There is much in the great field of astronomy that is discouraging to the savant who hasn't the time nor means to rummage around through the heavens. At times I am almost hopeless, and feel like saying to the great yearnful, hungry world: “Grope on forever. Do not ask me for another scientific fact. Find it out yourself. Hunt up your own new-laid planets, and let me have a rest. Never ask me again to sit up all night and take care of a newborn world, while you lie in bed and reck not.”
I get no salary for examining the trackless void night after night when I ought to be in bed. I sacrifice my health in order that the public may know at once of the presence of a red-hot comet, fresh from the factory. And yet, what thanks do I get?
Is it surprising that every little while I contemplate withdrawing from scientific research, to go and skin an eight-mule team down through the dim vista of relentless years?
Then, again, you take a certain style of star, which you learn from Professor Simon Newcomb is such a distance that it takes 50,000 years for its light to reach Boston. Now, we will suppose that after looking over the large stock of new and second-hand stars, and after examining the spring catalogue and price list, I decide that one of the smaller size will do me, and I buy it. How do I know that it was there when I bought it? Its cold and silent rays may have ceased 49,000 years before I was born and the intelligence be still on the way. There is too much margin between sale and delivery. Every now and then another astronomer comes to me and says: “Professor, I have discovered another new star and intend to file it. Found it last night about a mile and a half south of the zenith, running loose. Haven't heard of anybody who has lost a star of the fifteenth magnitude, about thirteen hands high, with light mane and tail, have you?” Now, how do I know that he has discovered a brand new star? How can I discover whether he is or is not playing an old, threadbare star on me for a new one?
We are told that there has been no perceptible growth or decay in the star business since man began to roam around through space, in his mind, and make figures on the barn door with red chalk showing the celestial time table.
No serious accidents have occurred in the starry heavens since I began to observe and study their habits. Not a star has waxed, not a star has waned to my knowledge. Not a planet has season-cracked or shown any of the injurious effects of our rigorous climate. Not a star has ripened prematurely or fallen off the trees. The varnish on the very oldest stars I find on close and critical examination to be in splendid condition. They will all no doubt wear as long as we need them, and wink on long after we have ceased to wink back.
In 1866 there appeared suddenly in the northern crown a star of about the third magnitude and worth at least $250. It was generally conceded by astronomers that this was a brand new star that had never been used, but upon consulting Argelander's star catalogue and price list it was found that this was not a new star at all, but an old, faded star of the ninth magnitude, with the front breadths turned wrong side out and trimmed with moonlight along the seams. After a few days of phenomenal brightness, it gently ceased to draw a salary as a star of the third magnitude, and walked home with an Uncle Tom's Cabin company.
It is such things as this that make the life of the astronomer one of constant and discouraging toil. I have long contemplated, as I say, the advisability of retiring from this field of science and allowing others to light the northern lights, skim the milky way and do other celestial chores. I would do it myself cheerfully if my health would permit, but for years I have realized, and so has my wife, that my duties as an astronomer kept me up too much at night, and my wife is certainly right about it when she says if I insist on scanning the heavens night after night, coming home late with the cork out of my telescope and my eyes red and swollen with these exhausting night vigils, I will be cut down in my prime. So I am liable to abandon the great labor to which I had intended to devote my life, my dazzling genius and my princely income. I hope that other savants will spare me the pain of another refusal, for my mind is fully made up that unless another skimmist is at once secured, the milky way will henceforth remain unskum.
A Thrilling Experience.
I had a very thrilling experience the other evening. I had just filled an engagement in a strange city, and retired to my cozy room at the hotel.
The thunders of applause had died away, and the opera house had been locked up to await the arrival of an Uncle Tom's Cabin Company. The last loiterer had returned to his home, and the lights in the palace of the pork packer were extinguished.
No sound was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was still as the bosom of a fried chicken when the spirit has departed.
The swallow-tail coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the gross receipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for I was worn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed kept me from repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns for another's gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to mangle his victim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will often take a short cut to wealth by means of murder, when, if he would enter politics, he might accomplish his purpose as surely and much more safely.
Anon, however, tired nature succumbed. I know I had succumbed, for the bell-boy afterward testified that he heard me do so.
The gentle warmth of the steam-heated room, and the comforting assurance of duty well done and the approval of friends, at last lulled me into a gentle repose.
Anyone who might have looked upon me, as I lay there in that innocent slumber, with the winsome mouth slightly ajar and the playful limbs cast wildly about, while a merry smile now and then flitted across the regular features, would have said that no heart could be so hard as to harbor ill for one so guileless and so simple.
I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound or other, no doubt, broke my slumber, and I opened my eyes wildly. The room was in semi-darkness.
Hark!
A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a human being! I was now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes wider, but not without spilling them out of their sockets.
Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a sigh of relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done for that purpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a woman might heave after she has returned from church and transferred herself from the embrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into a friendly wrapper.
Regularly, like the rise and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose and fell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with it.
I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was nothing to laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a woman who had entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as I lay wrapt in slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her whole life.
But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven some cruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till the proper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd a hotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me of my hard-earned wealth.
Regularly still rose the soft breathing, as though the robber might be trying to suppress it. I reached gently under the pillow, and securing the money I put it in the pocket of my robe de nuit. Then, with great care, I pulled out a copy of Smith & Wesson's great work on “How to Ventilate the Human Form.” I said to myself that I would sell my life as dearly as possible, so that whoever bought it would always regret the trade.
Then I opened the volume at the first chapter and addressed a thirty-eight calibre remark in the direction of the breath in the corner.
When the echoes had died away a sigh of relief welled up from the dark corner. Also another sigh of relief later on.
I then decided to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt seen a man scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you have also seen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that his pantaloons were hanging on a chair at the other end of the room.
However, I lit the gas with my left hand and kept my revolver pointed toward the dark corner where the breath was still rising and falling.
People who had heard my lecture came rushing in, hoping to find that I had suicided, but they found that, instead of humoring the public in that way, I had shot the valve off the steam radiator.
It is humiliating to write the foregoing myself, but I would rather do so than have the affair garbled by careless hands.
Catching a Buffalo.
A pleasing anecdote is being told through the press columns recently, of an encounter on the South Platte, which occurred some years ago between a Texan and a buffalo. The recital sets forth the fact that the Texans went out to hunt buffalo, hoping to get enough for a mess during the day. Toward evening they saw two gentlemen buffalo on a neighboring hill near the Platte, and at once pursued their game, each selecting an animal. They separated at once, Jack going one way galloping after his beast, while Sam went in the other direction. Jack soon got a shot at his game, but the bullet only tore a large hole in the fleshy shoulder of the bull and buried itself in the neck, maddening the animal to such a degree that he turned at once and charged upon horse and rider.
The astonished horse, with the wonderful courage, sagacity and _sang froid_ peculiar to the broncho, whirled around two consecutive times, tangled his feet in the tall grass and fell, throwing his rider about fifty feet. He then rose and walked away to a quiet place, where he could consider the matter and give the buffalo an opportunity to recover.
The infuriated bull then gave chase to Jack, who kept out of the way for a few yards only, when, getting his legs entangled in the grass, he fell so suddenly that his pursuer dashed over him without doing him any bodily injury. However, as the animal went over his prostrate form, Jack felt the buffalo's tail brush across his face, and, rising suddenly, he caught it with a terrific grip and hung to it, thus keeping out of the reach of his enemy's horns, till his strength was just giving out, when Sam hove in sight and put a large bullet through the bull's heart.
This tale is told, apparently, by an old plainsman and scout, who reels it off as though he might be telling his own experience.
Now, I do not wish to seem captious and always sticking my nose into what is none of my business, but as a logical and zoological fact, I desire, in my cursory way, to coolly take up the subject of the buffalo tail. Those who have been in the habit of killing buffaloes, instead of running an account at the butcher shop, will remember that this noble animal has a genuine camel's hair tail about eight inches long, with a chenille tassel at the end, which he throws up into the rarified atmosphere of the far west, whenever he is surprised or agitated.
In passing over a prostrate man, therefore, I apprehend that in order to brush his face with the average buffalo tail, it would be necessary for him to sit down on the bosom of the prostrate scout and fan his features with the miniature caudal bud.
The buffalo does not gallop an hundred miles a day, dragging his tail across the bunch grass and alkali of the boundless plains.
He snorts a little, turns his bloodshot eyes toward the enemy a moment and then, throwing his cunning little taillet over the dash-boardlet, he wings away in an opposite direction.
The man who could lie on his back and grab that vision by the tail would have to be moderately active. If he succeeded, however, it would be a question of the sixteenth part of a second only, whether he had his arms jerked out by the roots and scattered through space or whether he had strength of will sufficient to yank out the withered little frizz and told the quivering ornament in his hands. Few people have the moral courage to follow a buffalo around over half a day holding on by the tail. It is said that a Sioux brave once tried it, and they say his tracks were thirteen miles apart. After merrily sauntering around with the buffalo one hour, during which time he crossed the territories of Wyoming and Dakota twice and surrounded the regular army three times, he became discouraged and died fiom the injuries he had received. Perhaps, however, it may have been fatigue.
It might be possible for a man to catch hold of the meager tail of a meteor and let it snatch him through the coming years.
It might be, that a man with a strong constitution could catch a cyclone and ride it bareback across the United States and then have a fresh one ready to ride back again, but to catch a buffalo bull in the full flush of manhood, as it were, and retain his tail while he crossed three reservations and two mountain ranges, requires great tenacity of purpose and unusual mental equipoise.
Remember, I do not regard the story I refer to as false, at least I do not wish to be so understood. I simply say that it recounts an incident that is rather out of the ordinary. Let the gentle reader lie down and have a Jackrabbit driven across his face, for instance. The J. Rabbit is as likely to brush your face with his brief and erect tail as the buffalo would be. Then carefully note how rapidly and promptly instantaneous you must be. Then closely attend to the manner in which you abruptly and almost simultaneously, have not retained the tail in your memory.
A few people may have successfully seized the grieved and startled buffalo by the tail, but they are not here to testify to the circumstances. They are dead, abnormally and extremely dead.
John Adams.
After viewing the birthplace of the Adamses out at Quincy I felt more reconciled to my own birthplace. Comparing the house in which I was born with those in which other eminent philanthropists and high-priced statesmen originated, I find that I have no reason to complain. Neither of the Adamses were born in a larger house than I was, and for general tone and eclat of front yard and cook-room on behind, I am led to believe that I have the advantage.
John Adams was born before John Quincy Adams. A popular idea seems to prevail in some sections of the Union that inasmuch as John Q. was bald-headed, he was the eider of the two; but I inquired about that while on the ground where they were both born, and ascertained from people who were familiar with the circumstances, that John was born first.
John Adams was the second president of the United States. He was a lawyer by profession, but his attention was called to politics by the passage of the stamp act in 1765. He was one of the delegates who represented Massachusetts in the first Continental Congress, and about that time he wrote a letter in which he said: “The die is now cast; I have passed the rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country is my unalterable determination.” Some have expressed the opinion that “the rubicon” alluded to by Mr. Adams in this letter was a law which he had succeeded in getting passed; but this is not true. The idea of passing the rubicon first originated with Julius Caesar, a foreigner of some note who flourished a good deal B.C.
In June, 1776, Mr. Adams seconded a resolution, moved by Richard Henry Lee, that the United States “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.” Whenever Mr. Adams could get a chance to whoop for liberty now and forever, one and inseparable, he invariably did so.
In 1796, Mr. Adams ran for president. In the convention it was nip and tuck between Thomas Jefferson and himself, but Jefferson was understood to be a Universalist, or an Universalist, whichever would look the best in print, and so he only got 68 votes out of a possible 139. In 1800, however, Jefferson turned the tables on him, and Mr. Adams only received 65 to Jefferson's 73 votes.
Mr. Adams made a good president and earned his salary, though it wasn't so much of a job as it is now. When there was no Indian war in those days the president could put on an old blue flannel shirt and such other clothes as he might feel disposed to adopt, and fish for bull heads in the Potomac till his nose peeled in the full glare of the fervid sun.
Now it is far different. By the time we get through with a president nowadays he isn't good for much. Mr. Hayes stood the fatigue of being president better, perhaps, than any other man since the republic became so large a machine. Mr. Hayes went home to Fremont with his mind just as fresh and his brain as cool as when he pulled up his coat tails to sit down in the presidential chair. The reason why Mr. Hayes saved his mind, his brain and his salary, was plain enough when we stop to consider that he did not use them much during his administration.
John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States and the eldest son of John Adams. He was one of the most eloquent of orators, and shines in history as one of the most polished of our eminent and bald-headed Americans. When he began to speak, his round, smooth head, to look down upon it from the gallery, resembled a nice new billiard ball, but as he warmed up and became more thoroughly stirred, his intellectual dome changed to a delicate pink. Then, when he rose to the full height of his eloquent flight, and prepared to swoop down upon his adversaries and carry them into camp, it is said that his smooth intellectual rink was as red as the flush of rosy dawn on the 5th day of July.
He was educated both at home and abroad. That is the reason he was so polished. After he got so that he could readily spell and pronounce the most difficult words to be found in the large stores of Boston, he was sent to Europe, where he acquired several foreign tongues, and got so that he could converse with the people of Europe very fluently, if they were familiar with English as she is spoke.
John Quincy Adams was chosen president by the House of Representatives, there being no choice in the electoral contest, Adams receiving 84 votes, Andrew Jackson 99, William H. Crawford 41, and Henry Clay 37. Clay stood in with Mr. Adams in the House of Representatives deal, it was said, and was appointed secretary of state under Mr. Adams as a result. This may not be true, but a party told me about it who got it straight from Washington, and he also told me in confidence that he made it a rule never to prevaricate.
Mr. Adams was opposed to American slavery, and on several occasions in Congress alluded to his convictions.
He was in Congress seventeen years, and during that time he was frequently on his feet attending to little matters in which he felt an interest, and when he began to make allusions, and blush all over the top of his head, and kick the desk, and throw ink-bottles at the presiding officer, they say that John Q. made them pay attention. Seward says, “with unwavering firmness, against a bitter and unscrupulous opposition, exasperated to the highest pitch by his pertinacity--amidst a perfect tempest of vituperation and abuse--he persevered in presenting his anti-slavery petitions, one by one, to the amount sometimes of 200 in one day.” As one of his eminent biographers has truly said: “John Quincy Adams was indeed no slouch.”
The Wail Of A Wife.
“Ethel” has written a letter to me and asked for a printed reply. Leaving off the opening sentences, which I would not care to have fall into the hands of my wife, her note is about as follows:
“---- Vt., Feb. 28, 1885.
My Dear Sir:
[Tender part of letter omitted for obvious reasons.] Would it be asking too much for me to request a brief reply to one or two questions which many other married women as well as myself would like to have answered?
I have been married now for five years. To-day is the anniversary of my marriage. When I was single I was a teacher and supported myself in comfort. I had more pocket-money and dressed fully as well if not better than I do now. Why should girls who are abundantly able to earn their own livelihood struggle to become the slave of a husband and children, and tie themselves to a man when they might be free and happy?
I think too much is said by the men in a light and flippant manner about the anxiety of young ladies to secure a home and a husband, and still they do deserve a part of it, as I feel that I do now for assuming a great burden when I was comparatively independent and comfortable.
Now, will you suggest any advice that you think would benefit the yet unmarried and self-supporting girls who are liable to make the same mistake that I did, and thus warn them in a manner that would be so much more universal in its range, and reach so many more people than I could if I should raise my voice? Do this and you will be gratefully remembered by
Ethel.”
It would indeed be a tough, tough man who could ignore thy gentle plea, Ethel; tougher far than the pale, intellectual hired man who now addresses you in this private and underhanded manner, unknown to your husband. Please destroy this letter, Ethel, as soon as you see it in print, so that it will not fall into the hands of Mr. Ethel, for if it should, I am gone. If your husband were to run across this letter in the public press I could never look him in the eye again.
You say that you had more pocket-money before you were married than you have since, Ethel, and you regret your rash step. I am sorry to hear it. You also say that you wore better clothes when you were single than you do now. You are also pained over that. It seems that marriage with you has not paid any cash dividends. So that if you married Mr. Ethel as a financial venture, it was a mistake. You do not state how it has affected your husband. Perhaps he had more pocket-money and better clothes before he married than he has since. Sometimes two people do well in business by themselves, but when they go into partnership they bust higher than a kite, if you will allow me the free, English translation of a Roman expression which you might not fully understand if I should give it to you in the original Roman.
Lots of self-supporting young ladies have married and had to go very light on pin-money after that, and still they did not squeal, as you, dear Ethel. They did not marry for revenue only. They married for protection. (This is a little political bon mot which I thought of myself. Some of my best jokes this spring are jokes that I thought of myself.)
No, Ethel, if you married expecting to be a dormant partner during the day and then to go through Mr. Ethel's pantaloons pocket at night and declare a dividend, of course life is full of bitter, bitter regret and disappointment. Perhaps it is also for Mr. Ethel. Anyhow, I can't help feeling a pang of sympathy for him. You do not say that he is unkind or that he so far forgets himself as to wake you up in the morning with a harsh tone of voice and a yearling club. You do not say that he asks you for pocket-money, or, if so, whether you give it to him or not.
Of course I want to do what is right in the solemn warning business, so I will give notice to all simple young women who are now self-supporting and happy, that there is no statute requiring them to assume the burdens of wifehood and motherhood unless they prefer to do so. If they now have abundance of pin-money and new clothes, they may remain single if they wish without violating the laws of the land. This rule is also good when applied to young and self-supporting young men who wear good clothes and have funds in their pockets. No young man who is free, happy and independent, need invest his money in a family or carry a colicky child twenty-seven miles and two laps in one night unless he prefers it. But those who go into it with the right spirit, Ethel, do not regret it.
I would just as soon tell you, Ethel, if you will promise that it shall go no farther, that I do not wear as good clothes as I did before I was married. I don't have to. My good clothes have accomplished what I got them for. I played them for all they were worth, and since I got married the idea of wearing clothes as a vocation has not occurred to me.
Please give my kind regards to Mr. Ethel, and tell him that although I do not know him personally, I cannot help feeling sorry for him.
Bunker Hill.
Last week for the first time I visited the granite obelisk known all over the civilized world as Bunker Hill monument. Sixty years ago, if my memory serves me correctly. General La Fayette, since deceased, laid the corner-stone, and Daniel Webster made a few desultory remarks which I cannot now recall. Eighteen years later it was formally dedicated, and Daniel spoke a good piece, composed mostly of things that he had thought up himself. There has never been a feature of the early history and unceasing struggle for American freedom which has so roused my admiration as this custom, quite prevalent among congressmen in those days, of writing their own speeches.
Many of Webster's most powerful speeches were written by himself or at his suggestion. He was a plain, unassuming man, and did not feel above writing his speeches. I have always had the greatest respect and admiration for Mr. Webster as a citizen, as a scholar and as an extemporaneous speaker, and had he not allowed his portrait to appear last year in the Century, wearing an air of intense gloom and a plug hat entirely out of style, my respect and admiration would have continued indefinitely.
Bunker Hill monument is a great success as a monument, and the view from its summit is said to be well worth the price of admission. I did not ascend the obelisk, because the inner staircase was closed to visitors on the day of my visit and the lightning rod on the outside looked to me as though it had been recently oiled.
On the following day, however, I engaged a man to ascend the monument and tell me his sensations. He assured me that they were first-rate. At the feet of the spectator Boston and its environments are spread out in the glad sunshine. Every day Boston spreads out her environments just that way.
Bunker Hill monument is 221 feet in height, and has been entirely paid for. The spectator may look at the monument with perfect impunity, without being solicited to buy some of its mortgage bonds. This adds much to the genuine thrill of pleasure while gazing at it.
There is a Bunker Hill in Macoupin County, Illinois, also in Ingham County, Michigan, and in Russell County, Kansas, but General Warren was not killed at either of these points.
One hundred and ten years ago, on the 17th day of the present month, one of America's most noted battles with the British was fought near where Bunker Hill monument now stands. In that battle the British lost 1,050 in killed and wounded, while the American loss numbered but 450. While the people of this country are showing such an interest in our war history, I am surprised that something has not been said about Bunker Hill. The Federal forces from Roxbury to Cambridge were under command of General Artemus Ward, the great American humorist. When the American humorist really puts on his war paint and sounds the tocsin, he can organize a great deal of mourning.
General Ward was assisted by Putnam, Starke, Prescott, Gridley and Pomeroy. Colonel William Prescott was sent over from Cambridge to Charlestown for the purpose of fortifying Bunker Hill. At a council of war it was decided to fortify Breeds Hill, not so high but nearer to Boston than Bunker Hill. So a redoubt was thrown up during the night on the ground where the monument now stands.
The British landed a large force under Generals Howe and Pigot, and at 2 P.M. the Americans were reinforced by Generals Warren and Pomeroy. General Warren was of a literary turn of mind and during the battle took his hat off and recited a little poem beginning:
“Stand, the ground's your own, my braves!
Will ye give it up to slaves?”
A man who could deliver an impromptu and extemporaneous address like that in public, and while there was such a bitter feeling of hostility on the part of the audience, must have been a good scholar. In our great fratricidal strife twenty years ago, the inferiority of our generals in this respect was painfully noticeable. We did not have a commander who could address his troops in rhyme to save his neck. Several of them were pretty good in blank verse, but it was so blank that it was not just the thing to fork over to posterity and speak in school afterward.
Colonel Prescott's statue now stands where he is supposed to have stood when he told his men to reserve their fire till they saw the whites of the enemy's eyes. Those who have examined the cast-iron flint-lock weapon used in those days will admit that this order was wise. Those guns were in union to health, of course, when used to excess, but not necessarily or immediately fatal.
At the time of the third attack by the British, the Americans were out of ammunition, but they met the enemy with clubbed muskets, and it was found that one end of the rebel flint-lock was about as fatal as the other, if not more so.
Boston still meets the invader with its club. The mayor says to the citizens of Boston: “Wait till you can see the whites of the visitor's eyes, and then go for him with your clubs.” Then the visitor surrenders.
I hope that many years may pass before it will again be necessary for us to soak this fair land in British blood. The boundaries of our land are now more extended, and so it would take more blood to soak it.
Boston has just reason to be proud of Bunker Hill, and it was certainly a great stroke of enterprise to have the battle located there. Bunker Hill is dear to every American heart, and there are none of us who would not have cheerfully gone into the battle then if we had known about it in time.
A Lumber Camp.
I have just returned from a little impromptu farewell tour in the lumber camps toward Lake Superior. It was my idea to wade around in the snow for a few weeks and swallow baked beans and ozone on the 1/2 shell. The affair was a success. I put up at Bootjack camp on the raging Willow River, where the gay-plumaged chipmunk and the spruce gum have their home.
Winter in the pine woods is fraught with fun and frolic. It is more fraught with fatigue than funds, however. This winter a man in the Michigan and Wisconsin lumber camps could arise at 4:30 A.M., eat a patent pail full of dried apples soaked with Young Hyson and sweetened with Persian glucose, go out to the timber with a lantern, hew down the giants of the forest, with the snow up to the pit of his stomach, till the gray owl in the gathering gloom whooped and hooted in derision, and all for $12 per month and stewed prunes.
I did not try to accumulate wealth while I was in camp. I just allowed others to enter into the mad rush and wrench a fortune from the hand of fate while I studied human nature and the cook. I had a good many pleasant days there, too. I read such literary works as I could find around the camp, and smoked the royal Havana smoking tobacco of the cookee. Those who have not lumbered much do not know much of true joy and sylvan smoking tobacco.
They are not using a very good grade of the weed in the lumber regions this winter. When I say lumber regions I do not refer entirely to the circumstances of a weak back. (Monkey-wrench, oil can and screwdriver sent with this joke; also rules for working it in all kinds of goods.) The tobacco used by the pine choppers of the northern forest is called the Scandihoovian. I do not know why they call it that, unless it is because you can smoke it in Wisconsin and smell it in Scandihoovia.
When night came we would gather around the blazing fire and talk over old times and smoke this tobacco. I smoked it till last week, then I bought a new mouth and resolved to lead a different life.
I shall never forget the evenings we spent together in that log shack in the heart of the forest. They are graven on my memory where time's effacing fingers can not monkey with them. We would most always converse. The crew talked the Norwegian language and I am using the English language mostly this winter. So each enjoyed himself in his own quiet way. This seemed to throw the Norwegians a good deal together. It also threw me a good deal together. The Scandinavians soon learn our ways and our language, but prior to that they are quite clannish.
The cook, however, was an Ohio man. He spoke the Sandusky dialect with a rich, nut brown flavor that did me much good, so that after I talked with the crew a few hours in English, and received their harsh, corduroy replies in Norske, I gladly fled to the cook shanty. There I could rapidly change to the smoothly flowing sentences peculiar to the Ohio tongue, and while I ate the common twisted doughnut of commerce, we would talk on and on of the pleasant days we had spent in our native land. I don't know how many hours I have thus spent, bringing the glad light into the eye of the cook as I spoke to him of Mrs. Hayes, an estimable lady, partially married, and now living at Fremont, Ohio.
I talked to him of his old home till the tears would unbidden start, as he rolled out the dough with a common Budweiser beer bottle, and shed the scalding into the flour barrel. Tears are always unavailing, but sometimes I think they are more so when they are shed into a barrel of flour. He was an easy weeper. He would shed tears on the slightest provocation, or anything else. Once I told him something so touchful that his eyes were blinded with tears for the nonce. Then I took a pie, and stole away so that he could be alone with his sorrow.
He used to grind the coffee at 2 A.M. The coffee mill was nailed up against a partition on the opposite side from my bed. That is one reason I did not stay any longer at the camp. It takes about an hour to grind coffee enough for thirty men, and as my ear was generally against the pine boards when the cook began, it ruffled my slumbers and made me a morose man.
We had three men at the camp who snored. If they had snored in my own language I could have endured it, but it was entirely unintelligible to me as it was. Still, it wasn't bad either. They snored on different keys, and still there was harmony in it--a kind of chime of imported snore as it were. I used to lie and listen to it for hours. Then the cook would begin his coffee mill overture and I would arise.
When I got home I slept from Monday morning till Washington's Birthday, without food or water.
My Lecture Abroad.
Having at last yielded to the entreaties of Great Britain, I have decided to make a professional farewell tour of England with my new and thrilling lecture, entitled “Jerked Across the Jordan, or the Sudden and Deserved Elevation of an American Citizen.”
I have, therefore, already written some of the cablegrams which will be sent to the Associated Press, in order to open the campaign in good shape in America on my return.
Though I have been supplicated for some time by the people of England to come over there and thrill them with my eloquence, my thriller has been out of order lately, so that I did not dare venture abroad.
This lecture treats incidentally of the ease with which an American citizen may rise in the Territories, when he has a string tied around his neck, with a few personal friends at the other end of the string. It also treats of the various styles of oratory peculiar to America, with specimens of American oratory that have been pressed and dried especially for this lecture. It is a good lecture, and the few straggling facts scattered along through it don't interfere with the lecture itself in any way.
I shall appear in costume during the lecture.
At each lecture a different costume will be worn, and the costume worn at the previous lecture will be promptly returned to the owner.
Persons attending the lecture need not be identified.
Polite American dude ushers will go through the audience to keep the flies away from those who wish to sleep during the lecture.
Should the lecture be encored at its close, it will be repeated only once. This encore business is being overdone lately, I think.
Following are some of the cablegrams I have already written. If any one has any suggestions as to change, or other additional favorable criticisms, they will be gratefully received; but I wish to reserve the right, however, to do as I please about using them:
LONDON, ---, ---, --Bill Nye opened his foreign lecture engagement here last evening with a can-opener. It was found to be in good order. As soon as the doors were opened there was a mad rush for seats, during which three men were fatally injured. They insisted on remaining through the lecture, however, and adding to its horrors. Before 8 o'clock 500 people had been turned away. Mr. Nye announced that he would deliver a matinee this afternoon, but he has been petitioned by tradesmen to refrain from doing so, as it will paralyze the business interests of the city to such a degree that they offer to “buy the house,” and allow the lecturer to cancel his engagement.
LONDON, ---, ---. --The great lecturer and contortionist, Bill Nye, last night closed his six weeks' engagement here with his famous lecture on “The Rise and Fall of the American Horse Thief,” with a grand benefit and ovation. The elite of London was present, many of whom have attended every evening for six weeks to hear this same lecture. Those who can afford it will follow the lecturer back to America, in order to be where they can hear this lecture almost constantly.
Mr. Nye, at the beginning of the season, offered a prize to anyone who should neither be absent nor tardy through the entire six weeks. After some hot discussion last evening, the prize was awarded to the janitor of the hall.
[Associated Press Cablegram]
LONDON, ---, ---. --Bill Nye will sail for America to-morrow in the steamship Senegambia. On his arrival in America he will at once pay off the national debt and found a large asylum for American dudes whose mothers are too old to take in washing and support their sons in affluence.
The Miner at Home.
Receiving another notice of assessment on my stock in the Aladdin mine the other day, reminded me that I was still interested in a bottomless hole that was supposed at one time to yield funds instead of absorbing them. The Aladdin claim was located in the spring of '76 by a syndicate of journalists, none of whom had ever been openly accused of wealth. If we had been, we could have proved an alibi.
We secured a gang of miners to sink on the discovery, consisting of a Chinaman named How Long. How Long spoke the Chinese language with great fluency. Being perfectly familiar with that language, and a little musty in the trans-Missouri English, he would converse with us in his own language, sometimes by the hour, courteously overlooking the fact that we did not reply to him in the same tongue. He would converse in this way till he ran down, generally, and then he would refrain for a while.
Finally, How Long signified that he would like to draw his salary. Of course he was ignorant of our ways, and as innocent of any knowledge of the intricate details peculiar to a mining syndicate as the child unborn. So he had gone to the president of our syndicate and had been referred to the superintendent, and he had sent How Long to the auditor, and the auditor had told him to go to the gang boss and get his time, and then proceed in the proper manner, after which, if his claim turned out to be all right, we would call a meeting of the syndicate and take early action in relation to it. By this, the reader will readily see that, although we were not wealthy, we knew how to do business just the same as though we had been a wealthy corporation.
How Long attended one of our meetings and at the close of the session made a few remarks. As near as I am able to recall his language, it was very much as follows:
“China boy no sabbe you dam slyndicate. You allee same foolee me too muchee. How Long no chopee big hole in the glound allee day for health. You Melican boy Laddee silver mine all same funny business. Me no likee slyndicate. Slyndicate heap gone all same woodbine. You sabbe me? How Long make em slyndicate pay tention. You April foolee me. You makee me tlired. You putee me too much on em slate. Slyndicate no good. Allee time stanemoff China boy. You allee time chin chin. Dlividend allee time heap gone.”
Owing to a strike which then took place in our mine, we found that, in order to complete our assessment work, we must get in another crew or do the job ourselves. Owing to scarcity of help and a feeling of antagonism on the part of the laboring classes toward our giant enterprise, a feeling of hostility which naturally exists between labor and capital, we had to go out to the mine ourselves. We had heard of other men who had shoveled in their own mines and were afterward worth millions of dollars, so we took some bacon and other delicacies and hied us to the Aladdin.
Buck, our mining expert, went down first. Then he requested us to hoist him out again. We did so. I have forgotten what his first remark was when he got out of the bucket, but that don't make any difference, for I wouldn't care to use it here anyway.
It seems that How Long, owing to his heathenish ignorance of our customs and the unavoidable delay in adjusting his claim for work, labor and services, had allowed his temper to get the better of him, and he had planted a colony of American skunks in the shaft of the Aladdin.
That is the reason we left the Aladdin mine and no one jumped it. We had not done the necessary work in order to hold it, but when we went out there the following spring we found that no one had jumped it.
Even the rough, coarse miner, far from civilizing influences and beyond the reach of social advantages, recognizes the fact that this Little, unostentatious animal plodding along through life in its own modest way, yet wields a wonderful influence over the destinies of man. So the Aladdin mine was not disturbed that summer.
We paid How Long, and in the following spring had a flattering offer for the claim if it assayed as well as we said it would, so Buck, our expert, went out to the Aladdin with an assayer and the purchaser. The assay of the Aladdin showed up very rich indeed, far above anything that I had ever hoped for, and so we made a sale. But we never got the money, for when the assayer got home he casually assayed his apparatus and found that his whole outfit had been salted prior to the Aladdin assay.
I do not think our expert, Buck, would salt an assayer's kit, but he was charged with it at this time, and he said he would rather lose his trade than have trouble over it. He would rather suffer wrong than to do wrong, he said, and so the Aladdin came back on our hands.
It is not a very good mine if a man wants it as a source of revenue, but it makes a mighty good well. The water is cold and clear as crystal. If it stood in Boston, instead of out there in northern Colorado, where you can't get at it more than three months in the year, it would be worth $150. The great fault of the Aladdin mine is its poverty as a mine, and its isolation as a well.
An Operatic Entertainment.
Last week we went up to the Coliseum, at Minneapolis, to hear Theodore Thomas' orchestra, the Wagner trio and Christine Nilsson. The Coliseum is a large rink just out of Minneapolis, on the road between that city and St. Paul. It can seat 4,000 people comfortably, but the management like to wedge 4,500 people in there on a warm day, and then watch the perspiration trickle out through the clapboards on the outside. On the closing afternoon, during the matinee performance, the building was struck by lightning and a hole knocked out of the Corinthian duplex that surmounts the oblique portcullis on the off side. The reader will see at once the location of the bolt.
The lightning struck the flag-staff, ran down the leg of a man who was repairing the electric light, took a chew of his tobacco, turned his boot wrong side out and induced him to change his sock, toyed with a chilblain, wrenched out a soft corn and roguishly put it in his ear, then ran down the electric light wire, a part of it filling an engagement in the Coliseum and the balance following the wire to the depot, where it made double-pointed toothpicks of a pole fifty feet high. All this was done very briefly. Those who have seen lightning toy with a cottonwood tree, know that this fluid makes a specialty of it at once and in a brief manner. The lightning in this case, broke the glass in the skylight and deposited the broken fragments on a half dozen parquette chairs, that were empty because the speculators who owned them couldn't get but $50 apiece, and were waiting for a man to mortgage his residence and sell a team. He couldn't make the transfer in time for the matinee, so the seats were vacant when the lightning struck. The immediate and previous fluid then shot athwart the auditorium in the direction of the platform, where it nearly frightened to death a large chorus of children. Women fainted, ticket speculators fell $2 on desirable seats, and strong men coughed up a clove. The scene beggared description. I intended to have said that before, but forgot it. Theodore Thomas drew in a full breath, and Christine Nilsson drew her salary. Two thousand strong men thought of their wasted lives, and two thousand women felt for their back hair to see if it was still there. I say, therefore, without successful contradiction, that the scene beggared description. Chestnuts!
In the evening several people sang, “The Creation.” Nilsson was Gabriel. Gabriel has a beautiful voice cut low in the neck, and sings like a joyous bobolink in the dew-saturated mead. How's that? Nilsson is proud and haughty in her demeanor, and I had a good notion to send a note up to her, stating that she needn't feel so lofty, and if she could sit up in the peanut gallery where I was and look at herself, with her dress kind of sawed off at the top, she would not be so vain. She wore a diamond necklace and silk skirt The skirt was cut princesse, I think, to harmonize with her salary. As an old neighbor of mine said when he painted the top board of his fence green, he wanted it “to kind of corroborate with his blinds.” He's the same man who went to Washington about the time of the Guiteau trial, and said he was present at the “post mortise” examination. But the funniest thing of all, he said, was to see Dr. Mary Walker riding one of these “philosophers” around on the streets.
But I am wandering. We were speaking of the Festival. Theodore Thomas is certainly a great leader. What a pity he is out of politics. He pounded the air all up fine there, Thursday. I think he has 25 small-size fiddles, 10 medium-size, and 5 of those big, fat ones that a bald-headed man generally annoys. Then there were a lot of wind instruments, drums, et cetera. There were 600 performers on the stage, counting the chorus, with 4,500 people in the house and 3,000 outside yelling it the ticket office--also at the top of their voices--and swearing because they couldn't mortgage their immortal souls and hear Nilsson's coin silver notes. It was frightful. The building settled twelve inches in those two hours and a half, the electric lights went out nine times for refreshments, and, on the whole, the entertainment was a grand success. The first time the lights adjourned, an usher came in on the stage through a side entrance with a kerosene lamp. I guess he would have stood there and held it for Nilsson to sing by, if 4,500 people hadn't with one voice laughed him out into the starless night. You might as well have tried to light benighted Africa with a white bean. I shall never forget how proud and buoyant he looked as he sailed in with that kerosene lamp with a soiled chimney on it, and how hurt and grieved he seemed when he took it and groped his way out, while the Coliseum trembled with ill-concealed merriment. I use the term “ill-concealed merriment” with permission of the proprietors, for this season only.
Dogs and Dog Days.
I take occasion at this time to ask the American people as one man, what are we to do to prevent the spread of the most insidious and disagreeable disease known as hydrophobia? When a fellow-being has to be smothered, as was the case the other day right here in our fair land, a land where tyrant foot hath never trod nor bigot forged a chain, we look anxiously into each other's faces and inquire, what shall we do?
Shall we go to France at a great expense and fill our systems full of dog virus and then return to our glorious land, where we may fork over that virus to posterity and thus mix up French hydrophobia with the navy-blue blood of free-born American citizens?
I wot not.
If I knew that would be my last wot I would not change it. That is just wot it would be.
But again.
What shall we do to avoid getting impregnated with the American dog and then saturating our systems with the alien dog of Paris?
It is a serious matter, and if we do not want to play the Desdemona act we must take some timely precautions. What must those precautions be?
Did it ever occur to the average thinking mind that we might squeeze along for weeks without a dog? Whole families have existed for years after being deprived of dogs. Look at the wealthy of our land. They go on comfortably through life and die at last with the unanimous consent of their heirs dogless.
Then why cannot the poor gradually taper off on dogs? They ought not to stop all of a sudden, but they could leave off a dog at a time until at last they overcame the pernicious habit.
I saw a man in St. Paul last week who was once poor, and so owned seven variegated dogs. He was confirmed in that habit. But he summoned all his will-power at last and said he would shake off these dogs and become a man. He did so, and to-day he owns a city lot in St. Paul, and seems to be the picture of health.
The trouble about maintaining a dog is that he may go on for years in a quiet, gentlemanly way, winning the regard of all who know him, and then all of a sudden he may hydrophobe in the most violent manner. Not only that, but he may do so while we have company. He may also bite our twins or the twins of our warmest friends. He may bite us now and we may laugh at it, but in five years from now, while we are delivering a humorous lecture, we may burst forth into the audience and bite a beautiful young lady in the parquet or on the ear.
It is a solemn thing to think of, fellow-citizens, and I appeal to those who may read this, as a man who may not live to see a satisfactory political reform--I appeal to you to refrain from the dog. He is purely ornamental. We may love a good dog, but we ought to love our children more. It would be a very, very noble and expensive dog that I would agree to feed with my only son.
I know that we gradually become attached to a good dog, but some day he may become attached to us, and what can be sadder than the sight of a leading citizen drawing a reluctant mad dog down the street by main strength and the seat of his pantaloons? (I mean his own, not the dog's pants. This joke will appear in book form in April. The book will be very readable, and there will be another joke in it also. eod tf.)
I have said a good deal about the dog, pro and con, and I am not a rabid dog abolitionist, for no one loves to have his clear-cut features licked by the warm, wet tongue of a noble dog any more than I do, but rather than see hydrophobia become a national characteristic or a leading industry here, I would forego the dog.
Perhaps all men are that way, however. When they get a little forehanded they forget that they were once poor, and owned dogs. If so, I do not wish to be unfair. I want to be just, and I believe I am. Let us yield up our dogs and take the affection that we would otherwise bestow on them on some human being. I have tried it and it works well. There are thousands of people in the world, of both sexes, who are pining and starving for the love and money that we daily shower on the dog.
If the dog would be kind enough to refrain from introducing his justly celebrated virus into the person of those only who kiss him on the cold, moist nose, it would be all right; but when a dog goes mad he is very impulsive, and he may bestow himself on an obscure man. So I feel a little nervous myself.
Christopher Columbus.
Probably few people have been more successful in the discovering line than Christopher Columbus. Living as he did in a day when a great many things were still in an undiscovered state, the horizon was filled with golden opportunities for a man possessed of Mr. C.'s pluck and ambition. His life at first was filled with rebuffs and disappointments, but at last he grew to be a man of importance in his own profession, and the people who wanted anything discovered would always bring it to him rather than take it elsewhere.
And yet the life of Columbus was a stormy one. Though he discovered a continent wherein a millionaire attracts no attention, he himself was very poor.
Though he rescued from barbarism a broad and beautiful land in whose metropolis the theft of less than half a million of dollars is regarded as petty larceny, Chris himself often went to bed hungry. Is it not singular that the gray-eyed and gentle Columbus should have added a hemisphere to the history of our globe, a hemisphere, too, where pie is a common thing, not only on Sunday, but throughout the week, and yet that he should have gone down to his grave pieless!
Such is the history of progress in all ages and in all lines of thought and investigation. Such is the meagre reward of the pioneer in new fields of action.
I presume that America to-day has a larger pie area than any other land in which the Cockney English language is spoken. Right here where millions of native born Americans dwell, many of whom are ashamed of the fact that they were born here and which shame is entirely mutual between the Goddess of Liberty and themselves, we have a style of pie that no other land can boast of.
From the bleak and acid dried apple pie of Maine to the irrigated mince pie of the blue Pacific, all along down the long line of igneous, volcanic and stratified pie, America, the land of the freedom bird with the high instep to his nose, leads the world.
Other lands may point with undissembled pride to their polygamy and their cholera, but we reck not. Our polygamy here is still in its infancy and our leprosy has had the disadvantage of a cold, backward spring, but look at our pie.
