The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 08
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Title: The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 08
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Release date: April 11, 2005 [eBook #15599]
Most recently updated: January 30, 2022
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15599
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF AMBROSE BIERCE, VOLUME 08 ***
[Illustration: Title Page]
* * * * *
THE COLLECTED
WORKS OF
AMBROSE BIERCE
VOLUME VIII
NEGLIGIBLE TALES
ON WITH THE DANCE
EPIGRAMS
NEW YORK
GORDIAN PRESS, INC.
1966
* * * * *
Originally Published 1911
Reprinted 1966
Published by
GORDIAN PRESS, INC.
Library of Congress Card Catalog No 66-14638
Printed in the U.S.A. by
EDWARD BROTHERS INC.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
* * * * *
CONTENTS
NEGLIGIBLE TALES
A BOTTOMLESS GRAVE 9
JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER-GENERAL 23
THE WIDOWER TURMORE 41
THE CITY OF THE GONE AWAY 52
THE MAJOR'S TALE 63
CURRIED COW 76
A REVOLT OF THE GODS 89
THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO 95
THE RACE AT LEFT BOWER 104
THE FAILURE OF HOPE & WANDEL 110
PERRY CHUMLY'S ECLIPSE 115
A PROVIDENTIAL INTIMATION 122
MR. SWIDDLER'S FLIP-FLAP 131
THE LITTLE STORY 138
THE PARENTICIDE CLUB
MY FAVORITE MURDER 147
OIL OF DOG 163
AN IMPERFECT CONFLAGRATION 171
THE HYPNOTIST 177
THE FOURTH ESTATE
MR. MASTHEAD, JOURNALIST 187
WHY I AM NOT EDITING "THE STINGER" 195
CORRUPTING THE PRESS 204
"THE BUBBLE REPUTATION" 211
THE OCEAN WAVE
A SHIPWRECKOLLECTION 219
THE CAPTAIN OF "THE CAMEL" 226
THE MAN OVERBOARD 239
A CARGO OF CAT 258
"ON WITH THE DANCE!" A REVIEW
THE PRUDE IN LETTERS AND LIFE 267
THE BEATING OF THE BLOOD 270
THERE ARE CORNS IN EGYPT 276
A REEF IN THE GABARDINE 282
ENTER A TROUPE OF ANCIENTS, DANCING 285
CAIRO REVISITED 296
JAPAN WEAR AND BOMBAY DUCKS 299
IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CRUCIBLE 311
COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE 316
THEY ALL DANCE 321
LUST, QUOTH'A 330
OUR GRANDMOTHERS' LEGS 332
EPIGRAMS 343
NEGLIGIBLE TALES
A BOTTOMLESS GRAVE
My name is John Brenwalter. My father, a drunkard, had a patent for an
invention, for making coffee-berries out of clay; but he was an honest
man and would not himself engage in the manufacture. He was, therefore,
only moderately wealthy, his royalties from his really valuable
invention bringing him hardly enough to pay his expenses of litigation
with rogues guilty of infringement. So I lacked many advantages enjoyed
by the children of unscrupulous and dishonorable parents, and had it not
been for a noble and devoted mother, who neglected all my brothers and
sisters and personally supervised my education, should have grown up in
ignorance and been compelled to teach school. To be the favorite child
of a good woman is better than gold.
When I was nineteen years of age my father had the misfortune to die. He
had always had perfect health, and his death, which occurred at the
dinner table without a moment's warning, surprised no one more than
himself. He had that very morning been notified that a patent had been
granted him for a device to burst open safes by hydraulic pressure,
without noise. The Commissioner of Patents had pronounced it the most
ingenious, effective and generally meritorious invention that had ever
been submitted to him, and my father had naturally looked forward to an
old age of prosperity and honor. His sudden death was, therefore, a deep
disappointment to him; but my mother, whose piety and resignation to the
will of Heaven were conspicuous virtues of her character, was apparently
less affected. At the close of the meal, when my poor father's body had
been removed from the floor, she called us all into an adjoining room
and addressed us as follows:
"My children, the uncommon occurrence that you have just witnessed is
one of the most disagreeable incidents in a good man's life, and one in
which I take little pleasure, I assure you. I beg you to believe that I
had no hand in bringing it about. Of course," she added, after a pause,
during which her eyes were cast down in deep thought, "of course it is
better that he is dead."
She uttered this with so evident a sense of its obviousness as a
self-evident truth that none of us had the courage to brave her surprise
by asking an explanation. My mother's air of surprise when any of us
went wrong in any way was very terrible to us. One day, when in a fit of
peevish temper, I had taken the liberty to cut off the baby's ear, her
simple words, "John, you surprise me!" appeared to me so sharp a reproof
that after a sleepless night I went to her in tears, and throwing myself
at her feet, exclaimed: "Mother, forgive me for surprising you." So now
we all--including the one-eared baby--felt that it would keep matters
smoother to accept without question the statement that it was better,
somehow, for our dear father to be dead. My mother continued:
"I must tell you, my children, that in a case of sudden and mysterious
death the law requires the Coroner to come and cut the body into pieces
and submit them to a number of men who, having inspected them, pronounce
the person dead. For this the Coroner gets a large sum of money. I wish
to avoid that painful formality in this instance; it is one which never
had the approval of--of the remains. John"--here my mother turned her
angel face to me-"you are an educated lad, and very discreet. You have
now an opportunity to show your gratitude for all the sacrifices that
your education has entailed upon the rest of us. John, go and remove the
Coroner."
Inexpressibly delighted by this proof of my mother's confidence, and by
the chance to distinguish myself by an act that squared with my natural
disposition, I knelt before her, carried her hand to my lips and bathed
it with tears of sensibility. Before five o'clock that afternoon I had
removed the Coroner.
I was immediately arrested and thrown into jail, where I passed a most
uncomfortable night, being unable to sleep because of the profanity of
my fellow-prisoners, two clergymen, whose theological training had given
them a fertility of impious ideas and a command of blasphemous language
altogether unparalleled. But along toward morning the jailer, who,
sleeping in an adjoining room, had been equally disturbed, entered the
cell and with a fearful oath warned the reverend gentlemen that if he
heard any more swearing their sacred calling would not prevent him from
turning them into the street. After that they moderated their
objectionable conversation, substituting an accordion, and I slept the
peaceful and refreshing sleep of youth and innocence.
The next morning I was taken before the Superior Judge, sitting as a
committing magistrate, and put upon my preliminary examination. I
pleaded not guilty, adding that the man whom I had murdered was a
notorious Democrat. (My good mother was a Republican, and from early
childhood I had been carefully instructed by her in the principles of
honest government and the necessity of suppressing factional
opposition.) The Judge, elected by a Republican ballot-box with a
sliding bottom, was visibly impressed by the cogency of my plea and
offered me a cigarette.
"May it please your Honor," began the District Attorney, "I do not deem
it necessary to submit any evidence in this case. Under the law of the
land you sit here as a committing magistrate. It is therefore your duty
to commit. Testimony and argument alike would imply a doubt that your
Honor means to perform your sworn duty. That is my case."
My counsel, a brother of the deceased Coroner, rose and said: "May it
please the Court, my learned friend on the other side has so well and
eloquently stated the law governing in this case that it only remains
for me to inquire to what extent it has been already complied with. It
is true, your Honor is a committing magistrate, and as such it is your
duty to commit--what? That is a matter which the law has wisely and
justly left to your own discretion, and wisely you have discharged
already every obligation that the law imposes. Since I have known your
Honor you have done nothing but commit. You have committed embracery,
theft, arson, perjury, adultery, murder--every crime in the calendar and
every excess known to the sensual and depraved, including my learned
friend, the District Attorney. You have done your whole duty as a
committing magistrate, and as there is no evidence against this worthy
young man, my client, I move that he be discharged."
An impressive silence ensued. The Judge arose, put on the black cap and
in a voice trembling with emotion sentenced me to life and liberty. Then
turning to my counsel he said, coldly but significantly:
"I will see you later."
The next morning the lawyer who had so conscientiously defended me
against a charge of murdering his own brother--with whom he had a
quarrel about some land--had disappeared and his fate is to this day
unknown.
In the meantime my poor father's body had been secretly buried at
midnight in the back yard of his late residence, with his late boots on
and the contents of his late stomach unanalyzed. "He was opposed to
display," said my dear mother, as she finished tamping down the earth
above him and assisted the children to litter the place with straw; "his
instincts were all domestic and he loved a quiet life."
My mother's application for letters of administration stated that she
had good reason to believe that the deceased was dead, for he had not
come home to his meals for several days; but the Judge of the Crowbait
Court--as she ever afterward contemptuously called it--decided that the
proof of death was insufficient, and put the estate into the hands of
the Public Administrator, who was his son-in-law. It was found that the
liabilities were exactly balanced by the assets; there was left only the
patent for the device for bursting open safes without noise, by
hydraulic pressure and this had passed into the ownership of the Probate
Judge and the Public Administrator--as my dear mother preferred to
spell it. Thus, within a few brief months a worthy and respectable
family was reduced from prosperity to crime; necessity compelled us to
go to work.
In the selection of occupations we were governed by a variety of
considerations, such as personal fitness, inclination, and so forth. My
mother opened a select private school for instruction in the art of
changing the spots upon leopard-skin rugs; my eldest brother, George
Henry, who had a turn for music, became a bugler in a neighboring asylum
for deaf mutes; my sister, Mary Maria, took orders for Professor
Pumpernickel's Essence of Latchkeys for flavoring mineral springs, and I
set up as an adjuster and gilder of crossbeams for gibbets. The other
children, too young for labor, continued to steal small articles exposed
in front of shops, as they had been taught.
In our intervals of leisure we decoyed travelers into our house and
buried the bodies in a cellar.
In one part of this cellar we kept wines, liquors and provisions. From
the rapidity of their disappearance we acquired the superstitious belief
that the spirits of the persons buried there came at dead of night and
held a festival. It was at least certain that frequently of a morning we
would discover fragments of pickled meats, canned goods and such débris,
littering the place, although it had been securely locked and barred
against human intrusion. It was proposed to remove the provisions and
store them elsewhere, but our dear mother, always generous and
hospitable, said it was better to endure the loss than risk exposure: if
the ghosts were denied this trifling gratification they might set on
foot an investigation, which would overthrow our scheme of the division
of labor, by diverting the energies of the whole family into the single
industry pursued by me--we might all decorate the cross-beams of
gibbets. We accepted her decision with filial submission, due to our
reverence for her wordly wisdom and the purity of her character.
One night while we were all in the cellar--none dared to enter it
alone--engaged in bestowing upon the Mayor of an adjoining town the
solemn offices of Christian burial, my mother and the younger children,
holding a candle each, while George Henry and I labored with a spade and
pick, my sister Mary Maria uttered a shriek and covered her eyes with
her hands. We were all dreadfully startled and the Mayor's obsequies
were instantly suspended, while with pale faces and in trembling tones
we begged her to say what had alarmed her. The younger children were so
agitated that they held their candles unsteadily, and the waving shadows
of our figures danced with uncouth and grotesque movements on the walls
and flung themselves into the most uncanny attitudes. The face of the
dead man, now gleaming ghastly in the light, and now extinguished by
some floating shadow, appeared at each emergence to have taken on a new
and more forbidding expression, a maligner menace. Frightened even more
than ourselves by the girl's scream, rats raced in multitudes about the
place, squeaking shrilly, or starred the black opacity of some distant
corner with steadfast eyes, mere points of green light, matching the
faint phosphorescence of decay that filled the half-dug grave and seemed
the visible manifestation of that faint odor of mortality which tainted
the unwholesome air. The children now sobbed and clung about the limbs
of their elders, dropping their candles, and we were near being left in
total darkness, except for that sinister light, which slowly welled
upward from the disturbed earth and overflowed the edges of the grave
like a fountain.
Meanwhile my sister, crouching in the earth that had been thrown out of
the excavation, had removed her hands from her face and was staring with
expanded eyes into an obscure space between two wine casks.
"There it is!--there it is!" she shrieked, pointing; "God in heaven!
can't you see it?"
And there indeed it was!--a human figure, dimly discernible in the
gloom--a figure that wavered from side to side as if about to fall,
clutching at the wine-casks for support, had stepped unsteadily forward
and for one moment stood revealed in the light of our remaining candles;
then it surged heavily and fell prone upon the earth. In that moment we
had all recognized the figure, the face and bearing of our father--dead
these ten months and buried by our own hands!--our father indubitably
risen and ghastly drunk!
On the incidents of our precipitate flight from that horrible place--on
the extinction of all human sentiment in that tumultuous, mad scramble
up the damp and mouldy stairs--slipping, falling, pulling one another
down and clambering over one another's back--the lights extinguished,
babes trampled beneath the feet of their strong brothers and hurled
backward to death by a mother's arm!--on all this I do not dare to
dwell. My mother, my eldest brother and sister and I escaped; the others
remained below, to perish of their wounds, or of their terror--some,
perhaps, by flame. For within an hour we four, hastily gathering
together what money and jewels we had and what clothing we could carry,
fired the dwelling and fled by its light into the hills. We did not even
pause to collect the insurance, and my dear mother said on her
death-bed, years afterward in a distant land, that this was the only sin
of omission that lay upon her conscience. Her confessor, a holy man,
assured her that under the circumstances Heaven would pardon the
neglect.
About ten years after our removal from the scenes of my childhood I,
then a prosperous forger, returned in disguise to the spot with a view
to obtaining, if possible, some treasure belonging to us, which had been
buried in the cellar. I may say that I was unsuccessful: the discovery
of many human bones in the ruins had set the authorities digging for
more. They had found the treasure and had kept it for their honesty. The
house had not been rebuilt; the whole suburb was, in fact, a desolation.
So many unearthly sights and sounds had been reported thereabout that
nobody would live there. As there was none to question nor molest, I
resolved to gratify my filial piety by gazing once more upon the face of
my beloved father, if indeed our eyes had deceived us and he was still
in his grave. I remembered, too, that he had always worn an enormous
diamond ring, and never having seen it nor heard of it since his death,
I had reason to think he might have been buried in it. Procuring a
spade, I soon located the grave in what had been the backyard and began
digging. When I had got down about four feet the whole bottom fell out
of the grave and I was precipitated into a large drain, falling through
a long hole in its crumbling arch. There was no body, nor any vestige of
one.
Unable to get out of the excavation, I crept through the drain, and
having with some difficulty removed a mass of charred rubbish and
blackened masonry that choked it, emerged into what had been that
fateful cellar.
All was clear. My father, whatever had caused him to be "taken bad" at
his meal (and I think my sainted mother could have thrown some light
upon that matter) had indubitably been buried alive. The grave having
been accidentally dug above the forgotten drain, and down almost to the
crown of its arch, and no coffin having been used, his struggles on
reviving had broken the rotten masonry and he had fallen through,
escaping finally into the cellar. Feeling that he was not welcome in his
own house, yet having no other, he had lived in subterranean seclusion,
a witness to our thrift and a pensioner on our providence. It was he who
had eaten our food; it was he who had drunk our wine--he was no better
than a thief! In a moment of intoxication, and feeling, no doubt, that
need of companionship which is the one sympathetic link between a
drunken man and his race, he had left his place of concealment at a
strangely inopportune time, entailing the most deplorable consequences
upon those nearest and dearest to him--a blunder that had almost the
dignity of crime.
JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER-GENERAL
_From the Secretary of War to the Hon. Jupiter Doke, Hardpan Crossroads,
Posey County, Illinois._
WASHINGTON, November 3, 1861.
Having faith in your patriotism and ability, the President has been
pleased to appoint you a brigadier-general of volunteers. Do you accept?
_From the Hon. Jupiter Doke to the Secretary of War._
HARDPAN, ILLINOIS, November 9, 1861.
It is the proudest moment of my life. The office is one which should be
neither sought nor declined. In times that try men's souls the patriot
knows no North, no South, no East, no West. His motto should be: "My
country, my whole country and nothing but my country." I accept the
great trust confided in me by a free and intelligent people, and with a
firm reliance on the principles of constitutional liberty, and invoking
the guidance of an all-wise Providence, Ruler of Nations, shall labor so
to discharge it as to leave no blot upon my political escutcheon. Say to
his Excellency, the successor of the immortal Washington in the Seat of
Power, that the patronage of my office will be bestowed with an eye
single to securing the greatest good to the greatest number, the
stability of republican institutions and the triumph of the party in all
elections; and to this I pledge my life, my fortune and my sacred honor.
I shall at once prepare an appropriate response to the speech of the
chairman of the committee deputed to inform me of my appointment, and I
trust the sentiments therein expressed will strike a sympathetic chord
in the public heart, as well as command the Executive approval.
_From the Secretary of War to Major-General Blount Wardorg, Commanding
the Military Department of Eastern Kentucky._
WASHINGTON, November 14, 1861.
I have assigned to your department Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, who
will soon proceed to Distilleryville, on the Little Buttermilk River,
and take command of the Illinois Brigade at that point, reporting to you
by letter for orders. Is the route from Covington by way of Bluegrass,
Opossum Corners and Horsecave still infested with bushwhackers, as
reported in your last dispatch? I have a plan for cleaning them out.
_From Major-General Blount Wardorg to the Secretary of War._
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, November 20, 1861.
The name and services of Brigadier-General Doke are unfamiliar to me,
but I shall be pleased to have the advantage of his skill. The route
from Covington to Distilleryville _via_ Opossum Corners and Horsecave I
have been compelled to abandon to the enemy, whose guerilla warfare made
it possible to keep it open without detaching too many troops from the
front. The brigade at Distilleryville is supplied by steamboats up the
Little Buttermilk.
_From the Secretary of War to Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, Hardpan,
Illinois._
WASHINGTON, November 26, 1861.
I deeply regret that your commission had been forwarded by mail before
the receipt of your letter of acceptance; so we must dispense with the
formality of official notification to you by a committee. The President
is highly gratified by the noble and patriotic sentiments of your
letter, and directs that you proceed at once to your command at
Distilleryville, Kentucky, and there report by letter to Major-General
Wardorg at Louisville, for orders. It is important that the strictest
secrecy be observed regarding your movements until you have passed
Covington, as it is desired to hold the enemy in front of
Distilleryville until you are within three days of him. Then if your
approach is known it will operate as a demonstration against his right
and cause him to strengthen it with his left now at Memphis, Tennessee,
which it is desirable to capture first. Go by way of Bluegrass, Opossum
Corners and Horsecave. All officers are expected to be in full uniform
when _en route_ to the front.
_From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to the Secretary of War._
COVINGTON, KENTUCKY, December 7, 1861.
I arrived yesterday at this point, and have given my proxy to Joel
Briller, Esq., my wife's cousin, and a staunch Republican, who will
worthily represent Posey County in field and forum. He points with pride
to a stainless record in the halls of legislation, which have often
echoed to his soul-stirring eloquence on questions which lie at the very
foundation of popular government. He has been called the Patrick Henry
of Hardpan, where he has done yeoman's service in the cause of civil and
religious liberty. Mr. Briller left for Distilleryville last evening,
and the standard bearer of the Democratic host confronting that
stronghold of freedom will find him a lion in his path. I have been
asked to remain here and deliver some addresses to the people in a local
contest involving issues of paramount importance. That duty being
performed, I shall in person enter the arena of armed debate and move in
the direction of the heaviest firing, burning my ships behind me. I
forward by this mail to his Excellency the President a request for the
appointment of my son, Jabez Leonidas Doke, as postmaster at Hardpan. I
would take it, sir, as a great favor if you would give the application a
strong oral indorsement, as the appointment is in the line of reform. Be
kind enough to inform me what are the emoluments of the office I hold in
the military arm, and if they are by salary or fees. Are there any
perquisites? My mileage account will be transmitted monthly.
_From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to Major General Blount Wardorg._
DISTILLERYVILLE, KENTUCKY, January 12, 1862.
I arrived on the tented field yesterday by steamboat, the recent storms
having inundated the landscape, covering, I understand, the greater part
of a congressional district. I am pained to find that Joel Briller,
Esq., a prominent citizen of Posey County, Illinois, and a far-seeing
statesman who held my proxy, and who a month ago should have been
thundering at the gates of Disunion, has not been heard from, and has
doubtless been sacrificed upon the altar of his country. In him the
American people lose a bulwark of freedom. I would respectfully move
that you designate a committee to draw up resolutions of respect to his
memory, and that the office holders and men under your command wear the
usual badge of mourning for thirty days. I shall at once place myself at
the head of affairs here, and am now ready to entertain any suggestions
which you may make, looking to the better enforcement of the laws in
this commonwealth. The militant Democrats on the other side of the river
appear to be contemplating extreme measures. They have two large cannons
facing this way, and yesterday morning, I am told, some of them came
down to the water's edge and remained in session for some time, making
infamous allegations.
_From the Diary of Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, at Distilleryville,
Kentucky._
January 12, 1862.--On my arrival yesterday at the Henry Clay Hotel
(named in honor of the late far-seeing statesman) I was waited on by a
delegation consisting of the three colonels intrusted with the command
of the regiments of my brigade. It was an occasion that will be
memorable in the political annals of America. Forwarded copies of the
speeches to the Posey _Maverick_, to be spread upon the record of the
ages. The gentlemen composing the delegation unanimously reaffirmed
their devotion to the principles of national unity and the Republican
party. Was gratified to recognize in them men of political prominence
and untarnished escutcheons. At the subsequent banquet, sentiments of
lofty patriotism were expressed. Wrote to Mr. Wardorg at Louisville for
instructions.
January 13, 1862.--Leased a prominent residence (the former incumbent
being absent in arms against his country) for the term of one year, and
wrote at once for Mrs. Brigadier-General Doke and the vital
issues--excepting Jabez Leonidas. In the camp of treason opposite here
there are supposed to be three thousand misguided men laying the ax at
the root of the tree of liberty. They have a clear majority, many of our
men having returned without leave to their constituents. We could
probably not poll more than two thousand votes. Have advised my heads of
regiments to make a canvass of those remaining, all bolters to be read
out of the phalanx.
January 14, 1862.--Wrote to the President, asking for the contract to
supply this command with firearms and regalia through my brother-in-law,
prominently identified with the manufacturing interests of the country.
Club of cannon soldiers arrived at Jayhawk, three miles back from here,
on their way to join us in battle array. Marched my whole brigade to
Jayhawk to escort them into town, but their chairman, mistaking us for
the opposing party, opened fire on the head of the procession and by the
extraordinary noise of the cannon balls (I had no conception of it!) so
frightened my horse that I was unseated without a contest. The meeting
adjourned in disorder and returning to camp I found that a deputation of
the enemy had crossed the river in our absence and made a division of
the loaves and fishes. Wrote to the President, applying for the
Gubernatorial Chair of the Territory of Idaho.
_From Editorial Article in the Posey, Illinois, "Maverick," January 20,
1862._
Brigadier-General Doke's thrilling account, in another column, of the
Battle of Distilleryville will make the heart of every loyal Illinoisian
leap with exultation. The brilliant exploit marks an era in military
history, and as General Doke says, "lays broad and deep the foundations
of American prowess in arms." As none of the troops engaged, except the
gallant author-chieftain (a host in himself) hails from Posey County, he
justly considered that a list of the fallen would only occupy our
valuable space to the exclusion of more important matter, but his
account of the strategic ruse by which he apparently abandoned his camp
and so inveigled a perfidious enemy into it for the purpose of murdering
the sick, the unfortunate _countertempus_ at Jayhawk, the subsequent
dash upon a trapped enemy flushed with a supposed success, driving their
terrified legions across an impassable river which precluded
pursuit--all these "moving accidents by flood and field" are related
with a pen of fire and have all the terrible interest of romance.
Verily, truth is stranger than fiction and the pen is mightier than the
sword. When by the graphic power of the art preservative of all arts we
are brought face to face with such glorious events as these, the
_Maverick's_ enterprise in securing for its thousands of readers the
services of so distinguished a contributor as the Great Captain who made
the history as well as wrote it seems a matter of almost secondary
importance. For President in 1864 (subject to the decision of the
Republican National Convention) Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, of
Illinois!
_From Major-General Blount Wardorg to Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke._
LOUISVILLE, January 22, 1862.
Your letter apprising me of your arrival at Distilleryville was delayed
in transmission, having only just been received (open) through the
courtesy of the Confederate department commander under a flag of truce.
He begs me to assure you that he would consider it an act of cruelty to
trouble you, and I think it would be. Maintain, however, a threatening
attitude, but at the least pressure retire. Your position is simply an
outpost which it is not intended to hold.
_From Major-General Blount Wardorg to the Secretary of War._
LOUISVILLE, January 23, 1862.
I have certain information that the enemy has concentrated twenty
thousand troops of all arms on the Little Buttermilk. According to your
assignment, General Doke is in command of the small brigade of raw
troops opposing them. It is no part of my plan to contest the enemy's
advance at that point, but I cannot hold myself responsible for any
reverses to the brigade mentioned, under its present commander. I think
him a fool.
_From the Secretary of War to Major-General Blount Wardorg._
WASHINGTON, February 1, 1862.
The President has great faith in General Doke. If your estimate of him
is correct, however, he would seem to be singularly well placed where he
now is, as your plans appear to contemplate a considerable sacrifice for
whatever advantages you expect to gain.
_From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to Major-General Blount Wardorg._
DISTILLERYVILLE, February 1, 1862.
To-morrow I shall remove my headquarters to Jayhawk in order to point
the way whenever my brigade retires from Distilleryville, as
foreshadowed by your letter of the 22d ult. I have appointed a Committee
on Retreat, the minutes of whose first meeting I transmit to you. You
will perceive that the committee having been duly organized by the
election of a chairman and secretary, a resolution (prepared by myself)
was adopted, to the effect that in case treason again raises her hideous
head on this side of the river every man of the brigade is to mount a
mule, the procession to move promptly in the direction of Louisville and
the loyal North. In preparation for such an emergency I have for some
time been collecting mules from the resident Democracy, and have on hand
2300 in a field at Jayhawk. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!
_From Major-General Gibeon J. Buxter, C.S.A., to the Confederate
Secretary of War._
BUNG STATION, KENTUCKY, February 4, 1862.
On the night of the 2d inst., our entire force, consisting of 25,000 men
and thirty-two field pieces, under command of Major-General Simmons B.
Flood, crossed by a ford to the north side of Little Buttermilk River at
a point three miles above Distilleryville and moved obliquely down and
away from the stream, to strike the Covington turnpike at Jayhawk; the
object being, as you know, to capture Covington, destroy Cincinnati and
occupy the Ohio Valley. For some months there had been in our front only
a small brigade of undisciplined troops, apparently without a commander,
who were useful to us, for by not disturbing them we could create an
impression of our weakness. But the movement on Jayhawk having isolated
them, I was about to detach an Alabama regiment to bring them in, my
division being the leading one, when an earth-shaking rumble was felt
and heard, and suddenly the head-of-column was struck by one of the
terrible tornadoes for which this region is famous, and utterly
annihilated. The tornado, I believe, passed along the entire length of
the road back to the ford, dispersing or destroying our entire army; but
of this I cannot be sure, for I was lifted from the earth insensible and
blown back to the south side of the river. Continuous firing all night
on the north side and the reports of such of our men as have recrossed
at the ford convince me that the Yankee brigade has exterminated the
disabled survivors. Our loss has been uncommonly heavy. Of my own
division of 15,000 infantry, the casualties--killed, wounded, captured,
and missing--are 14,994. Of General Dolliver Billow's division, 11,200
strong, I can find but two officers and a nigger cook. Of the artillery,
800 men, none has reported on this side of the river. General Flood is
dead. I have assumed command of the expeditionary force, but owing to
the heavy losses have deemed it advisable to contract my line of
supplies as rapidly as possible. I shall push southward to-morrow
morning early. The purposes of the campaign have been as yet but partly
accomplished.
_From Major-General Dolliver Billows, C.S.A., to the Confederate
Secretary of War._
BUHAC, KENTUCKY, February 5, 1862.
... But during the 2d they had, unknown to us, been reinforced by fifty
thousand cavalry, and being apprised of our movement by a spy, this vast
body was drawn up in the darkness at Jayhawk, and as the head of our
column reached that point at about 11 P.M., fell upon it with
astonishing fury, destroying the division of General Buxter in an
instant. General Baumschank's brigade of artillery, which was in the
rear, may have escaped--I did not wait to see, but withdrew my division
to the river at a point several miles above the ford, and at daylight
ferried it across on two fence rails lashed together with a suspender.
Its losses, from an effective strength of 11,200, are 11,199. General
Buxter is dead. I am changing my base to Mobile, Alabama.
_From Brigadier-General Schneddeker Baumschank, C.S.A., to the
Confederate Secretary of War._
IODINE, KENTUCKY, February 6, 1862.
... Yoost den somdings occur, I know nod vot it vos--somdings
mackneefcent, but it vas nod vor--und I finds meinselluf, afder leedle
viles, in dis blace, midout a hors und mit no men und goons. Sheneral
Peelows is deadt, You will blease be so goot as to resign me--I vights
no more in a dam gontry vere I gets vipped und knows nod how it vos
done.
_Resolutions of Congress_, February 15, 1862.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of Congress are due, and hereby tendered, to
Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke and the gallant men under his command for
their unparalleled feat of attacking--themselves only 2000 strong--an
army of 25,000 men and utterly overthrowing it, killing 5327, making
prisoners of 19,003, of whom more than half were wounded, taking 32
guns, 20,000 stand of small arms and, in short, the enemy's entire
equipment.
_Resolved_, That for this unexampled victory the President be requested
to designate a day of thanksgiving and public celebration of religious
rites in the various churches.
_Resolved_, That he be requested, in further commemoration of the great
event, and in reward of the gallant spirits whose deeds have added such
imperishable lustre to the American arms, to appoint, with the advice
and consent of the Senate, the following officer:
One major-general.
_Statement of Mr. Hannibal Alcazar Peyton, of Jayhawk, Kentucky._
Dat wus a almighty dark night, sho', and dese yere ole eyes aint wuf
shuks, but I's got a year like a sque'l, an' w'en I cotch de mummer o'
v'ices I knowed dat gang b'long on de far side o' de ribber. So I jes'
runs in de house an' wakes Marse Doke an' tells him: "Skin outer dis fo'
yo' life!" An' de Lo'd bress my soul! ef dat man didn' go right fru de
winder in his shir' tail an' break for to cross de mule patch! An' dem
twenty-free hunerd mules dey jes' t'nk it is de debble hese'f wid de
brandin' iron, an' dey bu'st outen dat patch like a yarthquake, an' pile
inter de upper ford road, an' flash down it five deep, an' it full o'
Con-fed'rates from en' to en'!...
THE WIDOWER TURMORE
The circumstances under which Joram Turmore became a widower have never
been popularly understood. I know them, naturally, for I am Joram
Turmore; and my wife, the late Elizabeth Mary Turmore, is by no means
ignorant of them; but although she doubtless relates them, yet they
remain a secret, for not a soul has ever believed her.
When I married Elizabeth Mary Johnin she was very wealthy, otherwise I
could hardly have afforded to marry, for I had not a cent, and Heaven
had not put into my heart any intention to earn one. I held the
Professorship of Cats in the University of Graymaulkin, and scholastic
pursuits had unfitted me for the heat and burden of business or labor.
Moreover, I could not forget that I was a Turmore--a member of a family
whose motto from the time of William of Normandy has been _Laborare est
errare_. The only known infraction of the sacred family tradition
occurred when Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore, an illustrious
master burglar of the seventeenth century, personally assisted at a
difficult operation undertaken by some of his workmen. That blot upon
our escutcheon cannot be contemplated without the most poignant
mortification.
My incumbency of the Chair of Cats in the Graymaulkin University had
not, of course, been marked by any instance of mean industry. There had
never, at any one time, been more than two students of the Noble
Science, and by merely repeating the manuscript lectures of my
predecessor, which I had found among his effects (he died at sea on his
way to Malta) I could sufficiently sate their famine for knowledge
without really earning even the distinction which served in place of
salary.
Naturally, under the straitened circumstances, I regarded Elizabeth Mary
as a kind of special Providence. She unwisely refused to share her
fortune with me, but for that I cared nothing; for, although by the laws
of that country (as is well known) a wife has control of her separate
property during her life, it passes to the husband at her death; nor can
she dispose of it otherwise by will. The mortality among wives is
considerable, but not excessive.
Having married Elizabeth Mary and, as it were, ennobled her by making
her a Turmore, I felt that the manner of her death ought, in some sense,
to match her social distinction. If I should remove her by any of the
ordinary marital methods I should incur a just reproach, as one
destitute of a proper family pride. Yet I could not hit upon a suitable
plan.
In this emergency I decided to consult the Turmore archives, a priceless
collection of documents, comprising the records of the family from the
time of its founder in the seventh century of our era. I knew that among
these sacred muniments I should find detailed accounts of all the
principal murders committed by my sainted ancestors for forty
generations. From that mass of papers I could hardly fail to derive the
most valuable suggestions.
The collection contained also most interesting relics. There were
patents of nobility granted to my forefathers for daring and ingenious
removals of pretenders to thrones, or occupants of them; stars, crosses
and other decorations attesting services of the most secret and
unmentionable character; miscellaneous gifts from the world's greatest
conspirators, representing an intrinsic money value beyond computation.
There were robes, jewels, swords of honor, and every kind of
"testimonials of esteem"; a king's skull fashioned into a wine cup; the
title deeds to vast estates, long alienated by confiscation, sale, or
abandonment; an illuminated breviary that had belonged to Sir Aldebaran
Turmore de Peters-Turmore of accursed memory; embalmed ears of several
of the family's most renowned enemies; the small intestine of a certain
unworthy Italian statesman inimical to Turmores, which, twisted into a
jumping rope, had served the youth of six kindred generations--mementoes
and souvenirs precious beyond the appraisals of imagination, but by the
sacred mandates of tradition and sentiment forever inalienable by sale
or gift.
As the head of the family, I was custodian of all these priceless
heirlooms, and for their safe keeping had constructed in the basement of
my dwelling a strong-room of massive masonry, whose solid stone walls
and single iron door could defy alike the earthquake's shock, the
tireless assaults of Time, and Cupidity's unholy hand.
To this thesaurus of the soul, redolent of sentiment and tenderness, and
rich in suggestions of crime, I now repaired for hints upon
assassination. To my unspeakable astonishment and grief I found it
empty! Every shelf, every chest, every coffer had been rifled. Of that
unique and incomparable collection not a vestige remained! Yet I proved
that until I had myself unlocked the massive metal door, not a bolt nor
bar had been disturbed; the seals upon the lock had been intact.
I passed the night in alternate lamentation and research, equally
fruitless, the mystery was impenetrable to conjecture, the pain
invincible to balm. But never once throughout that dreadful night did my
firm spirit relinquish its high design against Elizabeth Mary, and
daybreak found me more resolute than before to harvest the fruits of my
marriage. My great loss seemed but to bring me into nearer spiritual
relations with my dead ancestors, and to lay upon me a new and more
inevitable obedience to the suasion that spoke in every globule of my
blood.
My plan of action was soon formed, and procuring a stout cord I entered
my wife's bedroom finding her, as I expected, in a sound sleep. Before
she was awake, I had her bound fast, hand and foot. She was greatly
surprised and pained, but heedless of her remonstrances, delivered in a
high key, I carried her into the now rifled strong-room, which I had
never suffered her to enter, and of whose treasures I had not apprised
her. Seating her, still bound, in an angle of the wall, I passed the
next two days and nights in conveying bricks and mortar to the spot, and
on the morning of the third day had her securely walled in, from floor
to ceiling. All this time I gave no further heed to her pleas for mercy
than (on her assurance of non-resistance, which I am bound to say she
honorably observed) to grant her the freedom of her limbs. The space
allowed her was about four feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of
the top course, in contact with the ceiling of the strong-room, she bade
me farewell with what I deemed the composure of despair, and I rested
from my work, feeling that I had faithfully observed the traditions of
an ancient and illustrious family. My only bitter reflection, so far as
my own conduct was concerned, came of the consciousness that in the
performance of my design I had labored; but this no living soul would
ever know.
After a night's rest I went to the Judge of the Court of Successions and
Inheritances and made a true and sworn relation of all that I had
done--except that I ascribed to a servant the manual labor of building
the wall. His honor appointed a court commissioner, who made a careful
examination of the work, and upon his report Elizabeth Mary Turmore
was, at the end of a week, formally pronounced dead. By due process of
law I was put into possession of her estate, and although this was not
by hundreds of thousands of dollars as valuable as my lost treasures, it
raised me from poverty to affluence and brought me the respect of the
great and good.
Some six months after these events strange rumors reached me that the
ghost of my deceased wife had been seen in several places about the
country, but always at a considerable distance from Graymaulkin. These
rumors, which I was unable to trace to any authentic source, differed
widely in many particulars, but were alike in ascribing to the
apparition a certain high degree of apparent worldly prosperity combined
with an audacity most uncommon in ghosts. Not only was the spirit
attired in most costly raiment, but it walked at noonday, and even
drove! I was inexpressibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking there
might be something more than superstition in the popular belief that
only the spirits of the unburied dead still walk the earth, I took some
workmen equipped with picks and crowbars into the now long unentered
strong-room, and ordered them to demolish the brick wall that I had
built about the partner of my joys. I was resolved to give the body of
Elizabeth Mary such burial as I thought her immortal part might be
willing to accept as an equivalent to the privilege of ranging at will
among the haunts of the living.
In a few minutes we had broken down the wall and, thrusting a lamp
through the breach, I looked in. Nothing! Not a bone, not a lock of
hair, not a shred of clothing--the narrow space which, upon my
affidavit, had been legally declared to hold all that was mortal of the
late Mrs. Turmore was absolutely empty! This amazing disclosure, coming
upon a mind already overwrought with too much of mystery and excitement,
was more than I could bear. I shrieked aloud and fell in a fit. For
months afterward I lay between life and death, fevered and delirious;
nor did I recover until my physician had had the providence to take a
case of valuable jewels from my safe and leave the country.
The next summer I had occasion to visit my wine cellar, in one corner of
which I had built the now long disused strong-room. In moving a cask of
Madeira I struck it with considerable force against the partition wall,
and was surprised to observe that it displaced two large square stones
forming a part of the wall.
Applying my hands to these, I easily pushed them out entirely, and
looking through saw that they had fallen into the niche in which I had
immured my lamented wife; facing the opening which their fall left, and
at a distance of four feet, was the brickwork which my own hands had
made for that unfortunate gentlewoman's restraint. At this significant
revelation I began a search of the wine cellar. Behind a row of casks I
found four historically interesting but intrinsically valueless objects:
First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe of state (Florentine) of the
eleventh century; second, an illuminated vellum breviary with the name
of Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore inscribed in colors on the
title page; third, a human skull fashioned into a drinking cup and
deeply stained with wine; fourth, the iron cross of a Knight Commander
of the Imperial Austrian Order of Assassins by Poison.
That was all--not an object having commercial value, no papers--nothing.
But this was enough to clear up the mystery of the strong-room. My wife
had early divined the existence and purpose of that apartment, and with
the skill amounting to genius had effected an entrance by loosening the
two stones in the wall.
Through that opening she had at several times abstracted the entire
collection, which doubtless she had succeeded in converting into coin of
the realm. When with an unconscious justice which deprives me of all
satisfaction in the memory I decided to build her into the wall, by some
malign fatality I selected that part of it in which were these movable
stones, and doubtless before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she
had removed them and, slipping through into the wine cellar, replaced
them as they were originally laid. From the cellar she had easily
escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant parts. I have
endeavored to procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron of the Court of
Indictment and Conviction reminds me that she is legally dead, and says
my only course is to go before the Master in Cadavery and move for a
writ of disinterment and constructive revival. So it looks as if I must
suffer without redress this great wrong at the hands of a woman devoid
alike of principle and shame.
THE CITY OF THE GONE AWAY
I was born of poor because honest parents, and until I was twenty-three
years old never knew the possibilities of happiness latent in another
person's coin. At that time Providence threw me into a deep sleep and
revealed to me in a dream the folly of labor. "Behold," said a vision of
a holy hermit, "the poverty and squalor of your lot and listen to the
teachings of nature. You rise in the morning from your pallet of straw
and go forth to your daily labor in the fields. The flowers nod their
heads in friendly salutation as you pass. The lark greets you with a
burst of song. The early sun sheds his temperate beams upon you, and
from the dewy grass you inhale an atmosphere cool and grateful to your
lungs. All nature seems to salute you with the joy of a generous servant
welcoming a faithful master. You are in harmony with her gentlest mood
and your soul sings within you. You begin your daily task at the plow,
hopeful that the noonday will fulfill the promise of the morn, maturing
the charms of the landscape and confirming its benediction upon your
spirit. You follow the plow until fatigue invokes repose, and seating
yourself upon the earth at the end of your furrow you expect to enjoy in
fulness the delights of which you did but taste.
"Alas! the sun has climbed into a brazen sky and his beams are become a
torrent. The flowers have closed their petals, confining their perfume
and denying their colors to the eye. Coolness no longer exhales from the
grass: the dew has vanished and the dry surface of the fields repeats
the fierce heat of the sky. No longer the birds of heaven salute you
with melody, but the jay harshly upbraids you from the edge of the
copse. Unhappy man! all the gentle and healing ministrations of nature
are denied you in punishment of your sin. You have broken the First
Commandment of the Natural Decalogue: you have labored!"
Awakening from my dream, I collected my few belongings, bade adieu to my
erring parents and departed out of that land, pausing at the grave of my
grandfather, who had been a priest, to take an oath that never again,
Heaven helping me, would I earn an honest penny.
How long I traveled I know not, but I came at last to a great city by
the sea, where I set up as a physician. The name of that place I do not
now remember, for such were my activity and renown in my new profession
that the Aldermen, moved by pressure of public opinion, altered it, and
thenceforth the place was known as the City of the Gone Away. It is
needless to say that I had no knowledge of medicine, but by securing the
service of an eminent forger I obtained a diploma purporting to have
been granted by the Royal Quackery of Charlatanic Empiricism at Hoodos,
which, framed in immortelles and suspended by a bit of _crêpe_ to a
willow in front of my office, attracted the ailing in great numbers. In
connection with my dispensary I conducted one of the largest undertaking
establishments ever known, and as soon as my means permitted, purchased
a wide tract of land and made it into a cemetery. I owned also some very
profitable marble works on one side of the gateway to the cemetery, and
on the other an extensive flower garden. My Mourner's Emporium was
patronized by the beauty, fashion and sorrow of the city. In short, I
was in a very prosperous way of business, and within a year was able to
send for my parents and establish my old father very comfortably as a
receiver of stolen goods--an act which I confess was saved from the
reproach of filial gratitude only by my exaction of all the profits.
But the vicissitudes of fortune are avoidable only by practice of the
sternest indigence: human foresight cannot provide against the envy of
the gods and the tireless machinations of Fate. The widening circle of
prosperity grows weaker as it spreads until the antagonistic forces
which it has pushed back are made powerful by compression to resist and
finally overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my skill in medicine that
patients were brought to me from all the four quarters of the globe.
Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying was a perpetual grief to
their friends; wealthy testators whose legatees were desirous to come by
their own; superfluous children of penitent parents and dependent
parents of frugal children; wives of husbands ambitious to remarry and
husbands of wives without standing in the courts of divorce--these and
all conceivable classes of the surplus population were conducted to my
dispensary in the City of the Gone Away. They came in incalculable
multitudes.
Government agents brought me caravans of orphans, paupers, lunatics and
all who had become a public charge. My skill in curing orphanism and
pauperism was particularly acknowledged by a grateful parliament.
Naturally, all this promoted the public prosperity, for although I got
the greater part of the money that strangers expended in the city, the
rest went into the channels of trade, and I was myself a liberal
investor, purchaser and employer, and a patron of the arts and sciences.
The City of the Gone Away grew so rapidly that in a few years it had
inclosed my cemetery, despite its own constant growth. In that fact lay
the lion that rent me.
The Aldermen declared my cemetery a public evil and decided to take it
from me, remove the bodies to another place and make a park of it. I was
to be paid for it and could easily bribe the appraisers to fix a high
price, but for a reason which will appear the decision gave me little
joy. It was in vain that I protested against the sacrilege of disturbing
the holy dead, although this was a powerful appeal, for in that land the
dead are held in religious veneration. Temples are built in their honor
and a separate priesthood maintained at the public expense, whose only
duty is performance of memorial services of the most solemn and touching
kind. On four days in the year there is a Festival of the Good, as it is
called, when all the people lay by their work or business and, headed by
the priests, march in procession through the cemeteries, adorning the
graves and praying in the temples. However bad a man's life may be, it
is believed that when dead he enters into a state of eternal and
inexpressible happiness. To signify a doubt of this is an offense
punishable by death. To deny burial to the dead, or to exhume a buried
body, except under sanction of law by special dispensation and with
solemn ceremony, is a crime having no stated penalty because no one has
ever had the hardihood to commit it.
All these considerations were in my favor, yet so well assured were the
people and their civic officers that my cemetery was injurious to the
public health that it was condemned and appraised, and with terror in my
heart I received three times its value and began to settle up my affairs
with all speed.
A week later was the day appointed for the formal inauguration of the
ceremony of removing the bodies. The day was fine and the entire
population of the city and surrounding country was present at the
imposing religious rites. These were directed by the mortuary priesthood
in full canonicals. There was propitiatory sacrifice in the Temples of
the Once, followed by a processional pageant of great splendor, ending
at the cemetery. The Great Mayor in his robe of state led the
procession. He was armed with a golden spade and followed by one hundred
male and female singers, clad all in white and chanting the Hymn to the
Gone Away. Behind these came the minor priesthood of the temples, all
the civic authorities, habited in their official apparel, each carrying
a living pig as an offering to the gods of the dead. Of the many
divisions of the line, the last was formed by the populace, with
uncovered heads, sifting dust into their hair in token of humility. In
front of the mortuary chapel in the midst of the necropolis, the Supreme
Priest stood in gorgeous vestments, supported on each hand by a line of
bishops and other high dignitaries of his prelacy, all frowning with the
utmost austerity. As the Great Mayor paused in the Presence, the minor
clergy, the civic authorities, the choir and populace closed in and
encompassed the spot. The Great Mayor, laying his golden spade at the
feet of the Supreme Priest, knelt in silence.
"Why comest thou here, presumptuous mortal?" said the Supreme Priest in
clear, deliberate tones. "Is it thy unhallowed purpose with this
implement to uncover the mysteries of death and break the repose of the
Good?"
The Great Mayor, still kneeling, drew from his robe a document with
portentous seals: "Behold, O ineffable, thy servant, having warrant of
his people, entreateth at thy holy hands the custody of the Good, to the
end and purpose that they lie in fitter earth, by consecration duly
prepared against their coming."
With that he placed in the sacerdotal hands the order of the Council of
Aldermen decreeing the removal. Merely touching the parchment, the
Supreme Priest passed it to the Head Necropolitan at his side, and
raising his hands relaxed the severity of his countenance and exclaimed:
"The gods comply."
Down the line of prelates on either side, his gesture, look and words
were successively repeated. The Great Mayor rose to his feet, the choir
began a solemn chant and, opportunely, a funeral car drawn by ten white
horses with black plumes rolled in at the gate and made its way through
the parting crowd to the grave selected for the occasion--that of a high
official whom I had treated for chronic incumbency. The Great Mayor
touched the grave with his golden spade (which he then presented to the
Supreme Priest) and two stalwart diggers with iron ones set vigorously
to work.
At that moment I was observed to leave the cemetery and the country; for
a report of the rest of the proceedings I am indebted to my sainted
father, who related it in a letter to me, written in jail the night
before he had the irreparable misfortune to take the kink out of a rope.
As the workmen proceeded with their excavation, four bishops stationed
themselves at the corners of the grave and in the profound silence of
the multitude, broken otherwise only by the harsh grinding sound of
spades, repeated continuously, one after another, the solemn invocations
and responses from the Ritual of the Disturbed, imploring the blessed
brother to forgive. But the blessed brother was not there. Full fathom
two they mined for him in vain, then gave it up. The priests were
visibly disconcerted, the populace was aghast, for that grave was
indubitably vacant.
After a brief consultation with the Supreme Priest, the Great Mayor
ordered the workmen to open another grave. The ritual was omitted this
time until the coffin should be uncovered. There was no coffin, no body.
The cemetery was now a scene of the wildest confusion and dismay. The
people shouted and ran hither and thither, gesticulating, clamoring, all
talking at once, none listening. Some ran for spades, fire-shovels,
hoes, sticks, anything. Some brought carpenters' adzes, even chisels
from the marble works, and with these inadequate aids set to work upon
the first graves they came to. Others fell upon the mounds with their
bare hands, scraping away the earth as eagerly as dogs digging for
marmots. Before nightfall the surface of the greater part of the
cemetery had been upturned; every grave had been explored to the bottom
and thousands of men were tearing away at the interspaces with as
furious a frenzy as exhaustion would permit. As night came on torches
were lighted, and in the sinister glare these frantic mortals, looking
like a legion of fiends performing some unholy rite, pursued their
disappointing work until they had devastated the entire area. But not a
body did they find--not even a coffin.
The explanation is exceedingly simple. An important part of my income
had been derived from the sale of _cadavres_ to medical colleges, which
never before had been so well supplied, and which, in added recognition
of my services to science, had all bestowed upon me diplomas, degrees
and fellowships without number. But their demand for _cadavres_ was
unequal to my supply: by even the most prodigal extravagances they could
not consume the one-half of the products of my skill as a physician. As
to the rest, I had owned and operated the most extensive and thoroughly
appointed soapworks in all the country. The excellence of my "Toilet
Homoline" was attested by certificates from scores of the saintliest
theologians, and I had one in autograph from Badelina Fatti the most
famous living soaprano.
THE MAJOR'S TALE
In the days of the Civil War practical joking had not, I think, fallen
into that disrepute which characterizes it now. That, doubtless, was
owing to our extreme youth--men were much younger than now, and evermore
your very young man has a boisterous spirit, running easily to
horse-play. You cannot think how young the men were in the early
sixties! Why, the average age of the entire Federal Army was not more
than twenty-five; I doubt if it was more than twenty-three, but not
having the statistics on that point (if there are any) I want to be
moderate: we will say twenty-five. It is true a man of twenty-five was
in that heroic time a good deal more of a man than one of that age is
now; you could see that by looking at him. His face had nothing of that
unripeness so conspicuous in his successor. I never see a young fellow
now without observing how disagreeably young he really is; but during the
war we did not think of a man's age at all unless he happened to be
pretty well along in life. In that case one could not help it, for the
unloveliness of age assailed the human countenance then much earlier
than now; the result, I suppose, of hard service--perhaps, to some
extent, of hard drink, for, bless my soul! we did shed the blood of the
grape and the grain abundantly during the war. I remember thinking
General Grant, who could not have been more than forty, a pretty well
preserved old chap, considering his habits. As to men of middle age--say
from fifty to sixty--why, they all looked fit to personate the Last of
the Hittites, or the Madagascarene Methuselah, in a museum. Depend upon
it, my friends, men of that time were greatly younger than men are
to-day, but looked much older. The change is quite remarkable.
I said that practical joking had not then gone out of fashion. It had
not, at least, in the army; though possibly in the more serious life of
the civilian it had no place except in the form of tarring and
feathering an occasional "copperhead." You all know, I suppose, what a
"copperhead" was, so I will go directly at my story without introductory
remark, as is my way.
It was a few days before the battle of Nashville. The enemy had driven
us up out of northern Georgia and Alabama. At Nashville we had turned at
bay and fortified, while old Pap Thomas, our commander, hurried down
reinforcements and supplies from Louisville. Meantime Hood, the
Confederate commander, had partly invested us and lay close enough to
have tossed shells into the heart of the town. As a rule he
abstained--he was afraid of killing the families of his own soldiers, I
suppose, a great many of whom had lived there. I sometimes wondered what
were the feelings of those fellows, gazing over our heads at their own
dwellings, where their wives and children or their aged parents were
perhaps suffering for the necessaries of life, and certainly (so their
reasoning would run) cowering under the tyranny and power of the
barbarous Yankees.
To begin, then, at the beginning, I was serving at that time on the
staff of a division commander whose name I shall not disclose, for I am
relating facts, and the person upon whom they bear hardest may have
surviving relatives who would not care to have him traced. Our
headquarters were in a large dwelling which stood just behind our line
of works. This had been hastily abandoned by the civilian occupants, who
had left everything pretty much as it was--had no place to store it,
probably, and trusted that Heaven would preserve it from Federal
cupidity and Confederate artillery. With regard to the latter we were as
solicitous as they.
Rummaging about in some of the chambers and closets one evening, some of
us found an abundant supply of lady-gear--gowns, shawls, bonnets, hats,
petticoats and the Lord knows what; I could not at that time have named
the half of it. The sight of all this pretty plunder inspired one of us
with what he was pleased to call an "idea," which, when submitted to the
other scamps and scapegraces of the staff, met with instant and
enthusiastic approval. We proceeded at once to act upon it for the
undoing of one of our comrades.
Our selected victim was an aide, Lieutenant Haberton, so to call him. He
was a good soldier--as gallant a chap as ever wore spurs; but he had an
intolerable weakness: he was a lady-killer, and like most of his class,
even in those days, eager that all should know it. He never tired of
relating his amatory exploits, and I need not say how dismal that kind
of narrative is to all but the narrator. It would be dismal even if
sprightly and vivacious, for all men are rivals in woman's favor, and to
relate your successes to another man is to rouse in him a dumb
resentment, tempered by disbelief. You will not convince him that you
tell the tale for his entertainment; he will hear nothing in it but an
expression of your own vanity. Moreover, as most men, whether rakes or
not, are willing to be thought rakes, he is very likely to resent a
stupid and unjust inference which he suspects you to have drawn from his
reticence in the matter of his own adventures--namely, that he has had
none. If, on the other hand, he has had no scruple in the matter and his
reticence is due to lack of opportunity to talk, or of nimbleness in
taking advantage of it, why, then he will be surly because you "have the
floor" when he wants it himself. There are, in short, no circumstances
under which a man, even from the best of motives, or no motive at all,
can relate his feats of love without distinctly lowering himself in the
esteem of his male auditor; and herein lies a just punishment for such
as kiss and tell. In my younger days I was myself not entirely out of
favor with the ladies, and have a memory stored with much concerning
them which doubtless I might put into acceptable narrative had I not
undertaken another tale, and if it were not my practice to relate one
thing at a time, going straight away to the end, without digression.
Lieutenant Haberton was, it must be confessed, a singularly handsome man
with engaging manners. He was, I suppose, judging from the imperfect
view-point of my sex, what women call "fascinating." Now, the qualities
which make a man attractive to ladies entail a double disadvantage.
First, they are of a sort readily discerned by other men, and by none
more readily than by those who lack them. Their possessor, being feared
by all these, is habitually slandered by them in self-defense. To all
the ladies in whose welfare they deem themselves entitled to a voice and
interest they hint at the vices and general unworth of the "ladies' man"
in no uncertain terms, and to their wives relate without shame the most
monstrous falsehoods about him. Nor are they restrained by the
consideration that he is their friend; the qualities which have engaged
their own admiration make it necessary to warn away those to whom the
allurement would be a peril. So the man of charming personality, while
loved by all the ladies who know him well, yet not too well, must endure
with such fortitude as he may the consciousness that those others who
know him only "by reputation" consider him a shameless reprobate, a
vicious and unworthy man--a type and example of moral depravity. To name
the second disadvantage entailed by his charms: he commonly is.
In order to get forward with our busy story (and in my judgment a story
once begun should not suffer impedition) it is necessary to explain that
a young fellow attached to our headquarters as an orderly was notably
effeminate in face and figure. He was not more than seventeen and had a
perfectly smooth face and large lustrous eyes, which must have been the
envy of many a beautiful woman in those days. And how beautiful the
women of those days were! and how gracious! Those of the South showed in
their demeanor toward us Yankees something of _hauteur_, but, for my
part, I found it less insupportable than the studious indifference with
which one's attentions are received by the ladies of this new
generation, whom I certainly think destitute of sentiment and
sensibility.
This young orderly, whose name was Arman, we persuaded--by what
arguments I am not bound to say--to clothe himself in female attire and
personate a lady. When we had him arrayed to our satisfaction--and a
charming girl he looked--he was conducted to a sofa in the office of the
adjutant-general. That officer was in the secret, as indeed were all
excepting Haberton and the general; within the awful dignity hedging the
latter lay possibilities of disapproval which we were unwilling to
confront.
When all was ready I went to Haberton and said: "Lieutenant, there is a
young woman in the adjutant-general's office. She is the daughter of the
insurgent gentleman who owns this house, and has, I think, called to see
about its present occupancy. We none of us know just how to talk to her,
but we think perhaps you would say about the right thing--at least you
will say things in the right way. Would you mind coming down?"
The lieutenant would not mind; he made a hasty toilet and joined me. As
we were going along a passage toward the Presence we encountered a
formidable obstacle--the general.
"I say, Broadwood," he said, addressing me in the familiar manner which
meant that he was in excellent humor, "there's a lady in Lawson's
office. Looks like a devilish fine girl--came on some errand of mercy or
justice, no doubt. Have the goodness to conduct her to my quarters. I
won't saddle you youngsters with _all_ the business of this division,"
he added facetiously.
This was awkward; something had to be done.
"General," I said, "I did not think the lady's business of sufficient
importance to bother you with it. She is one of the Sanitary
Commission's nurses, and merely wants to see about some supplies for the
smallpox hospital where she is on duty. I'll send her in at once."
"You need not mind," said the general, moving on; "I dare say Lawson
will attend to the matter."
Ah, the gallant general! how little I thought, as I looked after his
retreating figure and laughed at the success of my ruse, that within the
week he would be "dead on the field of honor!" Nor was he the only one
of our little military household above whom gloomed the shadow of the
death angel, and who might almost have heard "the beating of his wings."
On that bleak December morning a few days later, when from an hour
before dawn until ten o'clock we sat on horseback on those icy hills,
waiting for General Smith to open the battle miles away to the right,
there were eight of us. At the close of the fighting there were three.
There is now one. Bear with him yet a little while, oh, thrifty
generation; he is but one of the horrors of war strayed from his era
into yours. He is only the harmless skeleton at your feast and
peace-dance, responding to your laughter and your footing it featly,
with rattling fingers and bobbing skull--albeit upon suitable occasion,
with a partner of his choosing, he might do his little dance with the
best of you.
As we entered the adjutant-general's office we observed that the entire
staff was there. The adjutant-general himself was exceedingly busy at
his desk. The commissary of subsistence played cards with the surgeon in
a bay window. The rest were in several parts of the room, reading or
conversing in low tones. On a sofa in a half lighted nook of the room,
at some distance from any of the groups, sat the "lady," closely veiled,
her eyes modestly fixed upon her toes.
"Madam," I said, advancing with Haberton, "this officer will be pleased
to serve you if it is in his power. I trust that it is."
With a bow I retired to the farther corner of the room and took part in
a conversation going on there, though I had not the faintest notion what
it was about, and my remarks had no relevancy to anything under the
heavens. A close observer would have noticed that we were all intently
watching Haberton and only "making believe" to do anything else.
He was worth watching, too; the fellow was simply an _édition de luxe_
of "Turveydrop on Deportment." As the "lady" slowly unfolded her tale of
grievances against our lawless soldiery and mentioned certain instances
of wanton disregard of property rights--among them, as to the imminent
peril of bursting our sides we partly overheard, the looting of her own
wardrobe--the look of sympathetic agony in Haberton's handsome face was
the very flower and fruit of histrionic art. His deferential and
assenting nods at her several statements were so exquisitely performed
that one could not help regretting their unsubstantial nature and the
impossibility of preserving them under glass for instruction and delight
of posterity. And all the time the wretch was drawing his chair nearer
and nearer. Once or twice he looked about to see if we were observing,
but we were in appearance blankly oblivious to all but one another and
our several diversions. The low hum of our conversation, the gentle
tap-tap of the cards as they fell in play and the furious scratching of
the adjutant-general's pen as he turned off countless pages of words
without sense were the only sounds heard. No--there was another: at long
intervals the distant boom of a heavy gun, followed by the approaching
rush of the shot. The enemy was amusing himself.
On these occasions the lady was perhaps not the only member of that
company who was startled, but she was startled more than the others,
sometimes rising from the sofa and standing with clasped hands, the
authentic portrait of terror and irresolution. It was no more than
natural that Haberton should at these times reseat her with infinite
tenderness, assuring her of her safety and regretting her peril in the
same breath. It was perhaps right that he should finally possess himself
of her gloved hand and a seat beside her on the sofa; but it certainly
was highly improper for him to be in the very act of possessing himself
of _both_ hands when--boom, _whiz_, BANG!
We all sprang to our feet. A shell had crashed into the house and
exploded in the room above us. Bushels of plaster fell among us. That
modest and murmurous young lady sprang erect.
"Jumping Jee-rusalem!" she cried.
Haberton, who had also risen, stood as one petrified--as a statue of
himself erected on the site of his assassination. He neither spoke, nor
moved, nor once took his eyes off the face of Orderly Arman, who was now
flinging his girl-gear right and left, exposing his charms in the most
shameless way; while out upon the night and away over the lighted camps
into the black spaces between the hostile lines rolled the billows of
our inexhaustible laughter! Ah, what a merry life it was in the old
heroic days when men had not forgotten how to laugh!
Haberton slowly came to himself. He looked about the room less blankly;
then by degrees fashioned his visage into the sickliest grin that ever
libeled all smiling. He shook his head and looked knowing.
"You can't fool _me_!" he said.
CURRIED COW
My Aunt Patience, who tilled a small farm in the state of Michigan, had
a favorite cow. This creature was not a good cow, nor a profitable one,
for instead of devoting a part of her leisure to secretion of milk and
production of veal she concentrated all her faculties on the study of
kicking. She would kick all day and get up in the middle of the night to
kick. She would kick at anything--hens, pigs, posts, loose stones, birds
in the air and fish leaping out of the water; to this impartial and
catholic-minded beef, all were equal--all similarly undeserving. Like
old Timotheus, who "raised a mortal to the skies," was my Aunt
Patience's cow; though, in the words of a later poet than Dryden, she
did it "more harder and more frequently." It was pleasing to see her
open a passage for herself through a populous barnyard. She would flash
out, right and left, first with one hind-leg and then with the other,
and would sometimes, under favoring conditions, have a considerable
number of domestic animals in the air at once.
Her kicks, too, were as admirable in quality as inexhaustible in
quantity. They were incomparably superior to those of the untutored kine
that had not made the art a life study--mere amateurs that kicked "by
ear," as they say in music. I saw her once standing in the road,
professedly fast asleep, and mechanically munching her cud with a sort
of Sunday morning lassitude, as one munches one's cud in a dream.
Snouting about at her side, blissfully unconscious of impending danger
and wrapped up in thoughts of his sweetheart, was a gigantic black
hog--a hog of about the size and general appearance of a yearling
rhinoceros. Suddenly, while I looked--without a visible movement on the
part of the cow--with never a perceptible tremor of her frame, nor a
lapse in the placid regularity of her chewing--that hog had gone away
from there--had utterly taken his leave. But away toward the pale
horizon a minute black speck was traversing the empyrean with the speed
of a meteor, and in a moment had disappeared, without audible report,
beyond the distant hills. It may have been that hog.
Currying cows is not, I think, a common practice, even in Michigan; but
as this one had never needed milking, of course she had to be subjected
to some equivalent form of persecution; and irritating her skin with a
currycomb was thought as disagreeable an attention as a thoughtful
affection could devise. At least she thought it so; though I suspect her
mistress really meant it for the good creature's temporal advantage.
Anyhow my aunt always made it a condition to the employment of a
farm-servant that he should curry the cow every morning; but after just
enough trials to convince himself that it was not a sudden spasm, nor a
mere local disturbance, the man would always give notice of an intention
to quit, by pounding the beast half-dead with some foreign body and then
limping home to his couch. I don't know how many men the creature
removed from my aunt's employ in this way, but judging from the number
of lame persons in that part of the country, I should say a good many;
though some of the lameness may have been taken at second-hand from the
original sufferers by their descendants, and some may have come by
contagion.
I think my aunt's was a faulty system of agriculture. It is true her
farm labor cost her nothing, for the laborers all left her service
before any salary had accrued; but as the cow's fame spread abroad
through the several States and Territories, it became increasingly
difficult to obtain hands; and, after all, the favorite was imperfectly
curried. It was currently remarked that the cow had kicked the farm to
pieces--a rude metaphor, implying that the land was not properly
cultivated, nor the buildings and fences kept in adequate repair.
It was useless to remonstrate with my aunt: she would concede
everything, amending nothing. Her late husband had attempted to reform
the abuse in this manner, and had had the argument all his own way until
he had remonstrated himself into an early grave; and the funeral was
delayed all day, until a fresh undertaker could be procured, the one
originally engaged having confidingly undertaken to curry the cow at the
request of the widow.
Since that time my Aunt Patience had not been in the matrimonial market;
the love of that cow had usurped in her heart the place of a more
natural and profitable affection. But when she saw her seeds unsown, her
harvests ungarnered, her fences overtopped with rank brambles and her
meadows gorgeous with the towering Canada thistle she thought it best to
take a partner.
When it transpired that my Aunt Patience intended wedlock there was
intense popular excitement. Every adult single male became at once a
marrying man. The criminal statistics of Badger county show that in that
single year more marriages occurred than in any decade before or since.
But none of them was my aunt's. Men married their cooks, their
laundresses, their deceased wives' mothers, their enemies'
sisters--married whomsoever would wed; and any man who, by fair means or
courtship, could not obtain a wife went before a justice of the peace
and made an affidavit that he had some wives in Indiana. Such was the
fear of being married alive by my Aunt Patience.
Now, where my aunt's affection was concerned she was, as the reader will
have already surmised, a rather determined woman; and the extraordinary
marrying epidemic having left but one eligible male in all that county,
she had set her heart upon that one eligible male; then she went and
carted him to her home. He turned out to be a long Methodist parson,
named Huggins.
Aside from his unconscionable length, the Rev. Berosus Huggins was not
so bad a fellow, and was nobody's fool. He was, I suppose, the most
ill-favored mortal, however, in the whole northern half of
America--thin, angular, cadaverous of visage and solemn out of all
reason. He commonly wore a low-crowned black hat, set so far down upon
his head as partly to eclipse his eyes and wholly obscure the ample
glory of his ears. The only other visible article of his attire (except
a brace of wrinkled cowskin boots, by which the word "polish" would have
been considered the meaningless fragment of a lost language) was a
tight-fitting black frock-coat, preternaturally long in the waist, the
skirts of which fell about his heels, sopping up the dew. This he always
wore snugly buttoned from the throat downward. In this attire he cut a
tolerably spectral figure. His aspect was so conspicuously unnatural and
inhuman that whenever he went into a cornfield, the predatory crows
would temporarily forsake their business to settle upon him in swarms,
fighting for the best seats upon his person, by way of testifying their
contempt for the weak inventions of the husbandman.
The day after the wedding my Aunt Patience summoned the Rev. Berosus to
the council chamber, and uttered her mind to the following intent:
"Now, Huggy, dear, I'll tell you what there is to do about the place.
First, you must repair all the fences, clearing out the weeds and
repressing the brambles with a strong hand. Then you will have to
exterminate the Canadian thistles, mend the wagon, rig up a plow or two,
and get things into ship-shape generally. This will keep you out of
mischief for the better part of two years; of course you will have to
give up preaching, for the present. As soon as you have--O! I forgot
poor Phoebe. She"----
"Mrs. Huggins," interrupted her solemn spouse, "I shall hope to be the
means, under Providence, of effecting all needful reforms in the
husbandry of this farm. But the sister you mention (I trust she is not
of the world's people)--have I the pleasure of knowing her? The name,
indeed, sounds familiar, but"----
"Not know Phoebe!" cried my aunt, with unfeigned astonishment; "I
thought everybody in Badger knew Phoebe. Why, you will have to scratch
her legs, every blessed morning of your natural life!"
"I assure you, madam," rejoined the Rev. Berosus, with dignity, "it
would yield me a hallowed pleasure to minister to the spiritual needs of
sister Phoebe, to the extent of my feeble and unworthy ability; but,
really, I fear the merely secular ministration of which you speak must
be entrusted to abler and, I would respectfully suggest, female hands."
"Whyyy, youuu ooold, foooool!" replied my aunt, spreading her eyes with
unbounded amazement, "Phoebe is a _cow_!"
"In that case," said the husband, with unruffled composure, "it will, of
course, devolve upon me to see that her carnal welfare is properly
attended to; and I shall be happy to bestow upon her legs such time as I
may, without sin, snatch from my strife with Satan and the Canadian
thistles."
With that the Rev. Mr. Huggins crowded his hat upon his shoulders,
pronounced a brief benediction upon his bride, and betook himself to the
barn-yard.
Now, it is necessary to explain that he had known from the first who
Phoebe was, and was familiar, from hearsay, with all her sinful traits.
Moreover, he had already done himself the honor of making her a visit,
remaining in the vicinity of her person, just out of range, for more
than an hour and permitting her to survey him at her leisure from every
point of the compass. In short, he and Phoebe had mutually reconnoitered
and prepared for action.
Amongst the articles of comfort and luxury which went to make up the
good parson's _dot_, and which his wife had already caused to be
conveyed to his new home, was a patent cast-iron pump, about seven feet
high. This had been deposited near the barn-yard, preparatory to being
set up on the planks above the barn-yard well. Mr. Huggins now sought
out this invention and conveying it to its destination put it into
position, screwing it firmly to the planks. He next divested himself of
his long gaberdine and his hat, buttoning the former loosely about the
pump, which it almost concealed, and hanging the latter upon the summit
of the structure. The handle of the pump, when depressed, curved
outwardly between the coat-skirts, singularly like a tail, but with this
inconspicuous exception, any unprejudiced observer would have pronounced
the thing Mr. Huggins, looking uncommonly well.
The preliminaries completed, the good man carefully closed the gate of
the barnyard, knowing that as soon as Phoebe, who was campaigning in the
kitchen garden, should note the precaution she would come and jump in to
frustrate it, which eventually she did. Her master, meanwhile, had laid
himself, coatless and hatless, along the outside of the close board
fence, where he put in the time pleasantly, catching his death of cold
and peering through a knot-hole.
At first, and for some time, the animal pretended not to see the figure
on the platform. Indeed she had turned her back upon it directly she
arrived, affecting a light sleep. Finding that this stratagem did not
achieve the success that she had expected, she abandoned it and stood
for several minutes irresolute, munching her cud in a half-hearted way,
but obviously thinking very hard. Then she began nosing along the ground
as if wholly absorbed in a search for something that she had lost,
tacking about hither and thither, but all the time drawing nearer to the
object of her wicked intention. Arrived within speaking distance, she
stood for a little while confronting the fraudful figure, then put out
her nose toward it, as if to be caressed, trying to create the
impression that fondling and dalliance were more to her than wealth,
power and the plaudits of the populace--that she had been accustomed to
them all her sweet young life and could not get on without them. Then
she approached a little nearer, as if to shake hands, all the while
maintaining the most amiable expression of countenance and executing all
manner of seductive nods and winks and smiles. Suddenly she wheeled
about and with the rapidity of lightning dealt out a terrible kick--a
kick of inconceivable force and fury, comparable to nothing in nature
but a stroke of paralysis out of a clear sky!
The effect was magical! Cows kick, not backward but sidewise. The impact
which was intended to project the counterfeit theologian into the middle
of the succeeding conference week reacted upon the animal herself, and
it and the pain together set her spinning like a top. Such was the
velocity of her revolution that she looked like a dim, circular cow,
surrounded by a continuous ring like that of the planet Saturn--the
white tuft at the extremity of her sweeping tail! Presently, as the
sustaining centrifugal force lessened and failed, she began to sway and
wabble from side to side, and finally, toppling over on her side, rolled
convulsively on her back and lay motionless with all her feet in the
air, honestly believing that the world had somehow got atop of her and
she was supporting it at a great sacrifice of personal comfort. Then she
fainted.
How long she lay unconscious she knew not, but at last she unclosed her
eyes, and catching sight of the open door of her stall, "more sweet than
all the landscape smiling near," she struggled up, stood wavering upon
three legs, rubbed her eyes, and was visibly bewildered as to the points
of the compass. Observing the iron clergyman standing fast by its faith,
she threw it a look of grieved reproach and hobbled heart-broken into
her humble habitation, a subjugated cow.
For several weeks Phoebe's right hind leg was swollen to a monstrous
growth, but by a season of judicious nursing she was "brought round all
right," as her sympathetic and puzzled mistress phrased it, or "made
whole," as the reticent man of God preferred to say. She was now as
tractable and inoffensive "in her daily walk and conversation" (Huggins)
as a little child. Her new master used to take her ailing leg trustfully
into his lap, and for that matter, might have taken it into his mouth if
he had so desired. Her entire character appeared to be radically
changed--so altered that one day my Aunt Patience, who, fondly as she
loved her, had never before so much as ventured to touch the hem of her
garment, as it were, went confidently up to her to soothe her with a pan
of turnips. Gad! how thinly she spread out that good old lady upon the
face of an adjacent stone wall! You could not have done it so evenly
with a trowel.
A REVOLT OF THE GODS
My father was a deodorizer of dead dogs, my mother kept the only shop
for the sale of cats'-meat in my native city. They did not live happily;
the difference in social rank was a chasm which could not be bridged by
the vows of marriage. It was indeed an ill-assorted and most unlucky
alliance; and as might have been foreseen it ended in disaster. One
morning after the customary squabbles at breakfast, my father rose from
the table, quivering and pale with wrath, and proceeding to the
parsonage thrashed the clergyman who had performed the marriage
ceremony. The act was generally condemned and public feeling ran so high
against the offender that people would permit dead dogs to lie on their
property until the fragrance was deafening rather than employ him; and
the municipal authorities suffered one bloated old mastiff to utter
itself from a public square in so clamorous an exhalation that passing
strangers supposed themselves to be in the vicinity of a saw-mill. My
father was indeed unpopular. During these dark days the family's sole
dependence was on my mother's emporium for cats'-meat.
The business was profitable. In that city, which was the oldest in the
world, the cat was an object of veneration. Its worship was the religion
of the country. The multiplication and addition of cats were a perpetual
instruction in arithmetic. Naturally, any inattention to the wants of a
cat was punished with great severity in this world and the next; so my
good mother numbered her patrons by the hundred. Still, with an
unproductive husband and seventeen children she had some difficulty in
making both ends cats'-meat; and at last the necessity of increasing the
discrepancy between the cost price and the selling price of her carnal
wares drove her to an expedient which proved eminently disastrous: she
conceived the unlucky notion of retaliating by refusing to sell
cats'-meat until the boycott was taken off her husband.
On the day when she put this resolution into practice the shop was
thronged with excited customers, and others extended in turbulent and
restless masses up four streets, out of sight. Inside there was nothing
but cursing, crowding, shouting and menace. Intimidation was freely
resorted to--several of my younger brothers and sisters being threatened
with cutting up for the cats--but my mother was as firm as a rock, and
the day was a black one for Sardasa, the ancient and sacred city that
was the scene of these events. The lock-out was vigorously maintained,
and seven hundred and fifty thousand cats went to bed hungry!
The next morning the city was found to have been placarded during the
night with a proclamation of the Federated Union of Old Maids. This
ancient and powerful order averred through its Supreme Executive Head
that the boycotting of my father and the retaliatory lock-out of my
mother were seriously imperiling the interests of religion. The
proclamation went on to state that if arbitration were not adopted by
noon that day all the old maids of the federation would strike--and
strike they did.
The next act of this unhappy drama was an insurrection of cats. These
sacred animals, seeing themselves doomed to starvation, held a
mass-meeting and marched in procession through the streets, swearing and
spitting like fiends. This revolt of the gods produced such
consternation that many pious persons died of fright and all business
was suspended to bury them and pass terrifying resolutions.
Matters were now about as bad as it seemed possible for them to be.
Meetings among representatives of the hostile interests were held, but
no understanding was arrived at that would hold. Every agreement was
broken as soon as made, and each element of the discord was frantically
appealing to the people. A new horror was in store.
It will be remembered that my father was a deodorizer of dead dogs, but
was unable to practice his useful and humble profession because no one
would employ him. The dead dogs in consequence reeked rascally. Then
they struck! From every vacant lot and public dumping ground, from every
hedge and ditch and gutter and cistern, every crystal rill and the
clabbered waters of all the canals and estuaries--from all the places,
in short, which from time immemorial have been preëmpted by dead dogs
and consecrated to the uses of them and their heirs and successors
forever--they trooped innumerous, a ghastly crew! Their procession was a
mile in length. Midway of the town it met the procession of cats in full
song. The cats instantly exalted their backs and magnified their tails;
the dead dogs uncovered their teeth as in life, and erected such of
their bristles as still adhered to the skin.
The carnage that ensued was too awful for relation! The light of the sun
was obscured by flying fur, and the battle was waged in the darkness,
blindly and regardless. The swearing of the cats was audible miles away,
while the fragrance of the dead dogs desolated seven provinces.
How the battle might have resulted it is impossible to say, but when it
was at its fiercest the Federated Union of Old Maids came running down a
side street and sprang into the thickest of the fray. A moment later my
mother herself bore down upon the warring hosts, brandishing a cleaver,
and laid about her with great freedom and impartiality. My father joined
the fight, the municipal authorities engaged, and the general public,
converging on the battle-field from all points of the compass, consumed
itself in the center as it pressed in from the circumference. Last of
all, the dead held a meeting in the cemetery and resolving on a general
strike, began to destroy vaults, tombs, monuments, headstones, willows,
angels and young sheep in marble--everything they could lay their hands
on. By nightfall the living and the dead were alike exterminated, and
where the ancient and sacred city of Sardasa had stood nothing remained
but an excavation filled with dead bodies and building materials, shreds
of cat and blue patches of decayed dog. The place is now a vast pool of
stagnant water in the center of a desert.
The stirring events of those few days constituted my industrial
education, and so well have I improved my advantages that I am now Chief
of Misrule to the Dukes of Disorder, an organization numbering thirteen
million American workingmen.
THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO
It was a wicked thing to do, certainly. I have often regretted it since,
and if the opportunity of doing so again were presented I should
hesitate a long time before embracing it. But I was young then, and
cherished a species of humor which I have since abjured. Still, when I
remember the character of the people who were burlesquing and bringing
into disrepute the letter and spirit of our holy religion I feel a
certain satisfaction in having contributed one feeble effort toward
making them ridiculous. In consideration of the little good I may have
done in that way, I beg the reader to judge my conceded error as
leniently as possible. This is the story.
Some years ago the town of Harding, in Illinois, experienced "a revival
of religion," as the people called it. It would have been more accurate
and less profane to term it a revival of Rampageanism, for the craze
originated in, and was disseminated by, the sect which I will call the
Rampagean communion; and most of the leaping and howling was done in
that interest. Amongst those who yielded to the influence was my friend
Thomas Dobsho. Tom had been a pretty bad sinner in a small way, but he
went into this new thing heart and soul. At one of the meetings he made
a public confession of more sins than he ever was, or ever could have
been guilty of; stopping just short of statutory crimes, and even
hinting, significantly, that he could tell a good deal more if he were
pressed. He wanted to join the absurd communion the very evening of his
conversion. He wanted to join two or three communions. In fact, he was
so carried away with his zeal that some of the brethren gave me a hint
to take him home; he and I occupied adjoining apartments in the Elephant
Hotel.
Tom's fervor, as it happened, came near defeating its own purpose;
instead of taking him at once into the fold without reference or
"character," which was their usual way, the brethren remembered against
him his awful confessions and put him on probation. But after a few
weeks, during which he conducted himself like a decent lunatic, it was
decided to baptise him along with a dozen other pretty hard cases who
had been converted more recently. This sacrilegious ceremony I persuaded
myself it was my duty to prevent, though I think now I erred as to the
means adopted. It was to take place on a Sunday, and on the preceding
Saturday I called on the head revivalist, the Rev. Mr. Swin, and craved
an interview.
"I come," said I, with simulated reluctance and embarrassment, "in
behalf of my friend, Brother Dobsho, to make a very delicate and unusual
request. You are, I think, going to baptise him to-morrow, and I trust
it will be to him the beginning of a new and better life. But I don't
know if you are aware that his family are all Plungers, and that he is
himself tainted with the wicked heresy of that sect. So it is. He is, as
one might say in secular metaphor, 'on the fence' between their grievous
error and the pure faith of your church. It would be most melancholy if
he should get down on the wrong side. Although I confess with shame I
have not myself embraced the truth, I hope I am not too blind to see
where it lies."
"The calamity that you apprehend," said the reverend lout, after solemn
reflection, "would indeed seriously affect our friend's interest and
endanger his soul. I had not expected Brother Dobsho so soon to give up
the good fight."
"I think sir," I replied reflectively, "there is no fear of that if the
matter is skilfully managed. He is heartily with you--might I venture to
say with _us_--on every point but one. He favors immersion! He has been
so vile a sinner that he foolishly fears the more simple rite of your
church will not make him wet enough. Would you believe it? his
uninstructed scruples on the point are so gross and materialistic that
he actually suggested soaping himself as a preparatory ceremony! I
believe, however, if instead of sprinkling my friend, you would pour a
generous basinful of water on his head--but now that I think of it in
your enlightening presence I see that such a proceeding is quite out of
the question. I fear we must let matters take the usual course, trusting
to our later efforts to prevent the backsliding which may result."
The parson rose and paced the floor a moment, then suggested that he'd
better see Brother Dobsho, and labor to remove his error. I told him I
thought not; I was sure it would not be best. Argument would only
confirm him in his prejudices. So it was settled that the subject should
not be broached in that quarter. It would have been bad for me if it had
been.
When I reflect now upon the guile of that conversation, the falsehood of
my representations and the wickedness of my motive I am almost ashamed
to proceed with my narrative. Had the minister been other than an arrant
humbug, I hope I should never have suffered myself to make him the dupe
of a scheme so sacrilegious in itself, and prosecuted with so sinful a
disregard of honor.
The memorable Sabbath dawned bright and beautiful. About nine o'clock
the cracked old bell, rigged up on struts before the "meeting-house,"
began to clamor its call to service, and nearly the whole population of
Harding took its way to the performance. I had taken the precaution to
set my watch fifteen minutes fast. Tom was nervously preparing himself
for the ordeal. He fidgeted himself into his best suit an hour before
the time, carried his hat about the room in the most aimless and
demented way and consulted his watch a hundred times. I was to accompany
him to church, and I spent the time fussing about the room, doing the
most extraordinary things in the most exasperating manner--in short,
keeping up Tom's feverish excitement by every wicked device I could
think of. Within a half hour of the real time for service I suddenly
yelled out--
"O, I say, Tom; pardon me, but that head of yours is just frightful!
Please _do_ let me brush it up a bit!"
Seizing him by the shoulders I thrust him into a chair with his face to
the wall, laid hold of his comb and brush, got behind him and went to
work. He was trembling like a child, and knew no more what I was doing
than if he had been brained. Now, Tom's head was a curiosity. His hair,
which was remarkably thick, was like wire. Being cut rather short it
stood out all over his scalp like the spines on a porcupine. It had been
a favorite complaint of Tom's that he never could do anything to that
head. I found no difficulty--I did something to it, though I blush to
think what it was. I did something which I feared he might discover if
he looked in the mirror, so I carelessly pulled out my watch, sprung it
open, gave a start and shouted--
"By Jove! Thomas--pardon the oath--but we're late. Your watch is all
wrong; look at mine! Here's your hat, old fellow; come along. There's
not a moment to lose!"
Clapping his hat on his head, I pulled him out of the house, with actual
violence. In five minutes more we were in the meeting-house with ever so
much time to spare.
The services that day, I am told, were specially interesting and
impressive, but I had a good deal else on my mind--was preoccupied,
absent, inattentive. They might have varied from the usual profane
exhibition in any respect and to any extent, and I should not have
observed it. The first thing I clearly perceived was a rank of
"converts" kneeling before the "altar," Tom at the left of the line.
Then the Rev. Mr. Swin approached him, thoughtfully dipping his fingers
into a small earthern bowl of water as if he had just finished dining. I
was much affected: I could see nothing distinctly for my tears. My
handkerchief was at my face--most of it inside. I was observed to sob
spasmodically, and I am abashed to think how many sincere persons
mistakenly followed my example.
With some solemn words, the purport of which I did not quite make out,
except that they sounded like swearing, the minister stood before
Thomas, gave me a glance of intelligence and then with an innocent
expression of face, the recollection of which to this day fills me with
remorse, spilled, as if by accident, the entire contents of the bowl on
the head of my poor friend--that head into the hair of which I had
sifted a prodigal profusion of Seidlitz-powders!
I confess it, the effect was magical--anyone who was present would tell
you that. Tom's pow simmered--it seethed--it foamed yeastily, and
slavered like a mad dog! It steamed and hissed, with angry spurts and
flashes! In a second it had grown bigger than a small snowbank, and
whiter. It surged, and boiled, and walloped, and overflowed, and
sputtered--sent off feathery flakes like down from a shot swan! The
froth poured creaming over his face, and got into his eyes. It was the
most sinful shampooing of the season!
I cannot relate the commotion this produced, nor would I if I could. As
to Tom, he sprang to his feet and staggered out of the house, groping
his way between the pews, sputtering strangled profanity and gasping
like a stranded fish. The other candidates for baptism rose also,
shaking their pates as if to say, "No you don't, my hearty," and left
the house in a body. Amidst unbroken silence the minister reascended the
pulpit with the empty bowl in his hand, and was first to speak:
"Brethren and sisters," said he with calm, deliberate evenness of tone,
"I have held forth in this tabernacle for many more years than I have
got fingers and toes, and during that time I have known not guile, nor
anger, nor any uncharitableness. As to Henry Barber, who put up this job
on me, I judge him not lest I be judged. Let him take _that_ and sin no
more!"--and he flung the earthern bowl with so true an aim that it was
shattered against my skull. The rebuke was not undeserved, I confess,
and I trust I have profited by it.
THE RACE AT LEFT BOWER
"It's all very well fer you Britishers to go assin' about the country
tryin' to strike the trail o' the mines you've salted down yer loose
carpital in," said Colonel Jackhigh, setting his empty glass on the
counter and wiping his lips with his coat sleeve; "but w'en it comes to
hoss racin', w'y I've got a cayuse ken lay over all the thurrerbreds yer
little mantel-ornyment of a island ever panned out--bet yer britches I
have! Talk about yer Durby winners--w'y this pisen little beast o'
mine'll take the bit in her teeth and show 'em the way to the horizon
like she was takin' her mornin' stroll and they was tryin' to keep an
eye on her to see she didn't do herself an injury--that's w'at she
would! And she haint never run a race with anything spryer'n an Injun in
all her life; she's a green amatoor, _she_ is!"
"Oh, very well," said the Englishman with a quiet smile; "it is easy
enough to settle the matter. My animal is in tolerably good condition,
and if yours is in town we can have the race to-morrow for any stake you
like, up to a hundred dollars.
"That's jest the figger," said the colonel; "dot it down, barkeep. But
it's like slarterin' the innocents," he added, half-remorsefully, as he
turned to leave; "it's bettin' on a dead sure thing--that's what it is!
If my cayuse knew wa't I was about she'd go and break a laig to make the
race a fair one."
So it was arranged that the race was to come off at three o'clock the
next day, on the _mesa_, some distance from town. As soon as the news
got abroad, the whole population of Left Bower and vicinity knocked off
work and assembled in the various bars to discuss it. The Englishman and
his horse were general favorites, and aside from the unpopularity of the
colonel, nobody had ever seen his "cayuse." Still the element of
patriotism came in, making the betting very nearly even.
A race-course was marked off on the _mesa_ and at the appointed hour
every one was there except the colonel. It was arranged that each man
should ride his own horse, and the Englishman, who had acquired
something of the free-and-easy bearing that distinguishes the "mining
sharp," was already atop of his magnificent animal, with one leg thrown
carelessly across the pommel of his Mexican saddle, as he puffed his
cigar with calm confidence in the result of the race. He was conscious,
too, that he possessed the secret sympathy of all, even of those who had
felt it their duty to bet against him. The judge, watch in hand, was
growing impatient, when the colonel appeared about a half-mile away, and
bore down upon the crowd. Everyone was eager to inspect his mount; and
such a mount as it proved to be was never before seen, even in Left
Bower!
You have seen "perfect skeletons" of horses often enough, no doubt, but
this animal was not even a perfect skeleton; there were bones missing
here and there which you would not have believed the beast could have
spared. "Little" the colonel had called her! She was not an inch less
than eighteen hands high, and long out of all reasonable proportion. She
was so hollow in the back that she seemed to have been bent in a
machine. She had neither tail nor mane, and her neck, as long as a man,
stuck straight up into the air, supporting a head without ears. Her eyes
had an expression in them of downright insanity, and the muscles of her
face were afflicted with periodical convulsions that drew back the
corners of the mouth and wrinkled the upper lip so as to produce a
ghastly grin every two or three seconds. In color she was "claybank,"
with great blotches of white, as if she had been pelted with small bags
of flour. The crookedness of her legs was beyond all comparison, and as
to her gait it was that of a blind camel walking diagonally across
innumerable deep ditches. Altogether she looked like the crude result of
Nature's first experiment in equifaction.
As this libel on all horses shambled up to the starting post there was a
general shout; the sympathies of the crowd changed in the twinkling of
an eye! Everyone wanted to bet on her, and the Englishman himself was
only restrained from doing so by a sense of honor. It was growing late,
however, and the judge insisted on starting them. They got off very well
together, and seeing the mare was unconscionably slow the Englishman
soon pulled his animal in and permitted the ugly thing to pass him, so
as to enjoy a back view of her. That sealed his fate. The course had
been marked off in a circle of two miles in circumference and some
twenty feet wide, the limits plainly defined by little furrows. Before
the animals had gone a half mile both had been permitted to settle down
into a comfortable walk, in which they continued three-fourths of the
way round the ring. Then the Englishman thought it time to whip up and
canter in.
But he didn't. As he came up alongside the "Lightning Express," as the
crowd had begun to call her, that creature turned her head diagonally
backward and let fall a smile. The encroaching beast stopped as if he
had been shot! His rider plied whip, and forced him again forward upon
the track of the equine hag, but with the same result.
The Englishman was now alarmed; he struggled manfully with rein and whip
and shout, amidst the tremendous cheering and inextinguishable laughter
of the crowd, to force his animal past, now on this side, now on that,
but it would not do. Prompted by the fiend in the concavity of her back,
the unthinkable quadruped dropped her grins right and left with such
seasonable accuracy that again and again the competing beast was struck
"all of a heap" just at the moment of seeming success. And, finally,
when by a tremendous spurt his rider endeavored to thrust him by, within
half a dozen lengths of the winning post, the incarnate nightmare turned
squarely about and fixed upon him a portentous stare--delivering at the
same time a grimace of such prodigious ghastliness that the poor
thoroughbred, with an almost human scream of terror, wheeled about, and
tore away to the rear with the speed of the wind, leaving the colonel an
easy winner in twenty minutes and ten seconds.
THE FAILURE OF HOPE & WANDEL
_From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans,
December 2, 1877._
I will not bore you, my dear fellow, with a narrative of my journey from
New Orleans to this polar region. It is cold in Chicago, believe me, and
the Southron who comes here, as I did, without a relay of noses and ears
will have reason to regret his mistaken economy in arranging his outfit.
To business. Lake Michigan is frozen stiff. Fancy, O child of a torrid
clime, a sheet of anybody's ice, three hundred miles long, forty broad,
and six feet thick! It sounds like a lie, Pikey dear, but your partner
in the firm of Hope & Wandel, Wholesale Boots and Shoes, New Orleans, is
never known to fib. My plan is to collar that ice. Wind up the present
business and send on the money at once. I'll put up a warehouse as big
as the Capitol at Washington, store it full and ship to your orders as
the Southern market may require. I can send it in planks for skating
floors, in statuettes for the mantel, in shavings for juleps, or in
solution for ice cream and general purposes. It is a big thing!
I inclose a thin slip as a sample. Did you ever see such charming ice?
_From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago,
December 24, 1877._
Your letter was so abominably defaced by blotting and blurring that it
was entirely illegible. It must have come all the way by water. By the
aid of chemicals and photography, however, I have made it out. But you
forgot to inclose the sample of ice.
I have sold off everything (at an alarming sacrifice, I am sorry to say)
and inclose draft for net amount. Shall begin to spar for orders at
once. I trust everything to you--but, I say, has anybody tried to grow
ice in _this_ vicinity? There is Lake Ponchartrain, you know.
_From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans,
February 27, 1878._
Wannie dear, it would do you good to see our new warehouse for the ice.
Though made of boards, and run up rather hastily, it is as pretty as a
picture, and cost a deal of money, though I pay no ground rent. It is
about as big as the Capitol at Washington. Do you think it ought to have
a steeple? I have it nearly filled--fifty men cutting and storing, day
and night--awful cold work! By the way, the ice, which when I wrote you
last was ten feet thick, is now thinner. But don't you worry; there is
plenty.
Our warehouse is eight or ten miles out of town, so I am not much
bothered by visitors, which is a relief. Such a giggling, sniggering lot
you never saw!
It seems almost too absurdly incredible, Wannie, but do you know I
believe this ice of ours gains in coldness as the warm weather comes on!
I do, indeed, and you may mention the fact in the advertisements.
_From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago,
March 7, 1878._
All goes well. I get hundreds of orders. We shall do a roaring trade as
"The New Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company." But you have not
told me whether the ice is fresh or salt. If it is fresh it won't do for
cooking, and if it is salt it will spoil the mint juleps.
Is it as cold in the middle as the outside cuts are?
_From Mr. Jebez Hope, from Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans,
April 3, 1878._
Navigation on the Lakes is now open, and ships are thick as ducks. I'm
afloat, _en route_ for Buffalo, with the assets of the New Orleans and
Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company in my vest pocket. We are busted out,
my poor Pikey--we are to fortune and to fame unknown. Arrange a meeting
of the creditors and don't attend.
Last night a schooner from Milwaukee was smashed into match-wood on an
enormous mass of floating ice--the first berg ever seen in these waters.
It is described by the survivors as being about as big as the Capital at
Washington. One-half of that iceberg belongs to you, Pikey.
The melancholy fact is, I built our warehouse on an unfavorable site,
about a mile out from the shore (on the ice, you understand), and when
the thaw came--O my God, Wannie, it was the saddest thing you ever saw
in all your life! You will be _so_ glad to know I was not in it at the
time.
What a ridiculous question you ask me. My poor partner, you don't seem
to know very much about the ice business.
PERRY CHUMLY'S ECLIPSE
The spectroscope is a singularly beautiful and delicate instrument,
consisting, essentially, of a prism of glass, which, decomposing the
light of any heavenly body to which the instrument is directed, presents
a spectrum, or long bar of color. Crossing this are narrow, dark and
bright lines produced by the gases of metals in combustion, whereby the
celestial orb's light is generated. From these dark and bright lines,
therefore, we ascertain all that is worth knowing about the composition
of the sun and stars.
Now Ben had made some striking discoveries in spectroscopic analysis at
his private garden observatory, and had also an instrument of superior
power and capacity, invented, or at least much improved, by himself; and
this instrument it was that he and I were arranging for an examination
of the comet then flaming in the heavens. William sat by apparently
uninterested. Finally we had our arrangements for an observation
completed, and Ben said: "Now turn her on."
"That reminds me," said William, "of a little story about Perry Chumly,
who--"
"For the sake of science, William," I interrupted, laying a hand on his
arm, "I must beg you not to relate it. The comet will in a few minutes
be behind the roof of yonder lodging house. We really have no time for
the story."
"No," said Ben, "time presses; and, anyhow, I've heard it before."
"This Perry Chumly," resumed William, "believed himself a born
astronomer, and always kept a bit of smoked glass. He was particularly
great on solar eclipses. I have known him to sit up all night looking
out for one."
Ben had now got the spectroscope trained skyward to suit him, and in
order to exclude all irrelevant light had let down the window-blind on
the tube of it. The spectrum of the comet came out beautifully--a long
bar of color crossed with a lovely ruling of thin dark and bright lines,
the sight of which elicited from us an exclamation of satisfaction.
"One day," continued William from his seat at another window, "some one
told Perry Chumly there would be an eclipse of the sun that afternoon at
three o'clock. Now Perry had recently read a story about some men who in
exploring a deep cañon in the mountains had looked up from the bottom
and seen the stars shining at midday. It occurred to him that this
knowledge might be so utilized as to give him a fine view of the
eclipse, and enable him at the same time to see what the stars would
appear to think about it."
"_This_," said Ben, pointing to one of the dark lines in the cometic
spectrum, "_this_ is produced by the vapor of carbon in the nucleus of
the heavenly visitant. You will observe that it differs but slightly
from the lines that come of volatilized iron. Examined with this
magnifying glass"--adjusting that instrument to his eye--"it will
probably show--by Jove!" he ejaculated, after a nearer view, "it isn't
carbon at all. _It is_ MEAT!"
"Of course," proceeded William, "of course Perry Chumly did not have any
cañon, so what did the fellow do but let himself down with his arms and
legs to the bottom of an old well, about thirty feet deep! And, with the
cold water up to his middle, and the frogs, pollywogs and aquatic
lizards quarreling for the cosy corners of his pockets, there he stood,
waiting for the sun to appear in the field of his 'instrument' and be
eclipsed."
"Ben, you are joking," I remarked with some asperity; "you are taking
liberties with science, Benjamin. It _can't_ be meat, you know."
"I tell you it _is_ though," was his excited reply; "it is just _meat_,
I tell you! And this other line, which at first I took for sodium, is
_bone_--bone, sir, or I'm an asteroid! I never saw the like; that comet
must be densely peopled with butchers and horse-knackers!"
"When Perry Chumly had waited a long time," William went on to say,
"looking up and expecting every minute to see the sun, it began to get
into his mind, somehow, that the bright, circular opening above his
head--the mouth of the well--_was_ the sun, and that the black disk of
the moon was all that was needed to complete the expected phenomenon.
The notion soon took complete obsession of his brain, so that he forgot
where he was and imagined himself standing on the surface of the earth."
I was now scrutinizing the cometic spectrum very closely, being
particularly attracted by a thin, faint line, which I thought Ben had
overlooked.
"Oh, that is nothing," he explained; "that's a mere local fault arising
from conditions peculiar to the medium through which the light is
transmitted--the atmosphere of this neighborhood. It is whisky. This
other line, though, shows the faintest imaginable trace of soap; and
these uncertain, wavering ones are caused by some effluvium not in the
comet itself, but in the region beyond it. I am compelled to pronounce
it tobacco smoke. I will now tilt the instrument so as to get the
spectrum of the celestial wanderer's tail. Ah! there we have it.
Splendid!"
"Now this old well," said William, "was near a road, along which was
traveling a big and particularly hideous nigger."
"See here, Thomas," exclaimed Ben, removing the magnifying glass from
his eye and looking me earnestly in the face, "if I were to tell you
that the _coma_ of this eccentric heavenly body is really hair, as its
name implies, would you believe it?"
"No, Ben, I certainly should not."
"Well, I won't argue the matter; there are the lines--they speak for
themselves. But now that I look again, you are not entirely wrong: there
is a considerable admixture of jute, moss, and I think tallow. It
certainly is most remarkable! Sir Isaac Newton--"
"That big nigger," drawled William, "felt thirsty, and seeing the mouth
of the well thought there was perhaps a bucket in it. So he ventured to
creep forward on his hands and knees and look in over the edge."
Suddenly our spectrum vanished, and a very singular one of a quite
different appearance presented itself in the same place. It was a dim
spectrum, crossed by a single broad bar of pale yellow.
"Ah!" said Ben, "our waif of the upper deep is obscured by a cloud; let
us see what the misty veil is made of."
He took a look at the spectrum with his magnifying glass, started back,
and muttered: "Brown linen, by thunder!"
"You can imagine the rapture of Perry Chumly," pursued the indefatigable
William, "when he saw, as he supposed, the moon's black disk encroaching
upon the body of the luminary that had so long riveted his gaze. But
when that obscuring satellite had thrust herself so far forward that the
eclipse became almost annular, and he saw her staring down upon a
darkened world with glittering white eyes and a double row of flashing
teeth, it is perhaps not surprising that he vented a scream of terror,
fainted and collapsed among his frogs! As for the big nigger, almost
equally terrified by this shriek from the abyss, he executed a
precipitate movement which only the breaking of his neck prevented from
being a double back-somersault, and lay dead in the weeds with his
tongue out and his face the color of a cometic spectrum. We laid them in
the same grave, poor fellows, and on many a still summer evening
afterward I strayed to the lonely little church-yard to listen to the
smothered requiem chanted by the frogs that we had neglected to remove
from the pockets of the lamented astronomer.
"And, now," added William, taking his heels from the window, "as you can
not immediately resume your spectroscopic observations on that
red-haired chamber-maid in the dormer-window, who pulled down the blind
when I made a mouth at her, I move that we adjourn."
A PROVIDENTIAL INTIMATION
Mr. Algernon Jarvis, of San Francisco, got up cross. The world of Mr.
Jarvis had gone wrong with him overnight, as one's world is likely to do
when one sits up till morning with jovial friends, to watch it, and he
was prone to resentment. No sooner, therefore, had he got himself into a
neat, fashionable suit of clothing than he selected his morning
walking-stick and sallied out upon the town with a vague general
determination to attack something. His first victim would naturally have
been his breakfast; but singularly enough, he fell upon this with so
feeble an energy that he was himself beaten--to the grieved astonishment
of the worthy _rôtisseur_, who had to record his hitherto puissant
patron's maiden defeat. Three or four cups of _café noir_ were the only
captives that graced Mr. Jarvis' gastric chariot-wheels that morning.
He lit a long cigar and sauntered moodily down the street, so occupied
with schemes of universal retaliation that his feet had it all their own
way; in consequence of which, their owner soon found himself in the
billiard-room of the Occidental Hotel. Nobody was there, but Mr. Jarvis
was a privileged person; so, going to the marker's desk, he took out a
little box of ivory balls, spilled them carelessly over a table and
languidly assailed them with a long stick.
Presently, by the merest chance, he executed a marvelous stroke. Waiting
till the astonished balls had resumed their composure, he gathered them
up, replacing them in their former position. He tried the stroke again,
and, naturally, did not make it. Again he placed the balls, and again he
badly failed. With a vexed and humilated air he once more put the
indocile globes into position, leaned over the table and was upon the
point of striking, when there sounded a solemn voice from behind:
"Bet you two bits you don't make it!"
Mr. Jarvis erected himself; he turned about and looked at the speaker,
whom he found to be a stranger--one that most persons would prefer
should remain a stranger. Mr. Jarvis made no reply. In the first place,
he was a man of aristocratic taste, to whom a wager of "two bits" was
simply vulgar. Secondly, the man who had proffered it evidently had not
the money. Still it is annoying to have one's skill questioned by one's
social inferiors, particularly when one has doubts of it oneself, and is
otherwise ill-tempered. So Mr. Jarvis stood his cue against the table,
laid off his fashionable morning-coat, resumed his stick, spread his
fine figure upon the table with his back to the ceiling and took
deliberate aim.
At this point Mr. Jarvis drops out of this history, and is seen no more
forever. Persons of the class to which he adds lustre are sacred from
the pen of the humorist; they are ridiculous but not amusing. So now we
will dismiss this uninteresting young aristocrat, retaining merely his
outer shell, the fashionable morning-coat, which Mr. Stenner, the
gentleman, who had offered the wager, has quietly thrown across his arm
and is conveying away for his own advantage.
An hour later Mr. Stenner sat in his humble lodgings at North Beach,
with the pilfered garment upon his knees. He had already taken the
opinion of an eminent pawnbroker on its value, and it only remained to
search the pockets. Mr. Stenner's notions concerning gentlemen's coats
were not so clear as they might have been. Broadly stated, they were
that these garments abounded in secret pockets crowded with a wealth of
bank notes interspersed with gold coins. He was therefore disappointed
when his careful quest was rewarded with only a delicately perfumed
handkerchief, upon which he could not hope to obtain a loan of more than
ten cents; a pair of gloves too small for use and a bit of paper that
was not a cheque. A second look at this, however, inspired hope. It was
about the size of a flounder, ruled in wide lines, and bore in
conspicuous characters the words, "Western Union Telegraph Company."
Immediately below this interesting legend was much other printed matter,
the purport of which was that the company did not hold itself
responsible for the verbal accuracy of "the following message," and did
not consider itself either morally or legally bound to forward or
deliver it, nor, in short, to render any kind of service for the money
paid by the sender.
Unfamiliar with telegraphy, Mr. Stenner naturally supposed that a
message subject to these hard conditions must be one of not only grave
importance, but questionable character. So he determined to decipher it
at that time and place. In the course of the day he succeeded in so
doing. It ran as follows, omitting the date and the names of persons and
places, which were, of course, quite illegible:
"Buy Sally Meeker!"
Had the full force of this remarkable adjuration burst upon Mr. Stenner
all at once it might have carried him away, which would not have been so
bad a thing for San Francisco; but as the meaning had to percolate
slowly through a dense dyke of ignorance, it produced no other immediate
effect than the exclamation, "Well, I'll be bust!"
In the mouths of some persons this form of expression means a great
deal. On the Stenner tongue it signified the hopeless nature of the
Stenner mental confusion.
It must be confessed--by persons outside a certain limited and sordid
circle--that the message lacks amplification and elaboration; in its
terse, bald diction there is a ghastly suggestion of traffic in human
flesh, for which in California there is no market since the abolition of
slavery and the importation of thoroughbred beeves. If woman suffrage
had been established all would have been clear; Mr. Stenner would at
once have understood the kind of purchase advised; for in political
transactions he had very often changed hands himself. But it was all a
muddle, and resolving to dismiss the matter from his thoughts, he went
to bed thinking of nothing else; for many hours his excited imagination
would do nothing but purchase slightly damaged Sally Meekers by the
bale, and retail them to itself at an enormous profit.
Next day, it flashed upon his memory who Sally Meeker was--a racing
mare! At this entirely obvious solution of the problem he was overcome
with amazement at his own sagacity. Rushing into the street he
purchased, not Sally Meeker, but a sporting paper--and in it found the
notice of a race which was to come off the following week; and, sure
enough, there it was:
"Budd Doble enters g.g. Clipper; Bob Scotty enters b.g. Lightnin';
Staley Tupper enters s.s. Upandust; Sim Salper enters b.m. Sally
Meeker."
It was clear now; the sender of the dispatch was "in the know." Sally
Meeker was to win, and her owner, who did not know it, had offered her
for sale. At that supreme moment Mr. Stenner would willingly have been a
rich man! In fact he resolved to be. He at once betook him to Vallejo,
where he had lived until invited away by some influential citizens of
the place. There he immediately sought out an industrious friend who had
an amiable weakness for draw poker, and in whom Mr. Stenner regularly
encouraged that passion by going up against him every payday and
despoiling him of his hard earnings. He did so this time, to the sum of
one hundred dollars.
No sooner had he raked in his last pool and refused his friend's appeal
for a trifling loan wherewith to pay for breakfast than he bought a
check on the Bank of California, enclosed it in a letter containing
merely the words "Bi Saly Meker," and dispatched it by mail to the only
clergyman in San Francisco whose name he knew. Mr. Stenner had a vague
notion that all kinds of business requiring strict honesty and fidelity
might be profitably intrusted to the clergy; otherwise what was the use
of religion? I hope I shall not be accused of disrespect to the cloth in
thus bluntly setting forth Mr. Stenner's estimate of the parsons,
inasmuch as I do not share it.
This business off his mind, Mr. Stenner unbent in a week's revelry; at
the end of which he worked his passage down to San Francisco to secure
his winnings on the race, and take charge of his peerless mare. It will
be observed that his notions concerning races were somewhat confused;
his experience of them had hitherto been confined to that branch of the
business requiring, not technical knowledge but manual dexterity. In
short, he had done no more than pick the pockets of the spectators.
Arrived at San Francisco he was hastening to the dwelling of his
clerical agent, when he met an acquaintance, to whom he put the
triumphant question, "How about Sally Meeker?"
"Sally Meeker? Sally Meeker?" was the reply. "Oh, you mean the hoss? Why
she's gone up the flume. Broke her neck the first heat. But ole Sim
Salper is never a-goin' to fret hisself to a shadder about it. He struck
it pizen in the mine she was named a'ter and the stock's gone up from
nothin' out o' sight. You couldn't tech that stock with a ten-foot
pole!"
Which was a blow to Mr. Stenner. He saw his error; the message in the
coat had evidently been sent to a broker, and referred to the stock of
the "Sally Meeker" mine. And he, Stenner, was a ruined man!
Suddenly a great, monstrous, misbegotten and unmentionable oath rolled
from Mr. Stenner's tongue like a cannon shot hurled along an uneven
floor! Might it not be that the Rev. Mr. Boltright had also
misunderstood the message, and had bought, not the mare, but the stock?
The thought was electrical: Mr. Stenner ran--he flew! He tarried not at
walls and the smaller sort of houses, but went through or over them! In
five minutes he stood before the good clergyman--and in one more had
asked, in a hoarse whisper, if he had bought any "Sally Meeker."
"My good friend," was the bland reply--"my fellow traveler to the bar of
God, it would better comport with your spiritual needs to inquire what
you should do to be saved. But since you ask me, I will confess that
having received what I am compelled to regard as a Providential
intimation, accompanied with the secular means of obedience, I did put
up a small margin and purchase largely of the stock you mention. The
venture, I am constrained to state, was not wholly unprofitable."
Unprofitable? The good man had made a square twenty-five thousand
dollars on that small margin! To conclude--he has it yet.
MR. SWIDDLER'S FLIP-FLAP
Jerome Bowles (said the gentleman called Swiddler) was to be hanged on
Friday, the ninth of November, at five o'clock in the afternoon. This
was to occur at the town of Flatbroke, where he was then in prison.
Jerome was my friend, and naturally I differed with the jury that had
convicted him as to the degree of guilt implied by the conceded fact
that he had shot an Indian without direct provocation. Ever since his
trial I had been endeavoring to influence the Governor of the State to
grant a pardon; but public sentiment was against me, a fact which I
attributed partly to the innate pigheadness of the people, and partly to
the recent establishment of churches and schools which had corrupted the
primitive notions of a frontier community. But I labored hard and
unremittingly by all manner of direct and indirect means during the
whole period in which Jerome lay under sentence of death; and on the
very morning of the day set for the execution, the Governor sent for me,
and saying "he did not purpose being worried by my importunities all
winter," handed me the document which he had so often refused.
Armed with the precious paper, I flew to the telegraph office to send a
dispatch to the Sheriff at Flatbroke. I found the operator locking the
door of the office and putting up the shutters. I pleaded in vain; he
said he was going to see the hanging, and really had no time to send my
message. I must explain that Flatbroke was fifteen miles away; I was
then at Swan Creek, the State capital.
The operator being inexorable, I ran to the railroad station to see how
soon there would be a train for Flatbroke. The station man, with cool
and polite malice, informed me that all the employees of the road had
been given a holiday to see Jerome Bowles hanged, and had already gone
by an early train; that there would be no other train till the next day.
I was now furious, but the station man quietly turned me out, locking
the gates. Dashing to the nearest livery stable, I ordered a horse. Why
prolong the record of my disappointment? Not a horse could I get in that
town; all had been engaged weeks before to take people to the hanging.
So everybody said, at least, though I now know there was a rascally
conspiracy to defeat the ends of mercy, for the story of the pardon had
got abroad.
It was now ten o'clock. I had only seven hours in which to do my fifteen
miles afoot; but I was an excellent walker and thoroughly angry; there
was no doubt of my ability to make the distance, with an hour to spare.
The railway offered the best chance; it ran straight as a string across
a level, treeless prairie, whereas the highway made a wide detour by way
of another town.
I took to the track like a Modoc on the war path. Before I had gone a
half-mile I was overtaken by "That Jim Peasley," as he was called in
Swan Creek, an incurable practical joker, loved and shunned by all who
knew him. He asked me as he came up if I were "going to the show."
Thinking it was best to dissemble, I told him I was, but said nothing of
my intention to stop the performance; I thought it would be a lesson to
That Jim to let him walk fifteen miles for nothing, for it was clear
that he was going, too. Still, I wished he would go on ahead or drop
behind. But he could not very well do the former, and would not do the
latter; so we trudged on together. It was a cloudy day and very sultry
for that time of the year. The railway stretched away before us, between
its double row of telegraph poles, in rigid sameness, terminating in a
point at the horizon. On either hand the disheartening monotony of the
prairie was unbroken.
I thought little of these things, however, for my mental exaltation was
proof against the depressing influence of the scene. I was about to save
the life of my friend--to restore a crack shot to society. Indeed I
scarcely thought of That Jim, whose heels were grinding the hard gravel
close behind me, except when he saw fit occasionally to propound the
sententious, and I thought derisive, query, "Tired?" Of course I was,
but I would have died rather than confess it.
We had gone in this way, about half the distance, probably, in much less
than half the seven hours, and I was getting my second wind, when That
Jim again broke the silence.
"Used to bounce in a circus, didn't you?"
This was quite true! in a season of pecuniary depression I had once put
my legs into my stomach--had turned my athletic accomplishments to
financial advantage. It was not a pleasant topic, and I said nothing.
That Jim persisted.
"Wouldn't like to do a feller a somersault now, eh?"
The mocking tongue of this jeer was intolerable; the fellow evidently
considered me "done up," so taking a short run I clapped my hands to my
thighs and executed as pretty a flip-flap as ever was made without a
springboard! At the moment I came erect with my head still spinning, I
felt That Jim crowd past me, giving me a twirl that almost sent me off
the track. A moment later he had dashed ahead at a tremendous pace,
laughing derisively over his shoulder as if he had done a remarkably
clever thing to gain the lead.
I was on the heels of him in less than ten minutes, though I must
confess the fellow could walk amazingly. In half an hour I had run past
him, and at the end of the hour, such was my slashing gait, he was a
mere black dot in my rear, and appeared to be sitting on one of the
rails, thoroughly used up.
Relieved of Mr. Peasley, I naturally began thinking of my poor friend in
the Flatbroke jail, and it occurred to me that something might happen to
hasten the execution. I knew the feeling of the country against him, and
that many would be there from a distance who would naturally wish to get
home before nightfall. Nor could I help admitting to myself that five
o'clock was an unreasonably late hour for a hanging. Tortured with these
fears, I unconsciously increased my pace with every step, until it was
almost a run. I stripped off my coat and flung it away, opened my
collar, and unbuttoned my waistcoat. And at last, puffing and steaming
like a locomotive engine, I burst into a thin crowd of idlers on the
outskirts of the town, and flourished the pardon crazily above my head,
yelling, "Cut him down!--cut him down!"
Then, as every one stared in blank amazement and nobody said anything, I
found time to look about me, marveling at the oddly familiar appearance
of the town. As I looked, the houses, streets, and everything seemed to
undergo a sudden and mysterious transposition with reference to the
points of the compass, as if swinging round on a pivot; and like one
awakened from a dream I found myself among accustomed scenes. To be
plain about it, I was back again in Swan Creek, as right as a trivet!
It was all the work of That Jim Peasley. The designing rascal had
provoked me to throw a confusing somersault, then bumped against me,
turning me half round, and started on the back track, thereby inciting
me to hook it in the same direction. The cloudy day, the two lines of
telegraph poles, one on each side of the track, the entire sameness of
the landscape to the right and left--these had all conspired to prevent
my observing that I had put about.
When the excursion train returned from Flatbroke that evening the
passengers were told a little story at my expense. It was just what they
needed to cheer them up a bit after what they had seen; for that
flip-flap of mine had broken the neck of Jerome Bowles seven miles away!
THE LITTLE STORY
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ--_A Supernumerary Editor. A Probationary Contributor_.
SCENE--"_The Expounder" Office_.
PROBATIONARY CONTRIBUTOR--Editor in?
SUPERNUMERARY EDITOR--Dead.
P.C.--The gods favor me. (_Produces roll of manuscript_.) Here is a
little story, which I will read to you.
S.E.--O, O!
P.C.--(_Reads_.) "It was the last night of the year--a naughty, noxious,
offensive night. In the principal street of San Francisco"--
S.E.--Confound San Francisco!
P.C.--It had to be somewhere. (_Reads_.)
"In the principal street of San Francisco stood a small female orphan,
marking time like a volunteer. Her little bare feet imprinted cold
kisses on the paving-stones as she put them down and drew them up
alternately. The chilling rain was having a good time with her scalp,
and toyed soppily with her hair--her own hair. The night-wind shrewdly
searched her tattered garments, as if it had suspected her of smuggling.
She saw crowds of determined-looking persons grimly ruining themselves
in toys and confectionery for the dear ones at home, and she wished she
was in a position to ruin a little--just a little. Then, as the happy
throng sped by her with loads of things to make the children sick, she
leaned against an iron lamp-post in front of a bake-shop and turned on
the wicked envy. She thought, poor thing, she would like to be a
cake--for this little girl was very hungry indeed. Then she tried again,
and thought she would like to be a tart with smashed fruit inside; then
she would be warmed over every day and nobody would eat her. For the
child was cold as well as hungry. Finally, she tried quite hard, and
thought she could be very well content as an oven; for then she would be
kept always hot, and bakers would put all manner of good things into her
with a long shovel."
S.E.--I've read that somewhere.
P.C.--Very likely. This little story has never been rejected by any
paper to which I have offered it. It gets better, too, every time I
write it. When it first appeared in _Veracity_ the editor said it cost
him a hundred subscribers. Just mark the improvement! (_Reads_.)
"The hours glided by--except a few that froze to the pavement--until
midnight. The streets were now deserted, and the almanac having
predicted a new moon about this time, the lamps had been conscientiously
extinguished. Suddenly a great globe of sound fell from an adjacent
church-tower, and exploded on the night with a deep metallic boom. Then
all the clocks and bells began ringing-in the New Year--pounding and
banging and yelling and finishing off all the nervous invalids left over
from the preceding Sunday. The little orphan started from her dream,
leaving a small patch of skin on the frosted lamp-post, clasped her thin
blue hands and looked upward, 'with mad disquietude,'"--
S.E.--In _The Monitor_ it was "with covetous eyes."
P.C.--I know it; hadn't read Byron then. Clever dog, Byron. (_Reads._)
"Presently a cranberry tart dropped at her feet, apparently from the
clouds."
S.E.--How about those angels?
P.C.--The editor of _Good Will_ cut 'em out. He said San Francisco was
no place for them; and I don't believe----
S.E.--There, there! Never mind. Go on with the little story.
P.C.--(_Reads_.) "As she stooped to take up the tart a veal sandwich
came whizzing down, and cuffed one of her ears. Next a wheaten loaf made
her dodge nimbly, and then a broad ham fell flat-footed at her toes. A
sack of flour burst in the middle of the street; a side of bacon impaled
itself on an iron hitching-post. Pretty soon a chain of sausages fell in
a circle around her, flattening out as if a road-roller had passed over
them. Then there was a lull--nothing came down but dried fish, cold
puddings and flannel under-clothing; but presently her wishes began to
take effect again, and a quarter of beef descended with terrific
momentum upon the top of the little orphan's head."
S.E.--How did the editor of _The Reasonable Virtues_ like that quarter
of beef?
P.C.--Oh, he swallowed it like a little man, and stuck in a few dressed
pigs of his own. I've left them out, because I don't want outsiders
altering the Little Story. (_Reads_.)
"One would have thought that ought to suffice; but not so. Bedding,
shoes, firkins of butter, mighty cheeses, ropes of onions, quantities of
loose jam, kegs of oysters, titanic fowls, crates of crockery and
glassware, assorted house-keeping things, cooking ranges, and tons of
coal poured down in broad cataracts from a bounteous heaven, piling
themselves above that infant to a depth of twenty feet. The weather was
more than two hours in clearing up; and as late as half-past three a
ponderous hogshead of sugar struck at the corner of Clay and Kearney
Streets, with an impact that shook the peninsula like an earthquake and
stopped every clock in town.
"At daybreak the good merchants arrived upon the scene with shovels and
wheelbarrows, and before the sun of the new year was an hour old, they
had provided for all of these provisions--had stowed them away in their
cellars, and nicely arranged them on their shelves, ready for sale to
the deserving poor."
S.E.--And the little girl--what became of _her_?
P.C.--You musn't get ahead of the Little Story. (_Reads_.)
"When they had got down to the wicked little orphan who had not been
content with her lot some one brought a broom, and she was carefully
swept and smoothed out. Then they lifted her tenderly, and carried her
to the coroner. That functionary was standing in the door of his office,
and with a deprecatory wave of his hand, he said to the man who was
bearing her:
"'There, go away, my good fellow; there was a man here three times
yesterday trying to sell me just such a map.'"
THE PARENTICIDE CLUB
MY FAVORITE MURDER
Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity, I
was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years. In
charging the jury, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked that it
was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to
explain away.
At this, my attorney rose and said:
"May it please your Honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by
comparison. If you were familiar with the details of my client's
previous murder of his uncle you would discern in his later offense (if
offense it may be called) something in the nature of tender forbearance
and filial consideration for the feelings of the victim. The appalling
ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent with any
hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not been for the fact that the
honorable judge before whom he was tried was the president of a life
insurance company that took risks on hanging, and in which my client
held a policy, it is hard to see how he could decently have been
acquitted. If your Honor would like to hear about it for instruction and
guidance of your Honor's mind, this unfortunate man, my client, will
consent to give himself the pain of relating it under oath."
The district attorney said: "Your Honor, I object. Such a statement
would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is
closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three years
ago, in the spring of 1881."
"In a statutory sense," said the judge, "you are right, and in the Court
of Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling in your favor.
But not in a Court of Acquittal. The objection is overruled."
"I except," said the district attorney.
"You cannot do that," the judge said. "I must remind you that in order
to take an exception you must first get this case transferred for a time
to the Court of Exceptions on a formal motion duly supported by
affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office was
denied by me during the first year of this trial. Mr. Clerk, swear the
prisoner."
The customary oath having been administered, I made the following
statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the
comparative triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he
made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply
instructed the jury to acquit, and I left the court, without a stain
upon my reputation:
"I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee, Mich., of honest and reputable
parents, one of whom Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in my
later years. In 1867 the family came to California and settled near
Nigger Head, where my father opened a road agency and prospered beyond
the dreams of avarice. He was a reticent, saturnine man then, though his
increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity of his
disposition, and I believe that nothing but his memory of the sad event
for which I am now on trial prevents him from manifesting a genuine
hilarity.
"Four years after we had set up the road agency an itinerant preacher
came along, and having no other way to pay for the night's lodging that
we gave him, favored us with an exhortation of such power that, praise
God, we were all converted to religion. My father at once sent for his
brother, the Hon. William Ridley of Stockton, and on his arrival turned
over the agency to him, charging him nothing for the franchise nor
plant--the latter consisting of a Winchester rifle, a sawed-off shotgun,
and an assortment of masks made out of flour sacks. The family then
moved to Ghost Rock and opened a dance house. It was called 'The Saints'
Rest Hurdy-Gurdy,' and the proceedings each night began with prayer. It
was there that my now sainted mother, by her grace in the dance,
acquired the _sobriquet_ of 'The Bucking Walrus.'
"In the fall of '75 I had occasion to visit Coyote, on the road to
Mahala, and took the stage at Ghost Rock. There were four other
passengers. About three miles beyond Nigger Head, persons whom I
identified as my Uncle William and his two sons held up the stage.
Finding nothing in the express box, they went through the passengers. I
acted a most honorable part in the affair, placing myself in line with
the others, holding up my hands and permitting myself to be deprived of
forty dollars and a gold watch. From my behavior no one could have
suspected that I knew the gentlemen who gave the entertainment. A few
days later, when I went to Nigger Head and asked for the return of my
money and watch my uncle and cousins swore they knew nothing of the
matter, and they affected a belief that my father and I had done the job
ourselves in dishonest violation of commercial good faith. Uncle William
even threatened to retaliate by starting an opposition dance house at
Ghost Rock. As 'The Saints' Rest' had become rather unpopular, I saw
that this would assuredly ruin it and prove a paying enterprise, so I
told my uncle that I was willing to overlook the past if he would take
me into the scheme and keep the partnership a secret from my father.
This fair offer he rejected, and I then perceived that it would be
better and more satisfactory if he were dead.
"My plans to that end were soon perfected, and communicating them to my
dear parents I had the gratification of receiving their approval. My
father said he was proud of me, and my mother promised that although her
religion forbade her to assist in taking human life I should have the
advantage of her prayers for my success. As a preliminary measure
looking to my security in case of detection I made an application for
membership in that powerful order, the Knights of Murder, and in due
course was received as a member of the Ghost Rock commandery. On the day
that my probation ended I was for the first time permitted to inspect
the records of the order and learn who belonged to it--all the rites of
initiation having been conducted in masks. Fancy my delight when, in
looking over the roll of membership; I found the third name to be that
of my uncle, who indeed was junior vice-chancellor of the order! Here
was an opportunity exceeding my wildest dreams--to murder I could add
insubordination and treachery. It was what my good mother would have
called 'a special Providence.'
"At about this time something occurred which caused my cup of joy,
already full, to overflow on all sides, a circular cataract of bliss.
Three men, strangers in that locality, were arrested for the stage
robbery in which I had lost my money and watch. They were brought to
trial and, despite my efforts to clear them and fasten the guilt upon
three of the most respectable and worthy citizens of Ghost Rock,
convicted on the clearest proof. The murder would now be as wanton and
reasonless as I could wish.
"One morning I shouldered my Winchester rifle, and going over to my
uncle's house, near Nigger Head, asked my Aunt Mary, his wife, if he
were at home, adding that I had come to kill him. My aunt replied with
her peculiar smile that so many gentleman called on that errand and were
afterward carried away without having performed it that I must excuse
her for doubting my good faith in the matter. She said I did not look as
if I would kill anybody, so, as a proof of good faith I leveled my rifle
and wounded a Chinaman who happened to be passing the house. She said
she knew whole families that could do a thing of that kind, but Bill
Ridley was a horse of another color. She said, however, that I would
find him over on the other side of the creek in the sheep lot; and she
added that she hoped the best man would win.
"My Aunt Mary was one of the most fair-minded women that I have ever
met.
"I found my uncle down on his knees engaged in skinning a sheep. Seeing
that he had neither gun nor pistol handy I had not the heart to shoot
him, so I approached him, greeted him pleasantly and struck him a
powerful blow on the head with the butt of my rifle. I have a very good
delivery and Uncle William lay down on his side, then rolled over on his
back, spread out his fingers and shivered. Before he could recover the
use of his limbs I seized the knife that he had been using and cut his
hamstrings. You know, doubtless, that when you sever the _tendo
Achillis_ the patient has no further use of his leg; it is just the same
as if he had no leg. Well, I parted them both, and when he revived he
was at my service. As soon as he comprehended the situation, he said:
"'Samuel, you have got the drop on me and can afford to be generous. I
have only one thing to ask of you, and that is that you carry me to the
house and finish me in the bosom of my family.'
"I told him I thought that a pretty reasonable request and I would do so
if he would let me put him into a wheat sack; he would be easier to
carry that way and if we were seen by the neighbors _en route_ it would
cause less remark. He agreed to that, and going to the barn I got a
sack. This, however, did not fit him; it was too short and much wider
than he; so I bent his legs, forced his knees up against his breast and
got him into it that way, tying the sack above his head. He was a heavy
man and I had all that I could do to get him on my back, but I staggered
along for some distance until I came to a swing that some of the
children had suspended to the branch of an oak. Here I laid him down and
sat upon him to rest, and the sight of the rope gave me a happy
inspiration. In twenty minutes my uncle, still in the sack, swung free
to the sport of the wind.
"I had taken down the rope, tied one end tightly about the mouth of the
bag, thrown the other across the limb and hauled him up about five feet
from the ground. Fastening the other end of the rope also about the
mouth of the sack, I had the satisfaction to see my uncle converted into
a large, fine pendulum. I must add that he was not himself entirely
aware of the nature of the change that he had undergone in his relation
to the exterior world, though in justice to a good man's memory I ought
to say that I do not think he would in any case have wasted much of my
time in vain remonstrance.
"Uncle William had a ram that was famous in all that region as a
fighter. It was in a state of chronic constitutional indignation. Some
deep disappointment in early life had soured its disposition and it had
declared war upon the whole world. To say that it would butt anything
accessible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of its
military activity: the universe was its antagonist; its methods that of
a projectile. It fought like the angels and devils, in mid-air, cleaving
the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve and descending
upon its victim at just the exact angle of incidence to make the most of
its velocity and weight. Its momentum, calculated in foot-tons, was
something incredible. It had been seen to destroy a four year old bull
by a single impact upon that animal's gnarly forehead. No stone wall had
ever been known to resist its downward swoop; there were no trees tough
enough to stay it; it would splinter them into matchwood and defile
their leafy honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable
brute--this incarnate thunderbolt--this monster of the upper deep, I had
seen reposing in the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of
conquest and glory. It was with a view to summoning it forth to the
field of honor that I suspended its master in the manner described.
"Having completed my preparations, I imparted to the avuncular pendulum
a gentle oscillation, and retiring to cover behind a contiguous rock,
lifted up my voice in a long rasping cry whose diminishing final note
was drowned in a noise like that of a swearing cat, which emanated from
the sack. Instantly that formidable sheep was upon its feet and had
taken in the military situation at a glance. In a few moments it had
approached, stamping, to within fifty yards of the swinging foeman, who,
now retreating and anon advancing, seemed to invite the fray. Suddenly I
saw the beast's head drop earthward as if depressed by the weight of its
enormous horns; then a dim, white, wavy streak of sheep prolonged itself
from that spot in a generally horizontal direction to within about four
yards of a point immediately beneath the enemy. There it struck sharply
upward, and before it had faded from my gaze at the place whence it had
set out I heard a horrid thump and a piercing scream, and my poor uncle
shot forward, with a slack rope higher than the limb to which he was
attached. Here the rope tautened with a jerk, arresting his flight, and
back he swung in a breathless curve to the other end of his arc. The ram
had fallen, a heap of indistinguishable legs, wool and horns, but
pulling itself together and dodging as its antagonist swept downward it
retired at random, alternately shaking its head and stamping its
fore-feet. When it had backed about the same distance as that from which
it had delivered the assault it paused again, bowed its head as if in
prayer for victory and again shot forward, dimly visible as before--a
prolonging white streak with monstrous undulations, ending with a sharp
ascension. Its course this time was at a right angle to its former one,
and its impatience so great that it struck the enemy before he had
nearly reached the lowest point of his arc. In consequence he went
flying round and round in a horizontal circle whose radius was about
equal to half the length of the rope, which I forgot to say was nearly
twenty feet long. His shrieks, _crescendo_ in approach and _diminuendo_
in recession, made the rapidity of his revolution more obvious to the
ear than to the eye. He had evidently not yet been struck in a vital
spot. His posture in the sack and the distance from the ground at which
he hung compelled the ram to operate upon his lower extremities and the
end of his back. Like a plant that has struck its root into some
poisonous mineral, my poor uncle was dying slowly upward.
"After delivering its second blow the ram had not again retired. The
fever of battle burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxicated with
the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who in his rage forgets his skill
and fights ineffectively at half-arm's length, the angry beast
endeavored to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps as he
passed overhead, sometimes, indeed, succeeding in striking him feebly,
but more frequently overthrown by its own misguided eagerness. But as
the impetus was exhausted and the man's circles narrowed in scope and
diminished in speed, bringing him nearer to the ground, these tactics
produced better results, eliciting a superior quality of screams, which
I greatly enjoyed.
"Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce, the ram suspended
hostilities and walked away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its
great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch of grass and
slowly munching it. It seemed to have tired of war's alarms and resolved
to beat the sword into a plowshare and cultivate the arts of peace.
Steadily it held its course away from the field of fame until it had
gained a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile. There it stopped and
stood with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud and apparently half
asleep. I observed, however, an occasional slight turn of its head, as
if its apathy were more affected than real.
"Meantime Uncle William's shrieks had abated with his motion, and
nothing was heard from him but long, low moans, and at long intervals my
name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful to my ear.
Evidently the man had not the faintest notion of what was being done to
him, and was inexpressibly terrified. When Death comes cloaked in
mystery he is terrible indeed. Little by little my uncle's oscillations
diminished, and finally he hung motionless. I went to him and was about
to give him the _coup de grâce_, when I heard and felt a succession of
smart shocks which shook the ground like a series of light earthquakes,
and turning in the direction of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust
approaching me with inconceivable rapidity and alarming effect! At a
distance of some thirty yards away it stopped short, and from the near
end of it rose into the air what I at first thought a great white bird.
Its ascent was so smooth and easy and regular that I could not realize
its extraordinary celerity, and was lost in admiration of its grace. To
this day the impression remains that it was a slow, deliberate movement,
the ram--for it was that animal--being upborne by some power other than
its own impetus, and supported through the successive stages of its
flight with infinite tenderness and care. My eyes followed its progress
through the air with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by contrast
with my former terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward the
noble animal sailed, its head bent down almost between its knees, its
fore-feet thrown back, its hinder legs trailing to rear like the legs of
a soaring heron.
"At a height of forty or fifty feet, as fond recollection presents it to
view, it attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant
stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without altering the relative
position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and steeper course
with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me with a noise like
the rush of a cannon shot and struck my poor uncle almost squarely on
the top of the head! So frightful was the impact that not only the man's
neck was broken, but the rope too; and the body of the deceased, forced
against the earth, was crushed to pulp beneath the awful front of that
meteoric sheep! The concussion stopped all the clocks between Lone Hand
and Dutch Dan's, and Professor Davidson, a distinguished authority in
matters seismic, who happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained
that the vibrations were from north to southwest.
"Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in point of artistic atrocity
my murder of Uncle William has seldom been excelled."
OIL OF DOG
My name is Boffer Bings. I was born of honest parents in one of the
humbler walks of life, my father being a manufacturer of dog-oil and my
mother having a small studio in the shadow of the village church, where
she disposed of unwelcome babes. In my boyhood I was trained to habits
of industry; I not only assisted my father in procuring dogs for his
vats, but was frequently employed by my mother to carry away the debris
of her work in the studio. In performance of this duty I sometimes had
need of all my natural intelligence for all the law officers of the
vicinity were opposed to my mother's business. They were not elected on
an opposition ticket, and the matter had never been made a political
issue; it just happened so. My father's business of making dog-oil was,
naturally, less unpopular, though the owners of missing dogs sometimes
regarded him with suspicion, which was reflected, to some extent, upon
me. My father had, as silent partners, all the physicians of the town,
who seldom wrote a prescription which did not contain what they were
pleased to designate as _Ol. can_. It is really the most valuable
medicine ever discovered. But most persons are unwilling to make
personal sacrifices for the afflicted, and it was evident that many of
the fattest dogs in town had been forbidden to play with me--a fact
which pained my young sensibilities, and at one time came near driving
me to become a pirate.
Looking back upon those days, I cannot but regret, at times, that by
indirectly bringing my beloved parents to their death I was the author
of misfortunes profoundly affecting my future.
One evening while passing my father's oil factory with the body of a
foundling from my mother's studio I saw a constable who seemed to be
closely watching my movements. Young as I was, I had learned that a
constable's acts, of whatever apparent character, are prompted by the
most reprehensible motives, and I avoided him by dodging into the oilery
by a side door which happened to stand ajar. I locked it at once and was
alone with my dead. My father had retired for the night. The only light
in the place came from the furnace, which glowed a deep, rich crimson
under one of the vats, casting ruddy reflections on the walls. Within
the cauldron the oil still rolled in indolent ebullition, occasionally
pushing to the surface a piece of dog. Seating myself to wait for the
constable to go away, I held the naked body of the foundling in my lap
and tenderly stroked its short, silken hair. Ah, how beautiful it was!
Even at that early age I was passionately fond of children, and as I
looked upon this cherub I could almost find it in my heart to wish that
the small, red wound upon its breast--the work of my dear mother--had
not been mortal.
It had been my custom to throw the babes into the river which nature had
thoughtfully provided for the purpose, but that night I did not dare to
leave the oilery for fear of the constable. "After all," I said to
myself, "it cannot greatly matter if I put it into this cauldron. My
father will never know the bones from those of a puppy, and the few
deaths which may result from administering another kind of oil for the
incomparable _ol. can_. are not important in a population which
increases so rapidly." In short, I took the first step in crime and
brought myself untold sorrow by casting the babe into the cauldron.
The next day, somewhat to my surprise, my father, rubbing his hands with
satisfaction, informed me and my mother that he had obtained the finest
quality of oil that was ever seen; that the physicians to whom he had
shown samples had so pronounced it. He added that he had no knowledge as
to how the result was obtained; the dogs had been treated in all
respects as usual, and were of an ordinary breed. I deemed it my duty to
explain--which I did, though palsied would have been my tongue if I
could have foreseen the consequences. Bewailing their previous ignorance
of the advantages of combining their industries, my parents at once took
measures to repair the error. My mother removed her studio to a wing of
the factory building and my duties in connection with the business
ceased; I was no longer required to dispose of the bodies of the small
superfluous, and there was no need of alluring dogs to their doom, for
my father discarded them altogether, though they still had an honorable
place in the name of the oil. So suddenly thrown into idleness, I might
naturally have been expected to become vicious and dissolute, but I did
not. The holy influence of my dear mother was ever about me to protect
me from the temptations which beset youth, and my father was a deacon in
a church. Alas, that through my fault these estimable persons should
have come to so bad an end!
Finding a double profit in her business, my mother now devoted herself
to it with a new assiduity. She removed not only superfluous and
unwelcome babes to order, but went out into the highways and byways,
gathering in children of a larger growth, and even such adults as she
could entice to the oilery. My father, too, enamored of the superior
quality of oil produced, purveyed for his vats with diligence and zeal.
The conversion of their neighbors into dog-oil became, in short, the one
passion of their lives--an absorbing and overwhelming greed took
possession of their souls and served them in place of a hope in
Heaven--by which, also, they were inspired.
So enterprising had they now become that a public meeting was held and
resolutions passed severely censuring them. It was intimated by the
chairman that any further raids upon the population would be met in a
spirit of hostility. My poor parents left the meeting broken-hearted,
desperate and, I believe, not altogether sane. Anyhow, I deemed it
prudent not to enter the oilery with them that night, but slept outside
in a stable.
At about midnight some mysterious impulse caused me to rise and peer
through a window into the furnace-room, where I knew my father now
slept. The fires were burning as brightly as if the following day's
harvest had been expected to be abundant. One of the large cauldrons was
slowly "walloping" with a mysterious appearance of self-restraint, as if
it bided its time to put forth its full energy. My father was not in
bed; he had risen in his nightclothes and was preparing a noose in a
strong cord. From the looks which he cast at the door of my mother's
bedroom I knew too well the purpose that he had in mind. Speechless and
motionless with terror, I could do nothing in prevention or warning.
Suddenly the door of my mother's apartment was opened, noiselessly, and
the two confronted each other, both apparently surprised. The lady,
also, was in her night clothes, and she held in her right hand the tool
of her trade, a long, narrow-bladed dagger.
She, too, had been unable to deny herself the last profit which the
unfriendly action of the citizens and my absence had left her. For one
instant they looked into each other's blazing eyes and then sprang
together with indescribable fury. Round and round the room they
struggled, the man cursing, the woman shrieking, both fighting like
demons--she to strike him with the dagger, he to strangle her with his
great bare hands. I know not how long I had the unhappiness to observe
this disagreeable instance of domestic infelicity, but at last, after a
more than usually vigorous struggle, the combatants suddenly moved
apart.
My father's breast and my mother's weapon showed evidences of contact.
For another instant they glared at each other in the most unamiable way;
then my poor, wounded father, feeling the hand of death upon him, leaped
forward, unmindful of resistance, grasped my dear mother in his arms,
dragged her to the side of the boiling cauldron, collected all his
failing energies, and sprang in with her! In a moment, both had
disappeared and were adding their oil to that of the committee of
citizens who had called the day before with an invitation to the public
meeting.
Convinced that these unhappy events closed to me every avenue to an
honorable career in that town, I removed to the famous city of Otumwee,
where these memoirs are written with a heart full of remorse for a
heedless act entailing so dismal a commercial disaster.
AN IMPERFECT CONFLAGRATION
Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a
deep impression on me at the time. This was before my marriage, while I
was living with my parents in Wisconsin. My father and I were in the
library of our home, dividing the proceeds of a burglary which we had
committed that night. These consisted of household goods mostly, and the
task of equitable division was difficult. We got on very well with the
napkins, towels and such things, and the silverware was parted pretty
nearly equally, but you can see for yourself that when you try to divide
a single music-box by two without a remainder you will have trouble. It
was that music-box which brought disaster and disgrace upon our family.
If we had left it my poor father might now be alive.
It was a most exquisite and beautiful piece of workmanship--inlaid with
costly woods and carven very curiously. It would not only play a great
variety of tunes, but would whistle like a quail, bark like a dog, crow
every morning at daylight whether it was wound up or not, and break the
Ten Commandments. It was this last mentioned accomplishment that won my
father's heart and caused him to commit the only dishonorable act of his
life, though possibly he would have committed more if he had been
spared: he tried to conceal that music-box from me, and declared upon
his honor that he had not taken it, though I knew very well that, so far
as he was concerned, the burglary had been undertaken chiefly for the
purpose of obtaining it.
My father had the music-box hidden under his cloak; we had worn cloaks
by way of disguise. He had solemnly assured me that he did not take it.
I knew that he did, and knew something of which he was evidently
ignorant; namely, that the box would crow at daylight and betray him if
I could prolong the division of profits till that time. All occurred as
I wished: as the gaslight began to pale in the library and the shape of
the windows was seen dimly behind the curtains, a long cock-a-doodle-doo
came from beneath the old gentleman's cloak, followed by a few bars of
an aria from _Tannhauser_, ending with a loud click. A small hand-axe,
which we had used to break into the unlucky house, lay between us on the
table; I picked it up. The old man seeing that further concealment was
useless took the box from under his cloak and set it on the table. "Cut
it in two if you prefer that plan," said he; "I tried to save it from
destruction."
He was a passionate lover of music and could himself play the concertina
with expression and feeling.
I said: "I do not question the purity of your motive: it would be
presumptuous in me to sit in judgment on my father. But business is
business, and with this axe I am going to effect a dissolution of our
partnership unless you will consent in all future burglaries to wear a
bell-punch."
"No," he said, after some reflection, "no, I could not do that; it would
look like a confession of dishonesty. People would say that you
distrusted me."
I could not help admiring his spirit and sensitiveness; for a moment I
was proud of him and disposed to overlook his fault, but a glance at the
richly jeweled music-box decided me, and, as I said, I removed the old
man from this vale of tears. Having done so, I was a trifle uneasy. Not
only was he my father--the author of my being--but the body would be
certainly discovered. It was now broad daylight and my mother was likely
to enter the library at any moment. Under the circumstances, I thought
it expedient to remove her also, which I did. Then I paid off all the
servants and discharged them.
That afternoon I went to the chief of police, told him what I had done
and asked his advice. It would be very painful to me if the facts became
publicly known. My conduct would be generally condemned; the newspapers
would bring it up against me if ever I should run for office. The chief
saw the force of these considerations; he was himself an assassin of
wide experience. After consulting with the presiding judge of the Court
of Variable Jurisdiction he advised me to conceal the bodies in one of
the bookcases, get a heavy insurance on the house and burn it down. This
I proceeded to do.
In the library was a book-case which my father had recently purchased of
some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and size
something like the old-fashioned "wardrobes" which one sees in bed-rooms
without closets, but opened all the way down, like a woman's
night-dress. It had glass doors. I had recently laid out my parents and
they were now rigid enough to stand erect; so I stood them in this
book-case, from which I had removed the shelves. I locked them in and
tacked some curtains over the glass doors. The inspector from the
insurance office passed a half-dozen times before the case without
suspicion.
That night, after getting my policy, I set fire to the house and started
through the woods to town, two miles away, where I managed to be found
about the time the excitement was at its height. With cries of
apprehension for the fate of my parents, I joined the rush and arrived
at the fire some two hours after I had kindled it. The whole town was
there as I dashed up. The house was entirely consumed, but in one end of
the level bed of glowing embers, bolt upright and uninjured, was that
book-case! The curtains had burned away, exposing the glass-doors,
through which the fierce, red light illuminated the interior. There
stood my dear father "in his habit as he lived," and at his side the
partner of his joys and sorrows. Not a hair of them was singed, their
clothing was intact. On their heads and throats the injuries which in
the accomplishment of my designs I had been compelled to inflict were
conspicuous. As in the presence of a miracle, the people were silent;
awe and terror had stilled every tongue. I was myself greatly affected.
Some three years later, when the events herein related had nearly faded
from my memory, I went to New York to assist in passing some counterfeit
United States bonds. Carelessly looking into a furniture store one day,
I saw the exact counterpart of that bookcase. "I bought it for a trifle
from a reformed inventor," the dealer explained. "He said it was
fireproof, the pores of the wood being filled with alum under hydraulic
pressure and the glass made of asbestos. I don't suppose it is really
fireproof--you can have it at the price of an ordinary book-case."
"No," I said, "if you cannot warrant it fireproof I won't take it"--and
I bade him good morning.
I would not have had it at any price: it revived memories that were
exceedingly disagreeable.
THE HYPNOTIST
By those of my friends who happen to know that I sometimes amuse myself
with hypnotism, mind reading and kindred phenomena, I am frequently
asked if I have a clear conception of the nature of whatever principle
underlies them. To this question I always reply that I neither have nor
desire to have. I am no investigator with an ear at the key-hole of
Nature's workshop, trying with vulgar curiosity to steal the secrets of
her trade. The interests of science are as little to me as mine seem to
have been to science.
Doubtless the phenomena in question are simple enough, and in no way
transcend our powers of comprehension if only we could find the clew;
but for my part I prefer not to find it, for I am of a singularly
romantic disposition, deriving more gratification from mystery than from
knowledge. It was commonly remarked of me when I was a child that my big
blue eyes appeared to have been made rather to look into than look out
of--such was their dreamful beauty, and in my frequent periods of
abstraction, their indifference to what was going on. In those
peculiarities they resembled, I venture to think, the soul which lies
behind them, always more intent upon some lovely conception which it has
created in its own image than concerned about the laws of nature and the
material frame of things. All this, irrelevant and egotistic as it may
seem, is related by way of accounting for the meagreness of the light
that I am able to throw upon a subject that has engaged so much of my
attention, and concerning which there is so keen and general a
curiosity. With my powers and opportunities, another person might
doubtless have an explanation for much of what I present simply as
narrative.
My first knowledge that I possessed unusual powers came to me in my
fourteenth year, when at school. Happening one day to have forgotten to
bring my noon-day luncheon, I gazed longingly at that of a small girl
who was preparing to eat hers. Looking up, her eyes met mine and she
seemed unable to withdraw them. After a moment of hesitancy she came
forward in an absent kind of way and without a word surrendered her
little basket with its tempting contents and walked away. Inexpressibly
pleased, I relieved my hunger and destroyed the basket. After that I had
not the trouble to bring a luncheon for myself: that little girl was my
daily purveyor; and not infrequently in satisfying my simple need from
her frugal store I combined pleasure and profit by constraining her
attendance at the feast and making misleading proffer of the viands,
which eventually I consumed to the last fragment. The girl was always
persuaded that she had eaten all herself; and later in the day her
tearful complaints of hunger surprised the teacher, entertained the
pupils, earned for her the sobriquet of Greedy-Gut and filled me with a
peace past understanding.
A disagreeable feature of this otherwise satisfactory condition of
things was the necessary secrecy: the transfer of the luncheon, for
example, had to be made at some distance from the madding crowd, in a
wood; and I blush to think of the many other unworthy subterfuges
entailed by the situation. As I was (and am) naturally of a frank and
open disposition, these became more and more irksome, and but for the
reluctance of my parents to renounce the obvious advantages of the new
_régime_ I would gladly have reverted to the old. The plan that I
finally adopted to free myself from the consequences of my own powers
excited a wide and keen interest at the time, and that part of it which
consisted in the death of the girl was severely condemned, but it is
hardly pertinent to the scope of this narrative.
For some years afterward I had little opportunity to practice hypnotism;
such small essays as I made at it were commonly barren of other
recognition than solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet;
sometimes, indeed, they elicited nothing better than the
cat-o'-nine-tails. It was when I was about to leave the scene of these
small disappointments that my one really important feat was performed.
I had been called into the warden's office and given a suit of
civilian's clothing, a trifling sum of money and a great deal of advice,
which I am bound to confess was of a much better quality than the
clothing. As I was passing out of the gate into the light of freedom I
suddenly turned and looking the warden gravely in the eye, soon had him
in control.
"You are an ostrich," I said.
At the post-mortem examination the stomach was found to contain a great
quantity of indigestible articles mostly of wood or metal. Stuck fast in
the oesophagus and constituting, according to the Coroner's jury, the
immediate cause of death, one door-knob.
I was by nature a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into
the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not help
remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the
niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons; and I
knew of no reason to think they had reformed.
On the road between Succotash Hill and South Asphyxia is a little open
field which once contained a shanty known as Pete Gilstrap's Place,
where that gentleman used to murder travelers for a living. The death of
Mr. Gilstrap and the diversion of nearly all the travel to another road
occurred so nearly at the same time that no one has ever been able to
say which was cause and which effect. Anyhow, the field was now a
desolation and the Place had long been burned. It was while going afoot
to South Asphyxia, the home of my childhood, that I found both my
parents on their way to the Hill. They had hitched their team and were
eating luncheon under an oak tree in the center of the field. The sight
of the luncheon called up painful memories of my school days and roused
the sleeping lion in my breast. Approaching the guilty couple, who at
once recognized me, I ventured to suggest that I share their
hospitality.
"Of this cheer, my son," said the author of my being, with
characteristic pomposity, which age had not withered, "there is
sufficient for but two. I am not, I hope, insensible to the hunger-light
in your eyes, but--"
My father has never completed that sentence; what he mistook for
hunger-light was simply the earnest gaze of the hypnotist. In a few
seconds he was at my service. A few more sufficed for the lady, and the
dictates of a just resentment could be carried into effect. "My former
father," I said, "I presume that it is known to you that you and this
lady are no longer what you were?"
"I have observed a certain subtle change," was the rather dubious reply
of the old gentleman; "it is perhaps attributable to age."
"It is more than that," I explained; "it goes to character--to species.
You and the lady here are, in truth, two _broncos_--wild stallions both,
and unfriendly."
"Why, John," exclaimed my dear mother, "you don't mean to say that I
am--"
"Madam," I replied, solemnly, fixing my eyes again upon hers, "you are."
Scarcely had the words fallen from my lips when she dropped upon her
hands and knees, and backing up to the old man squealed like a demon and
delivered a vicious kick upon his shin! An instant later he was himself
down on all-fours, headed away from her and flinging his feet at her
simultaneously and successively. With equal earnestness but inferior
agility, because of her hampering body-gear, she plied her own. Their
flying legs crossed and mingled in the most bewildering way; their feet
sometimes meeting squarely in midair, their bodies thrust forward,
falling flat upon the ground and for a moment helpless. On recovering
themselves they would resume the combat, uttering their frenzy in the
nameless sounds of the furious brutes which they believed themselves to
be--the whole region rang with their clamor! Round and round they
wheeled, the blows of their feet falling "like lightnings from the
mountain cloud." They plunged and reared backward upon their knees,
struck savagely at each other with awkward descending blows of both
fists at once, and dropped again upon their hands as if unable to
maintain the upright position of the body. Grass and pebbles were torn
from the soil by hands and feet; clothing, hair, faces inexpressibly
defiled with dust and blood. Wild, inarticulate screams of rage attested
the delivery of the blows; groans, grunts and gasps their receipt.
Nothing more truly military was ever seen at Gettysburg or Waterloo: the
valor of my dear parents in the hour of danger can never cease to be to
me a source of pride and gratification. At the end of it all two
battered, tattered, bloody and fragmentary vestiges of mortality
attested the solemn fact that the author of the strife was an orphan.
Arrested for provoking a breach of the peace, I was, and have ever since
been, tried in the Court of Technicalities and Continuances whence,
after fifteen years of proceedings, my attorney is moving heaven and
earth to get the case taken to the Court of Remandment for New Trials.
Such are a few of my principal experiments in the mysterious force or
agency known as hypnotic suggestion. Whether or not it could be employed
by a bad man for an unworthy purpose I am unable to say.
THE FOURTH ESTATE
MR. MASTHEAD, JOURNALIST
While I was in Kansas I purchased a weekly newspaper--the _Claybank
Thundergust of Reform_. This paper had never paid its expenses; it had
ruined four consecutive publishers; but my brother-in-law, Mr. Jefferson
Scandril, of Weedhaven, was going to run for the Legislature, and I
naturally desired his defeat; so it became necessary to have an organ in
Claybank to assist in his political extinction. When the establishment
came into my hands, the editor was a fellow who had "opinions," and him
I at once discharged with an admonition. I had some difficulty in
procuring a successor; every man in the county applied for the place. I
could not appoint one without having to fight a majority of the others,
and was eventually compelled to write to a friend at Warm Springs, in
the adjoining State of Missouri, to send me an editor from abroad whose
instalment at the helm of manifest destiny could have no local
significance.
The man he sent me was a frowsy, seedy fellow, named Masthead--not
larger, apparently, than a boy of sixteen years, though it was difficult
to say from the outside how much of him was editor and how much cast-off
clothing; for in the matter of apparel he had acted upon his favorite
professional maxim, and "sunk the individual;" his attire--eminently
eclectic, and in a sense international--quite overcame him at all
points. However, as my friend had assured me he was "a graduate of one
of the largest institutions in his native State," I took him in and
bought a pen for him. My instructions to him were brief and simple.
"Mr. Masthead," said I, "it is the policy of the _Thundergust_ first,
last, and all the time, in this world and the next, to resent the
intrusion of Mr. Jefferson Scandril into politics."
The first thing the little rascal did was to write a withering leader
denouncing Mr. Scandril as a "demagogue, the degradation of whose
political opinions was only equaled by the disgustfulness of the family
connections of which those opinions were the spawn!"
I hastened to point out to Mr. Masthead that it had never been the
policy of the _Thundergust_ to attack the family relations of an
offensive candidate, although this was not strictly true.
"I am very sorry," he replied, running his head up out of his clothes
till it towered as much as six inches above the table at which he sat;
"no offense, I hope."
"Oh, none in the world," said I, as carelessly as I could manage it;
"only I don't think it a legitimate--that is, an effective, method of
attack."
"Mr. Johnson," said he--I was passing as Johnson at that time, I
remember--"Mr. Johnson, I think it _is_ an effective method. Personally
I might perhaps prefer another line of argument in this particular case,
and personally perhaps you might; but in our profession personal
considerations must be blown to the winds of the horizon; we must sink
the individual. In opposing the election of your relative, sir, you have
set the seal of your heavy displeasure upon the sin of nepotism, and for
this I respect you; nepotism must be got under! But in the display of
Roman virtues, sir, we must go the whole hog. When in the interest of
public morality"--Mr. Masthead was now gesticulating earnestly with the
sleeves of his coat--"Virginius stabbed his daughter, was he influenced
by personal considerations? When Curtius leaped into the yawning gulf,
did he not sink the individual?"
I admitted that he did, but feeling in a contentious mood, prolonged the
discussion by leisurely loading and capping a revolver; but, prescient
of my argument, Mr. Masthead avoided refutation by hastily adjourning
the debate. I sent him a note that evening, filling-in a few of the
details of the policy that I had before sketched in outline. Amongst
other things I submitted that it would be better for us to exalt Mr.
Scandril's opponent than to degrade himself. To this Mr. Masthead
reluctantly assented--"sinking the individual," he reproachfully
explained, "in the dependent employee--the powerless bondsman!" The next
issue of the _Thundergust_ contained, under the heading, "Invigorating
Zephyrs," the following editorial article:
"Last week we declared our unalterable opposition to the candidacy of
Mr. Jefferson Scandril, and gave reasons for the faith that is in us.
For the first time in its history this paper made a clear, thoughtful,
and adequate avowal and exposition of eternal principle! Abandoning for
the present the stand we then took, let us trace the antecedents of Mr.
Scandril's opponent up to their source. It has been urged against Mr.
Broskin that he spent some years of his life in the lunatic asylum at
Warm Springs, in the adjoining commonwealth of Missouri. This cuckoo
cry--raised though it is by dogs of political darkness--we shall not
stoop to controvert, for it is accidentally true; but next week we shall
show, as by the stroke of an enchanter's wand, that this great
statesman's detractors would probably not derive any benefits from a
residence in the same institution, their mental aberration being
rottenly incurable!"
I thought this rather strong and not quite to the point; but Masthead
said it was a fact that our candidate, who was very little known in
Claybank, had "served a term" in the Warm Springs asylum, and the issue
must be boldly met--that evasion and denial were but forms of
prostration beneath the iron wheels of Truth! As he said this he seemed
to inflate and expand so as almost to fill his clothes, and the fire of
his eye somehow burned into me an impression--since effaced--that a just
cause is not imperiled by a trifling concession to fact. So, leaving the
matter quite in my editor's hands I went away to keep some important
engagements, the paragraph having involved me in several duels with the
friends of Mr. Broskin. I thought it rather hard that I should have to
defend my new editor's policy against the supporters of my own
candidate, particularly as I was clearly in the right and they knew
nothing whatever about the matter in dispute, not one of them having
ever before so much as heard of the now famous Warm Springs asylum. But
I would not shirk even the humblest journalistic duty; I fought these
fellows and acquitted myself as became a man of letters and a
politician. The hurts I got were some time healing, and in the interval
every prominent member of my party who came to Claybank to speak to the
people regarded it as a simple duty to call first at my house, make a
tender inquiry as to the progress of my recovery and leave a challenge.
My physician forbade me to read a line of anything; the consequence was
that Masthead had it all his own way with the paper. In looking over the
old files now, I find that he devoted his entire talent and all the
space of the paper, including what had been the advertising columns, to
confessing that our candidate had been an inmate of a lunatic asylum,
and contemptuously asking the opposing party what they were going to do
about it.
All this time Mr. Broskin made no sign; but when the challenges became
intolerable I indignantly instructed Mr. Masthead to whip round to the
other side and support my brother-in-law. Masthead "sank the
individual," and duly announced, with his accustomed frankness, our
change of policy. Then Mr. Broskin came down to Claybank--to thank me!
He was a fine, respectable-looking gentleman, and impressed me very
favorably. But Masthead was in when he called, and the effect upon _him_
was different. He shrank into a mere heap of old clothes, turned white,
and chattered his teeth. Noting this extraordinary behavior, I at once
sought an explanation.
"Mr. Broskin," said I, with a meaning glance at the trembling editor,
"from certain indications I am led to fear that owing to some mistake we
may have been doing you an injustice. May I ask you if you were really
ever in the Lunatic asylum at Warm Springs, Missouri?"
"For three years," he replied, quietly, "I was the physician in charge
of that institution. Your son"--turning to Masthead, who wa
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