A tricycle made for two

Published in Short Stories, June 1894.

A street organ was playing “A Bicycle Made For Two,” and as we listened sadly, and wondered how long England would be permitted to be the refuge of Anarchists and organ-grinders, the Colonel remarked to no one in particular, “A bicycle made for two may do well enough in this country, but if you Britishers had ever seen Professor Van Wagener’s tricycle made for two, you would never think of singing about any kind of bicycle.”

“I think I was telling you the other day,” continued the Colonel, “about Professor Van Wagener, the great electrical sharp, who used to live next door to me in New Berlinopolisville. A mighty clever man he was in many other directions than that of electricity. He was always inventing something. I have known that man to get up at four o’clock on a winter’s morning and invent straight along till noon. Show him a piece of machinery, I don’t care what it might be, and he would instantly go to work to improve it.

“I had a reaping-machine in my field, and one day the Professor happened to see it. Nothing would satisfy him but to put an attachment to that machine so that it would gather the straw into bundles, and tie them neatly around the middle with ropes which were to be twisted out of straw by a second attachment to the machine. He worked at that idea for several months, until he got it to suit him. Then he built a brand new machine with his two attachments, and took it into my field to exhibit it. He was so proud of it that he sent out written invitations to about all his acquaintances to come and see it, and he told me that this time he had made an invention that was going to make his fortune and give him a reputation that would lie over any other man’s, except, perhaps, George Washington’s.

“The machine was a big, clumsy-looking affair, and was run by a horse that had a sort of stall in about the middle of it, where he couldn’t play any tricks, and where the machine couldn’t play any tricks on him. The Professor had his wife with him and his wife’s cousin, who was a very pretty girl, though I don’t believe Van Wagener ever noticed that anything was pretty unless it was some sort of scientific apparatus. The horse was started up, and the machine began to reap and to tie up bundles of straw, just as the Professor had said it would do. His wife’s cousin wanted to see just how the thing worked, so he took her alongside of the machine, and before they fairly knew what was the matter the machine had tied the Professor and the girl into a bundle, and tied them so tight that they could hardly breathe. Naturally the people who had been invited to see the machine work, rushed up to help the Professor and the young woman, and presently that machine had most of the leading citizens of New Berlinopolisville tied up in neat bundles, and lying around on the ground calling for help, except such of them as had been wrapped round with straw, and were too nearly suffocated to speak. The machine kept on its way, seeking for more citizens and more straw, until some man had sense enough to stop the horse, and so put an end to the performance. There isn’t any manner of doubt that it was a talented machine, but when the leading citizens had been set free, they seemed very much prejudiced against it. Some of them were for killing the Professor, and some of them were for killing the horse, but they finally compromised, and arranged their differences by smashing the machine into scrap iron, and informing the Professor that if he ever calculated to build another one, he had better dig his grave first, and sit close to the edge of it. I can’t say that I blame them very much, for when a man is violently tied up with some other man whom he don’t particularly like, or with some other man’s wife, knowing all the time that the woman’s husband is spry with his weapons and unwilling as a general rule to argue a matter until after he has got through shooting, it stands to reason that he won’t feel particularly friendly to the machine that has done the tying. I never heard any more about that machine from the Professor, and it’s my belief that when his wife got him home she let him know that he couldn’t be tied up in the same bundle with a good-looking cousin without inviting the just indignation of a virtuous and devoted wife.

“Another time the Professor was taking a drive with me in my buggy, and it struck him as a bright idea that the bit and reins ought to be superseded by electricity. So he goes to work and invents a new way of driving a horse by pressing buttons instead of pulling on the reins. He had wires running from the seat of his wagon to different parts of the horse. You pressed one button, and the horse got a shock on the right side of his face that made him turn to the left. You pressed another button, and a shock on the left cheek turned him to the right. A wire connecting with his tail was used to stir him up instead of a whip, and a strong current sent into his forelegs was expected to make him stop dead still whenever it was turned on. All these currents came from a battery under the seat of the wagon, and the buttons that turned them on were let into the seat on either side of the driver.

“Van Wagener took his wife out to drive in this new style of wagon as soon as he got it perfected, and to all appearances it worked very well. He stopped in front of Dr. Smith’s drug store, which was our leading drug store at the time, though afterwards the proprietor was crusaded by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who smashed all his whiskey bottles and knocked out the heads of his whiskey barrels, and left nothing in his establishment except a few medicine bottles and a little perfumery. Well, as I was saying, the Professor stopped in front of the drug store, and Mrs. Van Wagener climbed down and bought some mustard-plasters, or something of the sort, and then climbed into the wagon again. She was a middling heavy woman, which was a little strange, considering how strict she was in matters of morality and religion, for your strict woman is nearly always more or less bony, and she sat down on the seat with considerable force, and directly on the top of about half the electric buttons, she having forgot all about them. The horse couldn’t quite understand the signals, but when he felt a current setting up his spine and another in his left cheek, and another in his right cheek, he saw that as a matter of self-respect he ought to kick that wagon to flinders, and accordingly he started in to do it. The Professor yelled to him to whoa, and he turned on all his electricity at once, hoping to shock the horse into some sort of paralysis, but it didn’t work. The horse just kicked the whole front of the wagon into smithereens, and when he struck the battery and spilt the acids over his legs, he remembered that he had an engagement in the next county, and he started to keep it at a pace of about thirty miles an hour. It didn’t much matter to the Professor and his wife, who had been scattered all over the neighborhood when the horse’s heels first struck the seat, but when they came to, and Smith had plastered them up with brown paper and arnica, Van Wagener remarked that, in his opinion, horses were played out, and that in this age electricity ought to be made to take the place of such a grossly unscientific animal.”

The Colonel paused, and pulled his hat down over his eyes as was his custom when he had finished speaking and desired to smoke in silence. He was reminded by Thompson that, however interesting his reminiscences of Professor Van Wagener might be, they had not yet included the promised account of the tricycle made for two.

“Beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said the Colonel. “I clean forgot about that. The truth is, when I get to remembering about the Professor’s inventions there are so many of them that I generally forget the particular one I started out to tell about. It’s the same way with this hyer village of London. I’ve started out half a dozen times to go to see the Tower, and I strike so many things that interest me that I have never yet got there. Take your cigar shops, for instance. Why, they are fifty years behind the age, and when I go into one I get talking with the proprietor, and trying to show him the error of his ways, till first I know it’s too late to go anywhere.

“But about this hyer tricycle. When bicycles and tricycles came to New Berlinopolisville, the Professor was mightily interested in them. Not that he admired them, but because, as he said, they were unscientific. He demonstrated with not more than half a slateful of figures that it took more exertion to drive a bicycle a mile than it would take to run that mile with a man’s own legs. There was no getting around his figures. They proved that a man weighing a hundred and forty pounds and driving an ordinary bicycle at the rate of ten miles an hour consumed, say, five hundred foot pounds of energy—if anybody knows what that means, and I don’t much believe anybody does. Well, the same man could run a mile with the consumption of only four hundred pounds, leaving a surplus of a hundred pounds for the benefit of the poor. ‘If these young fellows that I see on bicycles had any sense,’ said Van Wagener, ‘they would drive their machines by electricity, and avoid the awful consumption of energy.’ No sooner had this idea struck him than he proceeded to invent an electric engine for bicycles, and in the course of the summer he had his invention worked out to his own satisfaction.

“The engine and the storage battery took up a good deal of space, and so the Professor, instead of applying it to a bicycle, built a big tricycle with seats for two, and fitted his engine to that. He calculated that it would drive the machine for twelve hours at a speed of fifteen miles’ on a level, and that it would carry two persons weighing in the aggregate 500 lbs. with perfect ease. When the machine was all finished the Professor wheeled it out of the yard and down to a turn in the road, where Mrs. Wagener couldn’t see him, and made ready for a start. You see his wife was prejudiced against his inventions, and always said that he should never try experiments with new inventions so long as she could prevent it. Just as the Professor was climbing aboard the tricycle, Widow Dumfries comes along, and, being young and full of spirits, besides being a mighty sociable sort of woman, she told Van Wagener that it looked mighty selfish for him to start out alone, and that if he wanted to be real accommodating he would give her a little ride on his machine. The Professor never could say no, except to another scientific person; and so he told Mrs. Dumfries to get into the front seat and he would take her down to her house, which was about a quarter of a mile down the road.

“The machine went along all right, and the Professor worked his way cautiously along the main street with his brake on most of the time; but as soon as he got in the outskirts of the town he turned on the full current and let her whiz. The widow was delighted, and said that she had never enjoyed anything half so much in all her life. Pretty soon the machine came to a middling steep descent in the road, and the Professor started to shut off the current and put on his brake. But there was something wrong about his levers. He couldn’t shut off the current to save his life, and when he put the brake hard on, hoping that it would stop the thing, the brake broke.

“They tell me that the tricycle went down that hill at about sixty miles an hour; that is, after it got well under headway, you understand. Nothing that Van Wagener could do had any effect in slowing it down. The engine was working for all it was worth, and she meant to keep on working according to contract. When the tricycle struck the level ground she slowed down to about eighteen miles an hour, for the Professor had given her rather more power than he had intended to give her. There weren’t any hills or any ascents worth mentioning for the machine to climb, for Berlinopolisville is about six hundred feet above the lake, and the road that the Professor had taken keeps descending all the way.

“When the Professor found that he couldn’t stop the tricycle, he was a pretty badly frightened man. He couldn’t possibly throw himself off without mixing himself all up with the wheels, and breaking most of his bones. Besides, he couldn’t desert the widow in any such way as that. You may ask why he didn’t turn the machine round, and steer for home. The reason was that he couldn’t possibly turn it at the speed it was running at without capsizing the whole concern. The only thing he could possibly do was to keep in the middle of the road, and let the machine run till the power was exhausted, which, if he had made no mistake in his calculation, wouldn’t be less than twelve hours.

“Mrs. Dumfries enjoyed the thing at first, but after a little while she suspected that something was wrong. The Professor told her that he was sorry to say that he couldn’t stop the tricycle, but that if she sat tight, and they had middling good luck, he calculated that they wouldn’t come to any great harm. The widow wasn’t easily frightened. She reflected that she had on her best pair of shoes and stockings, and declared that if there was to be an accident she would have to make the best of it. The longer the ride lasted the less chance there seemed to be of running into anything, for the teams that the Professor and Mrs. Dumfries did meet mostly went into the ditch on one side of the road or the other, before the tricycle had a chance to run into them. The Professor, being a kind-hearted man, and disliking profane language, was considerably troubled when he saw a horse and buggy, or, maybe, a pair of horses and loaded wagon, pile up in the ditch, and heard the remarks that the driver made—that is, in those cases where he was in a condition to make remarks; but he couldn’t stop to explain or apologize.

“It was about nine o’clock in the morning when the tricycle started, and about two o’clock Mrs. Dumfries was about as tired and as hungry as they make ’em. She called to the Professor and asked him to tell her the truth about the time it would take the machine to run down. He told her that, if he hadn’t made any miscalculation, she would run till about nine o’clock that night; but that it was a bright moonlight night, and he thought everything would go well, unless there should happen to be a turnpike gate on the road, and it should happen to be closed. At that the widow broke down, and, leaning back with her head on the Professor’s waistcoat, fainted away. All he could do was to hold her tight with one arm, so that she couldn’t slip off the machine, and to steer with the other hand. Just then he began to meet friends and acquaintances. He afterwards told me that it seemed as if there was a procession of them coming up the road, and before they went off into the ditch they all recognized the Professor, and he heard several of them say, ‘Why, that there ain’t Mrs. Van Wagener! Well, I never would have thought it!’ or similar remarks, showing a want of confidence in the Professor’s motives. He tried to call out to two or three people whom he knew very well that the machine had run away with him, but they mostly misunderstood him, and said, when they got back to town, that Van Wagener had up and told them in so many words that he was running away with the widow.

“Night came along and the moon came up, but the road was lined with trees, and it was fair to middling dark. Mrs. Dumfries had come to long before this; but she had lost her temper, and told the Professor he was a brute, and that her brother would settle with him for his outrageous conduct. Once a man hailed the tricycle and ordered it to stop, and, finding that it would not stop, fired three revolver shots after it, without, however, doing any harm. Once the machine ran into an old woman who was crossing the road, and was either deaf or blind, but there wasn’t very much of her, and the tricycle went over her like a horse taking a low fence. If it hadn’t been for the excitement of the ride, and the thought of what the consequences would probably be when Mrs. Van Wagener should come to know about it, the Professor would probably have dropped exhausted, for he wasn’t a very strong man. However, he held out well, and about nine o’clock, just as the machine was approaching a tavern that stood alongside of the road, the current gave out and the tricycle stopped.

“There wasn’t any other house nearer than four miles, and there was the Professor and Mrs. Dumfries, nearly two hundred miles from New Berlinopolisville, and about as tired, and about as hungry, and about as mad as any two people ever were. Of course they had to stop at the tavern till morning, and it took them two more days to get home, partly by stage coach and partly by rail. When they did get home the Professor found that Mrs. Van Wagener had gone to her mother’s, leaving word with a neighbor that she should begin proceedings for a divorce at once, and that the widow’s brother had started out with his Winchester rifle, remarking to the Professor’s friends that they could make arrangements for the funeral at once, and that he would send the body on to them at their expense, if they so desired.

“The end of it all was that I went to see the widow, and then I hunted up Mrs. Van Wagener, and finally explained things so that the Professor’s wife came back again, and the widow’s brother allowed that he was satisfied that it was a case which didn’t require any shooting. But after that you could never get the Professor to listen to the word tricycle, which was a pity, for in my opinion there was a fortune in that invention of his if it had been properly put on the market. But that’s the way with these scientific men. When they make a good invention they don’t know it, and when they invent something that is of no earthly use they spend their bottom dollar trying to get people to take an interest in it.”

Antonio’s Englishman

Published in Short Stories, August 1894.

Antonio was young, handsome, and a gondolier. He lacked but two things: a gondola of his own, and an Englishman. He was too poor to buy a gondola, and though he occasionally hired an old and extremely dilapidated one, and trusted to his handsome face to enable him to capture a party of foreign ladies, his profits had to be divided with the owner of the gondola, and were thus painfully small. The traghetto brought him in a few francs per month, and he picked up other small sums by serving as second oar, whenever tourists could be convinced that a second oar was necessary. Still, Antonio was desperately poor, and he and his young wife were often uncomfortably hungry.

Now, if the Madonna would only send him an Englishman, even if it were only for a single year, Antonio could easily save enough money to buy himself a beautiful gondola, besides living in the lap of luxury. His brother Spiro had owned an Englishman for only seven months and a half, and already he was a capitalist, with his own gondola, and, figure it to yourself!—with four hundred francs in the savings bank! And Spiro had done nothing to deserve this blessing, for he was notoriously an unbeliever, and never went inside a church except when he was escorting English ladies, when, of course, he prayed with fervor at the most conspicuous shrine, which was worth at least ten extra soldi of buona mano. Whereas, Antonio was deeply religious, and at least once a year gave a wax candle to the Blessed Virgin of Santa Maria Zobenigo. “But patience!” said Antonio daily to himself. “Some day the Madonna will grow weary, and will say, ’ Give that Antonio an Englishman, so that I can have a little peace and quiet.’ And then the Englishman will appear, and Antonio’s fortune will be made.”

Of course Antonio knew of every foreigner who came to Venice with the intention of making a prolonged stay. There is no detective police in the world that can be compared with the Venetian gondolier in learning the ways and purposes of tourists. To know all about the foreigner is at once his business and his capital. The Englishman who comes to Venice and determines to spend six months or a year in that enchanted city, may reach this decision on a Saturday night and mention it to no living soul. Yet by the following Monday morning all the gondoliers in Venice know that there is an Englishman to be striven for, and they have even settled in their own minds precisely what apartment he will probably hire. How they arrive at this knowledge it is not for me to say. There are mysteries in the Venice of today, as there were in the Venice of the Ten and of the Three.

Now, it fell out that one day Antonio learned that an Englishman and his wife, a young couple, who had every appearance of sweet temper and scant knowledge of the world, had arrived at the Albergo Luna, and had told the porter that they intended to take a house and live forever in Venice. The porter was an intimate friend of Antonio, and had been promised a handsome commission on any foreigner whom he might place in Antonio’s hands. Within an hour after receiving the precious information, Antonio had put on his best shirt, had said ten Aves at lightning speed, had promised the Blessed Virgin two half-pound wax candles in case he should land this desirable Englishman, and was back again at the Luna and waiting to waylay his prey.

The porter presented Antonio, and asserted that, as a combination of professional skill and moral beauty, Antonio was simply unique. Mr. Mildmay, the Englishman in question, was pleased with Antonio’s clean shirt, and Mrs. Mildmay was captivated by his chestnut curls, and the frank, innocent expression of the young fellow’s face. He was hired on the spot, with the new gondola which he professed to own, for 150 francs per month, including his board. He was to bring his gondola and his recommendations to the hotel to be inspected that afternoon, and was to begin his duties on the following day, the Mildmays having already secured an apartment in advance of their arrival in Venice.

The long-hoped-for fortune had arrived at last. “He is a man of excellent heart, the paron,” said Antonio to the porter. “He will be as wax in my hands; already I love him and the sweet parona. You shall have your share of him, my Zuane. No one can say that I am not a just man.”

Antonio hurried at once from the hotel with a note from the porter to a dealer in gondolas, certifying that the bearer had secured a most eligible Englishman. He had to pay a heavy price for the hire by the month of a nearly new gondola, but the payments were to form part of the purchase-money, and Antonio did not grudge the price. Then he stopped at his house to show the new gondola to his wife, and tell her the blessed news, and then, armed with his baptismal certificate, and an old letter from a notary, informing him that the funeral expenses of his father must be paid or serious consequences would follow, he returned to the hotel.

The Mildmays were satisfied with the gondola, and with Antonio’s recommendations; for they could not read Italian handwriting, and when Antonio informed them that the notary’s letter was a certificate that he was the most honest man in Venice, and that it had been given him by a German Prince whom he had served ten years, they were not in a position to contradict the assertion. Moreover, they were already half in love with the handsome and happy face of their gondolier, and would have taken him without any recommendation at all, sooner than have taken an old and ugly gondolier with the recommendation of the British Consul and the resident chaplain. The next day Antonio entered upon his duties, and began the joyous task of making hay while the sun of the Englishman shone on him.

The gondolier in private service in Venice does many things wholly unconnected with his boat. He usually waits on his master’s table ; he polishes the concrete floors, and he is sent on every variety of errand. Antonio was tireless, respectful, and cheerful, and the Mildmays agreed that he was an ideal servant. Of course they responded to his suggestion that he needed a livery, and he was soon furnished at their expense with a handsome suit of heavy blue cloth, a picturesque hat, a silk sash, and an overcoat. He looked very handsome in his new dress, and the difference between what he paid the tailor and what he charged his master provided his wife and his little boy with their entire wardrobe for the coming winter.

Venice is a cold city after the winter fogs begin, and when Antonio advised the Mildmays to lay in their entire stock of firewood in September instead of waiting until the price should be higher, they said to one another what a comfort it was to have a servant who really looked after their interests. So Antonio was commissioned to buy the wood, and he bought it. He made a handsome commission on the transaction, and, in addition, he had about one-fifth of the whole amount of wood delivered at his own residence. It is true that this was not quite enough to provide him fuel for the entire winter, but the deficiency could easily be remedied by simply carrying home three or four sticks under his coat every night, and Antonio was not a man who shrank from any honest labor when the good of his family was in view.

About ten days after the arrival of his Englishman, Antonio informed him that the gondola needed to go to the squero to have its bottom cleaned, at a cost of ten francs. This, however, he insisted upon paying out of his own pocket, because the foulness of the bottom had been incurred before he entered Mr. Mildmay’s service. This scrupulous display of honesty still further convinced the Englishman that he had the pearl of gondoliers, and when the next day Antonio asked him to give him as a loan, to be deducted from his future wages, fifty francs, wherewith to make certain essential but wholly unintelligible repairs to the gondola, Mr. Mildmay was of his wife’s opinion that it would be a shame to require the poor man ever to repay it.

The first thing that shook the Mildmays' confidence in Antonio was a little incident in connection with a chicken. They had had a pair of roast fowls for dinner and had eaten only one, intending to have the other served cold for luncheon the next day. When late in the evening Mrs. Mildmay accidentally discovered Antonio in the act of going out of the house with the cold fowl stuffed under his coat, she demanded an explanation. “It is true, parona” said Antonio, “that I took the fowl. And why? Because all the evening I had seen you and the paron sitting together in such love and happiness that my heart bled for poor Antonio, who has no happy fireside at which to sit. And so I said to myself, ‘Antonio! surely you deserve a little happiness as well as these good and noble people! Take the cold fowl, and eat it with love and gratitude in your heart!’”

Mrs. Mildmay could not scold him after this defense, and she simply contented herself with telling him that he might keep the fowl for this time, but that such a method of equalizing the benefits of fortune must not occur again. Antonio promised both her and himself that it should not, and though he continued to keep his wife’s table fully supplied from that of the Mildmays, the latter never again found him in possession of surreptitious chickens.

One day Antonio found a gold piece, twenty francs in fact, on the floor of his gondola. He knew it must have been dropped by the paron, and he promptly brought it to him. “How wrong I was,” said Mrs. Mildmay, “to doubt the poor fellow because of that affair of the chicken. No one would ever have been the wiser if he had kept that twenty-franc piece, but he brought it to us like an honest man.” For once she was right in believing Antonio to be honest. Nothing could have induced him to sully his soul and hands by unlawfully detaining his master’s money. He was determined to make all the money out of his providential Englishman that he could make in ways that every gondolier knows to be perfectly legitimate, but he was no thief, and Mr. Mildmay could fearlessly have trusted him with all the money in his purse.

Antonio was now one of the happiest men in Venice, but one morning he came to Mr. Mildmay with a face of pathetic sadness, and asked for a day’s holiday. “It is not for pleasure that I ask it,” he said; “my only pleasure is to serve the best of masters. But my little boy is dead, and is to be buried to-day. I should like to go with the coffin to San Michele.”

Mr. Mildmay was unspeakably touched by the man’s sorrow and the quiet heroism with which he bore it. He gave him the day’s holiday and fifty francs towards the funeral expenses of his child. When Antonio appeared in the morning, quiet, sad, but scrupulously anxious to do his whole duty, the Mildmays felt that they really loved the silent and stricken man.

Misfortune seemed suddenly to have run amuck at Antonio. A week after the death of his child, he announced in his usual quiet way that his wife was dead. It was very sudden, so he said. He did not know exactly what was the disease, but he thought it was rheumatism. The Mildmays thought it strange that rheumatism should have carried off a woman only twenty-two years old, but strange things happen in Venice, and the climate is unquestionably damp. Antonio only asked for a half-holiday to attend the funeral, and he added that unless the paron could advance him two hundred francs of his wages, he should be unable to save his wife from being buried in the common ditch. Of course, this could never be permitted, and Antonio received the two hundred francs, and Mrs. Mildmay told her husband that if he should think of deducting it from the unhappy man’s wages, she could never respect him again.

For a time the darts of death spared the household of Antonio. The gondola made its alleged monthly visit to the squero to have its bottom cleaned at Mr. Mildmay’s expense, and the amount of repairs and paint which it needed did seem unexpectedly large. But Antonio was not foolishly grasping. So long as he doubled his wages by tradesmen’s commissions, and by little devices connected with the keeping of the gondola, he felt that he was combining thrift with prudence. He made, however, one serious mistake, of which he afterwards repented when it was too late. Instead of giving the Madonna the two wax candles which he had promised her, he gave her two stearine candles, trusting that she would not notice the difference. It was not in keeping with his honest and religious character, and there were times when the recollection of it made him feel uneasy.

As the winter wore on, Antonio’s devotion to his employers never slackened. Beyond the commissions which it is but just and right that the faithful gondolier should exact from those dogs of tradesmen, even if they did charge the same commissions in his master’s bills, he was tireless in protecting the Mildmays from imposition. He was never too tired to do anything that he was asked to do, and although, when his brother Spiro was temporarily out of employment, Antonio discovered that there was nearly always too much wind to render it safe to take the gondola out with a single oarsman, and that he would therefore furnish a second oarsman in the person of Spiro at his master’s expense, he never intimated that he was not ready to row hour after hour while the Mildmays explored the city and the lagoon. Mr. Mildmay was fascinated by the narrow Venetian streets, and spent hours exploring alone every part of the city. He was probably perfectly safe in so doing, for highway robbery and crimes of violence are almost unknown in Venice; but, for all that, he was always, though without his knowledge, accompanied on his walking excursions by the stealthy and unsuspected Antonio, who kept out of sight, but in readiness to come to his assistance should the necessity arise.

Toward Spring Antonio thought it best to have his wife’s mother die, but to his surprise Mr. Mildmay did not offer to pay the old lady’s funeral expenses. He drew the line at mothers-in-law, and Antonio received only his half-holiday to accompany the corpse to the cemetery. This miscarriage made Antonio think more than ever of that failure to keep his promise to the Madonna in the matter of the wax candles, and he sometimes wondered if she were capable of carrying her resentment so far as to take his Englishman from him.

There is gas in Venice, but the judicious householder does not use it, save when he desires to enshroud his rooms in a twilight gloom. If he wishes a light strong enough to read by, he burns petroleum. It was, of course, Antonio who supplied the petroleum to the Mildmay household, and equally, of course, he bought the poorest quality and charged for the dearest. Now, in spite of all the care which a timid person may lavish on a lamp burning cheap petroleum, it is nearly certain sooner or later to accomplish its mission of setting somebody or something on fire, and Antonio’s petroleum, which was rather more explosive than gunpowder, unaccountably spared the inmates of the casa Mildmay until the month of March, when it suddenly asserted itself.

It happened in this way. One evening Mrs. Mildmay took a lamp in her hand and started to cross the wide and slippery floor of her drawing-room. The rug on which she trod moved under her, and in the effort to save herself she dropped the lamp. It broke, and in an instant she was in a blaze.

Antonio was in the ante-room. The door was open and he saw the accident. He sprang to Mrs. Mildmay’s assistance. He did not attempt to avoid the flames, but rushed directly through the pool of blazing oil, burning his feet and ankles horribly. He seized Mrs. Mildmay and tore away her dress with his bare hands. He had nothing to wrap around her, for he was wearing no coat at the time, but he clasped her close in his arms, and smothered the flames that had caught her petticoat by pressing her against his bosom. She escaped with nothing worse than a slightly burned finger, but Antonio’s hands, arms, feet, and ankles were burned to the bone. By this time Mr. Mildmay, who had been in his study, heard his wife calling for help, and made his appearance.

Antonio asked the parona’s permission to sit down for a moment, and then fainted away. The cook was called and sent for the doctor. She met Antonio’s brother in the calle, close to the house, and sent him upstairs. With his help Antonio was carried to Mrs. Mildmay’s bedroom and laid on the bed, and before the doctor came the wounded man regained consciousness and thanked the Mildmays for their care of him.

The doctor, after dressing the wounds, said that the man might very probably recover. But Antonio announced that he was about to die, on hearing which decision the doctor changed his mind.

“When a Venetian of the lower class gives up, and says he is going to die,” said the doctor, “no medical science can save him. Your man will die before morning, if he has really lost all hope. There! he says he wants a priest; you might as well order his coffin at once. I can do nothing to save him.”

“Paron” said Antonio, presently, “would you, in your great goodness, permit my wife to come to see me for the last time?”

“You shall have anything you want, my brave fellow,” replied Mr. Mildmay, “but I thought your wife was dead.”

“I was mistaken about it,” said Antonio. “It was her twin sister who died, and they were so much alike that their own mother could not tell them apart. No, my poor wife is still alive. May she bring my little boy with her?”

“Tell her to bring anybody you may want to see,” replied his master, “but I certainly thought your little boy was buried last January.”

“The paron is mistaken, if he will pardon me for saying so. It was my little girl who died. Was it not so, Spiro?”

Spiro confirmed Antonio’s statement, like a loyal brother who is afraid of no fraternal lie, and Mr. Mildmay had not the heart to trouble the sufferer with any more doubts of his veracity.

Antonio was duly confessed, and received absolution. “Did you tell the father about the candles?” whispered Spiro after the priest had gone.

“I thought,” answered Antonio, “that perhaps the Madonna had not yet noticed that they were not wax, and that it would not be wise to tell her of it, just as one is going where she is.”

In the early morning Antonio died with the smile of an innocent little child on his face. “I have served the dear paron faithfully,” he said, just as he died. “I know he will take care of my wife and child. And he will take Spiro as his gondolier.”

Mr. Mildmay religiously carried out Antonio’s dying, request. He installed Spiro in the place of the dead man, and he settled an annuity on Zanze, the disconsolate widow. He gave Antonio a grave all to himself in San Michele, and a beautiful white marble tombstone, with the epitaph, “Brave, Faithful, and Honest.” He came to know somewhat later how Antonio had enriched himself at his expense, but he said to his wife: “After all, my dear, Antonio was strictly honest according to his own code. I think I have known some Englishmen of unblemished reputation, whose honesty, according to the English code, could not be compared with that of the poor boy who gave his life for yours.”

Hopkin’s safe

Published in The Idler, 1894.

“I see,” said the Jericho station master, “that a train on the Denver road has just been held up, and the safe robbed of over three hundred thousand dollars. Well! These things has to happen so long as the present style of burglar-proof safes is in fashion. Any robber that has been properly educated to the business can open a safe inside of half-an-hour, and can do it without any dynamite or such violent ways. Now a safe can be made that nobody can open except with the proper combination, for I’ve seen such a safe myself. Saw it on this very road too, and it was buried only about fifty miles from here.”

“What in the world was the reason for burying a safe?” I asked.

“Because you can’t have a funeral without burying the corpse,” replied the station master. “I’ve got just about time enough to tell you the story before the Athensville express comes in, so set down and you shall hear all about it.

“About ten years ago, or mebbe eleven, I ain’t any sort of a hand for dates, there was a baggage master on this road by the name of Hopkins. He and I were on the same train, which was the regular day express, and carried the gold dust that used to be sent down once a week from Custerville, where the mines were panning out at the time pretty middling well. Thishyer Hopkins—Jim was his name—besides being baggage master, also acted as agent for the express company, and took charge of the safe. As a rule, the train was held up about once a month, and the safe was either opened by Jim, with a pistol to his ear, or else, if the robbers had plenty of time before them, and took a pride in their profession, they would open it themselves.

“Jim got tired of this sort of thing, and, being an ingenious sort of chap who had invented quite a lot of things, he undertook to invent a safe that nobody could open except with the combination. Moreover, he cal’lated to make it so strong that dynamite wouldn’t have no effect upon it, so that it would really be a burglar-proof safe, in good earnest. Well, Jim he worked at that safe for a good part of the winter, until he had got it planned out in a way to suit him, and then he took some of his savings, for he had a good lot of money in the bank, and he built his new patent burglar-proof safe, and had it put in his baggage car.

“The new safe was about twice the size of an ordinary express company’s safe. Outside it looked like any other safe, but besides being twice as strong as anything of the kind that had ever been built before, it had a good many special features, which I don’t pretend to remember, not being a mechanical sharp myself. I do recall, however, that it had a spring lock, which Jim explained was for convenience in case the train should be held up very sudden, and there shouldn’t be time to close the safe and lock it in the usual way.

“ ‘Seems to me,’ said the conductor, whose name was Sampson, though we always called him Gates, after that friend of Sampson’s that he carried away from somewhere on his back—I don’t exactly remember the name of the town—‘Seems to me,’ said he, ‘that when you get a pistol to your ear that safe’ll come open as easy as any other safe.’

“ ‘So it will,’ says Jim, ‘provided I ever find that pistol alongside of my ear. But I cal’late that I’ve got through with that style of amusement. The next time thishyer train is held up, the robbers won’t find me, unless they can open that safe, which is just what I mean that they shan’t be able to do.’

“ ‘Why, where are you going to be?’ asks Gates. ‘Are you cal’lating to hide yourself in the fire-box, or under the water in the tank? ‘

“ ‘See here,’ says Jim. ‘I ain’t no blamed fool, if I do look like one. No, Sir, I don’t cal’late to try any such games as those you’re a-referring to, but I do expect to get inside of that safe when the train is held up, and to stay there till the robbers get tired of trying to open it.’

“ ‘That’s a big scheme, Jim,’ says the conductor; ‘but I’d like to know how you expect to open the safe again when you want to come out.’

“ ‘O!’ says Jim, ‘that part of the business I leave with you. I’ll give you the combination, and after the robbers have got tired and gone home, you can open the safe and let me out.’

“ ‘All right,’ says Gates. ‘I’ll let you out fast enough, provided I can remember the combination, but you know my memory isn’t what you might call first-class, and I might forget the combination, and never be able to open the safe. Of course, you wouldn’t mind a little thing like that, for you’d be snug and comfortable, though perhaps a little bit hungry after a while.’

“Well, the conductor kept on chaffing Jim about his new invention, but the two were good friends, though it was afterwards thought by people who didn’t know all the facts that Gates was partly to blame for what happened. Jim he gave Gates the combination of the safe, and the very next day after the thing was put in the baggage-car the train was held up just this side of Athensville.

“The robbers climbed into the baggage-car, and when they couldn’t find Jim they brought up the conductor and told him to open the safe. The conductor swore that nobody knew the combination except Jim, and that he wasn’t aboard the train that night, but had laid over at Jones’s Misery, owing to not feeling very well. The robbers, seeing as Jim was not to be found, believed what the conductor said, and they went to work to pick the lock of the safe. Of course they couldn’t do it, for that lock was just a masterpiece of engineering, and there wasn’t a man living that could pick it. Then they tried their center bits, but they couldn’t make any impression on the safe. The bits would just slide around and scratch the surface here and there, but they hardly made a dent in the steel. By this time the robbers had got pretty mad, and they slid the safe out into the open, and tried what they could do with dynamite. They must have put a lot of the stuff under the safe, for when it went off the safe sailed more than thirty feet into the air, and came down so solid that she made a big hole in the ground. But when they came to examine her she wasn’t hurt a bit. Not a joint nor a bolt was started, and except for a little blackening of the outside she was as good as new.

“ ‘Thishyer is a low-down outrage,’ says the robber captain. ‘The man that made that safe deserves hanging if ever a man did, for the thing is going to put an end to train robbing, and will throw hundreds of men out of employment. I hate a man what hasn’t any feelings for his fellow-men.’

“Well, the rest of the robbers they stood around the safe and cussed till they were tired, but they admitted that they couldn’t open it, and after a while they told the conductor that he might take his safe back again, and start his train down the road. Accordingly, we got the safe into the baggage-car again, and after the train was a mile or two down the road the conductor he opens her, and there was Jim, as gay as a jaybird, and laughing himself sick over the failure of the robbers.

“There wasn’t any doubt that Jim’s scheme had worked well, and the express company gave him fifty dollars as a testimonial of their gratitude for having prevented the robbers from seizing two hundred thousand dollars worth of gold dust. Bimeby, a new idea occurred to Jim. You see, at that time there wasn’t any telegraph on this line, and there being only a single track, and that a pretty rough one, accidents were frequent. One day when there was a drove of cattle on the line, and Jim, looking out of the car saw that there was certain to be a smash up, he just opened his safe and gets into it, to wait for better times. That train went off the track, and the baggage car broke loose and went down an embankment, turning over a half-a-dozen times, and going clean to kindling-wood. When we began to clear things up, and missed Jim, we all supposed that he had been smashed, but when the conductor opened the safe to see if the contents were all right, there was Jim as smiling as a basket of chips, and enquiring in a kind of careless way if there was anything the matter with the train. After that, Jim regularly climbed into his safe whenever he heard the danger signal, and he never once got the least scratch or bruise. He went through three collisions in that safe, and after one of them, the safe was buried so deep among the rubbish that it was two days before we could dig it out. That didn’t disturb Jim, however. He just took the time out in sleep, and, according to what he said, would have been perfectly contented if he had only been able to smoke his pipe, which he couldn’t do owing to the scarcity of air in the safe. You see, as long as he kept his mouth somewhere near the key-hole he managed to do very well, but it wasn’t what you could call an airy sort of place.

“Jim was a careful man, and never neglected any precaution that would make the valuables in his charge as safe as possible. This was why he made it a rule to change the combination of the safe every month. About the third day of August—I remember the month, because I always suffer from the liver complaint in August, and I was off duty at the time and riding in the smoking car, being too sick to work as brakesman—we came near running into a waggon that was crossing the track. When Jim heard the brakes blown down, he crawled into his safe and shut the door, expecting there would be an accident. It so happened that the waggon got clear of the track just in time, and we went on our way rejoicing. After awhile we missed Jim, and, knowing that he must be in his safe, the conductor started to open it. He found that the combination wouldn’t work, and then, remembering that it was just after the first of the month, he knew Jim must have changed it and forgotten to give him the new combination. So the conductor gets close to the keyhole and calls to Jim to give him the combination, but Jim answers that he had changed it that very morning but couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was.

“Here was a pretty go. The only man who knew the combination had forgot it, and he was shut up in the safe. We told Jim that we would leave him quiet for an hour, and that there wasn’t any doubt that he would be able to remember the combination in that time, but somehow when he agreed to this his voice didn’t sound very sanguine. At the end of an hour he hadn’t made any progress. All he could say was, that the word had something to do either with robbery or politics, and that it must be a word of five letters, that being the way the lock was made.

“Well, we set to work to think of every word in the language relating to robbery and containing five letters. It was like working out some of these puzzles that you see in the Sunday papers, but we couldn’t hit on the right answer. Seeing as ‘robbery’ didn’t furnish us with the word, we tried words connected with ‘politics,’ and if we had only known it, we were on the right track, but we never got there. The conductor sent to his house for a big dictionary, and proposed to begin and try every word of five letters in the whole concern, but after awhile we found that it would take pretty near a year to get through with them all, and by that time Jim wouldn’t be wanting to get out.

“We worked at that combination for a good twenty-four hours, taking it altogether, and then we had to give it up. Then we sent for the best safe burglar in the whole North-west, and offered him a hundred dollars to open the safe, giving him leave to try any plan he might prefer. The man had heard of Jim’s patent burglar-proof safe, and, being an ambitious chap who took a genuine pride in his profession, he was glad of the job. But he didn’t succeed any better than we had done. Picking the lock, guessing at the combination, and working with the jimmy were all failures, and having heard about the experiment that the first gang of train robbers had made on the safe with dynamite, he didn’t think it worth while to try that sort of thing second time. However, he did say that in his opinion sledge-hammers would open the safe if they were used long enough. So we got two men with big sledge-hammers and set them to hammering the safe hour after hour in the same place, and when they were tired we had two more men to relieve them. We took the safe and the men along with us in the train, and they made such a noise that you could have heard that train a mile away, and would have thought that she was a boiler manufactory on wheels. At the end of twelve hours of steady hammering there wasn’t so much as a good-sized dent on that safe, and we gave up sledge-hammers and made up our minds that we had seen the last of Jim.

“For all that we kept tinkering at the combination for a fortnight or more afterwards. Jim had been quiet after the end of the first eight days, and we couldn’t get any answer from him. So, seeing as the time had come for to bid farewell to him, we decided that we would take the safe down to the Athensville cemetery and bury it as it stood. Which accordingly was done on the following Sunday, and, seeing as it was well known that safe belonged to Jim, and was empty at the time, except so far as Jim was concerned, there was nobody who had the right to make any objection. The minister who conducted the funeral did say something about the extraordinary nature of the coffin that we had chosen for the deceased, but we told him that the coffin didn’t concern him, and that all he had to do was to heave ahead and give it Christian burial without passing any of his remarks. We didn’t think it worth while to sink the safe very deep, because some day the combination might be discovered, and then Jim’s heirs would want to get the safe out again and put it among Jim’s assets, for it would have been sure to fetch a big price if there had been any way of getting into it.

“It must have been a year after the funeral when a passenger got to talking with the conductor of the express in the smoking-car about Jim and his safe, and he accidentally mentioned that the night before Jim shut himself up for the last time they two had been talking politics, and Jim, who was a Democrat, was slinging language about President Hayes, and saying that he had stole the Presidency from Tilden, and was no better than a train robber. When the conductor heard this he swore a while in a thoughtful sort of way, and then he says, ‘We’ve got that combination at last.’

“ ‘How so?’ says the man.

“ ‘Why,’ says the conductor, ‘Jim allowed that the combination was a word of five letters that had something to do either with robbery or politics. Now “Hayes” would be exactly that sort of word, and I can’t think how it happened that we didn’t try it. I haven’t the least manner of doubt that if we was to dig that safe up and try it with “Hayes” it would open without the least trouble.’

“ ‘What’s the good of opening it after Jim has been occupying it for more than a year?’ says the man.

“ ‘Why, just this,’ says the conductor. ‘That there safe is the only burglar-proof safe ever built, and if the combination was known the relatives of the remains could sell it for two thousand dollars easy. I’ll see them about it to-morrow, and we’ll have one more try at opening it.’

“Well, to make a long story short, the relatives dug the safe up, and found sure enough that ‘Hayes’ was the word that unlocked it. It was a little rusty on the outside, but otherwise it was just as good as ever. There wasn’t very much left of Jim by that time, but what there was received a second funeral, for there wasn’t anything mean about Jim’s family, and then the express company bought the safe for eighteen hundred dollars, and it was used on this road for upwards of two years.”

“What became of it finally?” I asked.

“What always becomes of anything or anybody that sticks to railroading too long. The train went off of Three Mile Bridge, about seventy-five miles north of Josephusville, and, there being a quicksand at the bottom of the creek that no man could ever find the bottom of, the whole train—including Jim’s safe—sank out of sight, and nobody ever found the least trace of it afterwards. You ought to have heard of that accident, for about three hundred passengers went down with the train, and the company never paid a cent of damages because there were no remains found, and nobody could prove that anybody in particular had been killed. I say it didn’t cost the company anything for damages, though they do say that the jurymen cost altogether not far from five thousand dollars a-piece. However, the company got out of it very cheap, and the directors were more disgusted about losing that safe than they were about losing the whole train. Come into my office and I’ll show you Jim’s photograph standing by his new safe, and making believe to pronounce an oration on its merits. He was a good fellow was Jim, but he put his confidence in that safe once too often.”

A ghost train

Published in The Idler, November 1895.

“Do you mean to tell me,” I asked the station master, “that you really believe that a train has a ghost, and that ghostly trains run over actual railways at night?”

“If you were a railroad man,” replied my friend, “you’d see the foolishness of asking such a question. Do I believe in ghost trains? You might as well ask me if I believed in Pullman cars. Why, man! every railroad man knows that ghost trains are liable to be met with almost any night. I don’t say that they are common, but I do say that there are lots of men who have seen ’em, and have just as much reason for believing in ’em as they have for, believing in any regular train.”

“Have you yourself ever seen a ghost train?” I asked.

The station master chewed his cigar for a moment in silence, and then said: “Seeing as it’s you that asks me, I’ll tell you something that I haven’t told any man for more than ten years, unless he happened to be an experienced railroad man. You see, I got tired of having people doubt my word, and insinuate that I was a lunatic, or had been drinking too much whiskey. You’ll perhaps think the same, but what I’m going to tell you is a cold fact, and there ain’t a bit of lying, or poetry, or political argufying, or any of those sort of imaginative things about it.

“You know the road from here to Tiberius Center? It’s pretty near a straight line, but when I first came into these parts, the trains used to run from here to Tiberius Center by a mighty roundabout way. The line, as it was originally laid out, ran in a sort of semicircle, taking in half a dozen small towns lying north-west of this place. After a while the company surveyed the new line, and bored the big tunnel through the Blue Eagle mountain. The old line wasn’t entirely abandoned until about two years ago, but after the tunnel was finished, there was only one passenger train each way daily on the old line, and a freight train three times a week.

“I had a brother who lived up at Manlius, a town on the old line, about seventy miles from here. That is to say, Manlius was his post office address, but he lived in a house that was three miles from the station, and there wasn’t any town of Manlius, except the station house, and a little shanty that was used as a post office. I was a kind of general assistant at thishyer station where we are now, and there not being very much work on hand, I got two days’ leave, and took the train up to see my brother. It was just about a year after the new line had been opened, and as the company meant to abandon the old line, they hadn’t put any repairs on it worth speaking of, and it was about the roughest road you ever traveled over.

“I was a little scared myself, though, as a rule, I never trouble myself about railroad accidents, knowing that they’re bound to come, and you can’t help yourself. There had been a terrible bad accident on that very road just before the expresses quit running over it. A train, with a Pullman car full of passengers, went off the track just as she had struck the bridge over the Muskahoot river, and as the bridge was over sixty feet high, and the river was over twenty feet deep, nobody ever saw hide or hair of that train, or of anybody connected with it, from that day to this.

“Well, I got up to my brother’s along about eight or mebbe half-past eight o’clock in the evening, and found him gone away, and the house locked up. I hammered on the doors and tried the windows till I had settled that there wasn’t any one at home, and that I couldn’t break in, and then I meandered back to the station, calculating to pass the night in the wood-shed, and take the train back to Jericho the next day. It had been snowing hard, and there was near a foot of snow on a level, let alone the big drifts that were here and there. I was pretty well fagged out when I got to the station, which, of course, was shut up for the night, and if it hadn’t been that I had a quart flask of whiskey in my pocket, I should have come near freezing to death.

“I went into the wood-shed, and got round behind the wood, where the wind couldn’t reach me, and after cussin’ my brother for a spell, on account of his having gone off and shut up his house, I made my preparations for taking a nap. Just then I heard the rumble of a train. This naturally astonished me, knowing as I did exactly what trains were running on that road, and that there wasn’t any sort of train due at that station for the next fifteen hours. However, the train kept coming nearer and nearer, and pretty soon I heard the grinding of the brakes, and understood that the train was coming to a stop. I didn’t lose any time in getting out of that wood-shed, and going for that train. I could see it standing close to the water-butt, about fifty yards down the road, and knew, of course, that the engineer was taking in water. When I reached her I saw that the train consisted only of a baggage car and a Pullman sleeper. I swung myself up on the rear platform of the sleeper, and pushed the door open with a good deal of trouble, for the woodwork seemed to have swelled, and there wasn’t anybody to help me from the inside of the car.

“When I got inside I looked around for the passengers, but there wasn’t a single one. Neither was there any sign of the nigger porter, who ought to have been there to ask me for my ticket, and to pretend that I was making him a lot of trouble by asking for a bed. You know the ways of nigger porters, and how they always make you feel that if you don’t give them a pretty big tip, you are a good deal worse than a slave driver. The car was lit up after a fashion by a single oil lamp, and all the berths looked as if the passengers had just jumped out of them, and the porter hadn’t been round to make up the beds. I couldn’t think what had become of the passengers, seeing as they couldn’t have gone into the baggage car, and it didn’t seem probable that a whole car full could have distributed themselves at way stations. However, that wasn’t any affair of mine. I opened both doors of the car to let a little air blow through, for it was as musty as a bar-room when you open it the first time in the morning; and then I picked out a good berth, and calculated to turn in for the night. I soon found that those berths weren’t fit for any Christian to sleep in, for the bed-clothes were as damp as if they had been left out in a rain-storm. Where the water had come from that had soaked them I couldn’t imagine, for it hadn’t rained any for a week, and it stood to reason that the snow couldn’t have drifted into the car, shut up as tight as it was. Then it puzzled me to imagine why the porter hadn’t taken the wet clothes away, and what had become of the nigger anyhow. The whole business was enough to throw a man off his balance, and I gave up thinking about it, and, going into the wash-room, I sat down in the wash-basin, which was the only dry seat in the car, and, leaning up against the corner, tried to get a nap.

“By this time the train had left the station several miles behind, and was running at a rate that I knew would have been risky on any road, let alone as rough a road as the one we were on. At first I didn’t mind this, the running of the train not being my business, but pretty soon I found that I could not keep in my seat without holding on with both hands. I’ve been in cars that have done some pretty tall running, and over some mighty rough roads, but I never before or since knew a car to jump, and roll, and shake herself generally as that car did. I began to think that the engineer was either drunk or crazy, and that the passengers had got so scared that they had all left the train. To tell the truth, I would have been glad to have left the train myself, but I never was fond of jumping, aud if there is any man who says that he likes to jump from a train that is doing forty or fifty miles an hour, why I just don’t believe him.

“All of a sudden I thought of the bell-cord, and I decided that I would pull it and stop the train. Then if any conductor appeared I would tell him who I was, and inform him that if he didn’t make his engineer run the train in a decent way, I would take good care that the Division Superintendent should know all about the thing. So I got hold of the bell-cord and gave it a fairish sort of pull—not the very hardest sort of a pull, you understand, but just a moderate pull. The cord broke in my hand as easy as if it had been a piece of thread, and all chance of stopping the train that way disappeared. I looked at the bell-cord and saw that it was as rotten as a politician’s conscience, so I just broke off a piece of it, about two or three yards long, and put it in my pocket, intending to show it to the Division Superintendent as a specimen of the way in which the Pullman car conductors attended to their business.

“All the time the train was rushing ahead at a speed that would have been counted worth noticing even on the New York Central. When she struck a curve—and there were lots of them—she just left the track entirely, and swung round that curve with her wheels in the air. And when she did strike the track again you can bet that things shook. Of course I don’t mean that the train actually did leave the track, but that was the way it would have seemed to you if you had been aboard that car. I went to the forward door to see if there was any chance of getting into or over the baggage car and so reaching the engineer, but it would have taken a monkey in first-rate training to have climbed over that baggage car without breaking his neck at the rate at which we were running. I went back into the sleeper again, and, holding on to a berth, tried to light up a cigar, but somehow the match didn’t seem to take much interest in the thing. I felt confident that in a few minutes more the car would leave the track and go to everlasting smash, and I remember feeling thankful that I had gone over my accounts just before leaving Jericho, and that nobody could fail to understand them. Just then I thought of the brake. If I should go out on the platform and put the brake on, the engineer would feel the drag on the car and would stop the train, unless he was stark mad. At any rate, the thing was worth trying.

“I got out on the platform, hanging on for all I was worth to the hand rail, until I got hold of the brake wheel. It was as rusty as if it had been soaking in water for a week, but I didn’t mind that. I jammed that brake down good and hard, but the brake-chain snapped almost as easy as the bell-cord, and there was an end of that plan for stopping the train. Of course, I knew that a brake-chain sometimes snaps, and you can’t prevent it, but it was curious that both the bell-cord and the brake-chain on that car should have been good for nothing.

“Well, I got back into the car again, and I took a middling good drink of the whiskey, and it sort of warmed up my courage. I never was a drinking man even in my young days, for I despise a drunkard, especially if he is a railroad man. But I hadn’t had above six or seven drinks that day, and I knew that another moderate one wouldn’t do me any harm. I was beginning to feel a little better, when I remembered that I had never heard the whistle of the locomotive since we had started from Manlius station. That showed me that the engineer wasn’t either drunk or mad, for in either case he would have blown his whistle about two-thirds of the time; there being nothing that a crazy man or a drunken engineer finds as soothing as a steam whistle. I couldn’t explain our flying around curves and over level crossings without sounding the whistle, except on the theory that the engineer had dropped dead in his cab. But then there would have been the fireman. Both of the men couldn’t very well have died at the same minute, and if there was anything the matter with the engineer, the fireman would naturally either have stopped the train and tried to get help, or he would have run it very cautiously, that not being his usual business, and would have been very particular about whistling at the proper places. Not hearing the whistle was, on the whole, more astonishing to me than finding a Pullman car without a passenger, or without a nigger porter; and with the bed-clothes soaked with water, and the bell cord almost too rotten to bear its own weight.

“There wasn’t a thing to be seen through the car windows, for they were thick with dirt. So, wanting to get some idea of the locality that we had got to, I went out on the rear platform again, and getting down on the lower step I leaned out to have a look all around. Just then we started around another curve, and what with my fingers being a little numb, and what with the swaying of the car, I lost my hold, and was shot off that train like a mail-bag that is chucked on to our platform when the Pacific express goes booming by.

“Luckily I fell into a snow-bank and wasn’t seriously hurt. However, the shock stunned me for a while, and when I came to, and found that I had no bones broken, and that my skull was all right, I picked myself up and started to wank down the track till I should come to a house. After walking, as I should judge, about half a mile, I came to East Fabiusville, where there is a little tavern, and mighty glad I was to see it. I knocked the landlord up and got a bed, and it was noon the next day before I woke up.

“There wasn’t any train to Jericho until after three o’clock, so not having anything to do, I looked up the landlord, and found he was an old acquaintance of mine, by the name of Hank Simmons. When I told him that I had come to Fabiusville by a night train, he sort of smiled, and I could see he didn’t believe me. ‘I don’t say that the train stopped here,’ I said, ‘for the last I saw of it was a mile or so up the road, where I fell off the rear platform into a snow-bank. But all the same, I did come most of the way from Manlius last night in a Pullman sleeper.’

“ ‘Then you must have come on what the boys call the ghost train,’ says Hank.

“ ‘What train’s that?’ says I.

“ ‘Why, it’s the ghost of the train that went off the bridge on the Muskahoot river. The boys do say that every once in a while there is a train made up of a locomotive, a baggage-car, and a Pullman sleeper that comes down the road a hustlin’, and goes off the Muskahoot bridge into the river. I never saw no such train myself, but there’s lots of folks living along this road that have seen it, and you’d have hard work to convince ’em that it isn’t the ghost of the wrecked train. Come to think of it, that there train was wrecked just a year ago last night, and it’s probable that her ghost was out for an airing, as you might say.’

“Well, when I came to think the thing over, I came to the conclusion that Hank was right, and that the Pullman with the wet bedclothes, and the rotten bell-cord, was nothing, more or less, than the ghost of a car. However, I didn’t say much more to Hank about it at the time, for the less a man talks about seeing ghosts the better it is for him, if he wants to be considered a reliable man. But as soon as I got back to Jericho I went to see the Division Superintendent and told him the whole story.

“ ‘See here,’ he said, when I had got through, ‘I suppose I ought to report you, but considering that you were not on duty last night, and that you’re not a drinking man as a general thing, I shan’t say anything about it. But if you’ll take my advice, you’ll not tell that ridiculous story to anybody else.’

“ ‘Then you think I was drunk and dreamed the whole thing, do you?’ I asked.

“ ‘I don’t think so,’ says he, ‘I’m sure of it, I’ve just been over the division reports, and no such train as you describe has been seen at any station. Besides, I know where every Pullman car in the company’s service is just at this identical time, and it’s impossible that a Pullman should have been on the Manlius branch last night. No train of any kind went over that branch between eight o’clock last night, and seven o’clock this morning.’

“ ‘Then I wish you’d explain how I traveled from Manlius station to East Fabiusville last night between nine and twelve. I can prove by the conductor of the up train that he let me off at Manlius after eight o’clock last night, and I can prove by the landlord of the Fabiusville Tavern that I put up at his house just before twelve o’clock. A man, whether he is drunk or sober, can’t travel seventy miles in three hours, unless he does it on a railroad train.’

“The Superintendent was a mighty smart man, but this conundrum of mine was more than he could answer. So he only smiled, in an aggravating sort of way, and said, ‘You’d better take my advice and keep quiet. You know how down the Directors are on any man that drinks too much whiskey. If you go about talking of this adventure of yours the chances are you’ll lose your place.’

“Just then I happened to think of the piece of bell-cord that I had taken from the car. I put my hand in my pocket, and there it was, sure enough. I held it up, and said to the Superintendent: ‘There’s a piece of the rotten bell-cord that I told you about. Perhaps you’ll say I dreamed six feet of cord into my pocket.’

“The Superintendent took it, and I could see that he was some considerable staggered. ‘You say you got this out of the Pullman sleeper that you dreamed about?’ he asked.

“ ‘That’s just exactly and precisely the identical place where I got that cord aforesaid,’ says I, as solemn as if I was on my oath.

“ ‘Well!’ says he, ‘I take back what I said about you’re having been drunk. That there cord hasn’t been in use in any car on this road for more than a year. The last car that had a cord like that was the one that went into the Muskahoot river. That’s a cotton cord, and we don’t use anything but hemp nowadays.’

“ ‘Then you think that I was on a ghost train after all,’ says I.

“ ‘I think,’ says he, ‘that the less you say about it the better—that is, if you care to follow my advice. If you keep on talking about it you’ll have half the trainmen on the division watching for ghosts and neglecting their regular duties.’

“Of course, I promised to do as the Superintendent said, and I never mentioned the ghost train until this particular Superintendent had skipped to Canada with over a hundred thousand dollars. He was a most amazing smart man, and if I had gone against his wishes, I wouldn’t have stayed in the company’s service very long. However, when I did begin to tell the story, nobody believed me, except now and then an old train hand who had seen ghost trains himself, and knew all about ’em. I’ve told you the story as straight as a die, and you can take it or leave it just as you choose. As Horace says, ‘There’s more things in heaven and the other place than any philosopher ever dared to dream about.’ “

A very satisfactory fog

Published in Windsor, 1895.

“I have always wanted to see a London fog,” remarked the Colonel, “and at last I’ve seen one. Half-a-dozen times I’ve seen fogs that seemed to me to be about as thick as the head of a McKinley Protectionist, but whenever I have said to a Londoner, ‘Do you call this a thick fog?’ he has exclaimed, ‘Oh dear, no! This is only a little misty.’ But I saw all the fog I ever want to see last night.’

“It was thick,” I observed, “and it seems to have left you feeling rather tired.”

“I am tired,” said the Colonel. “It wasn’t the fog that tired me so much as the after effects. Do you know that I spent this morning at the police-station, and paid a fine, all on account of that beastly fog? That was an after effect of the fog, and a mighty disagreeable one. I’ll tell you about it if you’ve nothing better to do than to listen.

“Last night I went to the Lyceum Theater, and when I came out I found that the fog was so thick that I couldn’t even see a lamp-post until I had walked into it. I enjoyed it at first, for it was a new experience for me, and I started to walk home, thinking that I could find my way without any difficulty. A man who has found his way down from the tenth story of a Chicago hotel when the building was burning and the corridors were black with smoke, ought, I thought, to be able to get the better of any British monarchical fog that was ever yet made. But I found before long that I had made a mistake. I lost my way, and after wandering for an hour or so I was mighty glad to walk into a cabman who was leading his horse, and, as I supposed, knew the London streets as well in a fog as in clear weather. So I just climbed into the cab and told the man where to take me, and then I pulled up the windows to keep the choke-damp out, and started a cigar, and felt pretty comfortable. The cabman didn’t dare to get on the box and drive, though there didn’t seem to be any traffic in the street. However I didn’t concern myself with the cabman, for there is no use in buying a cab and then doing your own driving; besides I had been told that the London cabmen are the best in the world, and I don’t know but what it is true. I will say this for them that when it comes to making a shilling fare stretch into half-a-crown, and then grumbling because you don’t voluntarily pay five shillings, your cabmen show an amount of financial genius that an average Chancellor of the Exchequer might envy.

“We had been slowly cruising around London—occasionally running into an ashbox or wandering on to the sidewalk—for about an hour (as I should judge) when the cab stopped and the cabman opened the door. I was going to get out, thinking that we had reached my hotel, but the man stopped me and said, ‘Better stop where you are, sir!’

“‘And where’s that?’ said I.

“‘Blest if I know,’ said the cabman. ‘To tell the bloomin’ truth, sir, I don’t know where we are any more than the dead. It may be Whitechapel (though it don’t smell like it) and it may be Camden Town (though the road is a little too rough for that). Anyway we’re nowheres near Piccadilly way, which is where you want to go, and that’s the only thing I’m sure about.’

“‘I don’t see,’ said I, ‘that this concerns me. I hired you to take me to my hotel. I’m in no sort of hurry; but all the same if I were you I’d earn that fare instead of remarking on the geography of London.’

“‘There ain’t no sort of use in wandering round in this way,’ said the man. ‘You must see that yourself, sir! We’ll never get nowhere unless perhaps we walks into the river or some bloomin’ canal. For all I know we may have gone over Waterloo Bridge, and we may fetch up in the West Injy Docks. I put it to you, sir, if that’s the sort of thing you’d like.’

“I began to see that there was more or less force in what the cabman said, so I asked him what he proposed to do about it.

“‘I think, sir,’ said he, ‘that I’d better leave you and the cab here for a bit and try to find a public-house if there is one open or a police station, so as we can know in a general way where we are. You can sit quite comfortable in the cab till I come back.’

“‘All right,’ says I. ‘Only you’d better find a lamp-post and make the horse fast to it, or else anchor him with a weight or something of that sort. I don’t want him to start for Piccadilly on his own responsibility.’

“Well the cabman led the horse along a little farther till he came to a lamp-post, which he hit middling fair with his nose or his forehead (judging by the remarks he made), and then he tied the horse and went off, saying that he wouldn’t be gone very long.

“I don’t know whether he found a public-house open and got drunk, or whether he found a police station and got locked up, or whether he was run over and killed, or just suffocated by the fog. All I do know is that I have never laid eyes on that cabman since he left me sitting in his cab, and I don’t want to see him either. If he ever finds me he will charge me for that twenty-four hours’ use of that cab at two shillings an hour, besides making a big claim for damages. If he’s alive he’s probably consulting with some expert plumber as to the best way of swelling his bill up to ten or fifteen pounds.

“Well, I sat in that cab until morning. There was no kind of use in deserting it and trying to find my way on foot—I had had quite enough of that—besides, the cab was more comfortable than the streets, and as I had plenty of cigars I managed to get rid of the time in a pretty comfortable sort of way.

“Along towards morning a policeman happened to find the cab, and he opened the door and told me to get along out of that, and not to waste any time about it either.

“I told him I was not the cabman, and that the latter had left me for a few moments, and would return very soon.

“‘Can’t help that,’ says the policeman. ‘I can’t allow any cab to stop here tied to a lamp-post. You must move on at once.’

“I told him that if he would get on the box and drive to the station-house I should be very much obliged to him; but he explained that he wasn’t a cabman, and couldn’t leave his beat. My own belief is that he thought I was the cabman, and that I had tied up the cab in order to have a quiet sleep. When I gave him a cigar and half-a-crown he saw his mistake and went away, telling me that the moment the cabman came back I must move on.

“It was just beginning to get a little light, by which I knew that morning was coming, when a man lurched up against the cab, and after doing a little general swearing got the door open and climbed in. He told me to drive to somewhere that sounded like Victoria Street, but might have been almost anything else, and immediately fell fast asleep on the seat beside me. I struck a match and managed to make out that he wore a good hat, from which it was clear that he wasn’t a vagabond, and so I decided to let him have his nap out. He leaned up in the corner and snored like a high-pressure steam-boat, but otherwise he didn’t give me any trouble.

“About eight o’clock the fog thinned so much that I decided to make a start for Piccadilly. My intoxicated friend was still fast asleep, and now that I could see him I saw that he was a middle-aged old party who looked as if he might be a bank president or something of that kind, with too much fondness for port wine. I did not think it worthwhile to turn him out of the cab, so I just cast the horse loose and climbed up on the box and drove off at a slow walk, keeping close to the curbstone. I had my slouched hat on, and it was somewhat the worse for wear, considering that the fog had soaked it all night, and when I had pulled the cabby’s blankets well up to my neck I didn’t look at all out of place on the box.

“Before I had driven more than a block I came across a policeman and asked him in what part of England I and the cab happened to be. He told me I was a little north of Finsbury Circus, and as I knew where that was I judged that I wouldn’t have any trouble in finding my way to Piccadilly. I jogged along, now and then coming very near to running into somebody, but meeting with no accident worth mentioning. All of a sudden my passenger wakes up, and leaning out of the window begins to abuse me for being so long on the road to Victoria Street. ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ says I, ‘but this here blooming fog is so thick that I daren’t drive faster than a walk.’ At that he got very angry and said that he’d get out and take my number, and wouldn’t pay me a farthing. I was glad enough to get rid of him, but when he bolted round the corner I began to see that a cabman may have things to trouble him which we folks don’t often think about.

“Pretty soon a woman hailed me, and as the cab was moving very slowly she managed to get the door open and to climb inside, in spite of my telling her that I was engaged. ‘A very likely story,’ said she, settling herself in the cab as if she meant to stay there. ‘You can’t refuse to take a passenger when you’ve got nobody,’ she said, making as if she was going to stir me up with her umbrella; ‘and you know it. You’ll drive me to Bloomsbury Square, or I’ll make it ‘ot for you!’

“Now I knew too much to get into an argument with a woman, and so I drove to Bloomsbury Square. But when I had stopped at the number that she had given me she did not attempt to get out. She was perfectly sober, but in my opinion she was stark crazy, for she insisted that I had lost my way, and that we were not in Bloomsbury Square. I got down from my seat and tried to argue the matter with her. I asked her to look at the corner of the street, where she would see ‘Bloomsbury Square, North’ in large letters, but she told me not to be impertinent or she would summons me, and refused to look at the corner of the street or anything else. I rang the door-bell of the house, but when the servant had answered it, and looked at my fare, she said that she didn’t know her, and went back into the house calling out to me from the doorstep that I ought to be ashamed of myself for being in such a state so early in the morning. I got back on the box again and wondered if everybody in London was made either drunk or crazy by an extra thick fog. I couldn’t see my way to dumping the woman on the pavement and leaving her there, and I didn’t want to abandon the cab on the street for fear that it might be stolen, or that the horse might take it into his head to bolt. There was nothing left for it but to drive slowly on and hope that things would take a turn for the better.

“There was very little fog by this time, and after thinking the thing over I made up my mind to drive back to the place where I had taken the woman up, leave her on some quiet doorstep, and drive off before anyone could stop me. It wasn’t very long before I was back again in the Finsbury quarter, but it wasn’t a pleasant drive, for the woman kept yelling to me out of the window, and trying to hit me with her umbrella, and generally conducting herself in a way that would have been sure to bring a policeman down on me if we had happened to meet one. When I got to Finsbury I selected a good quiet street, and then I got down and told my passenger that she must get out. Of course she said she wouldn’t do anything of the kind, and when she saw that I meant business she set up a yell that promised to wake the whole street. About fifty windows went up, and more than fifty men and women put their heads out and remarked ‘Fire!’ and ‘Murder!’ at the top of their lungs. It was clear that this sort of thing would never do, so I jumped upon my perch again and drove away feeling more sympathy for cabmen than I had ever felt before.

“Having started to scream the woman kept it up. Moreover she managed to pull the front window open and set to work to jab me in the ribs with her umbrella in a way that was far from pleasant. The street filled up with people, though where they came from I couldn’t imagine, and some of them cried ‘Shame!’ and ‘Stop him!’ Boys seemed to spring up out of the ground and followed me, running alongside the cab,and all the time that dreadful woman kept screaming ‘Murder’ and ‘Thieves,’ and making other unpleasant personal remarks of the same general character.

“It would have been useless for me to abandon the cab and run away, for I would have been caught before I could have fairly got off my box. I knew that a policeman would turn up presently, and for the first time that morning I was anxious to see one. Anything would have been better than driving that yelling demon of a woman, and having a mob gather round me. The thing went on for perhaps ten minutes longer, when a policeman arrived, and the woman gave me in charge for attempted murder, and a general assortment of miscellaneous offenses.

“That policeman was an intelligent man. He saw at once that the woman was crazy, and he was evidently ready to accept my version of the affair; but when he asked me for my number, and saw that I hadn’t any, he changed his mind. It certainly was a suspicious circumstance, from his point of view, that I didn’t have any number; and after he had asked me a few questions which I answered in a way not to give him much information, for I didn’t want to explain things before the crowd—he got into the cab, so as to keep the woman quiet, and told me to drive to the station-house.

“Of course when I saw the officer in charge I told him the whole story. It did sound rather improbable, as I couldn’t help feeling while I told it; and I could see that he didn’t believe a word I said, but was of the opinion that I was some desperate sort of villain who had been caught in the act of trying to kidnap an inoffensive woman. So they locked me up. What they did with the woman I don’t know.

“I sent off messengers for my landlord, and my banker, and half-a-dozen other people, and the upshot of it all was that next morning I was taken before a magistrate, who, after examining into my case, gave me to understand that I wasn’t guilty of the great majority of the crimes that had been charged against me, but that as a sort of warning to me never to commit any of them he should fine me. I paid the fine—I needn’t mention just how much it was—and went home in a cab that had a real cabman on the box.

“Whether my original cabman ever saw his cab again or not, or what became of it after I drove it to the station-house, I don’t know. For my part I never want to see or hear of a cab again; and after this I shall stick to buses and the District Railway in foggy weather. But I’ve considerably more sympathy for cabmen than I used to have; and if as a class they are men who look on the rest of mankind as their natural enemies, whom they have a perfect right to impose upon, I don’t much wonder at it, now that I’ve been a cabman myself and know a little of the troubles that an honest cabman may have to endure.”

Professor van Wagener’s eye

Published in The Idler, November 1895.

“There is one thing,” said the Colonel, as we were walking along the Strand one evening, “in which London is behind the age, and that is in the matter of electric lighting. Take my own town of New Berlinopolisville. It hasn’t more than fifty thousand inhabitants, but there isn’t a gas lamp in the whole place, except in a few houses. The streets and most of the houses are all lighted with electricity, and I shouldn’t be surprised to find when I get home again, that our people were doing all their cooking and house-warming by electric heat. Why you Britishers still stick to gas as you do, is something that I can’t account for.

“Did I ever tell you about old Professor Van Wagener and his electric inventions? Well, this looks like a respectable bar-room, and, if you say so, we’ll step in and have a little something; and I’ll tell you about the Professor. He was one of our most remarkable men, and though the general public doesn’t know it, he did more for the cause of electricity than almost any man in America, except Edison.

“About two years ago,” began the Colonel, as he sipped his hot Scotch, and tried in vain to tilt back on its imaginary hind-legs the sofa on which we were sitting, “Professor Van Wagener went crazy, as most folks thought, on the subject of electricity. Incandescent lamps were his particular style of lunacy, and he made up his mind that he wouldn’t have any other sort of light in his house. You see his sight was beginning to get a little dim, which made him dissatisfied with gas; and then he had knocked over his kerosene lamp—paraffin, I believe you call it over here, though I don’t see what right you have to invent new names for things that we Americans have named—half a dozen times, and had come so near to setting the house on fire, that he was anxious to get rid of kerosene altogether. Then, again, he believed that electricity would be a good deal cheaper than gas, provided it was properly managed; and I’m inclined to think that he was right. Anyway, he told Mrs. Van Wagener that he was going to furnish the house with incandescent lights, and that she might sell her kerosene lamps and her gas fixtures for what they would bring.

“Now thishyer Professor was not only an ingenious man, but he was a practical man, which is something that a Professor very seldom is. He saw that it was all a mistake to have lights fixed in one place, as gas-burners are, or to have them carried about by hand like ordinary lamps or candles, and supplied it from a storage battery that was concealed under the girl’s back hair. When there was no need for a light in the front hall it was left in darkness, but whenever anybody rang at the front door, the maid just turned up her light, and answered the bell. She was a rather pretty girl, and she made a fine effect with her lamp glowing on the top of her head, and lighting up her face in a way that would have made an ugly face pretty hard to bear. When she showed visitors into the parlor, she would walk in front of them, lighting the way; and everybody declared that she was a long way superior to the best hall light that had ever been previously known.

“Then the Professor fitted a light in the inside of his silk hat, and cut openings in the hat to let the light shine through. In front of the hat was a window of plain glass; on the right side was one of green glass; and on the left side one. of red gloss. You see, the Professor’s idea was, that his lights would, show which way he was heading, when he went out on the street after dark. ‘Any man who knows the rule of the road,’ said he, ‘will know by the color of my lights which way I am heading, and can keep out of my way.’ This was very convenient for the old gentleman, for, as I have said, his sight was rather dim, letting alone the fact that he had one glass eye; and this being the case, he often ran into people, and horses, and things, when he was out after dark. He made a good deal of a sensation the first time he appeared on our Broadway, with his head-light and his side-lights burning their brightest, and, as was natural, he had a pretty big crowd following him. The policemen were a little doubtful about the thing at the start, for a policeman always thinks that anything that is new must be unlawful. However, the Professor was so generally respected that even the policemen hesitated to club their ideas into his head.

“Professor Van Wagener had a daughter who was middling popular with the young men, although she did know an awful lot of mathematics and chemistry. Of course, her father fitted her, as he did everybody else in the house, with an electric head-light; but the girl wasn’t very well pleased with it. When a young man came to, see her, she would turn herself on, and light him into the back parlor, where they would sit together and talk. But somehow the young men never seemed to make much progress after Miss Sallie was lighted by electricity. Whether it was that no fellow likes to have an electric light resting on his shoulder, or whether it was because there was no way of turning the light down till it would burn in a cosy subdued way, like gas when it is turned down by an intelligent girl, I can’t say; but the result of the thing was that Sallie didn’t get a single offer from the day her father lit her up with the incandescent light. At first she begged him to let her have a kerosene light, and when, he wouldn’t do it she cried a good deal, and said that he wanted her to die an old maid. That’s what would probably have happened if it hadn’t been for the intelligence of a young man who came to see her before the winter was quite over, and brought a candle with him every time. Sallie would light the candle, and then turn herself off for the rest of the evening, and she gathered in that young man the very second time he called at the house.

“Professor Van Wagener had a cat that he considered to be an animal of considerable taste for science, and nothing would satisfy him till he had provided the cat with an electric head-light. He had considerable difficulty in fastening the light on the cat’s head, for, although she had always seemed to take a good deal of interest in watching him experimenting with different sorts of things in his chemical laboratory, she drew the line at electricity and objected to being lighted up like the rest of the people in the house. However, the Professor wouldn’t listen to her; and the first night that the lamp was in working order, he put the cat in the kitchen, and told her to lay for mice. They do say that the next morning, when the housemaid came downstairs, she found about five thousand mice lying on the kitchen floor, too frightened to think of running away. The cat was sitting up in the middle of the room, with her head-light blazing away, and she paying not the least attention to the mice, but just licking her chops, and saying to herself that after all there was considerable good in electricity. She never made the least attempt to catch the mice, considering that it wouldn’t be sportsmanlike to take advantage of their condition. The girl, she just gave one big scream, and then she got out of that kitchen and fainted dead away on the hall-floor, breaking her head-light in her fall, and creating a good deal of excitement in the house. The Professor, came down and swept up the mice, and carried them out in a basket. They do say that there was pretty near a bushel of them, but I don’t doubt that the thing was exaggerated. Anyhow, the house was completely cleared of mice; and whether the Professor drowned his basketful, or just let them loose somewhere in the street, I never knew. I suspect he let them loose, for that is what a scientific man would have been middling sure to do.

“There was one person in the Professor’s family who didn’t like the electric light business. That was Mrs. Van Wagener. She was a woman of a great deal of character, people said, and, of course, we all know that when a woman is said to have a great deal of character, what is meant is that she can make herself mighty disagreeable, and generally does it. Mrs. Van Wagener always disliked her husband’s scientific habits. She used to say that some men were kept up late at night by whiskey, and some by science, but of the two she preferred the man who went in for whiskey. Mrs. Waterman, who lived next door to Mrs. Van Wagener, had a husband who drank considerable whiskey, and Mrs. Van Wagener used to say to her, ‘My dear, don’t you grieve! When Waterman gets drunk, you know where he is, but when my husband gets to work in his laboratory I never know from one minute to another whether he is alive, and all in one piece, or whether he has blown himself up, and is scattered all over the country in mornamillion bits.’ You see, the Professor had blown himself up a number of times, which made his wife a little prejudiced against chemistry, though he had never done himself any very great harm, except when he lost his eye.

“Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Van Wagener was mightily opposed to the electric light, and nothing could induce her to wear one on her head. She compromised by wearing a light fastened to her waist-belt, but she complained that it was of very little use when she wanted to read or to sew. ‘Gimme an old-fashioned kerosene lamp every time,’ she used to say. ‘Some day thishyer electricity will blow up and kill the whole of us.’ By the way, did you ever notice that women always believe that electricity is liable to explode? I remember when we had electric bells put into our house in New Berlinopolisville, my aunt, who kept house for me, used to warn the servants never to bring a lighted candle anywhere near the wires for fear of setting the electricity on fire and blowing up the house. Say what you will for women, you can’t honestly think that they have scientific minds.

“There was one thing that troubled the Professor. He had his electric light rigged up in the top of his hat, as I believe I told you. This was all right when he took his walks abroad, but it wasn’t quite so convenient in the house. Every time the Professor wanted a light he hail either to call the maid, or his daughter, or his wife, or else he had to put on his hat. Now he had a fashion of reading in bed, and he found it mighty awkward to go to bed with his hat on, which was what he had to do if he wanted a light to read by. One day a happy thought struck him, and he told his wife that he had solved the problem of his head-light at last.

“A glass eye isn’t of very much use, except for show, and this was a reflection that had always annoyed the Professor, ever since he began to wear a glass eye. He now saw his way to make that eye useful, and to give himself the most convenient light that a man ever had. His idea was to make a glass eye with an incandescent fiber in the middle of it, and to run it by a storage battery in his waistcoat pocket. So he went to work, and, being a very ingenious workman, as well as a man brimful of science, he turned out a glass eye that couldn’t be distinguished from a natural one, so far as appearances went, and that had an electric light of six candle-power in the middle of it.

“It was the biggest success that the Professor had ever had. Wherever he went after dark, that eye was blazing away and lighting up the path. When he wanted to read, there was his light in just the handiest place it could possibly have been. The fine wires that ran from it down to his waistcoat pocket wore concealed under his hair, so that hardly anybody would notice them; and when he wanted to put his light out, or to turn it on, all he had to do was to put his finger and thumb into his pocket. Then again, the thing operated like a dark lanthorn, for whenever the Professor wanted to turn his light off in a hurry, and without fumbling for the button in his pocket, all he had to do was to shut his eye. The light would keep on burning behind the eyelid, but it wouldn’t be bright enough to attract attention.

“The day the Professor got his new eye-light into working order, his wife wasn’t at home, having gone out to spend the day and the evening. He lit himself up early in the evening, and, keeping in his room, he wasn’t seen by anybody. When night came he went to bed early, so as to enjoy the luxury of reading in bed. He took the storage battery out of his pocket, and put it under the pillow; and when he had stretched himself out in bed, with a book in his hand and his eye blazing away with six candle-power, he was about the happiest man in all New Berlinopolisville. He read and read until he began to get sleepy, and then he put down his book, and thought over a lot of scientific things, till he accidentally fell asleep. I told you be could close the lid over the illuminated eye if he wanted to, but as a rule he didn’t close that lid, but slept with it wide open. Mrs. Van Wagener came home in course of time, and naturally went up to her bedroom. She was a strong-minded woman, who was about as likely to steal a sheep as to faint away, but she admitted afterwards that when she entered the room and saw the Professor’s eye blazing its level best, she came nearer dropping on the floor than she had ever done before. However, she pulled herself together, and woke the Professor up. She never said just how she did it, but it’s my idea that he was waked up suddener than a man was ever waked before. She told him that this time he had gone too far; that his illuminated eye was simply blasphemous, and that she wouldn’t stay in the same house, and much less in the same room, with it. ‘It’s bad enough for a man to sleep with a glass eye wide open,’ says she, ‘but when it comes to an illuminated eye, it is more than any Christian woman is called to bear.’

“The Professor was offered to turn his eye out at once, which he naturally did, being a small, as well as a peaceful, man; and he was told that he must never wear an illuminated eye again. This didn’t suit him, for he was proud of his new eye, and then there is no denying that it was a very convenient thing. So he said that he really couldn’t afford to give up one of the most important inventions of the age just because of a woman’s whim, and he stuck to this view of the case all through the night. The next morning, Mrs. Van Wagener went home to her mother, and brought a suit for a divorce against the Professor on the ground of cruel and inhuman treatment. When the case came on to be tried, the Professor was compelled to show the practical working of his illuminated eye to the jury, and they found a verdict for the plaintiff without leaving their seats.

“The Professor didn’t seem to care very much about this, for the only thing he did care much about was science, and now that he had his house to himself he had nobody to interrupt him in his experiments. But he never could go into the street with his eye lit up without causing a crowd to collect and follow him, and presently there was an injunction got out against him, forbidding him to wear his eye in public, on the ground that it constituted a nuisance, and led to breaches of the peace. The poor old gentleman got angry at this, and said he wouldn’t go into the street either by day or night; and the consequence was that, not having any exercise, he took sick and died. Well, he was a mighty bright light of science, and it’s my opinion that some one else will take up his scheme of illuminated servant girls, and the like, and make a fortune out of it, though I’m willing to admit that I don’t believe that illuminated glass eyes will ever become popular.”

The professor’s jump

Published in The Idler, August 1895.

“I saw a paragraph this morning,” said the Colonel, “in the Daily Telephone, which I have been reading about once a year ever since I began to read newspapers. It was that standard old paragraph about the strength of a flea—the one which mentions that he can jump about seven hundred and thirty-two times his own length. I can’t understand why that paragraph is so popular. What has the flea ever done for us that we should be for ever advertising him, and calling attention to his superiority in the matter of jumping? It just stimulates his ambition, and sets him to trying to break the record, which is so much the worse for us. However, that isn’t what I started out to say.”

The Colonel paused, and was evidently waiting for an invitation to pursue his theme, which we promptly gave him.

“You remember my old friend Professor Van Wagener,” continued the Colonel. “I was talking with Van Wagener once about this very flea question, and he was mightily enthusiastic about it. He was an electrician by profession, but there is so much in common between fleas and electricity, that he naturally took a good deal of interest in the latter. He told me all the regulation paragraph says about the flea as an athlete, and a great deal besides; and when he had got through with his statements, some of which were tougher than anything I’ve ever seen in print, he went on to say what a shame it was that such an insignificant insect as a flea should be able to outjump anything else, from men up to kangaroos.

“‘It’s your own fault. Professor,’ said I. ‘Why don’t you call in the aid of science, and invent some way by which a man can jump seven hundred and thirty-two times his length, and so show the fleas that man is their superior?’

“ ‘That’s a grand idea. Colonel,’ says he, ‘and I’ll do it.’

“ ‘You haven’t any doubt that you will succeed, have you?’ said I, meaning to do a little sarcasm.

“ ‘Of course I haven’t,’ he replied. ‘There are no limits to what science can do, and I think you’ll admit that there are few men who can lay over me in the matter of inventing things.’ Of course, I don’t pretend to give his words exactly, but that was the gist of what he said.

“ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘but now and then your inventions don’t altogether seem to invent, as you might say. You remember your electric tricycle, and the difficulties that you got into through it.’

“ ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Professor, ‘I admit that it didn’t turn out to be all that I, or rather Mrs. Van Wagener, could have desired, but for all that it was a good invention. Now I’m going to set to work to invent a way by which man can show his superiority to the flea, and if betting was not a grossly unscientific thing, I’d be willing to bet you that I will succeed.’

“Well, Van Wagener set to work, as he said he would, and he must have spent pretty much the whole of the next two months on that invention, for the greater part of that time he was both lame and black and blue, as any man who tries to jump in competition with a flea would naturally be. One day, however, he came to me and said: ‘Colonel, you remember our conversation about fleas? Well, I have kept my promise about that invention, and have got things into such shape that I can jump nine hundred and fifty times my own length, and at least forty times my own height’

“ ‘Oh, I don’t doubt your word, Professor,’ said I, ‘but, as you know, seeing is believing, that is to say, with us chaps that don’t go in for science. Now with you scientific fellows it’s different. You don’t believe anything you see, and you do believe most anything that neither you nor anybody else can see.’

“ ‘That’s all right,’ says he. ‘You shall see what my new invention can do, and if you like you shall jump nine hundred and fifty times your own length. You may not like the sensation at first, but you will get used to it after a while, that is, if you don’t meet with any serious accident.’

“ ‘When do you propose to exhibit this invention?’ said I.

“ ‘I’ll exhibit it in any quiet place, where nobody but you and I are present, just as soon as you please.’

“ ‘Very well,’ said I; ‘this afternoon I shan’t have anything in particular to do, and we can go down to Deacon McFadden’s pasture where nobody will see us except the crows, and there you can jump till every flea in New Berlinpolisville, that hears about it, will wish that he had never been born. But hadn’t we better get Doctor Sabin to come along with a supply of liniment and things for setting broken legs and such? They might come in very handy.’

“ ‘Colonel,’ says he, ‘you’re a mighty nice man in your way, but you don’t know the resources of science. My invention is complete without any medical attachment, and we will dispense with Dr. Sabin’s presence, if you please.’

“Well, about two o’clock that afternoon the Professor calls for me with a big bundle under his arm, and a fishing-pole in his hand. He said that people might think it a little strange to see him going down to Deacon McFadden’s pasture with me, but if they supposed that we were going fishing it would allay all suspicion, and nobody would think of following us. There was no water within five miles of the pasture, but that didn’t strike the Professor as any reason why we should not pretend that we were going there on a fishing excursion. That’s always the way with scientific men. The minute they attempt to reason without a slate and pencil they are no sort of good. To see a man going into McFadden’s pasture with a fishing-rod on his shoulder would have been the very thing to induce every man or boy who saw him to follow after him. Luckily no one happened to meet us, and before long we were in the pasture, and the Professor leaned his fishing-pole up against the fence, and proceeded to get his invention into working order.

“This wonderful invention consisted of four steel springs, that were tremendously powerful. Van Wagener’s idea was to fasten a spring on the palm of each hand, and on the bottom of each foot. Then he meant to stand on the top of the fence, or of some middling high rock, and take a big jump, landing on all fours. The springs were expected to get in their work the moment the Professor should strike the ground, and, after giving him a boost that would throw him nine hundred and, fifty times his length, the springs would be compressed automatically, by the weight of the Professor and the force of his contact with the ground, and so would start him on a fresh jump. He explained all this to me while he was fastening his springs in position, and admitted that what he had said about being able to jump over nine hundred feet wasn’t quite true as yet. ‘According to my calculations,’ said he, ‘I can make and wear springs that will enable me to jump nearly a thousand feet, but in order to do it safely more practice would be required than I have had time to indulge in. I am satisfied that the principle of my invention is all right, but for the present I content myself with springs that will carry me about fifty feet. They will do very well to illustrate the nature of the invention, and I promise you, that just as soon as I can make a set of springs of a thousand-feet jumping power, you shall be the first to use them.’

“ ‘You’re very kind, I’m sure,’ said I, ‘but I’m not in any hurry to convert myself into a flea. That’s a queer idea of yours,’ I continued, ‘to fasten springs on your hands as well as your feet. Do you want to make a quadruped of yourself!’

“ ‘To tell the truth,’ said the Professor, ‘I tried at first to jump with springs on my feet only, but I couldn’t manage to keep right side up. You may notice that I am a little bruised. That came from using only one pair of springs. I found that whenever I jumped with them I landed on my head or on my back, and after trying the thing for a dozen times with the same result, I saw that it wouldn’t do. The flea, you will take notice, does his jumping feats with all his legs at once, and it is only reasonable that if we wish to rival him in his own line we should make up for our deficiency in point of legs by using our hands.’

“I admitted that the Professor was logical in his remarks, but my faith in his invention was beginning to be a little shaken. When a man has got to reduce himself to a quadruped before he can accomplish what he sets out to do, it doesn’t seem to me that the game is worth the candle. However, the Professor was a mighty clever man, and a truthful one, so far as his devotion to science would allow him to be. So I had no doubt that he would be able to jump a distance of fifty feet, and do it in a way that wouldn’t be disastrous to his legs and trousers.

“Van Wagener got his springs into position, after a good deal of trouble, and then I helped him to climb up on the top of the fence, which was an old-fashioned rail fence, about ten feet high. He found it wasn’t an easy job to balance himself on the top rail, but he was a mighty persevering man, and he stuck to it, till he was able to stand upright, with the help of a hop-pole that I found for him. Then, when all was ready, he told me to stand aside, and made his jump.

“He landed on his feet, and the minute he struck the ground the springs flung him about ten feet into the air. They didn’t however, send him forward to any great extent, and he came down on his head only a foot or two in front of the place from which he had started. I picked him up, and when he had got the mud out of his mouth, and found that his neck wasn’t broken, he was as cheerful as ever, saying that he had made a slight mistake in his way of jumping, but that he would try it again, and show me what he could do. This time, when he jumped from the fence, he lit on all fours, and then sailed away, skimming over the ground and keeping about four feet above it, until he had covered a good thirty feet. Then he lit again, and this time the springs lost a good deal of their power, for his next jump wasn’t more than twenty feet in length. He made another little mistake this time, for in doing those twenty feet he somehow turned over, and finally struck the ground on his back, and as there wasn’t any spring in it he stopped where he was, and waited for me to help him up. He wasn’t hurt, you understand, but he was a little discouraged, for the tail of his coat had got twisted around his head, and for a few minutes he didn’t precisely know where he was.

“ ‘Seems to me,’ I began to remark. But Van Wagener interrupted me in a way that showed that his temper was getting a little ruffled. ‘I don’t care how it seems to you, Colonel!’ he said. ‘You’re not a scientific man, and you can’t appreciate the difficulties which a pioneer in a new scientific path has to overcome. Wait till I get those springs tightened up a bit, and you’ll see that I can do fifty feet with ease and safety.’

“Well! the Professor went to work again, and wound up his springs with a monkey wrench, and then he limped back to the fence and made ready for a fresh start. I wanted to warn him that his bones weren’t warranted to stand his jumping experiments with impunity, but there would have been no use in trying to influence him. So I let him alone, resolving, at the same time, that if he did break his neck, I would leave town in a hurry, and let some one else carry the news to Mrs. Van Wagener, who was one of those unreasonable women who are always blaming their husbands’ friends for their husbands’ faults.

“The Professor made a tremendous effort this time, and landed fifteen feet in front of the fence, with a headway that gave the springs a chance to show just what they were worth. They sent him soaring along for a distance that I calculated, by carefully pacing it, was a little over fifty feet. The Professor continued on in a series of most successful jumps, each one of which was about ten feet shorter than the previous one, for, of course, the springs couldn’t do a uniform rate of work, for, if they had done it, they would have solved the problem of perpetual motion. I followed after Van Wagener at a run, but I couldn’t keep up with him. There were some pretty bad places in the pasture, and I was afraid that my old friend would come to grief. However, he skimmed clean over a bush that stood in the middle of the pasture, and by the time I had run around it he was a long way ahead of me, and heading straight for a stone wall. I suppose he calculated to jump over the wall, or, perhaps, he was so much occupied with keeping himself right side up, that he didn’t notice the obstacle. Anyway, he sailed on, and just in the middle of his seventh jump he struck the wall good and fair with the top of his head, and lay on the grass completely insensible, when I reached him.

“Now this stone wall was at one end of the pasture, and the high road was just the other side of it. I had noticed that three or four people were standing in the road, watching the Professor as he came along through the air, with his arms and legs and coat-tails stretched out, and looking for all the world like a new style of spider; but I hadn’t noticed, until I was close to the wall, that one of these persons was Mrs. Van Wagener. I knew well enough that she must have recognized her husband, for there was nobody else in New Berlinopolisville who would have made that sort of a spectacle of himself, and I foresaw that things would be made pretty lively for me.

“I turned the Professor over on his back, and felt his neck and head, to find if he had sustained any serious breakage. Finding that his damages were only skin-deep, I loosened his collar, and poured a little whiskey down his throat, and brought him round all right by the time that Mrs. Van Wagener had contrived to climb over the wall. I’ll admit that he wasn’t a very soothing spectacle to an affectionate wife, for he was covered with blood and dirt, and his clothes were mostly rags. Still, it wasn’t my fault, as far as I could see, and Mrs. Van Wagener ought to have been thankful that I was on hand with my whiskey flask to bring him round. But there! what is the use of expecting a woman to be reasonable? As soon as Mrs. Van Wagener saw that the Professor was alive, she just cast off her tongue lashings and went for me in her best style. The poor Professor was too dazed to say anything, and, of course, I wasn’t going to contradict a lady; but when I had helped to hoist the Professor over the stone wall, and into a waggon that happened to come along just then, I did tell her that if her husband chose to transform himself into a flea, and could thereby be able to hop about fifty thousand miles away from her, no sensible man could possibly blame him. Then I went back home cross-lots, and it was a fortnight before the Professor was able to get out of his room.

“He never found those springs again, and he never dared to make another pair, for Mrs. Van Wagener warned him that if he ever tried to jump again she would apply for a divorce the very next day. Well! he was a mighty ingenious man, and I’m not sure that if he had been allowed to work out that invention, and hadn’t killed himself while working it out, it might not have superseded the bicycle in time. As for me, I’m contented with my own legs. They may not be handsome, but they suit me well enough, and I don’t propose to fit myself up with any wheel or spring attachment that any one may invent.”

A sleeping car tragedy

Published in The Idler, Volume 9, 1896.

The through express, consisting almost entirely of sleeping cars, had just passed through Jericho Station. The station master gazed after the rapidly receding train which, at a little distance, was nearly hidden by a following cloud of dust. Then turning to me, and dropping heavily into a chair, he remarked, “That’s what people nowadays call ‘comfort in traveling,’ but gimme an old fashion ordinary car every time.”

“Then you don’t like sleeping cars?”

“No, sir! I don’t. When I’m traveling by night I want to be my own master. If I want to smoke, I want to be where I can smoke, and if I want to sit by the window and chew tobacco, I want a window accordingly. Now when you travel in a sleeping car at night what happens? Why you have to turn into a berth whether you want to or not, and you have to give up your boots and you can’t get ’em again till morning; and you can’t smoke, and you haven’t got any air to breathe, and some fellow is sure to snore so loud that the seven sleepers mentioned in Ephesians couldn’t get a wink if they were there.

“Why, speaking of snoring, I’ve known lots of what you would call tragedies to happen in sleeping cars on account of snoring. You don’t hear of ’em in the papers, for the men that do these tragedies don’t care to talk about ’em, and the company naturally wants the thing kept quiet. You read in the papers every little while about the mysterious disappearance of some man who started on a railway journey and was never heard of again. The next time you read anything like that you can just make up your mind that the missing man was a snorer, and that he was rash enough to take a sleeping car where there were a lot of other travelers. Oh! I’m not trying to hoax you. When you go back to Chicago you go to a public library, and you ask for a file of the Chicago Tribune for last year, and if you go through it carefully you will find that at least a dozen men who are missing were last seen entering a sleeping car on such and such a road. You’ll have to admit that if what I’m telling you isn’t true, it is certainly a curious coincidence that the missing men were all traveling in sleeping cars.

“The company put a sleeper on this line in the days when the Jericho mines were having their boom. It was the first sleeping car ever seen in the Northwest, and for a time it was very popular; that is on the eastward bound trip. You see, miners that had made their pile at the mines always took the sleeper when they started for the east, and sometimes we’d have every berth in the car engaged. They were that anxious to spend their money that they would have taken any sort of a car that we might have put on the line and charged an extra price for. I was brake man of that sleeper, and I used to get a lot of amusement out of the miners, except when they happened to start a difficulty, and then I would bolt for the other end of the train till the shooting was over. It was curious to see how those miners that didn’t care for any sort of law would knock under to the nigger porter, and obey his rules. I suppose it was because they didn’t want anybody to think that they didn’t know the ways and manners of sleeping cars. The porter would come at nine o’clock, and say, ‘Time to make up the beds, gemmen,’ and they would stand around till the beds were made up as meek as if they were children. Then when the beds were made they had to turn in, for there wasn’t any place for them to sit down, and they’d take off their boots and hand them over to the porter, without ever dreaming of telling him that they weren’t in the habit of taking off their boots at night, and that if he wanted those boots he had better try and take them off himself. Take ’em by and large, those miners were generally better behaved on the sleeping-car than the average commercial traveler is nowadays, for all that he gives such airs, and lets on to be at the top of Chicago society.

“There was one thing that the miners wouldn’t stand, and that was snoring. They got the conductor to post up a notice in the sleeper, ‘No Snoring Aloud,’ and any man who wanted to snore after that was expected to do it so quiet that it wouldn’t disturb anybody. If a man snored in a loud, tempestuous sort of way, he would be waked up and warned once. After that, if he began again, strong measures would be taken with him. I’ve seen a chap that persisted in snoring, dragged out of his berth and made to sit on the wood box, with a man in front of him stirring him up with the poker every time he began to nod. The miners would take turns at this duty, and relieve each other every two hours, and the snorer wouldn’t get a wink of sleep the whole time he was on that train. I’ve known of a man being kept awake in this way on a Central Pacific train all the way from ‘Frisco to Chicago, and that was five days and nights at the time I’m speaking of.

“But this was only mild treatment compared with some of the things that were done to passengers who would snore, I remember one chap who had a porous plaster put all over his mouth and nose. He didn’t snore any more, and in the morning he was found to be suffocated, and the boys just dropped his body off a bridge while the train was crossing the Missouri. There hadn’t been any intention of suffocating him, you understand, but nobody was dissatisfied with the result, except perhaps the friends of the man who had so mysteriously disappeared. Lots of men were gagged for snoring, and when they showed fight, as they did for the most part, they were knocked on the head, and occasionally the knock was a trifle too hard, and then of course there was another mysterious disappearance.

“Did you ever notice the kind of men that snore? Perhaps you haven’t had the opportunity for studying the subject that I have had. Well, in the first place it’s always a big man, put together kind of loose and careless, that snores. Your small, tight built nervous chap never snores. Now I’m a snorer myself, and I don’t deny it. That’s one of the reasons that I don’t travel on a sleeping car; but if I could reduce my weight by, say, eighty pounds, there wouldn’t be any more snoring about me.

“Then a man’s business, and his religion, and his politics have a good deal to do with the snoring question. I’ll back a Methodist to out-snore any two men of any other denomination, while it’s mighty seldom that a Presbyterian can be heard to snore. Ministers of the Gospel are hard snorers as a rule, and next to them come professional musicians. If you look at a man’s politics you’ll find that a Democrat and a Republican are about equal when it comes to snoring, but that a Prohibitionist will out-snore anybody that ever tried to compete with him. I don’t understand why these things should be as they are, but there is no denying the facts.”

“Do women ever snore?” I asked.

“Not often, that is to say in sleeping cars. What they may do elsewhere, I can’t say, not being myself a married man. Speaking of women, a curious circumstance happened in a sleeping car about the time I was telling you of, when we used to carry the car full of miners that had made their pile. I suppose by this time you are getting middling tired of listening to my yarns, but it’s something I can’t help. Telling anecdotes was always my strong suit, and I play it out whenever I get a chance. If anybody don’t want to listen to me, it’s always open to them to tell me so, and to get up and get out.”

I assured the station master that his anecdotes were the one thing that reconciled me to life in Jericho.

“That being the case,” he replied, “I’ll tell you about thishyer circumstance. It’s true, for I was brakeman on the sleeping car at that time, and I saw the whole proceedings.

“We left Athensville one afternoon about four o’clock with the car chock full. The whole lot were miners except a Jew pedlar—a chap who had come up from Chicago to assay silver—and a young woman. Naturally the young woman attracted a great deal of attention, women, old and young, being mighty scarce at the mines. It appeared that she had come to Athensville to prospect for a school, some of the leading residents having decided to start a school for the benefit of their children, and having applied to have a teacher sent down to take charge of it. When a handsome young woman turned up and said she had come to teach school, everybody felt that she wasn’t fit to grapple with the Athensville boys, who required an able bodied man who could handle three or four of them at once if the occasion should arise. At the same time nobody wanted to send the young woman away, and the upshot was that it was decided to start a Sunday school and to put her in charge of it, paying her the same that they would have paid her to run the regular school. Of course she didn’t object, the berth being a mighty easy one, and when I met her on the sleeping car she was on her way to Chicago to lay in a stock of Sunday school books, and a magic lantern.

“The miners treated her as if she was a genuine first class angel. Not a soul of them dared to speak to her, but they kept bringing her cakes and apples and candy and heaving them into her lap without speaking a word. When they wanted to smoke they went into the smoking car instead of smoking in the sleeper, which had been their usual practice, though it was against the rules. When there was a nice bit of scenery to be seen, one of them would say something about it in a loud tone of voice, and then they would all get up and go to the end of the car, so that the girl could look out of any window that she might select. There wasn’t a single swear word spoken in that car, and once, when two of the fellows showed an inclination to quarrel about something, the other chaps put them out of the car so quick and so quiet that you would hardly have noticed that there was any argument in progress.

“When night came, and the darkey porter started to make up the beds, the boys all went into another car, so as to give the girl a chance to go to bed in an unostentatious way. When they came back, which was about ten o’clock, everything was quiet, and there was no girl to be seen. The boys then turned in themselves, making no more noise than they could help, and mentioning to the Jew pedlar, who had the air of a snorer, that if he cal’lated to do any snoring that night, he might as well prepare to meet Moses and the Prophets at once.

“About an hour later as I was sitting just inside the door where I could hear the whistle handy, and at the same time get a few winks myself, somebody began to snore. It was a very small and inoffensive snore at first, but it kept growing stronger and louder, and bimeby it settled into one of the loudest and the most strangulating snores that you ever heard. The boys stood it for a few minutes, and then two of them got up, and going to the berth where the Jew slept, which was a lower berth in about the middle of the car, they pulled the curtains open and gave him a good shaking, telling him that unless he slopped that snore, and slept more like a Christian and less like a pedlar, his days were numbered. The man was considerable frightened, and he allowed that he was very sorry and wouldn’t do it again. But the boys hadn’t left him alone more than ten minutes before the snoring broke out worse than ever.

“Thishyer insulting of innocent young women has got to be stopped,” says one of the miners. “Get that cuss out of his berth, somebody, and set him up on the wood box. I’ll attend to him for the first two hours, and after that one of you fellows will relieve me.” So saying the miner gets on his legs, and two other miners having roused up the Jew and set him on the wood box, the chap that took the first watch sat down in front of him with his pistol in his hand and told the Jew that if he snored a single snore he would find himself where the climate was too warm for the ready made clothing trade.

“There had been considerable noise made in the process of waking up and hauling him out of his berth, for it appears that he was dreaming at the time, and took a notion that the boys were attempting some kind of violent action. He was quiet enough when he saw the miner with the revolver sitting in front of him, and for a little while the car was as quiet as you please. It wasn’t long before the miner who was on guard began to nod, and presently he was sound asleep. The Jew seeing this, leaned back against the side of the car, and settled himself for another nap; and to tell the truth, I dropped asleep myself.

“I was waked up by a scream from the Jew. The miner had him by the throat and was choking him pretty considerable. Feeling that it was my duty to protect passengers from harm, I asked the miner what the Jew had been doing. ‘Snoring,’ says he, ‘and he knows very well that we ought to drop him off the train without any more words. Don’t you know that, you ruffianly insulter of women?’ he adds, letting go of the Jew’s throat so that he could answer.

“Well! the Jew, he swore that he hadn’t snored the least particle in the world; that is, since he had been sitting on the wood box. ‘I was wide awake ail the time,’ says he, knowing that the miner had been asleep and couldn’t contradict him. ‘It’s somebody else that’s doing the snoring and I was listening to him when you woke up and grabbed me.’ ‘This is worse and worse,’ said the miner. ‘Not content with snoring like a low beast, and keeping an innocent and beautiful young lady awake with your disgustin’ uproar, you are trying to lay it on to gentlemen. You’ll now point out the man you charge with snoring, and I’ll tell you right here, that unless you prove your accusation that there man will take you out on the platform and hang you without any further nonsense.’ ‘I can’t tell you the precise man who was snoring,’ said the Jew, ‘but I can show you the berth where the snoring came from. It’s the berth just above mine, and if you gentlemen want to show fair play you’ll wait a little while, and see if the snoring begins again. If it does you can catch the guilty man red handed; and if it doesn’t, all I can say is that I am ready to take an oath before any magistrate that I’m not the man who has been snoring in thishyer car.’

“The boys considered over the matter for awhile, most of them being for hanging the Jew at once, and paying no attention to his charges. But the leader of the gang remarked that a grave charge, affecting their honor as gentlemen, had been made, and that although nobody had any doubt that it was a lie, it must be judicially investigated. So it was agreed that everybody should wait for half an hour, and if at the end of that time no snoring was heard, the Jew should be disposed of in any way that the majority might select.

“They hadn’t very long to wait, for in about ten minutes the snoring began again. It came from the identical berth pointed out by the Jew, and you never saw a more disgusted looking set of men that the dozen or so miners that sat and stood and listened to the sound. They were ashamed of having made a mistake in accusing the Jew, and they were still more sorry that any one of their own number should have been guilty of disturbing the whole car load of passengers, and especially the young woman.

“Whose berth is that?” said the leader.

“Nobody knew, though it was generally thought that it was Old Plunkett’s. Just at that minute, however, Old Plunkett turned out from a berth near the end of the car, so it was clear he wasn’t the guilty man.

“‘It doesn’t make any difference whose berth it is,’ said one of the men. ‘There is some heaven forsaken vagabond who is snoring in that there berth in the presence of a young lady, and if he was my own brother I’d be the first one to convince him of the error of his ways. I propose that we go to that there berth and catch the miscreant red nosed, as our Jewish friend here remarks. Just take him by the feet and drag him out. We can then hold a little Lynch court in this end of the car, and settle the thing in decent

“This satisfied the views of the other miners, and the whole gang of them went softly to the berth. The snoring was worse than ever, for it had got to be of the choking variety. You’d have sworn that the snorer was choking to death to hear the gaspings, and the stranglings, and the sighings that came from that berth. However, that kind of snoring is never directly fatal, though it is followed by fatal consequences on sleeping cars, as I’ve already given you to understand.

“One of the miners was just going to give the word for hauling the snorer out of the berth, when all of a sudden the curtains opened, and a young woman looked out with a sort of scared expression on her face. If you will believe what I say, that there snorer wasn’t any miner whatsoever, nor yet any other sort of masculine miscreant, as you might say. The whole of that snoring had been done by that identical pretty young woman that the boys had been wanting to protect.

“She saw in a minute that something was up, but put on a stern sort of countenance, like a school mistress addressing a lot of bad boys, and she said, “G’way! or I’ll call the conductor.” The boys didn’t wait for any further orders, but they just bolted out of the car. The Jew went to his berth chuckling to himself, and remarking that he meant to sue the company for damages. As for me, I kept out of sight round the corner of the washroom, for I didn’t seem to care about being mixed up in the business. The girl sat up a little while, as if she was waiting for another interview with the boys, but as they didn’t seem to have any further desire to cultivate her acquaintance, she drew the curtains together again, and the concert recommenced. The Jew, and she, and I had the sleeping car to ourselves for the rest of the night, and when we got to Chicago, the miners sneaked out of the smoking car on to the platform as if they had been caught picking pockets, and were afraid of the police.

“This story that I have been telling you goes to show that women can snore even when they’re young and good looking. I wouldn’t have believed it unless I had heard it with my own ears. In my opinion, however, it is a thing that young unmarried men ought to know. If I hadn’t happened to have been aboard that there sleeping car on that identical night, I might perhaps have been a married man myself before now. What I say to you is, never despise any sort of knowledge. It’s always liable to work in handy at some time, and protect you from one sort of harm or another.”

Foote’s catorium

Published in The Idler, September 1896.

“Did I know Sam Foote?” said the bar-keeper. “Well! I should smile! Why I knew Sam from the time that he was three years old. We were like two brothers. There wasn’t hardly a day that we didn’t fight, and I’m free to say that Sam generally had the best of it. I was his best man, as you might say, the first time he was divorced. I sat alongside of him in the court-room, and sort of braced him up, and after the thing was over I had him and his late lady to a bang-up divorce supper, and I never saw two people enjoy a supper more than they did. Sam was a white man all the way through, but he wasn’t a practical man. He was full of ideas, but they were all bad, or at any rate they turned out bad when he tried to carry them out. Did ever you hear about his Catorium? It was a good scheme in some respects, but Sam made a most everlasting muddle of it.

He was living in Chicago at the time, not two blocks from here, and one day he came to me and says, “I’ve struck it this time. Before the year is out I shall be a rich man, and you and I will take a trip to Yurrup at my expense, and call on every king and emperor in the business.”

“What’s your little game?” says I. “Is it anything that you want to keep quiet?”

“Not at all,” says he, “and if it was I could trust you. Here’s the whole scheme, and I don’t think that you or anybody else will say that it aint practical.

“I’ve been looking into the statistics of Chicago lately, and I calculate that there are on an average five thousand families that go into the country every summer from the first of July till the first of October. Now it is safe to say that at least three-fourths of these families keep a cat, and most of them think a heap of it. What troubles them is how to dispose of their cats while they are in the country. They can’t leave the cats to starve, and they can’t take them with them. The consequence is that when a family owning a pet cat goes into the country, somebody has got to be left behind in the house to look after the cat. Of course this costs money, and is a risk besides, for when you leave a caretaker in your house you can never feel sure that the caretaker won’t invite every burglar in Chicago to supper the first night you are out of town. My own idea is that, besides these five thousand families that go into the country, there are at least a thousand more that stay at home all summer, just because they can’t make up their minds to leave their cats behind them.”

“I aint denying what you say,” said I, “but I don’t see yet how you are going to make money out of cats.”

“It’s this way,” says Sam; “I’m going to open a Catorium, where cats will be boarded during the summer months.”

“Where did you get that name?” says I.

“I got it in the Zoological Garden. The place where they keep the carnivorous animals is called the Carnivorium. Similarly a place where cats are kept ought to be called a Catorium. There is nothing like giving a thing a scientific name. People will send cats to a Catoriutn who wouldn’t dream of sending them to a plain Cat’s Home.

“What I mean to do is this. I’ve hired the old skating-rink in Three-hundred-and-First Street—the one that has been condemned by the authorities, and is to be torn down next spring. I’ve got it for six months at a rent of fifty dollars, and it will hold a good two thousand cats. I’m going to advertise in all the papers that I’ll take cats to board at the rate of fifty cents, a week, and give them the best of care.

“Cats supplied with Pure Milk and Wholesome Meat! Mice for Mental Relaxation, and Sparrows for Sport! Morals strictly attended to! Make your Holidays successful by making your Cats Happy!” That’s the way the advertisement reads, and I think it’s about as attractive as any advertisement you ever came across.

“Now there isn’t the least doubt that out of the five or six thousand families that want to go into the country for the summer, at least a thousand will jump at the chance of leaving their cats at the Catorium. Suppose that I get only five hundred cats, and that on an average they stay with me eight weeks. Five hundred cats for eight weeks at fifty cents, a week is two thousand dollars. Say that my expenses are, all told, two hundred and fifty dollars, and as I make the calculation they can’t possibly be more than that, I shall then have fifteen hundred dollars clear profit. The second year I shan’t have less than two thousand cats, and shall clear at least six thousand dollars. I tell you that my Catorium is the bluest business scheme of the century, and it won’t be very long before the papers will be full of paragraphs about the ‘Hon. Samuel Foote, the eminent Chicago millionaire.’ You come round to the Catorium when I get it in full swing, and you’ll see that I have been telling you the exact truth.”

I didn’t think much of Sam’s schemes as a general thing, but it really looked as if this time he had struck a good idea, and I took a good deal of interest in his Catorium. He spent about a hundred dollars fitting up the old rink for the reception of his boarders. Along the sides of the place he had a thousand small bunks, for all the world like the bunks in a steamer’s cabin, and every one had its number painted over it. The floor of the rink was covered with asphalt, and was in middling good condition; but the walls were full of rat holes, and Sam stocked the place with five hundred mice and two hundred and fifty big rats. Down the middle of the rink he had a trough which he calculated to fill with milk every morning; and on the rafters in the roof there was a big colony of sparrows, which Sam introduced, so as to furnish the cats with healthy recreation.

The day the Catorium opened I was there to see how the thing worked. Sam sat in a little office, like the ticket office of a railroad station, and took in his cats through the window, giving a handsome printed receipt for them. He had got hold of a book of forms such as they use at the Police-station, and he filled one of these forms out whenever he received a cat. For instance, he took in a tabby cat from a friend of mine, and the receipt read, “Name, Thomas G. Thunnan; age, two years; residence, Number 10. Lake Avenue; occupation, general house cat; religion, unknown; number of cell, 157.” This gave the affair a mighty serious and business-like aspect, and people who brought their cats were so much pleased with their receipt that they went away full of admiration of Sam’s business talent.

The Catorium opened at eight o’clock, and by nine o’clock the stream of cats that was pouring in was amazing. People stood in a long line with their cats in their arms, waiting to hand them over to Sam. Just as fast as he could make out his receipts he took his cats in through the window, and handed them to his assistant, at the same time singing out the number of the bunk assigned to each cat. The assistant stowed the cats away in their respective bunks according to instructions, and he and Sam were about the two busiest men in Chicago, By noon Sam had taken in five hundred and seventy odd cats; and in the course of the week more cats kept trickling in, till, according to Sam’s figures, he had pretty near seven hundred, not counting unexpected kittens.

As I said, my first idea was that Sam had really struck a good thing; and so he had, only he slipped up in managing it. His first mistake was in not taking pay for his cats in advance, and his next mistake was in supposing that any cat would be willing to stay in its proper bunk. If you know anything about cats, you know that a cat is the most conceited animal on earth. You can put a cat in the best arm-chair in the house, but you can’t make the cat stay there. She or he, as the case may be, will say, “I don’t let no man select no chair for me,” and with that the cat will take another chair, and, as a rule, will always take just the identical one that you want for yourself. Sam, not being intimate with cats, and, considering all the bunks were just alike, supposed that the cats would be contented to stay where they were put; but there wasn’t one of them who didn’t change his or her bunk the minute Sam’s assistant had turned his back. The consequence was that those cats were so everlastingly mixed up that the smartest old maid that ever lived couldn’t have identified her own animal.

What with good food, and no end of mice to catch, and lots of sparrows to swear at, Sam’s cats had a bang up time. Of course considerable fighting went on, especially at night; and there were times when two tom cats would start a difficulty, and the rest would join in, and there would be a pile of cats about six feet high, swearing, and biting, and kicking till the whole place was full of flying fur, and Sam would have to go in and cool them off with buckets of cold water. However, it wasn’t often that anyone was killed; and there wasn’t any sickness to speak of among the cats. What discouraged Sam a little was the avalanche of kittens that begun almost as soon as the Catorium was opened. In the course of the first four weeks a hundred and fifty or sixty kittens made their appearance, and Sam considered that this was playing it low down on him. You see he couldn’t let the kittens die, and he knew that he couldn’t charge board for them; they never having been entered on his books and receipted for. I told him that he ought to consider the kittens as a sort of interest on his investment in cats, and that by fair rights the kittens were his property. But this didn’t satisfy him, he not having any use for kittens, and knowing well that the market was so overstocked that kittens wouldn’t fetch ten cents a gross,

Along towards the first of September, when it was nearly time for the owners of the cats to return to town, Sam told me how the cats were all mixed up, owing to their refusal to stay in their proper bunks; and he admitted that he should probably have some difficulty in satisfying the owners. I saw at once what a fix the man was in, and I took pains to be on hand on the first of September to see the fun. The first cat claimant was a middle-aged woman, who handed in a receipt for cat number fifty-three. Sam went into the Catorium, and brought out a black and white cat with four kittens, and handed it over to the woman, remarking that she was getting a good deal more cat than she had originally left with him.

“That ain’t my cat,” says the woman. “My cat is a black tom, and I want him, and I don’t want no other.”

“Your cat, madam,” says Sam, “was number fifty-three, as you will see by looking at your receipt I can’t help what it was when you brought it here. The best of food and the best of accommodations will do a good deal towards improving a cat. That’s the identical cat you left with me, and I’ll thank you to pay me two dollars, and take the dear, sweet animal away.”

Well! the woman was about as mad as any woman I ever saw, and I’ve been married three times. She threw the cat and all four of the kittens in Sam’s face, and kept on demanding her own precious Tommy, till Sam got frightened, and told her to come into the Catorium and find her cat She did so, but she went away without paying, and left Sam feeling pretty small. That was only a sample of what happened with everybody who came for a cat Sam never once produced the correct cat, and of course everybody got mad, and said that Sam was a swindler. He tried letting people in to find their own cats, but he soon found that it wouldn’t work. It was like letting people select their own umbrellas at a public concert. By the time the first twenty or thirty people had been allowed to look for their cats, Sam found that all his best cats were gone. Every man or woman who came for a cat carried away the handsomest animal they could find, and when Sam shut down on this proceeding he had hardly a swell cat left. Along about noon there was so big a crowd at Sam’s office, and such an everlasting row, that I slipped out and called a policeman, who made Sam close his establishment, and took him home in a cab, so as to protect him from the mob.

That night Sam came around to see me, and confessed that he was a ruined man. He couldn’t possibly return his cats to their owners, and consequently he couldn’t collect his pay. The only comforting thing about the affair was that he found out that he couldn’t be sued for stealing cats. He had been to a lawyer, who told him that the law didn’t recognize property in cats, which, as I afterwards found out, was true. If you steal a dog you can be arrested, but you can steal every cat in Chicago, and the owners can’t touch you. The lawyer told Sam that all he had to do was to keep his Catorium locked up till people had got tired of demanding their cats, and that then he could quietly drown the whole lot. It was a consolation to Sam to know that he couldn’t be sent to jail, but when he reflected that he was out of pocket some two hundred and fifty dollars, and that he wouldn’t receive a cent for all his summer’s work and outlay, he was naturally pretty downhearted.

Sam followed the lawyer’s advice, and kept his Catorium closed, and himself out of sight. This saved him from a lot of abuse, but it didn’t help him out of his trouble. About a dozen cat owners, when they found that they couldn’t get back their cats, swore to make things as unpleasant for Sam as possible, and they hit on the plan of having him arrested for cruelty to animals, provided he should give them the slightest chance. They formed a committee, and took turns in watching outside the Catorium to see if the animals were properly fed and watered. Sam knew that it wouldn’t do to give the committee any plausible reason for complaining of him, and therefore he felt obliged to feed the cats twice as often as was really necessary. Every morning and every afternoon he had gallons of milk, and pounds of cat’s meat carried into the Catorium, and he kept his assistant in the place night and day to see that the cats didn’t fight, and attract attention by their howls. All this cost money, and Sam was pretty near at the end of his purse. It looked as if he would have to feed those miserable cats all winter, for the committee showed no signs of letting up on him, and he knew that the minute he neglected the cats, or tried the experiment of drowning a few of them, he would be hauled up and fined for cruelly. What especially aggravated him was the way the cats kept on increasing. By November there were over four hundred kittens of different sizes in the establishment. It looked as if there was a deliberate plan on the part of the cats to ruin him. “If I have to keep those cats till spring,” said Sam, “there will be about two thousand of them. If I can’t drown them, I had better go and drown myself” And then he used language about cats in general which I won’t repeat, but which was no more than natural under the circumstances.

The weather got to be pretty bad in November, and the committee found that watching outside the Catorium at night wasn’t as amusing as it had been. I recommended Sam to take fifty or a hundred cats down to the lake in bags every night, and so get rid of them by degrees, but he said that it wouldn’t be safe, and that he hadn’t the courage to try it. Somebody would be sure to find out that he was drowning cats, and then the committee would have him arrested. As for letting the animals loose, that wouldn’t do either, for the committee would have charged him with turning innocent cats out to starve, and public sentiment was so down on Sam that he would have been found guilty of almost anything, if he had been brought into court.

One day I saw an advertisement that gave me an idea. It was a big poster, notifying the public that a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Woman was going to be held in the Mormon meeting-house. This was a big building that stood next to the Catorium, and had been vacant for several years, owing to there being no Mormons in Chicago—the boys having spent a lot of money in tar and feathers by way of inducing the Mormon congregation to emigrate. As soon as I saw the poster I sent for Sam and told him about it. “What you want to do,” said I, “is to have your cats attend this meeting for the Advancement of Woman. There will be about six or seven hundred old cats in petticoats present at that meeting, and there is no sort of reason why your own cats shouldn’t join them and take part in the proceedings. You just pass your cats in at the window of the Mormon meeting-house the night before this Society holds its pow-wow, and then you leave town by the first train in the morning. Nobody can charge you with having treated the cats cruelly, and if anybody says you have turned them out to starve, you can reply that you let them go to the meeting so as to improve their minds, and that if they didn’t come back to the Catorium it wasn’t your fault.”

Sam took to the scheme at once, and I agreed to come down to the Catorium at night and help him carry the cats over to the meeting-house. It was considerable of a job, but we finished it about two o’clock, and shut up the window of the meeting-house and came away.

The meeting was to begin at ten o’clock the next morning, and I was on hand when the doors were opened. A procession of Advanced Women with a band of music arrived at the same time and marched into the meeting-house with banners flying and brass instruments blowing, and a chorus of Advanced Women singing an advanced female hymn. The cats didn’t wait to see the show, but every blessed one of them bolted under the stage that had been erected across the upper end of the meeting-house. I was only in time to see the last of them disappearing under the stage, and at first I thought that I should see no more of them while the meeting lasted. But this turned out to be a mistake. After the meeting was opened, the Advanced Women took to making speeches, and the house was middling quiet, One woman had been speaking for about half an hour, and she was abusing men as lively as you please, when one of the tom cats judged that the thing had gone far enough, and that it was time for him to take a hand in the proceedings. So he ripped out a few curses and a few yells, and, so far as I could understand, pitched into another cat that probably had expressed some sympathy with the object of the meeting. The cats were crowded together pretty thick under the stage, and being hungry as well as generally discontented, they were ripe for a difficulty. In less than a minute every cat that wasn’t occupied with family cares had joined in, and if ever you have heard the noise that two cats can make fighting in the back-yard, you can imagine what happened when four or five hundred went in for an argument about the advancement of women. I’ve seen pretty lively times at a meeting of the Chicago Common Council, but I never saw or heard anything to compare with that consolidated cat-fight. The woman who was speaking fainted away on the spot, and there was a panic in the building that couldn’t have been worse if there had been an alarm of fire. The women all yelled and rushed for the door, and the tearing of dresses and scattering of hairpins, and general wreck and ruin that went on was what might have been expected if a hamper of rats had been let loose. Knowing what was the matter I kept quiet, waiting for the meeting-house to be cleared, and for the women that had fainted and were lying around here and there, to come to their senses again. There was such a tremendous crush around the door that it must have been fifteen minutes before the place was emptied, and all that time the cats kept on arguing, and the fur kept sifting out through the openings under the stage, till the whole place seemed sort of hazy with it.

I went home just as the police and the fire department arrived. They turned the hose on the cats, so I am told, and the policemen killed the bulk of them, on the ground that they bad all gone mad. I don’t know but what they had gone mad, and, considering the speeches they had been compelled to hear, I can’t say as I can blame them. The surviving cats scattered through the neighborhood, and that was the end of Sam’s Catorium, so far as he and the cats were concerned. Some of the Advanced Women did try to make out that Sam had attempted to murder the lot of them by introducing mad cats into their meeting; but Sam was far enough away from Chicago by that time, and besides, nobody could prove that he had anything to do with putting the cats into the Mormon meeting-house.

If Sam had only had the foresight to collect pay for his cats in advance, and the ordinary good sense to fasten labels round their necks, so that he could identify them when they were called for, his Catorium would have made him a rich man; but that was always the way with him. He would invent a first-class scheme, and then muddle it so that it would be a first-class failure. For all that, he was a good, honest chap, and when I heard that he had been hung by mistake out in Montana—he being suspected of stealing mules, which it afterwards turned out had been stolen by the Mayor of the next town—I must say that I felt honestly sorry for him.

The development of Furlani

Published in The Idler, June 1896.

Mr. McCartney was an admirable example of the effects of judicious training on the American parent. He knew no law except his daughter’s will. One day she said to him, “Popper! I have made up my mind to live in Venice, so you must just get ready and we’ll sail three weeks from to-day.” Mr. McCartney did not show the slightest surprise. He merely said, “That’s middling short notice, but if the thing’s got to be of course I’ll be ready in time.” Accordingly he made his preparations without delay. He subscribed for two Chicago daily newspapers, and a monthly barrel of the best Chicago pork, and thus armed against famine and ennui, faced the prospect of spending the rest of his days in what ha assumed to be a semi- barbarous city, with courageous cheerfulness. Once arrived in Venice, and lodged in a Gothic palace on the Grand Canal, his spirits somewhat revived. He conceded that the architecture of the palace was not greatly inferior to that of Mr. Armour’s pork-packing establishment in Chicago; and that the steamboats on the canal were proofs of unexpected civilization on the part of the Venetians, He was even happy, when the tide was low, and the smaller canals made themselves obvious to more than one of the senses, for he declared that on such occasions he had only to shut his eyes in order to imagine that he was once more walking down the chief street of Chicago.

Miss McCartney had resigned her position as Professor of Mathematics in a Chicago High School in order to devote herself wholly to the elevation of the human race. She had once made a brief visit to Venice, and had caught sufficient glimpses of its poverty and misery to feel sure that the Venetians stood greatly in need of elevation. Besides, there was in her a vein of romance which she had never recognized, but which made Venice more fascinating to her than even the very highest kind of higher mathematics. She honestly believed that she had chosen Venice as a field of philanthropic labor, because the people needed her help, but the real truth was that the siren city had charmed her.

Miss McCartney knew a little Italian, which she spoke with a pure Chicago-accent, before she came to Venice, and as her knowledge of the language increased, she made acquaintance with several Venetian families, as well as with the members of the English colony. She read both the Venetian newspapers, and carefully followed the course of national and municipal politics. She studied, as best she could, the condition of the poorer classes, and formulated many pleasing and impossible schemes for their relief. She had nearly determined to open a free school for the children of the poor, when she discovered, not only that Venice had free schools, but that all children were compelled to attend them. Then she dreamed of establishing a small hospital, but on inquiry she found that Venice was fully provided with hospitals. It was certainly vexatious that Venice should be so well provided with schools and hospitals, but Miss McCartney knew that the life of a philanthropist is a difficult and disappointing one. Finally she decided to form a society among the Venetian ladies for the emancipation of their sex, and for that purpose, while waiting to enroll her first convert, she drew up an admirable constitution for the proposed society. It is possible that in time she would have found the desired recruit, had it not been for an unexpected incident which temporarily diverted her attention from her own to the opposite sex. Miss McCartney fell in love.

She had met the young Marchese Furlani at the house of the British consul. He was handsome, charming in his manners, and irreproachable in his morals—that is to say, from a Venetian point of view. He spoke a variety of English that was perhaps more intelligible to Miss McCartney than it would have been to an Englishwoman, for he had taken lessons from a stranded American sailor, who had undertaken to teach him the purest English at his command in exchange for a daily frugal dinner. Furlani was greatly pleased with Miss McCartney, who, although she had been a Professor of Mathematics, was still young, and by no means devoid of good looks. Her bright intelligence and her calm confidence in her own judgment were wonderfully attractive to him in their sharp contrast to the sweet insipidity of the women he had hitherto known. It was true that she was a heretic of some unknown and unintelligible kind, but he was certain that she was as good as she was intelligent. Her ignorance and disregard of the rules of Italian society never shocked him, for he knew before he met her that American girls are as free from European conventions as are the lunatics at San Clemente. So, when Miss McCartney asked him to call upon her, and a little later proposed to him to accompany her to the opera, he did not misconstrue conduct the very mention of which would have covered a Venetian young lady with blushes of shame. He saw her nearly every day, and when he learned that Mr. McCartney’s practice of withdrawing from the room and leaving his daughter alone with her visitor was obligatory upon every American father, he was lost in admiration of the manners and customs of America.

Miss McCartney, liked the Marchese from the first. His education was extremely limited, and his capacity for reasoning was not much better than than of a child, but he was so simple, sincere, kindly, and honest that he won her regard in spite of his deficiencies. She looked on him as an overgrown child; and while his prattle amused her, she fancied that she was exerting an elevating influence upon him. It had never occurred to her that he could be in love with her, but when he suddenly asked her to marry him, she unexpectedly discovered that he was a dear boy, and that she was sincerely attached to him.

Furlani asked Miss McCartney to be his wife purely because he loved her, or fancied that he did. His own income was just sufficient for his daily wants, and he knew from the way in which the McCartneys lived that Miss McCartney’s dower would be a very modest one. He had no doubt that the combination of their resources would enable them to live much as he had been accustomed to live, and perhaps with a little more comfort; and he felt sure that he would prefer Miss McCartney with a very small dowry to another American girl with a great fortune. All this he told her in his frank way, assuring her that if she “would husband herself with him he would make her happy, b’gosh!”

Miss McCartney, brought face to face with the idea of marriage, was at first astonished beyond measure; and then, looking at the matter from the philosophic point of view, asked herself “Why not?” At all events, she would not instantly come to a decision, but would think over Furlani’s proposal, and see if her acceptance of it would not open the way for her to elevate not only her husband, but also his fellow-countrymen. So she smilingly told the Marchese that, while he must not think that there was any probability that she would marry him, she would of course treat his proposal with respect, and would give him a final answer on the morrow. In the course of the next twenty-four hours she had decided that she liked Furlani; that as his wife she would have opportunities for exerting an elevating influence on Venetian society that would otherwise be beyond her reach; and that she could fill her former friends and acquaintances with awe and admiration by signing herself “marchioness”—though this consideration was, as she said to herself, quite unworthy of attention. Her chief objection to marrying Furlani was that he had neither occupation nor aim in life. However, she was sure that he had noble possibilities within him, and perhaps it was her duty to develop them. The result of her careful study of the question was that when Furlani came for his answer, she told him that she would marry him at the end of the year, if, during that time, he had proved that he was something more than an idle boy.

Furlani gladly accepted these terms, and conscientiously strove to meet Miss McCartney’s requirements. She set herself to the task of convincing him that his life had hitherto been unworthy of a man, but her success was slow. Furlani cheerfully told her the exact truth about himself—that is, up to a certain point. He explained to her that he dressed himself, that he ate sparingly, and drank with still greater moderation; that he spent a certain number of hours daily at the cafe; that he walked in the Piazza at certain fixed hours, and that he nightly went to the theater. “I spend very little money,” he said. “I have no vices that a young man should not have, and my confessor thinks a darned sight of me. What more can my dearest angel desire?”

“Do you never read anything, or improve your mind in any way?” asked Miss McCartney.

“Oh, yes! I improve him very often. I read the Gil Blas, and the Fanfulla, and your English Dellynoose. I think everyone should improve his mind.”

“I am afraid the Fanfulla and the Gil Blas do not do you much good,” returned Miss McCartney. “Can’t you see, Carlo, that you are wasting your life, and doing nothing for the benefit of your fellow-creatures?”

“And there, dear one! you are mistaken. I went to a benefit last night. It was of our prima ballerina at the Rossini, and I took four tickets, b’gosh.”

“I don’t mean that sort of benefit,” said Miss McCartney. “I mean that you do nothing to make mankind wiser and better. Why, for instance, do you not take part in politics, and become a Deputy?”

“I do not care for the politic,” replied the young man. “There are many who like him and will manage affairs. Besides, it costs a good deal of money to be a Deputy, and I have none. We cannot all be Deputies. Otherwise the Chamber would be what you call a blasted bear-garden.”

“I call it nothing of the sort, Carlo! and I do wish you would not use those expressions, such as blasted and that other horrid word. They are very improper.”

“I learned them from my teacher,” said Furlani, humbly, “but I will try to forget them.”

“Have you ever thought of going into the army?” pursued the girl. “I don’t like armies, still, if I were a man, I would rather be an officer than to be nothing.”

“I am too old to go to the military school. Besides, I am too tall to look well in a uniform. My legs are too thin. Perhaps you have observed those legs. I am quite ashamed of them. But then, one must take the legs that the Madonna sends.”

“Can’t you go into some kind of business?” continued Miss McCartney, hurriedly. “In my country a young man like you would either have a profession, or he would go into a broker’s office, or travel for some mercantile house. At any rate he would do something to make himself independent. Is there no business here in Venice that you could learn?”

“Is it possible that you would wish that I should make myself a darned tradesman?” asked Furlani, with his big eyes full of wonder.

“Hush!” cried the girl, “Never let me hear you use that word again.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the Marchese. “I forgot that it was improper. I should have said ‘damned tradesman.’ I will be careful always to say damned, after this. I remember now that my teacher told me that ‘darned’ was a corruption of damned.”

“Worse and worse!” wailed Miss McCartney. “Dear! dear! what a wretch the man who taught you must have been. Now do try to remember that all those words are bad, and must not be used. I have told you so over and over, but you still keep on using them.”

“I am sorry that I do not please you,” said Furtani. “I know that you are right. Upon you there are no——Ah! I have forgotten the word. What is it that is never upon you?”

“I’m sure I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean,” said the girl. “So far as I know I have nothing on that I ought not to wear.”

“Now I come to remember him,” cried Furlani triumphantly, “it is of flies that I should speak. There are no flies on you. That is why I always know that what you say is true.”

Miss McCartney sighed. Furlani’s English tried her sorely at times, but after all it was a small matter compared with his inability to comprehend that he was wasting his life. She felt that it would be absurd for her, an earnest woman, wholly devoted to philanthropic work, to marry him; and yet she found him thoroughly loveable. Morally and mentally he was little more than a child, but he had a child’s charming sincerity and sunny cheerfulness, and she never for a moment doubted that he truly loved her. She sat gazing at him sadly for a moment, and the answering tears rose to the young man’s eyes.

“I know, dear one!” he said, “that I am of the most worthless, but I promise you that I will try to do something as you desire. I will work with my head, and perhaps I shall find out how to make myself such as you wish me to be. I will what you call hustle around without delay. This very night I will hell around among my friends, and perhaps some one of them will have an idea.”

The next day Furlani presented himself earlier than usual at Miss McCartney’s drawing-room, and his face beamed with excitement and happiness. “At last,” he cried, “I have done something, and I know you will be pleased, and perhaps even a little proud of your poor friend. Behold!” And he drew from his pocket a thick package of bank-notes, and laid them with a bow on Miss McCartney’s lap.

“What in the world does all this money mean?” she asked. “Where did you get it, and why do you bring it to me?”

“There are nearly fifteen thousand francs,” cried Furlani. “I won him all at baccarat last night. It is very nice to have all that money, but if you are pleased, that is worth a thousand times more.”

“My dear Carlo!” said Miss McCartney solemnly, “don’t you know that it is very wrong to gamble?”

“Oh, yes!” replied Furlani. “It is very wrong if you lose. I had a brother who always lost, and yet he would always play until at last he had no more money, and we were all very much ashamed of him, and told him that he was a cussed fool. But it is not wrong to play if you win. That is a very different thing. For myself I never lose more than I can spare. Yes! I disapprove very much of play, except for those who have the happiness to win.”

“Carlo! Carlo!” cried the girl, sadly. “Can I never instil any sort of principle into you! You must promise me never to gamble again. I don’t expect to make you understand how wrong it is, but you must promise me this, if you love me.”

“I will promise you anything. Only be patient with me. I have no other wish but to please you. I will even become a blooming tradesman if you insist upon it, but I kind of guess you won’t.”

“Can’t you find the man from whom you won this money and give it back to him?” asked Miss McCartney.

“But if I were to do that everyone would say that I was a lunatic,” replied the wondering Furlani. “I need not tell you that I won the money fairly. If you wish me to give it away, it would be better to give it to the poor, for the man from whom I won it is very rich. Besides, he was only a Frenchman who was passing through Venice, and by this time he is far away.” Furlani was sincerely anxious to shape his conduct in all things by Miss McCartney’s wishes, but it was really too absurd, this suggestion that he should return his lawful gains. His fleeting Frenchman was invented on the spur of the moment, and he was greatly relieved to find that Miss McCartney accepted his transparent fib without the slightest question.

“Very well, then!” she said. “If the money can’t be returned it must be kept, but I trust it is the last that you will ever win at the gaming-table.”

She arose, and walked up and down the room. Furlani regarded her with admiration. “She was now thinking,” so he said to himself, and he regarded that process with awe. He too, would learn to think, and who knows what great things might come of it?

“Carlo,” said Miss McCartney suddenly, “you must and shall make a man of yourself, but you can never do it here in Venice. I am awfully sorry that you gambled, but now that you have the money, and cannot return it, you shall take it and go to America. There you will learn what life ought to be to a young man. I will give you letters to my friends, who will show you how our young men live. Very likely you will find some opening in business there, and in that case I will come to America and marry you. If you return at the end of the year, you will find me waiting for you here, and by that time you will have learned far more than I can ever hope to teach you, and will have become a man whom I can respect as well as love.”

Furlani’s handsome face fell. “Dearest!” he said, “you know that I could never live away from you and from Venice. And yet you ask me to go and live a year in that most barbarous of lands. But you shall see how I love you. If you insist upon it, I will go at once. I am your slave, b’gosh! You are my angel, my saint, my holy terror on wooden wheels!” Miss McCartney cast a hurried glance at the closed door, and then, to Furlani’s immense astonishment, kissed him. It was not, on the whole, a very skilful kiss, for it alighted on the tip of his ear. Still, it should be said, by way of excuse, that a Professor of Mathematics is not expected to be an expert in kissing, and that Miss McCartney had never before kissed any man except her father.

“Go, and come back to me the noble, earnest man that I am certain you can become,” cried the girl; “you are a dear boy, and I am now sure that I love you, but I must be able to look up to you. Make this journey for me, and I promise that when you return, whether you have learned much or little, I will marry you.”

Furlani knew that Miss McCartney was inflexible in her determinations.

She had decided that he must go to America, and there was nothing for him to do but to go. He had an unspeakable dread of leaving Venice, but he was honestly anxious to transform himself into the new and as yet incomprehensible sort of person that Miss McCartney wished him to be. So with many tears he bade her farewell, and early in October sailed for New York, having his affianced to resume her temporarily neglected work of elevating the Venetian women.

During his first month in America he wrote almost daily. It was easy to see that he was horribly home-sick, but Miss McCartney fancied that she could detect in his letters signs that his moral nature was awakening, and that he was beginning to understand that he had a loftier mission in life than that of lounging in the Piazza. His English improved rapidly, and he completely dropped those peculiarities of expression which had so shocked her. But after a time Miss McCartney became uneasy. A certain worldliness seemed to be creeping into his letters that was wholly foreign to the nature of the frank, childish boy whom she had sent away from Venice. Doubts as to the wisdom of her course began to trouble her. what if her efforts to develop Furlani’s moral nature should end in making him a sordid, money-getting Philistine, like too many of her fellow-countrymen? With the first days of spring there came a letter which told her how well the young Venetian had learned the lessons that America had to teach him. It was long, and began with many protestations of the writer’s undying love for his “angelic guide.” Then it continued as follows:

“I have tried to look at affairs as your Americans look at them. I asked many Americans what a young man like myself, well born, but without money or the means of making money, ought to do, and they all told me that he ought to marry a rich lady. At first I did not like their advice, for I had wished to marry only you. But after a little I saw that they were right, and that to marry wisely is the only business for such a one as I. So I am to be married to a young lady who has a dowry of five hundred thousand francs, and she will come with me to Venice. She is a good one, and I like her very much, but I shall never love anyone but you. I hope, dear one, that you will think I have done wisely. Now that I am to be rich, I will become a Deputy, and you shall be proud of me. In four weeks more I will be at your feet, and you shall tell me that I have done right, and that you love me.”

“Popper!” said Miss McCartney, after she had read her letter, “I guess you had better pack up your things at once. We are going to Germany to-morrow, for I must improve my German.”

“Ain’t this pretty middling sudden?” asked Mr. McCartney. “I thought you calculated to do some reforming among the women here?”

“I’m tired of Venice,” replied the girl. “So just you pack up like a dear old Popper. I don’t think the climate here suits me very well.”

“I’ll do exactly as you say,” said the father. “Of course it ain’t any of my business, but won’t young Furrlanny be a little put out if he comes back and finds you are gone?”

Miss McCartney kissed her father, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes, so, like the well-trained father that he was, he decided that he had better make no further mention of Furlani’s name. Together with his daughter he left Venice at once, and Miss McCartney vanished completely and for ever from the knowledge of her astounded lover. He is still living luxuriously on the money of his rich wife, but he cannot understand why the woman who took such pains to develop his moral nature deserted him just when he had, as he imagined, made himself the sort of man whom she would respect. He talked the matter over with all his friends, and they unanimously agreed that Miss McCartney, like all Anglo-Saxons, was quite mad, and that Furlani was fortunate in losing her. But he could never take precisely that view, and there were times when he sincerely wished that he had never gone to America, but had remained in Venice, the poor, but faithful lover of his “angelic guide.”

Van Wagener’s flying cat

Published in The Idler, December 1896.

“Sparrows,” said the Colonel, “may be very upright, respectable, middle-class birds long as they stay in England, but when they emigrate to America, they are no better than the average of our working classes. Some meddling idiot brought a lot of sparrows to the States ten or fifteen years ago, expecting they would kill all the worms on the fruit trees. They hadn’t been in the country above six months when they took the ground that they were as good as the best of our swell birds, and that they considered that killing worms was a degrading kind of labor fit only for blackbirds and crows. So they took to living on wheat, and strawberries, and cherries, and they multiplied so fast that they are the worst curse that the farmer and the fruit grower ever had, with the solitary exception of the McKinley tariff. That shows the folly of promoting emigration among birds, just as the exportation of rabbits lo Australia showed the folly of supposing that man knows more about the proper distribution of animals than Nature knows. There are now about ten sparrows to every worm in the United Stales, and what we need more than anything else is some style of worm big enough to cat the sparrows.

“Professor Van Wagener and I were discussing the sparrow question one day, and I was complaining of the inefficiency of the American cat. Our cats are about as wide-awake as any monarchical cats that you can produce, but they can’t catch a single sparrow. I’ve known ambitious cats who set out to catch sparrows, and who wasted away to mere skeletons, and died of weakness, through watching for sparrows from dawn to darkness, and never once getting within ten feet of one. As a general rule I don’t have much sympathy with cats, but the insulting language that sparrows use when they see a cat laying for them, and the aggravating way in which they will fly just over the cat’s head, or maybe hit the cat over the tail with their wings, is more than any cat can be expected to bear.

“ ‘The trouble is,’ said Van Wagener, ‘that the cat isn’t a flying animal and the sparrow is. The sparrow’s native element is the air, and you can’t expect a cat to catch a sparrow so long as the cat can’t fly.’

“ ‘That’s true enough,’ said I, ‘but it don’t help us out of our difficulty. Cats weren’t made with wings, and neither you nor I can invent a new model of cat that will he able to fly, and to catch sparrows on the wing.’

“ ‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ said the Professor. ‘Science has improved everything that it has put its hand to, and I see no reason why science shouldn’t improve cats. A flying cat would supply a great public want, for she would kill off the sparrows as easily as she kills off the mice. I’ve half a mind to try the experiment of inventing a flying cat.’

“ ‘All right,” said I, ‘When you get your flying cat finished just notify me and I’ll come and see her fly. Then, if you are going in for improving animals, perhaps you will invent a cat that can sing like a nightingale. The present style of singing among cats is disgraceful. They haven’t any more idea of music than a Chinaman.’

“ ‘You only show your ignorance, Colonel,’ said Van Wagener, ‘when you ridicule science. Give me six weeks, and I promise to show you a flying cat. I don’t say positively that the flying cat will exterminate all the sparrows, for that would be a pretty large order; but I do say that she will fly, and that she will give the sparrows the worst scare that they have ever had.’

“Well, the Professor buckled down to business, and from his daily interviews with his private cat, and the consequent scratches that diversified his good old scientific countenance, I judged that he was doing his best to make a cat that would fly. Before the six weeks were up he sent me a note, inviting me to come round to his house at two o’clock the next afternoon to see the first successful flying cat that had ever been invented. I needn’t say that I went. I had assisted at the birth of dozens of Van Wagener’s inventions, and I had generally found that the presence of a man with experience in the treatment of accidents was a handy thing, so far as the Professor was concerned.

“I found Van Wagener sitting in his library with the most discouraged-looking cat that I had ever seen. As soon as he had shaken hands with me he launched out into a description of his new invention.

“ ‘You know. Colonel,’ said he, ‘my method as an inventor. I ask myself what is needed for some particular purpose, and then I proceed to supply that need. Most people think that an inventor has ideas come to him all of a sudden, in a supernatural sort of way; but that is all nonsense. Inventing is a business, like any other, and any intelligent man can learn it. Now, when I saw that the reason why cats don’t catch sparrows is that they can’t fly after the bird, I saw that what was wanted was a flying cat, and I proceeded to invent one. Here I have a small balloon. This I fix to that cat of mine, and when it is inflated it will just support the weight of the cat in the air. Then you see this pair of paddle-wheels. They are to be fixed, one on each side of the cat, and are to be driven by a small electrical engine. The balloon floats the cat, and the paddle-wheels propel her. In order to steer the cat I fix a flat piece of tin to the extremity of her tail. When she sees a sparrow her instinct will make her swish her tail from one side to the other, and her attention being fastened on catching the bird, she will unconsciously work her tail in such a way as to steer her directly towards it. Take it all in all I am justly proud of this invention. It is simple and effective, that is to say when the air is still, for of course my paddle-wheels will not propel the cat against the wind. I tried at first to fit the cat out with wings, but it was impossible to teach her to use them. Next to a woman a cat cares less for science than any other animal, and it is impossible to teach her to take an interest in an invention that is designed solely to benefit her. However, the day will come when flying cats will be as common as the ordinary type, and when they once get used to flying they will take to the sport as kindly as they now take to catching mice. Now, Colonel, if you are ready, we will rig up the cat for flying, and we will see what effect she produces on the sparrows in my backyard,’

“It wasn’t an easy job to rig up Van Wagener’s cat. She kicked and swore her level best, and got in several good scratches on the Professor’s hands. However, he stuck to his task, and after a while the cat was ready, and we adjourned to the backyard. There was a whole gang of sparrows in the middle of the yard, forming a sort of ring round two that were fighting, and from the way in which every sparrow was talking at the top of his voice it was clear that some heavy betting on the fight was in progress. When they saw Van Wagener and his cat, they naturally flew up to the eaves of the house, where the fight was resumed. Van Wagoner took his flying cat to the extremity of the yard, and after showing her the sparrows on the top of the house, and exhorting her to gather them in, he launched her into the air.

“The cat rose slowly, kicking and yelling, until she was just about level with the eaves. The sparrows were so occupied with the fight that they paid no attention to her, and when she saw that there were at least twenty of them gathered close together, her desire to get at them made her temporarily forget her balloon and her paddle-wheels. She lashed her tail, as cats will do when bent on murder, and, just as the Professor predicted, the effect was to steer her in the direction of the sparrows. Her paddle-wheels were working smoothly and regularly, and though they were not large enough to give her any great speed, they steadily carried her across the yard towards the sparrows. Van Wagener was in ecstasies. He challenged me to point out any defect in his flying cat, and when I candidly admitted that it did seem to be a complete success, he was the happiest man in New Berlinopolisville. The cat came through the air so slowly and noiselessly that she was within two yards of the sparrows before they saw her. When they did catch sight of this new and startling animal, they were the worst frightened lot of birds that were ever seen outside of one of those so-called Happy Families, where half-a-dozen birds, clean paralyzed with fear, are shut in a cage with a cat that has been filled up with chloral, and the public is asked to regard the exhibition as a specimen of what will be the usual sort of thing when the millennium gets its work fairly in. Those sparrows left in a tremendous hurry. They had a sudden business call in some distant part of Illinois, and I don’t believe a single one of them stopped flying until they had put at least thirty miles between themselves and Van Wagener’s flying cat.

“ ‘Now, you see,’ said the Professor, ‘how completely successful my invention is. My flying cat will either catch the sparrows and kill them, or she will frighten them out of the country. In either case the great sparrow problem is solved. It makes no difference to me, as a patriotic American citizen, whether all the British sparrows in the country are killed, of whether they are driven over into Canada. Come to think of it, I should prefer the latter result, for the driving of monarchical European birds out of our beloved country will be an object lesson in the enforcement of the Monroe doctrine, which will be of immense benefit to the nation.’

“The Professor, being a scientific crank, was naturally a political crank also, and he was more than two-thirds mad on the subject of the Monroe doctrine, which by-the-bye is unanimously believed in and worshipped by every lunatic in the States. When the Professor once got fairly started on the subject of the Monroe doctrine he forgot everything else, and he had clean forgotten his flying cat when Mrs. Van Wagener leaned out of a second story window, and advised him, in case he was going to make a political speech, to hire a hall. She was a mighty sarcastic woman, and her contempt for her husband’s political views was even greater than her contempt for his scientific achievements. She was on the point of continuing her remarks about the Professor’s political oration, when she suddenly gave the awfullest screech that I ever heard from female lips, though I was once in a room full of strong-minded women when a mouse ran across the floor. Mrs. Van Wagener thought that her last hour had come, judging from her screams, but, as I had a full view of what was taking place, I knew it was only the cat who had come. Having missed the sparrows the cat turned partly round to see what had become of them, and just then Mrs. Van Wagener, having unconsciously put her head within the animal’s reach, the cat judged that her opportunity for miking a landing had arrived, and accordingly she lit on the top of Mrs. Van Wagener’s head.

“Most any woman, not knowing that her husband had invented a flying cat, would have supposed when some monster with sharp claws, and a talent for using bad language, came flying through the air and lit on her head, that nothing less than the sea-serpent, or the flying dragons mentioned in Scripture, had attacked her. What with the cat’s desire to kick herself free from her flying apparatus, and her anxiety to get square with the human race, she did more with that poor woman’s hair in five minutes than any other cat could have done in a good half hour. The Professor tried to explain that it was only the cat, and begged his wife not to injure the flying apparatus. It didn’t seem to occur to him that he ought to run to his wife’s assistance, till I had taken him by the shoulders, and started him upstairs, I don’t want you to think for a moment that he wasn’t anxious to help his wife, but he was so in the habit of looking at things from a scientific point of view, that he forgot that while he was explaining things Mrs. Van Wagener might be clawed to such an extent that she would never be recognized by her nearest friend. When he had once grasped the idea that she needed his help he fairly flew upstairs and succeeded in transferring the cat’s attentions to himself. Then I had to come to the rescue, for the Professor not having hair enough to interest the cat, she had devoted her efforts to beautifying his countenance, and if I hadn’t succeeded in pulling her off, and tossing her out of the window, she would have torn his eyes out, or at all events ruined his nose. Her balloon had burst during her interview with Mrs. Van Wagener, and consequently when I threw her out of the window she struck the ground pretty heavily, and smashed up the paddle-wheels. We never saw her again, but every little while there would appear in the newspapers stories of a strange animal with a glittering tail, that haunted the lower part of Illinois. You see the cat couldn’t rid herself of her steering attachment, and she naturally wasn’t willing to show herself in what she considered a disgraceful dress.

“Mrs. Van Wagener made peace with her husband on condition of his making a solemn promise never to have anything more to do with flying cats. I consider that she was wrong in so doing, for Van Wagener’s invention was bound to be a success. If he had been allowed to carry it out, flying cats would have become as common as bats, and every sparrow in the States would have emigrated. If it wasn’t that I don’t believe in using other people’s inventions, I would go in for the manufacture of flying cats myself; and as it is, I believe that Edison will some day hear of Van Wagener’s experiment, and will immediately invent a flying cat, and spend the rest of his life in trying to make the invention work.”

The American and Brescia

Published in Harper’s Magazine, August 1904.

Few tourists go to Brescia. Personally I know of only two Anglo-Saxons, besides myself, who have visited the place. One was the late Mr. Augustus Hare, who went to Brescia with his prolific scissors in his hand, intending to write up the place elaborately. But he probably met with no person of title in Brescia, and therefore he recorded his impression that there was very little to see in the place. The other Anglo-Saxon was an American whom I met at the Brescia station.

I had just descended from the Milan train, when I saw a tall, gaunt American, wearing a traveling cap, and leaning in a limp and despairing attitude against the station wall. In front of him stood subdued and apologetic porters, with the American’s hand-luggage, humbly suggesting in their native tongue that the traveler should see the station master. Suddenly, and with a fierce gesture, the American exclaimed: “I ain’t talking about that! I’m talking about a hat, a hat, a hat!”

Yielding to a weak impulse to do a kind action, I approached my fellow countryman and asked if I could be of any assistance to him. He looked at me as if I were speaking some unknown language, and made no reply. With the conviction that I had been served as I deserved for interfering with another traveler’s concerns, I turned away; but before I had emerged from the station I felt a strong grasp on my arm, and heard a repentant voice saying: “Guess I was a little rude just now, but I’ve lost a first-class New York hat, and I was considerable mad. Thank you all the same for your politeness.”

“You left the hat in the train, I presume,” said I.

“Just so,” he replied. “You see, I’m traveling with a friend, and we came from Venice this morning. I wanted to get out here and see them make carpets, but my friend wouldn’t stop. So, being a little mad at him, I let him go on to Milan alone, and got out in a hurry and forgot my hat. That porter kept jabbering at me till I was ready to kill him. It’s a shame that they don’t have men on these Eyetalian railroads that can speak a decent language.”

“I was not aware that they made carpets in Brescia,” I remarked.

“They make Brussels carpets here, don’t they?” asked the American. “I always thought that Brussels carpets came from Brussels, and having a brother in the carpet trade, I felt some interested in the matter.”

“But this isn’t Brussels,” said I. “It is Brescia.”

“My friend told me this was Brussels, only the natives called it Brushia, just as they miscall all their towns. A nation that don’t know the proper names of its towns don’t amount to much, in my opinion. My friend knows Europe down to the ground. He’s in the elevator business, and he ought to know whether this is Brussels or not.”

I could not quite see how familiarity with the elevator business made a man an authority in geography, but I did not say so. “Your friend,” I remarked, gently, “was not quite right in this instance. Brussels is at least eight hundred miles from here. However, now that you are here, you had better come with me and have a look at Brescia.”

“All right,” he replied. “I’ve got to get rid of the time somehow, and I’m used to disappointments since I came to Italy. I haven’t seen anything yet that hasn’t disappointed me,—except the beer in Venice, and that don’t come up to the Milwaukee standard.”

So we took a carriage and drove for the next three hours through Brescia, stopping at churches and other buildings of interest. My companion strongly resented the fact that Brescia was not Brussels, and was inclined to divide the blame between the Brescians and his friend in the elevator business.

He was the only man I ever met who associated Brescia with carpets. Most English-speaking people who have heard of Brescia associate it either with Haynau or with Browning. A legend dating from the year 1848 charges Haynau, the Austrian general, with having flogged patriotic Brescian ladies, and it was the belief in this legend which led the dray-men of Barclay and Perkins to mob Haynau when he visited London. That Haynau suppressed an insurrection in Brescia with stern severity is true. It was his duty as an Austrian general to suppress it, and he can hardly be blamed for so doing, no matter how warmly we may sympathize with the patriotic impulse which spurred the Brescians into revolt against their Austrian masters. Haynau shot men freely, but men who engage in an insurrection that fails must expect to pay the penalty. That he ever flogged women there is no sufficient evidence. The story was believed because, at the time, the hatred of Austria was so intense in Lombardy that the Italians were ready to believe anything against them. Still, until sufficient evidence that Haynau flogged women is forthcoming, it is unfair to charge him with that outrage.

Readers of Browning associate Brescia with the poem which describes a patriot on his way to be hanged, amid the applause of the delighted Brescian population. He had entered Brescia just a year previous to the date of his exit, and had been welcomed with enthusiastic demonstrations of approval. What he had done during the twelve months that reconciled the people to his death on the gallows is not mentioned. Possibly he wanted to introduce electric lights and automobiles and female suffrage into Brescia. At any rate, the Brescians had evidently had enough of him. Of course he was a purely imaginary patriot, and hence we are justified in saying that many people know Brescia only as the site of one or two mythical incidents. But that is not the fault of Brescia.

The guide-books inform us that Brescia is called “Brescia Armata,” or Armed Brescia, and that it is so called because arms are manufactured there. I very much doubt this interpretation. Bologna has the title of “Bologna la Grassa,” or Bologna the Fat. Does this mean that Bologna is celebrated for the manufacture of fat, instead of bologna sausages? Like many other Italian towns, Brescia is built on a hill, and is crowned with a castle which in medieval days must have been exceptionally strong. Perhaps Brescia was called the armed because she was always armed against her enemies. In the good old times when every Italian city fought against its neighbors, Brescia must have been a place which judicious generals left alone, while they sacked the cities of the plain.

The first thing which strikes the observant visitor to Brescia is the excessive number and abnormal length of the local cats. The town is fairly crowded with cats, and the guide-books furnish no explanation of the fact. The Brescian cat is so long and narrow that he might almost be described as a dachscat. Why he has developed this extreme length can only be conjectured. It may possibly have something to do with the fierce competition for food which must prevail where cats are so abundant. Most people who are familiar with cats, and have not had their minds warped by the study of text-books of natural history, know that the cat is elastic to a high degree. When he desires to reach some article cf food, or some new and possibly dangerous object, without approaching any nearer to it than is absolutely necessary, he stretches out his body until it is about a fifth longer than usual. Such is the excellence of the materials of which the cat is made that he can elongate himself and shrink back again to his normal length almost any number of times without permanently weakening his springs. But it is, however, quite possible that an excessive frequency of elongation may in time weaken the cat’s springs, and prevent him from shrinking back to his original length. Now the Brescian cat is nearly always seen in the attitude of peering carefully around a corner, or of stealing up to some article that seems to him to have the promise and potency of food. In these circumstances he elongates himself to the utmost, and it is perhaps this that has made him permanently long.

My companion did not admire the cats, and the sentiment was reciprocated with much warmth. In every Italian church there are one or more cats, who have sought refuge from the cares of mice, and the temptations of the back fence, and have chosen a life of meditation and asceticism. There was a large cat sitting in an empty niche at the door of the cathedral. He seemed to be a distant relation of the dachshund, for in length and a marked tendency to bow-leggedness he resembled that preposterous animal. As we entered the church door he rose up and swore defiantly at my companion. The latter had done nothing whatever to merit such language, but wherever we went in Brescia the cats eyed him with strong disapproval. In the case of the cathedral cat this may have been due to the man’s dislike of churches, but as the average cat is notoriously an agnostic, this would not explain the conduct of the other cats.

After we had glanced through the cathedral, and had emerged into the street once more, my acquaintance said:

“If you’re going into any more churches, you must excuse me. I’ll sit in the carriage till you come out again, but I don’t want any more churches in mine. When we landed in Genoa, my friend made me go and see every church in the place. I don’t believe there was a Catholic, or a Baptist, or a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or a Mormon church in Genoa that he didn’t drag me into. After that I struck, and this is the first church I’ve been inside of since I left Genoa. These Italian churches don’t deserve the name. They are nothing but big, cold barns. Every one I’ve seen yet has been lit with candles, and nothing else. No lamps, no gas, no electric lights! Why, you couldn’t get one of our Cyrusville preachers to preach in them, no matter what salary you might offer him.”

I went into every church in Brescia that the guide-book told me I ought to visit, and I had so little time to give to each one that I felt that I was even as the traditional American who saw Rome in twenty-four hours. My companion sat in the carriage while I was in the churches, and I am afraid that there was something in his manner that failed to please the human as well as the cat population of Brescia, for twice I rejoined the carriage just in time to prevent him from using strong measures with certain men and boys, who approached too closely to the carriage in order to stare at him.

The municipal palace is a picturesque specimen of medieval architecture, and although the American compared it most unfavorably with the city hall of Cyrusville, Minnesota, he could not spoil it for me. Also the ancient Roman temple, which has been transformed into a museum, has been so judiciously restored that the most captious sentimentalist could not find fault with it. The market-place, which at first sight seemed to be covered with a monstrous growth of white and yellow mushrooms of gigantic size, under each one of which was seated a woman with a collection of fruit and vegetables, was also a delight. The mushrooms, which on nearer inspection proved to be immense umbrellas, filled my companion with inextinguishable mirth. He laughed in a low, choking way at the sight of them, and half a dozen times that day the recollection of them moved him to solemn laughter. I could not understand why the umbrellas amused him so much. Several times he said softly to himself, “Those darned umberels!” and then chuckled. The memory of his laughter haunts me to this day. What on earth was the man laughing at? I shall never know, for he gave me no explanation, and now he has vanished from my world forever, taking the secret of the umbrellas with him.

The painter upon whom Brescia prides herself—and with good reason—is Moretto. There are a great many of his works in the churches and galleries, private and public, of Brescia. I induced my companion to enter the chief gallery with me, although he insisted that he detested pictures. However, there was one canvas that interested him. It was a St. Sebastian with rather more than the usual quantity of arrows, and my companion stopped before it and asked me what it represented. I told him the legend of the saint, and he laughed scornfully.

“So they set him up for a target and shot at him, did they?” he remarked, gazing at the picture. “Well! All I have to say is that they were mighty poor shots in those days. Just look at those arrows. There are about fifty of them, and only two have made a bull’s-eye. The others are mostly outers, and bad outers at that. Why, there ain’t a boy of twelve years old in the whole State of Minnesota who wouldn’t be ashamed of such shooting as that. It’s disgraceful: that’s what it is.”

That was all the comment he made on the art treasures of Brescia, until after we were again in the carriage. Then he said: “What you fellows can see in pictures I can’t make out. I never took no stock in them. Why should I want to look at a lot of angels in nightgowns doing a walk-around, or a man stuck as full of arrows as a pincushion, or a woman holding a fat baby, or a tramp with a big stick, and nothing on in the way of clothes except a bit of buffalo-hide? It’s all nonsense to pretend that folks really do take, interest in such things. Give me a portrait of James G. Blaine or of John L. Sullivan, and I can take interest in it, for it means something; but these old masters, as my friend calls them, ought to have been set to painting- barns and fences.”

Brescia is a busy town. The inhabitants are, as a rule, tall and robust, and they are always hard at work. The main streets are full of men employed in wearing large cloaks and talking to other men with the utmost energy. No matter how tired they may be, the Brescians scorn to rest, but they work at wearing cloaks and general conversation with an indefatigable earnestness that does them infinite credit. In the chemists’ shops the local doctors are hard at work from morning to night, sitting on chairs and discussing politics with one another and with the chemist and his assistants. In front of the chief cafes there are dozens of young men who, from their dress, belong to the upper classes, but they work as hard as the rest of the people. They stand for hours at their post, tirelessly watching the ladies who pass. Some of these young men struck me as looking rather thin and worn, as if they had overworked themselves. But I presume that they hold that it is better to wear out than to rust out.

There is a superb view of the Lombard plain from the castle which crowns the summit of Brescia. To the south, east, and west stretches the plain, dotted with cities and isolated bell-towers. On the north rises the vast wall of the Alps, and in the far southwest the Apennines are dimly outlined.

My companion seemed interested in the view, but nevertheless it displeased him. Said he: “This country would make the best wheat-growing country in the world—that is, for its size. What the Italians want to do is to pull down all those miserable dirty little towns that they call cities, and to put all the inhabitants into one decent-sized city. Then they could grow wheat all over the country, and make big money. But you can’t get any sense into an Italian. I know them all the way through, for we had gangs of them working on our new railroad last year.”

I bade good-by to my acquaintance at the railway station. He was going on to Milan, and I was bound for Cremona. We parted in the most friendly way, and he thanked me warmly for having shown him Brescia, and said that if ever I came to Cyrusville he would show me a town worth seeing. “And,” he added, “just you chuck away all that rubbish that folks talk about pictures and architecture, and such, and take interest in things that amount to something. Come over to Cyrusville, and see how business is hustling with us. It will just make your head swim, and you’ll wonder how you ever had the patience to stay overnight in this miserable Italy.”

As the Milan train rolled out of the station my late companion thrust his head out of the window of his carriage, and in a stentorian voice yelled to me, “Think of those umberels!” Then his laughter rose above the noise of the train, and presently I saw him no more.

On reflection I mean to go again to Brescia, alone, and try to see it. At present it is hopelessly mixed up in my mind with Cyrusville, Minnesota, and the mixture is far from satisfactory.

The cats of Piacenza

Published in Harper’s Magazine, August 1906.

The guide-books seem to have found it difficult to say much concerning Piacenza. In point of fact, there is very little historical interest attached to the place. While great men were born in profusion in other Italian cities, nobody of any consequence appears to have thought of being born in Piacenza. The city was founded by the Romans, who called it Placentia, in accordance with their usual custom of calling Italian cities out of their names. Its ostensible mission was to defend one of the fords of the Po against the Gauls and other undesirable barbarians; though why it was placed a good third of a mile from the river, instead of being planted directly on the south bank, is not clear. During the middle ages Piacenza was evidently popular with the rulers of the neighboring duchies and marquisates, and was frequently besieged and captured by covetous tyrants. Tennyson, in his poem descriptive, or rather reminiscent, of a journey he once made in Italy, found nothing to notice in Piacenza except rain. He briefly remarks that he found—

In Parma rain; Piacenza rain.

And to tell the truth, Piacenza is a particularly rainy place in the late autumn and winter. But the one unique and extraordinary feature of Piacenza consists in its cats, and this feature is not so much as hinted at in any guide-book. This may possibly have been due to accident, but it looks like deliberate suppression of the truth, for it is incomprehensible how any guide-book editor could have visited Piacenza without being struck by the overwhelming predominance of cats among its population and the unique social position which they hold.

I entered Piacenza one sunny autumn day, and in accordance with my usual custom I avoided the hotel omnibus and walked into the town. It ought to be generally known that the hotel omnibus is expressly designed to weaken the mind of the passenger, and thereby fit him to undergo with meekness the exactions of the hotel-keeper. To this end a large mirror is always placed against the front partition of the vehicle, and in this mirror the passenger sees the streets and all that is therein reversed. He sees in the mirror an interesting doorway, a picturesque tower, a beautiful statue, or a vigorous dog-fight; but when he leans out of the window and gazes in front of the omnibus in search of them he cannot discover them, and only when it is too late does he remember that the treacherous mirror has led him to look in the wrong direction. It is the same if he sees a pretty girl or some novel and ingenious variety of professional cripple. The mirror always induces him to look from the window in the wrong direction, and brings to him failure and disappointment. A confused state of mind bordering upon imbecility results from this state of things, and when the passenger arrives at the hotel he falls an easy victim to the landlord.

I reached the main street of Piacenza in time to witness what at first sight looked like a popular uprising. A crowd of vociferating men and weeping women and joyous small boys occupied the street from curb to curb. I pushed my way through the throng until I came upon a motor-car with a single occupant. He was sitting in stolid silence, smoking a wooden pipe, and I could not fail to recognize him as an Englishman. Leaning over the front of the vehicle was a tall and excited man, holding a dead and extremely limp cat by the scruff of its neck, and waving it from time to time before the impassive Englishman’s face. A policeman stood by the side of the car, and at intervals addressed what seemed to be remonstrances to its occupant, although the noise of the crowd was so great that I could not hear what he was saying.

Evidently the motor-car had committed some grave contravention of the laws and customs of Piacenza, and as it was equally evident that the Englishman did not understand Italian, and was sitting still and waiting for better times, I felt that it was my duty to proffer assistance.

“What is the matter?” I asked. “Can I be of any service to you?”

He looked at me doubtfully for a moment, evidently suspecting me of being a professional guide. “You are English?” he said presently, with a note of doubt in his voice.

“I am an American,” I replied, “which in the circumstances ought to do nearly as well.”

“Glad to see you,” he said. “I’ve had the bad luck to run down an old woman and kill a cat. These beggars don’t seem to care a hang about the old woman, who, I fancy, isn’t much hurt, but they’ve gone stark mad about the cat. It’s the rummiest thing I ever met. This Johnny here”—and he indicated the policeman with a wave of his pipe—“seems to want something, I don’t know what. I should say a lunatic asylum would be about what he ought to want.”

The policeman’s face brightened as I spoke to him, and he gladly unfolded his view of the case. The English signore in the motor-car had, he informed me, killed a cat, and naturally the proprietors of the cat were greatly displeased. He had, as was his duty, asked the signore to accompany him to the police office, but the signore smoked always and always, and would not so much as look at him. Could I not kindly explain to my compatriot that it would be a great favor if he would condescend to come to the police office. Otherwise—!” And here the policeman, who was a gentle and peaceable man, shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of the terrible consequences which would follow the Englishman’s refusal to comply with the demands of the law.

“I am afraid,” I said to my new acquaintance, “that you will have to go with this policeman to the police office. If you like, I will go with you, as I may be able to be of some little use.”

“Oh! That’s what’s the matter, is it?” replied the Englishman. “How was I to know the fellow was a policeman? Where’s his helmet, and what right has he got to wear a sword? Our policemen don’t get themselves up like imitation soldiers.”

I explained that there were sometimes slight differences between the customs of different countries. This seemed to strike the Englishman as an original and forcible idea.

“That’s so!” he exclaimed, as he climbed down from the car and prepared to accompany the officer. “All the same, it’s a mighty rum thing to dress a policeman up in that way.”

We made an imposing procession as we marched down the Via Garibaldi. It was headed by the Englishman and myself, closely followed by the policeman. Then followed the motor-car, laboriously pushed by two more policemen, who had arrived in the nick of time. Next came the remains of the cat, borne aloft by the tall man who acted as chief mourner, followed by half a dozen or more other mourners, weeping and gesticulating. The rear of the procession was brought up by citizens generally, without regard to rank or sex. We reached the police office without further incident, and were ushered into the presence of a severe-looking magistrate, who regarded us with one eye, while he kept the other on the motor-car, which had come to a halt just in front of the window. He accomplished this feat with perfect ease, for nature had endowed him with eyes expressly constructed to enable him to look in two directions at once. Perhaps it was to this qualification that he owed his elevation to the bench.

After the crowd of witnesses had been reduced to a semblance of order, the policeman gave his evidence. He charged the prisoner with having run over and killed a cat, and with having refused to submit to arrest until the casual arrival of a distinguished compatriot, who had succeeded in making him listen to reason.

The judge bowed to me in recognition of my good offices, and I was about to ask his permission to make a statement, when he waved his hand, implying that I should wait until the witnesses had been examined. It is only the Italian who can make long and intricate sentences with a wave of the hand. I knew what that magistrate’s hand wished to say as well as if he had spoken audibly and at length.

Five men and two women severally swore that they were owners in part of the deceased cat, and that it had been wickedly and purposely killed by the accused. Four other witnesses, who disclaimed any ownership in the cat, sustained the testimony of the seven cat-owners, and described the death of the animal with a wealth of indignation that would have been justified only in the case of the wanton killing of an exceptionally valuable baby. Then the magistrate turned to the Englishman and solemnly said: “Accused! It is established by the testimony of these good people that you have killed a cat. Moreover, that it was an important cat, belonging to the seven bereaved persons whose names the clerk will now read aloud.”

The seven names were read, and the magistrate asked the Englishman if he had anything to say in his defense.

I replied for him, saying that he did not understand Italian, and wished me to act as interpreter. I said that neither of us could understand how the cat could possibly have seven owners, and that the Englishman wished to have this matter explained.

“Here in Piacenza,” replied the magistrate, gently, “it is not uncommon for a prominent cat to have several owners. If a person cannot afford to keep an entire cat, he joins with others who take shares in the cat and become its joint owners. This lamented animal who met with such a sudden and painful death was, as I have said, the property of the seven persons now in court, and they are entitled to payment for their sad loss.”

I translated the magistrate’s explanation to the Englishman, who received it with an impassive face and the remark that it was “deuced rum.” To my inquiry as to what he might wish me to say in his defense he replied:

“Oh, I killed the cat straight enough. Tell the beak that I did it because I was trying not to kill an old woman. Tell him I did knock an old woman down and am ready to pay damages for it, but I’m blessed if I’m going to pay for a beastly cat.”

In my translation of this defense I judiciously omitted the refusal to pay for the cat, since I knew that such payment was inevitable. The magistrate waved the matter of the old woman aside as being of trivial importance.

“No complaint has been made as to the complete or partial killing of any old woman,” he remarked. “What is now before the court is the far more important affair of the cat. I have the most profound respect for the noble English nation, and would gladly show to your friend any possible favor, but justice must be maintained. I therefore decree that he shall pay to each owner of the deceased cat five francs, besides a fine of ten francs more, making in all forty-five francs. Unless this is paid, I must commit him to prison.”

The Englishman, after some little argument on my part, decided that resistance was useless. He paid over the forty-five francs, and was informed that he was at liberty to go where he pleased, provided he abstained from slaughtering cats. The bereaved cat-owners were quite satisfied with their respective five francs, and the magistrate complimented us on the promptness with which Englishmen always pay their debts.

“Tell him,” said the Englishman, “that he has not heard the last of this outrage. Tell him that I shall write to the Times.”

I did not think it worth while to translate this dire threat, so I merely informed the magistrate that we were both grateful for his courtesy and consideration. He descended from the bench to shake hands with us “at the mode of the English,” and again lamented the hard fate which had compelled him to fine an English gentleman.

“But you conceive,” he added, “that we cannot permit foreigners, even of the most distinguished, to come here and kill our leading cats. It is impossible. If such conduct were to be permitted, there would be a revolution of the most sanguinary.”

We bade the magistrate farewell, and I said to my companion:

“Come with me and have some luncheon. Baedeker says that there is a hotel near by where there is a good restaurant, and I should be delighted if you would lunch with me.”

“Right you are,” he replied. “If you can find anything decent to eat in this country, it’s more than I’ve been able to do. There’s one good thing: folks that worship cats as they do in this blooming town won’t serve them up at a restaurant.”

We drove carefully in the motor-car, keeping a bright lookout for cats, until we reached the hotel. The dining-room was a large square apartment, with a rather dusty cement floor and a quantity of small meal tables, at most of which officers of the garrison in brilliant uniforms and well-to-do citizens were vigorously lunching. We selected a table in a quiet corner, and at the Englishman’s request I ordered the luncheon. He was evidently in grave doubt as to what the order might bring forth.

“The food in this country,” he remarked, as the waiter departed, “is rummer than it is in France, and that’s saying a lot. I haven’t had a bit of bacon nor a cut of mutton since I left England. I can’t see what ails foreigners. They don’t seem to have the first idea of what a dinner ought to be.”

But when the luncheon was brought on the table, and the Englishman successively ate tagliatelli alla Bolognese, frit to misto, and polpettone, washed down by an excellent red wine, and followed by Parmesan cheese that wept under the knife, he magnanimously admitted that it was possible to eat, even in Piacenza.

“I don’t fancy,” he added, “that a man could get any forrader with this wine, even if he drank twice as much as I’ve had: but I’d really like to know if all the cats I see in this room are real.”

In point of fact, the room swarmed with cats. I counted eleven within sight at one time, and there were many more under the tables and behind the legs of the guests. They were mostly young cats, for they walked with their tails erect, and it is an inflexible rule among cats that one must turn one’s tail down on attaining fourteen months of age. The cats walked fearlessly among the multitudinous legs of the guests, rubbing themselves against the steel scabbards of the officers, and condescending to eat the morsels of meat that nearly every one made it a rule to offer them. The officers were especially friendly with the cats, and when one of the latter refused a bit of cheese offered by a second lieutenant, the gentle warrior was obviously hurt and ashamed.

“They are real enough,” I said, in reply to the Englishman’s question. “Only I begin to think with you that cats must be worshiped in Piacenza. Perhaps the ancient Egyptian cult of Pasht still survives here.”

Just at that moment there entered four grizzled men in faded red shirts and venerable gray trousers. They were Garibaldian veterans, and at the sight of them I remembered that it was the anniversary of the battle of the Volturno, and I understood that these relics of the great Garibaldian epic had donned their old uniforms to do honor to the day. The officers rose and saluted as the four veterans entered. What if the men had been only privates in the army that gave half the peninsula to United Italy! What if they were evident mechanics, with the stoop of the shoulders that comes to men who toil with their hands! They were still the immortal Red Shirts who had accomplished miracles under their miraculous leader, and the handsomely uniformed and high-bred officers of the Italian army were proud to salute them.

“Who are those Johnnies in their shirt-sleeves?” asked my companion. “They might dress decently before coming into a public place.”

“They are Garibaldian veterans,” I replied, “and one of them wears the medal of the Thousand.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said the Englishman. “I remember seeing Garibaldi in London when I was a kid. He was as right as they make ’em. When you got on your legs I thought for a minute that you were going to chuck those chaps out.”

A large white cat walked solemnly towards the veteran of the Thousand, sprang into his lap, and reaching up, touched the medal reverently with his lips. Then he gently released himself from the caressing hand of the Garibaldian, and jumping down, seated himself a few feet from the table, and contemplated the four Red Shirts with obvious admiration.

I began to think that there was something uncanny about the cats of Piacenza. I had once heard a cat enthusiast speak of a religious cat whom he claimed to have known, but, since cats were first domesticated, who had ever dreamed of a patriotic cat? And yet here was a cat who saluted the medal of the Thousand; a cat who unquestionably knew the Garibaldian legend and reverenced the symbolic red shirt. I felt uncomfortable in that patriotic animal’s presence.

“Come,” I said. “We must have a look at this town. I want to take the afternoon train for Modena, and that will give us just an hour to see the cathedral and the other objects of interest.”

The Englishman readily acquiesced, and we went in search of the cathedral. Here the fates were unexpectedly good to me. The entire front of the cathedral was covered with straw matting, for it was in process of restoration. This saved me from admiring a building that Ruskin may have called vile and wicked, or of failing to admire what that tyrannical master may have called beautiful and holy. To tell the truth, I did not then and do not now know Ruskin’s opinion of the facade of the Piacenza cathedral, but it is a relief to know that whatever that opinion may have been, there is not the least danger that I shall ever run counter to it, for I shall never see Piacenza again.

There is really very little to see in Piacenza except the narrow streets, which, like nearly all narrow Italian streets, are picturesque. The Piazza Cavalli is rather impressive, although the statue of Ranuzio Farnese, which is intended to be its chief ornament, is little better than the average equestrian statue executed by order of Congress for the embellishment of the Capitol. The Church of St. Antonino has its architectural merits, but as for the rest of the Piacenza churches, they are painfully commonplace.

As we walked up the nave of the cathedral, I noticed a black cat slinking behind a column, and had little doubt that its black coat was purposely worn in imitation of a cassock. We had finished our last tomb and our last picture, and were nearly ready to leave the cathedral, when the Englishman touched my arm and pointed to the pulpit. There, on the reading-desk, sat the black cat, with his head slightly on one side as he watched us.

“Let’s get out of here before he begins to preach,” whispered the Englishman, and I hastened to follow his counsel. I had been in Piacenza but three hours, and had seen a dead cat owned in shares by seven persons, a patriotic cat who kissed the Garibaldian medal, and an ecclesiastical cat who gave every reason to suppose that he was ready to preach a sermon from the pulpit of the cathedral. Prudence loudly told me to leave Piacenza without risking any fresh and still more startling evidences of the unique intelligence of its cats.

“Look here,” said the Englishman, when we were once more in the open air. “You get into my automobile and come with me as far as Modena. I’m in the automobile-manufacturing business, and I’ve got to take this machine to a man in Florence who has bought it. I’ll take you all the way there if you’ll come. Don’t say no.”

I thanked him warmly. We stopped at the railway station for my luggage, and presently we were spinning down the old Roman road that runs in almost a straight line from Piacenza to Rimini. As the fresh air blew on my face and the warm sun filled me with the sense of contentment that we share with other sun-loving animals, I wondered if the cats of Piacenza were not partly the creatures of a dream. But beyond doubt I had been wide awake while in Piacenza; and besides, there was the testimony of my unimaginative English friend, who swore that there was something bally rum about the cats. So I must accept those weird animals as real, no matter how unaccountable and inexplicable their conduct may have been.

Psmith of Pavia

Published in Harper’s Magazine, 1907.

As I came out of the railway station at Pavia, one burning midsummer day, I noticed a thin, eager, hungry-looking man, in shabby black clothing, who was watching me closely. No sooner had I climbed into the omnibus of the hotel than he came to the side of the vehicle and said to me, in fairly good English: “You want a guide, sir? Show you all things visible. I am the unique guide.”

I could not at first think what brought the Prayer-book suddenly into my mind, but presently I remembered, and felt mildly thankful that the guide had not offered to show me all things invisible as well as visible. I thanked him, “I will wait upon you at the hotel. I am English guide. Permit me—” and he offered me a printed card bearing the legend:

John Psmith

Unique Guide to the

Monuments of Pavia.

Just then the omnibus moved on, and rattled swiftly down the street leading from the station. The unique guide followed on foot, with the air of one who knew that his prey could not escape him and that haste was therefore unnecessary.

When I descended at the hotel, there was the guide, standing on the opposite sidewalk, and apparently wrapped in deep meditation. He had evidently taken a short cut to the hotel, for he had not the slightest appearance of having raced an omnibus, with the thermometer at 92°. He was still standing thoughtfully on the sidewalk when I went to my room, and I temporarily forgot him while trying to solve the problem of bathing with three pints of water and a porridge-bowl.

I had come to Pavia in pursuance of a long-cherished purpose to visit all the Lombard cities that the tourist usually fails to see. Many travelers visit the Certosa of Pavia, which, in spite of its somewhat mongrel architecture, is imposing, and cannot fail to please those bold spirits who have not the fear of Ruskin before their eyes. But the Certosa is five miles from the town of Pavia, and the ordinary tourist, traveling between Genoa and Milan, catches only a passing glimpse of the old blue wall and the domes and towers of Pavia from the window of his railway-carriage. Perhaps I ought to say that the wall of Pavia is not blue, but that venerable sentence “the old gray wall” has grown painfully familiar to me, as it must have grown to every one who has read of Italian cities, and I refuse to make any further use of it. Also, the railway traveler sees the long bridge over the Ticino, and informs his wife, or other companion, that the river is the Po. This in pursuance of the ineradicable conviction of all tourists that all the rivers in Lombardy are the Po.

Pavia has many attractions. For example, it has its full share of historical associations. Hannibal fought his first battle with the Romans in Italy at Pavia, or at any rate in its immediate neighborhood. Columbus studied at the University of Pavia—a university which for more than a thousand years has held its place as one of the chief universities of Italy. What Columbus studied at Pavia is not known. It could not have been Bancroft’s History of the United States, for in that case he would have been too tired to have cared to discover America. Possibly it was ecclesiastical seamanship; for we know that on his first great voyage he weathered a terrible gale by the clever expedient of vowing to go in procession to a shrine, clad only in his shirt. Seamanship such as this was precisely the sort that would probably be taught at a pious university, where eminent school men had discovered how a man could convert himself into a procession by walking in his shirt. Furthermore, St. Augustine is buried in Pavia.

Late in the afternoon of the day of my arrival in Pavia I came down the stairs of my hotel with the intention of exploring the city. The unique guide was still waiting on the opposite side of the street, and I asked the porter if he knew him. “Sairtainly, sir,” he replied. “He was Psmeet, the Greek. He is very goot guide.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “So he is Greek? I thought he was English.”

“I could not say,” said the porter, stretching out both hands with a large gesture of apology. “We call him Greek because his father was an Englishman. He is very honest, and a stupendous intelligent guide.”

It was, as I have said, a very warm day, and that perhaps was the reason why I failed to see that a man should be called a Greek because his father was an Englishman. I was wrestling with this problem as I passed the threshold of the hotel, and Psmith swooped down upon me and took immediate possession of me. Now I do not like guides. In fact, I would rather miss seeing an important saint or the very dingiest of pictures rather than to see them at the cost of an explanation in broken English from a hungry guide. But there was something in the happy expression of Psmith’s face which conquered me. He had waited so patiently for me to be delivered into his hands, and was so obviously delighted when I came in sight, that I had not the heart to reject him.

We walked on together towards the Duomo, Psmith chatting cheerfully of the weather, but showing occasional signs of sadness over the depressed condition of the tourist-market in Pavia.

“They all go to Milan or Genoa,” he said, mournfully. “In Milan and Genoa it is noisy, and the hotels are very dear. I know Genoa, for I was born there.”

“You told me,” said I, “that you were English. Why do the people here call you the Greek?”

“Yes,” replied my guide, “my father was an Englishman. He was a sailor, and he married my mother, who kept a wine-shop in Genoa. He was a good man and a learned.”

“But why,” I insisted, “if your father was an Englishman, should you be called a Greek?”

“Ah, sir,” answered the guide, “it is a long story, but I will tell you in the Duomo. Here it is too hot.”

The Duomo boasts of a beautiful doorway and of the tomb of St. Augustine. Psmith gave me a long biography of the saint, in whom he took much pride. There was not much else to see in the Duomo, but it was dark and cool after the glare and heat of the streets, and I sat down, on the pedestal of a column and once more demanded to know why Psmith was called a Greek.

“Who knows?” he answered. “Sometimes a man is called an Englishman and sometimes a Frenchman and sometimes a Spanish man. We do not always know why these things are.”

“You spell your name queerly,” I continued. And then it flashed upon me that Psmith began with the Greek letter Psi. Could this afford a clue to the mystery of the guide’s nationality?

“My father he spelled his name likewise,” replied Psmith, “but he had his misfortunes. He was compelled to kill a man in the wine-shop—a man who had said insults and had refused to pay for his wine. Yes! He spelled his name precisely as I spell.”

I began to think that logic had never been taught in Pavia, either at the university or elsewhere. I had met a porter who thought that because a man was half an Englishman he should be called a Greek, and I had met a guide who spelled his name with a Greek letter because his father had killed a man in a wine-shop.

“I see!” I exclaimed, peremptorily. “You promised to tell me what you said was a long story about yourself, but you have told me nothing. Now tell me at once why you, who are half English and half Genoese and spell your name with a Greek initial, are called the Greek by the people of Pavia. This I must know, and know at once.”

“I will tell you all, sir!” cried the guide. “My mother was not strictly Italian, for she was born in Switzerland, and I think her father was a Frenchman. She was not very happy with my father, for sometimes he drank too much wine, and then he would say that he would make my mother know that he was an Englishman, and he would beat her after the manner of the English. And she did not live to be very old, for her head was thin and it would break very easily; and twice every year I have masses said for her soul, but they cost much money.”

“Come,” I said, “let us see Pavia.” And we went out of the church—Psmith wearing a sad smile, and I wondering if there was really any answer to the riddle of his true nationality.

As we passed through a narrow street a dog fled across our path, and at the same time a woman rushed to the door of a house and hurled a stone, which struck Psmith on the ankle. As he held the injured limb in one hand and hopped hither and thither on one leg in order to maintain his balance, he lavished sarcasm and abusive epithets on the woman, and called the universe to witness that no woman had sufficient intelligence to hit even a Spitz dog with a stone. Why a Spitz dog should afford a safer aim to a woman than any other species of dog Psmith did not condescend to explain. The woman listened in silence, and when he had finished his tirade she made a derisive gesture, and exclaiming, “Va-tene! porco tedesco!” she vanished into her house.

Now the expression the woman used may be literally translated into the dialect of Psmith’s lamented father thus: “Garn, you German swine!” It seemed to wither Psmith, for he made no attempt to reply, and limped down the street, muttering to himself.

“Psmith,” cried I, “this thing has got to stop. That woman called you German. If you don’t explain why you are English, Italian, Swiss, Greek, and German all at once, you are going to meet with trouble.”

“I cannot explain, sir,” he replied. “These Pavians are pigs and the sons of pigs. They have no knowledge. Do not mind what they say, sir! Perhaps I am German. Who can tell.”

I had to be satisfied with this explanation, for Psmith’s feelings as well as his ankle had been deeply wounded, and he was not in a state to discuss matters of importance and intricacy. We walked on until we reached the university, where the guide showed me a statue of Volta, standing in a courtyard, and assured me that Volta had invented lightning. It was not a bad statue, and the courtyard in which it stood looked as if it had once been the cloister of a monastery. The sun striking on its marble columns made them dazzlingly white, and I wondered how it happened that the studious youth of Pavia had not covered the white surfaces with names and inscriptions, after the manner of youth.

I saw no students in Pavia, for it was vacation-time. The Italian university student is almost invariably a red-hot radical, and spends much of his time in making political demonstrations, or in actively rebelling against some unpopular professor. When he rebels or demonstrates, the authorities close the university for a few weeks, and thank Heaven that they have an unexpected vacation. At the university the students learn how to wear a sort of tam-o’-shanter cap jauntily on one side of the head, and practice, with much assiduity, the art of making unearthly noises in the street at dead of night. An Italian university student may be safely backed to talk for more hours and in a louder tone concerning nothing, immediately under your hotel window, than can any other species of being, human or otherwise. Pavia also has a reputation for teaching the medical art. This, as Herodotus would say, is all that I am permitted to say concerning the University of Pavia.

We went to see the two leaning towers of Pavia. The tower habit must have been very prevalent in Lombardy in the middle ages. Rich people of otherwise good moral character became addicted to the tower habit, and squandered their money in building towers. Most of these towers are built of common brick, after the model of the common factory chimney. They are extremely ugly, and, so far as can be ascertained, were utterly useless to their owners. Psmith, however, dwelt at some length on the beauty of the towers of Pavia.

“This,” he said, “is the country of towers. Genoa is a fine city, but it has no towers, except, of course, the lighthouse, and therefore is not as healthy as Pavia.”

This new fact in sanitary science interested me greatly. At first sight it seems improbable that the health of a city should depend upon the number of its towers, but then the more improbable a theory may seem, the more truly scientific it may prove to be.

We had a look at the outside of the Castello, which was once the palace and fortress of the Visconti family, in the days when they ruled over Pavia and enjoyed themselves in the hearty, strenuous, decapitating manner of the times. The Castello has been greatly modernized outwardly, and is now the barracks of the garrison of Pavia. The guide told me that there was nothing worth seeing inside the buildings, and if there were, we could not see it, since no civilians were allowed to enter the place. That gave me the comfortable feeling that as a sightseer I had done my whole duty towards the Castello. The most satisfactory moments in the tourist’s experience are those in which he finds that he is not allowed to enter buildings which he has come to see.

After a cursory look into several churches of minor importance, the guide led me to the great bridge across the Ticino, where on summer evenings the beauty and fashion of Pavia come to promenade. At the time there was no one on the bridge, except a peasant with a donkey, neither of whom gave any marked evidences of the possession of either beauty or fashion. Psmith and I leaned over the parapet of the bridge between two of its many beautiful columns. The river ran swiftly, and looked as if it might be deep.

“Is the river deep in this place?” I asked.

“Immensely deep,” replied Psmith. “Many persons come here to be drowned.”

I placed my hand suddenly on his shoulder and said: “Psmith, I am a desperate man. I am not, as you think, an Englishman. I am an Arab, and terribly ferocious. Tell me instantly who and what you are, or else the river waits for you.”

With a terrified expression of face, in which at the same time I seemed to detect relief and joy, Psmith clasped his hands and cried: “Ana arabi keman. Manish rubbawi. Ana Masrawi.”

What he said was good Arabic—at all events, of the Egyptian variety. It was, in brief, a claim that he too was an Arab. And this new complication was all that I had gained by my clumsy trick!

I gave Psmith up then and there as an insoluble problem. I paid him his money and begged him to depart. He thanked me, assuring me that he would remember me “world without end,” and then went away hastily. My joke had plainly frightened him, and for the fiftieth time, or thereabouts, I recognized the fact that jokes are not understood in Italy.

Monty’s friend

Published in Lords of the housetops, 1921.

The discovery of gold at Thompson’s Flat, near the northern boundary of Montana, had been promptly followed by the expected rush of bold and needy adventurers. But disappointment awaited them. Undoubtedly there was gold a few feet below the surface, but it was not found in quantities sufficient to compensate for the labor, privation, and danger, which the miners were compelled to undergo.

It is true that the first discoverer of gold, who had given his name to the Flat, had found a “pocket,” which had made him a rich man; but his luck remained unique, and as Big Simpson sarcastically remarked, “A man might as well try to find a pocket in a woman’s dress as to search for a second pocket in Thompson’s Flat.” For eight months of the year the ground was frozen deep and hard, and during the brief summer the heat was intense. There were hostile Indians in the vicinity of the camp, and although little danger was to be apprehended from them while the camp swarmed with armed miners, there was every probability that they would sooner or later attack the handful of men who had remained, after the great majority of the miners had abandoned their claims and gone in search of more promising fields.

In the early part of the summer following Thompson’s discovery of gold there were but thirty men left in the camp, with only a single combined grocery and saloon to minister to their wants. Partly because of obstinacy, and partly because of a want of energy to repeat the experiment of searching for gold in some other unprofitable place, these thirty men remained, and daily prosecuted their nearly hopeless search for fortune. Their evenings were spent in the saloon, but there was a conspicuous absence of anything like jollity. The men were too poor to gamble with any zest, and the whiskey of the saloon keeper was bad and dear.

The one gleam of good fortune which had come to the camp was the fact that the Indians had disappeared, having, as it was believed, gone hundreds of miles south to attack another tribe. Gradually the miners relaxed the precautions which had at first been maintained against an attack, and although every man went armed to his work, sentinels were no longer posted either by day or night, and the Gatling gun that had been bought by public subscription in the prosperous days of the camp remained in the storeroom of the saloon without ammunition, and with its mechanism rusty and immovable.

Only one miner had arrived at Thompson’s Flat that summer. He was a middle-aged man who said that his name was Montgomery Carleton—a name which instantly awoke the resentment of the camp, and was speedily converted into “Monte Carlo” by the resentful miners, who intimated very plainly that no man could carry a fifteen-inch name in that camp and live. Monte Carlo, or Monty, as he was usually called, had the further distinction of being the ugliest man in the entire Northwest. He had, at some unspecified time, been kicked in the face by a mule, with the result that his features were converted into a hideous mask. He seemed to be of a social disposition, and would have joined freely in the conversation which went on at the saloon, but his advances were coldly received.

Instead of pitying the man’s misfortune, and avoiding all allusion to it, the miners bluntly informed him that he was too ugly to associate with gentlemen, and that a modest and retiring attitude was what public sentiment required of him. Monty took the rebuff quietly, and thereafter rarely spoke unless he was spoken to. He continued to frequent the saloon, sitting in the darkest corner, where he smoked his pipe, drank his solitary whiskey, and answered with pathetic pleasure any remark that might be flung at him, even when it partook of the nature of a coarse jest at his expense.

One gloomy evening Monty entered the saloon half an hour later than usual. It had been raining all day, and the spirits of the camp had gone down with the barometer. The men were more than ever conscious of their bad luck, and having only themselves to blame for persistently remaining at Thompson’s Flat, were ready to cast the guilt of their folly on the nearest available scapegoat. Monty was accustomed to entering the room unnoticed, but on the present occasion he saw that instead of contemptuously ignoring his presence, the other occupants of the saloon were unmistakably scowling at him. Scarcely had he made his timid way to his accustomed seat when Big Simpson said in a loud voice:

“Gentlemen, have you noticed that our luck has been more particularly low down ever since that there beauty in the corner had the cheek to sneak in among us?”

“That’s so!” exclaimed Slippery Jim. “Monty is ugly enough to spoil the luck of a blind nigger.”

“You see,” continued Simpson, “thishyer beauty is like the Apostle Jonah. While he was aboard ship there wasn’t any sort of luck, and at last the crew took and hove him overboard, and served him right. There’s a mighty lot of wisdom in the Scriptures if you only take hold of ’em in the right way. My dad was a preacher, and I know what I’m talking about.”

“That’s more than the rest of us does,” retorted Slippery Jim. “We ain’t no ship’s crew and Monty ain’t no apostle. If you mean we ought to heave him into the creek, why don’t you say so?”

“It wouldn’t do him any harm,” replied Simpson. “He’s a dirty beast, and this camp hasn’t no call to associate with men that’s afraid of water, except, of course, when it comes to drinking it.”

“I’m as clean as any man here,” said Monty, stirred for the moment to indignation. “Mining ain’t the cleanest sort of work, and I don’t find no fault with Simpson nor any other man if he happens to carry a little of his claim around with him.”

“That’ll do,” said Simpson severely. “We don’t allow no such cuss as you to make reflections on gentlemen. We’ve put up with your ugly mug altogether too long, and I for one ain’t going to do it no longer. What do you say, gentlemen?” he continued, turning to his companions, “shall we trifle with our luck, and lower our self-respect any longer by tolerating the company of that there disreputable, low-down, miserable coyote? I go for boycotting him. Let him work his own claim and sleep in his own cabin if he wants to, but don’t let him intrude himself into this saloon or into our society anywhere else.”

The proposal met with unanimous approval. The men wanted something on which to wreak their spite against adverse fortune, and as Monty was unpopular and friendless he was made the victim. Simpson ordered him to withdraw from the saloon and never again to enter it at an hour when other gentlemen were there. “What’s more,” he added, “you’ll not venture to speak to anybody; and if any gentleman chances to heave a remark at you you’ll answer him at your peril. We’re a law-abiding camp, and we don’t want to use violence against no man; but if you don’t conform to the kind and reasonable regulations that I’ve just mentioned to you, there’ll be a funeral, and you’ll be required to furnish the corpse. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” said Monty. “I hear a man what’s got no more feelings than a ledge of quartz rock. What harm have I ever done to any man in the camp? I know I ain’t handsome, but there’s some among you that ain’t exactly Pauls and Apolloses. If you don’t want me here why don’t you take me and shoot me? It would be a sight kinder and more decent than the way you say you mean to treat me.”

“Better dry up!” said Simpson, warningly. “We don’t want none of your lip. We’ve had enough of you, and that’s all about it.”

“I’ve no more to say,” replied Monty, rising and moving to the door. “If you’ve had enough of me I’ve had enough of you. I’ve been treated worse than a dog, and I ain’t going to lick no man’s hand. Good evening, gentlemen. The day may come when some of you will be ashamed of this day’s work, that is if you’ve heart enough to be ashamed of anything.”

So saying Monty walked slowly out, closing the door ostentatiously behind him. His departure was greeted by a burst of laughter, and the cheerfulness of the assembled miners having been restored by the sacrifice of Monte Carlo, a subdued gaiety once more reigned in the saloon.

Monty returned to his desolate cabin, and after lighting his candle threw himself into his bunk. The man was coarse and ignorant, but he was capable of keenly feeling the insult that had been put upon him. He knew that he was hideously ugly, but he had never dreamed that the fact would be made a pretext for thrusting him from the society of his kind. Strange to say he felt little anger against his persecutors. No thoughts of revenge came to him as he lay in the silence and loneliness of his cabin. For the time being the sense of utter isolation crowded out all other sensations. He felt infinitely more alone when the sound of voices reached him from the saloon than he would have felt had he been lost in the great North forest.

Before coming to Thompson’s Flat he had lived in one of the large towns of Michigan, where decent and civilized people had not been ashamed to associate with him. Here, in this wretched mining camp, a gang of men, guiltless of washing, foul in language, and brutal in instinct, had informed him that he was unfit to associate with them. There had never been any one among the miners for whom he had felt the slightest liking; but it had been a comfort to exchange an occasional word with a fellow-being. Now that he was sentenced to complete isolation he felt as a shipwrecked man feels who has been cast alone on an uninhabited island. If the men would only retract their sentence of banishment, and would permit him to sit in his accustomed corner of the saloon he would not care how coarsely they might insult him—if only he could feel that his existence was recognized.

But no! There was no hope for him. The men hated him because of his maimed and distorted face. They despised him, possibly because he did not permit himself to resent their conduct with his revolver, and thus give them an excuse for killing him. He could not leave the camp and make his way without supplies to the nearest civilized community. There was nothing for him to do but to work his miserable claim, and bear the immense and awful loneliness of his lot. As Monty thought over the situation and saw the hopelessness of it, his breath came in quick gasps until he broke into a sob, and the tears flowed down his scarred and grimy cheeks.

A low, inquiring mew drew his attention for a moment from his woes. The camp cat—a ragged, disreputable animal, who owned no master, and rejected all friendly advances—stood in the door of Monty’s cabin, with an interrogative tail pointing to the zenith and a friendly arch in his shabby back.

Monty had often tried to make friends with the cat, but Tom had repulsed him as coldly as the miners themselves. Now in his loneliness the man was glad to be spoken to, even by the camp cat; and he called it to him, though without any expectation that the animal would come to him. But Tom, stalking slowly into the cabin, sprang after a moment’s hesitation into Monty’s bunk, and purring loudly in a hoarse voice, as one by whom the accomplishment of purring had long been neglected, gently and tentatively licked the man’s face, and kneaded his throat with two soft and caressing paws. A vast sob shook both Monty and the cat. The man put his arms around the animal, and hugging him closely, kissed his head. The cat purred louder than ever, and presently laying his head against Monty’s cheek, he drew a long breath and sank into a peaceful slumber.

Monty was himself again. He was no longer alone. Tom, the cat, had come to him in the hour of his agony and had brought the solace of a love that did not heed his ugliness. Henceforth he would never be wholly alone, no matter how strictly the men might enforce their boycott against him. He no longer cared what they might do or say. He felt the warm breath of the friendly animal on his cheek. The remnant of its right ear twitched from time to time and tickled his lip. The long sinewy paws pressed against his neck trembled nervously, as the cat dreamed of stalking fat sparrows, or of stealing fried fish. Its hoarse croupy purr sounded like the sweetest music to the lonely man. “There’s you and me, and me and you, Tom!” said Monty, stroking the cat’s ragged and crumpled fur. “We’ll stick together, and neither of us won’t care a cuss what them low-down fellows says or does. You and me’ll be all the world to one another. God bless you forever for coming to me this night.”

From that time onward, Monte Carlo and Tom were the most intimate of friends. Wherever the man went the cat followed. When he was working in the shallow trench, where the sparse gold dust was found, Tom sat or slept on the edge of the trench, and occasionally reminded Monty of the presence of a friend, by the soft crooning sound which a mother cat makes to her newborn kittens. The two shared their noon meal together; and it was said by those who professed to have watched them that the cat always had the first choice of food, while the man contented himself with what his comrade rejected. In the evening Monty and Tom sat together at the door of the cabin, and conversed in low tones of any subject that happened to interest them for the time being. Monty set forth his political and social views, and the cat, listening with attention, mewed assent, or more rarely expressed an opposite opinion by the short, sharp mew, or an unmistakable oath.

Once or twice a week Monty was compelled to visit the saloon for groceries and other necessities. He always made these visits when the men of the camp were working in their claims; and he was invariably accompanied by Tom, who trotted by his side, and sprang on his shoulder while he made his purchases. The saloon keeper declared that when once by accident he gave Monty the wrong change, Tom loudly called his friend’s attention to the error and insisted that it should be rectified. “That there cat,” said the saloon keeper to his assembled guests on the following evening, “ain’t no ordinary cat, for it stands to reason that if he was he wouldn’t chum with Monty. A cat that takes up with such a pal, and that talks pretty near as well as you or me, or any other Christian is, according to what I learned at Sunday School, possessed with the devil. You mark my word, Monty sold his soul to that pretended cat, and presently he’ll be shown a pocket chuck full of nuggets, and will go home with his ill-gotten gains while we stay here and starve.”

The feeling that there was something uncanny in the relations that existed between Monte Carlo and the cat gradually spread through the camp. While no man condescended to speak to the boycotted Monty, a close watch was kept upon him. Slippery Jim asserted that he had heard Monty and Tom discuss the characters of nearly every man in the camp, while he was concealed one evening in the tall grass near Monty’s cabin.

“First,” said Jim, “Monty asked kind o’ careless like, ‘What may be your opinion of that there Big Simpson?’ The cat, he just swears sort of contemptuous, and then Monty says, ‘Jest so! That’s what I’ve always said about him; and I calculated that a cat of your intelligence would say the same thing.’ By and by Monty says, ‘What’s that you’re saying about Red-haired Dick? You think he’d steal mice from a blind cat, and then lay it on the dog? Well! my son! I don’t say he wouldn’t. He’s about as mean as they make ’em, and if I was you I wouldn’t trust him with a last year’s bone!’ Then they kept on jawing to each other about this and that, and exchanging views about politics and religion, till after a while Tom lets out a yowl that sounded as if it was meant for a big laugh. Monty, he laughed too; and then he says, ‘I never thought you would have noticed it, but that’s exactly what Slippery Jim does every time he gets a chance.’

“I don’t know,” continued Jim, “what they were referring to, but I do know that Monty and the cat talk together just as easy as you and me could talk, and I say that if it’s come to this, that we’re going to allow an idiot of a man and a devil of a cat to take away the characters of respectable gentlemen, we’d better knuckle down and beg Monty to take charge of this camp and to treat us like so many Injun squaws.”

Other miners followed Slippery Jim’s example, in watching and listening to his conversations with the cat, and the indignation against the animal and his companion grew deep and bitter. It was decided that the scandal of an ostentatious friendship between a boycotted man and a cat that was unquestionably possessed by the devil must be ended. The suggestion that the cat should be shot would undoubtedly have been carried out, had it not been that Boston, who was a spiritualist, asserted that the animal could be hit only by a silver bullet. The camp would gladly have expended a silver bullet in so good a cause, but there was not a particle of silver in the camp, except what was contained in two or three silver watches.

After several earnest discussions of the subject it was resolved that the cat should be hung on a stout witch-hazel bush, growing within a few yards of Simpson’s cabin. It was recognized that hanging was an eminently proper method of treatment in the case of a cat of such malevolent character; and as for Monty himself, more than one man openly said that if he made any trouble about the disposal of the cat, he would instantly be strung up to a convenient pine tree which stood close to the witch-hazel bush.

The next morning a committee of six, led by Big Simpson, cautiously approached the trench in which Monty was working. There was nearly an eighth of a mile between Monty’s claim and those of the other miners. The latter had taken possession of that part of Thompson’s Flat which seemed to hold out the best promise for gold, and Monty, partly because of his unprepossessing appearance, had been compelled to content himself with what was considered to be the least valuable claim in the camp.

The committee made its way through the long coarse grass, which had sprung up under the fierce heat of summer, and was already as parched and dry as tinder. They had intended to seize the cat before Monty had become aware of their presence; and they were somewhat disconcerted when Monty, with the cat clasped tightly in his arms, came running towards them. “There’s Injuns just over there in the woods,” he cried. “Tom sighted them first, and after he’d called me I looked and see three devils sneaking along towards your end of the camp. You boys, rush and get your Winchesters, and I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.”

The men did not stop to question the accuracy of Monty’s story. They forgot their designs against the cat, and no longer thought of their promise to shoot the boycotted man if he ventured to address them. They ran to their cabins, and seizing their rifles, rallied at the saloon, which was the only building capable of affording shelter. It was built of stout logs, and its one door was immensely thick and strong. By firing through the windows the garrison could keep at bay, at least for a time, the cautious Indian warriors, who would not charge through the open, so long as they could harass the miners from the shelter of the wood.

After Monty had placed his cat in his bunk he took his rifle, and carefully closing the door of his cabin, joined his late enemies in the saloon. Several of them nodded genially to him as he entered, and Simpson, who was arranging the plan of defense, told him to take a position by one of the rear windows. The men understood perfectly well that Monty’s warning had saved them from a surprise in which they would have been cruelly massacred. Perhaps they felt somewhat ashamed of their previous treatment of the man, but they offered no word of apology.

However Monty thought little of their manner. Although he knew that in all probability the siege would be prolonged until not a single miner was left alive, his thoughts were not on himself or his companions. Would the Indians overlook his cabin, or in case they found it, would they offer violence to Tom? These were the questions that occupied his mind as he watched through the window for the gleam of a rifle barrel in the edge of the forest and answered every puff of smoke with an instantaneous shot from his Winchester. The enemy kept carefully under cover, and devoted their efforts to firing at the windows of the saloon. Already three shots had taken effect. Two dead bodies lay on the floor, and a wounded man sat in the corner, leaning against the wall, and slowly bleeding to death. Suddenly a cloud of smoke shot up in the direction of Monty’s cabin. The Indians had set fire to the dry grass, and the flames were sweeping towards the cabin in which the cat was imprisoned.

Monty took in the situation and came to a decision with the same swiftness and certainty with which he pulled the trigger. “You’ll have to excuse me, boys, for a few minutes,” he said, rising from his crouched attitude and throwing his rifle into the hollow of his arm.

“What’s the matter with you?” growled Simpson. “Have you turned coward all of a sudden, or are you thinking of scaring the Injuns by giving them a sight of your countenance?”

“That there cabin of mine will be blazing inside of five minutes, and I’ve left Tom in it with the door fastened,” replied Monty, ignoring the insulting suggestions of Simpson, and beginning to unbar the door.

“Here! Come back, you blamed lunatic!” roared Simpson. “Do you call yourself a white man, and then throw your life away for a measly, rascally cat?”

“I am going to help my friend if I kin,” said Monty. “He stood by me when thishyer camp throwed me over, and I’ll stand by him now he’s in trouble.”

So saying he quietly passed out and vanished from the sight of the astonished miners.

“I told you,” said Slippery Jim, “that Monty was bewitched by that there cat. Who ever heard of a man that was a man who cared whether a cat got burned to death or not?”

“You shut up!” exclaimed Simpson. “You haven’t got sand enough to stand by your own brother—let alone standing by a cat.”

“What’s the matter with you?” retorted Jim. “You was the one who proposed boycotting Monty, and now you’re talking as if he was a tin saint on wheels.”

“Monty’s acted like a man in this business,” replied Simpson, “and it’s my opinion that we’ve all treated him pretty particular mean. If we pull through this scrimmage Monty’s my friend, and don’t you forget it.”

Monte Carlo lost none of his habitual caution, although he was engaged in what he knew to be a desperate and nearly hopeless enterprise. On leaving the saloon he threw himself flat on the ground, and slowly drew himself along until he reached the shelter of the high grass. Then rising to his hands and knees he crept rapidly and steadily in the direction of his cabin.

His course soon brought him between the fire of the miners and that of the Indians, but as neither could see him he fancied he was safe for the moment. He was drawing steadily closer to his goal, and was already beginning to feel the thrill of success, when a sharp blow on the right knee brought him headlong to the ground. A stray shot, fired possibly by some nervous miner who had taken his place at the saloon window, had struck him and smashed his leg.

He could no longer creep on his hands and knees, but with indomitable resolution he dragged himself onward by clutching at the strong roots of the grass. His disabled leg gave him exquisite pain as it trailed behind him, and he knew that the wound was bleeding freely; but he still hoped to reach his cabin before faintness or death should put a stop to his progress. He felt sure that the shot which had struck him had not been aimed at him by an Indian, for if it had been he would already have felt the scalping knife. The nearer he drew to his cabin the less danger there was that the Indians would perceive him. If he could only endure the pain and the hemorrhage a few minutes longer he could reach and push open the door of his cabin, and give his imprisoned friend a chance for life. He dragged himself on with unfaltering resolution, and with his silent lips closed tightly. Not a groan nor a curse nor a prayer escaped him. He stuck to his task with the grim fortitude of the wolf who gnaws his leg free from the trap. All his thoughts and all his fast-vanishing strength were concentrated on the effort to save the creature that had loved him.

After an eternity of anguish he reached the open space in front of the cabin, where the thick smoke hid him completely from the sight of both friends and foes. The flames had just caught the roof, and the heat was so intense that for an instant it made him forget the pain of his wound, as his choked lungs gasped for air. The wail of the frightened animal within the cabin gave him new energy. Digging his fingers into the ground he dragged himself across the few yards that separated him from the door. He reached it at last, pushed it open, and with a smile on his face lost consciousness as the cat bounded out and fled like a mad creature into the grass.

Two hours later a troop of Mounted Police, who had illegally and generously crossed the border in time to drive off the Indians and to rescue the few surviving members of the camp, found, close to the smouldering embers of Monty’s cabin, a scorched and blackened corpse, by the side of which sat a bristling black cat. The animal ceased to lick the maimed features of the dead man, and turned fiercely on the approaching troopers. When one of them dismounted and attempted to touch the corpse the cat flew at him with such fury that he hurriedly remounted his horse, amid the jeers of his comrades. The cat resumed the effort to recall the dead man to life with its rough caresses, and the men sat silently in their saddles watching the strange sight.

“We can’t bury the man without first shooting the cat,” said one of the troopers.

“Then we’ll let him lie,” said the sergeant in command. “We can stop here on our way back from the Fort, and maybe by that time the cat’ll listen to reason. I’d as soon shoot my best friend as shoot the poor beast now.”

And the troop passed on, leaving Tom alone in the wilderness with his silent friend.

Domestic explosives
and other
sixth column fancies

Domestic explosives and other sixth column fancies was originally published in 1877 by Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Co.

Domestic explosives

For weeks before the Fourth of July the approach of the National Anniversary is heralded by the blowing up of manufactories of fireworks, and the diffusion of small particles of exploded workmen over miles of startled country. The coroner wears a happy and confident expression of face, and hopefully lingers in the neighborhood of shops where fireworks are sold. Now that fulminate of silver, nitroglycerine, and other violent explosives have been converted into playthings for juvenile patriots, the blowing up of a single small-boy may furnish business for a dozen coroners, each of whom may reasonably hope to pick up a finger, an ear, a jackknife, or other organ of the victim, upon which an entire inquest can lawfully be held. Not long ago a manufactory of nitroglycerine torpedoes exploded in New York and scattered finely comminuted workmen all over the neighborhood. Today there are scores of shops in our crowded streets where tons of fireworks are so recklessly exposed that the spark of a cigar may suddenly fill the air with vagrant rockets rushing with murderous intent upon unsuspecting pedestrians, and with flaming Catherine wheels revolving among the legs of passing horses, or dashing against the skirts of terrified women. In the midst of life we are also in the midst of fireworks, and no man knows at what moment his ears may be deafened by an explosion and his hat flattened over his eyes by the parabolic descent of some total though mangled stranger.

There is something to be said in defense of ornamental fireworks as a means of celebrating the Fourth of July. They are frequently beautiful in themselves, and the extent to which they set buildings on fire endears them to mechanics in search of employment. Mere explosives, however, are utterly indefensible except from the coroner’s point of view. Firecrackers, torpedoes, and toy pistols are the instruments with which the small-boy’s love for noise makes deafened millions mourn. That the small-boy frequently puts out his eyes, or ruins a dozen insurance companies by burning up a whole city, cannot be pleaded as a sufficient compensation for the torture which he inflicts during the twenty-four hours of Independence Day. If there has been any decay of patriotism among Americans of late years, the cause is to be sought in firecrackers. No man, outside of a deaf and dumb asylum, who is awakened at midnight on the 3d of July with a hideous din that he knows will grow worse and worse for the next twenty-four hours, can help feeling that the Declaration of Independence was a terrible mistake, and that slavery and quiet are infinitely preferable to freedom and firecrackers. This feeling is, of course, of only temporary duration; but its annual indulgence cannot but dull the patriotic instincts of the noblest men.

Why does the small-boy delight in firecrackers? Obviously because they make a noise. The Fourth of July is the one day when he is licensed to make unlimited noise, and accordingly he calls in the aid of the benighted heathen of China, who furnish him with firecrackers, and of the less excusable heathen of our own land, who are not ashamed to pander to his depraved passions with fulminate of silver and picrate of potash. While there is no hope that public opinion can never induce the small-boy to abandon his prescriptive right to make the Fourth hideous, it is possible that he might be made to achieve his noisy ambition in some other way than with the aid of explosive compounds. The thoughtful and studious small-boy is already aware that he can make noises of the most exasperating character without the aid of a particle of gunpowder. Why should we not point out to our little ones the safe and cheap instruments of uproar with which every house hold is provided, and prevail upon them to accept these in exchange for the firecracker that burns by day and the “nigger-chaser” that kindles in the night time?

The ordinary front door has enormous capabilities for noise. One small-boy can produce more noise by violently and persistently slamming it than can be produced by a whole pack of firecrackers. There is also the familiar species of dining table with swinging leaves, the rapid upsetting of which rivals in deafening results a regimental volley of musketry. Every man who has “moved” on the 1st of May is familiar with the magnificent effect in point of noise which is produced by loading a small-boy with an assortment of coal scuttles and directing him to carry them carefully down stairs. If this experiment were to be repeated say at half hourly intervals on the Fourth, and especially if a few worn out articles of tin ware were placed at the bottom of the stairs to receive the loaded boy, the crash and rattle that would ensue would far eclipse the best efforts of the largest “giant crackers.” The common domestic baby can in skilful hands be made to yield noises of great variety and penetrative power; and the ear piercing results of saw filing are so notorious, that the advantages of celebrating our nation’s birthday by a carnival of saws ought long ago to have been recognized.

Time would fail were the attempt made to give a complete list of domestic instruments of patriotic noise. Those that have been mentioned are alone sufficient to give expression to the wildest juvenile patriotism. Let us then discard the dangerous explosives sold by pyrotechnists and substitute for them the harmless front door, the innocuous dining table, and the safe but satisfactory baby and saw. What a sublime spectacle would be presented on the ensuing Fourth were the small-boys of this happy land to celebrate our national independence by the unremitting slamming of doors, the upsetting of tables, the filing of saws, and the pinching of babies. Of course the selfish and scoffing coroner will say that such a method of celebration would be wholly unworthy of the day; but we all know that what he calls his love of country is only a love of inquests, and that when he pretends that the firecrackers of pagan China are better adapted to honor the memory of Washington and Franklin than are the saws and files of Christian America, he is secretly longing for scorched corpses and shattered limbs. His business lies with contemporaneous bodies, and his profession of interest in the corpses of the men of 1776, who are now far beyond the reach of inquests, is obviously a hollow mockery.

Refuting Moses

There is no question that geology is a delightful science. It can be studied with less expense and inconvenience than any other science. Chemistry is expensive because it cannot be studied without a laboratory in which the student can blow himself up. Astronomy requires costly telescopes; mathematics are inseparable from slates, and “mumble-the-peg” cannot be mastered without a jackknife. Geology, on the other hand, is a science which any one can study by simply going out of doors and looking at the profuse strata which beneficent nature has lavished upon us. Persons who are confined by ill health to their homes can even study geology by examining the coal measures and kindling wood strata in their cellars, and there are encouraging instances of amateur geologists who have refuted Moses simply by investigating the stratification of their ash barrels.

It is, perhaps, to be regretted that the refutation of Moses is one of the imperative duties of the geologist. No man can hope to obtain any considerable reputation as a learned geologist unless at stated intervals he rises up and remarks that Moses was possibly a well meaning person, but he was grossly ignorant of the paleontology of the Mesozoic period. Whenever a new fossil is discovered, it is promptly thrown at Moses’ head, and thus, in one way or another, he is constantly and completely refuted. The friends of Moses may dislike this sort of thing, but it is apparently an inevitable result of studying strata or meddling with fossils.

A new and violent blow has just been struck at the Mosaic account of creation by the discovery of an extremely important fossil in a coffee sack at Baltimore. In the center of this sack was found the skull of a monkey. There can be no doubt as to the facts. The coffee was of the variety called Rio, and the skull was perfectly preserved. It is well that Moses died while he was yet esteemed a truthful person, and that his wife and brother have been spared this bitter, bitter blow.

Let us dwell for a little upon the meaning of this discovery as interpreted by the principles of geology. The coffee sack was 12 (say 12½) inches in diameter, and four feet in height. The skull, which lay in the middle of it, was therefore two feet below the surface. To suppose that it was violently forced into the sack after the latter was full, would be eminently unscientific. No one imagines that the fossil birds of the Old Red Sandstone, dug down into that locality through the superincumbent strata. Nothing is more universally conceded than that fossils are always found where they belong. The animals whose remains we find in the rocks of the paleozoic, the meso-Gothic, and the Syro-Phoenician strata, belong, respectively, to those several systems. The fossil monkey skull was, therefore, deposited in the coffee sack when the latter was half full, and the two feet of coffee which rested upon it was a subsequent deposit.

Now, it follows from this premise that monkeys existed during the early part of the Rio coffee period. It is the opinion of most geologists that the Rio coffee period succeeded the tertiary period, and immediately preceded the present period. Now, no tertiary monkeys have yet been found; but the Baltimore discovery shows that monkeys existed as early as the middle of the Rio coffee period, a date far earlier than any which has hitherto been assigned to them. We may feel sorry for Moses, but we cannot shut our eyes to this plain scientific fact. The monkey lived during the greater part, if not the whole, of the Rio coffee period; and yet that venerable Hebrew would have us believe that the world is only six thousand years old!

We are now in a position to inquire what is the least period of time which must have elapsed since the skull of the Baltimore monkey was the property of a live and active simian. The answer to this question must be sought by ascertaining the rate at which coffee is deposited. It is the opinion of Mr. Huxley, based upon a long and careful examination of over three hundred garbage boxes, that coffee is deposited in a ground condition at the rate of an inch in a thousand centuries, but that the deposition of unground coffee is almost infinitely slower. He has placed bags, coffee mills, and other receptacles in secluded places, and left them for months at a time, without finding the slightest traces of coffee in them. Although Huxley does not hazard a guess at the rate of deposition of unground Rio coffee, Prof. Tyndall does not hesitate to say that it is at least as slow as the rate of deposition of tomato cans. Let us suppose, as we are abundantly justified in doing, that 30,000,000 of years would be required to bring about the deposition of a stratum of tomato cans one foot thick all over the surface of the globe. An equally long period must certainly have elapsed while a foot of unground coffee was accumulating over the skull of the Baltimore monkey. We thus ascertain that the monkey in question yielded up his particular variety of ghost and became a fossil fully 30,000,000 of years ago. Probably even this enormous period of time is much less than the actual period which has elapsed since that monkey’s decease and we may consider ourselves safe in assigning to his skull the age of 50,000.000 years, besides a few odd months.

In the light of this amazing revelation, what becomes of Moses and his 6,000 years? It will hardly escape notice that he nowhere mentions Rio coffee. Obviously, this omission is due to the fact that he knew nothing of it. But if he was unacquainted with one of the most recent formations, how can we suppose that he knew anything about the elder rocks — the metamorphic and stereoscopic strata? And yet it is this man, ignorant of the plainest facts of geology, and of its very simplest strata, who boldly assumes to tell us all about the creation!

Whether the Christian religion can survive the discovery of the Baltimore monkey remains to be seen. Inasmuch as it has survived hundreds of previous refutations of Moses, it may perhaps last a few more years; but it can hardly count upon the patronage of any really scientific person. Well meaning theologians may attempt to convince us that a foot of coffee was deposited on the monkey’s skull by a boy with a scoop shovel in three minutes, but the facts of geology cannot be overthrown by such puerile sentimentalism. The theories of science are infallible, and scientific persons are incapable of error. Sooner or later the Protestant who believes in the infallible Bible, and the Roman Catholic who believes in the infallible Pope, must perceive their error and admit that Scientific Truth is the only variety of truth, and that a monkey’s skull in a sack of coffee can give more real comfort to the questioning soul than can all the creeds of the Christian world.

A profitable fork

After all that is said about industry and brains, a bold man can make a better living with the aid of his simple stomach than he can in any other way. Some years ago a Canadian soldier, who had a little “difficulty” with a rifle ball, by which the front elevation of his stomach was carried away, obtained an easy and abundant income by exhibiting the great moral spectacle of human digestion to enthusiastic medical men. In spite of his success, his example has never been followed until very recently, and the fortunate Frenchman who the other day invited the Paris Academy of Sciences to a private view of his stomach is the first and only imitator of the famous Canadian.

The Frenchman in question became a stomach exhibitor from accident rather than design. More than a year ago he undertook to imitate with a silver fork the world renowned knife swallowing feats of the eminent statesman of the West. Unfortunately, as he then supposed, he lost his hold on the handle of his fork, and instead of successfully withdrawing it from the interior of his person, as the Western statesman withdraws his skilful knife, he unintentionally and completely swallowed it.

The event created a degree of enthusiasm in medical circles which has rarely been equaled. How to deal with an abnormal development of fork in the stomach was a problem which no physician had ever been required to solve. The homoeopathists claimed to have specifics in their materia medica for acute or chronic attacks of marbles, coins, hairpins, and false teeth in the stomach, but they acknowledged that they had no remedy of which they could prescribe little enough to cure the symptoms of the fork. Moreover, their method of diagnosis dissatisfied the patient and exasperated the restaurant keeper, who was the real proprietor of the fork. They refused to entertain the idea of the absolute existence of any such entity as a stomachic fork, and asserted that what the old school physicians called the symptoms produced by the presence of a fork constituted the whole difficulty under which the patient suffered. As for the latter class of physicians, they were as much at a loss how to deal with the case as were their rivals. One doctor thought that if the man were made to swallow a pint of mercury, it would unite with the silver of the fork, and when subsequently sublimated by putting the patient in a crucible, would leave the silver in the readily accessible shape of a finely comminuted precipitate. Feasible as this plan undoubtedly was, it was vehemently opposed by the restaurant keeper, on the ground that it would ruin the fork and by the friends of the patient, on the ground that it would spoil him. These unscientific objections prevailed, and the physicians, after having vainly experimented upon the fork with blisters, vermifuge, ergot, and the exhibition of a tramp famous for producing the disappearance of silver plate, abandoned the case as one which was absolutely incurable.

But it so happened that the patient had swallowed better than he knew. After being abandoned by the physicians, the surgeons took him up, and stimulated by the agonized entreaties of the restaurant keeper, proposed to cut the patient open and thus regain the fork. By this time that unhappy man had become so much discouraged by colic that he was willing to try any remedy, no matter how unpleasant it might be. He therefore consented to have the front wall of his stomach removed, and the surgeons, having performed that feat with great hilarity and skill, rescued the long imperiled fork and restored it to its owner. Not only did the patient survive the operation, but he soon found that his stomach was worth far more to him than it had ever been. No sooner was it noised abroad that his wound had healed, leaving an opening in his abdomen, than all the physicians of Europe suddenly found out that he was a fine, genial, open-stomached fellow, whose acquaintance they were anxious to make. But the Frenchman was not to be caught by any such medical chaff. He promptly decided to undertake the profession of a showman, and to throw open his stomach for exhibition to all who might be willing to pay him a moderate fee. He has already put this project into execution, and his daily entertainments are now crowded by admiring audiences, who watch the thrilling performances of the gastric juice, and burst into thunders of applause when specimens of American pie, imported for the exhibition at immense cost, slowly yield to the indomitable digestive forces of the heroic Frenchman, and thus furnish what the audience believes to be a new demonstration of the superiority of the gallant French stomach to the sordid and perfidious stomachs of the English race.

To all those who desire to earn a living without personal exertion the story of this successful Frenchman may be commended, with the advice to go and do likewise. The tramps who are now compelled to undergo the trouble of asking for their food, have only to open their stomachs and to place them on exhibition in order to live in idleness on the best of food. They need not even incur the expense of a surgical operation. Every tramp who possesses nerve and a sharp knife can prepare himself for exhibition without delay or expense, and the world is full of charitable persons who will gladly put their knives at his disposal, in case he should have mislaid his own. Those tramps who attended the Philadelphia Exhibition, and lived on the surplus food of Centennial boardinghouse keepers, can easily surpass the most difficult feats of the French exhibitor by digesting articles which he, lacking their experience, would find as indigestible as forks. As for the good taste of the public exhibition of the human stomach, there can surely be no valid objection made to it by a community which has patronized the anatomical displays of the opera bouffe. There is a vast and fruitful field waiting to be reaped by the stomach exhibitor, and it is unfortunate that it is now too late to place in the Centennial Exhibition a few well selected American stomachs, and thus humiliate Europe by compelling a comparison between the free and vigorous stomach of the New World, which easily digests both pie and pork, and the feeble stomach of effete Europe, which is unequal to the digestion of a simple silver fork.

Vulcan

For many years ambitious astronomers have been in the habit of announcing the alleged discovery of a small planet revolving in a quiet and obscure orbit, situated within the orbit of Mercury. Their fellow astronomers have, however, unanimously declined to believe in the existence of this planet, and have scoffed at its discoverers as men who are not interested in seaside hotels scoff at the pretended discoverers of the sea serpent. In fact, the alleged planet Vulcan was looked upon very much in the light of an astronomical sea serpent. “Vulcan may possibly exist,” said the conservative astronomers, “but Professor So-and-So never saw it;” and then they would hint, with sneering astronomic smiles, that too much tea sometimes plays strange pranks with the imagination, and that an astronomer who cannot tell a planet from a fly that walks across his object glass is not the sort of man from whom any discoveries of moment need be expected. This determined hostility to Vulcan finally made it a hazardous matter for an astronomer to profess a belief in its existence. Public astronomic opinion insisted that there was quite enough planets between the earth and the sun already, and that to have this miserable little Vulcan take the first place on the list, and crowd the Earth back to the fourth place, would be little less than an outrage. Indeed, it is said that no scientific person has latterly been admitted to any astronomical society without previously renouncing Vulcan and all his phases, and professing his belief in only two inferior planets, possessing phases and the power of making transits.

But now comes M. Leverrier, the discoverer of Neptune, and confessedly a crack shot with the long range telescope, and announces that he has positively discovered Vulcan, and will before long exhibit it in the act of making a transit across the Sun. This announcement has been received in grim silence. M. Leverrier is too well known to be sneered at. The man who hunted Neptune with his nose — so to speak — following the mathematical scent of that shy planet till he flushed it in the vicinity of Uranus and brought it down with his unerring telescope, cannot be accused of confounding accidental flies with actual planets. When he firmly asserts that he has not only discovered Vulcan, but has calculated its elements, and has arranged a transit especially for its exhibition to doubting astronomers, there is an end to all discussion. Vulcan exists, and its existence can no longer be denied or ignored. The Earth must henceforth be ranked as the fourth planet from the sun, and the children in the public schools who have been taught to recite their planets after the old fashioned order, must be required to commit Vulcan to memory and insert it in its proper place.

That Vulcan is an extremely small planet there is every reason to believe. Moreover, it must be excessively hot, and its inhabitants ought to be very thankful that its day is so ridiculously short. Precisely what is the length of a Vulcanic day M. Leverrier has not yet announced, but in all probability it cannot be more than four hours. If its working men have obtained the passage of an eight minute law, and are careful not to overheat themselves by undue activity, they can doubtless accomplish as much in the course of a day’s work as does the earthly plumber, and with little more fatigue. On the other hand, the life of a Vulcanic editor, who has to issue a morning paper every four hours, must be a terribly laborious one, and as for the editor of a Vulcanic evening paper he can hardly find time to write the formula, “the news of the morning papers was substantially anticipated by our fourth edition of yesterday,” before he is required to prepare a powerful and convincing list of “hotel arrivals” for the first edition of next day’s paper. There is, however, one great advantage which the inhabitants of Vulcan have over the Tellurians. The Fourth of July, on that happy planet, lasts only eight hours, and a Vulcanite can make a day’s visit to a Centennial Exhibition without more than four hours of acute suffering. Still, even as to these matters, the brevity of Vulcanic time has its discouraging features. The Fourth of July must return with maddening rapidity, and the Vulcanites must be scourged with Centennial Exhibitions at least four times as often as the inhabitants of any part of our slower and more considerate planet.

In spite of the unreasonable opposition which astronomers have shown to the discovery of Vulcan, that event ought to fill them with joy, and to bring a corresponding sadness upon the unscientific part of mankind. Hitherto, Venus and Mercury have been the only planets which had the habit of making periodical transits across the disc of the Sun. Mercury has rather overdone the matter, and made its transits so frequently that the astronomers have lacked the assurance to pretend to take any exceptional interest in them. The infrequent transits of Venus, on the contrary, have been scattered along at such wide intervals that it was possible to assume an immense amount of apparent enthusiasm concerning them. Thus, whenever a transit of Venus was about to occur, astronomers who wanted to visit all sorts of out-of-the-way places would inform their Government with every appearance of sobriety, that unless they were sent in a man-of-war, with vast quantities of telescopes and cigars to Kerguelen’s Land, or Japan, or Mount Chimborazo, the transit could not be properly observed, and they would decline to hold themselves responsible for the consequences. By this means scores of fortunate — and would that we could say scrupulous! — astronomers, have made foreign tours of great interest, and have improved their minds with poker and seven-up during sea voyages of enormous length.

Now, it is evident that the first half dozen transits of the entirely new planet will be more interesting; and important than the hackneyed transits of Venus, and that astronomers all over the world will promptly urge this view of the matter upon their respective Governments. Of course, they will demand to be taken on free astronomical picnic excursions to remote regions where the climate is pleasant and the scenery is attractive, whence they will ultimately return with notebooks full of abstruse calculations as to the comparative frequency of the occurrence of “flushes” and “fulls,” which they will palm off upon the Smithsonian Regents as astronomical tables of vast learning and value. Thus the discovery of Vulcan, leading, as it undoubtedly will, to a series of delightful scientific expeditions, ought to be warmly welcomed by all astronomers of a social turn of mind, and ought to awaken the gravest apprehensions among the friends of economy and retrenchment in public expenses.

Underground classics

It is by no means certain that digging for ancient statues and vases is not more profitable than digging for gold. The German government is sinking shafts and driving tunnels at Olympia, and has already struck a rich marble “pocket,” in which has been found the identical statue of Victory mentioned by Pausanias! That this sort of mining has been so long neglected is due to the failure of fortune hunters to perceive the mercantile value of antiquarian remains. Let it only be thoroughly understood that Priam’s umbrella, or a canceled ticket of admission to an Olympian matinee, can be sold at a large price, and we shall see scores of enterprising speculators forming stock companies for antiquarian mining. So long as a statue or a vase or a hair pin can be proved to be a thousand or two years old, it is easily salable, even though it is not marked with its owner’s name. Schliemann’s firm belief that his mine is situated on the site of Troy, and that every earring which he finds belonged to Helen, and every pair of spectacles or slippers to Priam, is by no means commonly shared by antiquarians. Still the extreme age of his interesting collection is incontestable, and its monetary value is accordingly very great.

If digging for antiquities becomes, as it probably will become, an extensive business, we shall need some new theory to account for the enormous deposit of valuable objects in the alluvium of classic countries. How does it happen that the modern towns of Italy and Greece and Asia Minor rest on strata so prolific in statues and vases? It is all very well to say that the slow accumulation of earth has gradually covered thousands of bulky and valuable articles from sight and memory. No such process is going on in our day. Neglected as the streets of New York have been, no one can believe for a moment that the public would quietly permit mud to gather in Union square to such an extent as to gradually bury the statues of Washington and Lincoln, and to overwhelm scores of baby carriages and velocipedes in the neighborhood of the fountain. If such a state of things was in the least degree to be apprehended, we should either clear away the mud, or remove the statues and baby carriages. Neither are we in the habit of dropping valuable vases and dressing cases in the street, and permitting them to lie there until they are hidden under the gathering dirt. Yet we are asked to believe that such were the manners and customs of ancients. Greek and Asiatic communities are supposed to have left their streets absolutely unswept, and to have moved into the upper stories of their houses when the surface soil reached up to the second floor windows. So far as Troy is concerned, Schliemann tells us that he found four cities one resting upon another. Are we, then, to believe that as the streets of one city gradually became choked up by mud and dirt, the Trojans proceeded to build another on the roofs of the first? Troy was undoubtedly a windy place, but it is asking rather too much to demand that we should believe that all the loose earth of the Trojan plain came and heaped itself up in the Trojan streets.

In like manner it is difficult to believe that the Cypriot or the Roman was accustomed to take his walks abroad with his pockets full of earthenware and iron pots and to drop them all along the streets. Even if we grant so improbable a theory, where were the small-boys of the period? Is it supposable that they would permit a beautiful vase to lie for months in the middle of the street without smashing it into small pieces? Could they have resisted the temptation to tie ownerless pots and pans to the tails of classic dogs? To suppose that the ancients strewed valuable and fragile articles of household furniture in the street is wild enough, but it would be still wilder to suppose that the contemporary boy left them unsmashed to be exhumed by delighted and puzzled posterity.

Evidently the ordinary theory, that in ancient times everybody dropped everything, and the mud came and covered it up, does not meet the question which the successful mining operations at Troy and Olympia have brought prominently before us. There is now an opportunity for persons addicted to the composition of ingenious theories to account in some new manner for the marble, porcelain, and iron pot strata of the Mediterranean countries. There are learned geologists who have imagined that gold is deposited in the crevices of quartz by chemical action, and that thus the California gold mines grew and may still be growing. Those who accept this theory might not find a great deal of difficulty in supposing that the deposits of wine jars and statues of Victory have also been due to chemical action. It is a solemn thought that in the silent laboratory of nature, the formation of tin pans and paper collars may now be in progress, and that those interesting objects are being stealthily inserted into the rifts of rock and earth twenty feet below the foundations of New York. There are, however, almost as many objections to this theory of chemical deposition as there are to that of the unusual prevalence of the habit of dropping things among the ancients, and before adopting either we had better wait for a more satisfactory explanation.

A converted philosopher

So many spiritual mediums have recently been detected in cheating, and publicly exposed, that the ghostly cause has seriously suffered. Of course, those who originally believed in Flint’s teapot and Slade’s slate will probably hold fast to their fantastic faith, but unless those mediums repair their damaged professional reputations, the number of future proselytes to Spiritualism will be extremely small.

In spite, however, of the bad repute into which spirits have fallen, a courageous German philosopher has just come to their aid. Herr Hellenbach a citizen of Vienna, who has for years enjoyed the local reputation of holding vaguer views as to the unconditioned and the unknowable than any other philosopher has ventured to hold, has written a book in which he sets forth the evidence which has convinced him of the truth of Spiritualism, and made him conscious that he has an immortal soul. This evidence is of the most conclusive and delightful character, and Herr Hellenbach is so perfectly satisfied with it that he prefers it to the vaguest theories and the best tobacco with which German philosophy is acquainted.

Of course, there was a “medium” concerned in the conversion of Herr Hellenbach. Fortunately for him, the medium was not a tiresome slate writer, or an elderly priest of the sacred teapot, but a young and personally handsome American woman. This medium, whose name was Lottie Fowler, went from London to Vienna expressly to convert the Viennese philosopher, and the evidence which she produced was as remarkable as it was convincing

Having invited two or three philosophical friends to be present and to see fair play, Herr Hellenbach tied the medium in a chair in the middle of a room, and placed over her head what he calls a garment, but what was evidently a meal bag, which reached nearly to her feet. The devoted investigator then sat down at her feet, with his “back turned in such a way” that the back of his head rested on her knees. It is needless to say that Mrs. Hellenbach was not present, and it is to be presumed that the investigator felt that he would trust to, the discretion of those of his friends who were present. Still, there is no doubt that Herr Hellenbach has acted rashly in publishing so minute a description of his method of investigation. He may rest assured that sooner or later it will come to the knowledge of his wife, who will thereupon convince him that, though his soul may be immortal, his hair is certainly mortal, besides being inserted much too loosely to bear any severe and prolonged strain.

Having placed himself in the pleasant, but indiscreet, position above described, Herr Hellenbach immediately, and to his great surprise, began to experience novel sensations. Among them was, as he asserts, a “sensation as if somebody was running his finger nails from the nape of my neck up to the part in my hair.” This immediately convinced him that there is another world, inhabited, to some extent, by the spirits of just barbers; and it may be presumed that, to those who find the testimony of St. Paul unworthy of attention, this overwhelming evidence will be entirely conclusive. Another sensation was that of “two strong, and, once, of four delicate fingers,” which touched Herr Hellenbach’s temples. After this he could no longer doubt that he had an immortal soul, and so delighted was he with the clearness and force of the evidence that he “spoke out loudly, and in vain desired its repetition.” He does not say whether the touch of the two strong or the four delicate fingers was most agreeable to him, but it is probable that he would have been contented with either. The spirits, however, not only declined to gratify him, but openly resented his attempt to dictate to them. “The third feeling,” says Herr Hellenbach with mingled sadness and joy, “was a quite common and unpleasant one on the top of my head.” He does not tell us whether it reminded him more of a poker than of a broom handle, but there is no doubt that for a moment the terrible idea flashed upon him that Mrs. Hellenbach had swiftly entered the room, and was expressing in “a common and unpleasant” way her opinion of her husband’s method of investigating spiritual phenomena. Nevertheless, his fears were unfounded. The invisible poker or broom handle was wielded solely by spiritual hands, and with the double object of warning him that he had been wanting in courtesy in sitting up and howling for more “delicate fingers,” and that there is a Great First Cause. Naturally, he was strongly convinced of both of these great truths. An elderly and inactive philosopher can be convinced of almost anything by banging him over the head in a dark room, where there are no policemen within call. Herr Hellenbach promptly yielded to the unanswerable argument of the spirits, and he went forth from that seance a confirmed Spiritualist, buoyed up by the hope of meeting accomplished barbers in the future world, though, perhaps, a little saddened at the thought that, even after this life, the poker and the broomstick do not wholly cease from troubling.

The results of Hellenbach’s investigations are so completely satisfactorily, that persons who are uncertain whether they have or have not immortal souls have only to read the record of his experience to have their doubts dispelled. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon them, however, that it is unnecessary for them to repeat the philosopher’s experiments by personally leaning their heads on some attractive medium’s lap, and waiting for novel sensations in their hair. Let them be contented with what Herr Hellenbach has done in their behalf, and not rashly seek superfluous evidence at the risk of incurring the domestic difficulties which will sooner or later overtake that devoted investigator.

Forged fossils

Every one remembers the Cardiff giant, and the success which that fraudulent fossil achieved before its true character was fully exposed. It now appears that the alleged print of a human foot, which was said to have been recently discovered on a slab of Connecticut sandstone, is merely another attempt to palm off a forged fossil upon a confiding community. Not only does the print of the foot furnish intrinsic evidence that it was made by the foot of a modern Connecticut farmer, but the slab itself proves to be a lump of artificial stone. The forger first made his slab and then he put his foot in it. If he had not committed the rash mistake of using artificial stone, his deceit might have succeeded, and geologists might have accepted it as a final and fatal blow to Moses and his cosmogony.

These two instances of attempted fraud in the manufacture of fossils ought to call our attention to the fact that we are wholly at the mercy of the geologists in respect to fossils. Though the fraudulent character of the Cardiff giant and the Connecticut footprint has been discovered, how can we tell how many equally wicked forgeries have escaped detection? The geologists have the whole matter in their own hands, and if they choose to show us the handle of a tertiary toothbrush and call it the tusk of a Pliocene rhinoceros, we have no means of refuting their assertion. They go up and down over the surface of the earth with their hammers and pickaxes hunting for fossils, and finding them in quantities so enormous as to necessarily awaken the suspicions of skeptical minds. They can boast that they know just where to dig for fossils, and will confidently assure a man, inside of whose house they have never ventured, that his back cellar is full of the remains of megalosaurians. If they would be satisfied to exhibit only the complete skeletons of extinct animals, there would be some ground for accepting their assertions in regard to the preposterous beasts which they assure us existed in the dawn of the world’s history; but when they show us a handful of teeth, or an odd hoof, and insist that these relics form part of a lizard thirty-two hands high, and decorated with green wings and sky blue proboscis, there is a tremendous strain on our credulity. The effrontery with which they thus request us to admit gigantic animals on the mere authority of a few inches of nondescript bone is really astonishing. It is said of Cuvier that if you gave him a single thigh bone, he would promptly construct, upon this flimsy basis, forty-seven distinct and entertaining fossil animals. Of course this showed his ingenuity, but it also showed that paleontology affords a magnificent field for persons with a talent for constructing extinct beasts, birds, and reptiles.

No one doubts that fossils exist, and that very many of the fossils that are exhibited in our museums are genuine. The truth is, however, that the public is not in a position to discriminate between true and forged fossils, and is hence at the mercy of every unprincipled geologist. If, at the period when communication with China was extremely rare, some scientific person had obtained possession of one of those curious Chinese bottles containing a wooden ball much larger than the neck of the bottle, and that scientific person had called his strange toy a fossil, and had calculated that 3,000,000 of years must have elapsed while the glass bottle was slowly depositing itself around the ball, how could he have been satisfactorily convicted of imposing upon the public? Now, geologists are constantly finding caverns in which are deposited the bones of alleged paleolithic men. They inform us that the paleolithic man lived some 70,611 years ago, and that he usually carried a bushel of flints in his pocket, and never devoured a shoulder of mutton without subsequently engraving some amusing pictures on the clean picked bone. How does the public know that the alleged bones of the paleolithic men are anything more than the remains of a scientific picnic, or that the accompanying flints were not placed by the scientific men themselves where they would do the most good? We have to accept all these things on the bare word of persons notoriously interested in the trade in fossils, and it would be difficult to show that we have any security whatever against paleontological frauds.

The Cardiff giant was skilfully made, and except that it was of gigantic size, there was nothing absolutely incredible in its appearance. On the other hand, skilful paleontologists have frequently made the most elaborate and impossible beasts out of plaster of Paris, and then required us to believe that these figures were exact representations of extinct animals. We know that the Cardiff giant was an imposture, but we should be called all sorts of names if we refused to believe in Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins’ improved lizards and patent combined fish and serpent animals. Such animals may have existed in periods when the universe was in a chronic state of delirium tremens, but it certainly requires a good deal of faith to believe in them. And yet the very scientific person who scoffs at faith and professes to trust only to reason will thrust a shin bone six inches in length before the face of the public and remark that the man who does not believe that the bone is an icthyosaurus seventy five feet long and eighteen feet wide is a bigoted foe of science and the victim of the transparent falsehoods of John Milton. If we are to feel justified in believing in paleontology, we must be protected against forged fossils. We must not be left in a position where the footprints of a Connecticut deacon can be palmed off as the tracks of an extinct bird, or where the petrified ear of a “greenback” politician can be put in a museum and labeled “trunk of an extinct elephant.” All genuine fossils should be stamped by the Government, and all false fossils should be destroyed and their authors condemned to hard labor in geological quarries. We shall then be able to put reasonable confidence in the “records of the rocks,” and be ready to investigate the origin and history of the paleolithic man.

The theoretical barber

Almost every intelligent man is familiar with the story of Leverrier’s discovery of Neptune. We picture to ourselves the astronomer peering through his telescope and noticing Uranus in the act of staggering along its orbit with as many perturbations as a Ward politician returning from a ratification meeting is accustomed to exhibit. We can imagine how Leverrier sprang up when the thought suddenly came into his mind that some unknown and dissolute planet must have led Uranus astray, and how enthusiastically he seized his slate and began to do those tremendous sums in “double entry,” “compound interest,” and other abstruse departments of arithmetic which finally gave him the clue to the position of the suspected planetary disturber. Undoubtedly, he deserves great credit for his discovery; but, after all, it was one which astronomers ought never to have had any difficulty in making; and what was really the most curious feature of the affair was the failure of everybody but Leverrier and Adams to perceive that disturbance in the orbit of a planet postulated the existence of a disturber. It is not, however, among astronomers only that we find a tendency to ignore truths which are taught by implication. Not a single anthropologist has yet perceived that the existence of a “practical barber” implies the existence of a “theoretical barber,” and the social Leverrier who shall calculate the elements and discover the location of the “theoretical barber” has not yet made his appearance.

The sign of the “Practical Barber” is one which constantly meets the eye in certain parts of the city, and which conveys a very well understood meaning. We all know that a practical barber is a person of vast and oppressive conversational powers, who condescends to shave the beards and cut the hair of the public in order to obtain an audience. But what is the theoretical barber? Obviously, he is one who has mastered the rules of shaving, shearing, and conversation, but who does not handle the material razor or scissors. He is the professor of the art which the practical barber practices; the instructor of the innumerable practical barbers with whom the deafened public is sadly familiar.

No naturalist has hitherto called attention to the fact that the practical barber is always full grown, and that on his first appearance before the public he is fully panoplied with shears and razors, and sufficiently skilful in their use. The spectacle of an inexperienced barber fleshing his murderous razor in the cheek of his first customer is never seen. It is true that in all barbers’ shops there is an obtrusive small-boy, who brings the shaven customer some one else’s hat and makes a shallow pretense of brushing his coat. This small-boy, however, is evidently not an inchoate practical barber, for he never meddles with razor or scissors, and never makes the slightest allusion to the virtues of his employer’s “tonic.” If we are content to accept the evidence of our eyes we must believe that barbers’ apprentices do not exist, but that the practical barber springs into being full grown and endowed with a complete mastery of all branches of his art.

Reason teaches us that this cannot be the case. The practical barber must learn his duties by careful study and long practice. There must have been a period in the early life of the most accomplished barber when his conversation was not more tedious than that of other men, and when he was utterly incapable of shaving a victim without cutting him up into slices. There is no royal road to shaving or hair cutting; no shortcut by which the ambitious student may suddenly become proficient in shampooing and in forcing bottles of undesirable “tonic” upon weak minded men. We cannot see the cheeks which the barber student has slashed, and we know not where the unhappy beings upon whom he tries his ‘prentice tongue while learning the art of professional conversation are concealed; but no reasoning man can doubt that somewhere in the vast city the practical barbers who are to shave us three or four years hence, are secretly learning their trade, and that a frightful number of unhappy men must daily be cut to pieces and talked to death in the operating room of the occult barber’s college. Nothing is more certain than that a terrible mortality must result from the early efforts of the inexperienced shaver, and it will at once occur to every thoughtful man that we have here an explanation of the frequency with which dead bodies “much mutilated about the face,” are found floating in the river.

It being thus demonstrated that the practical barber learns his art in secret and by assiduous practice, and that the very existence of the practical barber postulates the existence of the theoretical barber, we are ready to draw the inevitable conclusion that the latter is the teacher of the former. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, we have among us barbers’ normal schools, presided over by accomplished theoretical barbers, and attended by scores of hard working students. In these schools classes in shaving, hair cutting, and conversation are furnished with subjects, upon which they are required to operate. How these subjects are procured — whether they are desperate men who voluntarily submit to torture for the sake of large wages, or whether they are quietly kidnapped by bold beard snatchers — we can only conjecture; but it is evident that the frequency with which the throats of subjects are fatally cut by new students fully accounts for the secrecy with which the schools are conducted and the retirement in which the theoretical barbers live. They cannot, however, successfully screen themselves from the investigations of inductive reasoning. As soon as Leverrier perceived that the perturbations of Uranus implied the existence of Neptune, the discovery of the latter’s hiding place was inevitable; and now that it has been demonstrated that theoretical barbers exist, it cannot be long before they are dragged into light, and their schools of sanguinary shaving and inhuman conversation broken up and suppressed in the interests of humanity.

A curious disease

Now that certain medical men have shown, to their own satisfaction, that Spiritualism is a disease of which peripatetic furniture, discordant guitar playing, and ungrammatical revelations are the symptoms, it is time that they should carefully investigate that curious nervous disorder peculiar to women, which is vulgarly called “dress reform,” and which is characterized by an abnormal and unconquerable thirst for trousers.

The disease in question does not, like the cholera, originate where masses of people are congregated; but it nevertheless assumes its most virulent type at the so-called conventions or congresses where those who, already suffering from it, are gathered together. It is certainly neither contagious nor infectious, and one who is suffering from dress reform of the most acute type, and who has actually gratified her strange thirst for trousers by visibly wearing them, can be touched by healthy women without the least danger that the disease will be communicated. The presence of one patient, however, perceptibly injures another; and in this respect the disease betrays its near relationship to hysteria. If a woman in whom the desire for trousers is latent is brought into the presence of one who has reached that miserable condition in which the patient incessantly calls for the coveted garment, the former will speedily develop the same symptoms as the latter. It is for this reason that physicians should discourage the assembling of dress reform conventions; and whenever it is announced that such a convention is to be held, the profession should unite in an address to the local sanitary authorities, setting forth the physiological objections to the proposed meeting.

The disease is comparatively a new one. Sporadic cases have undoubtedly occurred ever since trousers and women became contemporaneous, but dress reform did not become sufficiently common to attract attention until some twenty-five years ago. As a rule, women are exempt from its ravages until after they have reached at least the period of middle life, and the greater proportion of its victims are above the age of forty. It was formerly claimed that no woman was in danger of contracting the disease who was well supplied with adipose tissue. This theory, however, has been exploded; for although an extreme degree of emaciation, together with an unusual development of the osseous system, undoubtedly invite the approach of the disease, there are cases on record in which women conspicuous for fatness have suddenly developed the typical craving for trousers which always accompanies an attack of dress reform. It is remarkable that feeble, delicate, or timid women are never thus attacked. The disease uniformly fastens upon women of exceptional muscular strength, and upon those of extraordinary conversational powers. So well established is this fact, especially among the people of our Western States, that when a woman displays unusual vigor in wielding stove lids, or in otherwise convincing her husband of his faults, her acquaintances immediately recognize her as one who may be expected at any moment to clamor for trousers.

Many of those who have studied this curious disease believe that its origin must be sought in the melancholy which often accompanies any marked disturbance of the nervous system. The patient who suffers from this melancholy gradually becomes convinced that it is her duty to disfigure herself, and thus mortify the flesh. This she seeks to accomplish by arraying herself in trousers, and by exhibiting herself thus arrayed in public. Facts, however, are at variance with this theory. While there is no question as to the fact that trousers render the patient altogether hideous, and that no woman in a normal state of mind could exhibit herself thus clothed without undergoing acute anguish, it is doubtful if the victim of dress reform is actuated by any motive of self sacrifice. From the demeanor of a dress reform patient when occupying the platform of a convention it is plainly evident to all unprejudiced minds that she is in a condition of ecstatic happiness. Further investigation will probably show that the disease is simply hysteria attended by prolonged, and, in most cases, permanent mental hallucination. The patient becomes a prey to the delusion that health, beauty, and happiness are inseparable from trousers, and she therefore puts them on with unaffected delight, and wears them with a firm belief that she is exciting the envy and admiration of the world.

If this is true, the proper method of treatment ought not to be a difficult problem. The patient’s obscure hysteria should first be treated, and it is very possible that when this baffling disease is entirely overcome, the mental hallucination will disappear. If it does not so disappear, the physician should then try the usual remedies in use at the best conducted hospitals for the insane. It is quite possible that the experiment of satiating the patient with trousers might prove successful. Were she to be dressed exclusively in trousers, and compelled to live in a room where the walls, the windows, and the floor should be covered with trousers of the brightest patterns, it is by no means improbable that after a brief period she would acquire a loathing for that pervading garment, and, recovering her mental balance, would beg for the skirts of sanity and the petticoats of her earlier and happier days.

At all events, the disease is not incurable. Mrs. Bloomer, who was one of its earliest victims, and who suffered from it to a degree that excited the horror of all beholders, was long ago thoroughly and permanently cured. What treatment was pursued in her case is not generally known, but the fact that it was successful ought to encourage the friends of all those who are now similarly afflicted. Physicians need to study the disease more thoroughly than they have hitherto done, and were they to take this course, there is abundant reason to hope that they would soon discover the proper method of treatment, and would banish from the community one of the most painful and terrible diseases to which women are now subject.

Mrs. Arnold’s rig

Mrs. Eliza M. Arnold, of Houston, Texas, has invented and patented an improvement in rigging ladies of any size, which greatly simplifies the task of setting or furling an umbrella. The new invention is called an “umbrella supporter,” and next to the device of double topsail yards it is probably the most important improvement in rigging which has been made during the last half century. Mrs. Arnold’s description of the umbrella supporter is extremely interesting. Two curved rods made to fit upon what the inventor calls “the forward side” of a woman or girl, of any age, are fastened at the lower ends to the belt of the wearer, and, passing over her shoulders, unite behind the neck to form a socket into which the foot of an umbrella is stepped. The socket resembles in appearance the truss of a ship’s main yard, with the important exception that it is made of steel twisted into spiral springs, so that free lateral motion may be given to the umbrella. The rods are furnished with back stays leading to the arms and to what Mrs. Arnold would probably call the “backward side” of the wearer, and when these are set up taut there is no danger that the rods will be carried away by a sudden squall. The umbrella is of course furnished with halyards and brails, so that it can be easily set or taken in, and it is trimmed to suit the direction of the wind or of the sun’s rays by means of braces. It is claimed that the umbrella can be handled with extreme ease, and that any woman rigged in accordance with Mrs. Arnold’s plan is exempt from the necessity of shipping an able gentleman to carry her umbrella whenever she takes her walks abroad.

Excellent as this invention appears to the reader of Mrs. Arnold’s eloquent description, it is possible that in practice it will be found to have its weak points. It is noticeable that no means of sending the umbrella down on deck in case of a heavy gale are provided. Now, it is conceivable that a lady rigged with the Arnold umbrella may meet with a hurricane so fierce that prudence will dictate the immediate sending down of the umbrella and all its gear. Of course this could be done with the aid of sufficient force. A mast rope could be made fast to the upper part of the umbrella; the lower part could be cast loose from the truss; and by judiciously lowering away the mast rope, hauling in on the tripping line, and easing away the braces, the umbrella might be safely landed on deck. But at least five men would be needed to accomplish this task. One would have to go aloft, and having made fast the mast rope, would then have to cut the truss lashings, and stand by to keep the umbrella from chafing against the chignon or fouling the bonnet streamers. Another would have to be stationed at the mast rope and still another at the tripping line, while each brace would need the exclusive attention of a careful and competent hand. Now, the very object of Mrs. Arnold’s device is to enable a lady to carry an umbrella without the aid of a single man or boy. Is it probable that when the necessity of sending down the umbrella arrives, no less than five men will be within call and ready to undertake the job? Moreover, how is a man to reach the top of the umbrella in order to bend on his mast rope? To go aloft on a light sparred young lady in the midst of a hurricane is an exploit from which the hardiest mariner would shrink, and which would require the agility of a monkey combined with the strength of a man and the lightness of a ten year old boy.

Another serious objection to the Arnold rig is the danger which will result from careless or ignorant handling of the umbrella. Of course, in fair weather and with a breeze astern or on the quarter, the most inexperienced young lady could safely run before the wind without experiencing any difficulty. But suppose she is standing up the east side of Fifth Avenue, close hauled, and with a fresh breeze on the port bow, and suddenly decides to change her course and to stand over to the west pavement. Instead of tacking, the inexperienced girl would be very apt to merely put her helm hard down, and being thus caught aback, would drift helplessly and rapidly against the nearest ash barrel or lamp post. If the Arnold rig should be universally adopted, this melancholy spectacle would be of daily occurrence, and the services of the police as wreckers would be in constant demand.

Again, the feminine ignorance of the rule of the road would lead to constant and dangerous collision. How can two young ladies, beating up Broadway under a heavy press of umbrella, and nearing one another upon opposite tacks, be expected to remember that the one with the wind on her starboard side has the right of way over the other? And what fashionable woman going large, with everything set, would be willing to give way to a close hauled market woman. The more the new invention is studied in regard to its dangers when managed by inexperienced or careless women, the more objectionable does it appear. There is no doubt that it is ingenious, that it saves labor, and that, with careful management, it would be of very great value. It is equally clear that it would be a source of great danger except in experienced hands, and that if brought into general use it would lead to constant and frequently fatal disasters.

A new point for Darwinians

Recently the workmen in one of the Californian mines struck a stream of water at the depth of 2,200 feet. It rose with great rapidity until it reached the height of 400 feet, when the pumps prevailed upon it to pause. Whether it can be further induced to vacate the mine and permit the workmen to resume their labors remains to be seen.

A flooded mine is unfortunately no novelty, but the flooding of this particular mine has led to a discovery of vast importance to scientific persons and fishmongers. The water is not of that cool and delightful quality so pleasing to the temperance lecturer. No temperance song has yet been written which could be sung in its praise with the least propriety, for it is not merely warm, but positively hot. It is admirably adapted for the composition of the sinful beverage with which the Californian miner clarifies his vision so that he can perceive the spiritual snakes that are invisible to ordinary eyes; but except in connection with whiskey, sugar, and lemon peel it is manifestly unfit for thirsty men. In this hot water were, nevertheless, found quantities of fish of an entirely new pattern. Like the fish of the Mammoth Cave, they are destitute of eyes, but unlike all previous fish, they can live only in hot water. When the experiment of placing them in cold water was tried, they immediately showed symptoms of suffering from cold fins and tails, and presently died in great anguish. Of course, their color was a bright red, in consequence of the prolonged boiling which they had undergone, and it is probable that they were eaten on the spot by the hungry miners.

The existence of fish in hot water will bring joy to the heart of the believer in natural selection. It is a proof that when nature slowly and by almost imperceptible degrees heats the water in a subterranean fish pond, the fishes which insist upon cold water will gradually die off, while others who like a somewhat higher temperature will survive. In time, this survival of the hottest will result in the production of fishes which regard hot water as their natural element. This is evidently what has taken place in California. An entirely new species of fish has been developed, and the discovery of the Cyprinus Brooklynensis — as it is understood that the new hot water fish is to be appropriately called — furnishes a strong argument in support of the theory of development by aid of natural selection.

The importance of this discovery to fishmongers, keepers of restaurants, and housekeepers generally can hardly be over estimated. If boiled fish can be caught, all the trouble now required in cooking raw fish will be avoided, and if it is possible to develop a race of fishes that can live in boiling water, it is equally possible to develop a breed of hot water lobsters, or clams, or oysters. All that would be necessary would be a close imitation of the processes of nature. If we stock a pool of water with lobsters, and slowly increase its temperature so as to reach the boiling point, in the course of a hundred years we shall find the then surviving lobsters crawling around in a beautifully boiled state and requiring nothing but sauce to fit them for immediate eating. Whether it would be possible to develop a race of roast turkeys by breeding the birds in a hot house, in which the temperature should be increased say one degree every six months, may be doubted, since at a high temperature eggs would be hatched with such rapidity as to seriously inconvenience a hen turkey of slow and methodical habits. Still, the existence of living roast turkeys does not seem much more improbable than the existence of living fish in a boiled state seemed a week ago; and the day may yet come when our poultry can be placed on the table without undergoing the fearful risk of cooking at the hands of a newly imported Hibernian, and our fish can be eaten on the banks of their native caldron, without the aid of a frying pan or a gridiron.

There is but one thing which casts the slightest shade of doubt upon the possibility of the development of boiled fish. The California miners insist that they have seen the hot water fish of the flooded mine with their own eyes, and we cannot doubt that they make the assertion in good faith. Still, it would be interesting to know if they drank any of the hot water, in a properly medicated state, before catching the fish. If so, there is a possibility that the vision of boiled fish was only a delusion of the imagination. It is currently reported in alcoholic circles that the Californian miner often sees in his uneasy dreams whole menageries of curious animals, including not only those already known to naturalists, but other and hitherto unclassified beasts, birds, and reptiles of the most eccentric conformation and undesirable habits. If we are to class the boiled fish of the Red Dog Mine with the insubstantial fauna of California dreams, there is an end of the exultation with which Darwinians and lovers of fish diet have received the story of the flooded mine. Let us, however, hope for better things, and cling to the belief that the Cyprhius Brooklynensis is a blessed and boiled reality, until the contrary is conclusively shown.

The early American giant

The conduct of the prehistoric races of this continent, in omitting to leave any record which could establish their origin and customs, was extremely thoughtless. They managed such things vastly better in Europe. When the cave dwellers grew tired of their subterranean existence and decided to die, they had some consideration for those who were to come after them. They selected specimens of the bones of all the animals of the period, and drew portraits of themselves on the handles of their toothbrushes, and then laid down to die surrounded by these mute witnesses of their fondness for art and animals. Thus, when the British explorer finds a cave dweller’s skeleton, with its accompanying cabinet of curiosities, he is at once enabled to assert that the cave dwellers were contemporary with bears and toothbrushes, and has the great satisfaction of knowing that as soon as he can discover the date at which the cave bear flourished in the British Islands, he will know the date at which the cave dweller lived. In North America, on the contrary, the earliest residents were sublimely selfish, and cared nothing whatever for the archaeological feelings of subsequent generations. When a mound builder died, he neither collected any extraneous bones, nor took the slightest care of his own. Had he requested his surviving friends to look upon his corpse in the light of an antiquarian cornerstone, and to bury with it a box containing the newspapers and coins of the period, there would be some pleasure in digging him up. Or if he had simply directed that his name and occupation should be inexpensively stenciled on one of his largest bones, he could have saved us a great deal of unprofitable discussion as to his real character. But he did nothing of the sort; and in consequence when we now find his skeleton, it is useless even to the coroner, and is entirely indistinguishable from the ordinary Indian skeleton.

The public will be unpleasantly reminded of this callous indifference to the future on the part of prehistoric Americans by the recent discovery of three unusually fine skeletons in Kentucky. A Louisville paper asserts that two men lately undertook to explore a cave which they accidentally discovered not far from, that city. The entrance to the cave was small, but the explorers soon found themselves in a magnificent apartment, richly furnished with the most expensive and fashionable stalactites. In a corner of this hall stood a large stone family vault, which the two men promptly pried open. In it were found three skeletons, each nearly nine feet in height. The skeletons appear to have somewhat frightened the young men, for, on seeing so extensive a collection of bones, they immediately dropped their torch, and subsequently wandered in darkness for thirty-six hours before they found their way back to daylight and soda water.

Now, it is evident that these gigantic skeletons belonged to men very different from the men of the present day. A skeleton eight feet and ten inches in height would measure fully nine feet when dressed in even a thin suit of flesh. The tallest nine foot giant of a traveling circus is rarely more than six feet four inches high in private life and without his boots, and even giants of this quality are scarce and dear. The three genuine nine foot men of Kentucky must have belonged to a race that is now entirely extinct, and hence it would be a matter of very great interest if we could learn who and what they were.

It would be difficult to excuse the indifference of these giants to our rational curiosity. They could afford to be buried in a gorgeous family vault, and hence could have easily afforded to decorate the vault with a plain and inexpensive door plate. They could afford to pay the cost of having their heavy bodies carried a long distance into the cave before they were deposited in the vault, and it is reasonably certain that they did not obtain possession of so eligible a burial place without paying a large price to the local cemetery company. And yet they did not take the trouble to furnish us with the slightest clue to their identity. Not only did they omit to put a door plate on their vault, but they failed to deposit a visiting card, or a worthless certificate of petroleum stock, or anything whatever bearing the name of either of them, in the tomb. Not so much as a boot or a paper collar, a gilt sleeve button or a cheap jackknife, was buried with them. When we contrast this selfish parsimony with the generous forethought of the cave dweller who died with a bear’s skull in one hand, a rhinoceros’ horn in the other, and with his pockets stuffed full of engraved toothbrush handles, merely in order to please remote posterity, we can only blush for the selfish want of public spirit of the early American giant.

Of course, the tale of the two young Kentuckian explorers needs confirmation. They may have made their alleged discovery while in an advanced state of hot whiskey, or they may have manufactured their skeletons before finding them, with the view to subsequent exhibitions. Whole panoramas of eccentric skeletons have frequently been seen in Kentucky and elsewhere, by men who have looked too frequently upon the whiskey when it is hot and flavored with sugar and lemon peel; and the story of the Cardiff Giant reminds us that the manufacture of prehistoric men has already been attempted. Still, even if the Early American Giant proves to be a fact, we have no reason to hope that we shall ever find out what manner of man he was. It is only too evident that he was as inconsiderate as the Early American Cucumber which insists upon running over all contiguous vegetable beds, without depositing sufficient cucumbers to atone for its trespass. He died and left no sign, and he deserves our hearty condemnation for his selfish carelessness.

A sad case

The sea serpent has been seen again; this time in the Malacca Straits, and by the captain and surgeon of a British steamship, assisted, as they allege, by all the rest of the ship’s company. The alarming apparition is described at great length in an affidavit made by the two officers aforesaid, and there is no doubt that it ought to be a terrible warning to them.

On the 11th day of September last, at 10.30 a. m., the steamship Nestor was passing through the Malacca Straits, on her way to Shanghai. We need not inquire what the captain and surgeon were doing at that precise hour, but, as it was early in the day, we may assume there was merely a slight clash of brandy mingled with the soda water. Suddenly they saw on the starboard beam, at a distance of about two hundred yards, an animal that filled them with horror and alarm. It was, of course, serpentine in form— as that style of retributive animal always is — and it comprised a body of fifty feet in length, together with a tail one hundred and fifty feet long. At least, this is the way in which the two unhappy officers describe their vision, although it might be preferable to say that the serpent consisted of one hundred and fifty feet of tail, with a fifty-foot body attached thereto. In point of color, the animal could have given odds to Solomon in all his glory Its head was of a pale yellow color, while the body and tail were encircled with alternate stripes of yellow and black. In fact, the surgeon was at first inclined to think that he was gazing upon a Titanic mermaid, with yellow hair and a wealth of fashionable hosiery; but the conception of two hundred feet of striped hose was too vast to obtain a permanent lodging in his wearied and excited brain. What was exceptionally remarkable in this portentous snake was its total want of either mouth or eyes. It is well known to all naturalists that the serpents usually seen by seafaring men in thirsty latitudes are provided with eyes of pure phosphorus, and are equipped with mouths of tremendous size, which they habitually wear wide open, in order to breathe out streams of fire. Still, there is no reason why we should doubt the appearance of an eyeless and mouthless snake; and, indeed, such an animal would have a weird look, which would startle and appall the beholder, because of its very novelty.

When the captain first saw this terrible creature, it was swimming parallel to the ship at the rate of nine and three-quarters knots, and he felt a wild impulse to run it down, as though it were merely an American man-of-war in a Japanese harbor. On reflection, he decided that such a course might injure the blades of his screw, and that, after all, experience had demonstrated that the more one tries to slay a serpent of that particular species, the more apt it is to transform itself into a regiment of objectionable goblins. Moreover, the serpent suddenly ported its tail and ran under the steamer’s stern. It kept company with the ship for some time; and why it did not come on board, and, following the captain and surgeon to their staterooms, divide itself in two pieces and coil round their respective legs, we are not told.

So great was the shock experienced by the captain and surgeon, that as soon as the ship reached Shanghai they rushed to the office of a local magistrate and in his presence solemnly “swore off,” or, as they preferred to put it, made an affidavit. It is from the descriptive passages in this affidavit — which are the only portions of it which the deponents have ventured to publish — that the facts above set forth are taken. It is unpleasant to charge two British officers with a lack of candor, but it is impossible to read this affidavit without recognizing its evasive nature. The deponents weakly imagined that they could conceal the true state of the case by refraining from calling the marine monster a snake. Not only do they assert that they “should not for a moment compare it to a snake,” but they also allege that it resembled “the frog tribe.” We all know that the frog is a reputable cold water animal, which can be seen without gross cause for scandal by the most sober and abstemious persons, but the captain and surgeon of the Nestor cannot deceive the public by calling an animal consisting almost entirely of tail, and devoid of either legs or fins, a frog. They saw an open and undisguised serpent, and little hopes of their permanent reformation can be entertained so long as they attempt to deny the fact and to babble of innocent frogs.

If we may believe the testimony of these two unfortunate men, the sea serpent was also seen by their fellow officers and by all the passengers. As the latter were principally Chinamen, their testimony, even if we had it, would not be held to be of much value; but surely we ought to hear what the first and second mates of the Nestor have to say concerning the matter. Neither the captain or the surgeon mentions the impression which the sight of the sea serpent made upon these two estimable seamen; and although the captain does mention that the third mate said the animal was nothing but a shoal, he omits to tell us how he thereupon took the third mate aside and explained to him that delirium tremens could not be tolerated in a subordinate officer, and that he must abandon the intoxicating cup and sign the pledge if he wished to remain the third mate of the Nestor. There is not the least doubt that the captain and the surgeon saw precisely the sort of serpent which they describe in their affidavit, but when they hesitate to call it a serpent, and suppress the evidence of the first and second mates in regard to the vision, they excite in the public mind a doubt of their strict honesty.

An inconsiderate gift

It is related that when Wolfe lay wounded on the Plains of Abraham a noisy and inconsiderate staff officer suddenly cried: “They fly! They fly!” “Shoo, fly!” sternly exclaimed the dying but exasperated hero, “let me die in peace” — and immediately expired.

This touching historical anecdote will naturally recur to every one who reads of the late noble conduct of the King of the Fiji Islands. As is generally known, the British Government recently assumed a protectorate over the Fijians. It is not easy to explain precisely what a protectorate is, but there is no difficulty in understanding its results. When the British Government becomes the protector of an Indian or Polynesian nation, that nation’s property immediately passes into the hands of British agents, and the natives are notified to call at the collector’s office and pay their taxes. It will thus be seen that there is a wide difference between protecting and conquering a country, and good men are delighted to find that the former course is now uniformly preferred to the latter by the British Government.

As has been said, the Fiji Islands have passed under the protection of Great Britain, and as one of the consequences of this political change, the Fijian King has been relieved to some extent of the duty of personally eating his plumper subjects. Being thus at leisure, and needing to distract his attention from the emptiness of his larder, he has investigated the workings of the missionary system in his dominions, and has become filled with admiration for the noble and devoted missionaries. In the days when he was well fed, this monarch cared nothing for the average missionary, and was accustomed to remark that the pretense that a missionary had a peculiarly delicate flavor was all nonsense, and that for his part he preferred the simple citizen of his own country, roasted by a native cook, to the best of the high priced British or American viands that self styled epicures pretended to admire. Now, however, he looks upon the missionary with hungry and unprejudiced eyes, perceives that the men who have sacrificed everything to come and teach his savage subjects are deserving of the utmost gratitude and honor that he can give them. Especially does he admire the efforts of the London Missionary Society, which in his opinion, sends out a finer quality of missionary than any other society has sent; and as a proof of his high opinion of this noble organization he has just sent to its chairman seven young and valuable wives, accompanied by a polite note begging the chairman’s acceptance of the trifling gift.

Of course, there are those who will suspect that the Fijian King entertains a vague hope of throwing off the British protectorate, and that he wants to provide himself with materials for a banquet in celebration of that event. There is, however, really no sufficient reason for thus doubting the disinterested motives of the king. He says that he admires the London Missionary Society, and feels kindly towards its chairman. It would be unkind to look seven gift wives in the mouth, and to impute a hungry, instead of honorable, motive to the giver; and it would be grossly discourteous to intimate that a king does not tell the truth.

If, as is alleged, these seven young and confiding wives are now on their way to London, the question arises what will the chairman of the society do when they reach him? If they are delivered at his door by the express company during his absence from home, his original wife will probably leave them standing in the hall to wait his return, and will promptly betake herself to her father’s house, a prey to poignant doubts as to the real results of missionary labor. If the chairman is at home, and receives the seven wives himself, he will find it a difficult task to explain matters to his wife’s satisfaction, even if he takes refuge in prevarication, and alleges that the wives have been consigned to him purely for instruction, or that they are intended for Mr. Spurgeon, or some other friend. No matter how astutely he endeavors to smooth over the matter, he cannot expect a British matron to believe that when her husband has a package of seven wives openly delivered at his front door, he is conducting himself in a way that deserves her affection and respect.

If the unhappy chairman refuses to receive the king’s present, and leaves the seven young Fijians upon the hands of the express company, he will be guilty of exposing his heathen fellow creatures to misery and starvation. The express company will not undertake to support seven hungry young women, and the police will never permit them to appear on the streets clad in the simple garb of their native land. The chairman of a missionary society who ignores the Fijian at his own front door cannot, with any consistence, pretend to care for the Fijian ten thousand miles away. Either he must accept the king’s present at the price of the ruin of his domestic peace or he must refuse it and ruin his reputation as a consistent supporter of the missionary cause. It is seldom that an excellent and deserving man is put in so perplexing and dangerous a predicament.

It is said that the Fijian King was duly warned by the British Admiral that the chairman of the London Missionary Society would not be permitted to marry the seven gratuitous wives. “Then let him eat them,” was the generous monarch’s reply. Of course, the chairman cannot do this without creating remark, and perhaps incurring the condemnation of the stricter part of the press. There really seems to be no way out of his difficulties except that of immediate flight to some region where the express business is unknown. Let him take his family and instantly emigrate to Greenland. There he can cool his excited brain, and pass the remainder of his days in striving to forgive the generous but inconsiderate monarch who has buried his reputation under an avalanche of wives.

Pockets

A London magistrate lately told a woman whose pocket had been picked, that if women would change the position and plan of their pockets, they would not so frequently suffer from the depredations of light fingered thieves. This was a judicial opinion of remarkable acuteness and exceptional value, in so far as it indicated the true reason why women are the favorite prey of pickpockets. Still, it is one thing to point out an evil that deserves to be remedied, and quite another to designate the remedy. The court which denounced the present female substitute for a pocket did not suggest any practicable improvement upon it, and, indeed, it is doubtful if any man who is not a professional scientific person is fully capable of dealing with so difficult a question.

Man is marsupial, and herein he is broadly distinguished from woman. Nature has provided man with pockets in his trousers, his waistcoat, and his coat. The number is not always the same, some men having, in the aggregate, twelve distinct pockets, great and small, while others have only eight or nine; but a man totally without pockets would be a lusus naturae. It is remarkable that pockets are not congenital, but are slowly developed during childhood and youth. The trousers pockets, which are earliest developed, seldom make their appearance before the fifth year, and one of these usually comes to maturity ten or twelve months before its fellow. About the eighth year a male child develops two and sometimes three coat pockets, and two years later the lower waistcoat pockets appear. Nature then pauses in her work, and it is not until the fourteenth year that the small fob pockets of the waistcoat and the watch pocket of the trousers are developed. The appearance of the pistol pocket and the two coat tail pockets is usually synchronous with the cutting of the wisdom teeth. When these have reached maturity, the normal development of pockets ceases — for the comparatively recent discovery of isolated specimens of men with pockets in the sleeves of their overcoats, apparently designed for stowing away female hands, does not as yet warrant any change in the scientific classification and description of human pockets.

Of the uses of the pocket it is unnecessary to speak, since we are all familiar with them. It may, however, be safely asserted that without pockets men would never have emerged from barbarism. Handkerchiefs, pen knives, money, tobacco, latch keys — those articles the presence of which is essential to civilization, and the absence of which constitutes barbarism — manifestly could not exist in any useful form had not beneficent nature endowed us with pockets. It is a significant fact that the higher a man rises in the scale of civilization, the more numerous become his pockets. The red man has no pocket whatever; the Turk has two pockets; the people of the south of Europe have rarely more than five, while the man of Anglo Saxon blood has nine, or — counting those in his overcoat — ten well defined and practicable pockets. Representative government, fine cut tobacco, trial by jury, and revolving pistols are the precious inheritance of the nine-pocketed races. Ignorance, superstition, and a general assortment of miseries are the lot of those who have not developed more than four or five pockets.

Why nature constructed woman without true pockets it does not become us to inquire, although the fact might easily be interpreted as an evidence that women are not designed to become the military or civil leaders of mankind. It is sufficient for us to know that the pocket, in the scientific sense of the term, is the monopoly of the male sex, for it is not yet established that even Dr. Mary Walker has developed a really masculine pocket. Emulous of the more gifted sex, women have striven to supply the deficiencies of nature by art, and boldly claim that the mysterious’ and unseen bags which they carry concealed about their persons are virtually pockets. On this point the distinguished anatomist Cuvier says: “The capacious muslin organ generally called the female pocket has none of the essential characteristics of the true pocket. It is situated a little lower than the placquet, and forms a cul-de-sac, to which the placquet serves as the entrance. It may be removed by the knife without any perceptible effect upon the health, and it is plainly artificial and extraneous.” The same opinion is held by all educated anatomists, and, though we may admit that the so-called female pocket is capable of containing a large amount of handkerchiefs, candy, hair pins, and other necessities of feminine existence, its real character as a commonplace bag ought not to be concealed under the pretentious title of pocket.

From the nature of its construction, this bag is so easy of access to the shameless pickpocket that he looks upon it in the light of a storehouse, in which is laid up for his especial benefit portable property of more or less value. No one will dispute the dictum of the London court, that women who place their purses in these pseudo pockets invite pickpockets to steal them; but what other device can they substitute for the inefficient muslin bag. To require a woman to develop pockets without a basis of trousers, waistcoat, or coat, would be more cruel than was Pharaoh’s request that the Hebrews would make bricks without straw. Women who desire artificial pockets are limited to the use of the treacherous muslin bag, and the locality in which it is now worn is declared by competent comparative anatomists to be the only one where such an appendage could be securely placed, and remain at the same time easily accessible. The only way out of the difficulty is for women to abandon the vain effort to emulate marsupial man, and to lay aside their muslin bags. Thus will they remove temptation from the pickpocket, and prove themselves capable of accepting, without a murmur, the mysterious law of nature, which lavishes pockets upon one sex and withholds them inexorably from the other.

The Kentucky meteors

One day Mrs. Crouch, of Olympian Springs, Ky., was employed in the open air and under a particularly clear sky, in the celebration of those mysterious rites by which the housewife transmutes scraps of meat, bones, and effete overshoes into soap. Suddenly there descended upon her a gentle shower of meat. It fell impartially upon the presumably just Mrs. Crouch and her unjust cat, and the latter, conceitedly assuming that at last his merits had been signally recognized, immediately gorged himself with the public breakfast so unexpectedly tendered to him. The meat was served in the shape of hash, and its particles ranged in size from a delicate shred as light as a snowflake to a solid lump three inches square. It was in a raw state, but it was obviously perfectly fresh. Two Kentucky gentlemen in prosperous circumstances, and accustomed to eating meat, tasted it and pronounced the opinion that it was either venison or mutton; and the greater part of the State of Kentucky is probably, at this moment, covered with baskets and tubs, which have been placed in the open fields in readiness to catch the next shower of atmospheric hash.

Whence came this remarkable rain? It had not been predicted by the Weather Bureau, and it could not have been the result of the blowing up of a distant boarding house inasmuch as no trace of bones, buttons, and other components of the hash of commerce could be discovered by the most searching analysis. The most obvious conclusion is that the Kentucky shower of meat was really a meteoric shower. According to the present theory of astronomers, an enormous belt of meteoric stones constantly revolves around the sun, and when the earth comes in contact with this belt she is soundly pelted. Similarly, we may suppose that there revolves about the sun a belt of venison, mutton, and other meat, divided into small fragments, which are precipitated upon the earth whenever the latter crosses their path. Of course, the scientific persons will sneer at this explanation, inasmuch as they have not been the first to propose it, and will deny that there are any grounds whatever for a belief in the existence of cosmical meat. But if they believe in a hypothetical belt of meteoric stones, simply because certain stones occasionally fall upon the earth’s surface, why should they not believe in a possible belt of fresh meat, now that particles of venison and mutton have fallen on Mrs. Crouch and her appreciative cat? If they revive the theory — now generally abandoned — that the meteoric stones are fragments of an exploded planet, then we may require them to admit that the Kentucky shower consisted of fragments of exploded inhabitants who formerly occupied the wrecked planet. Doubtless, their final argument will be that their instruments show them no traces of meat in the solar system or the interstellar spaces. This is very true, but so far from upsetting the belt theory, it merely shows that new instruments of wider powers must be invented.

There is an obvious need of an improved spectroscope which will exhibit the appropriate lines for beef, mutton, venison, poultry, and fish as plainly as the present spectroscope shows the lines of hydrogen, magnesium, and other chemical elements. With such instruments, combined with a telescope sufficiently powerful to make visible the hypothetical meat belt, we might obtain some really satisfactory astronomical knowledge. The Signal Service Bureau could learn at what time to look for showers of meat, and could announce them with the same confidence with which it now occasionally prophesies “clear or cloudy weather.” If we should read under the head of “probabilities,” that “light showers of beefsteak may be looked for in the New England and Middle States during the morning, followed by a heavy rain of mutton in the afternoon,” we could abstain from visiting the market, and could, instead, spread out a sheet on the roof and lay in a week’s supply of butcher’s meat. Such predictions would, of course, be based upon the increased brilliancy of the spectroscopic lines of beef and mutton. These lines would naturally grow brighter as the earth neared the meat belt, and if the orbit of the belt were once thoroughly known, we could predict meat showers with the same certainty with which the August and November meteoric showers are now predicted.

When once the scientific men accept the hypothesis of cosmical meat they will tell us what a grand and solemn thought it is, that at the distance of whole slates full of figures, vast nebulae of finely comminuted meat are circling steadily around the sun. They will tell us how astronomers, profoundly learned in chalk and blackboards and filled full to the lips with logarithms and long division, saw that the falling of meat on the head of Mrs. Crouch and her hungry cat postulated the existence of a meat belt, and thereupon calculated its orbit and its periodic time with an assiduity that immediately raised the price of chalk crayons. At present, however, they will hoot at the very theory which they will ultimately adopt, and will put forward feeble hypotheses of the explosion of a cattle steam boat, or the tying of a can of nitroglycerine to a large dog’s tail, in order to account for the meteoric phenomenon which has alarmed the Kentucky butchers, and filled all other Kentuckians with amazement and delight.

Glass eyes

Of course, there are advantages in having a wife with a glass eye. It confers a certain distinction upon the husband. Wives without glass eyes are exceedingly common, but there is not one man in ten thousand who can proudly mention that he possesses a wife with a glass eye attachment. Then, too, the glass eyed wife has a never failing resource for quieting a noisy infant. The most vicious baby living — one that habitually bears false witness in regard to the alleged presence of imaginary pins, and who is addicted to an indulgence in midnight colic — could not fail to be instantly soothed into smiles by being permitted to scoop out its mother’s eye. To the Central African explorer the companionship of a wife with a glass eye would be simply invaluable. He would endear himself to the native husbands by occasionally knocking out his wife’s eye with every apparent sign of marital indignation, and could thus challenge popular admiration as a husband of great intelligence and decision of character without giving the slightest physical pain to his beloved companion. Employed as a bribe, a glass eye would buy the alliance of every native king on the whole continent; and if Sir Samuel Baker had been equipped with a glass eyed wife at the time when King Kamrasi admired the bright eyes of Lady Baker, and suggested that he would accept her as a present, the distinguished explorer could have gratified the monarch, and still retained possession of the greater part of his wife, by merely removing her glass eye and presenting it to his majesty. And yet, in spite of the many apparent advantages which accrue to the husband of a wife with a glass eye, there must be more than compensating disadvantages; for a Rochester man has just begun a suit for divorce on the ground that his wife has a glass eye which inflicts unendurable torments upon him.

The chief cause of complaint specified by this unfortunate man is the fact that his wife sleeps with her glass eye wide open. At first sight this may seem a trivial matter, but a little reflection will lead us to deeply sympathize with the aggrieved husband. It is not pleasant for a man to return home from a political meeting at 2 o’clock in the morning, knowing that however softly he may remove his innumerable boots, or however skilfully he may avoid tumbling over the chairs on which he had deposited his hats, the sleepless glass eye of his wife will gleam in the light of the two bedroom candles, and follow his wandering movements with a pitiless glare. The most sober of men cannot awake in the stillness of the night and feel quite at ease when he finds a glass eye watching him as sternly as though the owner knew all about his rash bet on the election, and was waiting to hear him explain how a man who had refused to buy a new parlor carpet could justifiably throw away his money in gambling. At any rate the Rochester husband found that his nerves were rapidly becoming shattered under the constant nocturnal watching to which he was subjected, and after having tried every possible means to keep his wife’s eye closed, he has now come to lay his woes before an impartial jury.

It can easily be imagined what were the means which he had vainly used to close that vigilant eye. It may not have been positively wrong for him to stealthily cover it with a coat of black paint, but he certainly ought to have known that no sleeping woman can have a paint brush drawn over half of her face without waking up and expressing decided opinions concerning the act. It was also natural that, after having found that a copper cent laid on his wife’s eyelid would continually slip from its position, he should have searched for some heavier weight; but it was a mistake to suppose that a large lump of coal would meet the exigencies of the case. It was, of course, open to him to surreptitiously possess himself of the offending eye and to hide it under the pillow; but after a man has been two or three times suddenly awakened in the morning with the awful question, “What have you done with my eye?” he is reluctant to undergo any further questioning of that sort. Whether there really is any effective and legitimate method which a tender husband can employ to keep his wife’s glass eye closed at night, is, perhaps, doubtful; but it is very certain that the man who can stealthily try to close his wife’s eye with mucilage has no adequate conception of the holiness of the marriage relation, and cannot be held to come into a divorce court with clean hands.

It is to be hoped in the interest of public morals that the Rochester husband will lose his suit; for if he gains it, our courts will swarm with suitors seeking divorces. If a glass eye is adjudged a sufficient cause for divorce, there would be no reason for refusing to grant a separation to a wife whose husband is guilty of false teeth, or an absolute divorce to a husband whose wife is habitually addicted to a wooden leg. In spite of the fact that this would illustrate the great doctrine of the survival of the fittest, and would tend to prevent glass eyes and wooden legs from becoming hereditary, it would loosen the marriage tie to an extent which no thoughtful man can contemplate without serious alarm.

Mr. Long

Few discoveries have been made which compare in importance with that recently made by Mr. Long, of Alameda County, Cal. Much credit has properly been given to Champollion for his graceful translations of Egyptian obelisks, and to Mr. Layard for his spirited versions of Assyrian public documents. Still, not only did these eminent men undertake tasks far easier than that to which Mr. Long has successfully devoted his days and nights, but their achievements were of comparatively little value. The Egyptian king who published his autobiography in two or three large obelisks full of hieroglyphics could not have had anything to say worth saying, or he would not have written in a style of which angular monkeys and hawk headed idols form conspicuous features; while, as for remarks made exclusively in arrowheads, we might have expected that they would be characterized by an oppressive sameness. But while Mr. Long has accomplished a philological feat of absolutely unprecedented difficulty, he has also opened to mankind a field of knowledge the importance of which cannot be overestimated. Henceforth the name of Long will stand first on the list of great discoverers, and his fame will be even above the rivalry of the future translator of the Etruscan inscriptions.

Every intelligent man who has had the privilege of being admitted on terms of intimacy into the best horse and dog circles has been thoroughly convinced that those excellent animals possess languages of their own in which they converse as freely, if not as frivolously, as men converse in human speech. It has been reserved for Mr. Long to demonstrate the truth of this opinion, and to fully master the sonorous and dignified language of the horse. Mr. Long was for many years a horse educator, and naturally learned to love and respect his equine friends. So greatly did he estimate the value of horse society that of late years he has taken up his residence in a stable where he eats and sleeps in company with the most eminent local horses. He had, moreover, a nobler object than that of being a recognized member of the first horse circles of California. Long ago he set himself resolutely to learn the horse language, and he now asserts that he can not only perfectly understand every remark that falls from a horse’s lips, but he can join in the conversation of cultivated horses with as much ease as though he had been born a horse and brought up exclusively in a stable. This claim he has apparently made good by permitting his human friends to listen to him when conversing with horses, and it is the firm conviction of the human public of Alameda County that Mr. Long has virtually broken through the barrier that has hitherto separated men and horses, and that the time is at hand when horse language will be taught in our common schools and when horses will admit us to their society on terms of perfect equality. Of course, if Mr. Long can learn the horse language he can also learn the languages spoken by other animals, and we may expect to find him barking cheerfully with his dogs, and mewing with the better class of cats. That he will impart his method of studying these languages to his fellow men there is every reason to believe. With the aid of a few learned men he will prepare a series of horse textbooks, including a Horse and English Dictionary, a First Horse Reader, and a New Method of Learning to Read, Write, and Neigh Horse. Similar textbooks will place the means of learning the dog language and other less important animal languages within the reach of every one, and before very long every young ladies’ seminary will have its regular dog Professor, who will instruct classes in the Dog Grammar and exercise them in conversational barking while imparting to them the purest Newfoundland or mastiff accent.

It is inevitable that this grand discovery should revolutionize our present relations with the higher animals. There will be no excuse for treating horses with tyranny and violence, when we can calmly explain our wishes to them, and listen to their views of the matter under consideration. We shall be ashamed to refuse the polite request of a faithful horse for a few more oats, or the privilege of pausing at the top of a hill in order to get his breath, and we shall remember with shame the stupidity with which we have been accustomed to regard his remarks as mere meaningless noises, which did not deserve the slightest attention. It will be a rare pleasure ‘to spend an evening with an intelligent terrier, and listen to his views as to the best method of extirpating rats; or to hear from a cultivated mastiff the real origin and symptoms of hydrophobia. Whether the language of cats will be generally studied unless those immoral animals abandon the detestable habit of profanity which now renders their midnight discussions so revolting, even to persons who cannot apprehend their precise meaning, remains to be seen. There is nevertheless no doubt that cats can give us a good deal of valuable information, and can, perhaps, teach us how to find our way home across miles of strange country, in case we should ever be kidnapped, and carried away in a large bag or basket.

In addition to the advantages which we shall obtain from the mastery of the various languages of domestic animals, we shall be enabled to greatly improve their condition. We shall doubtless be able to reduce their languages to writing, and teach the animals themselves how to read. The lonely and unprofitable hours which horses now spend in the stable will become thoroughly delightful when a horse library is placed within reach of every stable; and the time which dogs now waste in sleep will be employed in reading essays on the art of rat catching, and biographies of eminent dogs whose examples deserve to be followed. Even the cats may be elevated by the influence of tracts on the sin of stealing cold meat, and by sermons against the wickedness of bird killing and mouse torturing; while the evils of profanity and dissolute conduct might be forcibly pointed out by interesting and moral tales entitled “The Air Gun; or, The Swearer’s Doom,” and “The Belle of the Back Fence; or, The Terrible End of a Giddy Caterwauler.” Thus will the cause of morality among animals be powerfully aided, and the barbarous theory that they have neither minds to be cultivated nor consciences to be enlightened will give way to kind and earnest effort to render them some atonement for ages of cruelty, misunderstanding, and neglect.

The road to the Pole

There prevails a difference of opinion as to the possibility of reaching the North Pole. Capt. Hayes insists that when he visited the upper part of Smith’s Sound he saw a fine large open sea, over which any one could have sailed to the Pole without getting his feet wet. Capt. Nares, on the other hand, found that Hayes’ open sea was frozen to the depth of one hundred and fifty feet, and had been frozen since an early geological period. This does not necessarily impugn Capt. Hayes’ veracity, since we have only to suppose that the latter made a slight error in respect to the date of his journey, and that he saw the open Polar Sea some thousands of years ago, when it was yet uncongealed. Still, there is undoubtedly a want of perfect cordiality between the friends of Hayes, who believe that the Polar Sea is navigable, and those of Nares, who insist that the Pole is entirely inaccessible. In these circumstances, another captain, to wit, Capt. Howgate, of our Signal Service Bureau, has proposed a compromise, which provides a way for reaching the Pole without reflecting upon the veracity of either the American or the English explorer. Capt. Howgate assumes that the Polar Sea is occasionally open, as when Hayes saw it, and occasionally frozen, as it was at the time of Nares’ visit. He, therefore, proposes that twenty men should be taken to about the latitude of 81°, and left there for three years with instructions to wait until the one hundred and fifty feet of ice should melt and enable them to sail directly to the Pole.

This plan is not only a novel one, but it recommends itself by its apparent fairness. It is also perfectly feasible up to a certain point. For example, twenty men can be found at almost any time, and vessels capable of carrying that number to Smith’s Sound are also attainable. If these twenty men should be handcuffed and carried to latitude 81°, they could be landed and left there, as Capt. Howgate proposes. So far there is no great difficulty in the way of carrying out Capt. Howgate’s plan, provided a law were to be passed authorizing the deportation of twenty hardened criminals to Smith’s Sound. When, however, we come to the task of inducing the twenty men to leave their winter quarters and travel some six hundred miles to the Pole, the real difficulty of the scheme becomes apparent, and this difficulty will probably be found to be insuperable.

Of course, the twenty convicts — for such they will virtually be — would be told that their return at the end of three years would depend solely upon their success in reaching the Pole. When, at the end of three years, a vessel should arrive to obtain their report, there is not the least doubt that they would unanimously insist that they had been to the Pole. How would it be possible to tell whether they had told the truth or not? In three years’ time twenty men, no matter how dull they might be, could agree upon a description of the Pole which would satisfy the most enthusiastic expectations. They could decorate that distant region with more walruses and polar bears than the most intoxicated Esquimaux ever dreamed of. They could prepare, with the aid of a local spider, a map of their alleged route which would elicit tears of delight from the maker of the Herald‘s Central African maps; and they could insist that they had left a tin box, containing their autographs, on the very top of the Pole, as a convincing proof that they had been there. It would be far easier to do this than to actually make the journey, and it is idle to suppose that men, comfortably furnished with warm huts, Bibles in large print, and all the facilities for poker, would abandon these comforts in order to undertake a long and difficult journey, when it would be so much more simple for them to merely say that they had done so. Of course, in so saying, they would be guilty of falsehood; but in the extreme cold of 140° below zero the moral sense becomes somewhat numb. Men who can tell the truth with comparative ease in a moderate temperature cannot be expected to accomplish that feat with certainty when subjected to Arctic cold. If we can believe what is written here and in England concerning Arctic explorers, we must concede this fact, and hence it would be unreasonable to expect that twenty criminals, exiled to the far north, would hesitate to gain their release by a safe and easy falsehood.

Although Capt. Howgate’s plan, in its present form, is thus open to a serious objection, it suggests what would be a really feasible plan for reaching the Pole. Instead of making a single camp in latitude 81°, a succession of camps should be made all the way from that point to the Pole, at intervals of half a mile from one another. In each of these camps two or three men, provided with a few years’ rations, should be placed, with instructions to keep a lamp constantly burning in the kitchen window as a beacon for belated explorers, and to keep the sidewalk swept as far as the next camp. The explorer who desired to reach the Pole would then have an uninterrupted series of half-mile stations all the way to his place of destination. He could warm his feet at one station, lunch at another, and sleep at a third. Thus, by safe and easy stages, he could reach and discover the Pole and return to Smith’s Sound without difficulty. The Arctic explorer can always travel half a mile in a given direction. Divide the distance from Smith’s Sound to the Pole into half-mile walks, and all the difficulties which are now insuperable would vanish. This is undoubtedly the true way in which Arctic exploration should be conducted, and it is a wonder that no one has hitherto thought of it.

The building of these half-mile stations, and the work of supplying them with stores and garrisons, is a mere matter of detail which need not be here discussed. If we once grasp the idea that in order to reach the North Pole men must first be sent there to make and keep open a path, the precise method of carrying out this idea becomes a matter of secondary importance, as to which a broad liberty of thought may be exercised. While it is evident that Capt. Howgate’s twenty men would content themselves with saying that they had been to the Pole, no such subterfuge would be possible in the case of men whose sole business it would be to stay at these stations and entertain explorers. It is just possible that captious critics may affect to find flaws in this plan, but it would not be rash to assert that in no other way will the Pole ever be reached. Somebody must go there and build a fire and make things comfortable before either Hayes or Nares will see their way clear to make the journey. Unless this is done, the sooner we cease to waste time and lives in Arctic exploration the better.

Fish out of place

“It never rains but it pours” is a proverb so conspicuously false as regards the temperate zone, that we are justified in assuming that it must have been the work of some Aryan Franklin who issued a prehistoric almanac on the plains of India in which he inculcated honesty and vague meteorological views in homely Sanscrit. Nevertheless, if we limit the range of the proverb exclusively to showers of articles of diet, it becomes somewhat more trustworthy. The recent shower of alleged mutton or venison in Kentucky has been followed up by a shower of fish in Indiana, and the Western people are confidently expecting hailstorms of doughnuts, and possibly a gentle drizzle of turtle soup.

The Kentucky meat shower still maintains its interest in spite of a weak attempt of a rash scientific person to prove that it consisted simply of the eggs of frogs. Unfortunately, he forgot that frogs’ eggs do not contain blood, and hence his theory does not account for the sanguinary appearance of the celestial Kentucky meat. Meanwhile, doubt has also been cast on the mutton and venison theory. It will be remembered that the meat was tasted by two Kentucky gentlemen, who asserted that it was either mutton or venison, but who wisely forebore to decide which of the two it really was. A terrible suspicion has since grown up that the shower actually consisted of finely hashed citizens of Kentucky, who had been caught up in a whirlwind while engaged in a little “difficulty” with bowie knives, and strewn over their astonished State. It is, perhaps, natural that this view should be enthusiastically maintained by the swarm of coroners who instantly flocked to the region of the shower, and by the general undertaking sentiment of the country. So confident are the coroners in their own opinion of the affair, that they are understood to have offered to send samples of the meat to King Kalakaua and Prime Minister Steinberger for dental analysis. This certainly would secure a fair test of the true character of the meat, and it is to be hoped that the proposal will be promptly carried into effect. The Indiana shower admits of no such discussion, as to its character, since the fish of which it was composed were not only perfectly whole, but were, in some cases, still alive. They varied from one inch to four feet in length, and covered acres of ground, in the neighborhood of the town of Winchester. At least such is the substance of a telegram published in a Cincinnati newspaper, and the public mind shrinks from the suggestion that a Cincinnati editor, living amid the purifying and ennobling influences of pork, would knowingly print a false, or even an exaggerated, statement. The Winchester people have not hitherto been intimate with fish, and hence they do not undertake to specify the particular species which so unexpectedly fell among them. Until some accomplished fish person visits the scene and makes a careful investigation, we must, therefore, be content to remain in ignorance whether the Winchester fish are fresh or salt water fish, and whether they have violated the Indiana game laws by suffering themselves to be caught out of season.

It cannot be denied that this latest shower is more perplexing than its Kentucky predecessor. Kentucky gentlemen are always having little “difficulties,” and may at any time be caught up by sudden whirlwinds. Fish, on the contrary, stay in the water, and though they may be tempted from their element by preposterous artificial flies, no sportsman ever yet tried to fish with a whirlwind or ever heard of a fish rising to such an absurd bait. Moreover, we do not hear of any pisciculturist who has missed a few acres of private fish, nor of any fishmonger whose stock in trade has been blown away. It was admissible to entertain the conjecture that the Kentucky meat was cosmic in its origin, since there is no evidence that hash cannot exist in the universal ether. Fish, however, need water, and there is no astronomer of reputation who would entertain the’ hypothesis of cosmical rivers stocked with cosmical fish.

In these circumstances, the public mind naturally turns to the scientific person who lately offered to manufacture any desired climate by creating aerial vortices through which cold or warm air would pour down upon the earth. Is he already tampering with the atmosphere, and are these edible showers the first results of his ill directed meddling? Ill directed it certainly is, for no man with any sense of the fitness of things would serve up meat first and fish afterwards. Why did he not begin with oysters, and then pass on to soup and subsequent fish? If he proposes to continue this sort of thing, he should show a proper deference to gastronomic rules. If he is to create whirlwinds here and vortices there, and to rain down mince pie today and roast turkey tomorrow, the Weather Bureau should suppress him without delay, and thus save us from prandial anarchy. Of course the scientific person in question may not be the man who is actually responsible for this state of things, and it may be that the Weather Bureau itself, tired of the monotony of distributing areas of depressed barometer in the region of the lakes, and clear or cloudy weather followed by light rains or sunshine in the Middle States, has determined to try the experiment of a few dinner and breakfast showers. However this may be, we have a right to demand that some degree of decency should be observed in the succession of meteorological food. To fill the stomachs of the American people at the expense of their morals would be a wretched form of false philanthropy. If to our notorious offenses in respect to boiled coffee and fried steak, and our open and shameless indulgence in all the varied forms of pie, we are now to add a national contempt of the proper sequence of fish and meat, we had better resign forever our claim to be classed among civilized nations.

The decay of burglary

That the “hard times” have seriously affected that large and enterprising class of our fellow citizens, the burglars, there is abundant evidence. A marked change is plainly perceptible in the manner in which they do their work. Formerly the burglar was usually an artist in his profession, and showed a conscientious thoroughness and nicety in its practice. He effected his entrance into a house in a dexterous and workmanlike manner, leaving no broken glass or smashed panels to accuse him of clumsy incompetence. He knew what articles of value to select, and how to avoid disturbing the inmates of the house by rude and inconsiderate noises. In no circumstances would he be guilty of wanton and ungentlemanly destruction of property. If he found himself insulted with plated spoons, and mocked by oroide jewelry, he never showed his resentment by twisting the former and stamping on the latter. If he thus failed to meet with any adequate reward for his midnight toil, he simply withdrew quietly and inoffensively, and contented himself with pitying the selfish parsimony with which householders, rolling in plated teaspoons, ignored the hardworking burglar, and left him to suffer in silence the pangs of disappointed hope.

To this praiseworthy burglar of former days has succeeded the rude pretender to burglary, who cannot undertake the simplest job without showing his incompetence and vulgarity. He breaks into suburban houses by the primitive process of kicking out the cellar windows, and scratches the matches with which he lights his lantern on the spotless parlor walls. His first idea is to rob the refrigerator and make a hearty meal, careless of the annoyance which he thus inflicts upon the thrifty housewife, and of the disgrace which he brings upon his art by subordinating it to sensual gratification. After supper he makes an exploration of the house, soiling the carpets with tobacco juice and breaking the locks of desks and drawers. If he finds nothing that is worth stealing, he expresses his brutal anger by cutting the pictures, scratching the piano, and breaking the clock. Before he departs he usually manages to fall over enough furniture to awaken the proprietor, and to thus promote that want of harmony in the domestic circle which inevitably occurs when a husband hesitates to accept his wife’s advice to go down stairs armed only with his nightshirt and capture a burglar. The contrast between this ruffianly housebreaker and the skilful and accomplished burglar is painfully forced upon our attention whenever we read the police reports, and thinking men naturally ask themselves what has been the cause of this sad deterioration which apparently involves the whole profession.

The root of the evil lies in the high prices which have prevailed since the civil war. Formerly burglars’ tools could be obtained at prices which permitted men of moderate means to enter the profession. Today a complete set of tools costs fully four hundred dollars, and no one but a capitalist can equip himself for the practice of burglary in an artistic and creditable way. It thus follows that burglary has fallen into the hands of “shysters,” who undertake to rob houses by the unaided light of nature, and without either burglars’ tools or the knowledge of their uses, while men who might become able and accomplished burglars, were they provided with suitable tools, disdain to rob with their naked Hands, so to speak, and prefer to become gamblers or statesmen, rather than to bring disgrace upon a more honorable profession by using clubs or paving stones instead of center bits and “jimmies.”

In order to improve the condition of burglars, and restore the profession to its earlier excellence, we need, first of all, to remove the restrictions which the law has unfairly placed upon the manufacture and sale of burglars’ tools, and which necessarily increase their market value. Plumbers’ tools are openly made and sold, and gas manufacturers are permitted to supply that heaven and man defying instrument, the gas meter, to their victims. The law which sanctions these things nevertheless makes an arbitrary discrimination against burglars’ tools, and thus, while with one hand it protects the plumber and the gas manufacturer, with the other it hampers and oppresses the burglar. Take av/ay those offensive restrictions and burglars’ tools will fall fifty per cent, in price, while a substantial victory will be gained for the great principle of free trade.

Men who have the interests of burglary at heart will not, however, be content with merely securing the repeal of an obnoxious law. If we wish to be robbed in a skilful and artistic way, and to avoid the annoying visits of incapable and vulgar ruffians, we must encourage men with a talent for burglary by placing full kits of burglars’ tools within the reach of the very poorest. To do this a charitable society should be organized and a plan of action devised which should secure the end in view, without at the same time pauperizing the burglar. If this is done, the best and brightest days of burglary will soon return, and the householder will have the gratification of being robbed by accomplished artists, instead of the annoyance which he now experiences at the hands of the miserable pretenders who disgrace the profession.

The kidnapped Klamath

The witches who captured little Charley Ross were right in believing that almost any sum of money would be paid by the unhappy parents for the restoration of their child. In this matter they displayed a certain business sagacity which entitled them to rank with the skilful brigands of Italy rather than with the ordinary thieves and burglars of America. But what can be said of the stupid fellows who last April kidnapped a Klamath Indian, and were recently glad to let him go again without a particle of ransom? Undoubtedly they fancied that the mere fact of kidnapping gives a commercial value to the kidnapped. Herein they showed a degree of folly worthy of the advocates of an inflated paper currency. The child of loving parents has for them a real and inestimable value, but the stray Klamath is totally devoid of any intrinsic value whatever. To impress the stamp of kidnapping upon a Klamath cannot make him valuable, or create the slightest demand for him. There is probably not an intelligent lunatic in any well conducted asylum who does not at once perceive the supreme folly of an attempt to inflate the kidnapping market with ragged, red backed Indians.

The particular Klamath who was the subject of this kidnapping stupidity was one of a band of Modocs and Klamaths brought east for purposes of exhibition by ex-Peace Commissioner Meacham. The latter was one of the few companions of Gen. Canby who escaped the rifles of Capt. Jack and his treacherous followers, and he seems to have supposed that an exhibition of real Modocs, and of a real Peace Commissioner with real scalp wounds, would furnish a rational and moral amusement to which all the curiosity hunters would promptly rally. On the 28th of April last he had his Indians, as he imagined, safely boxed up in a New York hotel, but, on counting them was dismayed to find that one David Hill, called “for short” Walaiks Skidat, was missing. As it was certain that Mr. Skidat had not been mislaid by any baggage master, nor left on the seat of an omnibus by Mr. Meacham himself, the latter naturally supposed that he was merely temporarily absent either with a view to whiskey, or for the purpose of inspecting the fine stock of scalps which adorn the windows of local hairdressers. Days and weeks went by, however, and Mr. Skidat did not appear. The police were applied to by Mr. Meacham, who, having passed his life on the frontier, naturally knew nothing of the New York police, but they failed to find the missing Klamath. Somewhat later Mr. Meacham was mysteriously notified that certain persons were ready to return Mr. Skidat for the small reward of a thousand dollars. These mysterious dealers in cheap aborigines, however, failed to make good their offer, and all hope of finding the unfortunate Klamath was abandoned. Mr. Meacham and his friends probably hired a private parlor, and danced a funeral dance in honor of the departed. At all events they never expected to see him again, and the conviction that Mr. Meacham was a careless person, liable to mislay and lose Indians at any time, seems to have seized upon his Modoc and Klamath friends, and led them to abandon their exhibiting tour, and return hastily to their native wilds.

The experience of the kidnappers was at least as unpleasant as was that of the kidnapped. They had caught their Klamath, but they found no one anxious to buy that sort of wild game. He had to be watched with the utmost care lest he should scalp his kidnappers, and the expense of supplying him with whiskey and war paint, in order to keep him in a marketable condition, must have been very great. To get rid of him by killing him was not an easy task, since the Sportsman’s Club would have been pretty sure to proceed against men who killed an Indian out of season. Finally they decided that the only thing to be done was to let the Klamath loose again. Accordingly they took him to the far West — probably in a bag — and opening the bag on a lonely prairie requested him to “scat.” It is needless to say that he promptly obeyed, and a few weeks since he turned up on the Klamath reservation very foot sore and thirsty, and extremely dissatisfied with New York and civilization generally.

If those kidnappers have any self respect whatever, they must feel heartily ashamed to look in a looking glass. They went to the trouble of kidnapping an Indian, and their only reward was unlimited anxiety, and the expense of feeding him for four months. They have undoubtedly come to the conclusion that they were mistaken in supposing that their earthly mission is kidnapping. Something in the pocket picking or sneak thief line is evidently the only business for which they are fitted. Unless, indeed, they can obtain engagements to make anti-resumption political speeches, an occupation in which their lack of honesty and their experience of practical inflation would make them peculiarly at home.

The coming man

It is painful to notice that, while the advocates of the Darwinian theory trace with perfect confidence the development of man from his Simian ancestors, they refrain from pointing out the next step in his future development. In this, as in certain other matters, they show a curious reluctance to openly acknowledge the inevitable results of their theory. The average Darwinian, who hotly insists that the pig is not a special creation, but that he has been developed by the slow processes of nature, lacks the courage to profess the same view of the origin of the pigpen, and not only admits that it is a special creation, but also weakly concedes that its existence implies that of a conscious carpenter. This may be merely a wise withholding of the strong meat of development from orthodox babes, but it certainly has very much the look of a cowardly unwillingness to push logic to its final goal.

As to the gradual changes which man is undergoing, they are quite obvious to courageous and clear sighted philosophers, and plainly indicate what is to be the next stage in his development. It has been remarked that the superiority of American dentists to all other members of the profession was shown by the extraordinary display of dental instruments at the Phihadelphia Exhibition, if we ask what is the cause of this superiority, — which, by the way, is generally conceded to be beyond cavil, — the obvious answer is that the American dentist fills more cubic feet of cavities and draws more tons of teeth in the course of a month than the English or Continental dentist fills and draws in a year. This fact, in turn, implies that American teeth are exceptionally prone to decay; and there is a wealth of direct evidence of a conclusive character in support of this assertion. At this point the superficial thinker pauses, and imagines that he has exhausted the subject of dentistry in America. It is just here, however, that the profound Darwinian philosopher finds the clue to the next great physical change which is to distinguish the man of the future from the man of the present. He sees that in America we are rapidly developing a race of men without teeth, and that precisely as men have laid aside their useless primeval tails, so they are about to drop their nearly useless teeth. The man of the future is, then, to be a toothless animal. This much can science deduce from the apparently irrelevant fact that the American display of dental instruments at Philadelphia was wonderfully and exceptionally fine.

The causes of the rapid disappearance of American teeth are numerous. We may trace its first beginnings to the universal habit of eating oysters, and the invention of canned vegetables and fruits, and of Liebig’s extract of meat. These articles can be bolted by the busy American without calling in the aid of his teeth, and the latter, in accordance with the invariable law of development, have grown feebler and more infrequent in proportion to the constantly lessening demand upon their services. When once the decline of teeth began, it was inevitable that it should proceed with ever increasing rapidity. As soon as good teeth became exceptional they became unpopular, and just as among lean women plumpness is held to be vulgar, so among persons deficient in teeth, the opinion prevails that there is something essentially indelicate in a mouth crowded with obvious and vigorous teeth. Other causes tending to the decline of teeth might be mentioned, but these two are doubtless sufficient to account for the facts as they now are.

The total disappearance of teeth will, of course, involve changes in the habits of mankind. The diet of the future man will consist chiefly of what the American chef calls “spoon vittles,” and of fish. Oatmeal, oysters, and the delicate brook trout, which melts in the mouth without the intervention of teeth, will form the food of the coming man, and as these articles supply nutriment to the brain, he will unquestionably surpass the present variety of man in brain power. Of course, when the total disappearance of teeth is predicted, it is not meant that rudimentary teeth will not be found in the human mouth. These will, however, be of no practical value. The human coattail is unquestionably a reminiscence of the Simian state, and may be correctly termed a rudimentary tail. It is, nevertheless, of no possible use either in point of flies or as an aid to climbing trees, and in like manner such rudimentary teeth as the future man may retain will be wholly useless so far as pie crust and tobacco are concerned, and will not be available for gnashing purposes even in the heat of a political campaign.

Not only can we thus confidently predict the development of toothless men, but we can also assume that the next consecutive stage of human development will be an entirely hairless one. Clothing for the body was adopted prior to clothing for the head, and as a result the furry coat of the primeval man disappeared before the hair of his head began to give place to the invading hat. Hair, however, is plainly doomed. In less than nineteen centuries, the long hair of woman, to which St. Paul confidently alludes as to something which notoriously existed, has 50 far vanished that were St. Paul now living, he would probably modify his original assertion by remarking that the long hair of woman is a glory to her hair dealer. The normal type of masculine hair is now nothing more than a thin fringe around the base of the cranium, and even this shows signs of early disappearance. We may therefore unhesitatingly decide that the future toothless man will also be hairless, and a very handsome and creditable specimen of development he will be.

There are not wanting certain evidences, which are daily met on the theatrical stage and on the public promenade, that the human leg is to attain an extraordinary development in the near future. This, however, affords little consolation to those who cling fondly to teeth, and abhor absolute baldness. Perhaps the professional Darwinian cannot be blamed for his reluctance to tell us boldly to what a toothless and hairless goal we are steadily marching. Perhaps he feels in his secret heart that no man will adopt the development theory if he is told that it involves the disappearance of his teeth and hair. No such development will satisfy the popular mind, and it is probably better to conceal the truth from the impulsive public than to frankly tell them that there will not be a grain of tooth or a spear of hair among their unfortunate and helpless descendants.

Spiritual candy

Among recent ghosts, a new and useful variety of specter which has just appeared in Council Bluffs deserves to be noticed. Spiritualists desiring a quiet, useful, family ghost, warranted to be popular with the children and without any objectionable habits, had better order a Council Bluffs ghost without delay. The noisy table tipping and crockery breaking spirits that were so popular a few years ago have been almost entirely superseded by improved ghosts, which are noiseless, easily managed, and capable of affording innocent amusement to children and weak minded adults. The Council Bluffs ghost is in all respects the best which has yet been offered to the public, and had it only been exhibited at Philadelphia, it would doubtless have received a medal and a certificate showing its superiority to all competitors as plainly as do the certificates which all the piano makers have received.

The ghost in question is that of a little girl of excellent judgment in the selection of candy. The members of the family with whom the girl had been acquainted during her lifetime were lately holding a domestic seance for the reception of visiting ghosts, when this nice little girl announced that she was present, and intended to present one of the circle with a stick of candy. The ghost was not visible, but the candy was almost immediately placed in the hand of an astonished gentleman, who, when the lamp was lighted, found himself the happy possessor of an undoubted stick of striped candy.

An irreverent person, on being thus provided with gratuitous spiritual candy, would probably have eaten it and demanded more. The recipient of the gift was, however, an earnest Spiritualist, and he knew better than to rashly eat things made in another world. To all appearances the candy was an ordinary stick of white peppermint candy, ornamented with spiral stripes of red paint, but as it is impossible to say to what extent the adulteration of articles of food is carried in the other world, it was only prudent for the earnest Spiritualist to employ a small-boy to test the candy before eating it himself. But before a small-boy could be procured, the curiously indigestible nature of that stick of candy was unexpectedly demonstrated. Instead of becoming sticky when held in the hand, it merely grew somewhat warmer, and then suddenly transformed itself into a rose of remarkable beauty and delicious perfume. It was at once recognized that candy capable of such a sudden and extraordinary change was not meant to be eaten by any person of value. Had it blossomed into a rose when half way down a rash and irreverent throat, strangulation would have inevitably resulted. When it became cool, the ghostly rose again resumed its saccharine form, and it has since been changed from a stick of candy to a rose, and back again to its original shape, as often as any one has tried the experiment of warming and cooling it.

The superiority of this variety of candy for domestic purposes will at once be perceived. Ordinary earthly candy is useful in persuading noisy infants to silence, but its effect is merely temporary, and is followed by an abdominal reaction, which intensifies the very evil which it was designed to cure. A kind hearted man may be boarding in a house infested with infants to such an extent that peace of mind by day or sleep at night are utterly impossible. He may go to a confectioner’s and buy a dozen pounds of the most deadly candy, and present it to the destroyers of his peace. What is the result? The infants become preternaturally quiet for the space of say half an hour, while they devour the candy, and render the whole interior of the house a sticky conglomerate of mutually adhesive infants and furniture. At the end of this time they announce with start ling unanimity their intention to indulge in colic, and before their distracted’ mothers have soaked them loose from the furniture, and filled them with paregoric, the house vibrates from garret to basement with their yells. Thus the kind hearted man finds that he has thrown away his money and made his condition even worse than it was before. He cannot even recover damages against the confectioner, for the latter will always take the ground that the candy would have proved fatal had it been administered in proper doses. The truth is, that whatever confectioners and physicians may say, candy is rarely immediately fatal. It will undoubtedly produce good results if administered daily for a sufficiently long time; but few men have the patience to wait for weeks until the candy accomplishes its perfect work.

Now, the good little ghost of Council Bluffs has made us acquainted with a variety of spiritual candy from which we can confidently anticipate the very best results. Suppose that a good man who wishes to reward his neighbor’s small-boy for persistent practice on the drum, gives him a stick of this excellent candy. The small-boy instantly places what is scientifically called “a hunk” of the candy in his mouth, and tries to swallow it. The warmth of his interior transforms it into a rose while it is in the very act of entering the esophagus. There is a smothered cry, and the small-boy sinks to the ground, where he quietly chokes, while the good man goes cheerfully on his way, rejoicing that the ghost of Council Bluffs has convinced him that the soul is immortal, and that there is another world. Meanwhile, as the small-boy gradually grows cold the rose resumes the shape of candy, and the coroner’s jury find the unsuspecting verdict, “Choked with peppermint candy.” Thus the benevolent heart of the good man is made happy, and the small-boy ceases from drumming; and for these two important results we have to thank the good little ghost of Council Bluffs. It can safely be predicted that her candy will speedily become immensely popular. It will drive earthly candy out of the market, and supersede soothing syrup; and will convince a skeptical world that at least one really meritorious ghost has at last made her appearance.

Two recent inventions

Among recent American inventions there are two which deserve especial mention, not only for the ingenuity which they display, but for the noble and philanthropic purpose which evidently animated the inventors. One of these inventions has been already patented, and is thus fairly before the public. The other has not yet been brought to the attention of the Patent Office, and the inventor deserves all the more credit for his obvious design of presenting it as a free gift to his fellow countrymen.

The human baby has heretofore frequently called into action the ingenuity of philanthropic inventors. Years ago some good and great man invented the baby jumper, and thereby conferred a priceless benefit upon the nurseries of the land. The baby jumper consisted of a framework depending from the ceiling of the nursery by an elastic cord, and intended to encircle the surly infant with a firm but tender grasp. When a baby of obtrusive oratorical habits was placed in the baby jumper, the machine instantly began to lift him up and down as the India rubber cord contracted and stretched. The boldest baby, no matter how much he may have been fed upon gingerbread, or how seriously he may have been suffering from concealed pins, no sooner found himself executing this involuntary and persistent dance than he forgot his desires and his woes, and gradually yielded to incipient congestion of the brain. Strange as it may seem, the baby jumper has latterly passed out of use, owing, possibly, to the fact that occasionally an infant who had been placed in it and then forgotten by its mother, was found at the end of twenty-four hours so thoroughly shaken up that no care or anatomical skill could repack its internal organs in such a way as to induce them to work smoothly. Still, a great deal of good was unquestionably accomplished by the invention of the baby jumper, and the inventor’s memory is still lovingly cherished by tired nurses and the manufacturers of infant coffins.

The invention of the baby pole is, however, a decided advance upon that of the baby jumper. This new device consists of a pole, which may be of almost any length, to one end of which is affixed a series of straps so arranged as to hold an infant tightly and yet without the infliction of any pain. When it is desired to satisfy the longings of the infantile spirit for the chandelier or the various fruits that grow on trees, the baby is fastened to the pole, and is thus elevated until it can grasp the object of its desires. In this way an infant can be placed within reach of cherries or crab apples, or assisted to the easy acquisition of the knowledge that a lighted chandelier is more satisfactory when merely looked at than it is when brought in contact with investigating and inexperienced fingers. If the lower end of the baby pole is sharpened, it can be thrust into the ground in the neighborhood of a cherry tree, and the elevated infant can be left to choose its own rate of progress towards cholera morbus. Thus innocent and improving amusement can be furnished to energetic and restless babies at very little expense or trouble, and mothers can obtain a blessed respite from their wearisome maternal cares.

A still further advantage possessed by the baby pole is the fact that it furnishes an infallible means of reducing the loudest infant to immediate silence. It is generally known that if a hen be seized and whirled several times in a circle about the operator’s head, the fowl will cease to sing and will apparently sink into a profound slumber. In like manner it is only necessary to whirl the infant attached to the baby pole swiftly through the air, and it will pass into a species of mesmeric sleep so deep that iron boilers might be riveted under its very nose without awakening it. It is, of course, possible that nurses of a riotous disposition may occasionally use the baby pole, with its appendant baby, as a war club with which to mow down whole swathes of obnoxious small-boys, or to chastise a personal enemy; but such a perversion of a noble invention would probably seldom be made, since it would be almost certain to involve the breakage of the baby, the value of which would, in most cases, be deducted from the offending nurse’s wages.

The other invention to which reference has been made is intended to lessen the labors of those who transport the harmless but self willed hog to market. Nothing is more difficult than to induce a drove of hogs to cross a gangplank into a cattle car or on board a steamboat. Frequently, when a gangplank is crowded with these whimsical animals, they will suddenly stand still and refuse to move a single inch, though entreated with boots and hand spikes. It is for such an emergency as this that the hog bouncer is intended. That admirable invention consists of a gangplank, divided in the middle into two equal sections, connected with hinges. The section furthest removed from the steamboat or car is provided with a powerful spring, which, when set in action, throws it violently upward. When the plank is crowded, and it suddenly occurs to the hogs to pause and reflect upon the propriety of refusing to go any further, the spring is touched, the after part of the plank flies up, and the astonished hogs are shot violently forward, filling the air with indignant but helpless pork. A gangplank fitted with this invention, and capable of holding fifty hogs can thus be cleared in a moment of time, and it is estimated that, were the hog bouncer to be used in loading Cincinnati steamboats, a saving of time, labor, and profanity would be made which would be sufficient to reduce one-eighth the cost of transportation to St. Louis.

It is hardly necessary to point out that although the patentee of the hog bouncer describes it as exclusively designed for assisting the transportation of hogs, it is susceptible of much wider uses. In a modified form it could be placed at the entrances of our places of amusement, and used to prevent the frequent jams that occur when a crowd is forcing its way into the door of the opera house or theater. In like manner it would prove very useful in loading excursion steamers, where it would obviate the inconveniences resulting from the feminine practice of pausing on a gangplank for a few moments’ chat with suddenly recognized friends. In fact, wherever a crowd assembles, there the bouncer can be put to efficient use, and the inventor will doubtless be surprised to find in the course of a few years that he has supplied a great popular want, and will give his invention the more appropriate name of the universal bouncer.

It is pleasant to find that while other nations are inventing new instruments of warfare, and new varieties of nitroglycerine, America produces the baby pole and the hog bouncer. It is only in a land of liberty that genius turns its attention to infants and pigs, and we may well cherish the free institutions that have rendered possible such glorious results.

Raining cats

The time has arrived when it is the duty of the thoughtful patriot to protest against the zoological showers which are occurring almost daily in one or another part of the country. When the first of these abnormal showers covered a Kentucky farm with flesh and blood, wise men felt that the rights of graziers and butchers had been unwarrantably infringed. Nevertheless, inasmuch as no one supposed that the performance would be repeated, and as it had been the means of making a number of Chicago reporters acquainted with the taste of meat, no one publicly found fault with it. In a week or two afterward a shower of fish occurred in Illinois. It so happened that this shower took place at the beginning of Lent, and therefore discreet people abstained from expressing their indignation, lest they should be unwarily drawn into a theological discussion. When, however, it was announced that a heavy rain of mosquitoes had fallen in Canada, there was a universal feeling that this sort of thing had been carried altogether too far. There is no demand whatever for an increased number of mosquitoes. The volume of those pests issued every Summer is always more than commensurate with the necessities of business, and any attempt at inflation in connection with mosquitoes must be vigorously withstood. It ought to be mentioned that the myriads of mosquitoes which fell in Canada last week belonged to a new variety, each one of which was three times as large, and consequently possessed of three times as much horse power, as an ordinary New Jersey mosquito. If this shower was the work of a scientific person, who is experimenting upon the capacity of atmospheric currents to transport living organisms and rain them down upon distant localities, the malevolence of Thomassen has been completely surpassed. To blow up a steamship is a small matter compared with raining incalculable quantities of gigantic mosquitoes upon helpless communities. One thing is very certain, and that is that there will be an enormous decrease of the usual number of marriages next summer, if the new Canadian mosquitoes are to render the tailors and furriers of Canada inaccessible except by those who are encased in metallic armor.

But the recent mosquito shower, bad as it was, has been eclipsed by a still more recent and Objectionable shower which occurred in California. It was restricted to the narrow area of a single city lot on Van Ness street, San Francisco; but it was of unparalleled violence and malignity. Early one evening the Van Ness street family was quietly seated around the social center table, the father explaining to a casual Eastern visitor the unequaled beauties of the Californian climate, and the mother hushing her baby by reading in a monotonous murmur the report of the day’s sale of mining stocks. Suddenly a loud pattering was heard on the roof, mingled with the last despairing cry of some strong tomcat in his agony. The pattering and the cries increased, and a shower of heavy objects fell from the eaves and rattled on the pavement below. The whole family rushed to the front piazza, and by the increasing light of the full moon beheld scores of cats pouring from the roof. Cats of all sizes and colors were sliding over the shingles and turning wild somersaults in the air. At one moment a gigantic tomcat would clutch at the pitiless gutter pipe, and failing to break his fall, would shoot meteor like, with outstretched tail through the astonished night and impale himself on the iron spikes of the front fence. At another moment a staid tortoiseshell tabby, of untarnished reputation, would make the fatal plunge, uttering blasphemous and bloodcurdling yells until she brained herself on the brick pavement. The horrified family fled to the cellar, where they passed the night in denouncing the Weather Bureau; in vainly attempting to convince their Eastern guest that an occasional cat shower in no way detracted from the unequaled excellence of the Californian climate, and in searching a pocket New Testament for the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The shower did not last more than fifteen minutes, although it sprinkled cats at intervals until morning. When daylight came, every fence spike was ornamented with an impaled cat, and the yard was so thickly strewn with the dead and wounded that an experienced meteorologist, who subsequently investigated the affair, reported that at least eight inches of cats must have fallen during the night. The theory put forth by this skeptical man of science in order to account for the shower hardly needs to be refuted. He invented a small-boy, whom he accused of greasing the roof with imaginary butter, which caused some hundreds of cats, assembled on the ridge pole with a view to singing the praises of love and mice, to lose their footing. Inasmuch as he failed to produce either the boy or the butter, and also failed to explain how a boy could keep his footing on a greased roof, where the most skilful cat, even with the aid of four feet and a full set of claws, could not maintain a position, we can only pity the weakness and despise the effrontery of the scientific skeptic.

It is sufficiently evident that this Californian cat shower is the last of the kind which a free and proud people can permit. We have now had showers of flesh, fish, mosquitoes, and cats, and unless prompt measures are taken we shall presently be pelted with puppies and deluged with pitchforks. Men and brethren, shall these things be? Are we to silently permit the hands of the weather clock to be turned back, and our customary showers of water to be superseded by showers of undesirable animals? Delay is dangerous. While we are yet speaking a wave of atmospheric cats may be approaching us from the Gulf; light showers of wasps and mosquitoes may be about to descend upon the New England and Middle States, and an area of cosmical pigs may be threatening the region of the lakes.

Tennessee pygmies

Prehistoric America must have been an exceedingly curious and interesting country. Its forests were filled with mastodons, megatheriums, and other large and lively beasts, any one of which thought nothing of scratching himself on the sharp pinnacles of a convenient Gothic church, and so toppling it over on its scores of helpless pew holders. In the Mississippi Valley, the industrious mound builders were constantly throwing up gigantic molehills, and planting them with earthen pots and copper hatchets, in the vain expectation that the seed thus sown would yield enormous crops of kitchenware and carpenters’ tools. In Kentucky, the giants to whom the bones recently discovered in a Kentucky cave are said to have belonged, strode loftily along the turnpikes, kicking the Indians and the mound builders contemptuously out of the way; and finally, in Tennessee, a race of pygmies was continually holding political meetings and resolving that mastodons, mound builders, and giants should be promptly abolished, and that the size of the inhabitants of this country should be made and kept commensurate with its commercial necessities.

It is rather odd that the existence of the Tennessee pygmies of prehistoric America was until recently never suspected. The name of the mastodon has long been familiar to every person who is in the least degree addicted to fossils. His remains, in the shape of a plaster of Paris skeleton, with the artist’s name stamped on the forehead, are exhibited in every respectable museum, and inspire the youth of America with bitter regret that an animal so beautifully adapted for experiments with red pepper lozenges has gone where the small-boy ceases to trouble and the nomadic circus is at rest. The mound builders have been the subject of scores of learned essays, in which their identity with the Aztecs, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Welsh, and the lost tribes of Israel has been triumphantly shown; and of the exact height and probable capacity for whiskey of the Kentucky giants, we have had careful and presumably accurate statistics. The discovery of the pygmies is, however, so very recent, that no one has as yet framed any theory whatever to account for their origin, and to explain their complete extinction.

When the Kentucky giants were discovered, it was natural that the State pride of the people of Tennessee should be somewhat hurt. The Tennesseans, however, did not sit down and content themselves with reviling the Kentuckians and insinuating doubts as to the alleged character of the gigantic bones. They promptly proceeded to find rival bones of still greater merit, and their industry has been rewarded by their discovery of a graveyard containing the skeletons of seventy-five thousand pygmies of the average height of three feet each. What are the three nine-foot giants of Kentucky, in comparison with so great a cloud of pygmies? If we may judge from the price usually paid by circus managers for living giants and dwarfs a three-foot dwarf is decidedly more valuable than a nine-foot giant, and if the same standard governs the price of fossils, the seventy-five thousand Tennessee pigmies are worth fully twenty-five thousand times as much as the three Kentucky giants. While the Kentuckians can present their giants to three eminent scientific men, and thus obtain three distinct scientific reports certifying to the enormous interest and value of fossil giants, the Tennesseans can supply every scientific man in this country and in Europe with a fossil dwarf, and so secure testimonials without number to the unequaled excellence of Tennessee pygmies. Indeed, if the discoverers of the pygmies will only employ some astute piano maker who is an expert in testimonials, to obtain for the fossil dwarfs the recognition of the scientific world, there is not a living scientific person who will not sign a certificate setting forth his admiration for the beauty and durability of the pygmies, and his determination to use none but those of the celebrated Tennessee graveyard for the rest of his professional life.

At what period these pygmies flourished, what they accomplished, and by what means they were induced to retire simultaneously to their graveyard, can only be conjectured. They may have been the identical pygmies that, according to the Greek legend, waged war with the cranes. If so, the cranes must have proved too powerful for them. This is hardly probable, and any modern Tennessean who has attempted to keep chickens in the neighborhood of a family of citizens of African descent, will scornfully refuse to believe that pygmies of three feet in height could not kill cranes on their roost with at least as much success as is achieved by the African small-boy when invading the midnight hen house. We must wait for further discoveries before it will be safe to decide whether the pygmies were contemporary with the giants and whether they preceded the mound builders. The bare fact that they once existed is all that we can now safely affirm of them; but doubtless by the time that every home in the country is ornamented with a fossil pygmy, and every newspaper publishes extracts from the certificates of scientific persons who are overwhelmed with admiration of the vast superiority of the Tennessee pygmies to those of all rival communities, we shall be in the possession of information which will enable us to know at least as much of the pygmies as we now know of the mastodon and the mound builders.

A new company

Within the last three years those curious people who propose to put an end to sin and misery over the whole earth, by burning instead of burying corpses, have made numerous and strenuous efforts to propagate their peculiar principles. Hitherto they have not met with much success. Here and there an ardent advocate of “cremation” has had the good fortune to have a dead wife or grandmother in his house, and has promptly burned her in the back yard, but the public has steadily declined to follow his example. The truth is that at the present prices of fuel, burning corpses is a luxury quite beyond the means of men of moderate incomes. A man with a large family, who has the foresight to lay in a stock of coffins in midwinter, when the demand is light and prices are low, can bury half a dozen children in the following Spring and Fall at perhaps a fourth of the cost of the fuel which would be needed to burn them. This is naturally a strong argument against the adoption of the practice of cremation, especially among suburban communities, where chills and fever and railways prevail during the greater part of the year. Hence the agitation in favor of “cremation,” which two years ago was quite vigorous both here and in Europe, has gradually died away, and it is now some months since the press has had occasion to mention a corpse burning festival.

It has recently occurred to certain thoughtful and ingenious persons residing in London, that the constant fire maintained in the crater of Vesuvius generates an enormous amount of heat which is wholly wasted. That such a waste should be permitted in an age when fuel is universally dear, and there is a terrible prospect that in a few short millions of years the entire coal fields of the world will be exhausted, is nothing less than disgraceful. If the Neapolitans had any enterprise, they would long ago have heated their city, and provided a perpetual Summer for the fields of Southern Italy, by utilizing the Vesuvian heat. All that is needed is to induce some scientific person to invent a method of storing and transporting the heat of the volcano, and to organize a company to supply it to customers. Pure Mount Vesuvius heat would, of course, drive all the coal and wood now consumed in South Italy out of the market, and would place the means of cooking macaroni and warming fingers chilled by turning organ cranks in the frosty Winter air, within the reach of the poorest inhabitant of the province.

The ingenious Londoners already mentioned do not, however, propose to use the heat of Vesuvius for warming purposes; but they have devised a plan of utilizing the volcano which deserves the attention of all Europeans. Experience has shown that whatever is thrown into the crater is instantly consumed. Occasionally a native Italian has inadvertently slipped into it, and has vanished so suddenly and completely that not even a trace of garlic could be scented in the air, and nothing but a silent hand organ and a bereaved monkey remained to recall the fact that a citizen of free Italy had flashed into flame and been dissipated in gases. Even the stoutest British tourist who has toppled into the crater while searching for a good place to boil a teakettle, has disappeared before he could fairly mention his purpose of writing to the Times newspaper, and denouncing the neglect of the local authorities to rail in the crater for the protection of travelers. That Vesuvius is of all places in the world the one where cremation can be practiced cheaply and efficiently ought long ago to have been perceived, and though the astute Londoners deserve credit for having finally determined to make it the universal cemetery of Europe, they would have shown more enterprise had they hit upon the same idea three years ago.

It is the intention of the “London and Vesuvius Cremation Company (limited)” to build a railway from the foot to the summit of the volcano, and to connect it with the great European system of railways. On the verge of the crater they will build a neat chapel, and keep constantly on hand a staff of clergymen of every conceivable faith. Whenever a corpse is to be “cremated,” the friends of the deceased will leave an order at the office of the company for a Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Mormon funeral, as the case may be. The company will dispatch the corpse and the mourners by a special train personally conducted by an official, with a face expressive of the deepest grief, to the volcano, where the proper variety of clergyman will be in attendance, and the funeral having been promptly celebrated, the corpse will be gently lowered into the crater. It is estimated that the company can put this delightful style of funeral at prices which will bring it within the reach of persons of very moderate means, while at the same time rich and extravagant mourners can order special funerals of any degree of magnificence, without any limit as to cost.

There is one other feature of the plan which is especially attractive. Mourners who have seen the remains of their loved ones comfortably “cremated” in the finest natural furnace in Europe, can straightway distract their minds and allay their grief by enjoying the view from the summit of the mountain, and by making a subsequent visit to all points of interest in Naples and its vicinity. This will naturally tend to divest funerals of their present depressing effect, and will render them really enjoyable. The old proverb “see Naples and die,” will henceforth read, “Have some member of your family die, and then see Naples after the funeral.” Thus, by the simple device of turning Vesuvius into a “cremating” furnace, funerals will be cheaply conducted, corpses will be comfortably disposed of, and mourners will have their sorrow charmed away, their minds improved, and their tastes delighted by the beauties of the Bay of Naples, the treasures of the Bourbon Museum, the pleasures of the San Carlo, and the wonders of Pompeii and Herculaneum. No more beneficent scheme has been devised within the present century, and the “London and Vesuvius Cremation Company (limited)” will hereafter be ranked even higher in the affections of economical tourists than are Messrs. Cook, Son & Jenkins, with their personally conducted tours.

The achromatic small-boy

Among the wonders of California is a recently discovered small-boy, with unique and marvelous eyes. He is now nine years of age, and until within the last few months his parents have believed him to be totally blind. This belief, being based upon the boy’s utter inability to see anything, was not perhaps altogether irrational. When kindly disposed playmates present a strange cat, a tomato can, and apiece of string to a healthy and active small-boy only to find that he cannot perform the simple feat of putting them accurately together, it is safe to decide that there is something physically as well as morally wrong about him. And when the same small-boy can be left for hours in the immediate presence of accessible jam without showing the faintest desire to wallow in it, the conclusion that he must be blind is irresistible. The Californian boy of whom mention has just been made, exhibited for more than eight years the most unvarying inability to see any object whatever, and it is not strange that he obtained the reputation of unmitigated blindness.

On the 12th of December last this remarkable boy accidentally awoke in the night, and loudly remarked that he saw the moon. Not only did he perceive the existence of that respectable satellite, but he saw it as from a distance of two hundred yards, and could thus accurately describe its contents. He saw hills and valleys and trees and telegraph poles, and, in fact, all the natural beauties which constitute an alluring landscape. Moreover, he saw inhabitants of a new and extraordinary pattern. According to this veracious small-boy, the Lunarians run chiefly to legs. They are constructed on the model of a cartwheel without a rim, and revolve with enormous rapidity on the extremities of their radiating legs, which resemble in number and disposition the spokes of an ordinary and earthly wheel. These spokes, however, are evidently not developed until the Lunarian emerges from the period of infancy, inasmuch as the Lunar babies resemble pumpkins, and display no vestige of even rudimentary legs.

It appears that there is a College_of Sciences in California, consisting of a number of learned men, described by the local press as mathematical and geological sharps. As soon as the wonderful astronomical discoveries made by the supposed blind boy were brought to the attention of these scientific gentlemen, they at once dropped the slates on which they were calculating, in accordance with a request of the Legislature, the probabilities in favor of four aces being dealt to any one in a party of six, and promptly undertook to investigate the small-boy’s visual powers. In due time they reported that the boy’s lunar observations were unquestionably accurate, and they explained his vast superiority to any telescope hitherto constructed by deciding that his focal distance was of an abnormal character. In the opinion of these ingenious and accomplished scientific persons, the boy possesses achromatic eyes constructed expressly in order to observe objects at a distance of 240,000 miles, and the inability of such eyes to perceive objects close at hand is natural and inevitable. The best modern telescope brings the moon within an apparent distance of thirty miles, but if the moon were really only thirty miles distant, the telescope could not show it. It is no wonder that a boy afflicted — or rather gifted — with a focal distance greater than that of any telescope should have been blind to the presence of cats and jam. Had he been shown a cat at the distance of 240,000 miles, there is no doubt that he would instantly have called for strings and tomato cans, and displayed the liveliest interest in the apparent duty of the hour.

The discovery of this unparalleled boy marks a new era in the science of astronomy. Of course his peculiarities will at once be made to serve the interests of science. He will be equatorially mounted in the California Observatory in place of the now obsolete telescope, and will be fitted with clockwork, which will give him a constant sidereal motion. From twilight to dawn he will be constantly kept at work discovering asteroids and comets, and taking photographs of distinguished Lunar citizens. The utmost care will be taken to keep him in perfect order, and visitors will be strictly forbidden to touch him or to breathe upon his eyes. Only the best of oil and the softest of chamois leather will be used in polishing him, and only the most experienced astronomers will be allowed to wind up his clockwork or to move him on his axis. Such a boy, if once broken or scratched, cannot be replaced or repaired, and no mechanician will think it possible to contrive an artificial boy of anything like his powers. Let us hope that this last and best gift of California to mankind will be placed at the disposal of the most eminent astronomers of the age, and that they will employ every available moment in gazing through him at the wonders of the starry heavens. Had Herschel only possessed a purely achromatic boy, with a focal distance of ninety feet, he would have left nothing for future astronomers to discover; and if Prof. Peters will now undertake to keep his eye constantly applied to the California boy, he will in a few months’ time capture every asteroid and comet now at liberty, and become as familiar with the topography of the sun, the moon, and the planets as he is with the interior of his present observatory.

Sioux servants

When a woman devotes herself to politics she usually lets the bread burn. Similarly, when she is an earnest housekeeper she does not care to ask her husband which Presidential candidate she supports or whether she is in favor of hard or soft money. Yet, while the general truth of the assertion that women cannot combine politics and housekeeping is confirmed by the almost unshaken testimony of history, an exception must be made in favor of a Bostonian lady, who has just found that she can labor at the same time for the good of the kitchen and of the State. This unique woman has proposed a plan which aims at applying a simple remedy to the evils which the country suffers from hostile Indians, and those which harass the housewife at the hands of objectionable servants. A mind which can thus grasp two vast and widely different questions and discover a simple solution for them both is worthy of Boston — that city where the girl babies are born with spectacles, and refuse to go to sleep unless Emerson’s “Brahma” is crooned over their cradles.

The plan in question is a very simple one, and for that very reason is entitled to the respect of those who know how simple have been some of the greatest discoveries of science and some of the most eminent scientific persons. The Bostonian philanthropist lays down the premise that we have too many Indians and too few good servant girls. She thus reasons that if all the Indian women were to be banished from the Indian’s country the red men would soon become extinct, and that if those banished Indian women were to be placed in the kitchens of Massachusetts matrons the paucity of servants would no longer exist. The plan, then, consists in bringing the squaws to the Eastern States and using them as servants. This constitutes an Indian policy which has all the advantages of extermination without the uncertainty as to which side will be exterminated, which generally exists when troops are sent to exterminate Modocs or Sioux. It also furnishes the housekeepers of our beloved land with a kitchen policy which promises to free them from the tyranny of Bridget and the inefficiency of Dinah.

It is well known that the Indian women are accustomed to work. In fact all the work of the entire tribe is done by the women, the men restricting themselves to the pastimes of war and hunting, and the purchase and consumption of whiskey. If, then, we introduce a Sioux squaw into an Eastern kitchen there will be no reason to fear that she will be physically unable to work. She can cook, and hoe corn, and build wigwams in the back yard to an unlimited extent — provided her employer can convince her that it is her duty to work.

Of course, in dealing with a domestic squaw we must make use of arguments which she can understand, and which she regards as really forcible. Thus, she must be frequently knocked down with a club, in order to induce her to get up and go about her work. Such is the simple method of encouragement to which she is accustomed at the hands of the Sioux warrior, and we could hardly expect that she would work cheerfully and efficiently without it. Care must be also taken to provide her with the amusements with which the Sioux women relax their minds and cultivate a blithe and happy spirit. She must have an occasional plumber given to her for purposes of torture, and must be allowed to scalp the man who comes to inspect the gas meter. These innocent and harmless sports would not only bring happiness to her unsophisticated bosom, but would doubtless have an excellent effect upon the plumbers and gas inspectors. Even the most hardened plumber, who had been for years in the habit of charging a full day’s pay for sitting one hour on the edge of a bathtub, and making up his mind that he had forgotten to bring his tools, could not help being benefited by being tied to a post in the back yard where the Sioux cook could take a frequent hack at him with the hatchet while waiting for the potatoes to boil or the beef to roast. Of course, she should have free permission to brain all tramps with the poker, and to hang their scalps in the scullery. With these means of recreation she would probably be entirely contented, and would do her work with cheerful alacrity.

But there are two serious objections to the scheme of filling our kitchens with Sioux squaws. It would be impossible to teach a Sioux servant to wash dishes, or anything else. She would probably be willing to wipe an occasional plate on the end of her blanket, but her aboriginal conscience would not allow her to meddle with water or to contaminate herself with soap. Moreover, she would undoubtedly manage to get drunk at frequent intervals, and while in that state she would be certain to exterminate one or more members of her employer’s family. Such irregularities could not be overlooked by any judicious housekeeper. Even the Bostonian philanthropist herself would not think it wise to retain a servant who should wait on the dinner table with the chambermaid’s scalp at her girdle, or who should have exterminated the baby on the previous evening. Unless some method can be found of weaning the Sioux squaws from the love of whiskey and of convincing them that washing is not a dangerous practice, it will be impracticable to employ them in civilized kitchens; and the ingenuity of the fair philanthropist of Boston will have been exercised in vain.

Male girls

Hitherto the enemies of evolution have been in the habit of tauntingly requesting Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and other proprietors and dealers in that famous theory, to evolve a new kind of human being or a few novelties in pigs or horses. They have asserted that if unassisted nature can evolve a man from a monkey, a skilful scientific person ought to be able to evolve and patent an improved style of baby, or to develop a race of pigs with ears adapted to the manufacture of silk purses. Because the evolutionists have been apparently deaf to these demands they have been abused with much vigor as self confessed impostors, and to some extent the unscientific public has accepted this slanderous estimate of them. It now appears that in spite of their proud silence the evolutionists have been busily at work evolving a practical answer to their assailants, and that they have finally produced a specimen of their art which is to be exhibited in the next International Exhibition.

The world has been, and is now, very well contented with its present assortment of animals. It is true that persons of fastidious tastes have occasionally suggested that a few simple improvements might be put upon some of our domestic animals. For example, there are those who think it desirable to have the guinea fowl’s voice pitched in a a different key, or the tail of the milch cow fitted to the animal in such a way that it could be easily unshipped during the process of milking. These suggested improvements, however, are merely matters of detail. The idea of adding new animals to our present stock is quite a different affair, and no one has seriously advocated it except when jeering at the evolutionists and seeking to draw them into a vexatious position.

On the other hand, the belief that a new variety of human being is imperatively needed has prevailed among the most advanced social reformers. It is generally conceded among the friends of the “Emancipation of Woman” that what is really needed is the invention of a new sex. It is obvious to the minds of our strongest minded women that men, being unmitigated brutes, are entirely unfit to live, and that women, who are spiritually a little higher than the angels are physically unfit to meet all the exigencies of life. Of course, they consider that if men could be wholly eliminated and the world placed wholly under the control of women, the change would be an enormous improvement; nevertheless, they admit — in the confidence of private tea and toast — that even in a world governed wholly by women contingencies would arise with which the ablest woman would be unable to successfully cope. For instance, there is the implacable and devastating mouse. What would become of a senate of women if a mouse should venture into the senate chamber? There, too, is the appalling earthworm. How could women venture to undertake the cultivation of the entire wheat fields of the world with the certainty that from time to time the plow would bring to the surface a fierce and deadly earthworm, who would squirm under the very feet of the horrified husband-woman? It is in vain to allege that a woman can face dangers like these with any hope of triumphing over them. The most progressive woman, clad in the best of trousers, armed with the ballot, and holding the most important office in the State, would be liable to faint in the presence of a determined mouse, or to perish under the attack of an enraged and violent earthworm. It is thus clear that before the world can be brought to a state of absolute perfection a new kind of woman, having the moral and mental excellencies of the present variety of woman, and the boldness in the face of mice and creeping things which distinguishes the brave though brutal man, must be devised. Such a being would virtually constitute a new sex, to whom would rightfully appertain the possession and government of the world.

It is precisely this ideal man-woman that the evolutionists have silently and successfully developed. The fact that they have accomplished this grand achievement has not been directly announced, but it is revealed by implication in the advertising columns of a Philadelphia newspaper. The other day the newspaper in question contained in its columns of “wants” a request for a “wealthy” woman who would be willing “to adopt a male girl.” There can be no doubt that this “male girl” is the crowning achievement of evolution, and that she will soon become famous as the grandest scientific production of the age.

What constitutes a male girl, and in what respect she differs physically from the common human girl of current zoological textbooks, we are left to conjecture. Undoubtedly she is masculine in point of legs, and is thus fitted for the full enjoyment of trousers. It is also probable that although she may have a masculine beard, she is distinctively feminine in point of back hair, for otherwise she could not let it down in the heat of debate, and thus crush an opponent with hair superficially pinned on and wholly unfitted for rhetorical uses. How she is fitted up internally we can never know until the drawings and specifications which her inventor has doubtless filed in the Patent Office are published; but we may assume that her heart is so constructed as to be certain not to palpitate at the sight of mice or worms, and that instead of the usual human stomach, she has been provided with large tanks for holding tea, and a roomy compartment for the stowage of cake, caramels, and buttered toast.

When this male girl is formally placed on exhibition, there will be an end of the pretense that evolution cannot evolve a new pattern of humanity, and a revival of courage among the advocates of woman’s supremacy. Under the leadership of male girls who can face the fiercest mouse with impunity, and literally beard the earthworm in his native ground, women can fearlessly undertake all the duties which men so imperfectly discharge. The male girls will constitute a sort of corps d’ elite., and will come to the front whenever the masculine virtues of bravery in the presence of mice and other foes of women are needed. Thus will the new era prophesied by progressive women be made a magnificent success, and the need and memory of man utterly and forever vanish.

A growing vice

In a Philadelphia newspaper issued during the prevalence of the late Exhibition, a householder of that city announced that he desired to rent certain rooms to “a genteel gent,” with “a refined wife,” but that no “gent,” whether “genteel” or otherwise, who used tobacco in any shape need apply. He further announced that he had rejected nearly one hundred applicants for the rooms in question on the ground that they were one and all addicted to tobacco, and that no money could induce him to admit a consumer of tobacco beneath his roof. This shameless advertisement is only one of many evidences of the extent to which the degrading vice of abstinence from tobacco perverts the noblest instincts of mankind. It is probable that the strongest passion which nature ever implanted in the Philadelphian breast was a desire to let rooms at high prices to Centennial visitors. Among the more thoughtful Philadelphians it is held as a matter of faith that Philadelphia was founded for the express purpose of letting rooms and an occasional hack to the nations of the earth, who were delivered into her hand during the Centennial Exhibition as a lawful and predestined prey. What, then, must be the strength of that terrible habit which can render the Philadelphian deaf to the voice of nature, and induce him to spurn the proffered dollars of the tobacco smoker? It is indeed disheartening to find a Philadelphia householder, who at some period of his life was doubtless an innocent and kind hearted man, deliberately ignoring the great mission of his being, casting contempt upon his native city, and permitting the Centennial visitor to go unfleeced. Such, however, is the perverting influence of an unnatural and depraved habit.

The growth of the habit of abstinence from tobacco has been very obvious during the last four or five years. The fate of the late Mr. Trask, who was so completely under the dominion of the anti-tobacco habit that he permitted himself to write the most dreary tracts ever composed by an enfeebled intellect, seems to have had no effect in convincing his fellow sufferers of the evil of their course. On the other hand, the high price of cigars, and the venomous hostility to the Union, which led men to abstain from smoking lest they should increase the revenue of the Government, have had a vast influence in inducing parsimonious and unprincipled persons to abstain from tobacco. The statistics of this loathsome vice would astonish the careless and unthinking. It is estimated that at least ten per cent, of native American men are confirmed enemies of the weed, while the number of women who openly ex press their hostility to tobacco in any form is simply appalling. And what is the most painful feature of this widespread vice, is its certain tendency to deprive its votaries of all regard for the rights of those who live purer and more smoky lives.

Our public conveyances afford a constant illustration of this unhappy state of things. On many of our streetcars smokers are positively forbidden to ride, while nonsmokers are freely permitted to occupy the seats. On board our ferryboats the best cabin is entirely given up to victims of the anti-tobacco habit, and smokers are thrust into a nauseous den insultingly called the “gents’ cabin.” On railway trains smokers are forced to occupy the car nearest to the engine, in order that in case of a collision they may be killed or wounded, and in our theaters smoking is absolutely prohibited. If the non-smokers were in a majority, the tameness with which smokers submit to these humiliations might be understood, but that a few score men, devoid of the least scent of tobacco, and without even a clay pipe in their possession, should be permitted to poison themselves with pure air in the best cabin of a ferryboat while hundreds of smokers are driven into the “gents’ cabin” or compelled to stand on deck, is a curious and disheartening phase of American civilization.

In fact the victims of the anti-tobacco habit seem determined to forcibly bring all mankind under the dominion of the same pernicious vice. They are not ashamed to confess the atrocious sentiment that smokers have no rights which non-smokers are bound to respect. If they had the power they would banish tobacco from the world, and would drive the smoker out of existence. The Philadelphian who will neither lodge, feed, nor fleece a smolder is only a little more outspoken than the rest of his class. Unless steps are taken to arrest the flood of hostility to tobacco which now threatens to overwhelm our once happy land, the near future will be one from which every enterprising tobacconist will shrink back in horror and dismay.

What is needed is not force, but argument. We must’ leave the non-smoker to perceive the consequences of his body and soul destroying vice. A pledge binding its signer to use a definite quantity of tobacco daily should be persistently circulated, and signatures kindly solicited. Among the young, tobacco societies should be organized and infantile “bands of smoke” should make war with banners, picnics, and other efficient weapons against the giant evil of abstinence from tobacco. If this is done, the number of those who are confirmed non-smokers will receive few recruits, and in time it will be possible to pass a law in every State by which non-smokers shall be tolerated only on the forward platforms of street cars, and be permitted to ride on railway trains only on conditions of stowing themselves among the coal or in the baggage car.

Of course, such a crusade would provoke the bitter hostility of the enemies of tobacco. The wicked inevitably hate the good; but pure and upright men can afford to brave the enmity of those depraved beings who insist that pure air is the birthright of every man, and that no one has a right to fill his neighbor’s nose with the fumes of tobacco smoke. These atrocious opinions are what we might naturally expect from men corrupted by years of abstinence from tobacco, and they deserve only a pitying smile from those who lead more fragrant and cloudy lives, and have a better knowledge of the ways of salivation.

Ghost catching

It is conceded that when a person proposes to cook a hare the first thing to be done is to catch the hare. Similarly it has occurred to most persons not suffering under a belief in Spiritualism, that in order to test the alleged ghostly character of “materialized” spirits the first step is to catch a spirit. Until recently, however, no one has adopted this proper course. Investigators have attended the exhibitions of materialized ghosts, and have shown the utmost carefulness in searching for concealed trapdoors, theatrical costumes, and gutta percha masks, and in tying the operating medium in his or her chair with abstruse and elaborate knots. All this labor might have been saved, and some really satisfactory result obtained, if an able bodied investigator had simply caught a ghost in the act of exhibiting itself in the dim irreligious light, and subjected it to a little muscular analysis. If the alleged ghost had proved to be flesh and blood the fraudulent character of the “materialization” would have been established, and if, on the contrary, it had proved to be spirit, the existence of a future state of unmitigated idiocy would have been conclusively demonstrated. In either case there would have been no necessity for any further investigation, and the thankless task of tying ropes about a bony mediums ankles, with the certainty that skeptical people would subsequently insinuate that the investigators were either idiots or confederates of the medium, would have been happily avoided.

It is pleasant to note that Mr. Crum, of Rochester, has finally had the good sense to begin the task of investigating the materializing business in the only rational manner. Mrs. Markee, a medium of extraordinary powers, undertook to exhibit a company of select and first-class ghosts to a Rochester audience a few nights since. Mrs. Markee was assisted by Mr. Markee, who acted as master of ceremonies and introduced the ghosts with brief and complimentary biographical sketches. The medium was tied with the usual ropes in the usual cabinet, and the audience sang hymns, in accordance with Mr. Markee’s request, doubtless in order to prevent the ghosts from cherishing any longing to permanently return to a world where people who cant sing are always ready to try to sing. After the spirit of Daniel Webster had thrust his head out of the window of the cabinet, and made the astonishing revelation that there was “a Mr. Smith” in the audience, and that he rather thought he had met a Mr. Smith while in the body, the ghost of “Sarah” walked out upon the platform, clad in white, and materialized to the apparent extent of a hundred and fifty pounds. This was the moment for which Mr. Crum had waited. He leaped upon the platform and seized Sarah in his arms. The ghost, regarding this as a liberty, shrieked loudly; Mr. Markee caught up a chair and knocked the investigator down, and Sarah, escaping into the cabinet was seen no more.

There was of course a tremendous uproar. Mr. Markee loudly proposed to destroy Mr. Crum on the spot, as a villain who had laid his hand on a female ghost in other than a spirit of kindness. Mr. Crum argued that his destruction was unnecessary and undesirable; and the audience was divided in opinion as to whether Crum or Markee was the person who stood in need of immediate destruction. The presence of mind of Daniel Webster happily restored order. That eminent ghost yelled out of the cabinet window that the medium would die if the audience “didn’t everlastingly sing something,” and some sympathetic Spiritualist suddenly striking up that pathetic hymn beginning “Tramp, tramp, tramp,” the audience joined in, and Mr. Markee postponed his bloody resolution.

With the singing of the hymn the exhibition ended. Mrs. Markee was found in the cabinet still tightly bound, and with her face covered with blood, which, as Mr. Markee explained, was in some vague way the result of Sarah’s hasty “dematerialization” of herself. At any rate, no wound could be found upon her person, and though Mr. Markee, with great liberality, offered to put a bullet through Mr. Crum or to provide him with an additional and obviously superfluous head, he finally decided that his first duty was to wash Mrs. Markee, and to send Daniel Webster to inquire whether Sarah sustained any serious injury.

It is not to be denied that Mr. Crum’s praiseworthy experiment was not as conclusive in its results as he had a right to expect that it would be. He caught his ghost, but from circumstances beyond his control and not wholly unconnected with Mr. Markee and a heavy chair, he was forced to abandon his captive before he had thoroughly analyzed her. He, however, unhesitatingly asserts that “Sarah” was a real woman, and no known variety of ghost. It is said that Mr. Crum is an intelligent man, and can diagnose a woman even in the dark, by simply putting his arms around her, as he did around Sarah. Nevertheless the Spiritualists will claim that inasmuch as he did not hand “Sarah” to the audience for inspection, or did not capture from her any hairpins or other evidences of womanhood, he has not yet demonstrated that she was not a genuine and unadulterated ghost.

It is, then, chiefly as an example that Mr. Crum’s exploit is valuable. He is the first man who has tried to investigate materialized spirits in a truly scientific way, and there can be no doubt that other investigators will be found who will pursue the same system. It maybe suggested, however, that it is not necessary to seize a ghost with one’s bare hands. No sportsman goes out to hunt the deer or to capture the salmon with nothing but the weapons which nature has given him. The investigator should catch his ghosts with a scoop net, a lasso, or a boat hook, and thus make reasonably certain of his prey, while, at the same time, he avoids any argument with the medium’s husband. Had Mr. Crum, instead of rashly leaping upon the platform, remained in his seat and gathered Sarah to him with a skilfully thrown lasso, or a boat hook carefully inserted in her waistband, he would have fairly landed his game and escaped the interference of Mr. Markee. In fact the chase and capture of the materialized ghost can be made a delightful sport, rivaling fly fishing in the skill which it postulates, and deer shooting in the size of the “bag” which the sportsman may make. Of course, not more than one ghost could be taken in a single evening; but the sportsman who should return from a materializing seance with a hundred and fifty pound ghost across his shoulder and the sweet consciousness of having demonstrated the true nature of materialization, would enjoy a triumph far exceeding that which the fisherman feels on landing a six pound trout or a thirty pound salmon.

Superfluous snakes

It may be safely asserted that there is no real need of any addition to our present supply of snakes. Any man who wishes to lay in a full stock of snakes, from the deadly rattlesnake to what may be delicately mentioned as the elastic ligature snake, can do so at a very trifling expense. We have all the snakes that a free, intelligent, and Christian nation needs, without including the world of ideal snakes in which the consumer of Western whiskey is accustomed to revel, and hence any attempt to increase the number of North American snakes shows a lack of judgment which deserves to be frankly and firmly rebuked.

It is now fully two years since an enterprising Western meteorologist by the name of Tice undertook to compete with the Signal Service Department in the weather business. Mr Tice at first attracted a good deal of attention by the boldness and liberality of his promises. When the Weather Bureau would cautiously predict nothing more startling than an area of low barometer in the lake region, followed by clear or cloudy weather somewhere between Maine and California, Mr. Tice would predict a hurricane in New England, extreme heat, together with frequent ice gorges in the Middle States, and an assortment of selected earthquakes in the region of the gulf. Of course, persons who preferred striking and sensational weather to familiar everyday weather, ceased to patronize the old established bureau, and gladly dealt with Mr. Tice. In time, however, it was discovered that Mr. Tice promised more than he performed, and that his weather seldom justified his enthusiastic descriptions of it. Thus he earned the reputation of a busy, energetic, but not altogether trustworthy person, and, of course, his business gradually decreased as his deceived patrons deserted him and transferred their custom to the old shop.

In these circumstances, Mr. Tice felt that bold and decisive measures must be adopted, unless he was prepared to retire from business altogether. It was just at this period in his career that the Western part of our Union was visited by those extraordinary showers of butcher’s meat, frogs, and back hair, which inspired Western editors with the hope of becoming familiar with the taste of meat, and held out to boardinghouse keepers the prospect of a substantial decline in the price of the materials for butter manufacture. It is not certainly known that these meteorological novelties were the work of the enterprising Tice; but it is very certain that the Weather Bureau had nothing to do with them. That Tice, however, should attempt some startling novelty in the line of weather was precisely what might have been expected by those who were familiar with his character and business habits, and there is certainly a strong probability that he was the real originator of the meat and hair showers.

It will be remembered that the hopes created by these remarkable showers were never realized. The meat was found to be little better than mere refuse, and was so obviously uneatable that even the local cats sniffed at it disdainfully. The back hair was also of a coarse and brittle nature, and was unfit either for toilet or butter purposes. Thus, Mr. Tice’s showers, although they drew public attention to him, were as worthless for all practical purposes as were his predictions of hurricanes and earthquakes. They possessed a certain gaudy and meretricious brilliancy, but they were really cheap and useless.

Another shower, possessing precisely these twin features of gaudiness and worthlessness, has just taken place at Memphis, Tenn. It was a shower of small snakes, of from six inches to a foot in length. At first it was the universal opinion of the male inhabitants of the town that the time for signing the total abstinenee pledge had arrived, and the doctors’ offices were thronged with haggard men, who begged for composing draughts, and swore henceforth to lead temperate and sober lives. The reality of the snakes was, however, thoroughly substantiated by hundreds of the women of Memphis, who rushed wildly through the streets, clutching their tightly folded skirts, and occasionally dealing fierce blows at their surprised ankles. It was not long before the snakes wriggled out of sight; the frightened men returned to their accustomed beverage, and the excited women sought comfort and consolation in hysterics. A few snakes were thoughtfully captured and preserved in alcohol by fearless members of the Good Templar society, and these still remain to prove the truth of the unprecedented shower of snakes.

Now, if Mr. Tice is responsible for this last and most useless of all abnormal meteorological phenomena, he should be plainly dealt with. If we are to have showers of other materials than rain, snow, and hail, let us have something that is useful as well as novel. When the Israelites were hungry, they were refreshed with showers of good, wholesome manna, which, when nicely cooked and seasoned with a little Chutney or Worcestershire sauce, was extremely palatable. A shower of sausages, or pork chops, or shellfish, would, perhaps, have been equally interesting to scientific Hebrews, but such showers would have been useless from a culinary point of view, while a shower of snakes would probably have driven the Hebrews back to Egypt — where undesirable showers of all sorts were accustomed to fall exclusively upon the Egyptians. If Mr. Tice wants to advertise his weather business, he should prepare a few inexpensive but useful showers of such materials as dried beef, pickles, or condensed milk. He would thus earn the gratitude of the public, and would completely undermine the popularity of the Washington Weather Bureau. Such a miserable trick as a shower of snakes is, however, utterly inexcusable, and if Mr. Tice ventures to repeat it, he should be prosecuted under the statute which forbids any one to deface natural scenery with business advertisements.

A new society

The world is alleged to be full of mute, inglorious Miltons and other great men, who for lack of opportunity have never been able to demonstrate their greatness. This is their misfortune, and it should entitle them to the pity and consideration of their fellow men. Nevertheless, in at least one respect these unknown great men are treated with unfeeling coarseness. When a statesman, author, or other person of notoriety dies, his friends are frequently guilty of the bad taste of having his brains weighed and the result widely published. Thus, when Daniel Webster died and his brains were put on the scales, the public was informed that they weighed about twice as much as the brains of the average statesman, and that hence his exceptional intellectual greatness was beyond all question. Now, at that date, there were thousands of young men in the New England States alone, each one of whom was perfectly confident that he was at least the equal of Mr. Webster in intellect, and that he had in all probability from live to seven or eight more pounds of brain than Mr. Webster’s skull could possibly have held. But how could these young men demonstrate their wealth of brains? When Mr. Webster’s friends flaunted his brains in the face of the public and asserted that no other New Englander could furnish an equal quantity, they knew that their challenge was a hollow mockery. The ambitious young man who felt sure that his brains would outweigh Mr. Webster’s also knew that a fair count was out of the question. He could not have his brains weighed while living, and he was morally certain that were he to die, no one would take the trouble to weigh them. Thus his feelings were outraged, and he was virtually taunted with his accidental insignificance. Only the favorites of fortune possessed the privilege of having their brains weighed, while men equally great in their own estimation were compelled to take their brains with them to the silent tomb, without being allowed the consolation of having them weighed upon a platform scale or measured in a bushel basket.

The dissatisfaction which this grossly unfair system of brain weighing has created has finally led to the establishment of a brain weighing society on the part of a number of Frenchmen whose intellectual greatness the Academy and the nation have hitherto refused to recognize. Members of this society bind themselves to bequeath their corpses to the society, and in return the society engages to discover and weigh the brains of all its deceased members, and to publish the result in its official journal.’ Every Frenchman who feels confident that his brain would make a creditable appearance, if properly placed on exhibition, will hasten to join this society, and will thus be enabled to leave, as a precious legacy to his family, a handsomely engrossed certificate setting forth the exact weight of his brain, and thus showing that he had been the possessor of a really gigantic intellect, although while living the public had refused to recognize the fact. Henceforth the honor of having their brains weighed will no longer be the monopoly of a privileged class, but the most modest and obscure Frenchman can join the Mutual Brain Weighing Society, and enjoy the certainty of receiving justice after his death.

It is certainly to be hoped that a society so beneficent in its purpose will prove a brilliant success, but it is possible that the present expectations of its founders may be disappointed. When it occurs to M. Thiers to remember that he has neglected to die for a long series of years, and when he accordingly repairs that neglect, and his brains are duly weighed, the society will naturally be anxious to show that among its members are those who in weight of brains equal or even surpass the veteran statesman. There will, hence, be a strong temptation to seize upon the member who possesses the largest head and to weigh his brains without delay, in order to check the boastings of M. Thiers’ admirers. This temptation may be resisted during the early period of the society, but the day will come when the man with the large head will be informed that if he does not care enough for the honor of the society to voluntarily surrender his brains, they must be forcibly weighed, no matter how much inconvenience the process may give him. Thus, membership in the society will become a hazardous thing for men who boast that they are obliged to wear unusually large hats, and in time only those possessing small or moderately sized heads will venture to join it.

With the defection of the large headed element, the society would lose all interest in cerebral investigations. To hunt all over the body of a small Frenchman for the trifle of brain that he may have concealed about his person would be a tedious and thankless task. The friends of the corpse would be indignant at receiving a certificate announcing that the brain of the deceased brother weighed two and a half scruples, and the heartless world would mock and jeer at the society. No organization of Frenchmen can withstand ridicule, and in a short time the society for mutual brain weighing would be laughed out of existence, and the dissecting instruments and patent scales would be sold at auction.

A mystery solved

An eminent statistician has made the assertion that there were 64,000 book agents in this country in 1876, of whom 1,000 committed suicide. Painful as it is to every reverent mind to cast doubt upon figures, it must be said that there is reason to suspect the accuracy of this statistician’s statement. It is one of the leading principles of the science of statistics that a round number is essentially suspicious. Had the astronomers told us that the sun is distant from the earth exactly 95,000,000 miles, they would not have commanded our confidence; but when they call the distance 94,723,674 miles and 13½ feet, we surrender at once, and admit the impossibility of contradicting such evidently sincere figures. Perhaps the chief reason why astronomical calculations are so universally regarded as impregnably true is the fact that, in every single case in which the astronomers have decided upon the distance of any star from the earth, they have avoided the use of round numbers; while in terrestrial measurements they have taken the precaution to add rows of decimals to every set of figures. The man who would express skepticism as to decimals is not far from atheism, and can have no particle of reverence in his nature. In view of this principle, we are compelled to doubt that there were last year precisely 64,000 book agents and that precisely 1,000 of them died by their own hands — or tongues. We might have believed in 64,012 book agents, and unsuspectingly rejoiced in the death of 974⅝; but the numbers as stated are too symmetrical to warrant entire confidence.

It has long been known to profound students of criminal statistics that there is a mystery concerning the fate of those unhappy beings who practice the nefarious occupation of book agency. Unless a book agent happens to be killed by a railroad accident, or fatally injured by an exceptionally vigorous stroke of lightning, we never hear of his death. The assiduous attendant of funerals has never heard the officiating clergyman remark: “Alas, our dear departed brother was a book agent.” The most exuberant obituary column of a Philadelphia newspaper never contained a notice of the death of a book agent. Neither the Roman nor the Anglican Prayer book contains a service for the funeral of book agents, although special services for the benefit of criminals in prison and those condemned to the gallows are thoughtfully provided. We may search ecclesiastical law in vain for a provision authorizing the burial of book agents in consecrated ground; and, finally, there is not a medical journal in the country which contains an account of the illness or death of a single member of that pernicious class. The conclusion is inevitable. The book agent does not die after the manner of other and better men. No physician accelerates his death with drugs; no clergyman tries to awaken his dying conscience and no undertaker has the satisfaction of placing him where he will do the most good. What, then, is the solution of the mystery which clouds the end of the book agent?

There is no doubt that to some extent he does commit suicide. It is impossible that he should always be the utterly hardened and pitiless being that he ordinarily seems. At times the sense of his isolation from mankind must overpower him. When he sees women fleeing in terror from his approach, and strong men grasping clubs, and babies falling into sudden colic, he must wish that he had the brand of Cain, or some other comparatively inoffensive label, upon his brazen brow. It is also possible that an occasional book agent becomes a prey to remorse, as he remembers the consumptive clergyman whom he talked to the borders of the grave, or the lone widow whom he reduced to imbecility by an hour’s relentless exposition of the merits of a new cookbook. There is no doubt that remorse and a vivid sense of the last stalwart Irishman to whom he tried to sell Fox’s Book of Martyrs have sometimes driven the book agent to suicide. To suppose, however, that during any one year a thousand book agents thus evinced the possession of human emotions is manifestly preposterous. Very probably a thousand book agents did disappear in 1876, but only a very small proportion of them committed suicide. No man, says the Roman poet, can suddenly become a book agent. When we reflect upon the total elimination of shame and pity which a man must undergo before he can become an open and avowed book agent, it is evident that only in rare cases does he retain sufficient moral susceptibility to feel the propriety of withdrawing from the world.

It is manifest that the book agent cannot die as other men die. He has neither home nor friends, and when he is taken ill the landlord of the hotel at which he is stopping cannot, in justice to his fellow men, permit any one to incur the terrible risk of venturing into the sickroom. No doctor will visit his bedside, for fear that the patient may revive and attempt to sell him a Handbook of Domestic Medicine, and the bravest clergyman, if summoned to attend a dying book agent, would reply that the unhappy man had put himself beyond the pale of priestly ministrations, and that no clergyman, with a family depending upon him for support, had a right to risk his life or reason by voluntarily entering the presence of a book agent. Knowing these facts, the book agent carefully avoids dying in a hotel. When he feels his last hour approaching he takes his implements of crime in his bundle, and seeks the depths of some lonely forest. Then he makes a pillow of the last new humorous book, and, placing his other books by his side, repeats aloud the familiar lecture upon their alleged merits which has so often maddened the strong and crushed the weak. The frightened birds and outraged chipmunks fly from the scene, and not until his lessening voice has finally faded into silence do the cautious crows assemble to discuss the possibility of digesting him.

Such is the manner of the book agent’s death; such is the solution of the mystery of his disappearance. Perhaps, years afterward, a hunter discovers his bleached skeleton, and it figures in the local newspapers as a “Probable Fiendish Crime.” Perhaps his bones molder away unseen by human eye. Will not the young take warning by this terrible picture, and forbear to indulge in murder or burglary, or any of those seemingly unimportant crimes which, nevertheless, sear the conscience and drag their votary downward until at last he takes the fatal plunge, and becomes a pitiless, shameless, club-and-stove-lid-defying book agent.

The Hat Problem

Among the most fascinating questions upon which profound and subtle thinkers are in the habit of speculating is the question, what shall a man do with his hat in church? Great men in every age have grappled with this problem without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. It is true that the Jews have tried to solve it by wearing their hats in the synagogue, but this is a subterfuge unworthy of Christianity, and not much better than Spinoza’s plan of evading the issue by not going to church at all. We, in this enlightened and Christian age, recognize the necessity of going to church, and the duty, while in the sacred edifice, of putting our hats somewhere else than on our heads. Where to put them is still as unsettled a question today as it was eighteen hundred years ago.

Of all the various expedients by which ingenious churchgoers have endeavored to safely dispose of their hats, there is not one that has not been abundantly proved to be fallacious. To hold one’s hat continually in one’s lap is practicable only in a Quaker meetinghouse, where the worshipers remain seated during the entire service, and never use any devotional implements, such as prayer books and hymn books. No man could successfully balance a hat in one hand and find the Epistle for the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity with the other hand; while to stand up in order to repeat the Creed or to sing a hymn, with a hat under the left arm, would be the height of absurdity. The hat, then, must be laid entirely aside during divine service, and our churches, being constructed with exclusive reference to souls instead of hats, afford no resting places for the latter.

The extreme danger of placing a hat in the aisle immediately outside the pew is universally known. The first lady that sweeps up the aisle carries with her a confused mass of defenseless hats, which are deposited in the shape of a terminal moraine in the front of the pew which is her final goal. Of course the hats which have been subjected to this process are reduced by attrition to a rounded form and are covered with scratches, reminding one of the marks of glacial action on granite boulders. However interesting they may be to the geologist, they are of no further value as hats, and can rarely be bent into a shape that will allow their owners to wear them home. In the days when expansive crinolines were in fashion, the fate of the hat deposited in the aisle was still more appalling. When a well dressed lady passed by in its vicinity, it disappeared totally from human sight. There are cases on record where one fashionable woman has thus caused the disappearance of thirteen separate hats during her passage from the church door to a pew in the neighborhood of the pulpit. What was the final fate of those hats was never ascertained. Their owners simply knew that they vanished at the rustle of crinoline, and left no trace behind. Whether they were absorbed by contact with soft kid, or resolved into their chemical elements by proximity to steel, is yet to be discovered. The boldest men shrank from making investigations as to their fate, and preferred to bear their loss in sad and dignified silence.

Next to the aisle, the pew seat is the most dangerous position in which a hat can be placed. Statistics show that out of every one hundred hats thus situated, sixty are sat upon by their owners, thirty-five are sat upon by other people, and only five escape uninjured. It is a curious fact that more men sit down on their hats after repeating the Creed than after reading the Psalms or performing any other perpendicular part of the service; and another curious fact is the attraction which a hat thus exposed upon a seat exerts upon a fat person. Neither of these facts has ever been satisfactorily explained, although they are matters of general notoriety. A man may enter a remote pew in a strange church, and place his hat on the seat in a position where it is impossible that a fat man could perceive it on entering the church. Nevertheless, experience has shown that in six cases out of ten — or, to be exact, in 6.139 cases — the sexton will show a fat man into that precise pew within ten minutes after the hat is in position, while other and further fat men will from time to time hover about the locality, with the evident desire of ascertaining if the hat is still susceptible of further smashing. There is clearly a law of nature at wok here which needs to be definitely formulated, and it is discreditable tr science that this has not yet been done.

As to putting one’s hat on the floor underneath the seat, no man who follows this reckless course can expect anything but disaster. If there is a small-boy in the pew, he will infallibly discover that hat, and kick it to the further end of the pew within the first thirty minutes of the service. If there is a lady in the pew, a surgical operation will be required to remove her boot from the interior of the hat, while in any event the hat is certain to absorb every particle of dust within a radius of eight feet, and to fasten itself to the floor with the aid of forgotten Sunday school gumdrops. Neither under the seat, on the seat, nor in the aisle can the wearied hat find rest, and the plan of establishing a hat pound in the vestibule, where hats could be ticketed and kept during service, would simply result in converting a church into a hat exchange, where the sinners would secure all the good hats, and the saints would be compelled to content themselves with worn out and worthless ones.

Thus a severe and exhaustive process of reasoning shows that there is no place in a modern church where a hat can be reasonably safe. But let us be thankful that we are at the dawn of better things. A clever inventor has just devised a plan for solving the problem that has so long baffled the acutest minds. He has secured a patent for what he calls “an improved pew hat holder.” It consists of a sort of wire cage attached to the back of the pew, and intended as a receptacle for hats. When filled this receptacle revolves, and carries its precious freight into a safe and obscure recess, whence it is alleged that it can be withdrawn in an uninjured condition at the end of the service. Let us hope that the inventor is not too sanguine, and that his scheme will meet all the exigencies of the case. Who can tell how great will be the effect upon the spiritual welfare of the community when the masculine churchgoer can dismiss his hat from his mind and give his undivided attention to other, purer, and better themes.

The uses of dynamite

Among recent inventions which deserve notice, are two new applications of the explosive power of dynamite, at least one of which promises to be of substantial benefit to civilization, while both are evidently the work of ingenious philanthropists.

Mr. Duncan, of Nitshill, Scotland, is — or rather was — a poor and humble miner, but his name will live with those of the discoverers of vaccination and anesthesia. Various causes, among which was a tendency on the part of Mr. Duncan’s fellow townsmen to speak slightingly of his moral and mining character, led him to resolve to quit an unappreciative and heartless world. In such circumstances, an ordinary Scotchman would probably have bought a copy of some humorous work, and killed himself with a few pages of jokes; or he would have set free his personal spirit with the pistol, the rope, or the vial of poison. But Mr. Duncan was not an ordinary man. He was anxious to die, but he was unwilling to annoy his surviving friends by leaving his body in their hands. He felt that no true gentleman ought to leave his corpse littering up the street or incumbering his neighbor’s fishpond, and that it would be little less than robbery were he to compel other people to undertake the trouble and expense of burying him. He therefore sought some way by which he could commit suicide, and at the same time effectually dispose of his body, and the result of this search was the invention which is sure to make him famous.

One day the small-boys of Nitshill perceived Mr. Duncan in the act of issuing from his house, with a tin can and a length of fuse under his arm. On reaching the middle of the street he placed the can on the ground, lighted the end of the fuse, and inserting the other end in the can, leaned over it in a thoughtful though unusual attitude. Confident that here was a rare opportunity for safely upsetting the unpopular miner, the boys stealthily approached him. Suddenly he caught sight of them, and yelled to them to fly for their lives. They did so, but almost immediately the can exploded with a tremendous report. When the smoke cleared away, Mr. Duncan and the tin can had vanished. A few pounds of dynamite had blown that ingenious man into such small fragments that no coroner has been able to find a piece of him sufficiently large to warrant an inquest or to require a funeral.

As a means of easy and successful suicide, Mr. Duncan’s invention is nearly faultless. It kills its man in the most thorough manner, and without leaving a particle of waste. Those who use it run no risk of spoiling carpets or of poisoning ponds, and inflict no gratuitous corpses upon innocent people, who have no desire for such gifts, and who grudge the funeral expenses which they entail. If the suicide is only careful to explode his dynamite in localities where there will be no danger of accidentally blowing up unwary spectators, it will be impossible to find any reasonable fault with him. Thanks to Mr. Duncan, the suicide need no longer be an expensive nuisance, but he can quietly take his dynamite into a vacant lot and distribute himself in the shape of impalpable and inoffensive dust over miles of surrounding country.

While Mr. Duncan’s invention shows that an humble miner may possess both inventive genius and a rare delicacy of feeling, the inventor of the dynamite machine which lately exploded in a New Jersey baggage car deserves as much credit for his ingenuity and philanthropy. It is strange that the real purpose of the latter machine has been so completely misunderstood. Most people have jumped to the conclusion that the inventor was a wretch who intended to blow up the baggage car, either in order to rob the passengers in the ensuing confusion, or to defraud some insurance company. The fact that, while the machine contained sufficient dynamite to blow to pieces the trunk in which it was placed, it did not contain enough to do any serious damage to the train, ought to demonstrate the falseness of the popular theory as to its purpose. If the inventor had wished to wreck the train, he could have filled the trunk with dynamite enough to throw the passengers all over the State of New Jersey; whereas, in point of fact, he only placed in it a small bursting charge. Clearly his motive was not that which has been ascribed to him, and at the same time the object which he undoubtedly had in view is so obvious that there ought never to have been any doubt as to it.

That inventor was a man whose honest indignation had been excited by the havoc wrought among trunks by the railway baggage smashers. In all probability his own trunk had been smashed on its way to and from the Philadelphia Exhibition; but, at all events, he had seen the trunks of his fellow men brutally hurled from car to platform, and utterly and irretrievably ruined. He felt that so desperate an evil deserved a desperate remedy, and he therefore prepared a trunk which would teach a wholesome moral lesson to the baggage fiend. There is no doubt that had the trunk in question, with its charge of dynamite, been handled by the ordinary baggage smasher, in the ordinary manner, he would have been suddenly convinced of the error of his ways, while the appearance presented by specimens of his remains would have struck terror to his companions in crime. If baggage smashers should once fully grasp the idea that a trunk may contain dynamite, they will abandon their nefarious practices, and will handle trunks with the most exemplary care. Even the premature explosion in the New Jersey baggage car will not be without its beneficent effects, for, although no baggage smasher was immediately benefited by it, the evildoers cannot avoid presuming that the avenger is on their path, and that his invention may be tried again, and with more marked and satisfactory results.

A model city

Dr. Richardson is an English Scientific Person who has invented a new style of scientific city, which is shortly to be built upon land already secured for the purpose. All that remains to be done is for Dr. Richardson to discover the money wherewith to build his city, and to invent a population willing to live in it. It is to be hoped that he will succeed in both these endeavors, for the plan of his new city, as set forth by him in an elaborate pamphlet, is extremely ingenious and attractive.

Hygeia, as the model city will be called, is to be built on the slope of a hill, so as to afford ample facilities for draining, and for sliding in icy weather. It is to be laid out in rectangular form, and the streets are to be paved with wood set in asphalt. There will be no street railways, but underneath each of the principal avenues will be underground railroads. The houses, of which there are to be exactly twenty thousand, will be built of brick, and placed on vaulted foundations, without cellars. Each house is to be nicely surrounded with trees, and in addition to hot and cold water and gas, will be supplied with ozone from a central ozone manufactory. The sewage is to be used for farming purposes, and the corpses of dead inhabitants will be buried in wicker baskets, wherever they will do the most good, instead of being wasted in cemeteries. None of the residents will be allowed to drink wine or use tobacco, and even the chimneys will be forbidden to smoke. It is Dr. Richardson’s opinion that with the aid of an able municipal medical staff, the death rate in Hygeia will be reduced to 8 in every 1,000. As the death rate in New York is 28 per 1,000 there is no doubt that the Hygeians will be, in comparison, an exceptionally healthy people. But how the Doctor’s municipal medical men are to amuse themselves in such an exasperatingly healthy city he might find some difficulty in explaining.

In spite of the manifest advantages which the new city will possess, it is possible that Dr. Richardson will be disappointed in the actual working of certain details of his plan. For example, he has decided that the population will be “100,000, living in 20,000 houses, built on 4,000 acres of land,” and he dwells with much emphasis on the fact, that the health of his city will depend to a great extent upon this “equal distribution of the inhabitants.” Now, at first he may find no difficulty in obtaining his 100,000 inhabitants and in distributing them in families of five each.

The trouble is, that after he has thus nicely sorted and arranged his citizens, they will immediately proceed to uproot his “equal distribution.” What will the Doctor do when a scientific family of five persons is suddenly increased by the addition of a scientific baby? Then will there be six persons in that disordered household, and the “equal distribution” of the inhabitants of his city will be compromised. He cannot build a new house to meet the contingency, for he has strictly limited the city to 20,000 houses; and even if a new house could be built and inhabited exclusively by the intruding infant, his scheme of equal distribution would be spoiled. Unless every inhabitant of the new city is compelled to sign a lease containing a covenant against the introduction of infants, there will be no such thing as the permanent equal distribution of 100,000 people in 20,000 houses. Doubtless Dr. Richardson has entirely overlooked this weak spot in his calculations, but he will have it forced upon his attention to a maddening extent before the end of the first year of his city existence. Again, the plan of building houses without cellars and placing the kitchen on the upper floor of each house is at first glance unobjectionable, but a little scrutiny will show that it has its faults. Where will Dr. Richardson’s people keep their old bottles, and where will the family cat be placed at night? Natural philosophy teaches that the smell of heated dinners ascend. How then can the careful housewife, living in a city where all the kitchens are on the top floors, ascertain what the neighbors intend to have for dinner 1 Very probably Dr. Richardson imagines that in a purely scientific city there will be no crime or disorder, and no use for policemen. He must admit, however, that it is possible for scientific citizens to quarrel, and even to steal fossils, and valuable bugs. In such an event, the Police, instead of darting out of the area gate and capturing the offender, would have to descend from lofty kitchens, where their soup would grow cold before they could carry their prisoners to the station house and return to the cook’s fireside. It must also be remarked that in this ingenious city there is not the slightest provision for a single clothesline. It may be that the inventor looks upon clothes as unscientific and objectionable, for he remarks that “from the sleeping apartments old clothes, etc., are to be rigorously excluded.” If a man cannot leave his clothes in his bedroom, on going to bed, what is he to do with them? Is there to be a vast undressing room in the center of the city where everyone is to deposit his clothes at night, or is the population to dispense with clothing altogether? This is a question which Dr. Richardson cannot ignore, and which must be answered before he can induce respectable people to live in his city.

However satisfactory the plan of a Hygeian house may be to the enthusiastic sanitarian, it cannot be denied that it will seem dreary and ugly to most other people. Neither carpets, paint, plaster, nor wall paper will be used in any of Dr. Richardson’s buildings. The floors will be of wood and the walls will be of glazed brick. A wall into which a picture nail cannot be driven, or the pin of an impaled butterfly be thrust, or upon which a match cannot be scratched, will be a cold and glittering mockery. Let Dr. Richardson try to live in one of his model rooms himself and find how he likes to get up in the middle of a Winter’s night to turn on the ozone, or to write a note informing the people next door that if the baby which he has reason to believe they have surreptitiously introduced, is not equally distributed all over the city with the arid of nitroglycerine, their lease will be instantly canceled. After he has pierced his bare feet with a few splinters from the floor and exhausted his whole stock of matches by vainly scratching them upon the glazed surface of the wall, perhaps he will find that carpets have their uses, and that glazed walls do not alone constitute a paradise. Indeed, he would do well to try the experiment of distributing himself equally in every one of his houses before he urges other people to live in them. It is quite possible that he may find room to alter his plans, at least so far as to provide the city with a good comfortable lunatic asylum, containing a separate room for the inventor and builder of Hygeia.

A benevolent ghost

It is not often that a modern ghost displays moral qualities which can be honestly approved. As a class ghosts are idle, frivolous, meddlesome, and apparently wholly devoid of moral sense. Benjamin Franklin, in a ghostly state, does not scruple to tell preposterous lies as to the whereabouts of Charlie Ross; and John Milton, who during his lifetime wrote poetry which even Mr. Taine does not consider wholly devoid of merit, now perpetrates ghostly verse of the most execrable quality. In consequence, ghosts have fallen into general disrepute among sensible people, and before they expect to be heard with respect and attention, they must thoroughly change their present objectional habits.

The recent conduct of a St. Louis ghost gives us reason to hope that a ghostly reformation has actually begun, and that at least a few of the swarming millions of hitherto lazy and frivolous ghosts have determined to do something to redeem the damaged reputation of their kind. That a ghost should choose to visit St. Louis is not, of course, creditable to ghostly taste, but the individual ghost just referred to went to St. Louis exclusively in the interests of humanity. For several successive nights a St. Louis family were annoyed by the nightly ringing of the front door bell by invisible hands. The local small-boy and the household rats were in turn charged with the offense of malicious bell ringing, but no proof of their guilt could be obtained. An astute plumber, whose advice was sought, alleged that the bell ringing was due to electricity, and he accordingly undertook to suppress the nuisance by changing the direction of the bell wire and putting in new gas pipes and water pipes throughout the house. Though his bill was of the most formidable proportions, the mysterious bell ringing was not checked, and the household gradually accepted it as a necessary evil which no earthly remedy could cure. Of course, the bell was rung by a ghost, and when the latter found that no further good could be accomplished in that direction, she — for the ghost was of the gentler sex — changed her tactics. She adopted the habit of singing songs in the front parlor, accompanying her voice by playing on a closed and locked pianoforte. After thus opening the evening’s entertainment, she would move pictures, chairs, and bedsteads all over the house, and execute more noisy carpenter work with an invisible hammer and saw than any live carpenter with a proper sense of loyalty to his carpenters’ union would be willing to do in a week of consecutive labor. Her most remarkable feats, however, were performed in connection with small-boys, both actual and ghostly. The family were frequently astonished and delighted by seeing their private small-boy suddenly raised by the hair two or three feet above the floor, and thus borne kicking and shrieking from the room. Unfortunately, the ghost always brought him back again, imbued with a sense of injury which led him to lie down on the floor and howl until his disappointed parents pacified him with the boot jack or other convenient and soothing instrument. The ghost’s efforts to drive the family to despair were not, however, successful, until she adopted the plan of causing ghostly small-boys to emerge from the fireplace and other unexpected localities. When the persecuted residents of the haunted house found that they could not open a closet, or unlock a burglar proof safe, or remove the head of a whiskey barrel without being shocked at the prompt appearance of a shadowy and unnaturally silent small-boy, they became utterly demoralized and sent for a spiritual medium to negotiate terms of peace with their tormentor.

Now, what is remarkable and unprecedented in ghostly history is the motive assigned by the ghost for her pro longed disturbance of the household. She asserted, through the medium, that the lady of the house had once promised to treat her dead sister’s small-boy as her own, and that instead of keeping this promise she had farmed him out to a heartless baby farmer. The accused woman admitted with tears that such had been her faithless and wicked conduct, and she gladly acceded to the ghostly demand to send for the injured small-boy, and to treat him with the utmost kindness. In consideration of this promise the ghost agreed to withdraw from the premises, threatening, however, to return and make things disagreeably lively for the family in case the promise should not be kept. The boy was sent for and the ghost withdrew, and thus the first known philanthropic ghost accomplished her humane purpose.

To say that this exceptional ghost deserves the respect and gratitude of all humane people is hardly necessary. It is to be hoped, however, that she will not content herself with having performed one good action. What she ought to do is to form a ghostly society for the prevention of cruelty to children. Such a society could accomplish far more than any merely human society can hope to do, and all honest and kind hearted ghosts can rest assured that if they will only enter upon a life of active benevolence, by persecuting cruel parents and guardians, they will soon earn the admiration of mankind, and reinstate themselves in the good opinion of the living.

Dr. Schliemann

It is announced that the Turkish Government has authorized Dr. Schliemann to resume his excavations on the alleged site of Troy, and that the learned digger, having laid in a new copy of “Homer” and a large supply of spades, will immediately resume his labors.

Some misapprehension exists in the public mind as to the object of Dr. Schliemann’s labors. It is generally thought that he. has hitherto been digging in search of the alleged City of Troy. In point of fact, he has been trying to exhume the “Iliad,” and his success in so doing has been remarkable. There are very grave doubts whether there ever was such a person as Homer, or such a city as Troy, and granting the existence of the latter, its true site is wholly conjectural. There is, however, no sort of doubt as to the existence of the “Iliad,” as every college Freshman sadly knows, and hence Dr. Schliemann showed a praiseworthy discrimination in digging for the topographical and biographical incidents of the latter. At first he was rather embarrassed with the richness of the ruined cities which he unearthed, for he exhumed no less than four consecutive buried cities, one above another. The lowest of these he decided to call Troy — throwing the rest away as comparatively valueless — and in this so-called Troy he found everything of interest which is mentioned in the “Iliad.”

The maps which the good Doctor drew were extremely ingenious. They contained a plan of Troy, showing the principal buildings and such localities as have interesting Homeric associations. Priam’s palace, the town pump, the cottage occupied by Helen, the Lyceum, the spot where the Trojan horse disgorged its contents, the horse block on which Anchises perched himself in order to climb on the pious shoulders of Æneas, the Post Office, and the prominent banking and insurance offices, were all duly displayed on Schliemann’s maps, and gave the alleged city nearly as imposing an appearance as is presented by the map of some projected town in the far West. As for interesting relics, Schliemann found them by the basketful. His method was a peculiar one. He would strive to put himself in the place of some respectable Trojan, and then imagine how he would have conducted himself in any given contingency. Thus, he said to himself, “If I had been Priam, I would have put my portable property in a small box, and as soon as the Greeks entered the city I would have slipped out of the back door, climbed the back fence by means of the stepladder, and gone out of the west gate, where a cab would have awaited me.” Having thus satisfied himself as to what Priam actually did, he followed that respectable monarch’s course until he reached the west gate, where he picked up the box of portable property which Priam had evidently found too heavy, and which the cab man had refused to carry except at an exorbitant price. In like manner Dr. Schliemann was able to divine where to look for Helen’s hair pins, and where to find the blue spectacles with which Paris strove to disguise himself from the eyes of the private detective employed by Menelaus. Thus the exhumation of the “Iliad” was attended with extraordinary success, and there is no doubt that Dr. Schliemann in his future diggings will find every sort of object not absolutely inconsistent with a liberal interpretation of Homer’s immortal epic.

Great as is the interest which attaches to the hair pins of Helen, and the fine toothed comb of Paris, there are those who feel that Dr. Schliemann has dug quite long enough at Troy, and that he ought to exercise his remarkable genius in other fields. He is just the man to dig on the site of the Garden of Eden, and to reclaim the articles of personal property which our first parents left behind in the suddenness of their departure. He would not have the slightest difficulty in determining the exact locality of the primeval paradise. All he would think it necessary to do would be to visit the Plain of Mesopotamia; to pick out a good sized garden spot, and to announce that he had fixed the exact position of the Garden of Eden. Then he would begin to dig and to discover with the energy and success which have hitherto characterized him. He would soon lay bare the asphalt paths over which Adam was accustomed to walk, and would find his lawn roller and sickle in a rusty but still easily recognizable condition. As soon as the excavations became large enough to warrant a map, he would construct one calculated to bring tears to the eyes of the most hardened geographer. On that map would be marked the position of the apple tree which Eve had such melancholy cause to remember, together with a dotted line, labeled “Probable route of the Serpent on entering and retiring from the garden.” That same valuable map would also show “Adam’s Swimming Pool,” the “Birthplace of Eve,” “The Croquet Ground,” and the “Sartorial Fig Tree.” As for relics, Schliemann would find them to order for the use of clergymen’s families and Sunday schools. Fig leaf aprons would be picked up by the sharp eyed searcher on every hedge. Small fish bones, “supposed to have been used as hair pins;” polished bits of tomato cans, labeled “hand mirrors,” and innumerable quantities of agricultural tools and packages of Weathersfield garden seeds would be sent to Europe and America by the shipload, and if somebody were to order a slip ’ from the original apple tree. Dr. Schliemann would send out more young apple trees in the course of two years than the united nurseries of Long Island could furnish in ten.

When such a field as this is open to the good German discoverer, it is a pity to see him wasting his time at Troy. Trojan relics are, of course, very well in their way, but the public has somewhat lost interest in them, and in any event they are less interesting than relics from Eden would be. After what Dr. Schliemann has found at Troy, there is not the slightest doubt that he could find anything at any other locality that anyone might desire. Let him go to Mesopotamia and exhume Paradise, and it may be safely predicted that his discoveries there will be precisely as valuable as those which he has made on the alleged site of Troy.

The circulation of needles

A Portuguese physician has recently recovered from different localities in the area of a young lady’s person, eighty needles which she had swallowed either from hunger, a desire to store up needles for future use, or to amuse the children.

Many great discoveries have been made, the necessity of which had never dawned upon the public until some one suddenly decided to make them. Thus, long before Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood people knew that the blood circulated, but did not think it worth while to formally discover it. Every scientific person whose nose had been contused in the course of a scientific argument had noticed that his blood immediately circulated all over his shirt bosom, but it was left for the astute Harvey to announce that he had discovered that the blood was addicted to habitual circulation. It is perfectly well known that needles, v/hen swallowed by the girl of our species, immediately begin to circulate all over her system, cropping out here and there in the most unexpected places. Yet scientific persons who wonder that Harvey did not sooner discover the circulation of the human blood, delay to discover the circulation of the human needle, and it is in the hope of stimulating discovery in this direction that the attention of the public is now called to the facts concerning the circulation of needles.

From time immemorial certain girls with abnormal appetites have been in the habit of swallowing needles. It is probable that the needle supplies in a more satisfactory degree that feminine demand for sharp and pungent food which most of the sex try to satisfy with pickles and lemons. If the needle is swallowed eye first, it usually finds its way into the stomach with ease and rapidity, and when once there, its first effect is very much like that of red pepper or Chutney sauce. But unlike the latter article of diet, the needle passes directly into the system without undergoing the preliminary process of digestion, and begins to circulate not only through the interstices of the body, but though new paths which it opens in every direction. Needles that have thus started from the stomach have been detected in the back of the head, or in the extremity of the remotest finger. In fact, there is nothing that is more rash and dangerous than for an affectionate father to clasp his needle fed daughter in his arms. Like the fabled figure of the Virgin which made part of every well conducted inquisitorial torture room, and which on being embraced by a recanting heretic suddenly radiated penknives in all directions, and thus cut the worshiping victim into fine slices, the needle fed daughter may at any moment prick her affectionate parent in unexpected places and stimulate him to language of the most unfatherly nature. She becomes as dangerous as a buzz saw, and the lover who furtively clasps her hand during church service, is apt to scandalize the congregation by suddenly remarking “ouch” at moments when the Liturgy requires no such response. There is only one contingency in which this kind of girl becomes useful, and that is when there is a sudden demand for a needle. At such moments a careful investigation of her surface is nearly always rewarded by the discovery of the protrusive point of the desired implement, which is uniformly free from rust, and in a condition for immediate use. Still, the demand for needles is rarely so importunate as to justify the systematic conversion of a girl into a peripatetic needle case, and the most earnest seamstresses prefer to carry small needle cases in their pockets,’ rather than to swallow a paper full and trust to nature to bring them to the surface.

No scientific person will dream of denying that the circulation of needles is regulated by some law of nature. We do not as yet know what that law is by which scores of needles ceaselessly flow backward and forward through the young person who has swallowed them, but we may safely decide that they are not set in motion and directed merely by chance. If they made their way directly toward the feet we might assume that the force of gravity governed their course, but it is a well established fact that a needle that has traveled from the stomach to the left foot will frequently retrace its path and emerge behind the right ear. Gravity has thus nothing to do with the matter, and some other force must be credited with this remarkable result.

The theory that magnetic action is the cause of the circulation of needles is also untenable. When duly magnetized, the needle is sure to have a habit of pointing towards the pole; but the needles that circulate in the human system, neither point towards any specified pole, nor are they magnetized young ladies who swallow needles prefer them raw, and there is not a case on record in which a needle epicure has first subjected her needles to the appetizing process of magnetization. Even the theory that every young lady has her own personal poles, to which needles may point in preference to pointing to the earthly poles, is without the slightest scientific evidence. It IS true, that a girl who has swallowed a paper of needles, may occasionally revolve on her axis in a ballroom, but she has no regular and unintermittent revolution, and we have no right to assume that she possesses either poles or an equator, or that the needles which she may have introduced into her system turn invariably in any one direction.

The whole subject is involved in mystery. We know that needles are frequently swallowed, and that they then immediately begin to circulate, but that is really all we know concerning the matter. This is an obvious reproach to our scientific men. They pretend to tell us exactly how the blood is turned on at the heart, and how, when nature once pulls the “starting bar,” the blood rushes through the open valves, and continues to flow until death shuts it off; but when we ask what law regulates the circulation of needles they are dumb. Meanwhile, the silent needle is perforating its way through the tissues of eccentric girls, and pursuing its appointed course with a smoothness and certainty of circulation which are in the highest degree marvelous. The Portuguese physician who is now busy in eliminating an excess of needles from the system of his patient has an excellent opportunity for investigating the matter thoroughly, and he may yet make a discovery which will render his name as famous as that of Harvey.

The young man of Cheyenne

The Original Old Man of the Mountain, who founded that curious sect of early Protestants known as the Assassins, and taught them to protest with force and arms against the existence of the. human race, has been dead for several centuries. It was always supposed that he had left no successor, and that the pure faith. of his converts had become so corrupted by worldly influences that they had long since ceased to practice his sanguinary doctrines. It now appears that this was a mistake. Like the original Jacobs, or a railway corporation, the Old Man of the Mountain and his energetic sect have had perpetual succession. The present Old Man resides in the Rocky Mountains in about the latitude of the Black Hills, and his followers, having made breech loading rifles a part of their ritual, do an amount of missionary work among Indians, emigrants, and gold diggers which would have amazed and delighted the ancient founder of the Assassins.

The discovery of this Rocky Mountain congregation of breech loading believers was made by accident. Some months since a young man set out from the flourishing City of Cheyenne with his rifle, bottle, poker deck, and other mining tools about him, and a noble determination to lead a life of productive industry in the Black Hills diggings. On reaching “Red Canon,” a locality with which all our readers are doubtless familiar, he “strayed,” as he delicately puts it, from the rest of his party. Now and then a hard working miner does lie down and stray under a convenient tree, and his companions, after taking his boots off and thoughtfully emptying out the more venomous serpents, go on their way, and let him stray until some benevolent Indian finds him and charitably takes charge of his hair. In the case of the Young Man of Cheyenne, his straying was attended by a somewhat different result. He had not strayed more than an hour or two when he felt a lasso gently clasping his neck, and dimly discerned a shadowy figure gradually approaching him and carefully keeping the rope taut. Mechanically feeling for his empty bottle with a view of selling his life dearly, he suddenly felt the rope tighten, and thereupon sank back and became extremely insensible.

When he recovered his consciousness and felt for his hair, he was surprised to find that he was not scalped and that he was lying in a darkened room, “whose predominant atmosphere was a delicious perfume,” though he does not mention whether it was Bourbon or rye. His rifle, his bottle, and his cards had disappeared, and the delicious perfume aggravated his intolerable thirst. Presently a person whom he could only vaguely perceive, and whom at first he was inclined to regard as a new sort of snake with immense and presumably venomous Turkish trousers, approached him and bade him “arise and walk.” There is reason to believe that the vague person really told him to “get up and get,” but the Young Man of Cheyenne is a conscientious historian, who would scorn to narrate anything in a vulgar or commonplace style. Following his vague conductor he entered a gorgeous apartment, brilliantly lighted and evidently forming part of an. immense cave. By the light of countless — or at least two — kerosene lamps he saw that his guide was a man of enormous age, wearing a white beard so long that he had been compelled to separate it into two masses and knot them behind his back. This singular being proceeded to summon another white bearded individual, who was evidently a servant, and who brought with him a gorgeous banquet — of a nature not wholly unconnected with ham and eggs — which the Young Man of Cheyenne devoured with much satisfaction. This done, the first old man administered to his captive a teaspoonful of medicine, which proved to be Oriental hasheesh. So delightful was the effect produced by this drug that the Young Man informs the editor of the Denver News that if the latter could only taste it, “he would sell his soul almost to feel it again.” It is fortunate that this ecstatic description was addressed to a Western editor, who was debarred, from circumstances over which he had no control, from making the sale suggested. If, however, hasheesh is really what that Young Man represents it to be, we may expect to find the trans-Mississippi editors uniting in a demand that the volume of their editorial souls shall be made commensurate with the opportunities for buying hasheesh.

For three days the Young Man of Cheyenne was fed on hasheesh, and during that period he never once thought of whiskey or of his duties as a man and a citizen. On the fourth day the first old man came to him and informed him that he was the lineal descendant of the original Old Man of the Mountains; that he was, in fact, the “Only Real Original Old Man of the Genuine Mountains.” He further mentioned that he was the leader of a band of conscientious assassins who had perpetrated all the murders which had occurred in the West for the last twenty-five years, and that the Mountain Meadow massacre, which had been falsely attributed to the Mormons, was his own chef-d’oeuvre. Then he asked the young man to join his band, offering him as inducements to that end large daily rations of hasheesh and all the tobacco which he could accumulate by strict attention to business. This noble offer was gladly accepted, and the Young Man of Cheyenne immediately took a large collection of miscellaneous oaths of great strength and terrific purport.

As it so happened, these oaths were never kept. The young man “strayed” before he had an opportunity to commit a murder. Where he obtained his whiskey does not appear, but the fact that he strayed, and that after undergoing a prolonged fight with millions of serpents heavily reinforced by abnormal rats, he was finally found and saved by a party of miners returning from the Black Hills, his story forbids us to doubt. That he is an excellent and trustworthy young man may be conceded, and if either political party in Cheyenne wants an organ which will teem with stories of the abandoned profligacy of the opposition, a newspaper should at once be started in that city and put under the sole control of this able and accomplished person.

A remonstrance

Of course Dr. Schliemann is a very nice man. To the Anglo Saxon mind his name does seem to contain more consonants than a sober, honest citizen really needs, but hitherto this has been about the only charge which enmity could bring against him. He is understood to be an amiable German gentleman, full of science and blue spectacles; an enthusiastic, if not an exceptionally acute critic of Horace, and a man powerfully gifted in the discernment of beer. But Dr. Schliemann is gradually drawing upon himself the suspicions of envious people, while even his best friends are beginning to find that he is altogether too successful in the unearthing of buried cities, and if he does not shortly make a few judicious archeological mistakes, he may ultimately find his reputation obscured by a very unpleasant cloud.

Dr Schliemann’s first exploit was the digging up of Troy. He wanted to find the city of Priam, and the personal property of that deceased monarch; so he dug with great diligence until he found exactly what he wanted. As he would not divide with the Sultan, he abandoned the rich Troy lead, and opened a new antiquarian mine at Olympia. There he mentioned that he intended to find statues, and after a brief search he “struck it very rich” — as the Californians phrase it. No statue mine of equal richness had ever been previously discovered, and although the vein was soon exhausted it was estimated that the Olympian diggings yielded fully sixty per cent, of pure marble statues, together with eight per cent of valuable terracotta vases.

The expert digger’s next field of action was Mycenae; there he found no difficulty in locating a gold platter mine, which proved as rich as the best gold vein of the Consolidated Troy mine. Gold plates, and gold spoons and gold soup tureens, not to speak of such smaller matters as gold tobacco stoppers and gold sleeve buttons and studs, were daily found by the indefatigable Schliemann. Why he abandoned this auriferous mine after a few weeks’ work we are not informed, but it is probable that he intended to raise the price of gold dinner services by temporarily checking the supply. At all events he ceased to dig at Mycenae early last Summer, and having compromised matters with the Sultan, resumed his labors on the Troy lead.

We are now informed that he has struck a kind of “pocket” at a slight distance from the main Trojan vein, which has “panned out” wonderfully well. He calls it the tomb of Cassandra, and announces that it is full of dinner plates, belt buckles, crimping pins, and breech loading rifles, all made of the purest gold, and by the most skilful workmen of the Homeric period. He explains the peculiar richness of this “pocket” by asserting that Cassandra, the well known Trojan test medium, who gave her patrons information on all affairs of life, including marriage, sickness, stolen articles, and absent friends, was buried with all her portable property about her, and that he knew when he determined to discover her tomb that he should find a whole jeweler’s shop of ornaments concealed in her coffin.

Now had Dr. Schliemann confined himself to making discoveries on the alleged site of Troy, the world would probably have accepted them in good faith. It is his uniform and unbroken success in finding at Troy, Olympia, Mycence, and Cassandra’s tomb, precisely the sort of things which he wished to find that seems odd to the unprejudiced observer. When men, as intelligent and energetic as Schliemann, had dug in all sorts of places for all sorts of things and never found them, why should Schliemann always be able to dig up cities in lots to suit customers, in the precise localities where other diggers failed to find anything more valuable than the remains of a contemporaneous cat or a trifle of broken crockery bearing the Birmingham trademark? It really will not do for Dr. Schliemann to be so exceptionally successful unless he is ready to incur the gravest suspicions that can fall upon an excavating expert.

It might as well be frankly owned that it is the opinion of many respectable persons that Schliemann could not find so many gold plates and marble statues unless he knew before he began to dig exactly what he was about to find. With these persons the only question is whether Dr. Schliemann has himself sowed antique marbles and dinner dishes in the Plain of Troy and at Olympia and Mycenae, or whether other persons in collusion with him have been guilty of this disreputable trick. The truly chivalrous man will hesitate to charge a defenseless young woman like Cassandra, or a pair of personally reputable monarchs like the Kings of Troy and Mycenae, with having deliberately “salted” their estates with gold and marble expressly in order that Schliemann might subsequently be able to claim the discovery of valuable mining property. The theory that Dr. Schliemann is alone concerned in the affair is undoubtedly the one that honorable men will prefer to adopt, provided, of course, they think it necessary to differ from Schliemann’s own account of the matter.

It will, however be wiser and more just to give to Dr. Schliemann the benefit of every possible doubt. The talent of discovering buried cities may be a genuine one, and he may deserve our warmest admiration and gratitude.

Still a proper regard for his reputation ought to lead him to pause in his successful career, and to abandon his intention of finding Helen’s body in a perfect state of preservation, and the original love letters written by Paris and intercepted by Menelaus’s private detective. He is already finding altogether too much, and there is a limit to the patience of the public. If he will only fail to find a few dead cities during the next six months, public confidence will revive, but if he goes on as he has begun, he may earn the unenviable fame of the men who discovered the famous diamond and ruby mines of Arizona, and who were afterwards themselves discovered by unscientific policemen.

The smoking infant

There has latterly been a dearth of novelties in babies. Last winter the West produced several entirely new styles of babies, some with more and others with less heads and limbs than the common variety of infant. However excellent these improved babies may have been in theory, they do not seem to have succeeded in practice. Either they would not work at all or else they were found on trial to be less efficient than infants of the old fashioned model. At any rate, they soon passed into an obscurity as profound as that which enwraps the Keely motor, and not one of them was exhibited at Philadelphia among the productions of American inventive genius.

Stimulated by these numerous Western failures, the East has now invented an infant which has at least the merit of complete novelty. As might be expected from the fact that the new baby is a Massachusetts production, its peculiarities are of a moral instead of a physical character. Outwardly it resembles all other male infants of three years of age and of the usual pattern, but mentally and morally it is entirely original. This remarkable baby is a confirmed smoker, and the records of the Patent Office may be searched in vain for any model, drawing, or specification of a three year old baby capable of consuming strong; cigars and caporal tobacco.

The normal Massachusetts boy learns to smoke by degrees. He leads himself gently up to tobacco by a preliminary coarse of grapevine cigars and dried fern leaves, and when he finally makes his first attempt upon a genuine Connecticut cigar, he selects a secure retreat behind the barn, and undergoes agonies of subsequent nausea on the haymow. The Smoking Infant, on the contrary, disdained to trifle with the inefficient grapevine, or to smoke his first cigar in seclusion. Long before he reached his third birthday he had boldly seized one of his father’s best four cent cigars and smoked it in the nursery, careless of the curtains and heedless of his mother’s hair. Moreover, this feat was accomplished without the smallest pang of nausea. While his astonished and more mature friends expected to see him turn deadly pale and undergo the wildest abdominal remorse, he declined to do anything of the sort, and actually cried for more cigars. Since that period, he has shown an incessant and unappeasable appetite for tobacco. Though he still prefers cigars, he smokes pipes as a matter of economy, and chews fine cut with the solemnity and unerring marksmanship of a Western Senator. The feeble efforts of his unhappy mother to prevent him from smoking in the parlor and in bed have been entirely fruitless. He not only smokes in every room in the house, but he strews ashes on the keyboard of the piano, and drops his lighted pipe on his pillow, as he sinks into slumber. To the relatives and friends of the family he is a source of mingled wonder and indignation. He has been known to beg his grandmother to put a box of cigars — “Reina Victoria Intimidads, very dark if you please, grandma,” — in his Christmas stocking, and to ask a local deacon, who is a great admirer of the late Mr. Trask, “if he happened to have a chew about him.” Of course, he has a money box to which friends and visitors are requested to contribute. The ordinary Massachusetts boy always has a box of the kind, with a view to collecting money for the missionaries, and empties its contents from time to time into the till of the candy merchant, hoping that the latter is personally acquainted with numerous deserving missionaries, and that he always sends them his small change. The Smoking Infant either knows nothing or cares nothing about missionaries. He shamelessly demands contributions for a purely imaginary baseball club, and when he has collected twenty-five cents, he rushes to a tobacco shop where he selects two imported “Rosa Conchas” with a care and intelligence which challenge the admiration of every really able smoker.

Of course it will be said that this depraved child is growing thin and weak in consequence of his constant use of tobacco. Unfortunately for the opponents of smoking, it must be acknowledged that the Infant Smoker is growing fat and hale on his perpetual diet of smoke. He smokes from dawn to twilight, and his nerves are as firm as those of a trapeze performer. His father looks upon him as a complete success, and it is the judgment of all who have seen him — including three selectmen, a justice of the peace and six ministers of assorted denominations — that as a Smoking Infant it is impossible to find a flaw in his construction or operation.

It must, then, be conceded that the East has signally triumphed over the West in the invention of a new and thoroughly successful variety of baby. Still it is impossible to see in what respect a smoking infant is a specially desirable object. If it be true — as is darkly rumored — that the father of the marvelous Massachusetts child is in the pay of the Tobacco dealers’ Association, and that he invented the Smoking Infant merely in order to open a new field for the sale of tobacco, there is no doubt that he has fully earned whatever pay he may have received. That fact, however, does not constitute an argument which will lead parents to prefer smoking infants. Ingenious as the new invention is, it cannot be called a beneficent one, and all men unconnected with the tobacco trade will sincerely hope that the Smoking Infant of Massachusetts will not be duplicated, and will never be successfully introduced into American families.

A national want

The great want of this country — at least in the estimation of young people — is a variety of parent who will go to bed at eight o’clock. The disposition shown by too many fathers and mothers to sit up until midnight on occasions when their daughters are receiving the visits of eligible young men, is an evil as notorious as it is common. No reference is here intended to those heartless mothers who produce endless problems in crochet work whenever the front door bell rings, and set to work to solve them in the front parlor, with an obvious determination never to go to bed while they have strength left to lift a needle. Like the tireless father who reads inexhaustible newspapers in the presence of his unhappy daughter and her visitor, and who sternly represses all hints as to his need of sleep by the crushing remark “that he never goes to bed until after he has personally locked up the house and put out the gas,” the cruel crochet mother is an abnormal, though by no means rare, type of humanity. Such pitiless parents, however, are really less exasperating than the more common variety, who decline to go to bed from ignorance rather than vice. The former have a definite policy which they are morally certain to carry out. The latter torture their victims by permitting them to entertain the fallacious hope that the propriety of going to bed may at any moment dawn upon the paternal mind.

Now, the modern city house affords no opportunity for escaping the gaze of wakeful parents. For the young people to withdraw to the front balcony, with the moral certainty that untimely shawls will be brought by injudicious mothers at precisely the most ineligible moments, is simply to invite dangerous ambuscades. The back piazza — if there be one — is out of the question, since it cannot be occupied without inextricably mixing up love’s young dream with the remarks of extraneous cats, while from the clothesline the family linen flaps menace to young men of moderate means and matrimonial intentions. Certain bold and desperate youths have occasionally proposed an excursion to the roof, under the hollow pretext of an interest in astronomy, but the device has rarely been successful. The simple fact, is, that when parents will not go to bed there is no escape from them short of a total abandonment of their inhospitable house.

In these circumstances the judicious young man makes his call on Sunday night, and escorts the object of his affections to church. If he can only secure a pew in a remote corner, he can whisper for an hour and a half in perfect security. It is true that he and his companion are guilty of a peculiarly indecent form of rudeness, but the sexton cannot eject them without creating a far greater disturbance than that perpetrated by the whisperers. Every one perfectly well understands why the young couple came to church, and however much their conduct may be disliked, it is recognized as one of the inevitable consequences of parents who will not go to bed.

The remedy for this state of things is twofold. Either a style of parent warranted to go to bed at eight o’clock must be introduced, or churches must furnish sequestered nooks in which young people can whisper without disturbing the worshipers. The former remedy is, of course, preferable, and it would be a glorious thing if American ingenuity were to devise a trustworthy eight o’clock parent. It is improbable, however, that any such contrivance will be soon brought into use, and hence the other remedy is alone practicable. There are certain so-called churches in which the preacher, the choir, and the scene painters — that is to say, the upholsterers and decorators — vie with each other in devising means of drawing full houses. Let these Sunday resorts adopt the plan of setting apart curtained pews in the darkest corners for the exclusive use of young people. There is no cornet player who could offer any sort of rivalry to such an attraction, and there is not the slightest doubt that private whispering pews would draw better houses than the most eloquent preacher, warranted to produce a new religion every Sunday evening, could possibly attract. Of course, no staid and conservative church would tolerate such a worldly use of a sacred edifice; but there are not a few congregations that we might reasonably expect to find willing and eager to thus provide for the comfort of the young. At all events, the plan would put a stop to the nuisance of love making in the sight of a whole congregation, and inasmuch as no appeal to their imaginary sense of decency will have any effect upon the young whisperers, perhaps the plan of isolating then from public sight and hearing would be worth trying.

The happy yachtsman

There is a large class of men who are convinced that the extravagance of women is the root of all evil. Severe moralists, who find it difficult to clothe their wives and to provide themselves at the same time with costly cigars, insist, in season and out of season, that the woman who is not contented with calico will be sure to lead her husband into crime. Very probably many women are foolishly extravagant, and deserve to have reproving stones cast at them by faultlessly economical men; but the wildest extravagance of the most reckless woman is so vastly inferior to that of the ordinary yacht, that there is manifest unfairness in lecturing the former and permitting the latter to go Scot free.

Unsophisticated persons living in inland towns cannot understand why the cost of maintaining a yacht need necessarily be so enormous as it notoriously is. After the first cost of providing one’s self with a yacht is paid, they cannot perceive the necessity for spending vast annual sums upon her. But it is with yachts as it is with women. A man who provides himself with a pretty wife, equipped with a sufficient quantity of clothes, might keep her very cheaply if he did not permit her to go into society. Usually, however, he is proud of her, and wants to exhibit her, and consequently, after he has made her an ornament of society, he has to defray the constant expense of maintaining her position. It is not impossible for a yachtsman to buy a yacht, and to use her in a modest and quiet way without ruining himself. Experience shows, however, that he is never satisfied until he has joined a yacht club, and thus introduced his yacht to the society of other fashionable yachts. Now, the yacht is far more fond of extravagant display than is the average woman, and when the once modest schooner or bashful sloop has tasted the pleasures of a regatta, she proceeds to lavish her owner’s fortune with frightful recklessness.

The world has little conception of the private misery of the owner of a fast and beautiful yacht. During the racing season she splits her sails as though they were lace flounces, and sheds topmasts and booms as though they were hairpins. The yachtsman, of course, pretends that he has perfect confidence in her, but he is daily harassed by doubts as to the absolute propriety of her conduct in beating to windward, and never lays his head upon his pillow without asking himself the fearful question whether she has too much or too little ballast. There is no American yacht whose constitution can bear the wild excesses of the regatta season without becoming more or less impaired. When the season is over and the yachtsman brings his beloved vessel back to her Winter quarters, he finds her in a condition that requires him to call in the aid of the shipbuilding profession, and to lavish upon her costly tonics of hemp and iron and the various other expensive remedies prescribed by skilful yachting specialists.

When Spring returns the yachtsman finds that he must either quarrel with his yacht or carry out her ruinously expensive plans for the approaching season. She is not satisfied with the position of her masts, and insists upon having them brought closer together or placed further apart. She is unwilling to enter another regatta unless she is provided with a new and more graceful stern, and furnished with a complete wardrobe of new sails and signals. Then she convinces her owner that unless he is willing to have her called a perfect fright he must lengthen her bow ten or fifteen feet, and equip her with longer topmasts. Very probably she will be dissatisfied with her figure after these alterations have been made, and will assert that unless she is given more breadth of beam she might as well withdraw from yachting society and slave herself to death in the oyster or fruit trade. It is no wonder that in these circumstances no man can own a yacht who has not an independent fortune, or at least a position as counsel for an insolvent railroad. A yacht which squanders money like water all Summer, undergoes elaborate repairs in the Fall, and is completely remodeled every Spring, is infinitely more extravagant than any woman who ever wore 3 2 mo shoes or microscopic gloves.

There is only one way in which to be a happy yachtsman. It is to buy a slow and rather plain looking yacht. Such a yacht rarely cares to go into society, and carefully shuns the giddy regatta. Her owner will never be pointed out as the proprietor of a crack yacht, but he can enjoy a quiet, domestic sort of happiness which the owner of a fast yacht can never know, and he can feel that calm confidence in his yacht’s ballast which is worth more than money, challenge cups, and other yachting prizes.

The boy of Oshkosh

A Western newspaper alleges that a combined boy and girl, has made his, her, or their appearance in the City of Oshkosh. All previous Oshkoshian boys have been of the pattern in common use, and it is understood that the combined boy owes his existence to the stimulating effect of the late Centennial Exhibition upon the patriotic minds of his parents. Unfortunately he was not perfected in time to be exhibited at Philadelphia as a specimen of American ingenuity and industry. Still, although he will be looked upon more in the light of a curious human toy than of a meritorious and practical improvement upon the ordinary boy of commerce, he is certain to command the respectful attention of all persons with a taste for rare bits of human bric-a-brac.

Strictly speaking, the Oshkosh boy is not a combined boy and girl. He is rather a boy with an ingenious female attachment. So far as the larger part of him is concerned he is a complete boy in all respects — possessing the limbs, freckles, pockets, marbles, jackknives, and other organs with which nature has benevolently endowed the average human boy. Closely attached to him, much after the manner in which a limb is attached to the trunk of a tree, is a certain amount of girl. So far as her head and shoulders are concerned, this girl is a very creditable affair. Nature, which began her with evident care, nevertheless abandoned the undertaking prematurely and in reprehensible haste. The girl had been finished only down to her waist when she was abruptly fastened to the boy’s spinal column, and all intention of completing her was relinquished. That she is a girl there is no room for doubt. She has already, at the early age of thirteen months, exhibited an interest in bonnets and a passion for hair pins which would alone settle any possible question as to her sex. It is true that she is prone to insert the hair pins into her mouth, but in the absence of hair, she could scarcely dispose of them in any other way. We may regret that Nature delays to serve out to female babies their due allowance of hair until a comparatively late period of their infancy; but this fact in no way justifies any doubt as to their rightful sex.

Looked upon merely as an ingenious variation from the order of architecture which mankind has hitherto adopted in the construction of infants, the Oshkosh prodigy merits our admiration. For all practical purposes, however, the combined boy and girl is worse than useless. When his parents are persistently asked what possible use the boy can make of the small amount of girl thus arbitrarily fastened upon him, they are said to mutter in a feeble and apologetic way something concerning the advantages which the constant presence of a pair of hands ready to sew on unlimited buttons secures to their pattern of a boy. The weakness of this argument is simply pitiable. The trifling advantages in point of buttons which the combined boy may possess are as nothing compared with the disadvantages to which his female attachment will subject him. Placed, with a lack of forethought which is almost criminal, in a position where she has unlimited command of the boy’s hair, the girl will unquestionably develop into an inexorable tyrant. The boy will be made her helpless slave. The sole means of defense open to him will be to imitate the strategy of the army mule, and to back his tormentor violently against a stonewall. Even this method of defense can be attempted only at a cost of hair so frightful as to appall the boldest spirit. It may be safely predicted that the boy will choose the safer plan of absolutely surrendering his will to that of his ruthless ruler. His duty in life will simply be to bear her on his shoulders through a staring and pitiless world; and it is in the highest degree improbable that any further boys will be constructed upon so objectionable a model. Indeed, most humane persons will hope that the story of the Oshkosh boy is nothing more than an idle newspaper hoax. Incredible and revolting as it may appear, there are western newspapers which sometimes fail to discriminate between truth and falsehood, and it is possible that the combined boy and girl is merely the troubled dream of a rural journalist, whose mind has been thrown off its balance by the receipt of a free ticket to a traveling circus.

Too much prudence

Prudence is undoubtedly a good thing, but there may sometimes be too much of it. There is an extremely prudent man in Iowa, who recently married a wife in what he regarded as a wonderfully prudent manner; but there is reason to believe that he already bewails his excessive prudence, and acknowledges that any amount of matrimonial rashness would have been wiser and safer.

In order not to lacerate the feelings of this prudent Iowan, he shall be introduced to the reader under the general name of Smith. Mr. Smith had long desired to enter the matrimonial state, but he had a fine head of hair, and a skull which responded with unusual sensitiveness to the contact of broomsticks and stove lids. For some time he fancied that a weak, consumptive woman might meet the necessities of his case, but having on one occasion gone home from a torch light procession with a friend whose wife was a confirmed invalid, and having caught a glimpse of her through the crack of the door, standing grimly erect in a corner, with a deadly pie board grasped in both hands and poised above her head in very nearly the position of “right shoulder shift,” he promptly decided that no prudent man could rely with confidence upon womanly weakness. Probably, he would have remained a bachelor until this day had not the truths of Spiritualism suddenly enlightened his mind and filled him with hope. A powerful medium of great skill in the materialization of spirits happened to visit Mr. Smith’s native town, and as the latter witnessed the successful opening of an unequaled collection of the latest styles of female ghosts, the happy thought occurred to him that a materialized spirit would be precisely the sort of wife for a really prudent man.

Full of this inspiriting idea, Mr. Smith sought the medium, and unfolded to him his newborn hopes. The medium naturally did not underrate his ghostly stock in trade. He told the prudent Smith that a spiritual wife would be the cheapest and safest article of the kind that could possibly be obtained. He showed him that a materialized spirit always supplied its own clothes, and disdained to follow the fashions or wear the fabrics of the material world. Moreover, a materialized woman cannot be induced to eat earthly food, but always seeks the restaurants and boardinghouses of the other world when she is hungry or desires to stimulate her mind with tea. There is thus no possible expense attending the entertainment of ghosts, and, for an lowan husband of a frugal turn of mind a ghostly wife would be an unalloyed blessing. As to the dangers which, in districts inhabited by strong minded women, menace the heads or hair of disobedient or careless husbands, they are unknown in the spirit world. A materialized wife can only handle a materialized broomstick — the real article being too gross to be wielded by spiritual hands — and a blow from such a weapon would be entirely imperceptible. To these eminently satisfactory explanations Mr. Smith listened with the utmost joy, and when they were ended, he requested the medium to materialize a neat, attractive ghost, with blue eyes, yellow hair, and a handsome wedding dress, and he would promptly make her Mrs. Smith.

The next evening the desired ghost appeared. She was in all respects a first-class ghost, and as she issued from the cabinet with a step so light that she seemed to float on air, Mr. Smith felt that the dream of his life was about to be realized. He stepped forward, took her shadowy hand in his, and, without carping at the fact that it was rather warmer than the hand of a ghost who had been kept in a comfortably cool place ought to be, underwent the marriage ceremony with the coolness of a veteran missionary who had returned from an unhealthy climate to lay in his fourth or fifth wife. When the ceremony was finished he kissed his bride, and permitted her to withdraw to the cabinet to change her dress, while he waited for her at the stage door of the spiritual theater.

It is sad to relate that Mr. Smith has waited for his wife ever since. He has seen her but once since the evening of his marriage, and she then merely put her hand out of the cabinet and mentioned that while she should be true to her beloved husband, circumstances over which she had no control would prevent her from meeting him until he should reach the spirit world. The medium has replied to the reproaches of Mr. Smith, who, exhibiting to him the ragged edge of his wristbands and the decimation of his shirt buttons, piteously demanded his wife, that no one could compel a spirit to materialize unless the spirit wished to undergo that process. He warned Mr. Smith that if he rashly deserted his spirit wife and married an earthly woman, the former would make the future world an uncomfortably lively place for him on his arrival there, and further explained that the spirits had no divorce courts of their own, and that the jurisdiction of Indiana courts was not recognized except in that unpleasantly warm part of the spirit world where Indiana politicians chiefly reside. Thus Mr. Smith, who had thought it imprudent to marry an able bodied woman found himself wedded to a totally invisible wife, who could not be of the slightest use to him, and from whom he could obtain no possible decree of divorce. This was the result of his excessive prudence, and it is understood that he now openly calls the “good gosh” of New England mythology to witness that he has made a “t-rn-t-n fool of himself,” and that he would have been wiser if he had married a six-foot woman with red hair and a father in the wholesale broom trade.

The coming girl

Long before the rifle came into general use as a military weapon it was the familiar friend of the hunter and the frontiersman. Its vast superiority to the smooth bore musket had been conclusively shown, and yet both in Europe and in this country, military men opposed its introduction into the army. In like manner the breech loader made its way slowly and against persistent opposition. Sharpe’s rifles had proved their efficiency in Kansas years before Solferino was fought, but both the Austrians and the French fought that long and doubtful battle with muzzle loaders, although it is morally certain that had either of the combatants been armed with breech loaders the other would have been quickly beaten. The dull prejudice with which soldiers clung first to their muskets and afterwards to their muzzle loaders seems almost inexplicable now; but that civilians can be equally dull in opposing improvements of obvious merit is shown by the fact that the roller skate has been before the public for many years, and that both America and Europe have until now persistently refused to adopt it.

Curiously enough, the first nation which has seriously considered the propriety of increasing the efficiency of the usual style of girl by mounting her on wheels is the conservative British nation. Within the past two years the roller skate has become immensely popular in England, and if we properly interpret the tone of the English press, the time is close at hand when the efficiency of English girls will be at least trebled by the universal adoption of the ingenious device of fitting them with wheels.

The cost of this improvement will be trifling in comparison with the advantages which it will secure. The conversion of the Enfield rifle into a breech loader cost the British Government an enormous sum, but the nation cheerfully paid the bill. The cost of converting the present pattern of English girl into a four, six, or even eight wheeled girl would probably be so much less than the price paid for converting firearms, that it might be undertaken by the Government without involving the slightest increase in taxation. It is not, however, proposed that the Government shall undertake the matter. It will be the pleasure as well as the duty of every head of a family to mount his or her daughter on wheels, and there will not be the least necessity for any legislation on the subject.

As for the advantages which would be gained by the proposed conversion of young English women they hardly need to be pointed out. The sportsman who hunts partridges with a double-barreled breech loader is obviously better equipped than he would be were he to arm himself with a bow and arrows. In the pursuit of husbands wheeled girls will possess a similar superiority over unwheeled rivals. The old fashioned pedestrian girl, who from her window perceives an heir to a title striding along the street, knows how hopeless it would be for her to sally forth with the view of pursuing him on the opposite side of the way and of meeting him accidentally at some convenient crossing. The wheeled girl, however, could practice this strategy with every prospect of success. If she is properly mounted, and her wheels run easily and without much friction, she can attain a rate of speed which will enable her to run down the best pair of unmarried masculine legs in the whole kingdom. The same capacity for high speed will render it easy for her to avoid portionless younger sons whom she may meet either in the ballroom or on the public promenade. In fact the success of the wheeled girl would furnish a fine illustration of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The swiftest girls would capture the most eligible husbands, and the slowest girls would fail to catch even undesirable younger sons. Thus the poorer and the slower classes would gradually become extinct, and in time England would be peopled only by eight wheeled girls and desirable young men. It must also be noticed that the wheeled girl can always escape from a heavy and necessarily slow duenna, and the increased degree of freedom which wheels will thus insure will render most girls of the period exceedingly anxious to adopt them.

Of course, no one nation can hope to preserve a monopoly of wheeled girls. France and Germany will speedily follow the example of England and will convert their girls upon the six or eight wheeled system, and America will inevitably adopt the prevailing fashion. However efficient the pedestrian girl may hitherto have been, she is doomed to become obsolete except among savage nations. Henceforth the girl of civilization will pursue her prey on wheels, and until some cunning inventor can solve the problem of equipping girls with wings our sidewalks will echo with the whir of wheels, and lovely faces will flash by us with nearly the speed and more than the brilliancy of meteors.

An unnecessary invention

Few people have any accurate idea of the immense number of ingenious inventions that are annually patented at Washington. It is creditable to the inventors that for the most part these inventions are intended to serve some really useful end and to meet some obvious want. Nevertheless, there are inventors who appear to have more desire to display their ingenuity than to accomplish any public benefit. Such inventors are akin in spirit to those captious persons who decline to rent a room or an office unless it possesses facilities for swinging a cat. although they have not the remotest intention of ever performing that exciting but frivolous experiment. The Patent Office contains numerous models of machines framed with the utmost skill, but intended for purposes for which no man will ever desire to employ them, or which are hostile to the best interests of the community. We may admire the ingenuity of these machines, but at the same time we must regret that the inventors have wasted or perverted their abilities.

It is to this latter class of inventions that the recently patented “Smith Rolling and Crushing Machine,” undoubtedly belongs — unless, indeed, the nature and object of the invention have been grossly misrepresented. As its name implies, it is obviously intended for diminishing the number of Smiths. It is understood that it consists of a series of heavy rollers resembling those by which iron plates are rolled, and also of a pair of gigantic grindstones of novel pattern and enormous power, the whole being set in motion by a 12 horsepower engine. Its method of operation is at once simple and effective. The operator takes a Smith of any size, and adjusting the gearing of the rollers to the exact width to which it is desired to roll the Smith, gently inserts his head between the rollers. The machine is then set in motion, and in the brief space of fifty-eight seconds the Smith is rolled to any desired degree of thinness. If a Smith is to be crushed, he is placed in a hopper communicating with the grindstones, and after a rapid trituration, varying from two minutes to five minutes, according to the size and toughness of the Smith, he is reduced to a fine and evenly ground powder, in which such foreign substances as buttons or shirt studs can be detected only by the most delicate chemical tests. The inventor, so it is said, claims that by a very simple mechanical attachment the machine can be made to roll or crush Smythes and Schmidts with equal efficiency, and he is confident the general principle underlying his invention can be applied to Brown crushing or Robinson rolling machines.

Now we may fully appreciate the ingenuity displayed in the conception of the Smith roller and crusher, and the skill with which that conception has been embodied in iron and grindstones. A grave objection, however, can be urged against the invention, and that is that there is no evidence of any existing demand for such a machine. That there is a large quantity of Smiths, not to speak of Smythes and Schmidts, in this country is undeniable. There is, however, no proof that the volume of Smiths is more than commensurate with the necessities of business. It may be conceded that, at certain times and in certain limited localities, there is an excess of Smiths. A plethora of Smiths in one place, however, implies a corresponding paucity of Smiths in another, and the difficulty soon regulates itself. It may be confidently asserted that the great law of supply and demand can be trusted to preserve the balance of Smiths from any serious disturbance. Hence it is sufficiently plain that there is no need of a sudden contraction of the volume of Smiths, and that the Smith roller and crusher is wholly superfluous.

There is still another objection to the machine, which is, at least, as serious as that already suggested. No one will deny that were it desired to contract the volume of Smiths by a certain definite number, every week or month, the Smith roller and crusher would accomplish that end with thoroughness and success. A Smith when once rolled to the uniform thinness of a quarter of an inch, or crushed to the fineness of ground coffee, would be of no further use as a Smith. But why employ costly machinery to roll and crush Smiths, when they could be retired with equal efficiency in a dozen different and less expensive ways? The inventor has as yet made no suggestion as to the possible uses to which a rolled Smith might be put; neither has he proposed any plan for the utilization of crushed Smiths. On the other hand, it is perfectly evident that one result of his process would be the financial ruin of coffin makers, who, as is well known, regard the Smiths as their most valuable clients. The more closely the invention is studied, the more plainly is it seen that it meets no real want, and that it proposes to do, in an elaborate and costly way, what might be done more simply and cheaply. It is an unpleasant task to say to an ingenious inventor, “You have wasted your labor and have produced what is, at best, only a curious scientific toy.” This, however, must be the universal verdict upon the Smith roller and crusher. The rich and idle amateur of science may occasionally amuse himself by rolling or crushing Smiths in his private laboratory or workshop, but it is folly to suppose that the machine will ever come into general use, or that the inventor or the public will ever reap any decided benefit from it.

A beneficent invention

Those who were familiar with the appearance of a district schoolroom thirty years ago would find little to remind them of their school days were they to enter a classroom in any of our public schools today. The old fashioned benches that afforded such a delightful surface for carving, and that could be so easily tipped over whenever a boy felt that the sight of a dozen pair of juvenile legs waving wildly in the air would strengthen and encourage the weary schoolmistress, have been replaced by elaborate chairs molded to fit the sinuosities of the writhing small-boy, and turning on pivots entirely devoid of squeak. The capacious desks, in which hoards of apples and batteries of pop guns could be easily stowed away, have given place to smaller desks, astutely contrived to hold only the limited quantity of schoolbooks in daily use, and the rude blackboard of primitive times has been succeeded by a wide wainscot of black plaster which encircles the room, and which cannot be stolen, nor covered with soap, except at a vast outlay of time and material.

These improvements are the work of ingenious persons, who apparently pass their lives in the invention of new chairs, desks, and other schoolroom furniture. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to calculate without the aid of a blackboard the immense quantity of patents that have been recently granted for improved school furniture. Of course, no inventor claims to have originated the generic idea of a chair or a desk. It is, however, apparently held at the Patent Office that whenever a man manufactures a chair with the back at a different angle from that selected by the last preceding inventor, he is entitled to a patent, and a similar theory leads to the issue of patents to men who invent desks differing in size from those already in use by a half or a quarter of an inch. When we consider the multiplicity of patents which have hitherto been issued, and the ingenuity which inventors have shown in their efforts to produce ideally perfect chairs and desks, it is odd that no one has hitherto invented a chair contrived with a view to the entire suppression of “joggling.”

Of the evils of “joggling” it is unnecessary to speak. They are acknowledged and bewailed by all school teachers, but they have been regarded as among the necessary evils of the schoolroom. The small-boy is as prone to “joggle” as the sparks are to fly upward, and although a muscular teacher can easily convince him that the practice is fraught with danger, he cannot be induced to abandon it. Many of our best and noblest statesmen have “joggled” in their schoolboy days, and venerable matrons, whom the breath of scandal has never touched, know in the secret recesses of their hearts that in their childhood they were “joggled” by reckless schoolmates, and did not hesitate to “joggle” in return. In view of the universality of this nefarious habit, all who are interested in the permanence and prosperity of our school system will be glad to learn that an inventor has at last been found who has devised an absolute cure for “joggling.”

This invention, like many other valuable inventions, is charming in its simplicity. In the seat of each schoolroom chair is placed a small metallic plate connected by a wire with a galvanic battery placed within the teacher’s reach. Every alternate chair is connected with the positive pole of the battery, while the remaining chairs are connected with the negative pole. Let us suppose that a boy addicted to “joggling” seats himself on one of these chairs. He is, of course, in close contact with the metallic plate, and though it is possible that the mind may be thereby gently stimulated, he experiences no shock, and remains unconscious of the fact that a current of electricity is passing through him. Presently the Great Adversary tempts him to “joggle” his nearest neighbor, and he stretches out a surreptitious foot or hand, but no sooner has he touched his victim than the galvanic circuit is completed, and the unseen torturer has them both in an inexorable grasp. Two yells of contemporaneous human agony startle the schoolroom, and the teacher beholds the “joggler” and the “joggled” writhing in anguish and unable to break the’ bond that holds them in contact. When this spectacle has been fully seen by every scholar, and the teacher has improved the occasion to point out the wickedness of “joggling,” he breaks the current and the victims are released. It is safe to say that a boy thus punished would never “joggle” again, and that the chief effort of every scholar would be to avoid the slightest contact with another while in the schoolroom.

An invention so ingenious and so efficacious ought to be brought to the attention of every school teacher in the land. It should be exhibited at the American Institute Fair where unsuspecting boys could be bribed to “joggle” in public, and to thus illustrate the working of the invention, while at the same time serving as frightful examples of the evil of “joggling.” Let school teachers take courage. The day is at hand when “joggling,” with all its train of attendant evils will be at an end. The peace of the schoolroom will be kept by electricity, and the detection and punishment of every offender will instantaneously follow the commission of the offense.

Smiting the heathen

It is undoubtedly true that mobs are inexcusable, and that riots are not to be tolerated in any civilized community. And yet it sometimes happens that the law is unable or unwilling to suppress some public and gigantic evil. In such case mob violence becomes the only alternative of degrading submission, and to this alternative a courageous and high spirited people will usually resort. It is evident that this is the true explanation of the frequently threatened popular risings against the Chinese in California, and however much we may deprecate unlawful massacres perpetrated by unauthorized rioters, it cannot be denied that the conduct of the Chinese has provoked and invited public hostility.

When the earliest Chinese immigrants arrived in California they were not regarded with any serious dislike. On the contrary, much innocent amusement was derived from them by that frank, free, and manly class of the American population locally known as the “hoodlums.” To drag a Chinaman backwards by his cue was considered a wholesome and enlivening sport, and children too young to be trusted with revolvers were taught to cultivate accuracy of aim by throwing stones at the timid heathen. At that period the Chinese were too few in number to compete in any way with resident Christians, especially as they were allowed to search for gold only in claims which had been previously worked out and abandoned. This happy state of things was, however, of brief duration. The Chinese immigration increased with alarming rapidity, and it is now estimated that in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco there are fully twenty thousand so-called souls.

That these alleged men — for even in California there are Americans who unblushingly assert that the Chinaman is a man — should incur the hostility of the “hoodlums,” was inevitable. Their want of manliness and morality is simply disgusting. The Chinaman is not only always willing to work, but he does his work with mean spirited thoroughness, and for wages which a “hoodlum” would refuse with loathing and contempt. He has no conception of the manly joy of intoxicating himself on bad whiskey and of engaging in spirited “difficulties” with his friends or with casual strangers. Though he may have resided for several years in a Christian country, the Chinaman is seldom able to swear with fluency or originality. It is true that in his own quarter of the city he gambles with other Chinamen for preposterously small stakes, and it is not impossible that he blasphemes in his own intricate language, and in a feeble, heathenish way. It is nevertheless undeniable that he lacks the courage or the ability to practice those virtues in public, and right minded men cannot do otherwise than despise those who are manly and chivalrous only in private.

There are other and, if possible, worse vices to which the Chinamen are notoriously addicted. They wash themselves and wear clean clothing. This loathsome practice naturally renders them hideous in the sight of the “hoodlum,” and it is not surprising that it is generally regarded as a direct insult to voters. Equally heinous is the frugality practiced by these depraved heathen. The Chinese actually save money out of their meager earnings; and while they affect to scorn the free lunches provided by beneficent liquor sellers, it is currently reported that they dine on carefully fattened puppies, and even prefer that unnatural diet to the wholesome flesh of the still fed hog.

It will hardly be credited by persons unfamiliar with Californian law that there is not a single statute which prohibits the revolting pagan practices above described. Not only is this true, but certain Californian courts have deliberately decided that if an American citizen playfully shoots a casual Chinaman, or if an American small-boy fractures a Chinese skull with a paving stone, the injured Chinaman can cause the arrest, and in rare instances the punishment, of the aggressor. The law, so far from declaring the Chinaman to ferae naturae, and thus placing him on the same plane with the umbrella, as an object which can be stolen or smashed without fear of punishment, shamelessly proceeds upon the absurd assumption that he is a man, and has thus certain natural and inalienable rights. It is therefore, worse than idle to appeal to the law to suppress the Chinaman; and it follows that either the “hoodlum” must submit to the degrading presence of thousands of industrious pagans, who corrupt his moral nature by the open parade of their heathenish vices, or he must rise above the law and cure the Chinese ulcer with knife and pistol.

The latter is the course which he is apparently resolved to take, and though we may not approve of rioting in the abstract, it cannot be denied that an industrious, orderly, and frugal heathen is a sight adapted to goad the average “hoodlum” to frenzy. San Francisco has evidently made up its mind that the time has come when the resident Chinamen must be taught that this is a free and Christian country, where they and their pagan vices cannot be tolerated. The massacre of the Chinese can be easily accomplished, and as China has no fleet with which to bombard San Francisco, in imitation of the American and European custom of exacting satisfaction for the murder of a drunken sailor by a brutal mob of bloodthirsty Chinese, the “hoodlums” need have no fear of punishment. Of course, the municipal authorities of the city will nominally object to the threatened riot, but inasmuch as the Chinese have no votes, while every “hoodlum” polls at least a score, no very vigorous interference with the popular will need be apprehended.

Thanksgiving pie

Thanksgiving Day is the one national festival which is peculiarly and thoroughly American. Other nations undergo annual sufferings from. noise and gunpowder which are analogous to those which are associated in our minds with Fourth ‘of July. Christmas is the common property of the Christian world, although Russia celebrates her Christmas some weeks later than other nations, in order that Russians residing in foreign countries may obtain a double supply of Christmas presents. Thanksgiving Day, however, was the invention of the New England colonists, and though it has since been universally adopted by the American people, no other nation has imitated it. We alone express our annual gratitude by the sacrifice of turkeys, and it is, hence, greatly to be desired that the one exclusively American festival should be in all respects perfect and beyond reproach.

It is impossible to deny that In active practice our method of celebrating the day is open to one serious objection. In spite of the progress which we have made towards a higher morality than that of the last century, we still adhere, on Thanksgiving Day,’ to one barbarous and demoralizing ceremony. To a great extent the hot New England rum of our forefathers is banished from our dinner tables, but the no less deadly and demoralizing pie forms part of every Thanksgiving dinner, no matter how moral and intelligent its consumers may believe themselves to be.

The Thanksgiving array of pie is usually of so varied, as well as lavish a nature, that it seems cunningly devised to entrap even the most innocent palate. If mince pie alone were set before a virtuous family, it is quite probable that many of its members would have the courage to turn in loathing from the deadly compound, but the Thanksgiving mince pie is always accompanied or preceded by lighter pies, in which weak minded persons think they can indulge without injury. The thoughtless matron — for thoughtlessness, and not deliberate wickedness, is indicated by the presence of Thanksgiving pie — urges her guests to take a little chicken pie, assuring them that it cannot injure a child. The guest who tampers with the chicken pie is inevitably lost. The chicken pie crust awakens an unholy hunger for fiercer viands, and when the meats are removed, he is ready and anxious for undiluted apple or pumpkin pie. From that to mince pie the transition is swift and easy, and in nine cases out of ten the man who attends a Thanksgiving dinner and is lured into touching chicken pie abandons all self restraint and delivers himself up to the thraldom of a fierce longing for strong and undisguised mince pie. Hundreds of men and women who had emancipated themselves by a tremendous effort of the will from the dominion of pie, have backslidden at the Thanksgiving dinner, and have returned to their former degradation with a fiercer appetite than ever, and with little hope that they can find sufficient strength for a second effort towards reformation.

The chief evil of the Thanksgiving display of pie is, however, its terrible influence upon the young. It is a well known fact, however revolting it may seem when rehearsed in cold blood, that on Thanksgiving Day many a foolish mother has herself pressed pie to the lips of her innocent offspring. To the taste thus created thousands of victims of the pie habit ascribe their ruin. It is a common spectacle on Thanksgiving evening to see scores of children, mere babes in years, writhing under the influence of pie, and making the night hideous with their outcries. Physicians can testify to the appalling results of the pie orgies in which children are thus openly encouraged to take part. The amount of drugs which is consumed by the unhappy little victims on the day following Thanksgiving Day would fill the public with horror were the exact figures to be published. How can we wonder that children who are thus tempted to acquire the taste for pie by their own parents grow up to be shameless and habitual consumers of pie! The good matron who sees a haggard and emaciated man slink into a public pie shop, and presently emerge brushing the tell-tale crumbs from his beard, shudders to think that the unhappy wretch was once as young and innocent as her own darling children. And yet that very matron will sit at the foot of a Thanksgiving table groaning with pie, and will deal out the deadly compound to her children without a thought that she is awakening in them a depraved hunger that will ultimately lead them straight to the pie shop.

All the efforts of good men and women to stay the torrent of pie which threatens to engulf our beloved country will be in vain, unless the reform is begun at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Pie must be banished from that otherwise innocent board, or it is in vain that we try to banish it from shops, restaurants, and hotels. May we not hope for a great moral crusade which will sweep pie from every virtuous table, and unite all the friends of morality in a vigorous and persistent attack upon the great evil of the land.

Star traps

It is yet fresh in public recollection that M. Leverrier announced for production on a certain night in October last a transit of the new planet Vulcan across the sun; and that for causes which have not yet been explained the management failed to keep its promise, thus shamefully insulting all lovers of astronomy. Ever since that date there has been an active discussion among astronomers as to the existence of Vulcan, some firmly believing Vulcan to be a regular professional planet, although he failed to make a transit at the proper time; and others insisting that there is no such planet as Vulcan, and that he was wickedly invented by M. Leverrier for occult and ulterior purposes. Amateur astronomers, however, profess to have recently seen Vulcan to a prodigal extent, and every few days some enthusiastic rural person who is in the habit of studying the celestial heavens and his neighbor’s back windows through an opera glass writes a letter to his favorite newspaper, pretending that he has actually seen Vulcan, when, in all probability he has seen nothing more remarkable than a bald headed old gentleman in the act of drawing down his bedroom curtains.

Now, the failure of the promised transit of Vulcan, the doubts as to his existence, and the reckless astronomical observations of inquisitive amateurs, are matters of comparatively little importance. There is, however, one very grave consequence which has resulted from M. Leverrier’s broken promise, and which illustrates the malign and far reaching influence of a single dishonest and mendacious act. Heretofore the astronomer has pursued his celestial game with as much spirit and boldness as though he were Bootes himself, with his eager hunting dogs “in their leash of sidereal fire.” The men who have the greatest distinction as star hunters have swept the heavens, telescope in hand, and have depended for success upon their steady aim, the excellence of their weapons, and their familiarity with the habits and lurking places of timid planets. When such men captured a new star, it was a fact of which they had a right to be proud. When Prof. Peters, after a long night’s sport, returned to his home, and sat down to the breakfast table in his astronomical clothes, and the glow of healthful excitement on his cheek, he would modestly answer the inquiry of Mrs. Peters, “What luck, my dear?” with the cheerful reply: “Three asteroids, two Neptunian satellites, and a fine large nebula.” It is no wonder that even the servants admired the skill and prowess of so successful a sportsman; and if at times men like Prof. Peters and his comrades seemed to forget, in their passion for star hunting, the more prosaic duties of astronomy, we can easily pardon them. Their methods were those of true, chivalrous sportsmen, and they would have disdained to snare a planet by the tricky means employed by Leverrier and Adams for the capture of Neptune, as much as they would to have hunted asteroids out of season, or to have wasted their time with shooting stars and such like sidereal vermin.

But now we are told that a soulless, pot hunting person, who pretends to call himself an astronomer, has been led, by his desire to settle the question of Vulcan’s existence, to invent a planet trap, which, if it should come into general use, would speedily capture every star not yet in the catalog. The new trap consists of a photographic camera, provided with clockwork and other devilish devices. This is set at nightfall in some secluded spot, and left to accomplish its infamous and unsportsmanlike purpose. A timid asteroid notices the light reflected from the trap, and thoughtlessly peeps into the camera. Instantaneously its likeness is taken, the negative glides from its place, a fresh plate advances into position, and the trap is again ready for action. The inventor intends to bait this trap especially with reference to the capture of Vulcan; but he asserts that after leaving it set for a single night, he will find in the morning photographs of every star which has ventured near it during the night.

There is, unfortunately, no reason to doubt that the trap will do all that its inventor claims. It will prove a species of sidereal pound net which will capture indiscriminately everything which comes in its way. The full grown planet, the feeble asteroid, the fierce comet, the worthless aerolite, and the valuable fixed star will be photographed with equal promptitude and certainty. It is true that the midnight mosquito and the wandering cat will occasionally intrude into the camera, and be mistaken for curious nebulae or exceptionally brilliant comets, but though the pot hunting astronomer may thus be made ridiculous in the eyes of discriminating men, he will nevertheless continue to gather in his miscellaneous game, and thus render the efforts of the legitimate sportsman utterly fruitless.

Of course, there are hundreds of incompetent astronomers — men who cannot hit a full moon with the best telescope in existence — who will eagerly provide themselves with traps, and fancy that they are the worthy rivals of Peters and Olbers. We know how the analogous practice of pound net fishing has exterminated the game fish of our rivers, and driven the fly fisher to the remote regions of Maine and Canada. A like result will follow the introduction of star trapping, and the ardent sportsman will have to carry his telescope to China or Australia, if he hopes to have any legitimate sport. The only remedy is to fight trap hunters at once, and before it is too late. If Prof. Peters wishes to uphold the dignity of telescopic hunting, let him petition the legislature for the appointment of an astronomical commission, with power to prevent the introduction of star traps, and preserve the celestial game from extermination. If this is not done, star traps will be set on the roof of every house, and the time will soon come when Prof. Peters will be compelled to lay aside his rusty telescope, and mourn over the total extermination of the game that he now so gallantly pursues.

Solved at last

The mysterious mound builders of the Mississippi Valley have been a source of much solid satisfaction to patriotic Americans. It is true that we knew nothing whatever about the mound builders, but neither, for that matter, did any one else; and it was quite certain that when we boldly asserted that they were a prehistoric race there was no danger that any European antiquarian would disprove the assertion. But now comes a learned western professor and ruthlessly snatches from us our only antiquities. He tells us that the mounds were built only four hundred years ago, and that the builders, instead of being a prehistoric race, were merely ordinary Mexicans.

The professor bases his assertion of the identity of the Mexicans and the mound builders upon two remarkable facts. In the mounds are found pieces of volcanic glass — such glass as is found in Mexico; — and Cortez, when he invaded the latter country, found copper tools made of a variety of metal which he instantly recognized as coming from the Lake Superior copper mines. The inference to be drawn from these facts is evident. Whenever a Mexican wanted a trifle of copper, he simply went to Lake Superior and got it. As the journey was a rather long one, he naturally filled his pockets before starting with pieces of volcanic glass, a very little of which, when used as an article of food, goes a long way; and as the road was somewhat infested with Indians and wild beasts, he wisely threw up a mound or two as a breastwork wherever he encamped for a night. Of course, he occasionally dropped a few bits of unusually tough glass, when breakfasting in camp, and hence we find glass and mounds in close proximity to one another. The desire for copper was then probably very general among the Mexicans, just as the desire for Texan cattle is in our day. Thus a large number of Mexicans doubtless stepped over to Lake Superior in leisure moments for a pound or two of copper, and these frequent journeys fully account in the professor’s mind for the frequency of mounds in the Mississippi Valley, and the abundance of copper in Mexico at the time of Cortez’ invasion. When Mexico was conquered by the Spaniards, copper probably went out of fashion. At all events, the Mexicans no longer went to Lake Superior in search of it, and their neglected camps crumbled into shapeless and meaningless mounds.

The only thing which could possibly reconcile us to the destruction of our cherished prehistoric mound builders is the ingenuity and clearness of this demonstration that the real mound builders were stray Mexicans. There are dull persons who might easily have misinterpreted the above mentioned facts as to copper and volcanic glass, and held them to mean that the mound builders were an independent race of people who went to Mexico occasionally to lay in their winter glass, and paid for it in copper. The professor’s interpretation, however, is much more satisfactory and interesting. He ought to have carried his theory still further, and proved that the Egyptians were merely Mexicans who traveled a little further than the mound builders. Copper tools are found in Egypt as well as in Mexico, and the people of both countries were apparently equally fond of pyramids. If we assume that whenever it occurred to a Mexican that a pyramid would look well in his front yard he went over to Egypt and selected one — dropping, it may be, an occasional copper tool out of his coat pocket as he stooped to thoroughly examine the interior of his chosen pyramid — we need have no further doubt that the Egyptians and Mexicans were the same people. In fact, if we adopt the professor’s apparent axiom that the finding of the same article in two countries proves that the inhabitants of each belonged to the same race, the science of ethnology will be greatly simplified. We can consider that we are all Chinamen because we drink tea, and that Bafnum is an Esquimaux because he associates with a Polar bear. Perhaps the discovery of this great scientific axiom is worth more than the fondly cherished belief in the antiquity of our mounds. After all, we need not tell our foreign visitors that the mound mystery has been finally solved. When they ask to see some relics of the mound builders’ work, we can show them certain marvelous specimens of architecture in New York. They will never detect our patriotic fraud, nor fancy it possible that intelligent beings of the nineteenth century reared such monstrous and misshapen piles. Thus shall we satisfy their desire for the marvelous, and send them home prepared to write volumes of learned essays upon the “Probable Purpose and Possible Builders of the Court Houses and Post Offices of the New World.”

Boyton’s mistakes

Capt. Paul Boyton is still cruising in European waters. Not very long ago he spent eighty-three consecutive hours in the river Po; since then he has floated down the Arno; and recently he descended the Tiber. Of course, if he likes this style of yachting, it is his own concern, but to most men it is painful to see an alleged fellow being wasting so much time and energy by stubbornly clinging to obsolete methods of navigation. Every one knows that Capt. Boyton wears a life preserving dress, in which he floats on his back on water, and propels himself either with a paddle or a small sail. It is difficult to see how he can find much pleasure in this pursuit. He is in no danger of sinking unless he knocks a hole in himself by running on a sharp reef, but he is compelled to remain in a tedious and uncomfortable position. If he were able to go on deck, so to speak, and stretch his legs by walking up and down his abdomen, or if he could go aloft and scan the horizon from the lofty elevation of his nose, the wearisome sameness of his voyages would be to some extent broken up. Owing to the way in which he is constructed, these recreations are impossible, and he can only vary the monotony of paddling head first by occasionally backing astern and slowly forcing his blunt boots through the water.

These’ inconveniences are, however, unavoidable, so long as Capt. Boyton persists in converting himself into a seagoing vessel. Where he is at fault is in his stubborn refusal to avail himself of modern improvements in the art of propulsion. Whether we regard him as a sailing or a paddling craft, he is equally behind the age, and he has even failed to adopt the most efficient means of securing speed and weatherly qualities when under sail. He made a grave mistake when he had himself cat-rigged instead of cutter-rigged. He carries but one sail, and when he is running before a fresh breeze and rolling heavily — as he inevitably must, in consequence of his depth of hold and the dead weight of his skirt pockets — he is very apt to roll the extremity of his boom under, and thus incur the risk of a capsize. Had he adopted the cutter rig, he could have safely scudded before a gale of wind under his foresail alone, his mainsail being snugly stowed and his top mast housed. A graver mistake, however, was his failure to provide himself with a center board, or even a temporary false keel. Owing to this unaccountable omission, he cannot beat to windward, and he makes an enormous amount of leeway when sailing with a beam wind. Hence, unless he has the wind directly astern or on his quarter, his sail is worse than useless. It is idle to say that this is the fault of his model. His model is well enough, though he was evidently not designed for speed, but no light draught man without either keel or center board can go to windward. For Capt. Boyton to claw off a lee shore under sail would be an absolute impossibility, and if ever he finds himself in such a situation, and his paddle breaks down, he may make up his mind that he will have to abandon himself to his underwriters and claim a total loss.

Doubtless, Capt. Boyton’s friends will assert that his sail is intended to be used only as an auxiliary to his paddle, or as a final resort in case of any accident to the latter, and that in this respect he resembles the old fashioned paddle wheel steamers. But by what possible course of reasoning can either they or Capt. Boyton justify this imitation of an obsolete model.? It is impossible that Capt. Boyton does not know that the screw has completely driven out the paddle. It is true that he has the legal right to adopt any propelling machinery that he may fancy, but when he exhibits himself to the Europeans as the latest specimen of American marine architecture, he has no right to produce the impression that we are ignorant of the screw. It is possible that he may be in some way connected with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which, a few years ago, built a number of large paddle wheel ships for the Pacific trade, long after the superior speed and economy of screw propellers had been demonstrated. Still, this would not be a sufficient excuse for his worse than folly, and the only way in which his conduct can be explained is upon the almost incredible hypothesis that he is ignorant of the ‘screw.

Had this man fitted himself with a light three bladed screw, driven by a small engine, using alcohol or petroleum instead of coal, he would have reflected some credit upon our shipbuilders. He would have secured a much higher rate of speed than he can now command, and avoided the immense consumption of tissue which the steady use of the paddle requires. By dispensing with the cumbrous paddle, he would have had plenty of room for carrying fuel and fresh water, besides an additional quantity of freight. Of course, his machinery should have been of the simplest character, and as light as would have been consistent with strength, but there is no doubt that if he had gone to some prominent English or Scotch engine builder he could have had light and powerful machinery put into him at much less cost than his continued use of the paddle has involved.

In addition to these grave defects, it is generally conceded that Captain Boyton’s interior arrangements are wretchedly unsatisfactory. He is so badly ventilated that after a voyage of a few hours duration he is entirely prostrated with excessive heat. He has never been coppered since he was first launched, and has hence been obliged to go on the dry dock at frequent intervals in order to be thoroughly scrubbed. It may be granted that he is perfectly tight, and has never yet leaked a drop, but it is not certain that this is an advantage. A very slight leak, which would require him to use his pumps for ten or fifteen minutes every day, would not injure his cargo, but would tend to preserve the wood in the neighborhood of his keelson, and to keep his joints and butts swelled.

These criticisms are made, not in any spirit of hostility to Capt. Boyton, who is probably stanch and seaworthy. When, however, he enters a foreign port with the American flag at his peak, and throws himself open for inspection as a specimen of what American builders can do, we have a right to demand that he should reflect credit upon his countrymen. Let him make the changes in his rig, machinery, and general fitting up which have been suggested, and we will then be able to feel proud of him. Until he does this he may be very sure that although he may astonish Frenchmen and other landsmen, no American sailor or shipbuilder can look upon him with any real complacency.

Ghostly malignity

When a woman becomes thoroughly depraved she is generally held to be proportionally worse than a depraved man. This rule seems also to hold good in the shadowy world of ghosts. The male ghost is usually a preposterous idiot, but he is rarely vicious, whereas the female ghost displays a cunning malevolence which cannot be too heartily reprobated. A single illustration will show the difference in disposition between the two ghostly sexes. There is nothing which is more revolting to a sensitive ghost than the sharp, flat headed tacks known to artists “as drawing tacks.” When one of these tacks is tossed on the stage where materialized ghosts disport themselves, it invariably remains with its point upward. It may readily be conceived that an unsuspecting barefooted ghost who treads heavily on such a treacherous and penetrating tack would have a right to manifest a hearty and violent indignation. Indeed, almost any amount of language on the part of the injured ghost would be pardoned by all humane men. But what did the ghost of Daniel Webster do when he recently tried to walk over a stage strewn with drawing tacks, during a “materializing seance” in a Wisconsin town? When the first tack entered that respectable ghost’s right foot he calmly lifted up his injured limb and undertook to withdraw the intrusive bit of steel. It was not until, in his efforts to balance himself on one leg, he ran another tack in his left foot that he broke silence by softly remarking “ouch,” and it is doubtful if he would have repeated that statement or ventured upon any other had he not incautiously sat down and thus inserted two more tacks into his person. In these circumstances he might have totally lost his temper, and no man could have had a word of blame for him; but instead of letting his ghostly passions rise he merely expressed his views of the matter by the simple and touching remark: “Well! by gosh!” and hurriedly withdrew into the mystic cabinet. The other world may be safely challenged to produce a single female ghost that, in like trying circumstances, would have abstained from shrieking loudly and denouncing the anonymous tack distributor as a fiend of more miscellaneous and objectionable atrocity than any of the leading fiends of the warmer world.

Not only is the female ghost addicted to losing her temper upon due provocation, but she often wantonly annoys persons to whom she is a total stranger, and who have not sought her acquaintance. The little town of Bethel, in Ohio, was recently made aware of this fact in a very startling and vexatious way. Precisely at 12 o’clock on a warm September night, a ghostly lady, dressed exclusively in white, and riding on a white horse without saddle or bridle, made her appearance en the main street of Bethel. Whence she came no man knew, but, in the language of the local reporter, “she arose, as it were, from the ground.” Her horse paced slowly down the street, pausing in front of each house, as though he still retained an active interest in earthly garbage. At every pause the weird lady sang songs, the mere hearing of which had a tendency to loosen the back teeth of the strongest man; and in a short time the street was filled with astonished and maddened citizens, who swarmed about the implacable singer. Nothing could induce her to stop, for not only was. she deaf to all entreaties, but she and her horse were intangible to mortal hands and weapons. Those who smote the horse with clubs found that they were beating the air, and those who sought to drag him by the ears clutched nothing more substantial than vapor. The constable who tried to seize the ghostly singer’s arm stumbled and fell directly through the body of her delusive horse, and the missiles that indignant householders hurled from the windows passed through her head or bosom and splintered themselves upon the upturned foreheads of the dissatisfied spectators below. Until dawn this phenomenal singer continued to torture the ears of the helpless Bethelites, and as each one of her songs contained at least eighteen separate verses, all of which were totally unintelligible, she was even more oppressive than a rural choir in the act of singing a cantata. When daylight began to show itself the ghost and her horse vanished, sinking, “as it were, into the ground,” and disdaining to give the slightest explanation of her atrocious conduct.

Now, it will scarcely be denied that there are few offenses more atrocious than the nocturnal singing of unsolicited and unmelodious persons. Still more atrocious is the act when it is perpetrated by a shrill female ghost whose voice has suffered from exposure to midnight air and the extreme cold of the interstellar spaces. It is bad enough to be waked up in the middle of the night by a belated statesman recalling in lugubrious strains the happy days “when Teddy joined the gang;” but it is far worse to be wakened by a female ghost chanting the music of the future, and utterly impervious to the Heaviest and best aimed crockery. Of course, there are those who will claim that the Bethel ghost sinned through ignorance rather than malevolence, and that she really fancied she was conferring a musical boon upon the Bethelites. It is quite probable that her earthly parents did neglect to teach her how not to sing. The extent to which American parents neglect their duty in this matter is appalling, and, as a consequence, the country is full of young women who are in the confirmed habit of singing, but who might easily have been made useful members of society had their parents had the wisdom and liberality to hire competent teachers to instruct them in the beautiful art of never trying to sing. Even if we grant that the Bethel ghost was one who had been deprived of the advantages of unmusical instruction in her youth, she nevertheless must have known that she was committing an outrage in singing in spite of the protests and crockery of her midnight victims. Nothing can explain her conduct except the theory that it was dictated by sheer malevolence. The subtle and determined malignity of her equestrian serenade is too obvious to be questioned, and her depravity gives us a frightful glimpse of the moral condition of the female sex in a ghostly state.

Found at last

The tailed men have been found at last. Ever since the days of Herodotus there have been people who believed in the existence of a nation decorated with tails, although no traveler ever succeeded in penetrating into their country. This want of success was due to the vague and wandering character of that country. At one period it was popularly supposed to be in the region of the frozen ocean; at another it was confidently located in China, and during the last century the tailed men were believed to reside in the heart of Africa, Just as soon as an explorer reached their alleged country, they silently flitted away to some more distant land, and thus uniformly succeeded in eluding all pursuit, and in preserving their privacy unimpaired.

At last, however, a Wesleyan missionary who has been engaged in a professional tour through the South Sea Islands has run the tailed men to the earth on the Island of New Ireland. He found that they corresponded closely to the descriptions given of them by imaginative travelers. They were, of course, a savage race, inhabiting dark and difficult forests, but they kept up the good old custom of their forefathers by piercing small holes in their arm chairs and piano stools for the accommodation of their tails. These tails are described as being not more than from three to four inches in length, and are hence of little use in point of flies. Still that they are true — not to say ower true — tails, no anatomist can honestly deny, and we are thus compelled to admit that the venerable legend of the tailed nation has a substantial basis of fact.

It will not do for skeptics to assert that these tailed men are nothing more than a new species of ape. Their humanity is conclusively proved even by the few facts that we know about them. Do apes carry about with them camp chairs with perforated seats? Do apes distil illicit whiskey, and beat their wives with real clubs t Do apes practice tobacco smoking as a profession, and compel their females to cut kindling wood and carry in all the coal? That these are among the habits of the tailed men is an unanswerable proof that they have risen above the plane of the brute, and developed the most characteristic attributes of man. No doubt they are the connecting link between apes and men, but only blind prejudice can ignore their essential humanity, and class them with the orangutang or the gorilla.

It was the opinion of Lord Monboddo that originally all men possessed tails, but that they gradually wore them off by persistently sitting on hard substances, such as the rural district school bench. The new discovery shows the soundness of Lord Monboddo’s judgment. Why is it that one race of people alone has preserved the primeval tail 1 Evidently because they have cherished it with the utmost care, and designed their household furniture with a constant aim to its accommodation. Had our immediate ancestors used perforated chairs, and steadfastly refused to sit down upon anything else, Lord Monboddo would never have had occasion to trace the decline and final falling off of the luxuriant tails of prehistoric times.

Now that it is demonstrated that tailed men are not the idle dream of the poet’s dainty fancy, it is not impossible that unexpected revelations of the existence of contemporary tails may be made by bold and honest scientific men. It has been frequently suggested that Lord Monboddo wrote with a degree of earnestness only to be fully accounted for upon the hypothesis that he was writing of matters within his own personal knowledge. If we can imagine a man secretly possessed of a tail, and writhing under the belief that he was in that respect a lusus naturae, we can understand why he should write a book to prove that the tail is a proper attribute of humanity. If such was Lord Monboddo’s condition, he might naturally have become a sort of reversed fox, anxious to impress upon his fellows that tails should be worn by all intelligent and cultivated men. If he really had a tail, his conduct is easily explicable, and the intense earnestness with which he wrote is seen to be entirely natural and appropriate.

A similar train of reasoning explains the ardor with which the Darwinian hypothesis has been urged by certain scientific persons. If they are in the habit of wearing surreptitious tails, which they dare not openly acknowledge, they would naturally seek to educate public opinion up to the point of recognizing the tail as a manly and honorable appendage. In order to do this, their most efficient plan would be to convince us that we are descended from the apes, and that the loss of our tails is a matter to be regretted, since it places an obstacle in the way of readily demonstrating our simian origin. When every one should have been induced to adopt this theory, the time would be ripe for the discovery that Professor So-and-so has a well developed three inch tail, and is thus entitled to be regarded as a special authority upon all questions connected with the descent of man.

It is by no means certain that the tail is a rarity in modern society. Being, as it is, under the ban, no man with a tail would be willing to confess its existence. Such a peculiarity would admit of easy concealment among all civilized races. It is a solemn thought that not only the leading advocates of Darwinism, but even our best and most intimate friends, may have secret tails. The world may think them gay and happy, but the heart of him who has a concealed tail knows its own bitterness. For such the discovery of the tailed men of New Ireland is the dawn of hope. As our intercourse with this strange tribe becomes closer, the prejudice against tails may vanish, and the day of which Lord Monboddo dreamed, and for which the Darwinians have sighed — the day when tails shall become the bridge to social distinction — may arrive even during the lifetime of the present generation.

It ought, perhaps, to be added, that the traveling Wesleyan missionary has not actually seen the tailed people with his own personal eyes, but has gained his knowledge of them from intelligent natives of the usual South Sea pattern. There is no doubt, however, that these natives told the truth, for he expressly asserts that they are cannibals. Let us, then, give him due credit for the discovery of the tailed nation, and for whatever beneficent results may flow therefrom.

Destructive as the pie habit unquestionably is, many moral and upright men evince an apathy as to the subject from which it is difficult to arouse them. They cannot help noticing that nearly every block in the business thoroughfares, as well as in the streets inhabited by the poorer classes, has its pie shop, where the various deadly compounds generically known as pie are shamelessly exposed for sale. They comprehend perfectly well that the legislators of our country are virtually controlled by the pie sellers, and that they never venture to pass any measures

Systematic villainy

looking towards the suppression, or even the regulation, of the pie traffic. They have seen with their own personal eyes the victims of pie in the various stages of their moral and physical degradation, and they can scarcely plead ignorance of the recent census report which shows that in New York State alone are no less than 31,415 habitual and confirmed pie eaters, besides 74,021½ persons who admit that they eat pie in what they call moderation. Strange as it may seem, this terrible array of facts has failed to awaken scores of virtuous and intelligent men to the imperative necessity of an organized and determined resistance to pie; but a new feature of the pie traffic, which has recently come to light, is of so revolting a character that it would kindle the indignation of a brass monkey.

There can no longer be any doubt that there are certain depraved persons, who make it a practice to seduce the young and innocent by secretly placing pie in their hands. The object of this atrocious outrage is self evident. If pie is put into the hands of a thoughtless child, at the age when impulses are strong and the moral sense is weak, there is every reason to suppose that the unhappy child will develop a taste for pie which will grow rapidly and surely, and thus increase the sales and profits of the pie sellers. Of the extent to which this revolting system of juvenile corruption is carried the public has little idea. Pie is introduced surreptitiously into boys’ boarding schools and young ladies’ seminaries, where it is passed from hand to mouth until scores have felt its blasting influence. Children on their way to and from school are waylaid by men who tempt them to spend their pennies for pie; and peripatetic pie sellers, who thinly disguise their business under the pretext of apples or matches, visit the offices of lawyers, bankers, and brokers, to seek their victims among the office boys, and to pander to the vicious appetites of depraved clerks and cashiers. Thus a vast conspiracy for the secret propagation of the pie habit among the young is in constant activity, and of the frightful success which attends the hellish scheme there is unfortunately no room for doubt.

At the same time a systematic effort is making to tempt the leading opponents of pie to disgrace themselves and to bring scandal upon the cause. Pie is anonymously sent to men whose whole lives have been devoted to fighting the pie sellers; and the wicked senders evidently hope that they can thus awaken the thirst for pie in some reformed pie eater, and drag him down to their own loathsome level. Hitherto it is not known that any success has attended these efforts, but human nature is weak, and it would not be surprising if a tried and trusted opponent of pie, who finds a seductive pumpkin pie concealed in his room, should be tempted to try just one single slice, and thus overthrow in a moment the results of years of struggle and endeavor. That these assertions are not made at random will clearly appear from the recital of the following case, the facts as to which are abundantly susceptible of conclusive proof.

A few days since a well known enemy of the pie habit received an anonymous letter, skilfully adapted to flatter his vanity and throw him off his guard, in which it was mentioned that a substantial tribute of admiration had been sent to his office by express. Soon after the promised tribute made its appearance in the shape of a pie of unusually attractive appearance. It was evidently the intention of the senders that their victim should receive the pie in the seclusion of his business office, at an hour when hunger would tempt him to taste the deadly compound, and the absence of witnesses would furnish him with an opportunity to gratify a base passion in secrecy. It so happened, however, that the box containing the pie fell into the hands of a member of his family, and was opened in the presence of the whole household. Of its potent, deadly nature there was little room for doubt, but it was nevertheless subjected to a careful abdominal analysis by an eminent expert, who pronounced it to be mince pie of the strongest Connecticut brand. Had the person for whom it was destined opened the box alone, and yielded to the impulse to take a single bite, his usefulness would doubtless have been ruined. He would have been unable to restrain himself when once the slumbering appetite had been awakened, and he would have plunged into a debauch from which he would have emerged to find his self respect and his reputation among his fellow men forever vanished, and himself the derision of pie eaters, and the contempt of the very pie sellers who had previously hated and feared him.

Fortunately, in this case, the machinations of the conspirators were frustrated, but the incident shows the diabolical persistency and cunning with which they press their unholy purpose. These subtle secret attempts to undermine the principles of prominent reformers, and the even more revolting efforts to corrupt the stomachs of innocent children, are convincing proofs that the pie demon must be fought with all the energy and skill that we can muster. We need constant agitation, severe legislative enactments, and unremitting personal effort upon the part of every friend of mortality. There is no longer any room for neutrality in this matter. The disclosure just made cannot be passed over with indifference. The pie sellers are active, aggressive, and utterly unscrupulous, and unless we are ready to see their triumph and to witness the awful spectacle of a whole nation wallowing in the mire of mince pie, we must cast off our fatal apathy and make a determined stand in behalf of virtue and temperance and total abstinence from pie in every form.

The Greek Christmas

Twelve days after our Christmas, the millions who adhere to the Orthodox Greek Church celebrate their private Christmas. The rest of the Christian world usually note the fact with languid surprise, but few persons outside of the Greek communion reflect upon the serious and melancholy features of the day. Who ever thinks of the cold and gloomy feeling of isolation which must oppress the youthful Greek on the 6th of January? The Western small-boy has had his Christmas twelve days before. His candy and colic have vanished, his drum has already a hole in it, and his tin trumpet has been violently flattened by the exasperated foot of a father who, when purchasing that injudicious toy, thought more highly of his personal fortitude than he was justified in thinking. So, too, the little girl of Catholic or Protestant parentage has nearly forgotten the joy with which she clasped her stocking in the dim dawn, and has even ceased to weep over the cruel accident which set free the current of her new doll’s sawdust. And now, after every one else has entirely recovered from Christmas, the small-boy of the Eastern Church is made to celebrate his tardy festival with what factitious enthusiasm he can muster. It is worse than dining at the second table upon ragged turkey, with coagulated gravy. He feels like a masker bereft by some horrible accident of his carriage, and compelled to return home on foot and in his grotesque costume through the crowded daylight streets. If he happens to reside in a community which adheres to the Gregorian calendar, he knows that the police will pounce upon him if he fires untimely crackers and blows belated horns. He keeps his Christmas in a shamefaced manner, and in a back room, and when night comes goes sadly to bed, harassed by doubts as to the truth of his parents’ creed, and asking himself whether he would break his father’s heart if he should beg him to change his views as to filioque clause, and to embrace Catholicism and an early Christmas.

It is strange that the Greek Church does not listen to the cry of its children, and consider the propriety of a rectification of the calendar. The change must inevitably be made at some day, and the longer it is postponed the more costly it will be. Steadily, though almost insensibly, the error in the Julian calendar increases, and it will ultimately carry the Greek Christmas into midsummer. To make the change then will be to bring two successive Christmases within a few days of each other, thus doubling the cost of filling Greek stockings, and involving an enormous outlay for candles. Of course, the Russian Government will not adhere forever to a system which leads to innumerable misunderstandings between young lady correspondents, and which interferes seriously with the transaction of business between persons holding different views as to the true day of the month. The sooner the change is made the better. A conservatism which brings misery to children, and confusion upon promissory notes, cannot be defended. The Greek boy should be permitted to join with the rest of juvenile Christendom in stuffing himself with Christmas plum pudding, and in draining the subsequent chalice of penitential rhubarb, and the Russian merchant should be able to calculate the date on which the note of his Greek debtor falls due without the use of a blackboard and a table of logarithms.

Bottled books

An odd story is current concerning an eccentric Englishman who fears that the attacks of certain scientific men upon the Mosaic account of the creation will result in the total disappearance from literature of the book of Genesis, and the universal loss of all knowledge of its contents. In order to guard against this apprehended calamity, he has invented a method of preserving the Mosaic record which is extremely ingenious. He has freighted a vessel with ten thousand tightly corked bottles, each containing the story of the Garden of Eden, and has sent them to the Arctic regions. There the bottles are to be imbedded in the snow, where it is supposed that they will remain until the gradual shifting of the earth’s axis brings about a climatic change, and the consequent melting of the snow sets the bottles free to drift down to regions where their contents will be read with astonishment and gratitude by future generations.

Whether the alleged Englishman and his bottles have or have not any existence, is not a matter of very great consequence. The real value of the story consists in the hint which it gives to authors who desire to secure a republication of their works thousands of years hence. Books which were published yesterday, and are dead and forgotten today, can be called in by their authors, packed in airtight cases, and buried in the Arctic snows. When these books finally float back to the descendants of the public which now scorns them, they will be sure of the notoriety which they have so far failed to secure, and their republication by the Arctic current will be vastly more to their advantage than would be their possible reissue by a reckless publishing firm.

It is greatly to be hoped that the merits of this plan of bottling undesirable works for future consumption will be perceived by certain authors now living. With what joy would the intelligent part of the public learn that Mr. Tupper had bought up all existing copies of his Proverbial Philosophy, preferring the certainty that his wisdom would be supplied in quart bottles to the public of the thirtieth or fortieth century, to the chance that readers of the remaining twenty-five years of the nineteenth century might care to continue to draw it, so to speak, from the wood. How heartily could we, for the first time, applaud the gushing and grammarless “Ouida,” were she to pledge herself to bottle all her future novels, and to keep them on Polar ice for the delectation of posterity In our land there are novelists whom the public has utterly rejected; poets without number whose, works vainly lie in ambush for readers in secondhand bookstores, without ever finding a victim; and not a few humorists whom the world would not willingly let die in any slow and peaceful way, were there only a beneficent provision of law allowing any one to kill them with promptness and impunity. These should gather their works together and ship them to the Polar continent. What though some venturesome Polar bear should chance to devour a five act tragedy, or a volume of humorous police reports, and perish miserably in intestinal anguish? What if even an Esquimaux were to stimulate his sluggish mind with bottled Tupper, and so fall into sudden and hopeless idiocy? The welfare of civilized men must be preferred to that of casual Polar bears, and the happiness of whole nations must not be hazarded through fear of the possible ruin of an occasional Esquimaux.

But, it may be objected by humane men, that this scheme entails frightful consequences upon posterity, since it is ridding ourselves of a vast burden of oppressive literature, only to heap it upon the devoted heads of unborn generations. It is true that the philanthropic mind cannot contemplate without a shudder the thought of a tremendous cataclysm of Tuppers and Ouidas, sweeping down from the North, and carrying mental devastation throughout the civilized world. And yet we may justify ourselves in some measure by the same argument with which we excuse the heaping up of a national debt; which our children will be compelled to pay. In either case, the immediate necessities of the present take precedence of the remote contingencies of the future. Perhaps a few thousand years hence, men will be strong enough to endure books which now burden us beyond our strength. At any rate, there is no doubt that the majority will be willing to let the future take care of itself, and to secure their own happiness by sowing the Arctic fields with bottled literature. It remains for ambitious authors to take immediate measures for preserving their fame on ice. We now see that the desolate Arctic lands were not created in vain. Let us hope that there will be no delay in the use of so capacious and trustworthy a refrigerator for tainted and intolerable literature.

A steam horse

An ingenious Californian has invented a new method of employing steam as the motive power of street cars. The task which he proposed to himself in making this invention was a simple one, inasmuch as he did not intend to do away with railway tracks nor to change the pattern of the street cars now in use. What he tried to do was to devise a locomotive which would not frighten horses, and he fancies that he has fully accomplished his purpose by building a locomotive in what he regards as the likeness of a horse.

The new steam horse resembles the ordinary style of animal so far as its head and shoulders are concerned. There, however, its resemblance abruptly ends. The iron animal is devoid of legs, for which are substituted wheels, just visible at the foot of an iron petticoat. Where the hind quarters of a well constructed horse ought to be, the inventive Californian has placed a cab, reminding one by its appearance of a sedan chair. The steam horse is harnessed’ with a cowcatcher, a headlight, and a bell, but being built with immovable ears and no tail whatever, it is unable to express its emotions except by the un-equine process of whistling.

That any intelligent man should for a moment fancy that so preposterous a machine could impose upon even the most stupid carthorse, is something wonderful. The inventor actually believes that the average horse will mistake this legless and tailless machine for an animal of his own species. Now a horse may not be much more intelligent than a conscientious advocate of an irredeemable paper currency, but he cannot be imposed upon by any such shallow device as the Californian steam horse. He knows perfectly well that horses have legs, and that they do not wear iron petticoats. A horse with a cowcatcher would provoke his scorn and contempt, while he would undoubtedly regard a horse with a blazing headlight on his breast and a bell mounted between his ears as an equine demon from which every animal with any vestige of self respect ought to promptly run away. Even when standing motionless on the track, and with an empty boiler, the iron horse would exhibit peculiarities which would instantly convince real horses of his fraudulent character. They would notice his incomprehensible indifference to flies; the unnatural calmness with which he would witness the gambols of a bit of paper blown about by the wind; and the inexplicable firmness with which he would refuse to fly from the presence of that terrible danger — a sun umbrella. When neighed at in a friendly way by passing horses of a social turn of mind, his stolid refusal to prick up his ears, and his inability to whisk any sort of tail, would instantly give rise to grave suspicions of his character. It would be useless for the engine driver to make a show of whipping his insensate beast, or of cursing him with all the resources of Californian profanity. The sound made by beating boiler iron would never be mistaken by an experienced horse for the familiar thud of the cart rung upon hide and bones; and the failure of the driver to dismount and kick his steed in the ribs would convince all reflective horses that there must be something wrong about him.

So far as the newly invented steam horse is designed to impose upon the presumed stupidity of other horses, he is undoubtedly a failure. But there is a still stronger objection to him. Even if he were not to frighten horses, he would most certainly frighten children, nervous people, and persons addicted to an excessive consumption of whiskey. It is said that in early California days, the sight of a single harmless rat would throw a whole mining camp into a fearful looking for of delirium tremens. How much more alarming will be the sight of a horse with a parabolic headlight and a perpetually tolling bell. The terrible vision would fill the lunatic asylum of San Francisco in twenty-four hours, and besides frightening existing children into complicated fits, would endanger the safety of the next Californian generation.

A new weapon

It is a reproach to the inventive genius of the age that hitherto no improvements have been made in that familiar weapon, the umbrella. The present generation has seen the smooth bore musket succeeded by the breech loading rifle, and the old fashioned 32 pounder made obsolete by the introduction of the 15 inch Rodman gun. The revolver and the bowie knife, the percussion shell and the naval torpedo have all been invented during the present century, but the umbrella remains precisely the same uncertain and inefficient weapon that it was when first adopted as a substitute for the rapier. Whether it is used for purposes of offense or defense, it is equally unsatisfactory. Occasionally an irascible old gentleman attempts to strike a blow with a furled umbrella, but there is not on record a single case in which a serious wound has been thus inflicted, and it is now generally recognized that the umbrella cannot be effectually used either as a club or a cutting weapon. Tacticians are agreed that when an attack is made with an umbrella, the attacking party must use it exclusively as a thrusting weapon. Even when thus used, it is far inferior to the bayonet or the pike. If thrust violently into an adversary’s stomach, or inserted carefully in his eye, a wound may be inflicted which will temporarily disable him. It is seldom, however, that a man will hold his eye sufficiently still to enable another to hit it with an umbrella, and the inability of the weapon to pierce through several thicknesses of cloth renders the modern stomach comparatively safe from an umbrella thrust. In the hands of determined women, the umbrella is sometimes effectively employed in order to attract the attention of a car conductor, or to prepare a careless young man smoking a cigar on the car platform, to receive a tract on the sin of profane swearing. In such cases, however, the umbrella is intended merely to stimulate the mind through the medium of the ribs, and not as an offensive weapon. When used for defensive purposes, an open umbrella will sometimes ward off the attack of an infuriated poodle, and it is asserted that it has occasionally sheltered a cautious husband from a sudden shower of crockery, resulting from a depressed state of feminine hopes concerning a new bonnet and the sudden appearance of a domestic storm center in the area of the breakfast room. Still, when all has been said in behalf of the umbrella that its advocates can possibly claim, the facts of its miserable inefficiency both for attack and defense must be conceded.

The recent invention of the torpedo umbrella, by an ingenious citizen of Chicago, can be compared in value only to the invention of gunpowder, and the new weapon is as much superior to the old fashioned umbrella as the musket was to the bow and arrow. The torpedo umbrella resembles in its outward appearance the ordinary silk or cotton sidearm, but its stock is somewhat larger in diameter, and consists of two pieces, a hollow metallic tube and a wooden piston, the latter forming the handle of the weapon. Within that part of the tube which projects beyond the frame of the umbrella, and forms what is commonly called its point, is inclosed a cartridge containing a heavy charge of dynamite. This cartridge can be pushed forward and exploded simply by pressing the handle of the piston rod, and as the force of the explosion is exerted on a line with the tube, the cartridge can be fired without danger to the operator, especially if he first spreads the umbrella and thus interposes a shield against any possible splinters or flying fragments of an enemy.

It can easily be perceived that this simple weapon may be made extremely formidable in the hands of a cool and courageous man. If such a man were to be accosted in a lonely street at midnight by a suspicious looking stranger, who should express a wish for his money or his life, without evincing any particular preference for either, he would instantly open his umbrella, bring the point in contact with the stranger’s waistcoat, and smartly drive down the piston. There would be a sharp explosion, and the stranger would vanish. No trace of the tragedy would be left in the neighborhood for the edification of the possible policeman who might bend his slow footsteps in the direction of the explosion during the following day, but minute and widely dispersed materials for a hundred inquests would afterwards be collected by expert coroners, who would enjoy a prolonged carnival of fees. No such satisfactory results could be achieved by any other known weapon. Unlike the revolver, the torpedo umbrella never misses its aim; neither does it burden the operator with a useless corpse. Its work is done instantaneously, thoroughly, and with absolute certainty, and the Chicago inventor claims that by its aid an enterprising wife, who modestly shrinks from the trouble and cost of divorce suits, can prepare herself for a fresh husband, %even in the most crowded thoroughfare, without danger of impertinent interference. So instantaneous is the effect produced by the explosion of the umbrella torpedo, that had Mrs. Laura Fair used it in connection with the late Mr. Crittenden, all that the bystanders would have noticed would have been a violent report and the inexplicable disappearance of Mr. Crittenden — phenomena which no one would have dreamed of associating with a pretty woman and a seemingly harmless umbrella.

Hereafter the privacy of men with umbrellas will be strictly respected, and the traveling Briton who visits this country with his inevitable umbrella in his hand, can roam over the entire continent without finding a single representative of the traditional Yankee whose thirst for information has been recorded by every foreign bookmaking tourist.

The Thomsonian theory

A few years ago we all believed the interior of the earth to be a sea of melted rock. This theory was supported by such convincing facts, and gave such an easy explanation to the phenomena of volcanic eruptions and hot springs that it was a real comfort to persons who preferred certainty to speculation. We were then told with great confidence by the scientific persons that five miles was the average thickness of the crust of the earth, and that in some places, — as in Iceland, for example, — this crust was so exceedingly thin that the Icelander was continually in danger of breaking through and drowning in a vast sub cellar of liquid lava.

Sir William Thomson, who recently tried to prove that the solar system has only existed a few million of years, and who thus incurred the bitter resentment of all sincere geologists, has now struck a blow at the cherished popular belief in the extreme internal heat of the earth. In an able paper, read before the British Association at Glasgow, he demonstrated the falsity of this belief, and the solidity of the earth. Putting aside all facts which seem to conflict with this theory, he laid down the premise that matter contracts as it cools, and that the earth, in passing from a fluid to a solid state, began to cool on the surface. Now what happens when heated matter cools? “It contracts,” answers Sir William, ignoring the eccentric habit of expansion which characterizes water when approaching the freezing point. Consequently, the surface of the earth contracted in proportion as it cooled, and the fragments of rock broken by this contraction continually fell into the molten interior of the globe until they finally formed ribs on which the crust rested, and thus separated the liquid lava into small isolated ponds. These in their turn became gradually filled with fragments of solidified matter, and finally the whole earth became a vast pile of “rip-raps,” without any interior heat worth mentioning. This was the substance of Sir William’s argument, and it must be conceded that as a specimen of inductive reasoning it is wonderfully clear and quite unanswerable.

Whether Sir William Thomson illustrated his argument by experiments we are not told, but any one who is interested in the matter can easily try a very simple experiment, which will prove the truth of the new theory. If we take a common domestic baby, and with the aid of a glass siphon fill it with boiled milk of the temperature of 200° Fahrenheit, and then place the infant in a cool room, its surface will immediately begin to contract, and the process will go on until the interior of the subject of the experiment becomes wholly solidified, and all traces of liquid milk vanish. The same effect, though of course to a less obvious extent, is produced whenever warm food is placed in the interior of any human stomach. The surface of the body necessarily cools faster than the interior, which contains the heated food, and hence it follows that fat men can easily contract themselves by frequent indulgence in hot dinners. The proverbial thinness of maiden ladies of advanced years who are addicted to tea, is a striking illustration of Sir William’s theory. The more hot tea they drink, the more rapidly their surfaces contract, and thus the popular theory that the average maiden lady consists of a thin crust of flesh and bones surrounding a sea of superheated tea, is seen to be as fallacious as the theory of the existence of central fires in the interior of the globe.

In case there is no baby at hand with which to experiment, the ordinary household cooking stove may be employed to demonstrate the beautiful Thomsonian theory. When, towards night, the cook permits the fire to gradually die out, the exterior of the stove cools more rapidly than does the glowing mass of coal which it contains. Hence the stove contracts violently, and breaks into fragments which fall into the fire. The final result is exactly analogous to that which followed the cooling of the earth. The crumbling fragments of stove gradually fill up the space originally occupied by the fire, and in the morning the cook finds a heap of broken iron of a globular shape in the place where the cooking stove had stood on the previous evening.

It is proper to say that these experiments upon babies, fat men, and cooking stoves have not been actually tried by Sir William Thomson, at least so far as is known, but there can be no doubt that if they were tried, they would be perfectly successful. What Sir William has said of the phenomena which attended the cooling of the earth was based solely upon the great natural law that contraction follows the cooling of heated bodies, and if this is true of the earth, it must also be true of babies, fat men, cooking stoves, and all other articles. It is therefore unnecessary to try the experiments just described, and Sir William Thomson is doubtless so perfectly confident as to their inevitable result, that he would regard it as a waste of time to cool Lady Thomson’s cooking stove, or to induce her to surrender a baby with a view to the siphon experiment.

Since the Thomsonian theory of the solidity of the earth has been thus conclusively proved by a faultless process of reasoning, we shall have to devise some new method of explaining the presence of melted matter in the craters of active volcanoes, the heat of geysers, and the regular increase of temperature which keeps pace with the progress made in the direction of the center of the ‘earth in boring artesian wells. Sir William very properly declines to be annoyed by questions as to these matters. His argument is complete and unanswerable, and, having made such an argument, it is not necessary for him to reconcile with it facts which seem to contradict it. Any person is at liberty to explain volcanoes in the way that may best suit his personal tastes, but henceforth no one can honestly maintain that the interior of the earth is still in a molten state, or that fat men do not contract after eating hot dinners.

A western tragedy

Recently two simultaneous infants were born in a Des Moines boarding house, and inasmuch as they were not twins, it is perhaps, unnecessary to mention that two distinct mothers were involved in the affair. The judicious infant notoriously prefers to be born in the middle of the night, for the reason that it is certain to find its father at home ready to carry messages and execute commissions. The wild western infant, on the contrary, disdains custom, and is careless of the convenience of others. The two Des Moines infants made their first appearance in the middle of the day, when there was no one in readiness to welcome them; and if they have lifelong reason to regret their precipitancy, the verdict of staid and orderly people will be that it served them right.

It so happened that a friendly and neighboring matron, who heard of the casualty, promptly called on the two mothers and volunteered her assistance. Her aid was cheerfully accepted, and the infants being handed to her she placed them in a convenient market basket, and carried them to her room in order to dampen the enthusiasm with which they had entered on their new existence by making them acquainted with the pins and soap of everyday life. No one claims that she did not perform her task in a thorough and proper manner. The infants were soon made ready for exhibition, and were brought back to their mothers much depressed in spirits, and entertaining grave doubts whether, on the whole, they had acted wisely in emigrating to Des Moines. When, however, the more inquisitive of the mothers desired to know which was her private infant, the officious matron uttered a wild cry and sank fainting to the floor, while the infants rolled from her limp arms and brought up with considerable violence against the coal scuttle and the rocking chair.

It will hardly be credited that the well meaning but unfortunate matron had taken no precaution to distinguish one infant from the other. As a consequence she was entirely unable to return each to its actual mother. Nothing could have been easier than to mark them, for identification — calling one, say “Schedule A,” and the other “Schedule B.” This, in fact, is the precise way in which a local lawyer, whose advice was subsequently asked, asserted that the affair ought to have been managed. The same purpose would have been accomplished had the matron cut a small notch in the leg of one infant, or pasted a written label on its forehead, or marked its nose with indelible ink. As she remarked, however, it is easy enough to think of these things when it is too late to use them; and it is doubtful if those who now so severely condemn her for not habitually carrying brass checks in her pocket for the purpose of checking casual infants that may be thrown upon her care, would have been much less “flustered” had they been in her place. That she was “flustered” she readily admits, and though the precise meaning of that term is not very well ascertained, it is generally understood to denote a state of temporary insanity, induced by an excess of infants.

It is not pleasant to dwell upon the grief of the disappointed mothers. To find that, instead of owning one infant each, they had only a tenancy in common of two infants, must have been extremely painful. It is true that a mother who owns an undivided half part of two infants has just as much infantile property as though she owned one entire infant in fee simple. Still, every mother prefers to have a strictly private infant, and the law makes no provision for a partition suit between tenants in common of the same infant. The repentant matron tried to mend matters by advising the mothers to draw for the choice of children. First carefully mixing the infants behind her back, she covered them with a blanket, leaving a single leg of each projecting about three inches from the blanket. Each mother then selected a leg and drew forth the corresponding infant. Perhaps, in the circumstances, this was the best plan that could have been adopted, but it by no means repaired the mischief that had been done. Neither mother will ever have any real satisfaction in her alleged child. Each will always have a terrible fear that she is wasting her time and energies over a colic that rightfully concerns the other mother, and when one child is praised by indiscreet friends for its imaginary beauty, both mothers will insist that their own features have been inherited by the infant in question. When these unhappy babies grow to years of discretion, they will never be satisfied as to their identity, and the blighting consciousness that while other men are forbidden to marry only two grandmothers, they are each forbidden to marry four, will effectually take away the zest of life.

The moral of this tragedy is obviously twofold. It is a warning to western infants to return to the good old custom of entering upon existence in the nighttime, and it will impress upon the minds of all mothers the necessity of keeping labels always on hand for use in sudden emergencies. If these two results should follow, the Des Moines infants will not have been mixed in vain, and what is their loss will prove the gain of future generations.

A new branch of study

It has just been discovered that there exists a “Male and Female” college in Tennessee which includes in its curriculum a new study of vast practical importance. This is nothing less than the study of the human spine: and, though it is pursued as merely one branch of the general subject of “etiquette,” that fact does not in the least degree lessen its importance. The catalog of the institution informs us that, “the salutation, the bow, the courtesy, the word, the tone, the inflection — vocal and physical, the attitude, the hand, the feet, the spine, and eye are all observed and studied, and the students daily exercised in them.” It is only necessary to compare this intelligent curriculum with the Greek and Latin and mathematical studies still in vogue at Harvard and Yale to perceive that, in true progress, Tennessee has far outstripped the slow, pedantic East.

The spine may be said to make the man. The lower vertebrate animals are possessed of fore and aft spines, but the true perpendicular spine is the exclusive property of the human race. It is the spine which enables man to stand up at a bar and drink in a perpendicular position; to make campaign speeches; to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours for large stakes and half the gate money, and to do other things which distinguish him from the brutes, and prove his intellectual and moral superiority. Slight variations in spines are sufficient to affect the entire character of their proprietors. The humble and submissive person usually owes his character to the weakness of his spinal column, while the resolute and devoted Ritualist possesses a spine of wonderful stiffness and elasticity. It is true that occasionally the wrong spines appear be in the possession of the wrong man, and our sense of the fitness of things is shocked by finding a ritualistic spine wasted on a Baptist or Methodist, who cannot possibly develop its full capabilities. Still, as a rule, spines are usually well distributed, and, in nine cases out of ten, the rigid and the willowy spines are placed where they will do the most good.

The great importance of the spine being thus clearly manifest, it is eminently proper that it should be studied with the utmost thoroughness. In the enlightened Tennessee college to which reference has been made, the spine is not only “observed and studied,” but the students are “daily exercised in it.” It may occur to carping critics that a college recitation room is not the best place in which to observe spines, and that a fashionable ball will ordinarily present a greater extent and variety of spine to the gaze of the earnest student than will any other public or private museum. While this may be true as to the feminine spine, it is not true of spines in general, and however pleasing the exclusive study of a particular department of spines might be, the result would be to make spinal specialists, instead of men thoroughly learned in the whole field of spines. We may rest assured that when we are solemnly told that spines are daily “observed” by the students of this excellent institution, the means of properly observing them are duly supplied. What these means are the public is not informed, and probably for wise reasons. If any one wishes to “observe” spines, let him pay his matriculation fee, and enroll himself among the students of the only college where spinal observation is practiced. To demand a full explanation of the process in advance would be as unfair as it would be to insist upon inspecting the contents of a museum before paying the price of admission.

It will, of course, be noticed that in addition to observing and studying spines, the Tennessee students are “daily exercised in them.” What this latter process may be passes conjecture. To observe spines minutely and thoroughly, and to study them in all their relations to human clothes and human affairs, ought, one would think, to completely exhaust the subject. The young oculist who observes and studies the human eye, and does all that is requisite to make him a master of his specialty, would be much astonished if, before receiving his diploma, he were to be required to prove that he had been daily exercised in eyes. It may be suggested that the Tennessee student is required to exercise his personal spine in stiff Ritualistic, stern Presbyterian, or plastic Methodist functions, but this would be an undisguised introduction of sectarian studies, and as such contrary to the charter of the college. Of course, the human spine can be exercised precisely as the muscles are exercised in a gymnasium. The students can be required to balance themselves on their hands, in order to give rigidity to the spine, or to bend themselves in tortuous positions, with a view to increasing its pliability. But it must be remembered that the college where this study is pursued is a “male and female college,” and it is extremely doubtful if, in a mixed class of students of both sexes, these methods of exercising the spine would be found entirely satisfactory. Moreover, exercising one’s own private spine is obviously something very different from being daily exercised in spines, and we might as well admit that the unassisted intellect is not capable of devising the precise way in which the latter process is carried on.

What will be the result of a course of education which entitles men to the degree of Bachelor of Spines remains to be seen. If it will lead to the discovery of some infallible method of strengthening the spines of timid statesmen, and of infusing grace and flexibility into the severe spines of earnest female reformers, its usefulness will be demonstrated. In any event it must develop a fuller interest in spines, which, if properly directed, cannot fail to increase the physical welfare of the human race, and to satisfy the humor of the soul.

Going to the ant

Some men amuse themselves with horses, others with dogs, and occasionally an eccentric naturalist affects the society of snakes. Sir John Lubbock, however, cares for none of these animals. The ant monopolizes all his affections, and apparently all his time. His private ant stables are large and commodious, and they are stocked with thorough bred ants of unusual beauty and intelligence. If we may place confidence in his published statements, Sir John goes to the ant to a greater extent than any sluggard of whom we have any knowledge. He rises early in the morning, and spends his entire day in the acquisition of wisdom by observing the habits of the ants. From time to time he announces to the world new proofs of the astonishing attainments which ants have made in civilization and culture. Not long since, he confidently assured us that in addition to their profound knowledge of agriculture, mechanics, and politics, the ants possessed a religion the outward manifestation of which consisted in the worship of a blind beetle. Doubtless, before very long he will tell us of painful conflicts between Erastian ants, who hold that the anthill should feed the beetle out of the public granaries, and non-conformist ants, who demand that every ant should choose its own beetle and feed him by voluntary subscription. In fact we need not be surprised at anything that Sir John may discover as to ants. He believes that an ant hill is a microcosm, and that the ants have, if anything, surpassed men in the arts, sciences, and useful industries.

The most recent ant bulletin put forth by Sir John Lubbock differs somewhat in tone from those which have preceded it. The industrious investigator has discovered fresh resemblances between ant nature and human nature, but these, unfortunately do not reflect credit upon the ant. It appears that when an ant finds an accessible sugar bowl, or a pot of eligible jam, he is far too astute to inform his acquaintances of the fact. A short time since Sir John took two favorite ants by the forelegs and showed them the way to a quantity of excellent jelly. On every subsequent day these two ants slipped quietly out of their anthill, and hastening to the jelly, spent hours in reducing themselves morally below the level of the largest beasts by gorging themselves with jelly. They did not share their secret with a single friend, and when on their way home from the scene of their revels, they were careful to remove every trace of jelly from their persons. No Wall street broker with private information of the certain rise of New York Central could have observed a more discreet silence, and no railway speculator owning an absolute monopoly of all the railways within a limited district could have displayed a more complete indifference to the comfort of the public, and a firmer determination to take care of his own interests.

Sir John also announces that he has tried an experiment to determine the extent to which ants are influenced by sympathy for the unfortunate. He found that if he wounded an ant loaded with valuable property, other ants would immediately show a great solicitude for the unfortunate one, and would promptly relieve him of his burden. On the other hand, he found that a wounded ant who carried no articles of value on his person, might lie for hours in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare without attracting the slightest attention from his fellows. Good Samaritans are not very abundant among men, but among ants they appear to be totally unknown. Sir John has been forced to this painful conclusion in spite of his ardent admiration of ants, and though perhaps it furnishes an additional evidence of the resemblance between ants and men, it certainly gives us no reason to admire the moral status of the heartless insects.

Now that it is established that selfishness, greed, and want of sympathy for the suffering are among the characteristics of ants, doubts will begin to be entertained whether an anthill is the best possible school to which to send a persistent sluggard. It is true that he may learn from the ants to get up at preposterous hours in the morning, and to carry grains of sand all over the neighborhood, but he may also learn to make corners in jelly, and to aid people in distress only when he derives some personal benefit thereby. Certainly Sir John Lubbock, and other scientific partisans of the ant cannot hereafter hold up that exasperatingly industrious insect as a model of all possible virtues. Indeed, Sir John ought, in the light of his recent discoveries, to inquire whether there is not something radically defective in the ant religion as it now exists. May it not be true that the cult of the. blind beetle has become overlaid with corruptions, and is at the present time as dangerous to morals as is the worship of fortune among men? At all events, the theory of the immaculate character of the ant has received a severe blow, and until. Sir John informs us that there has been a reformation in the religion and morals of ants, we shall not be reminded quite so frequently as we have been of our enormous inferiority to them.

Postal cats

Those who are intimately acquainted with the domestic cat must sometimes wonder why no effort has been made to develop his intellectual powers. There is no doubt that the cat possesses a strong and subtle intellect, and the capacity to use it for the benefit of mankind. And yet this able beast is currently believed to waste his vast abilities in the frivolous pleasures of the chase, or in more questionable forms of dissipation. No animal has been more thoroughly misunderstood by the careless and prejudiced observers who constitute the majority of mankind. Because the cat is a beast of refined tastes, accustomed to wear neat and elegant fur and preferring to sleep on cushions rather than doormats, he has been constantly classed among useless and brainless dandies. His fondness for mice has been pointed out as a proof that low propensities may accompany luxurious habits, and his musical genius and romantic tendencies, which are so frequently displayed, on the back fence, have actually been cited as evidences of his depraved and riotous courses. His accusers, with wonderful inconsistency, praise the terrier, who is quite as much addicted to rats and mice as is the cat; and they profess to be charmed with the robin, whose voice and method are vastly inferior to those of a cultivated tenor or soprano cat. The worst that can be truly said of the cat is that he is the Alcibiades of animals, and were half the pains taken with his education that were lavished upon that of the brilliant Greek, he would probably prove his native superiority to the ablest Newfoundland or mastiff Pericles.

The fortunate few who have broken through the disdainful cloak of cynicism in which the unappreciated cat has wrapped himself, and who have learned that however heartless he may seem, there is always an angel in him as well as in the late Lord Byron, will be pleased to learn that certain Belgians have formed a society for the mental and moral improvement of cats. Their first effort has been to train the cat to do the work now done by carrier pigeons. It has long been known that the cat cannot be intentionally mislaid. The most astute and accomplished scientific person would have his ideas of locality totally confused by being tied up in a meal bag, carried twenty miles from home, and let out with a loud request to “scat” in a strange neighborhood in the middle of the night. This experiment has, however, been repeatedly tried upon cats of only average abilities, and the invariable result has been that the deported animal has reappeared at his native kitchen door next morning, and calmly ignored the whole affair. This wonderful skill in traveling through unfamiliar regions without a guidebook or a compass has suggested the possibility of using cats as special messengers. Recently the Belgian Society for the Elevation of the Domestic Cat invited thirty-seven cats residing in the city of Liege to take a social meal bag trip into the country. The animals were liberated at 2 o’clock in the afternoon at a long distance from Liege, and promptly proceeded to “scat.” At 6.48 the same afternoon, one of them reached his home, and beyond hinting, though in a much more delicate way than that employed by Mr. Wegg that a saucer of milk would be peculiarly “mellering to the organ,” he did not make the slightest allusion to his long and troublesome journey. His feline companions arrived at Liege somewhat later, but it is understood that within twenty-four hours every one had reached his home.

This result has greatly encouraged the society, and it is proposed to establish at an early day a regular system of cat communication between Liege and the neighboring villages. Messages are to be fastened in waterproof bags around the necks of the animals, and it is believed that, unless the criminal class of dogs undertakes to waylay and rob the mail cats, the messages will be delivered with rapidity and safety. At first it is probable that the new method of letter carrying will be patronized chiefly by domestic servants, since the kitchen is at present the usual habitat of the cat. Cooks and policemen will not, however, be long permitted to monopolize the services of so swift and discreet a messenger, and before very long the lover will commit his daily vows to the safekeeping of his mistress’ Tabby, and the Plymouth people will attach to every stray cat that may come within their reach letters involving the most tremendous secrets, which they will implore the chance receiver to aid them in keeping inviolate.

Psammetichus and Taine

Before the comparative philologists undertook to convince us that there never was any primeval language, but that the Ar3’an races always conversed in a graceful inflected tongue, while the Turanians always indulged in grossly agglutinative language, it was firmly believed that all the languages of the earth had sprung from one original mother tongue. Various attempts were made to ascertain what language most nearly resembled the primeval speech. King Psammetichus of Egypt tried to solve the problem by placing two infants in charge of a deaf and dumb shepherd, properly equipped with bottles and things, and strictly ordered to permit no human being to hold any sort of conversation with his youthful wards. When the infants reached the age at which all properly educated Egyptian children were accustomed to converse in hieroglyphics, by the simple process of carving their views in regard to candy and other important matters on the sides of obelisks, a committee was sent to hold an interview with them. The children ran to meet their visitors, and instead of handing them a portable obelisk profusely covered with requests for cake and pennies, loudly and with much iteration remarked, “Beccos.” The astonished committee at once consulted the unabridged dictionaries of various existing languages, and thereupon announced to the King that “beccos” was the Phrygian word for bread, and that he might therefore decide that the Phrygian language was the primeval language of mankind.

M. Taine, the entertaining author of a History of English Literature that deserves to rank with Gilbert Becket’s History of Rome, appears to adhere to the ancient conception of a primeval language in spite of comparative philologists. He has even tried, in a modified way, the experiment of Psammetichus. In a recent article in the Revue Philosophique, he asserts that the first word used by his personal infant, on reaching the age of fourteen months, was the word “ham.” The child always made this concise and appropriate remark “when hungry or thirsty.” M. Taine does not seem to be aware that “ham” is an English word, and one which many intelligent English speaking people are in the habit of using when hungry. He regards it as an entirely new word, invented by his ingenious infant to express phonetically the idea of hunger. He says that it is a sound which is “the natural vocal gesture of a person catching something in his mouth,” as, for example, flies. “It begins by a guttural aspirate, not unlike a bark, and ends by the lips closing as if the food were seized and swallowed.” This ingenious explanation does almost as much credit to M. Taine’s imagination as does his History of English Literature, but it is entirely unnecessary to impute to an innocent babe, an attempt to supersede French by a newly invented and purely phonetic language.

Those who do not accept as final the philologist’s theory that the respectable Aryans used inflected language, while the shameless Turanians habitually used agglutinative language, will interpret the results obtained by the experiments of Psammetichus and Taine in a way entirely different from that in which they have hitherto been interpreted, and will, at the same time, furnish a new argument in support of the theory of an original and universal language. “Beccos” may be a Phrygian word, but if the Egyptian investigating committee had been really anxious to arrive at the bottom facts, they would have easily discovered that the word is merely a childish corruption of the English word “breakfast.” In fact it is a recognized part of the nursery dialect of England, and when used by an infant, its meaning is never misunderstood. The children upon whom Psammetichus experimented were admitted by the investigating committee to be hungry, and their cry for “beccos” was, in a measure, properly interpreted to mean bread. It also meant more, inasmuch as it meant “breakfast,” with all that the term implies, including bread, jam, and milk and water. This ought by itself to suggest that English, and not Phrygian, is the oldest of all languages; but when it is taken in connection with the remark of M. Taine’s exceptional infant, there is no longer any room for doubt, except, of course, in the mind of a confirmed comparative philologist. The latter infant, when hungry, asks for “ham,” holding undoubtedly that every intelligent person will understand that eggs are also wanted, and that hence they need not be expressly demanded. When hungry Egyptian children ask for breakfast in good nursery English, and a modern French infant calls for ham and eggs in still better English, we need not question the extreme antiquity of the English tongue. Though Psammetichus and Taine babble of Phrygian and phonetic words, and though the philologists confront us with Sanscrit dictionaries and denounce us with insulting and agglutinative expressions, we can calmly trust in the superiority of our facts to their finely spun theories. Doubtless Adam’s remark to Eve was a suggestion of the propriety of “beccos,” and her reply was a special plea for “ham.” M. Taine must experiment with more infants and interpret their remarks with better success before he can convince plain and commonsense people that “ham” is not English, and that when a hungry child asks for ham, it is merely trying to invent an improved dialect of “Alwato.”

Food and poison

Every one knows that nearly everything which is bought from grocers and provision dealers is grossly adulterated. At least, so the public is assured by sanitary reformers. Temperance lecturers long ago demonstrated that instead of making beer out of malt, the brewers spend enormous sums of money in manufacturing that popular beverage out of costly poisons and rare pigments. So, too, we are told by persons who regard coffee as a demoralizing and deadly drink, that the grocers purchase at a vast expense secondhand rosewood coigns which they grind up and mingle with a small proportion of the genuine Java berry. As for milk, it is notorious that no living milkman ever consented to sell the pure product of the cow. Indeed the real reason of the high price of the milk of commerce is the cost of the ingredients which enter into its composition. Of course, there are rash skeptics who affect to doubt the extreme wickedness of grocers and milkmen, but we have only to read one of the numerous sanitary magazines devoted to the humane purpose of disquieting the human stomach, to know that we are fed upon poisons and nourished by deadly beverages thinly disguised as beer, rum, coffee, and milk.

This being our lamentable condition in regard to our daily food and drink, we need not be surprised to find that grocers are not the only persons who commit habitual adulterations. According to a London newspaper, the druggists of that and other English cities are guilty of the crime of adulterating their drugs. Doubtless the same practice prevails here, and our numerous drug stores are very probably filled with diluted and impure drugs. The New Jerseyman who in midwinter wisely lays in a barrel of quinine for summer use, cannot be sure that he is not buying a drug that is far too feeble to grapple efficiently with the ague. The thoughtful school boy, who purchases asafoetida with a view to quietly disinfecting his school room, has no certainty that the drug is sufficiently pure to overcome the teacher’s obstinate reluctance to dismiss his class. Wives who provide themselves with arsenic in order to prevent possible rats from invading their premises, cannot feel certain that their husbands will not entirely recover from any little temporary uneasiness resulting from eating homemade bread; and the young woman whose life has been blighted by the fickleness of some heartless male being whose vows are as false as his jewelry, may find that the druggist from whom she has purchased Paris green has palmed off upon her an adulterated drug, not half so deadly as the usual boarding house pie.

The practice of medicine must, of course, be greatly interfered with by the sale of adulterated drugs. When cur druggist is trustworthy, there is some satisfaction in obtaining a medical prescription and taking it to him to be made up. We are then reasonably sure that we shall procure something that will taste extremely unpalatable and that will create a wholesome surprise in our vital organs. But how can a prescription give us any real comfort when we lack faith in the apothecary, and think it only too probable that he will give us chalk instead of magnesia, and brick dust instead of rhubarb? And what is to become of our merchant marine if weak Epsom salts and adulterated castor oil are supplied to our sea captains? In former days when a sailor became ill — say with a fractured skull, with typhoid fever, with a broken rib, or any other of the diseases peculiar to seafaring life — it was the custom of the captain to administer to the sick man a tumblerful of salts and castor oil in equal parts. This familiar medicine was held to be a specific for all forecastle diseases, and it is quite certain that a single dose has often worked a cure so rapidly that the patient has either returned to duty or leaped overboard before the hour of the second dose arrived. If salts are to lose their savor and castor oil become no more difficult to swallow than is salad oil, ill health will prevail in the forecastle to such an extent that our ships will be without enough able bodied men to work them; unless, indeed, a resort is had to surgery, and the officer assumes the risk of performing hazardous operations with belaying pins, hand spikes, and other available surgical instruments.

Long experience has shown that it is possible to drink adulterated beer and coffee, and to consume sanded sugar and miscellaneous sausages, without immediate peril to life. We cannot, however, afford to permit our drugs to be tampered with. Let us insist upon being supplied with pure strychnine and arsenic, and with medicines that will not disappoint the just expectations of undertakers, and create in their minds a prejudice against young physicians just beginning their career. We need less poison in our food and more poison in our drugs. The druggist must not fancy that the surreptitious medicine supplied to us by grocers can be made an excuse for the adulteration of drugs with harmless groceries. Let us have everything in its proper place — groceries at the grocer’s and poisons at the druggist’s. The efforts of druggists and grocers to quietly exchange their respective trades without permitting the public to be made aware of the fact should be resolutely opposed.

Surgical engineering

It is not very long since a beneficent Frenchman swallowed a fork, and thereby developed a series of delightful symptoms, and opened the way for a surgical excavation of his person, which filled the medical profession with unbounded joy. Encouraged by this example, a second Frenchman has lately swallowed a preparation of phosphorus, which so severely burned his throat as to compel nature to completely close that avenue to alimentary business. By almost superhuman exertions the physicians were able to save this man’s stomach, but it was evident that a stomach to which the owner could not gain access, owing to the shutting up of his throat, would be a useless, though aggravating organ. In these circumstances the physicians recalled the case of the man who had swallowed a fork, and they argued that if a fork can be safely withdrawn from one stomach by tunneling from the exterior of the body, it would be practicable to employ a like process to convey food to another stomach. Thereupon, the aid of several able surgical engineers was sought, and a shaft was sunk in the region of the patient’s waistband. Into this shaft an India rubber tube was inserted, and when, with the aid of putty or some similar compound, the connection between the tube and the stomach was made airtight, it was found that food could be introduced through the artificial avenue even more easily than through the ordinary style of esophagus. The man is now perfectly well, and owing to the fondness of the medical men for trying experiments upon him, is never hungry. Indeed, it is said that he is exceedingly well satisfied with the success of the surgical engineers, and that he takes caster oil and other distasteful drugs with a smiling consciousness of his great superiority to persons who cannot swallow anything without the interference of the organ of taste.

Although at first glance there seems to be something marvelous in the idea of eating and drinking by way of an abdominal India rubber shaft, there is really no great difficulty in the way of the universal adoption of the new device. It is neither expensive nor difficult to drive a small tunnel through the walls of the abdomen, and there IS no reason why the operation should be a dangerous one. India rubber tubes are cheap, and putty is still cheaper. Indeed, there are very few men so poor that they could not afford the cost of an India rubber food pipe; while its advantages are so many and incontestable that we may expect to see it attain a sudden and general popularity.

The present style of throat is open to several grave objections. It is narrow, and liable to become choked up with bones, buttons, pins, and other frequent ingredients of boarding house food. Its worst feature, however, is its close association with the organ of taste. Nothing can be introduced into the throat without having first passed a strict examination on the part of the tongue and palate, and incurred their vigorous protest in case it proves disagreeable. Hence arise the sufferings which men undergo who are compelled to eat ill cooked and unsavory food, or to swallow unpleasant medicines. Once safely lodged in the stomach, nothing that is not positively unwholesome gives any further trouble, but so long as the throat affords the only means of access to the stomach, food and drugs must be tasted before they reach their destination. It will, of course, be said that the sense of taste has its compensations as well as its trials; but this also constitutes an objection to the process of imbibing nourishment by way of the esophagus. It is the very fact that candy and cake have a pleasant taste which induces children to cry for them, and the consumers of ardent spirits and mince pie excuse their weakness by pleading that to their depraved taste these deleterious articles are surpassingly delightful. If candy and cake and pie and brandy could be introduced into the stomach without tickling the palate, they would lose at once and forever their unfortunate popularity. This can be accomplished with absolute certainty by the new invention of the India rubber abdominal tunnel, and hence wise men have good reason for preferring it to the objectional esophagus hitherto in use.

The ease and rapidity with which the demands of the stomach can be satisfied under the new system constitute one of its most obvious advantages, and ought to make it especially popular with railway travelers. By the aid of a small portable funnel, breakfast, consisting of coffee and prepared meat, could be safely swallowed — if the term is applicable to the process — in from one to two minutes, while dinner would occupy but a trifle longer. A self feeding clockwork attachment could be readily devised which would fill the stomach at certain fixed intervals from a pocket reservoir. Thus, the time now devoted to eating would be entirely saved, and our breakfasts and dinners would occur almost without our knowledge. All mothers will readily appreciate the unequaled opportunity which the stomach tube presents of feeding children with those oatmeal preparations which are so extremely unpalatable that they are universally believed to be exceedingly wholesome. In the case of children’s tubes, however, it would probably be found necessary ta contrive some method of closing them with lock and key. Otherwise, the dirt pies which infancy delights to make, but which even the boldest juvenile throat declines to swallow, would occasionally be introduced into the stomachs of infants of an experimental turn of mind, and lead to consequences almost as serious as those which ordinarily follow the consumption of stolen doughnuts and surreptitious jam.

Let us, then, hasten to abandon the inefficient and objectionable esophagus, and adopt an invention which gives us all the benefits of eating and drinking without the labor and inconvenience which have hitherto been associated with those processes. It is discreditable to us that, while we have been improving everything about us, we have remained satisfied with our own bodies, and made no attempt to improve them. For as many years as man has been on the earth he has been content to reach his stomach by a long, narrow, roundabout way, when a little energetic work at the outside of his abdomen would have given him an infinitely better path. The race that has tunneled the Alps and covered the face of nature with railroad trestles and railroad cuts, ought to be ashamed to cling to the old fashioned esophagus, and we can confidently expect that every earnest and practical man will promptly take measures to provide himself with a stomach tube, and to thus keep pace with the spirit of the age.

The Boston archeologists

The trophies of Schliemann disturb the sleep of the New England antiquarians. A wild desire to go somewhere and dig up something is at present characteristic of every antiquarian, but the New England lover of the antique is true to his protectionist prejudices, and prefers to dig at home rather than abroad. It is the opinion of leading Bostonians that the pauper antiquities of despotic Europe must not be permitted to flood the market and drive out American antiquities, and that true patriotism demands the exhumation of valuable archaeological relics on this side of the Atlantic. Whereupon the Bostonians are now engaged in discussing the propriety of immediately digging up a set of choice antiquities, such as the Newport Mill and the Dighton Rock, and thus showing the world that New England can hold her own in respect to archeology with either Greece or Troas.

The so-called Dighton Rock is a stone in the Taunton River covered with a quantity of well defined scratches which local antiquarians, who are interested in the hotel business, call an inscription. This alleged inscription is absolutely undecipherable and is hence said to be the work of early Norse explorers, who were deficient in education and consequently wrote very illegibly. If it is really a relic of the Norsemen, it is by far the oldest work of human hands to be found in New England. The dates assigned to it by rival antiquarians differ to some extent, but all agree that it is even older than Mr. Adams, and that it was in existence before the first voyage of Christopher Columbus. Mr. Ole Bull, the eminent violinist, is so fully convinced that the inscription was written, as an advertisement, by an eminent Norse fiddler, that some time ago, he induced a learned Danish society to buy it, rock and all; and had it not been for the noble conduct of certain Bostonians, who induced the Danes to relinquish their purchase, the inscription would now be in Copenhagen, and the learned Danish society hotly quarreling over its meaning.

The other day the Bostonian archaeologists, including Gov. Rice and a prominent manufacturer of sewing machines, held a meeting, and discussed the Dighton Rock with a degree of enthusiasm seldom displayed since Mr. Pickwick discovered his ancient inscription at Ipswich. One learned archaeologist proved that the inscription was of Norse origin, inasmuch as several antiquarians in Denmark and in England, who have never seen it, are inclined to believe that it must have been made either by the Norsemen or by some other person or persons unknown. He also urged that the man who made the inscription might possibly have been called Eric, or that at all events some other Norseman may have possessed that name, and that hence a statue of the hypothetical Eric ought to be erected at once. Another archaeologist asserted that the Dighton Rock was the only inscribed rock in New England, and that this fact clearly demonstrated that the Norsemen were the first human beings who ever landed on this continent. Having thus settled the question of the true nature of the marks on the Dighton Rock, the learned archaeologists were in a glow of happiness and enthusiasm, and would doubtless have proceeded to appoint a committee to solicit subscriptions in New York and Philadelphia for money wherewith to erect a statue to Eric, had not a profane and skeptical person, who was unfortunately present, rose up and indulged in remarks which, like the colored minister’s sermon against chicken stealing, cast a gloom over the meeting.

This objectionable person began by boldly denying that the inscription in question was the only one in New England. He asserted that not only were there several such inscriptions within twenty miles of Dighton, but that quantities of them were to be found in Maine, Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania. Furthermore, he claimed that these inscriptions were the work of Indians, and that they probably commemorated successful scalping expeditions against the Pilgrim Fathers or other barbaric events of contemporaneous aboriginal interest. Finally, he insisted that there was not a shadow of evidence connecting the Norsemen with the Dighton Rock, and was evidently inclined to think that Norsemen who could not write their own language would never have been guilty of the folly of making unintelligible scratches in order to appall the Indians with a pretense of vast literary skill.

In all probability the depressed archaeologists would have dispersed in silence, and mourned in private over the destruction of their antiquarian hopes had not Mr. Ole Bull dropped his violin and courageously rushed to the defense of the Norsemen. He exhibited to the unbelieving scoffer a photograph of the Dighton inscription, and solemnly asked him if he knew what it meant? The scoffer calmly replied that he did not, and was thereupon crushed by being advised not to criticize those who did. Inasmuch as no human being has ever been able to translate the inscription, the boldness of Mr. Bull’s retort was really sublime, and it rendered the scoffer temporarily dumb with amazement. The archeologists thereupon seized the opportunity to adjourn, and in all probability they will soon meet in secret, free from the presence of wicked skeptics, and solemnly resolve that the Dighton Rock was originally scratched by Norsemen who invented a new and intricate language for that occasion only.

If they are wise they will refrain from digging up the rock and placing it where the heartless world can gaze upon it. Sooner or later Mr. Adams will see it and will remember that he made the inscription during his prehistoric youth by splitting kindling wood with a hatchet and carelessly permitting the blade to come in contact with the rock. If, however, they are determined to dig it up, let them send for Dr. Schliemann, and, after explaining to him that they wish to find the skeleton of Eric, together with a tin box containing a full history of the inscription, put him in charge of the affair. He will promptly discover anything within the bounds of reason, and the myth of the Norse explorer will thus be converted into genuine history, and skeptics and scoffers be permanently put to shame.

The missing link

The absence of any connecting link between apes and man has always been a stumbling block in the way of those who would otherwise fully accept the Darwinian theory. We may be willing to admit that the monkey, by strict industry and attention to business, developed himself into a baboon, and that the earnest and ambitious baboon gradually became an eminent and esteemed ape. Between apes and men, however, there is a vast difference, and hitherto no traces have been found of any intermediate type. If we could only find a fossil ape who had developed trousers, or a fossil man with an evident and respectable tail, the Darwinian theory would receive very strong confirmation. Its present supporters admit that it is impossible to suppose that some prehistoric ape suddenly twisted off his tail, cut out and sewed a pair of trousers, and thus abruptly transformed himself into a man without waiting for the slow process of development. They, have conceded that the link between the simian and the human animal is imperatively needed as the final evidence of the truth of their favorite theory, and they have been inclined to resent with a good deal of bitterness the failure of the intermediate ape man to preserve himself in a fossil state for the satisfaction of posterity.

The joy with which Darwinians will learn that the missing link has at last been found can hardly be overestimated. There is no doubt, however, in the mind of Mr. Silas Wilcox, of Prince Edward Island, that he has found the identical link, and that he now has it in his front parlor ready for exhibition to such scientific persons as may be willing to pay him a reasonable fee. The grand discovery was made in this wise: Mr. Wilcox was recently digging for peat in a marshy part of the island, and, after reaching a depth vaguely described as “considerable,” he unearthed the skeleton of an alleged man. The skeleton resembled that of a man of average height, with the important exceptions that the skull was flattened, the jaws were extremely prominent, the arms were excessively long, and the spinal column was prolonged by nineteen vertebrae, forming an unmistakable tail of at least eight inches in length. Of course the separate vertebrae were unconnected by any remnants of cartilage, and the local clergyman made this fact an excuse for the suggestion that the tail was an artificial one which had been worn by the owner of the skeleton as a fashionable ornament, and buried with him. The weakness of this feeble effort to deprive Darwinians of the benefit of so remarkable a skeleton is sufficiently apparent. It is, of course, conceivable that the prehistoric male inhabitants of Prince Edward Island were addicted to the wearing of extraneous tails, but it is in the highest degree improbable that a dying man would previously put on a frivolous and fantastic tail. No fashionable lady, in her last moments, requests her friends to wrap her pull back skirt about her and bury her with her bustle, and it is equally improbable that the prehistoric man of Prince Edward Island permitted thoughts of tails to disturb his last moments. The tail of Mr. Wilcox’s skeleton is, undoubtedly, part and parcel of that interesting anatomical specimen; and that the skeleton is that of an animal a little less than man and more than ape, no reasonable being who believes in Mr. Wilcox’s veracity can doubt.

The oddest feature of this discovery is the light it throws upon a strange custom of the early apes. They evidently used Prince Edward Island as a developing place. When an ape wanted to better his condition by ascending to a higher scale of being, he took passage for the island, and on his arrival there put on trousers and a silk hat, and assiduously practiced the art of walking erect. No ape could do this in his native country without exciting the derision of his fellows. At Prince Edward Island, however, he would meet none but those who were engaged in similar practices, and, like the patients at a hydropathic hospital, they would rigidly abstain from laughing at one another. It is probable that the system pursued at the island gradually eliminated the tails of the patients, and that none were discharged until they had been transformed into tolerably presentable men. This would fully account for the failure of scientific men to find any traces of the missing link except at Prince Edward Island, and would lead us to believe that the skeleton found by Mr. Wilcox belonged to a patient who had unfortunately died before his development had been fully completed.

However this may be, the fact remains that a skeleton, simian in point of tail and arms, but human in all other respects, has been discovered by Mr. Wilcox, either in his peat bog or in the bottom of his brown jug. Beyond all doubt this discovery is, in the estimation of the Darwinians, the greatest discovery of the century. Mr. Darwin ought to celebrate it by a magnificent epic, beginning, “Arms and the tail I sing,” and Mr. Wallace ought to instantly rectify the present classification of mammalia, by adding to the order of bimana, of which man has hitherto been the sole specimen, a new genus, entitled “Homo Wilcoxius.”

A warning to brides

It is impossible not to feel a lively sympathy for the bereaved bride whose husband is snatched from her at the foot of the altar or in front of the private desk of the officiating justice of the peace, as the case may be. Especially is such a bride to be pitied when she loses, through her own carelessness, a husband whom she has caught after protracted and skilful effort. Such is the misfortune which has lately befallen a Connecticut bride, and her story is one which conveys a wholesome lesson to expert but over confident widows.

The bride in question, awhile yet a blooming and energetic widow, met with an elderly gentleman of eighty years of age, and an indefinite quantity of bonds and stock certificates. In spite of the opposition of his family, she convinced him that it was his duty to marry the trusting and ingenuous woman who had lavished upon him her priceless and experienced affections. It is not a matter of very great difficulty for a skilful widow, or other astute woman, to hook an elderly gentleman. The real difficulty is in landing him. When once he is fastened by his promise, he must be played with with great care, or he will escape before he is finally gaffed by an efficient marriage ceremony. Until then he is always prone to seek refuge in inaccessible places, from which neither coaxing nor petting can dislodge him, or to suddenly break his promise and dart away into some secret and secure hiding place. In the present instance the widow played her prize so firmly and tenderly that he was finally successfully landed. Unfortunately, she then relaxed her vigilance, never dreaming that he would so far revive as to leap back into his original celibacy, and accomplish his escape. Let other widows note her carelessness and its consequences, and save themselves from disappointment and humiliation.

No sooner was the marriage ceremony ended than the happy bride directed her husband to run back to his house and bring his bonds and mortgages, so that they might begin to enjoy a happy honeymoon. The husband went, but as soon as he had entered his house he was seized by his relatives and safely locked up. He had made a will in their favor, and they had no intention of allowing it to be unmade by a new and unwelcome wife. His prolonged absence disturbed the bride, who sent a carriage to hasten his return; but the carriage came back empty, and the driver’s mind was too much confused by strong language, broken crockery, and pails of water to explain the reason why his presentation of a written order to “deliver to bearer one (1) elderly bridegroom” had given rise to so much vigorous discussion. The bride at once comprehended the true state of affairs. She armed herself with a pistol and a stout Irishman and stormed her husband’s prison. The battle was short but fierce. From his remote dungeon, the imprisoned husband could be heard cheering on the assailants, but there were too many bolts on the front door, too many determined maiden sisters, and too much available crockery in the house to render its capture possible by the assaulting column. The bride was beaten back, after performing prodigies of valor with a long pole against the parlor windows, and she has since appealed to the law for assistance. A suit for the forcible theft of a valuable husband, whose photograph is annexed to the complaint, and marked “Schedule A,” is now pending, and it remains to be seen whether a Connecticut court recognizes the right of property in husbands, or whether it looks upon them ferae naturae, and hence incapable of being made the subject of an action for trover and conversion.

The lesson conveyed by this affecting narrative hardly needs to be emphasized. It is a warning to widows never to let a freshly caught husband pass out of their hands; but to carry him off the moment the marriage ceremony is completed, and to keep him locked up until his spirit is broken and the rage, of his relatives has subsided. Had the Connecticut bride pursued this course, she would not now be suffering from the humiliation of having her husband locked up in somebody else’s two pair back, while she herself cannot stand below his prison windows and ask for one word of affection from his beloved lips, and one five dollar bill from his adored pocket, without incurring scathing insults and scalding water at the hands of her husband’s cruel jailers. Eternal vigilance is the price of an elderly and rich husband, and widows who fancy that vigilance becomes unnecessary as soon as they have married their latest prize, should revise that opinion, and redouble their precautions until the honeymoon has passed at least through its first quarter.

The spirophore

Hitherto drowning has never been free from certain unsatisfactory, not to say unpleasant, features. Confucius has ably remarked that, when a man drowns, “him heap chokee, chokee,” and experience has fully confirmed the sage’s assertion. Moreover, the drowning man always develops a sudden and vivid brightness of memory, in which, as in a glass, the whole history of his life is spread before him. Thus his last moments are embittered by the recollection of the money he has lost in betting on elections, and of the precious opportunities for securing an accident insurance policy which he has neglected. Unpleasant as these incidents of drowning must necessarily be, the ignominy to which the drowned person is compelled to submit at the hands of friends and creditors, who try to resuscitate him, is still more repugnant. Ordinarily he is rolled on barrels, in a posture that is at once ridiculous and painful. If a medical man is permitted to experiment on him, the helpless victim is stood on his head, in order to empty his interior of superfluous water, and he is then sat upon by some muscular ruffian, who squeezes his ribs and takes liberties with his diaphragm, under the pretext of promoting artificial respiration. Nothing can be more humiliating than the situation of the man who is subjected to this indelicate process. Undoubtedly, it often proves successful, for a person must be unusually dead who will not revive under such treatment sufficiently to ask for a club or a pistol with which to express his thanks to his noble preservers. Still, when one reflects upon the gross liberties to which the drowned man is forced to submit, and the contempt which the smallest small-boy must inevitably feel for a limp citizen forcibly compelled to stand on his head, it is evident that fastidious persons must look upon drowning as one of the most unsatisfactory of all occupations.

But an ingenious, chivalrous, and delicate Frenchman has just invented a machine which enables even the most modest man to be drowned and resuscitated with ease, comfort, and perfect dignity. The machine is called a spirophore, and it is a luxury with which no family can afford to dispense. The spirophore consists of a hollow sheet iron cylinder, closed at one end and open at the other. Into this the drowned man is inserted feet first, until only his head protrudes. When this has been done, we are told that “a tightly fitting diaphragm closes the aperture about the neck.” Of course, the object of this is to prevent the external air from penetrating into the cylinder, and it is to be hoped that it accomplishes that end. Nevertheless, most anatomists would be puzzled if they were required to place a man’s diaphragm closely about his neck, and the inventor of the spirophore ought to be told that, as to this point, his directions should be made plainer and more specific. When the tightly fitting diaphragm is thus properly adjusted, an air pump is connected with the cylinder, and a few strokes of the piston exhausts the air from the machine. As soon as the patient’s body is thus relieved of the weight of the atmosphere, the outer air immediately rushes into his mouth, fills all the interstices of his person, and thus expands his chest. Next, the air is readmitted into the cylinder, under a pressure somewhat greater than that of the atmosphere, and the lungs of the patient are thus sufficiently compressed to expel the air from them. By repeating those two processes alternately, the drowned man is made to enjoy all the comforts of respiration without the least trouble or exertion on his part, and in the course of an hour or two he usually recovers, and feebly suggests pie or some other powerful stimulant. Meanwhile, his children, who, under the old system, would have fought with one another to secure front seats for the entertaining spectacle of their parent rolled on a barrel, secure a great deal of innocent enjoyment by pounding on the outside of the cylinder with big sticks and singing some simple but reviving hymn, such as the “Mulligan Guards” or “Finnegan’s Wake.” When the man is fully resuscitated, his diaphragm is removed from his restored neck and to its proper position, and he is liberated from the cylinder, after giving a solemn promise to pay the expenses of the affair,together with a royalty to the inventor of the machine. Of course, he emerges in a damp and somewhat exhausted condition, but he has the proud consciousness that his self respect has not been impaired by barrels, and that he has not been outraged by the manual squeezing of his insulted ribs.

It is needless to point out that every family residing in the neighborhood of water more than a foot deep should have a spirophore always in readiness for immediate use. When not needed for the resuscitation of drowned persons, it would prove useful in a variety of ways. Infants of excessive conversational powers could be placed in the spirophore, and thus compelled to breathe with a slowness and regularity which they would at once recognize as being entirely incompatible with prolonged remarks concerning colic and pretended pins. As defense against mosquitoes the spirophore would also be extremely efficacious, provided the user were to enter it head first, and to twist his tightly fitting diaphragm around the legs of his protruding boots. A law should be passed requiring every ocean steamship to carry a spirophore for each and every passenger, so that in case of shipwreck the passengers could be promptly resuscitated. The only possible objection to the machine is that it may promote the practice of excessive drowning; since every small-boy whose parents possess a spirophore will constantly drown his sister, in order to enjoy the excitement of witnessing her resuscitation. Still,’ where children are numerous, and the spirophore is allowed to get out of order, this objection would generally be considered a trivial one, and most persons will agree that by inventing the spirophore the ingenious Frenchman has deprived drowning of its most unpleasant features, and earned the warm gratitude of his fellow men.

Solar insecurity

On the night of the 24th of November last a serious accident occurred in the constellation of the Swan. One of the smaller stars of the constellation caught fire from some unknown cause, and the flames had gained such headway before the astronomers were notified that all attempts to extinguish them were manifestly useless. The fire was first discovered by Prof. Schmidt, of Athens University, who promptly gave the alarm, and in a short time had all the available telescopes in Europe pointed at the star, although they produced no more effect than would have been produced by so many hot house syringes. Fortunately, the conflagration gradually burned itself out without extending to any of the neighboring stars, and though its embers are still glowing, there is no reason that any further danger should be apprehended.

Although the destruction by fire of a valuable and uninsured star is always a matter to be regretted, the fire of the 24th of November was so remote that it attracted little attention from the public. Since that date, however, Prof. Proctor, an accomplished sidereal expert, has made an official investigation into the origin of the fire, and has arrived at results which are full of interest and importance to mankind. Prof. Proctor asserts that the star was covered — rather recklessly as it seems to prudent men — with an envelope of hydrogen gas, and that the latter caught fire, possibly from a match dropped by a vagrant comet, and blazed so fiercely as to wrap the whole star in flames. He does not say whether or not there were any means at hand for extinguishing the fire. That is a question which it is now too late to press. What we do know is that the moment the hydrogen caught fire the star was doomed, no matter how abundant the water supply may have been or how efficient may have been the local fire department.

Having thus ascertained the proximate cause of the disaster. Prof. Proctor proceeds to call attention to the alarmingly unsafe condition of our sun. Not only is the sun entirely surrounded with an enormously thick covering of hydrogen, but on some occasions the latter has undoubtedly been on fire to a greater or less extent. Like the recently destroyed star in the constellation of the Swan, the sun is rushing through space, dragging its train of planets with it, and evidently striving to reach some distant and unknown station situated, far beyond the edge of the largest sidereal map. Neither Prof. Proctor nor any other astronomer has a copy of the celestial timetable, and hence we do not know whether the sun is running on schedule time or not. What does have a very suspicious look is the fact discovered last summer by Secchi, the Italian astronomer, that unusually large quantities of magnesium, a metal that develops intense heat when burning, were used as fuel in the solar furnace in July and August last. Now, when a Mississippi engineer feeds his furnaces with pitch and turpentine, it is because his boat is behind time or is engaged in racing. The sun may be traveling at its usual rate, but, on the other hand, it may be trying to make up lost time, or may be racing with Sirius, Arcturus, or some other fast star. In such case, we could easily understand the reason for the exceptional use of magnesium as fuel, and we should have abundant reason to dread an explosion or other terrible catastrophe. Even if the sun is quietly proceeding on its way without making any unusual effort, the danger that its hydrogen envelope will take fire and be partially or totally consumed is sufficiently great to excite in us the liveliest apprehensions. Prof. Proctor assures us that should such an accident occur, the heat would be so tremendous that human life would be totally extinguished. In order to produce this terrible result it would not be necessary that the entire sun should be consumed, for a fire that should destroy, say a quarter of its hydrogen envelope, would roast the earth till its surface would be a mere blackened crisp.

It has been already remarked, this hydrogen has more than once caught fire, apparently from causes existing in the sun itself. Prof. Proctor now points out an additional source of danger in the reckless conduct of irresponsible comets, which are constantly passing to and fro in the neighborhood of the sun. Any one of these celestial tramps may set the hydrogen on fire, either accidentally or purposely, in such a manner as to insure a tremendous conflagration. If we can imagine a powder magazine with a large fire burning in close proximity to the powder, to which fire tramps are constantly coming to warm themselves and to light their pipes, we shall have a fair idea of the frightfully dangerous condition of the sun. And this state of things has existed, no man and no astronomer knows how long, and were it not that the accident in the Swan led Prof. Proctor to investigate the condition of the sun we should never have suspected the danger that menaces us.

Of course, our first duty is to inquire what measures of safety, if any, we ought to take. It is distressing to learn that Prof. Proctor, with all his experience, has nothing to suggest, and that no other astronomer is likely to give us any aid. There is no Department of Public Buildings which has any jurisdiction in the sun, by virtue of which it could make the usual recommendation that buckets of water should be kept constantly within reach, and that the means of exit should be increased. So far as can be seen, we must content ourselves with hoping that the hydrogen envelope will not be brought in contact with fire, and that comets will see the propriety of conducting themselves in an orderly manner while in the neighborhood of the sun. Unless Mr. Proctor has been grossly deceiving us, the sun is liable at any moment to burst into flames, and we are powerless to prevent the catastrophe. Our only possible expedient in such a contingency would be to paint ourselves with a solution of tungstate of soda, but when we remember that a grand solar conflagration would probably rage for five or six weeks before burning itself out, we can perceive how little confidence could be placed in tungstate of soda or any other incombustible preparation known to chemistry.

Wandering houses

The wild animals of Long Island have been pretty thoroughly extirpated, except, of course, at Huntington. There is an occasional deer to be shot on Montauk Point, and the fierce and sanguinary woodchuck still lingers in the forests of the North Shore, but the bold German huntsman, who tramps over Queen’s County in company with his Spitz dog and Belgian gun, rarely slays anything more dangerous than the wild robin or the depraved catbird. Nevertheless, a strange tendency to revert to the savage state has of late been shown by the houses of Long Island. The meekest meeting houses and the tamest cottages have developed a lawless thirst for adventure, which impels them to wander away from their accustomed localities, and to roam the face of the country as if they were habitual photographic wagons or confirmed gypsy tents.

This singular tendency was first developed among the houses of Flushing. A quiet Baptist meeting house, which had never shown the slightest sign of restlessness, suddenly left its usual haunt, and proceeded at a leisurely rate up the main street of the village. It was at first supposed that it intended to make its way to the water, but instead of so doing, it wandered aimlessly through the village, until it was finally caught by a few determined men, and confined in a strongly fenced yard. Its example was soon followed by a full grown Methodist meeting house, which escaped from its yard one afternoon, and created a panic among the horses by its obstinate determination to monopolize the highway. For fully a fortnight this fierce building infested the streets. Every morning it would be found in a new locality, and bearing the most painful evidences of having been out all night. On one or two occasions it was found in the gutter in a muddy and frightfully disreputable condition, and it was at one time feared that it would make a violent attack upon the Episcopal church, so prolonged was its stay in front of that inoffensive edifice. After a time the more hardy villagers rallied, and by a vigorous attack overpowered it, and dragged it into a side street where it was hastily secured. It has since been quite docile, but should the sexton accidentally leave the front gate open, it is very probable that it would seize the opportunity to make its escape and renew its wandering and dissolute habits.

Seven miles from Flushing is Hunter’s Point. Whether the houses of the latter place heard, in some mysterious way, of the conduct of the Flushing meeting houses is not known. It is certain, however, that the general outbreak of the Hunter’s Point houses occurred soon after the disturbances at Flushing. Whole rows of houses were simultaneously affected. At one period the streets were full of wandering houses. Here a disreputable grocery staggered shamelessly through the mud, and there a timid cottage crept through an unfrequented street with the evident intention of concealing itself in the distant meadows. The Hunter’s Point citizen who left his house in the morning never knew where to look for it at night. This state of things naturally became intolerable, and the stray houses were finally captured by the aid of well trained steam engines and sagacious hydraulic jacks, and the town has now resumed, to some extent its normal appearance.

So far, the Long Island houses had shown no actual hostility to mankind and had apparently no other object in view than that of escaping from confinement. The other day, however, an escaped house made a determined attack upon a Long Island railway train. The incident occurred near the village of Hillside, and although it caused much anxiety and delay, it did not result in bloodshed. The house, which, though undersized, was powerfully built had evidently been at large for some time, for it had a soiled and travel worn look, and was perhaps suffering from the pangs of hunger. It placed itself directly across the railroad, and for several hours disputed the passage of any train. It could not be coaxed from its position nor driven away by threats. The whistle of the locomotive did not terrify it in the slightest degree, and the tempting display of prize packages of candy could not lure it from the track. In this emergency the threatened passengers felt that there was no hope except in Poppenhusen. To him they appealed, and he generously heard their cry. A fearless and ferocious locomotive was brought from Hunter’s Point, and loosed upon the still defiant house. With a hoarse yell the locomotive sprang upon its prey, and in a few moments so severely lacerated it that it could no longer offer any serious resistance.

There is every reason to believe that this strange form of madness which has already seized upon so many houses will continue to spread. It is evidently infectious in its character, though sporadic cases occur, the origin of which cannot be traced. Darwinians see in it a new confirmation of the development theory, since the return to savage and nomadic life on the part of a staid meeting house, and other civilized buildings, is a fresh proof that our present race of houses has been developed from the wild tent of prehistoric ages. The evil must be met with prompt repressive and preventive measures, or Long Island will become a howling wilderness, swarming with ferocious houses, which, either singly or in packs, will hunt down the railway trains and waylay incautious men, women and cattle.

Common prudence suggests that every Long Island house owner should look well to his gate fastenings, and keep his house chained up night and day. Where fences and chains cannot readily be procured, large yokes, modeled after the familiar pig yoke, should be fastened upon the houses, so that in case they do escape, they cannot leap fences or force their way through narrow openings. All houses found on the streets should be instantly destroyed by proper officers appointed for the purpose. In addition to these measures, the Long Islanders should treat their houses with kindness, and thus strengthen their attachment to their owners. A few coats of paint, or a new tin roof, judiciously bestowed upon a house may secure its lasting affection. The truth is we do not treat our houses with the care that they deserve, and doubtless this has had its share in reviving in the houses of Long Island the long dormant love of the wild, free life of the Asian steppes.

Ice water

Every one except the amateur or professional drunkard admits that ardent spirits ought not to be used as a beverage in hot weather. They simply increase the heat of the system and thus give aid and comfort to the thermometer in its summer assaults on the lives and collars of the human race. The English troops in the torrid zone were formerly addicted to the excessive use of brandy as a supposed prophylactic against malarial diseases. Experience, however, demonstrated that the brandy drinkers did not withstand the climate nearly as well as did the men of more temperate habits. It is true that one English Temperance Society, which had undertaken to collect statistics on this subject, was recently shocked by the official statement that of the “teetotalers” belonging to a regiment stationed at Sierra Leone, fifty per cent, had died and fifty per cent, had been invalided. Further inquiry, however, showed that the whole number of “teetotalers” in question was two, and that one had died of snakebite and the other had broken his leg; while the statistics concerning the mortality of brandy drinkers were such as to fill the “teetotal” mind with joy and triumph.

It is an abuse of language to style a man temperate merely because he does not drink ardent spirits. The truth is that many so-called temperate people, who decline to look upon the wine not only when it is red, but also when it is yellow, as in the case of eggnog, are extremely intemperate. While there is no doubt that intemperance in the use of ardent spirits is one of the most deadly evils incident to civilization, it is equally true that intemperance in the use of ice water is rapidly undermining the constitution of American men and women. As a nation, we are fearfully addicted to cold drinks, and there is imperative need of an organized movement to fight the demon of ice water.

Strange as it may seem to the conscientious man who comprehends the deleterious effects of cold drinks, there are thousands of our best and noblest citizens who are victims of the cold water habit. They begin the day with one or more glasses of ice water before breakfast. During that meal they frequently turn from the coffee which cheers but does not inebriate — in case it is sufficiently adulterated with the simple and healthful bean — and satisfy their depraved thirst for water. On their way to their business they stop at the numerous drug stores which shamelessly flaunt their soda water fountains in the face of the public, and hastily pour down the deadly ice water which perverted ingenuity makes palatable with creams and syrups. In the office or the store, the water cooler, filled with the stomach and tooth destroying beverage is always at hand, and when the water drinkers return home after a day of constant drinking, they too often spend the greater part of the night in solitary and aquarial debauchery.

The result of this pernicious practice has been to fill the country with a class of stomachs that are incapable of any earnest digestive efforts, and to crowd the chairs of busy dentists. American stomachs and American teeth are daily growing feebler, and the time is apparently at hand

when a set of false teeth will be presented to every newborn infant at the same time that he receives his first India rubber ring, and when all sorts of stomach bitters and digestive pills will invariably supplement his daily meals. For this state of things ice water, either in its undisguised form, or in the shape of soda water is responsible. And the worst of it is that the victims of the water habit are the very men who form our temperance societies and who fancy themselves temperate because they never drink anything but water.

Water is undoubtedly the most wholesome beverage which we can use, but there is a vast difference between water at a safe and natural temperature and the ice water which alone satisfies the unholy cravings of the American throat. Let us by all means drink water, but let us decline to endanger our health and degrade ourselves below the level of the beasts by drinking inordinate quantities of ice water. There is not a single animal — except man — which ever dreams of contaminating wholesome water with ice. The ordinary water of the hydrant and the faucet satisfies the thirst of the wild elephant and the domestic cat. Poor fallen human nature, on the contrary, longs for ice, and gratifies its corrupt cravings at the cost of outraged stomachs and ruined teeth.

Spiritual sport

The fine athletic sport of spook catching which was so lately introduced to the American public by Mr. Crum, of Rochester, bids fair to become extremely popular. No sooner had that gentleman described in eloquent terms the exciting character of the sport than two physicians, residing in Portland, Me., immediately equipped themselves and started forth in search of game. They were much more successful than Mr. Crum, who, it will be remembered, hooked a fine one hundred and fifty pound ghost, but was unfortunately unable to land it. The two Portland doctors not only hooked a large and powerful spook, but they also dragged it out of its spiritual element, and exhibited it with pardonable triumph to a host of astonished and delighted Portlanders. Such a feat deserves to be fully chronicled, especially as the method pursued by the sportsmen may afford useful hints to other amateur ghost catchers.

More than a year ago Mrs. Hull, an industrious spiritual medium, established a preserve of materialized ghosts in her house in Portland. The superiority of her artificially bred ghosts over the wild ghosts of the graveyard and the traditional haunted house was soon generally acknowledged. From behind a curtain hung across a corner of her dining room she would produce ghosts of all sizes and of any desired sex in unlimited quantities. Her male ghosts were not, perhaps, as large as those produced by the Eddy brothers, but they were plump and well proportioned, while her female ghosts were remarkable for their grace and beauty. Of course she exhibited only one ghost at a time — for ghosts are well known to be unsocial, and to object in the most decided manner to materializing in squads, or even in couples. Now and then a wicked skeptic insisted that Mrs. Hull personated each and every one of her ghosts, but recently she adopted the plan of permitting the hem of her skirt to project under the edge of the curtain behind which she sat while professionally employed, and thus convinced the public that she could not be playing the part of a ghost on the platform while her skirt remained behind the curtain.

Now, it so happened that Portland possessed two learned physicians, whose knowledge of physiology and anatomy was so profound that they knew it to be possible for a woman to exist separate and apart from her skirt. These two learned men were also fond of athletic sports, and they determined to try their luck at ghost catching. In pursuance of this design, they systematically scattered ground bait in Mrs. Hull’s ghost preserve by professing an earnest belief in spiritualism and by carefully suppressing their knowledge that Mrs. Hull could maintain an independent existence when separated from her skirt. This astute course had its natural results. The ghosts lost all fear of the two doctors, and when the latter were present in Mrs. Hull’s dining room whole schools of ghosts would float out, one by one, from the cabinet, and gaze fearlessly and lovingly at the two good medical men.

Finally the evening arrived which the sportsmen had’ fixed upon as the time for capturing a ghost. They were seated close to the platform, where they watched the smaller fry of miscellaneous ghosts come and go. Presently a fine plump female ghost floated towards them. To this ghost the strongest medical man, after making sure that his wife was not present, addressed the insinuating question, “Will you touch my hand, dear?” The over confident ghost acceded to the request, and placed her spiritual fingers within the doctor’s expanded hand. Quick as thought the medical sportsman closed his hand, and began to haul in his prey. The ghost was a game one, and fought desperately, but the sportsman played her with great skill, and steadily drew her towards him. At last exhaustion overcame her, and her captor was able to gently remove her veil and exhibit her as the identical Mrs. Hull, whose skirt was still visible underneath the curtain of the cabinet. Instantly the second doctor drew aside the curtain and showed an empty chair and a collapsed skirt, while Mr. Hull, an alleged man, attached to Mrs. Hull in the capacity of husband, nobly came forward and stated that “it was all her doin’s,” and that “he didn’t know nothin’ about it.”

This capture reflects the utmost credit upon the two accomplished sportsmen, and shows that ghosts may be taken with the bare hand, provided they are previously rendered somewhat tame by lavishly feeding them with the ground bait of flattery and professed confidence. We are inclined to think, however, that trolling will prove to be the best method of ghost catching. No spoon need be used, but the sportsman has only to attach a gang of large hooks to a stout line, and to draw it gently over the stage. The ghost will not notice the hooks in the dim light, but as she wanders up and down the platform she will certainly brush against them. A quick pull on the line will stick the hooks into the ghost’s skirts or shoes, and there will be no difficulty in landing the game, provided the tackle is sufficiently strong. It is also probable that ghosts may be taken with a fly, made in the shape of a new bonnet, and deftly thrown immediately in front of the ghost, or in the neighborhood of the cabinet in which the ghosts are known to lurk. However, the sport is yet in its infancy, and it would be unsafe to decide absolutely in favor either of the trolling line or the fly. That it is wholesome and delightful sport, in whatever way it may be practiced, there is no doubt, and as the ghost season is just beginning, we shall soon hear from all parts of the country of the capture of magnificent single ghosts, and of fine messes of smaller, but no less desirable, spooks.

The conflict of rods

The rapid decay of faith in lightning rods has naturally increased the terror which a thunderstorm excites in persons of nervous temperament or timid disposition. In the days immediately succeeding Dr. Franklin’s kite flying experiment, it was held that a lightning rod should be insulated from the house which it was supposed to protect. The theory prevailed that the lightning, when trying to strike the house, would be cleverly caught by the end of the lightning rod and conducted to the ground, without having an opportunity of effecting an entrance into the building. People who provided themselves with rods erected in accordance with this theory felt reasonably safe; and although the lightning did occasionally miss the rod and come down the chimney, the accident was always explained by the supposition that the rod was not quite so long or as thick as it ought to have been.

Of late years a new theory has been broached. It is alleged that during a thunder storm houses are filled with a certain kind of electricity which renders them liable to incur lightning strokes. In order to avert this danger, the objectionable electricity must be removed. This can be accomplished by placing a lightning rod in close contact with the building which it is desired to protect. The resident electricity runs off on the rod, and the house is then in no more danger of contracting a stroke of lightning than a man who has been vaccinated is of contracting smallpox. Those who hold this theory assert that an insulated rod, so far from being a safeguard, is a positive danger. It does not eliminate the resident negative electricity, and it simply banters the lightning to hit it.

It so happens that the men who sell lightning rods are about equally divided in support of these rival theories. One will assert that a rod is dangerous unless it is insulated, and another will claim that to trust one’s self to an insulated rod is suicidal. Occasionally a lightning rod vendor is found who, with the utmost shamelessness, will offer to put up just such a rod as the purchaser may desire, thus showing that either he knows nothing about the habits and customs of lightning, or that he cares nothing for the lives of the public. It follows that the unscientific householder can place no sort of confidence in his rod, whether it is insulated or not, and hence, if he has any fear of lightning, a thunder storm renders him extremely uneasy, and fills him with indignation against all lightning rod dealers, from Franklin’s time to the present day.

This conflict of faith in connection with the insulation question also vexes the souls of timid women. Formerly the average woman insulated herself during a thunderstorm either by sitting on a feather bed, which was said to be a nonconductor of electricity, or by putting the legs of her chair in glass tumblers. But if the new theory of electricity is true, this is the most dangerous course that could be pursued. The negative electricity contained in the woman who places herself in an insulated chair while a thunder storm is in progress cannot escape, and it constantly invites the positive electricity of the atmosphere to come and strike her. When the latter event occurs, the unhappy woman has two distinct varieties of electricity struggling in the interior of her person, and making desperate but unavailing attempts to escape. Thus, her last state is decidedly worse than her first, and unless she can make her husband lay his hand on her and thus convert himself into a self-abnegating lightning rod, she can hardly endure, without permanent injury, the throes of the imprison’ ed fluid. A similar calamity might be expected to overtake the woman who insulates herself on a feather bed, and thus the new and objectionable theory renders the sex unable to protect themselves from lightning, except by tightly shutting their eyes, and loudly remarking “oh,” at frequent intervals.

It is impossible that this universal uncertainty should long prevail. Men will insist upon knowing whether their houses and wives ought to be connected with the ground by non insulated rods, or whether safety is to be found only in insulation. If insulation is the proper thing, we ought to live in glass houses, and provide ourselves and our wives with glass garments, to be put on whenever a thunder storm is in prospect. If the new theory is true, prudent men will cover their houses with insulated rods, and prudent women will connect themselves with the ground by lengths of copper wire attached to their ankles. Until we know which theory is the true one, it is folly to take any precautions against lightning whatever, and the sooner the scientific electricians tell us the whole truth in regard to the matter the better.

Ivorine

What is popularly known as the petrifaction of human bodies, is by no means a rare phenomenon. In this country, where the exigencies of town lot speculations require the removal of the occupants of cemeteries at least once in every generation, two or three petrified bodies are annually exhumed. The cause of this phenomenon has generally been supposed to reside in the soil in which the petrified bodies are buried, but curiously enough no one has hitherto thought of definitely ascertaining its nature, and securing by patent the exclusive right to use it. Although the embalmers drove a thriving trade during the civil war, there is little call for their services at present, and the efforts of inventors have been directed towards the discovery of the swiftest and surest method of destroying the bodies of departed citizens. Yet all the while Nature was showing us that a corpse could be petrified and made as indestructible as marble, and hinting in the plainest manner that instead of burning or burying bodies, we ought to petrify them. It seems that at last an eminent chemist has discovered the precise process by which a corpse can be converted into a substance that is finer, harder, and better adapted to withstand the ravages of time than is the best quality of African ivory, and he is convinced that, before many 3’ears, cemeteries and “cremation temples” will become desolate, and the whole civilized world will petrify its dead.

No man can read an eloquent circular setting forth the advantages of the new process without wondering why it was not invented ages ago. It will save nearly the whole expense of the old fashioned funeral, which, as is forcibly remarked, “is an investment which yields not a cent of returns.” When Mr. Smith loses his wife, he need to employ neither an undertaker nor a sexton. All that he has to do is to pay the trifling cost of converting her beloved remains into “ivorine.” He can then place her on a pedestal in his parlor until her successor is chosen; at which time a delicate sense of what is due to the new wife will suggest the removal of her predecessor to one of the spare bedrooms. Of course, if the widower fancies that something in the Way of funeral ceremonies would be a comfort to the corpse, he can substitute a formal “inauguration of her ivorine statue,” for the now customary funeral. The cost of such an inauguration would, however, be trifling, while the ceremony itself would be of a pleasing and attractive, instead of a dismal and depressing nature. The local clergyman would probably deliver an oration, and the local poet would furnish a copy of verses in praise of the deceased, and containing a few neat allusions to Phidias and Praxiteles. Both the orator and the poet would doubtless give their services gratuitously, and unless the bereaved husband were to go to the unnecessary expense of fireworks and an elaborate banquet, the whole affair could hardly cost him more than five or ten dollars.

Inasmuch as “ivorine” is warranted to “withstand without injury the fiercest attacks of the elements,” the new invention enables every father of a large family — unless he resides in an exceptionally healthy region — to decorate his grounds with statues, and thus exercise an art educating influence upon the community. A few petrified children skilfully placed among the shrubbery of the front yard would give quite an Italian air to an otherwise commonplace New Jersey villa. A pair of deceased wives could be utilized as caryatides to support the arch of an elaborate front gate; while the two corresponding mothers-in-law might be armed with umbrellas and placed in conspicuous positions in the vegetable garden, with a view of discouraging the crows. As a material for memorial statues of public men, “ivorine” will be infinitely superior to the sculptor’s marble or bronze. If a marble statue of the founder of the Drew Theological Seminary were to be placed in front of that institution it would naturally elevate and purify the minds of the students; but how much more ennobling and satisfactory would be the “ivorine” petrifaction of Mr. Drew himself in the apparent act of giving “p’ints” in connection with Erie to a rural deacon, and beaming with benevolence and guileless innocence! The art of Michael Angelo and Vinnie Ream will no longer be needed when a grateful nation wishes to honor a dead statesman. The capitol at Washington will be decorated with the actual bodies of dead presidents and generals, and the country will be saved the cost of contracting with sculptors to make marble caricatures of the helpless dead.

The advantages which the new process affords, and which have been hastily enumerated, are sufficient to demonstrate the great value of the invention. The enthusiastic inventor dwells at some length upon the manifold uses to which “ivorine” may be applied by manufacturers; but public sentiment will have to be educated by degrees to the use of deceased relatives as billiard balls and hairbrush handles, and for the present the inventor will do wisely to refrain from dwelling upon all the possible uses of “ivorine.” He can justly claim that he has provided a way for avoiding the expense of funerals, and that he has rendered the services of the sculptor, the portrait painter, and the photographer useless. This ought to content him; and a proper reverence for the prejudices of commonplace people ought to restrain him from proposing to convert a respectable citizen weighing, while living, 170 pounds, into “four hundred and sixteen pounds of first-class ivorine, perfectly adapted for all the purposes for which the best ivory is now employed.”

Still another shower

After the showers of snakes, frogs, hash, and other remarkable objects which have recently occurred in this favored land, we. ought not to be astonished at anything of the sort, except, perhaps, a shower of extra sized elephants, with their tails tied up with blue ribbon. Nevertheless, a shower occurred the other day in Oshkosh, or some other western city to the same effect, which nearly created a terrible and fatal panic, and indeed did result in serious injury to at least one estimable citizen.

It took place in a meeting house on Sunday morning, and its area was restricted to the region immediately under the organ loft. It is a noticeable fact that the area of abnormal showers always is extremely small. The recent snake shower in Memphis, for example, was confined to two vacant lots. There is, then, nothing in the limited extent of the Oshkosh shower which need create any doubts as to its actual occurrence. Of course, its area might have been coincident with the entire length of the galleries, but it is not our place to sit in judgment upon the operations of nature and dictate the precise, area of this or that variety of shower.

Now that the shower is over, it is very easy for the critical Oshkoshian to claim that young ladies ought not to be allowed to occupy the organ gallery. It will not do, however, to thoughtlessly admit this claim. Its advocates could, with equal justice, insist that new bonnets ought not to be admitted to the body of a meeting house, and that deacons should be compelled to wear fire helmets while on duty. It is true that were these precautions to be taken, the recurrence of the shower would become either impossible or at all events harmless; but radical changes like these should not be lightly made in any church. The proposal to spread a large net immediately under the front of the organ gallery is also objectionable, since it would rapidly become a receptacle for hymn books and sandwiches, and would only partially arrest the danger of a sudden shower of the kind in question. These proposals are akin to those of preventing panics in theaters by chloroforming the spectators, and of rendering the latter safe against fire by soaking them in tungstate of soda. In each case the desired end might be partially secured, but only at a sacrifice of comfort too great to be thought of.

The shower descended just as the minister had reached the most eloquent part of his sermon. It is all very well to say that the audience ought to have kept their eyes fixed on their pastor, and their ears deaf to all sounds save that of his eloquent voice. There are circumstances in which the strongest men lose, momentarily, their self control, even when in church. When preliminary shrieks, followed by a heavy crash, and the cry of some strong deacon in his agony, drown the minister’s voice, only the soundest sleeper can avoid being startled. In this particular instance the minister himself abruptly paused in the discourse and turned deadly pale, and we cannot wonder that his hearers sprang to their feet and began to rush wildly to the door. Those who witnessed the shower were under the impression that it was a rain of purple and fine linen mingled with barber’s poles. A meteorological phenomenon of this kind would naturally have a bloodcurdling effect, and the wonder is not that a panic occurred, but that it was checked by the timely efforts of two or three calm and determined men before any one had been trampled to death or seriously wounded.

It would be a hopeless task to attempt to eradicate an interest in bonnets from the female soul. Theoretically, a church soprano ought to give her whole attention to her vocal duties, except when courteously listening to the humble efforts of the pastor to fill up in an attractive way the intervals between the hymns. But we must not lay upon any church singer burdens heavier than her sex can bear. If during the sermon a new bonnet of remarkable architectural merit enters the church the soprano will inevitably look at it. We might as well attempt to abolish the law of gravitation as to abolish this feminine instinct. Either remedy would oi course have prevented the Oshkosh shower, could it have been employed, but it is idle to talk of repealing the fundamental laws of nature.

The deacon was severely, but not fatally, hurt. He was struck directly upon the back of the neck, where two indentations, of the general size and shape of small boot heels, are still visible to attest the violence of the shower. It is unnecessary to repeat the exact words which he is said to have used at the moment when he first felt the blow. Very possibly he never said anything of the kind; but if he did, it should be remembered that, under the influence of sudden surprise or sharp agony, a good man may sometimes express himself in a brusque manner. Moreover, it has yet to be established that “Jerusalem” is a profane expression. The deacon may have intended to repeat the first lines of the hymn — “Jerusalem, my happy home.” If so his intention was unquestionably devout rather than profane.

It may be safely assumed that she will never lean over to look at another bonnet, at least in that particular church. She was not seriously injured, for the deacon was soft and elastic, at least for his years; but she resigned her position as the church soprano early in the following week. There was a general feeling among the church members that she was not conducive to the solemnity which ought to characterize the services, and that the deacons must be protected at any cost. Especial stress was laid by the elder ladies of the congregation upon the essentially worldly nature of alternate red and white stripes. The upshot of the matter was that the soprano withdrew permanently from the organ gallery, and the deacon, after having been carefully repaired, was provided with a pew in the exact center of the church.

Of course, this shower was not predicted by the Weather Bureau. No shower of any real merit ever is. Very likely it will be repeated in some other church at some future time, but it will fall upon the just deacon or the unjust small-boy without being previously announced by “Probabilities.” The story of the Oshkosh shower ought, however, to be widely published, for the sake of its moral, though, so far, it does not appear altogether clear precisely what its moral really is.

The subtle tack hammer

This is the season when the ordinarily calm and methodical housewife dishevels her hair, binds a handkerchief about her forehead, and plunges into a mad orgy of housecleaning. Much as we may regret to see women thus transformed into temporary domestic Bacchantes, and painful as it is for any man to have his carpets supplanted by shallow lakes of soap suds, these things are inevitable. It may be hard for us to comprehend how a woman who believes herself possessed of an immortal soul can thus change a happy home into a damp purgatory strewn with crooked tacks, but the fact that she is capable of such conduct there is no room to doubt. Beyond any question Mrs. Washington cleaned house every Fall, and the Father of his Country was forced at such periods to pick up precarious dinner in the kitchen pantry, and to search for his mislaid slippers in the dark recesses of the coal cellar.

It is during the housecleaning cataclysm that the wild and malicious nature of the domestic tack hammer is most conspicuously displayed. There are many animals which can be so thoroughly tamed as to lose all trace of their original timidity in the presence of man. The terrier, for example, knows not the fear of man, and will bark at a bishop and threaten to tear a justice of the peace into small fragments with as much fearlessness as if they were timid old ladies or superannuated cats. The tack hammer, on the other hand, can never be wholly tamed. No matter how well it may be treated, or how familiar it may be with human society, it is always ready to avail itself of the first chance which offers for flight or concealment.

Nothing is more thoroughly understood by the managers and victims of housecleaning than that a tack hammer cannot be trusted alone for a single moment. The first question that is asked by the unhappy husband who, on his return from business, is informed by his wife that he is expected to put down the parlor carpet before he goes to bed, is, “Where is the tack hammer?” This question is uniformly the signal for the beginning of an argument which only too often ends in marital misery. The wife asserts that she left the tack hammer on the piano, but the husband cannot find it. Then she refers in general terms to the inability of men to see anything that is “right before their very eyes,” while he retorts by wishing that women could rid themselves of the habit of hiding everything. A prolonged and exhaustive search finally leads to the discovery of the tack hammer tightly squeezed in between the clock and the wall, where there is no possible doubt that it had voluntarily concealed itself. How it made the journey from the piano to the clock can only be surmised, for there is no animal which in the stealth and secrecy of its movements begins to equal the apparently dull and inert tack hammer.

Scientific persons in all ages have studied with great interest the habits of the tack hammer. Sir Isaac Newton remarked that when he tried to comprehend the mental processes, and catalog the peculiarities of the tack hammer, he felt as if he were standing on the shore of a vast ocean and picking up handfuls of the myriad tacks strewn along the strand: and Mr. Tupper has beautifully said in his Proverbial Philosophy, “The tack hammer is small and subtle; but the stars are innumerable and bright,” thus recognizing in the most unequivocal way one of the distinguishing traits of the tack hammer. Especial interest, however, attaches to the experiments made by Prof. Huxley, since they illustrate with peculiar fulness the extraordinary timidity and the wonderful skill in concealment which distinguish the tack hammer from other hammers larger in size, but vastly inferior in other respects. These experiments demonstrated first that the tack hammer, when left on the floor in the three pair front bedroom, would convey itself into the laboratory, and hide under a pile of heavy scientific books; secondly, that when a tack hammer is shut up for the night in a dark closet, it is able to escape and to conceal itself for three entire days in Prof. Huxley’s breast pocket; and thirdly, that when extricated from the pocket, and delivered into the custody of Mrs. Huxley, it can elude that lady’s vigilance and not only secretly accompany the Professor to his lecture room, but remain hidden for weeks at a time under a spare handkerchief or between the leaves of a copy of Milton’s poems.

Inasmuch as Prof. Huxley stoutly affirms that in none of these instances was he privy to the escape or concealment of the tack hammer, it follows that he has fully demonstrated its apparently untamable disposition. He need not, however, abandon all hope that the tack hammer can be tamed. Many housewives are ready to testify that they have completely subdued the wildness of the common domestic scissors by chaining its handles. The same system might very probably be found efficacious in the case of the tack hammer. Were a heavy weight to be fastened to its handle by a stout chain, it would be extremely difficult for the tack hammer to glide noiselessly across the floor in search of a hiding place. At all events, the experiment is worth trying, for, as the late Mr. Buckle ably showed in his tables of social statistics, at least five per cent, of modern divorce suits can be traced to domestic dissensions arising from discussions as to the possible lair of an escaped tack hammer.

Fossil forgeries

There is a town in Ireland which affronts common sense and the language of the tyrannical Saxon by calling itself “Haulbowline.” Recently it has added to its original offense by perpetrating a gross and malignant attack upon the Mosaic cosmogony. The Haulbowline authorities have, for a long period, been engaged in the construction of a dock of such magnificent proportions that were Ireland a free and happy republic, every Haulbowline statesman would by this time have saved at least a million dollars out of the annual dock appropriation. The other day the workmen were lowering a heavy granite block upon the bed of concrete which forms the foundation of the dock, when a reckless and presumably atheistic Haulbowliner deliberately threw himself in its way. The block descended, and the man was slowly but thoroughly flattened out. The concrete yielded to receive him, and by the time that it occurred to a bystander to mention to the workmen that they had deposited their block on a layer of flattened Irishman, the latter had accomplished his suicidal purpose. As there was no active demand for his remains, no attempt was made to exhume them, and accordingly they will remain imbedded in the dock until, at some future day, the dock crumbles into pieces and the flattened skeleton is brought to light and exhibited by eminent scientific men as a conclusive proof of the vast antiquity of man.

The calm deliberation with which this Haulbowline enemy of Moses converted himself into a fossil, throws a flood of light upon the motives of previous fossil men. There are the cave dwellers of the British islands, whose skeletons and jack knives are found in secluded caves surrounded by the bones of extinct animals, and carefully covered with layers of gravel and waterproof stalagmite blankets. An able geologist examines these remains, and with the aid of a few theodolites, stethoscopes, and other meretricious instruments designed to dazzle the popular mind, readily calculates that they are at least 500,000 years old. If he is pressed for the details of this calculation, he will explain that two layers of gravel three feet thick equal 100,000 years; twelve cave bears at 10,000 years each, make 120,000 years, and four layers of stalagmite bring the entire age of the fossil men up to 500,000 years. If this plausible calculation is met by a feeble reference to the Mosaic record, the eminent geologist will reply that Moses was no doubt an able man, but that he had no knowledge of geology, and that his introduction into a scientific argument is uncalled for and ungentlemanly. What was done in regard to his bones by the British cave dweller has been paralleled by certain depraved Frenchmen, and by the eccentric Floridian who deposited — or possibly mislaid — his jawbone somewhere on the peninsula of Florida, where it was built upon by coral insects for a period of at least ten thousand years, as computed by the late Prof. Agassiz.

Now, it must strike the ordinary and unprejudiced mind that this sort of conduct could not have been wholly accidental and unpremeditated. It is essentially improbable that any man would call his favorite rhinoceros, hyena, and bear about him, lie down with them in a damp and uncomfortable cave, and draw a few layers of gravel and stalagmite about him, merely for the purpose of taking a brief and quiet nap. There is not a scientific person living who would dream of courting sleep under such conditions. What the cave dweller really meant to do was to throw suspicion upon Moses, and if we accept this explanation of his motive, his conduct was intelligible and astute.

That such was the purpose of the Haulbowline suicide it is safe to assume: and there is too much reason to fear that in the course of a few generations his stratagem will prove successful. When his future exhumation occurs, the geologist will at once calculate the time required for the deposition of the successive granite strata of an Irish dock. They will doubtless quote the record of the building of the New York courthouse as a convincing proof that the Irishman deposits heavy blocks of stone with a slowness almost equivalent to that with which the coral insect labors at his interminable roof. At the lowest calculation the careful geologist will assign 50.000 years as the period during which, say six strata of granite blocks were deposited over the remains of the dock fossil, and he will probably add another 10,000 years as the time during which a layer of concrete formed about the skeleton. Thus will Genesis be refuted and Moses utterly put to shame, and the conflict between science and the Pentateuch will receive a new and powerful impulse.

It will probably occur to thoughtful people that measures should be taken to prevent the repetition of such deliberate attempts to manufacture forged fossil testimony. It is too late to do more than expose the fraudulent and heretical purpose of the cave dweller and his private menagerie, and of the Florida person who left his jawbone as a stumbling block in the path of future and orthodox generations. That Haulbowline Irishman can, however, be blasted out with the aid of nitroglycerine, and his malignant purpose can be frustrated. If this is not done, some fanatical imitator will bury himself under the new granite pier which our own dock commissioners are building, and if he is not dug up until the improvement of the entire river front is finished, the geologists will not have slates enough to compute his enormous age. Meanwhile it would be well to prevent all scientific men from entering the new courthouse. We have no certainty that some malicious Irishman did not imbed himself in its foundations, in the dim antiquity when its cornerstone was laid. As v/e cannot deny the enormous age of the lower stories of that building, the discovery of human remains in its sub-cellar would be a triumph for the enemies of Moses, and commonsense and prudence dictate that no man with a hammer or quadrant or other scientific instrument concealed about his person should be permitted to enter and explore that ancient and yet unfinished edifice.

Taming the lamp chimney

Among the latest of the innumerable inventions which reflect so much credit upon the ingenuity of our countrymen, and so strikingly illustrate their reluctance to do any sort of work which machinery can be induced to do, is a substitute for the common hammer, whether of the tack or nail variety. It is estimated that every man who has reached the age of fifty years has spent no less than eighteen entire weeks in searching for mislaid hammers. This protracted labor would have been needless had he always had some effective substitute for a hammer close at hand. It is therefore evident that the National Glass Company, which has invented a lamp chimney made of Bastie glass, with which an eight penny nail can be driven through an inch and a half board, has made a substantial contribution to the labor saving inventions for which Americans are so deservedly famous. The utility of the new tool hardly needs to be emphasized. The man engaged in putting up a stove pipe need no longer stand for twenty minutes on a precarious stepladder, holding aloft an obstinate joint of pipe, and waiting for his wife to find the missing hammer. He has only to ask her to hand him the lamp chimney, and with that effective weapon he can pound that stove pipe to an extent that will completely satiate his vengeful passions. Similarly, a party of sailors who have been shipwrecked on a desert island, where hammers are absolutely unattainable, can knock together a summer cottage, or build a boat with the help of their lamp chimneys. Hereafter the heavy and clumsy iron hammer will fall into disuse, and the carpenter and the geologist will go to their daily toil each carrying in his hand a kerosene lamp, the chimney of which will drive nails or break stones with equal efficiency.

Such is the view which the majority of men will take of the new invention. To the thoughtful student of nature the subject presents itself in a totally different and far more interesting aspect. His attention will be wholly devoted to the important fact that at last the lamp chimney has been subjugated and made subservient to the will of man. There is an interesting animal known as the “Tasmanian devil,” which is so untamably fierce that it tears itself into small fragments and burns the pieces whenever it is placed in captivity. Though much smaller and less noisy than the Tasmanian devil, the lamp chimney has hitherto been fully as wild and untamable. There are few men living who have not tried to domesticate the lamp chimney, but there is not one who has succeeded. A chimney may have been treated with the utmost kindness for weeks, but it will nevertheless seize the most inconvenient moment for bursting into pieces and strewing its heated remains over the carpet. The most prolonged efforts will never render it willing to enter the lamp to which it belongs. It will catch hold of the lamp shade and strive to overthrow it, and it will cling to the edges of the cage surrounding the wick and make violent efforts to lacerate the lingers of its owner. Its timidity is as great as that of the ostrich, and its skill in concealing itself is infinitely greater. As is well known, the wild ostrich of the desert imagines that when it has ‘inserted its head in a flour barrel or other convenient receptacle, the Bedouin hunters are as unable to find it as the average detective is to find a modest murderer. The lamp chimney commits no such folly, but conceals itself in the most thorough manner. Frequently the housewife buys a flock of half a dozen chimneys, with a view to having one in readiness whenever it is wanted. In nine cases out of ten the whole half dozen chimneys have completely vanished long before search is made for them. They may have been placed in a nice roomy box, with plenty of cotton batting, and laid away on the dining room closet shelf, but when the moment comes that a chimney is in immediate demand, it will be found that they have absconded, taking the box with them. Such is their haste to conceal themselves that they often roll off the shelf or the table, and perish miserably on striking the floor. Often the housewife has found the crushed remains of a lamp chimney which had hidden itself behind a chest of drawers, or underneath a heavy flat iron, and been subsequently and unintentionally smashed. It is the deliberate opinion of nearly all married scientific persons, that in the whole range of the lower orders of creation there is nothing so utterly untamable as the lamp chimney; and an eminent Bostonian zoologist, who has made the lamp chimney a special study, and who was once severely wounded by one which he had foolishly placed in his pocket, has repeatedly asserted in language characterized by a forcible though painfully profane use of the word “gosh,” that he would prefer to tame a dozen rattlesnakes rather than one lamp chimney.

This being the notorious character of the lamp chimney, it will be at once perceived that when a chimney has been so far tamed as to permit itself to be used as a hammer, both its fierceness and its timidity have been completely overcome. Henceforth the lamp chimney may be fairly classed with the horse, the cow, and other placid and docile domestic animals. No longer will it refuse to do its duty in connection with lamps. The fearful spectacle of an irate chimney suddenly bursting and leaving the lamp to fill the room with noxious smoke will never again appall a peaceful family. The tame lamp chimney will meekly lie on the shelf where it is placed until its time of service has arrived, and it will never dream of rolling from the table with suicidal intent. To have accomplished this triumph over the instincts of the lamp chimney is a far greater matter than to have provided a substitute for the hammer. Now let the ingenious inventor turn his attention to the buzz saw, and if he can eradicate its thirst for fingers and blood, he will deserve the lasting gratitude of mankind.

The color cure

Signor Ponza is a distinguished Italian physician who has charge of an insane asylum at Alessandria, in Piedmont, and who has invented an entirely new system for the treatment of insane and nervous patients. It is astonishing to note from what simple facts an ingenious scientific person can deduce truths of tremendous importance. It has perhaps been mentioned once or twice in the course of the last century that when Sir Isaac Newton made the discovery that apples have a tendency to fall to the earth, provided there is nothing to keep them suspended in the air, he instantly suspected the force of gravitation. In like manner Dr. Ponza, by noting the fact that whenever he wore a red waistcoat the Alessandrian bulls proceeded to toss him in a manner which evinced angry excitement rather than genial hilarity, came to the conclusion that red invariably infuriates bulls. Following up this train of reasoning, he asked himself whether insanity in human beings might not be induced or aggravated by scarlet, and whether a more quiet color like blue or brown might not be used as a remedy for over excitement of the brain or the nervous system. He tested the matter without delay, and found such excellent results following the exhibition of a blue veil or a brown pair of trousers to male and female lunatics that he immediately discarded drugs and adopted colors, as the only materia medica fit for cerebral diseases.

The new system is still in its infancy, and we may expect from it in future much greater results than have yet been obtained. So far. Dr. Ponza considers that he has ascertained beyond any question that scarlet, in small doses, produces cheerfulness, and when used in excess excites acute mania; that blue calms an excited,patient and depresses the spirits of a person in normal health; that brown is a strong sedative, and that violet is possessed of extraordinary nutritive and tonic powers. We can now understand why the red flag of European radicalism has so maddening an effect upon the peaceful capitalist, and why it increases the insanity of the Communist lunatics who look upon it with reverence and love. We can also perceive the wonderful fitness of the word “blue,” when used to describe a morbid state of gloom, and of the phrase “a brown study,” as employed to denote a condition of tranquil enjoyment. It can no longer be doubted that it is the contemplation of his own surface which excites the red Indian to deeds of blood, and that the calming study of his bare brown legs lulls the Sandwich Islander into a complete forgetfulness of the edible qualities of his missionary friends. Dr. Ponza has as yet given us no information as to the effect of black, but there is certainly reason to suppose that black induces a disposition to propound abstruse conundrums and to play on the tambourine. No one ever knew a red Indian or a yellow Mongolian to exhibit these symptoms; while, on the other hand, it is notorious that the black man, whether in Central Africa or in a New York minstrel hall, is perpetually seeking information as to when a door is not a door, and constantly banging himself on the head with a tambourine.

It is an immense benefit to mankind to know that by the use of inexpensive colored spectacles any one can minister to his own diseased mind. If a man is melancholy, all he has to do is to wear red spectacles for a few hours, and he will find himself overflowing with hilarity. The excitable man, who is constantly falling into fits of rage, can become meek and gentle by the use of blue goggles. The tonic powers of violet are asserted by Dr. Ponza to be little less than miraculous, and he claims that he recently cured an imbecile patient by shutting him for a single day in a room into which the light was admitted through violet colored glass. The miraculous nature of this cure will be understood when it is mentioned that this particular patient had fallen into such a deplorable state that he was constantly memorializing the Italian Government to issue more paper currency.

When we remember that we owe this wonderful discovery of the medicinal property of colors to the seemingly meaningless incident of the frequent tossing of a fat but learned Italian gentleman on the horns of unreflecting bulls, we can well doubt if there be any such thing as chance. Persons who have seen Dr. Ponza, with his red waistcoat, in meteoric flight through the air, while a vindictive bull waited for his descent in order to reiterate his objections to scarlet, have undoubtedly characterized the affair as an unhappy accident. We, however, know better. The miscalled accident was only the first step in a grand and beneficent discovery. Had Dr. Ponza never worn a red waistcoat, and never met a bull, he would never have discovered that lunacy can be induced or cured by a course of appropriate color. The tailor who made the waistcoat, and the bull who protested against it, were really laboring in the cause of medical science. The tossing of Dr. Ponza was no more an accident than the birth of Washington. The times needed Washington, and he was born; the lunatics needed Ponza, and he was tossed. It were worse than blindness to call either occurrence an accident, or to attribute it in any way to chance.

The emancipated costume

It is a well known fact that the small-girl of our species is accustomed to derive early but erroneous views as to anatomy from the dolls which her fond imagination converts into loving, though commendably noiseless, babies. Having learned that dolls are filled with sawdust, she firmly believes that the interiors of men, women, and children are artistically packed with the same material. Her first theological problem is how to reconcile the Biblical assertion that she is made of the dust of the earth with her firm scientific conviction that sawdust is really her chief ingredient; and her earliest and most formidable fear arises from the delusion that an accidental pin prick may let loose her vital sawdust and transform her into an empty and shapeless bundle of clothes. Of course, this anatomical error vanishes with her infancy. Before she has reached her tenth birthday she has discovered that she is filled with a variety of organs which are far more complex than the contents of her doll, and has totally abandoned the theory that the extreme attenuation of her maiden aunt is the result of a chronic leakage of sawdust. It must be a sad moment when a small-girl learns that her doll bears only a surface resemblance to humanity, and that, instead of being dilated with dry and compressible sawdust, she is herself filled with a material that cannot be safely brought in contact with green apples, and for which no ingenious nurse can substitute coal ashes or cotton in case of a serious accident.

But now comes Mrs. Martha Gearing — vaguely described as “of Wisconsin” — with an invention which aims to convert the sawdust illusion of girlhood into the actual condition of womanhood. Mrs. Gearing is evidently a reformer whose specialty is the elevation of woman; for it is expressly in order to elevate her sex that she has designed a new garment, to be known as the “emancipated costume,” and — we may assume — to be exhibited and described at the next Dress Reform Convention, by the inventor herself. The “emancipated costume” first dawned upon the inventive mind of Mrs. Gearing as she entered her ice house one winter’s day. The ice house was lined with sawdust, and though it was cool in summer, Mrs. Gearing found that it was warm in winter. At once the idea came to her that she could keep warm in winter and cool in summer by lining her own person with sawdust. From this happy thought was gradually developed the “emancipated costume,” by the wearing of which any woman may emancipate herself from the thraldom of fashion, the trammels of skirts, and the bills of dressmakers, besides securing the ’ utmost physical comfort compatible with a due deference to the present prejudices of civilization in favor of clothes. Thus, Mrs. Gearing kills a variety of objectionable birds with a single garment, and she certainly deserves the fame which she will doubtless earn by her first appearance in public clad in the “emancipated costume.”

It is not an easy matter to describe the new dress. Not that it is at all complex — for it consists of a single garment — but because the theme is too sacred for irreverent handling. Perhaps it may be permissible to hint that were an “emancipated costume” to be made for a small boy of six years of age, it would consist of a shirt and trousers combined, and forming but one all enveloping garment. When it is further hinted that whether the “emancipated costume” is intended for a small-boy or a large female reformer, its pattern is precisely the same, a conception of the true shape of the garment may be delicately conveyed to the most modest mind. Of course, there is no law to prevent the wearer of this new garment from also wearing a skirt or two, and such other external articles as taste or prejudice may dictate. Mrs. Gearing, however, urges that the true reformer will wear the “emancipated costume” and nothing else — except a few trifles in the way of boots, hair pins, and such like coverings for the extremities of the person; and we may expect that all dress reformers who are really anxious for the elevation of woman will share the distinguished inventor’s views.

But the chief characteristic of the “emancipated costume” is the fact that it is made double, and that the intermediate space is divided into a number of presumably water tight compartments. These are each provided with small valves through which sawdust can be introduced in quantities to suit the wishes of the wearer. Mrs. Gearing claims that in extremely hot or cold weather a layer of sawdust an inch thick, evenly disposed about the person, will make the wearer perfectly comfortable. In proportion as the temperature of the atmosphere rises or sinks to the neighborhood of 65° (Fahrenheit) the quantity of sawdust is to be regulated, until the wearer feels neither too warm nor too cold. Thus clothed, she would need but one dress for all seasons of the year, and could adapt her clothing to meet the most sudden changes of weather by merely taking in or letting out a little more sawdust.

Of the beauty and utility of the “emancipated costume” there can be but one opinion. It will certainly be cheaper than the present style of feminine dress, and Mrs. Gearing asserts that it will be far more healthful. There will be “no more corsets,” cries the exultant inventor, “and no more cotton!” The latter allusion we do not clearly understand, but the disappearance of the corset would undoubtedly conduce to the welfare of mankind. There is no reason, however, that this beneficent invention should be monopolized by women. The schoolboy will clamor for an “emancipated costume,” which will enable him to bear with fortitude the reproofs of his father and school teacher — especially if he lays in a little extra sawdust just prior to an interview with either of them. The brakeman will find that he can survive an unusual quantity of collisions if he is carefully padded with sawdust, and the like precaution will be found extremely useful by book agents and map peddlers in regions where the inhabitants are athletic and wear heavy boots. Thus the “emancipated costume” will elevate boys and brakemen and peddlers, as well as women, and all over our country those who are peculiarly exposed to contusion will rise up, without regard to sex, color, or precious condition of turpitude, and call Mrs. Gearing blessed. Meanwhile, the small-girl will be more than ever convinced that humanity is largely composed of sawdust, and will undergo the most terrible apprehensions when her brother, who has failed to convince his father that skates are a devotional implement, which a truly devout youth invariably carries to prayer meeting under his jacket, comes forth from the paternal “study” leaking sawdust at every pore from a rent and treacherous “emancipated costume.”

A new attraction for Sunday schools

Of new plans for making Sunday school attractive there is no end. An active superintendent knows no such word as rest. The attraction which fills his Sunday school today will be imitated by the superintendent of a rival school next Sunday, and unless he is willing to witness the desertion of his scholars to the opposing camp, he must devise some new means of retaining their allegiance. Thus the life of the successful Sunday school superintendent is a continual reaching out after that which will satisfy the captious and pampered pupil, and to his gaze Alps upon Alps of magic lanterns forever rise, and a limitless succession of picnics and fairs stretches out into futurity.

During the recent winter season, Sunday school fairs and sleigh rides were comparatively infrequent. That improved species of magic lantern, the stereopticon, eclipsed all other attractions; and when supplemented by a distinguished missionary, it attained a popularity which even monthly recitations in the Westminster Catechism could not check. There is scarcely a Sunday school in the land which has not reveled in the stereopticon at some time during the last ten months, and it is probable that a very large majority of them have also enjoyed the luxury of a real missionary. Feeble attempts have here and there been made by mistaken superintendents to impose upon their scholars a respected fellow townsman who has made a visit to the Holy Land, or a popular clergyman who has personally bearded the Pope by looking at the outside of the Vatican. The experiment has uniformly failed, and even the members of the infant class have insisted upon the production of a real missionary, and scorned all cheaper substitutes. It is impossible to estimate the amount of Biblical knowledge which Sunday school scholars have derived from the favorite stereopticon picture representing a British traveler pelting an unruly donkey with discarded aspirates, or the fervor of religious feeling which has been awakened by the picture of seasick pilgrims on a voyage to Mecca. There is no doubt that the stereopticon has proved an enormous success, and that it has drawn hundreds of children into the Sunday school, a very large proportion of whom have continued their connection with the school until the distribution of Christmas presents or until the regular May excursion.

There are, however, in certain remote localities, Sunday schools which cannot afford even a small stereopticon or a genuine missionary with a choice collection of portable idols. Necessarily, the superintendents of such schools have been forced to extremities in order to keep their scholars together. The result has been the invention of several extremely ingenious attractions, which have reflected great credit upon the skill and enterprise of the inventors. Among these moral attractions, that which was exhibited a few weeks since to a Kentucky Sunday school deserves especial notice. The school had assembled, the opening hymn had been sung, and the boy pupils were bracing themselves to answer questions upon the lesson of the day and to receive without wincing the pinches of their mischievous fellows. Suddenly a young lady, certified to be “of excellent standing in the community,” entered the room, carrying a large hickory stick. Pausing just within the threshold, she propounded to the superintendent in a loud voice the startling conundrum, “Where is the scoundrel?” The superintendent, with a skilfully assumed air of surprise, made no reply, and the scholars, conceiving that the question was part of the lesson, began to feel uneasy as to the proper answer. Their anxiety was soon relieved, for the young lady suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, there he is!” and rapidly approached a teacher who had been thoughtfully assigned a seat where he was easily within view of every scholar. Having reached him, the young lady fell upon him with the hickory stick, and began to destroy him with wonderful vigor and animation. No words can paint the enthusiasm which the scene excited. The smaller children stood on the seats in order to obtain a fair view of the entertainment, and kind hearted teachers caught up little girls on their shoulders and dashed with them to the front. The superintendent, with a face beaming with delight, held the young lady by a corner of her sleeves, and pretended to make desperate efforts to draw her from her prey. Not until he was reinforced by several teachers did the young woman pause in her labors, and when she had gracefully retired, amid the applause of the excited house, the alleged scoundrel, in a partially destroyed state, was led forth in quest of arnica and brown paper.

Now, here was an attraction which involved a very small outlay of money, but which gave the most complete satisfaction to every youthful Kentuckian in the room. It was an entertainment which appealed to the tenderest emotions of the Kentucky small-boy in a way that the best picture ever presented by the stereopticon could not have done. No elaborate preparations were required in order to give the scholars this delightful treat. All that was needed was an agreement between the intelligent superintendent, a warm hearted and earnest young lady, and a self sacrificing scoundrel. These three excellent persons made the Sunday school the liveliest place in the whole region, and generations of Sunday school scholars yet unborn will remember with reverential gratitude the names of the ingenious inventors of this unparalleled Kentucky Sunday school entertainment.

This affecting incident shows how much good may be done by persons who have no money at their command, but who are animated by a love for children and a determination to make them happy. That Kentucky Sunday school will secure the attendance of every child within a radius of ten miles, if it continues to repeat so powerful an attraction. A word of caution should, however, be given to the Superintendent. He should remember that the part of the scoundrel is not a pleasant one, and he should insist upon all his male teachers assuming it in turn. Otherwise, the earnest young lady with the hickory stick, may ultimately destroy her victim, and so bring the Sunday school into painful conflict with the local Police Court.

Arms and the chair

An aggrieved traveler, who had suffered from the ingeniously uncomfortable chairs with which certain railway palace cars are furnished, recently wrote to the Times and explained at some length the varieties of muscular anguish which chairs without arms and unaccompanied by footstools inevitably produce. The next day a lady replied with great vigor in defense of the armless chairs, and expressed the utmost surprise that “any living being” should object to them. Whether she intended to concede that a corpse of good taste and judgment might have some special reason for preferring armchairs is not absolutely certain. She makes it very apparent, however, that living women prefer chairs without arms, while it may be assumed as an axiom that men always prefer chairs with arms. In these circumstances, what are the owners of palace cars to do 1 If they please one sex, they must displease the other, unless they can change the fashion of feminine dress or alter the whole character of the masculine spine.

Hitherto palace car chairs have been constructed exclusively in the interests of women. Any skilful anatomist if he were to be shown one of these chairs would instantly detect its feminine peculiarities. The unreflecting masculine letter writer complained that the back of the palace car chair is furnished with cushions at its point of contact with the shoulder blades, and that the locality properly known as the “small of the back” is left without any support whatever. This he regarded as a proof that the chair builders know nothing of anatomy. It evidently has not occurred to him to ask if this peculiar pattern of chair back is not designed for women instead of men; for the slightest investigation would have convinced him that the very features to which he takes exception are precisely those which recommend the palace car chair to its female admirers. A very simple experiment will demonstrate this fact. Let him place twelve copies of his favorite newspaper rolled into a neat bundle, in the skirts of his coat, and then sit down in the chair which he now denounces. He will find that the back of the chair has suddenly become perfectly comfortable, and, after he has been told that during the last two years these chairs have been carefully constructed to fit precisely twelve single or nine triple sheet copies of one of the leading journals of America, he will no longer charge the chair builders with gross ignorance of anatomy.

A little reflection will also show that the palace car chairs are made without arms expressly in order to satisfy the exigencies of feminine fashion. It is true that the narrow skirts now in vogue have to some extent opened the world of armchairs to the fair sex, but the chair builder builds not for a day, but for the whole period during which a palace car may last, and consequently he must provide for any sudden change of fashion. If the palace cars were furnished with armchairs, and if crinoline were to suddenly become once more fashionable, it would be mere folly for any lady to buy a palace car ticket. Even during the present reign of narrow skirts there is a want of female confidence in armchairs, due partly to early education and partly to the fact that such chairs are justly suspected of “crumpling” every woman who is not abnormally limp. Of course, the advocates of ” dress reform ” do not object to arms, as they are proof against all possibility of ” crumpling,” but it would hardly be worth while to build palace cars merely for the purpose of accommodating so small a class of the community.

There is one more objection to armchairs, the force of which every close student of feminine habits must admit. When a woman sits down with the intention of making herself comfortable, there is an immediate and total disappearance of one of her boots. What becomes of that boot is a mystery which thoughtful men in all ages have vainly yearned to solve. Bacon is understood to have classed it among his list of the arcana of nature,though it is unaccountably omitted in the later editions of his works, and Sir Isaac Newton, when on his deathbed, sadly remarked to his daughters that he had successfully grappled with gravitation, but that this boot problem had “thrown him.” A long series of careful scientific observations have, however, established the fact that this curious phenomenon cannot occur in connection with an armchair. It is hence plain that no woman can achieve comfort except in a chair devoid of arms, and it is our duty to reverently accept this truth, although in this stage of our existence, our minds cannot grasp the mystery which underlies it.

It having been thus demonstrated that palace car chairs are made after their present pattern solely in order to adapt them to the comfort of women, it is hardly probably that chivalrous men will continue to find fault with them. Of course, there are selfish bachelors who would prefer that palace cars should be exclusively reserved for men; but, fortunately, such hardened misogynists are not numerous. The American gentleman will cease to ask that palace car chairs shall be fitted to his personal wants, but he will try the more generous alternative of fitting his own person to the armless chairs. On entering the car he will fold his twelve newspapers about him, and sit down with confidence in the comfort of his spine. He will improvise a couple of slings by aid of handkerchiefs, and so secure a pleasant support for each arm, and it is not impossible that he may devise some plan for disposing of one of his boots, which although it may differ from the feminine method, may yet conduce to ease and comfort. Thus will both sexes be satisfied with the palace car chairs, and there will be no further occasion for an unseemly strife between men and women as to the proper way in which the chairs should be constructed.

Was it a coincidence

Latterly the ghost market has been unusually dull. Owing, possibly, to the repeated exposures of “materializing mediums,” the demand for ghosts has largely fallen off, and dealers have lacked courage to bring forward any new and attractive styles. A novel and interesting ghost has, however, recently made its appearance at Walkersville, Wis., which really deserves to be brought to the attention of all enterprising ghost collectors.

For a long time a young gentleman of Walkersville, whose identity may be concealed under the name of Smith, cherished a desire to make the acquaintance of a few select and attractive ghosts, with a view to mutual improvement. To this end he placed himself under the tuition of a Chicago medium, who undertook to refine his spiritual vision to that extent that he would be able to see any specified sort of ghost at any time or place. With the medium Mr. Smith had daily “sittings” for several weeks, at the low rate of $5 per sitting, but when his first quarter’s tuition was ended, and lie had not seen so much as the glow of a political ghost’s nose, he became indignant, denounced the medium as an impostor, and returned to his rural home. It is only fair to say that the medium indignantly repelled his accusation that he was an impostor. He pleaded that a watched ghost rarely boils, so to speak, and that the mere fact that his pupil had not been able to see ghosts on demand was no evidence that he would not be able to see them at some future time. The justice of this defense has since been established. Mr. Smith, who could see no ghosts in the medium’s room, has since seen the most remarkable ghost of the year — not to say of the century.

A month ago Mr. Smith was sitting in his bedroom wishing that when the landlady boiled cabbage she would keep the kitchen door shut, and yearning for the infinite.

The hour was 11 o’clock P.M., and he was on the point of preparing for bed by throwing something at the tuneful cats on the back fence, when he suddenly became aware that he was not alone. A vague mysterious dread as of a large athletic creditor with a heavy club, oppressed him, and he would probably have fled into the hall were it not that he would have been certain to fall over the house dog and thus excite the suspicions of that hasty animal. He therefore seated himself calmly in a chair, with his back against the wall, and remarked to himself in a soothing and explanatory manner, “rats.” In another moment the rat hypothesis was overthrown by an elderly and fat female ghost, who quietly floated before his astonished vision, and gazed steadfastly into his terrified eyes.

Female, fat, and elderly ghosts are by no means novelties, but there was that in the appearance of this particular ghost which was well adapted to startle the coolest ghostseer. The ghost did not touch the floor, but floated about four feet above it, in a graceful, wavy manner, not unlike the swaying motion of a captive balloon. What chiefly attracted Mr. Smith’s attention, however, was the peculiar attitude of this ghostly female. She was poised in midair with her head downward, and her arms and legs extended in straight and rigid lines. Her dress was a voluminous black alpaca, somewhat rusty, and apparently water stained, and a wide belt of some unrecognizable material was fastened around her in the presumed region of the knees, which preserved Mr. Smith’s feelings from too violent a shock. Swaying gently to and fro, this peculiar ghost smiled sadly at Mr. Smith, and winked at him in a manner so trying to his sensibilities that he could scarcely bear to look at her. Had she winked with her mouth and smiled with either eye, his nerves would have borne the strain, but there was undoubtedly something very painful in a wink situated three or four inches below the locality of the accompanying smile.

Mr. Smith had finally achieved his longing to see a ghost, but after all, this reversed old lady failed to give him any real comfort. It was impossible to ask such a preposterous being any serious questions as to the other life, or to propose to her to become his guardian angel and spirit wife. Still, he was determined not to be afraid of her, and so, hastily bending down the ends of his hair with both hands he requested her to “avaunt” — such being, in his opinion, the most effective method of exorcism. But the ghost declined to do anything of the sort. She merely floated once around the room, occasionally banging her head on the edge of the trunk and the foot board of the bed, and then resumed her station at three yards’ distance from the too successful ghost seeker.

Now, Mr. Smith was one who firmly believed that he who lays his hand upon a woman, save in kindness and in a reasonably dark room, is a man whom it would be unfair to call a book agent. But a ghost is not, strictly speaking, a woman, and is not entitled to be treated as such. Holding this very reasonable view, Mr. Smith firmly requested his ghostly visitor to “get out,” thinking that she might have misunderstood the word “avaunt”; but, finding that she still persisted in dangling before him, he seized the poker and dealt her a violent blow. The poker passed directly through her shadowy form and smashed the lamp, and when the occupant of the next room, who had been awakened by the crash, rushed in with a candle, Mr. Smith was found in a fainting fit, beautifully diversified with kerosene and broken glass, but still grasping the poker in his rigid hand.

Since then Mr. Smith has seen no more ghosts, and does not wish to see any. Of course, the average person who reads of the floating female ghost will scornfully insist that Mr. Smith was either dreaming, drunk, or idiotic. Without going behind the face of the returns to investigate this question, it must be mentioned that he subsequently learned that years ago his room had been occupied by an old lady who was drowned by the sinking of a steamer on Lake Michigan, and whose body was found with a life preserver fastened about the knees, the effect of which was to cause her to float head downward. Was this historical fact connected with Mr. Smith’s vision, or did the two merely constitute a coincidence? This is a question which does not admit of a conclusive answer without careful investigation. Meanwhile, it may be cheerfully admitted that Mr. Smith’s ghost was decidedly the most remarkable ghost which has so far revisited the glimpses of the Wisconsin, or indeed the American, moon.

The spread of respectability

The recent flight of several eminently respectable gentlemen who had misappropriated the funds of other people, ought to attract attention to the rapid increase in numbers and power of the so-called respectable classes.

It needs no demonstration that the crime of abusing trusts and embezzling trust estates is one which is monopolized by the respectable classes. The tramp, the burglar, or the pickpocket, no matter how depraved he may be, is never known to run away with one or more hundred thousand dollars which have been confided to his care. Poverty, undoubtedly, tempts weak men to crime, but when has a poor workman, or even a common pauper, been guilty of embezzling the funds of a savings bank or of squandering at the gaming table or the Stock Exchange the property of widows or orphans? Crimes of this character are invariably committed by respectable men, and their growing frequency shows that the respectable classes are increasing to an alarming extent. Respectable men have gradually worked their way into positions of prominence and trust, until at the present moment they actually control most of our banks, insurance companies, and other moneyed corporations. As a rule, the presidents of these corporations are men of notorious and conspicuous respectability. Among the bank cashiers and treasurers who daily handle vast sums of money can be found men whose confirmed respectability has been a matter of common report for years. We have in this city become pretty well accustomed to the rule of the vicious elements of society, but were the statistics to be published which prove the extent to which the respectable classes control moneyed corporations and private trust funds, the community would be absolutely appalled.

The danger of this state of things is self evident. Experience has shown that when an eminently respectable man thinks that the time has come for him to take whatever money is within his reach, and to carry it with him to Belgium or Spain, nothing can prevent him from carrying out his purpose. Our first knowledge of his crime comes from the discovery that he has already made his escape; and our only consolation must be drawn from the assertions of his friends that they had never thought him capable of embezzlement. The blindness of such friends is difficult of explanation. Those who know the last respectable gentleman who has disappeared with the property of confiding persons, must have known that for years his respectability was notorious. He was not merely accused here and there, by malicious enemies, of having been occasionally respectable, but every man and woman who had ever heard his name knew that habitual and hardened respectability was his most prominent characteristic. Had he been a penniless outcast, sleeping at night on the Park benches, and begging whiskey from charitable liquor sellers, no one would have suspected him of an intention to embezzle the funds of a church or a savings bank; but why any one should have been surprised that so thoroughly respectable a man should have been proved a defaulter is explicable only upon the hypothesis that too partial friends willfully shut their eyes to his respectability and its natural tendencies.

How we can suppress the respectable classes and put, a stop to their depredations is not very clear, but it is evident that unless we are willing to have all the loose change in the country carried off to Europe by absconding defaulters, something must be done. It is worth while to inquire whether an “Habitual Respectability act,” modeled upon the “Habitual Criminals act,” might not prove useful. Under the latter act the police have the right to arrest any person who is known to be an habitual criminal, and the magistrates have the power to commit him to prison. It is not necessary for him to commit any overt act of crime, but the mere fact of his habitual criminality warrants his arrest and detention, as a preventive measure. Now, if the police were authorized and required to keep under surveillance all men who are known to be habitually addicted to respectability, the opportunities for successful crime would be greatly lessened. From time to time it would be well to arrest two or three preeminently respectable men, and to give them thirty days each on Blackwells Island, as a wholesome warning to their confederates in respectability. It is not pretended that respectability could be wholly suppressed by the passage and enforcement of such an act, but there is certainly good reason to suppose that the measure would have a restraining and beneficial influence.

After all, we must rely mainly upon the effect of education and careful moral training. Most of our leading, respectable men are the offspring of respectable parents, whose tendencies they inherit. We have no right to expect that a boy born in a hotbed of respectability, and accustomed from his infancy upward to associate exclusively with persons among whom respectability is esteemed as something manly and creditable, will be better than the influences which surround and form him. He will grow up an open and shamelessly respectable man, and he will naturally have funds committed to him, with which he will run away in due time. If we wish to successfully combat this giant evil, we must rescue the young and innocent from the respectable influences to which they are exposed, and carefully train them in a better way. By this means we may check their evil tendencies, and render them a blessing rather than a danger to the community. That things can be long permitted to go on as they are at present is manifestly impossible. To the danger to life from the bold and lawless police element is now added the danger to property from the alarming increase of the respectable class, and if we are successfully to cope with these two dangers, we must arouse ourselves to the task at once.

Social bandits

The bold bad men and women who make it a practice to outrage the sanctity of happy homes, by invading them under the hollow pretext of “surprise parties,” are now laying their plans and organizing their forces for a winter campaign of active crime. It must be admitted that they pursue their wicked business with a skill much greater than that of the average burglar. They never attack a house except in circumstances which insure the infliction of a satisfactory amount of misery upon the inmates. The knowledge requisite to insure this uniform success is, of course, the result of a careful system of espionage. Whenever a householder is laboring under a black eye, or whenever his wife has sent her only set of false teeth to the dentist’s with a view to repairs, the social bandits swoop down upon that devoted house in resistless force. Doubtless, the bandits are in many cases in league with the servants, and obtain from them the information which is subsequently turned to so nefarious an account. Still, even households in which there are no servants whatever are not safe from assault, and hence the conclusion is inevitable that the managers of surprise parties employ to a great extent their own private detectives. The knowledge of this fact adds to the terror in which the timid householder lives. He cannot tell what moment he may be inveigled into entertaining spies unawares. The plausible tract distributor, the ostensible returned missionary, or the alleged gas inspector may be the hired tool of social bandits; and while he is discussing topics of apparently the most innocent character, he may be noting the weak points of the household defenses, and fixing upon the best time for a night attack.

It is not creditable to the respectable part of the community that so little effort is made to repel the assaults of surprise parties. Usually the bandits succeed without difficulty in allaying the suspicions and abusing the confidence of the most faithful dogs, and thus reach the front door unharmed, and summon their victims to surrender. It is true that the bandits always attack in strong parties, but that is not a sufficient reason that they should not be resisted. Humiliating as it undoubtedly is, it cannot be denied that in nearly every instance, the summons is obeyed and the doors are opened. The enemy rushes in, and all the horrors of a moral sack immediately follow. The children, awakened by the uproar, yell dismally from their rooms. The trembling matron in her wrapper and with one hemisphere of her head in curl papers, is surrounded by heartless wretches who mock her misery with protestations of pretended friendship, while the man of the house, in slippers and dressing gown, is made wretchedly conscious of the ungainly figure which he presents by contrast with gay, well dressed and handsome bandits. Occasionally the malefactors bring with them refreshments of a peculiarly greasy nature, which they scatter among the books and prints on the drawing room table, and trample into the carpet. The mental anguish and the material devastation wrought by a ruthless surprise party cannot be contemplated by a humane person without a shudder; and were the true history of a single season of American surprise parties to be written, the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria would seem in comparison, trivial, if not positively pleasant and soothing.

So far as can be learned, there is but one instance in which a surprise party has been successfully worsted and beaten off. This glorious achievement was the work of an ingenious and determined man residing in Chicago. Having reason to expect an attack, he severed the wire of the front door bell and securely riveted the bell handle to the doorpost. He then sawed through the fastenings of the doorpost, and, arming himself with a large club, lay in ambush behind the parlor window. The bandits approached in a solid phalanx at least thirty strong. A hoary headed reprobate who had achieved an infamous notoriety as a ringleader in surprise parties, donation riots, and other scenes of violence and crime, led the way, and boldly attempted to pull the door bell. Urged on by his malignant disposition and a false report that the head of the house was suffering from a nervous headache, he pulled the bell handle with all his force. The treacherous doorpost gave way, crushing him in its fall, and sweeping the legs of a dozen bandits from under them as it rolled heavily down the steps. With a despairing yell the miscreants who were yet unhurt fled away, and the heroic householder sallied forth and humanely put the wounded out of their misery with his club. In the morning the dustman removed thirteen lifeless bodies, while a fourteenth bandit, who still showed signs of life was carried to a hospital for purposes of vivisection.

May we not hope that this thrilling story will infuse new courage into the breasts of timid householders? It proves that the social bandit is not invincible, and that only courage and determination are needed to put him to flight. In this land of chemical engines and hot water boilers it is folly to say that a brave man cannot defend his house against a score of bandits, whose bravery is mainly due to the impunity which has hitherto attended their exploits. They who would be free, themselves must keep the front door locked. When the enemy rings the bell and summons the garrison, let him be met with a shower of hot water and played upon with a carbonic acid fire extinguisher. If he proves intractable to mild measures, let the revolver and rifle accomplish their perfect work. It is time that a free people should rise in their majesty and remark that they will no longer be intimidated by surprise parties. If this great evil can be successfully resisted in the very heart of Chicago, it can surely be attacked in cities where civilization and Christianity prevail, and where there exists at least a vague impression that violence and crime are to a certain extent undesirable.

Going to the dogs

It is the professed opinion of numerous timid and dissatisfied souls that this country is going to the dogs. Neither the particular species of dogs, nor the exact quantity of them, is specified, but that our beloved land is rapidly going to a good many different kinds of dogs is a conclusion to which every credulous person must come who listens to the despairing prophecies of discontented old gentlemen. Now, there is nothing to be gained by shutting our eyes to the possibilities of the future. When unpleasant people make what at first glance seems to be an unpleasant prophecy, it is much better to boldly look the matter in the face. When we are told that we are going to the dogs, let us examine the character of the dogs, and inquire what would be the result if we were really to go to them. It is far better to know and to be prepared for the worst that can possibly happen than it is to go forward in foolhardy confidence until the crisis is at hand, and we are compelled to face it without preparation, and hampered by the demoralization produced by a terrible surprise. It may be possible that the dogs are already aware that the country is shortly coming into their paws, and that they are qualifying themselves for the vast responsibility that is to be thrust upon them. At any rate, they have recently given new evidences of their wonderful intellectual powers and extraordinary nobility of soul. The other day a Chicago dog, who had been left at home in sole charge of a number of young children, whose parents had just stepped out for a friendly divorce, noticed that the youngest child had managed to set her dress on fire. Instantly that admirable dog threw the child down on the floor, tore off its garments, and saved its life, although, in the effort, he sustained burns which will probably disfigure his tail forever. Our readers have doubtless heard of the Oshkosh dog, who had won a brilliant reputation by dragging scores of drowning people out of the water, but who, on seeing a wandering book agent struggling in the lake, into which he had accidentally fallen, turned a series of joyful somersaults on the bank, and then, fearing that the book agent would struggle into shallow water, deliberately swam out to meet him, and held his head under until the good work was fully accomplished. Then there is the story of the dog belonging to a colored preacher residing in Kentucky, into whose house his neighbor’s chickens were in the habit of breaking in the dead of night in order to intimidate him, and whom the same skeptical neighbor accused of having wickedly robbed his hen roost. One day that intelligent dog determined to avert all suspicion from his master. The very next time that a chicken broke down his master’s front door he seized the intruder, carried it to the backyard of the leading Presbyterian Elder, where he carefully pulled out all its feathers, and then carried the denuded corpse home to his appreciative master. And then there is the seafaring dog belonging to a down east schooner, who, meeting an unhappy friend in Water street with a tin kettle tied to his tail by a Jong string, carefully took a turn with the string around a telegraph post, made it fast with a running bowline, and then taking his friend by the collar, hauled away until the sudden unshipping of his tail set the insulted animal at liberty. And, finally, brief reference may be made to the commercial ability of the terrier dog of Cincinnati, who, being extremely skilful in the capture of rats, was accustomed to retail them to the local cats at a fair price in current bones, and who so thoroughly comprehended the modern spirit of trade that he was in the habit of offering attractive premiums in mice to the cat who should bring him the largest quantity of bones within a given period.

If the country is really going to such intelligent dogs as these, what is there in the prospect that need fill us with alarm? Surely, a Congress of dogs would make fewer tedious speeches — except when debating questions relating to the full moon — than would a Congress of American statesmen, and would display quite as much intelligence in grappling with the financial problem as is displayed by the average inflationists. It may be objected that the dogs would legislate in their own interests, but it must be remembered that any legislation aiming at rendering bones abundant and cheap would necessarily benefit mankind, by reducing the price of butchers’ meat. As to oppressive game laws in relation to rats, they could be passed only by a Congress with a large terrier majority, and it is extremely improbable that, in a country where terriers are in an unquestioned minority, they would ever be able to gain control of either branch of Congress.

When we think of the dignified appearance which would be presented by a Senate of Newfoundland and mastiff dogs sitting gravely on their tails, and listening to a profound argument from a Pennsylvania dog in favor of protection to American bones, we can hardly deny that the average Senate quarreling over a question of pig iron would suffer by comparison. Of course, in so large a body as the House of Representative Dogs, a number of curs and Spitz dogs would doubtless be found, but the good sense and patriotism of the setters, pointers, and terriers would keep the disorderly element in subjection; and we may be very certain that in no event would such a House be capable of an attempt to throw the country into anarchy in order to make a wild, hopeless scramble for the public bones. Worse things may happen to us than a national going to the dogs, and such a canine catastrophe would be far better than our deliverance into the hands of unscrupulous and reckless demagogues.

“Enoch Arden”

When Mr. Tennyson wrote that popular poem “Enoch Arden,” he probably meant well enough, but he ought to have foreseen the inevitable consequences of his act. From that day to this no husband has ever returned home from a temporary absence and found his wife in the possession of a substitute without having his domestic difficulties paraded in the local newspapers, and himself described as “another Enoch Arden.” In this country, especially, the annual crop of Enoch Ardens has been enormous.

“Out of the golden, remote, wild west, Where the sea without shore is”

a vast procession of wandering husbands is continually winding its way homeward to Eastern hearthstones, where other and superfluous husbands are comfortably trespassing One would naturally think that no really chivalric husband, after going alone to California and residing for a dozen years in a land flowing with bowie knives and revolvers, without once writing to his deserted wife, would dream of returning home to earn the title of “another Enoch Arden.” Yet the wandering American husband always comes back at last. He may be cast upon the waters in a Pacific Mail steamship, but instead of being drowned or burned he is sure to return after many years. And when he does return, so potent is the influence of Mr. Tennyson’s preposterous teachings upon him that he always tries to surpass the original Enoch Arden in unprofitable idiocy.

It will be remembered that Mr. Tennyson’s hero, after spending several years on a lonely island, in the unworthy occupation of reciting doleful blank verse to the grieved but patient monkeys, finally took passage for England, and returned to the cottage where he had left his wife. Most men in his circumstances would have gone boldly to the front door, and, after tenderly embracing their wives, would have asked where on earth their slippers had been hidden, and whether they were ever to have any supper. Arden, however, preferred to look through the dining room windows; to gaze upon the apparent felicity of his wife’s new husband, and to make a rough estimate of the number of new children who infested the house. After this disreputable proceeding he withdrew from the window, rolled on the vegetables in the back garden, and finally went away to a cheap boardinghouse, where he died on a suspicious looking cot bedstead, after having told his landlady his true name, and thus made it certain that his wife’s matrimonial mistake would become the theme of universal gossip.

Absurd as this poor creature’s conduct was, Mr. Tennyson and the dramatists who have fitted the story for the stage have convinced nearly all wandering husbands that they ought to do likewise. When the American Enoch Arden returns from California to Oshkosh, he does not, indeed, descend to the meanness of surreptitiously gazing through the back window, but he enters his house stealthily and under cover of night, and creates a wanton and useless degree of embarrassment in the family. The wife hurriedly sends both kinds of children to bed lest they should ask troublesome questions, and then bursts into tears to avoid taking an active part in the ensuing conversation between the two husbands. Then the personator of Enoch Arden nobly says that, heartbroken as he is, he will not make his wife unhappy, but will go forth and wander, leaving her to reflect that she is living with a man who is not lawfully married to her, and that her conduct has made her real husband an outcast and a homeless vagabond. The next day, after having mentioned the matter to the editor of the Oshkosh Commercial Eagle, he hastens to his California wife, feeling that he has, on the whole, proved himself as intelligent and noble as any Enoch Arden on record.

Had Mr. Tennyson never written that unfortunate poem, the wandering husband, on learning that his original wife had promoted another man to his place, would stay av.‘ay altogether, or else would return with the intention of either promptly insisting upon his rights or of effecting a compromise. Perhaps the latter course would be more in keeping with the spirit of our institutions, provided the second husband is possessed of money and a desire to avoid scandal. If not, he should be immediately evicted by the strong arm of the law, and whatever improvements in the shape of bonnets and furs he may have put upon the disputed property during his term of occupancy should be confiscated by the real owner. It is safe to say that in the absence of the Tennysonian precedent, disputes between lawful and trespassing husbands would invariably be settled in some such manly and intelligible way, and the so-called Enoch Arden who returns home merely to make everybody uncomfortable, and goes away again without having reaped the slightest benefit from his visit, would be absolutely unknown.

The dawn of a better day is at last heralded by the able conduct of a wandering husband who returned to Boston last week, and is now mentioned by the provincial press as anew and startling species of Enoch Arden. This man walked boldly into his house, and, finding an unnecessary husband upon the premises, quietly sent for a policeman, had the intruder removed to the sidewalk, and then, putting on the abandoned slippers of his rival, calmly sat down to enjoy his cigar and the evening paper. Pie shed no tears, and he upbraided no one; he merely took possession of his own wife and furniture, and rid himself of the superfluous husband in the simplest possible way. The contrast between this man’s prompt and efficient course and the preposterous conduct of the usual Enoch Arden is so manifestly creditable to the former, that it is to be hoped that hereafter the influence of Mr. Tennyson and the number of Enoch Arden’s imitators will steadily decrease.

Riflewomen

One bright spring morning the members of a California rifle association were engaged in the great moral duty of shooting at a mark when a lady, carrying a long range rifle, decorated with the usual quantity of surveying instruments and meteorological machines, made her appearance, and announced that she intended to shoot. The astonished riflemen did not dare to interpose any objection, but flew madly towards the target in order to obtain a safe position. The unruffled lady — though, on second thought, she may have had more or less ruffles concealed about her person — stretched herself upon the ground, tied herself into the intricate knot usually called “the Creedmoor position,” shut her eyes firmly, and fired. To the dismay of the riflemen, she actually hit the target at the distance of a thousand yards, thereby seriously imperiling the lives of those who had sought safety in its vicinity. It was evident that something must be promptly done to check the threatened effusion of blood, and the lady was therefore hurriedly presented with a gold medal, and lured from the ground before she had time to fire a second shot.

Californians have been so long in the habit of having themselves shot in the course of social “difficulties” that they ought not to be seriously alarmed because they are now threatened with the devastating rifles of ambitious riflewomen. It is, however, a matter of very great importance to riflemen of other States that a woman has set her sex the example of shooting at a mark other than an objectionable husband or an unsatisfactory lover. Women have already invaded the domains of physicians, lawyers, and clergymen, but if they are bitten by a desire to become expert riflewomen, the insecurity of life and limb which will ensue will be a serious, if not fatal, check to the prosperity of the country.

It is quite possible that by careful study women may learn to distinguish between the muzzle and the breech of a rifle, although they are undoubtedly born with the idea that the breech, being much larger than the muzzle, is the active and efficient end of a gun. It is when they have learned the truth as to this matter, and rashly fancy themselves able to load and fire, that the real danger to the community will become imminent. Unfortunately, the cartridge of a breech loading rifle is so constructed that it cannot be inserted wrong end first; and hence women can hardly make any useful mistake in loading their weapons. If we had a rifle which, when carelessly loaded, would discharge itself backward, the slaughter resulting from female rifle practice would be greatly curtailed, and would, moreover, be of a kind which would tend to discourage the sex from meddling with firearms. Such a rifle will, of course, be invented as soon as the number of riflewomen demonstrates its necessity, but before that time our fair land may be covered with the corpses of unhappy men who chance to be within range of a rifle wielded by feminine hands.

The riflewoman will have no insuperable difficulty in assuming the “Creedmoor position,” though she will naturally kill a few persons by accidentally twisting the hammer of her rifle in her back hair while tying herself into the requisite quantity of knots. It is when she shuts her eyes and aims at the vague target which, to her imagination, extend along the horizon through an arc of 180° that the chief slaughter will begin. That she cannot fire without previously shutting her eyes will be universally conceded by every one who has the slightest knowledge of her sex, and hence the direction which may be taken by her ball will be wholly a matter of chance. The innocent boy who may be blithely stealing apples in a tree a hundred yards to the right of the target will be as liable to be hit as is the man who is standing by the riflewoman’s side, and the yells of those who are unexpectedly hit in painful places will be the only means of ascertaining whither the wandering bullets have sped. Of course, most persons will regard the space immediately in front of the target as the safest position, but even here they cannot be sure of immunity. The rifle woman may suddenly take it into her head to aim at the north star, and thus hit the very center of the bull’s eye. The simple truth is that there will be no such thing as safety within a radius of at least fifteen hundred yards of a woman with a rifle, and her path to and from the rifle ground will be strewn with the victims of accidental discharges.

This is a picture which may fill us with alarm. The poet has forcibly, and apparently prophetically, said, “that angels rush in where riflemen fear to tread,” and there is every reason to fear that the example of the California riflewoman will inspire her contemporary angels with a thirst for target shooting. Fortunately, however, we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We cannot expect to keep women out of Creedmoor and other rifle grounds by force, but we can call to our aid the fierce and terrible field mouse. With a little encouragement in the nature of crumbs, Creedmoor can be made, in the course of another season, to swarm with mice. Let it be once thoroughly understood that to assume the “Creedmoor position” on any rifle ground is to deliver one’s self to the careful and conscientious scrutiny of hungry and curious mice, and no woman will venture within miles of the place. It would not be necessary to go to the extreme length of rats, or even to circulate rumors of suppositious snakes. The mice alone would insure Creedmoor from female invasion, and if husbands and brothers would aid in the good work by stealthily concealing mice in the cartridge boxes of riflewomen, it is morally certain that feminine zeal for rifle shooting would suffer a sudden and complete eclipse.

Butter culture

Pisciculture is a business of such recent origin that it is still regarded by the public as an interesting novelty. More novel, more curious, and far more interesting is the business of butter culture, which, like pisciculture, is an aquatic industry. Extensive butter beds have been planted in the Thames, at London, and are yielding large and profitable harvests. Within a few years we may expect to see the slow old fashioned methods of the cow and churn wholly superseded by the more rapid results achieved by river butter culture. Dairymen will retire from the butter arena, and, under the supervision of able and intelligent Boards of Butter Commissioners, the growth of butter will be brought to such a degree of perfection as to place that useful compound within the reach of the poorest householder in the country.

The London Medical Examiner of a late date contains an interesting description of the process of planting and growing butter. The butter culturist selects a nice muddy locality in the bed of a river flowing through a large town, and carefully plants his butter seeds. The bed must not be more than a foot below the surface of the water at low tide, and it must be constantly swept by a strong current. Butter cannot be grown in a pure mountain stream, but only in a river which receives a large amount of sewage, by which the butter plants are nourished. Having selected an eligible bed, the butter culturist sets out a number of small globes of the size of a filbert, made of cork, hair, and woody fibers. As is well known to analytical chemists who have experimented upon the common butter of boardinghouse tables, these small globes contain all the essential ingredients of butter except its oleaginous parts. Of course, the butter culturist is not strictly confined to the use of cork, hair, and woody fibers, but may also add hairpins and buttons in quantities to suit his own taste. Having, however, decided upon the first ingredients of his butter, he plants his seed globes in the mud of his butter bed, placing them upon short but stout stalks either of wire or wood. The seed rapidly germinates, and, under the genial influence of the sewage, the plant soon reaches maturity. When fully ripe, it is gathered by boys with bare legs and carried to the butter press, where it undergoes certain refining processes. The ripe butter plant presents the appearance of a ball of dark colored wagon grease, through which hair, particles of corks, and bits of woody fibers are woven by the action of the tide. Its oleaginous particles are, of course, derived from the refuse grease which finds its way from kitchens and manufactories into the sewers; and though the ripe butter plant is neither palatable nor attractive in its appearance, it is readily transformed, by a cheap process of refining and flavoring, into as vigorous, substantial butter as the most exacting boardinghouse keeper could desire.

The Medical Examiner remarks that “the process by which the questionable fat is ultimately manufactured into an article of food unobjectionable to the eye and palatable to the taste is necessarily exciting public curiosity.” All judicious people will agree that to indulge one’s curiosity concerning the manner in which any kind of butter is made, is worse than idle. The wise man eats his butter and drinks his beer without seeking to know their origin. Were the boldest of us to try to trace the pedigree of pure Orange County butter back to the cows of the Brooklyn distilleries, the result might be extremely disastrous. That way madness lies. Between butter and science there is an irrepressible conflict, and if we are not ready to abandon butter altogether, we must put blind faith in its truth and purity, and resolutely decline to pry into its origin. There is no half way between the humble acceptance of butter and the total rejection of all edible grease, and those persons who, according to the Medical Examiner, are curious as to the process of converting the fruit of the butter plant into an article of food, are entering upon a path which will lead them to reject all butter and to deny the very existence of lard.

If, under the fertilizing influence of sewage, a little hair and a trifle of woody fiber and cork can be made to develop into butter it is quite possible that many other articles of food can be thus artificially propagated. The chemical basis of much of the sugar of commerce is admitted to be sand and starch. It is not quite possible that, if small globes of sand and starch were to be planted in the Thames, they would grow and blossom into brown sugar? Might not pure corn fed lard be grown from germs of bristles, dashed with brine; and is it not possible to sow a handful of buttons and bits of dog collars with the well founded hope of reaping a harvest of hash 1 The ordinary boardinghouse kitchen gardener will doubtless look upon these suggestions as wild and impracticable, but now that we know that the Thames sewage, when tickled with hair, will laugh into butter, it would be rash to reject as impossible any horticultural scheme which relies for its success upon the marvelously fertilizing power of the London sewage.

Of course, there are timid people who, after learning that butter culture is an established industry, will decline to use any butter unless they are personally cognizant of its close connection with some reputable cow. Is, then, the cow cleaner than the river in which she wades, and is the stable more savory than the sewer? These are questions which each one must settle for himself; but except in those cases where one’s butter is obviously stronger than one’s faith, it is probably best to eat it boldly and to waive the question of its origin as one of those things which no prudent fellow should try to find out.

The mosquito hypothesis

Among the most recent discoveries in medical science is that which an ingenious scientific person claims to have made in regard to mosquitoes. Hitherto, the opinion has universally prevailed that the mosquito is a small but vicious insect which displays a preternatural skill in forcing its way through the most elaborate wire and lace barriers, in order to feast on the blood of plethoric humanity. A theory which boldly denies the existence of such an insect, and which interprets all the alleged facts as to its appearance and habits as the symptoms of a malarial disease, certainly merits attention, even if it is not conclusively proved to be true.

It has long been noticed that the so-called mosquitoes are sure to attack persons who rent or purchase cottages in suburban villages. There are scores of towns in the neighborhood of this city, the inhabitants of which will solemnly assure any one who proposes to take up his residence among them, that they have never seen or heard a mosquito. Nevertheless, the newcomer and his entire family will be attacked by mosquitoes within a very few days after they have occupied their suburban cottage. This fact can hardly be misinterpreted. It means that the mosquitoes only attack unacclimated persons. In this respect they differ from all other representatives of the animal creation, and bear a striking resemblance to malarial fevers. It was this peculiar characteristic of the mosquito scourge which first suggested the hypothesis that it is really a disease, and it is certainly remarkable how closely facts fit themselves to this hypothesis.

An attack of the mosquito malady — if we assume that it is a disease — begins with a feverish state of the system, accompanied by more or less cerebral congestion. The patient hears a peculiar buzzing sound, due to the rushing of the blood through the arteries lying behind the ears. He becomes extremely irritable, and in many cases this irritability verges closely upon insanity. In severe attacks patients have frequently been known to seize pillows or other available weapons, and pursue imaginary foes about the room, breaking crockery and fragile furniture, and using language of a violent and painfully profane character. The buzzing in the ears is either accompanied or almost immediately followed by a fulness of the blood vessels of the eyes, which causes the patient to perceive spots or motes apparently floating in the air. It is these spots which have hitherto been mistaken for living insects, and dignified with the name of “mosquitoes.” Their nonexistence ought to have been long ago suggested by the uniform failure of all the patient’s efforts to capture them. Fully believing that the floating spots which obscure his vision are actual and malignant insects, he strikes wild and terrible blows at them, and although he is maddened by the supposed celerity with which they evade his blows, he is never discouraged by his repeated failures. Occasionally he captures a harmless gnat, which he fancies is one of his imaginary tormentors, but it maybe safely asserted that there is not a case on record in which the capture of one or more gnats has had the slightest effect in diminishing the number of the supposed mosquitoes.

The identity between the alleged insects supposed to be seen by the sufferer from the mosquito malady and the floating spots resulting from a congested state of the vessels of the eye, satisfactorily explains the unvarying failure of mosquito nets to prevent the ingress of mosquitoes. Every crevice by which mosquitoes might be supposed to enter the patient’s room may be carefully closed with strong iron network, but nevertheless the alleged mosquitoes will be seen and heard. This is obviously inconsistent with the theory that the mosquito is an insect. If such were the case, the barriers that keep out flies and wasps would keep out other insects, instead of proving hollow, or, more strictly speaking, reticulated mockeries, in the case of the most exasperating insect of all. And yet thousands of people annually fence themselves in with mosquito nets and never once ask themselves why these precautions are uniformly worthless.

The congestive symptoms are rarely of long duration. After two or three hours they pass away and the patient reaches the third stage of the disease. This is ushered in by an itching sensation which usually affects the face, neck, and extremities, but which in many instances extends over the entire surface of the skin. This itching is followed by an eruption of red pustules, having a small white center and surrounded by local inflammation and swelling. If these pustules are not disturbed, they will vanish in the course of twenty-four hours, and the patient will recover. In most instances, however, they are violently rubbed by the patient, in a vain attempt to allay the irritation of the skin which accompanies them, and the result is to bring about a relapse into the feverish condition with which the attack commerced.

It will thus be seen that the disease is as brief as it is violent. It rarely lasts over twelve hours, and in many cases runs its course in a still briefer period. Fresh attacks may occur day after day, and there is no evidence that the susceptibility of the system to the disease is ever eradicated until the patient has undergone at least a year of acclimatization, and has bought a house. Children and women are more liable to the disease than men, and among the former class of patients the characteristic eruption is usually much more extensive than it is among the latter. So far as is known, the disease is never fatal, but that it is extremely painful there is no room for question.

The fact that it is common in damp and swampy regions, and that fever and cerebral congestion are among its symptoms, indicate its malarial origin. It is also noticeable that it prevails only during warm weather, and that its germs, like those of yellow fever, are rendered inert by frost. Quinine, aconite, and belladonna are among the remedies which seem to be indicated by its symptoms, but what is especially needed is some prophylactic which will render the system proof against it.

Such is briefly the new theory. It is certainly plausible, but it remains to be seen whether it can make any headway against the prejudices of those who prefer the testimony of their own senses to the fine spun theories of scientific men.

Justice to stoves

In the Fall the rural householder brings forth the stove from its six months’ imprisonment, and with fear and trembling undertakes the dangerous task of putting it up. Few fatal stove casualties are reported by the press, but the sudden and enormous increase in the demand for arnica and divorces which is shown by the records of rural druggists and rural courts, and which occurs every Fall, is a sad proof of the danger which menaces the man who grapples with a large and violent stove.

There is a melancholy sameness in the manner in which the stove displays its unwillingness to be handled by man. Like the scorpion, which argues with its tail, the stove uses its articulated pipe as its instrument of attack and defense. So long as the householder confines himself to carrying the stove from place to place, it rarely attacks him; but no sooner does he meddle with its pipe than its fury is aroused. His first effort is to connect the lower joints of the pipe with one another, and here is he met by a determined obstinacy which is worthy of an independent and self poised pig, or even of an experienced army mule. The joints refuse to come together, and bend all their energy towards gratifying a fiendish thirst for human fingers. Sometimes, after a long struggle, the wrong joints are forced together, and when the householder discovers his mistake, they refuse to be separated except at the price of more blood and additional scraps of cuticle. Nothing but cool bravery and determined perseverance will succeed in properly joining the three lower joints of a stovepipe, and when this victory has been won, the worst of the battle is yet to come. It is not until the householder has mounted on a stepladder and undertakes to place the upper “elbow” on the pipe and to insert it in the chimney that the strength, activity, and malignity of the stovepipe is fully displayed. Its favorite feat is to release itself suddenly from the hands of its antagonist, strike his foot with its whole weight and its sharpest edge, and then to roll on the floor in evident convulsions of joy. Occasionally the upper “elbow” makes a vicious plunge for the householder’s head, and instances are on record in which it has violently torn his nose from its foundations, or driven its fangs deep into his skull. Efforts to subdue it with clubs or hammers are seldom effective. Usually, the more the pipe is pounded the more unruly it becomes, and the more resolutely it refuses to enter the chimney hole or to adhere to the stove.

Startling as the assertion may seem, it is by no means certain that these terrible conflicts are necessary, or that mankind cannot live on peaceable terms with stoves and stovepipes. It is an assumption, which is unsustained by satisfactory evidence, that the stove is necessarily untamable. Buffon, it is true, asserted that “the stove possesses a fierce and indomitable nature, which cannot be tamed,” and most subsequent naturalists have been content to adopt his opinion. Mr. Huxley, however, who, as an animal expert, is certainly at the head of his profession, disputes Buffon’s assertion, and argues that inasmuch as the law recognizes the right of property in stoves, it implies that they are ferae naturae. and can therefore be tamed. He has never actually tamed a stove himself, for theory and not practice is his specialty, but his opinion is certainly entitled to respect, and is sufficient to show that the scientific world is not unanimous as to the alleged untamable nature of the stove.

There is good reason to believe that, were the stove treated kindly and intelligently, it would become as harmless as the grate or the furnace. Professional stove fanciers who deal in stoves never have any difficulty with them, and can always put up a stove without exciting it to the slightest demonstration of hostility. The average householder is probably to a very great extent responsible for the violence and bad temper of which he accuses his stove. He keeps it during the summer in close confinement, where it mentally rusts and naturally grows morose. He does not make himself familiar with it and accustom it to be handled, but relies wholly upon his brute strength to keep it in subjection. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that when he mounts the stepladder for the decisive struggle, he is almost invariably hot and excited. The presence of his wife, who stands near the foot of the ladder, expressing those wild and impracticable views as to the uses of the hammer, which are so characteristic of her sex and so well adapted to madden the other, has also its share in increasing his nervousness and in rendering him unfit to deal with his difficult task. In these circumstances he is apt to resort to harsh and violent treatment when it is not needed, and he ought not to wonder if he thereby excites the fear and resentment of which he subsequently complains. The mere fact that when a man is standing on a stepladder with a stovepipe in his arms he betrays a readiness to undervalue his wife’s intellect, and to accuse her of “everlastingly chattering,” speaks volumes as to his state of mind. The disasters incident to the season of putting up stoves are proofs, not of the wildness of the stoves, but of the irritability of husbands, and it may be safely asserted that an irritable man is unfit to deal with stoves or with any domestic animals.

Let us, then, instead of persistently treating the stove as though it were the inveterate enemy of the race, try the effect of kindness and gentleness. Weeks before the stove is to be put up, the pipe should be brought out and accustomed to the presence of the family. Its joints should be allowed to lie on the rug, or under the table, and from time to time they should be gently brought in contact, so as to accustom them to their approaching duty. When the hour for putting up the stove arrives, the householder should send his wife out of town, and after engaging a large Irishman with a club to remain within call in case of any extreme violence on the part of the stove, he should proceed to put it up alone. Possibly, this course of treatment might fail of securing the desired end, but at all events it is worth trying. The assumption that intelligent men cannot live in peace with stoves is simply disgraceful, and all humane persons should be anxious to prove its falsity without delay.

Inexpensive girls

Every intelligent man knows that what is popularly called “perpetual motion” is an impossibility; nevertheless the constant idiot who believes that he can make an engine which will furnish its own motive power never loses faith in perpetual motion. He goes on, from year to year, spending his money in cogwheels and other vain machinery, and dies in the full conviction that if he could have lived a fortnight longer he would have proved the practicability of perpetual motion.

Closely analogous to this curious delusion is the theory that it is possible to construct a girl who shall live without food. As science has conclusively shown, the mysterious object commonly’ known as the human girl is merely an engine which consumes caramels and other miscellaneous fuel, and which is built of weak materials, which cannot last much longer than seventy years. To invent a girl that will furnish her own motive power and will consume no fuel whatever is as impossible as to invent any other variety of perpetual motion machine. And yet ignorant persons are constantly engaged in this hopeless task, and about once in every year we are told that the desired girl has been successfully constructed and is in full operation. The latest announcement of the kind comes from the town of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which boasts the possession of a girl who has eaten nothing for six consecutive months, but who has nevertheless been in constant motion during that entire period.

There is no doubt that, were it possible to manufacture girls who could live without food, they would speedily supersede the kind of girl now in use. At present girls are undeniably dear. The first cost of a well built girl is not very great, but the necessity of supplying her with food three times a day entails a constant outlay of money.

There is no economy in feeding her with an inferior quality of food, or in diminishing the amount which she is calculated to consume. Scientific persons have ascertained the precise number of “units of work” that are contained in a single pound of pure caramels, and if a girl is constructed so as to perform a certain amount of flirtation, piano playing, and novel reading upon one pound of caramels, she can do only half as much work upon half a pound. The worst of it is, the girl requires to be regularly supplied with food and to have her steam constantly kept up, so to speak, no matter whether there is any demand for her services or not. In this respect she is decidedly inferior to the ordinary steam engine, the fires of which may be banked or even entirely extinguished when the engine is not in use. No such expedient can be adopted in the case of a girl, for as soon as she is deprived of food her machinery falls to pieces, and she becomes entirely valueless. It is true that occasionally she may be sold for a trifling sum to the junk department of some medical college, but the demand for scrap girl is usually very limited.

There would obviously be a great saving effected if this daily consumption of fuel could be avoided. If, during Lent, for example, girls could have their fires banked, and their machinery could remain inactive until they should be needed to set society once more in motion, the saving thereby effected would be enormous. Every scientific person, however, knows that this is impossible so long as the law of nature, which strictly prohibits the production of effects without adequate causes, remains in force. When, therefore, the inventor of the Sheboygan girl gravely asserts she has used no food for six months, and is, nevertheless, in good running order, Ave know that he is an impostor. It is admitted that the girl does not develop as much power as an ordinary girl of the same dimensions would develop. She walks slowly, and a local young man who has experimented with her asserts that she swings on the front gate in a feeble and listless manner, and that her stroke, when engaged in croquet, is weaker than that of the average theological student. Still, the fact that she is capable of any work whatever proves that she consumes food. The quantity may be, and probably is, smaller than that used by other girls, but that she is regularly supplied with food is an absolute certainty.

The inventor claims that the girl consumes her own adipose tissue by some mysterious system of absorption, and that as fast as it is consumed it reappears in its original shape. Were any one to assert that the smoke and gases arising from the coal consumed by a Cunarder could be collected and solidified into precisely the original quantity of coal, and that this could be again used as fuel, he would be instantly advised to go west and edit a Wisconsin paper. Yet there are persons not entirely devoid of intelligence who really believe that the Sheboygan girl constantly accomplishes quite as impossible a feat. When it is remembered that they believe this solely upon the bare word of her inventor, we can hardly wonder that purchasers have been found for the stock of the Keely Motor Company.

There is a very simple way of exposing the false claims made for this impossible girl. Let her inventor allow her to be thoroughly searched for concealed sausage and other condensed food, and then let her be confined for a week in a cell where no food can be secretly brought to her. Before that time has expired the girl will either beg for food or her machinery will have ceased to act. Of course, the inventor will not consent to do this, since it is much more profitable for him to exhibit his girl at popular prices, but his unwillingness to allow her to be thoroughly tested will be a sufficient proof that he is imposing upon the Sheboygan public and raising false hopes among unscientific fathers who are dissatisfied with the annual cost of operating girls of the usual pattern.

Women in the pulpit

The dismissal of Rev. Miss Phoebe Hanaford by her congregation is a matter of general notoriety. In her case the experiment of a female Pastor has proved a failure. So far as can be learned the only charge brought against Miss Hanaford was the charge that she was not a man. This she attempted neither to palliate nor deny, and she was therefore deprived of her pastorate in order that her place might be filled by a man.

Those enthusiastic reformers who advocate the admission of women to the ministry have uniformly looked at only one side of the matter. They insist that inasmuch as a woman can write and deliver a sermon at least as well as a majority of male ministers, there can be no valid argument against a female ministry. They fail, however, to perceive the inevitable effect which female pastors must have upon their congregations. If the order of nature is reversed in the pulpit, it will also be reversed in the congregation. Nature will maintain the just balance of the sexes in ecclesiastical affairs, and she will not permit a pretty woman to be substituted for an ascetic clergyman without striving to produce corresponding changes among the flock.

When the experiment was first tried in a rural New England town some twenty years ago, it was clamorously asserted that it had brilliantly succeeded. In a short time, however, acute observers noticed that the young men of the congregation were undergoing a curious change. They became abnormally regular in their attendance at meeting, and although they showed a stern determination to occupy the front seats, they also manifested a winning modesty of manner previously unknown in the history of their sex. They would sit with upturned eyes gazing at their pastor and drinking in her eloquence with every token of earnest admiration. Sometimes they would be affected to tears, and would hide their eyes with perfumed handkerchiefs. ‘In casual conversation they always mentioned the minister as “our dear pastor,” and constantly quoted her as authority upon all questions of morals and manners. A little later and the price of worsted began to rise. The cause of this was soon known. Every one of the thirty-four young men was engaged in working slippers for his pastor. As this was a duty to which they were unaccustomed, they naturally spoiled an immense quantity of worsted, and mislaid or broke innumerable needles. Before the pastor had been six months in the pulpit she had received thirty-four pairs of slippers, nine-tenths of which were embroidered with a cross, while the remainder bore, in letters of white floss silk, the legend, “Bless my pastor.”

After the slippers should have come, in regular ecclesiastical order, the usual smoking caps, but it was obvious that the latter would have been grossly inappropriate gifts to a female pastor. Much ingenuity was displayed in providing substitutes. One young man knit out of scarlet worsted a “cloud” for the pastoral head, and another braided with his own hands a magnificent “switch” of back hair, the material for which he purchased from a professional hairdresser. The majority of the young men, however, expressed their pious devotion in embroidered handkerchiefs and lace collars, although it is rumored that an ill advised widower, who was perhaps the most outspoken of the pastor’s admirers, sent her a — that is to say, a garment made by his own hands out of the best quality of steel and modeled upon one formerly the property of his deceased wife, it is further asserted that his present was promptly returned to him, and that he therefore left town in a depressed state of mind, carrying his blighted hoops with him.

As the pastor did not wear a gown or surplice, the young men, after they had overwhelmed her with slippers and handkerchiefs, were at a loss what to do next. They finally hit upon the happy thought of making a magnificent overskirt of red cashmere, embroidered with blue, and ornamented with alternate yellow silk dogs and green silk horseshoes in the angle of each scallop. One of the young men surreptitiously helped himself to a pattern from his sister’s wardrobe, and produced it, under a strict vow of secrecy, to his admiring associates at their next Dorcas tea party. Great difficulty was experienced in cutting out the garment, but by carefully ripping the pattern apart, and making facsimile of each piece, the new over skirt was made ready for sewing. The unconquerable tendency t)f some of the young men to sew exclusively with white cotton led to frequent disputes and delays; but at last the garment was accurately sewed together with black silk. Determined to improve upon the original pattern, they put half a dozen pockets in the skirt, and attached a buckle and strap to the waistband, together with six metal suspender buttons. Then the garment, nicely perfumed and neatly folded, was sent to the parsonage, with a note written in a fine Italian hand, and breathing the earnest affection of thirty-four pious and innocent hearts.

What was the surprise of those young men to learn on the following Sunday that the pastor would no longer conduct the Bible class of which they were the sole members. They called upon her to beg a few moments’ conversation upon the true meaning of Ezekiel’s wheels, but were told that the pastor was busy, and that she begged to refer them to Deacon Smith. They felt that something was wrong, but they could not imagine what the matter really was. In the course of the next fortnight, however, the pastor suddenly brought home a husband from some distant town, who, being of an excitable and withal worldly nature, soon allowed it to become known that he felt perfect confidence in his ability to thrash the irreverent rascals who had insulted his wife by sending her a preposterous red p—tt—t.

After that, the young men lost all interest in religious things, and returned with great unanimity to their wallowing at the billiard table, and it was generally felt that the experiment of a female pastor had not succeeded. But the fault was not in the pastor’s sermons, nor in any lack of piety or discretion on her part. The failure of the experiment was the natural result of the attempt to reverse the proper sex of the pulpit. As soon as the female minister usurped manly functions, the young men of her flock developed feminine tendencies. Such will, doubtless, be the inevitable consequence of the presence of women in the pulpit, and it is surprising that no reformer can perceive what a powerful argument against a female ministry this state of things constitutes.

James Henry

The power to bear deserved punishment bravely, and to metaphorically kiss the rod, is one which belongs only to mature age. The small-boy never has it. When, after the commission of some juvenile crime, he is summoned by the school teacher to come and rest his weary form upon his beloved preceptor’s lap, he goes to meet his fate with bitterness of heart; and when the echoes of the interview have died away he returns sullenly to his desk, and, as he wearily seats himself on the extreme edge of his chair, he mentally “gol-darns” the teacher and determines to lay tile crooked pin or the adhesive shoemaker’s wax at the foundation of the tyrant, and to thus make him feel the misery which he inflicts on others. It is true that at times the spirit of the very small-boy is so utterly crushed by punishment that he is temporarily incapable of schemes of vengeance; but sooner or later his anger burns, and he breathes out caricatures and chewed paper balls whenever the teacher is looking the other way. For the small-boy of whatever age to forgive and love the teacher who faithfully permeates his system with geography or arithmetic by means of a cane is an unheard of phenomenon, or rather was unheard of until the advent of a recent and unique small-boy in Indiana.

In one of the small villages of that Western Commonwealth there is a flourishing school taught by a pretty school mistress, who is nevertheless a stern and strict disciplinarian. Among her scholars is — or, at all events, was — a small-boy of the age of fourteen. Though a small-boy in years and moral character, he was by no means a small-boy in point of size, since he was tall, heavy, and muscular. There had been what rural newspapers would have called an epidemic of joggling in that school, and the teacher determined to crush out the loathsome vice with the utmost rigor. She therefore announced, one morning, that, inasmuch as mild measures had failed to suppress the evil, she had determined to whip the very next boy who should be detected in joggling. Fear fell upon the small-boys, and they sat in silence for fully half an hour, when suddenly a small hand was raised, and the teacher was informed that, “Please, mum, James Henry is a-joggling awful.” In fact, the teacher had herself seen the culprit in the very act, and she, had no choice except to summon him to the platform for punishment.

Now, James’ Henry was the preternaturally large small-boy who has just been mentioned, and the schoolmistress’ heart sank within her probable bosom as she realized the fact that he was taller and vastly stronger than herself. On reaching the platform he firmly denied his guilt, and when he was severely requested not to lie about it, he proposed that inasmuch as there seemed to be a difference of opinion as to the matter, which might lead to a breach of the peace, he would be entirely satisfied to “leave it out” to five judges of the Supreme Court, whose decision should be final. But the school mistress had announced her policy in respect of joggling, and she could not now depart from it. So James Henry’s compromise plan was rejected, and the teacher, armed with a heavy ruler, rose to enforce her authority.

It was so clearly impossible for her to — in fact, it was so totally out of the question, that she was compelled to commute the threatened punishment into a severe “rulering.” The large small-boy was therefore directed to hold out his right hand, at which the conscientious teacher aimed a dozen violent blows, most of which hit her own skirts, though a few fell on good ground, where there was the usual juvenile abundance of soil. “Now the other hand,” gasped the flurried and breathless teacher; but James Henry, with a sweet, sad smile, extended both arms, inclosed his instructress in a respectful though tender embrace, and, calmly kissing her, remarked that, if she wanted to “lick” him any more, she might go on for six months at the same price. Then the good and forgiving small-boy went back to his seat and plunged into the multiplication table, while the pretty school mistress first dropped the tear of sensibility, and then, defiantly calling up the first class in spelling, allowed them to spell six syllable words by the light of nature, without once intimating that she noticed the indecent liberties which they took with the orthography of the English tongue.

What a lesson of practical forgiveness and true Christian benevolence is taught by this simple story. The heart of the natural small-boy, had he been in James Henry’s place, would have been full of hatred toward the schoolmistress, and he would have openly reviled her, after school hours, as a hateful old maid, and would have made faces at her in church next Sunday behind her back. The heart of the good James Henry, on the contrary, harbored nothing but love and gratitude towards his teacher, and so far from lighting against punishment, he was willing to endure the ruler and to kiss the young woman who smote him. Juvenile literature possesses no youthful hero whose example is more thoroughly worthy of imitation, and were it imitated by all small-boys, our schools would become so many dovecots wherein joggling and wickedness of every kind would be unknown. Of course, so good a small-boy as James Henry will presently die of slow consumption, as all good boys do, but his memory will be a precious legacy and his example may turn thousands of thoughtless jogglers from the evil of their ways and bring kisses to scores of hungry and hopeless school madams.

Mounted missionaries

The Baptist ministers of New York held a meeting not long since to discuss the propriety of buying an elephant. At first glance it does not seem as if an elephant could give any real comfort to an association of Baptist ministers. The Methodists or the Presbyterians might, perhaps, look with some favor upon the unwieldy beast, because of his skill in sprinkling water through his trunk, but he has not a single trait that fits him for Baptist purposes. Of course, an elephant could be used to great advantage as an attraction in Sunday schools, of whatever denomination. Where the stereopticon is scoffed at by the blasé Sunday school scholar, and even the returned missionary with real idols has lost his charm, a live elephant might do a vast deal of good in building up a prosperous school. If a Sunday school were to advertise that its scholars should enjoy a monthly ride on a real Indian elephant, rival Sunday schools would be totally deserted. Although the first cost of an elephant would be heavy, the animal would pay for itself within a year by the saving in candy, prize books, ice cream, strawberries, distinguished lecturers, and magic lanterns which its use would permit; and as the elephant is a Scriptural animal, while magic lanterns and candy are not so much as mentioned in the whole extent of the Bible, the elephant’s religious influence would, doubtless, be even greater than that of any other edible or optical attraction. Still, there is nothing about the elephant which commends it to a Baptist rather than to any other style of Sunday school, and in point of fact, a nice whale, or even a modest aquarium filled with inexpensive fishes, might naturally be expected to possess stronger attractions to the earnest Baptist mind.

The Baptist ministers in question, however, had no intention of buying an elephant for home use. It seems that a Baptist missionary residing in India desired to have a nice, easy riding elephant, with which to lighten the labor of making parochial visits, as well as to pursue the outlying and elusive heathen of the neighboring provinces. He had heard of a good elephant which could be bought for five hundred dollars, and he therefore asked his ministerial brethren at home to present him with this cheap and useful beast. Whether this request should be granted was a question which led to a good deal of debate. One of the ministers suggested that although five hundred dollars was not a high price for an elephant, nevertheless the cost of feeding it would be unpleasantly heavy; but he was silenced by an astute brother, who explained that if the missionary were to hire a coolie at $3.25 per month, the latter would manage to feed the beast without further expense to the owner. Very probably an enterprising coolie could collect enough peanuts, candy, popcorn, marbles, and other articles, such as constitute the food of the average circus elephant, to keep his reverend master’s beast from actual starvation, but can the Baptist ministers coolly ignore that coolie’s soul, and wink at the forced collection of elephant fodder from the young and helpless heathen?

The purchase of this elephant would be a matter of unusual importance, since it would be the adoption of an entirely new system of missionary effort. At present the missionaries in India are all of the nature of heavy infantry troops. They intrench themselves in permanent quarters, where they besiege the heathen with schools, church services, and other time honored weapons of spiritual warfare. As their marches must be made on foot, and they are without proper means of transportation, they can move but a short distance from their base of supplies, and hence their influence is circumscribed within comparatively narrow limits. A corps of light missionaries, mounted on swift elephants, and carrying a fortnight’s supply of rations and tracts, would revolutionize the whole art of missionary campaigning. The intrepid missionary could enter a village at a brisk trot, delivering volleys of tracts at the flying natives, and on reaching the marketplace could preach a sermon from the safe elevation of his “howdah,” which would command far greater attention than any sermon preached by a dusty pedestrian could possibly command. If the elephant, who is a wonderfully intelligent beast, were taught to hunt idols and dash them in pieces with his trunk, the heathen would hardly fail to be struck with awe. It need scarcely be pointed out that a sermon preached against Juggernaut from the back of an elephant constantly occupied in throwing that objectionable idol into the air and catching him as he came down, would appeal in the strongest manner to the impressible Oriental mind.

The mounted missionary thus roaming the Indian plains would present a very different spectacle from that presented by the slow plodding missionary of the Judson type. In fact, the difference would be as marked as that between the old fashioned Sunday school, where children struggled with the Catechism, and its modern successor, where the comic slides of the magic lantern strengthen and purify the juvenile soul. Dr. Judson and his compeers, who gave their lives to teach the heathen the way of life, may have been well meaning and not wholly unsuccessful men, but they must now be regarded as old fashioned persons. What is now needed is the dashing light missionary, dressed in a striking uniform, mounted on his fast elephant, and making brilliant and unexpected raids upon the astonished heathen. If some one would only invent a light howitzer, capable of being carried on the back of an elephant, and warranted to throw tracts with accuracy at least a thousand yards, the mounted missionary would need nothing further to increase his efficiency.

The buzz saw

The recent partial destruction of a leading citizen of Sheboygan by an infuriated buzz saw calls renewed attention to the ferocious character of the latter and the extreme danger of all attempts to domesticate it. The buzz saw in question was a large one which had been for nearly a year in the possession of a prominent Sheboygan lumber merchant, and had been remarkable for its uniform good behavior and its supposed gentleness. In fact, it was believed to be thoroughly tame, and its proprietor, although a man of unusual caution, had long since ceased to apprehend any danger from it. Last Friday the unfortunate leading citizen to whom reference has been made entered the room in which the buzz saw is confined, and while engaged in an animated conversation with the lumber merchant incautiously stroked the side of the buzz saw, under the apparent impression that it was asleep. Without an instant’s warning, the leading citizen’s right hand was severed at the wrist, and his left hand, with which he involuntarily tried to save the severed member, was also frightfully mangled. Faint with pain and loss of blood, he fell directly within reach of the ferocious teeth already bathed in his private gore, and the re ult was that before he could be rescued he was nearly cut in two in the region of the upper vest pocket. He still survives, although in a most lamentable condition, and his physicians assert that had the buzz saw succeeded in its deadly purpose of dividing him into two parts, it is more than doubtful whether the resources of medical science would have been able to put him together again. The affair has naturally created a good deal of indignation, and the people of Sheboygan are asking whether it is tolerable that men should keep buzz saws which may at any moment destroy unwary leading citizens and dissect incautious women and children.

That the buzz saw is absolutely untamable has been thoroughly proved. In the north western States, where they abound, buzz saws are kept by lumber merchants as commonly as dogs are kept by the herdsmen of sheep grazing countries. The buzz saw, however, has no sense of gratitude, is insensible to fear, and cannot be trusted for a single moment. It may be daily fed with the best lubricating oil, but it is always ready to tear the hand that feeds it. Though it may feign gentleness for many consecutive months, it does so merely in order to render its selected victims sufficiently confident to place themselves within its grasp. Sooner or later its savage thirst for blood will assert itself, and the despairing shriek of its unhappy prey will attest the sharpness of its cruel teeth. There is probably not a single buzz saw in the United States which has been in captivity for more than six months of which some horrible tragedy cannot be told. In view of these facts the indignant question of the Sheboygan people deserves an answer, and there can be but little doubt as to what that answer should be.

Before, however, deciding that the keeping of buzz saws should be prohibited by law, it ought to be ascertained whether they cannot be rendered harmless by filing their teeth. It has been already shown by certain dog fanciers that a dog whose teeth have been filed so as to render them comparatively blunt cannot inflict a dangerous bite, for the simple reason that his teeth cannot break the human skin. Might not a similar experiment he made upon the buzz saw? Mr. Bergh would doubtless interpose objections, and argue that where there exists a deep rooted desire for human gore it is cruelty to take any measures calculated to render the satisfying of this desire impossible. All other persons, however, will agree that the safety of leading citizens is of more consequence than the comfort of the buzz saw; and that society has a right to protect the former from complete or partial destruction, even at the cost of inflicting temporary pain upon the latter. In point of fact however, there is no cruelty in filing the teeth of the buzz, saw. The only possible objection to such a course is the uncertainty whether a buzz saw with blunt teeth would be really innocuous. As there would be considerable danger in performing the experiment — owing to the fierce resistance which the buzz saw would undoubtedly make — it would be well to try it on the tiger or the lion. If those animals cannot bite with blunt teeth, we may be reasonably sure that the buzz saw will cease to be dangerous after undergoing a careful process of dental filing, and there will be sufficient reason for incurring the danger of performing the operation. If, on the other hand, it should be found that the buzz saw, even after its teeth have been blunted, is still able to gratify its blood thirsty instincts, the decree for its extirpation should go forth. It is by no means creditable to use that while we have shown no mercy to the grizzly bear, the wolf, and the rattlesnake, we have permitted the buzz saw to multiply without restriction. The latter is far more dangerous than the indigenous wild animals which it has, to so great an extent, supplanted; and now that it has set its teeth in the flesh of a leading citizen, it should be made to feel the vengeance of a long suffering and mangled people.

The two Browns

There is a class of people who are always ready to tell what they do not like, but who carefully refrain from mentioning what they do like. They are eager to tear down, but entirely unwilling to rebuild. There, for example, is Mr. Talmage, who some time since mentioned with indignant eloquence that a ship once sailed from Boston on board of which were “three missionaries and twenty-four thousand gallons of rum.” Of course, he meant to say that there was a want of proper proportion of the two articles which formed that vessel’s cargo. In his opinion either there was too much rum for the missionaries, or too many missionaries for the rum; but he contented himself with merely expressing his dissatisfaction. To this day the the world does not know what Mr. Talmage considers the true proportion between rum and missionaries, and whether he thinks that the Boston ship ought to have carried less than three missionaries or more than twenty-four thousand gallons of rum. He found it easier to abuse the ship owners than to explain to them what they ought to have done; and preferred to scoff rather than to teach.

Of a like habit of mind are those numerous persons who scoff at young Mr. Brown, of Utica. The other morning young Mr. Brown’s father arose at an unholy hour and proceeded to examine his refrigerator. The refrigerator in question was an unusually large one — for old Mr. Brown is a butcher, and necessarily uses a great deal of ice in keeping constantly on hand for a week or a fortnight “beef that was killed yesterday.” Entering his refrigerator for some purpose not distinctly specified, Mr. Brown unwarily permitted the door to close after him. It closed with a spring lock, and the unfortunate butcher found himself locked up in an air tight box with the thermometer at 20°. Death — and a particular cold variety of death at that — stared him in the face; and it is to be hoped that for once in his life he saw the folly of early rising, and bitterly repented of his fault.

Meanwhile, young Mr. Brown was sleeping in his own bedroom and dreaming with great energy and success. When he awoke, at a comparatively reasonable hour, he remembered that he had been dreaming that he had a father in the refrigerator. It does not appear that this dream had the effect of inducing him to get out of bed earlier than was his custom. Probably he took very little interest in the dream, and rather regretted that he had not dreamed of a refrigerator of strawberries and cream, or some other really useful article. Or perhaps he reflected that the weather was extremely warm, and in case his father actually was in the refrigerator he would be sure to “keep” for at least a week or ten days. But even the youngest men must in time get out of bed, and so young Mr. Brown ultimately got up and went down stairs to enjoy the morning air and to ascertain if there were any pork chops for breakfast.

Whether young Mr. Brown opened the door of the refrigerator because he had dreamed that it contained his father or because he hoped that it contained pork chops is not certain. Neither is it positively known whether his search for pork chops proved successful. We do know, however, that on opening the refrigerator young Mn Brown found the author of his existence so nearly frozen that he could have been sent to a Fiji Island hotel with the certainty of arriving at his destination in perfect condition for the table. Hurriedly lifting up his congealed parent, and casting a rapid glance at the shelf where the pork chops were usually kept, the horrified son called for help. The other members of the household promptly assembled. Old Mr. Brown was judiciously thawed out, and on recovering his consciousness learned that he would certainly have been a dead man had not his son come to his rescue.

Now it will be perceived that the question whether young Mr. Brown expected to find his father in the refrigerator, or whether his whole mind was occupied with pork chops is not one of any importance. What the public wishes to know is how he came to dream that he had a father in the refrigerator? It is this question that scoffing iconoclasts refuse to answer. They content themselves with saying that it is all rubbish to claim that information is ever conveyed by dreams. This is merely an attack on young Mr. Brown’s dreaming abilities, and it suggests no answer to the question under consideration. Of course, it might be said that the presence of old Mr. Brown in the refrigerator and the dream of young Mr. Brown merely constituted a coincidence. If young men were in the habit of dreaming of fathers on ice, and if old men were in the habit of shutting themselves up in refrigerators, this explanation might be accepted. If young Mr. Brown had dreamed of pork chops in the refrigerator and had subsequently found them there, it would undoubtedly have been a mere coincidence, since the facts would have been in accordance with the usual habits of both young Mr. Brown and pork chops. But in the case as it actually occurred there was an entirely novel dream which entirely coincided with an entirely novel state of things. If this was a mere coincidence, it is idle to presume that there is any such thing as cause and effect in the sequence of any successive events.

Instead of sneering at all dreams, it would be wiser if skeptical people would try to explain young Mr. Brown’s meritorious dream of his father and the refrigerator. There is no reason to doubt that the facts of the case are substantially as they have just been narrated. The subject deserves to be investigated in an unprejudiced spirit, and without any connection with irrelevant pork chops. Until it is so investigated, scoffers should keep silent and refrain from attacking one theory until they are ready to replace it with another.

The rival motors

It is nearly two years since Mr. Keely first announced that his new “motor” was nearly ready to begin its great work of supplanting steam, horses, small-boys, and all other previous motive powers. All that he wanted was a pailful of water and a generator. Since that time he has repeatedly completed his generator, but he still delays to begin his great supplanting process. Probably he has been unable to obtain the needed pailful of water. Indeed, this is the only explanation which will account for his delay, unless we accept the hypothesis that his alleged motor is a delusion.

Meanwhile, Mr. Daniel Cook, of Mansfield, Ohio, has invented another motor which promises to completely eclipse that devised by Mr. Keely. As might have been expected, since it is the invention of a Western man, the Cook motor requires no water. It consists simply of a generator, which generates unlimited quantities of electricity, and of an engine, in which the force of electricity is trained to do the inventor’s bidding. Hitherto scientific persons have found it extremely easy to generate electricity in small quantities, but they have never been able to generate enough to be of any use. There are scores of learned scientific men who are fully capable of taking a cat into a dark closet and of rubbing her fur the wrong way until it sparkles and crackles with electricity; but if they were to be asked to fill, say, an eight-quart pail with the electricity thus evolved, and to construct even a one cat power engine in which to use the subtle fluid, they would immediately begin to talk about the correlation of species or the survival of forces, and thus endeavor to conceal, under a cloud of scientific terms, their utter inability to accomplish the task proposed. It is true that Dr. Franklin, who was once caught in a thunderstorm while flying a kite, sustained a severe shock from the electricity which passed down the string. He could not, however, be properly said to have generated the electricity thus collected from the clouds, and his subsequent insincerity in excusing his want of sufficient knowledge to come in when it rained by alleging that he flew his kite in a thunderstorm as a scientific experiment, casts doubt upon his entire account of the affair. The truth is, electricity has never yet been produced, much less bottled, in large quantities, by any scientific person, and the utmost that science can do in that direction is to produce a few sparks with the common domestic cat, or a small stream with the help of a galvanic battery.

Mr. Cook, on the other hand, has discovered a method of generating, not merely currents, but “whole floods and oceans of electricity,” at a ridiculously small cost. His generator needs no fuel, but when once put in working order will generate electricity by the hogshead for a practically unlimited period of time. This electricity he proposes to supply to the public in quantities to suit customers, and he claims that as fuel and light it will speedily supersede coal and gas. It is, however, chiefly as a motive power that he values his invention. It can be applied to all the purposes for which either steam or gunpowder is now used, and is infinitely more powerful than either. With it he has repeatedly performed the interesting experiment of sending “chunks of iron” through the roof of his house and out into space, beyond the reach of the earth’s attraction. This clearly demonstrates the tremendous power of the new motor, but it is doubtful if Mrs. Smith fully appreciates the grandeur of the feat of hurling “chunks” of iron through her ceilings, or if the natives of other planets approve of the recklessness which sends the same “chunks” flying about their heads. Mr. Cook has become so elated with the success of his chunk experiment that he thinks he can navigate space by machines propelled by the same force which hurls his chunks of iron through Mrs. Smith’s dining room ceiling and spare bed. There is no doubt that if iron can be shot beyond the sphere of the earth’s attraction, other missiles could be similarly projected, and there are probably scores of men who would be as willing to have all their wives’ relatives thus hurled into the interstellar spaces as Artemus Ward was to have his wife’s relatives enter the army. No person, however, will be willing to lead the way in such a hazardous expedition into space, and Mr. Cook will have, for some time to come, to devote himself to the benevolent work of converting his neighbors’ cats into improved comets which will circle forever round the sun with glistening eyeballs and with streaming and expanded tails.

While there is no more reason to doubt the truth of Mr. Cook’s assertions than there is to doubt those of Mr. Keely, it is annoying to reflect that neither inventor has yet fully perfected his respective motor. It is announced that the Cook motor is to be patented and laid before the public at once,‘but very possibly something will intervene to delay its completion. Perhaps the most satisfactory proof which these two great inventors could give of the genuineness of their claims would be for Mr. Keely to shoot Mr. Cook into space with the electric motor, and to subsequently blow himself into fine particles with his own water pail motor. There would then be an end of all uncertainty as to these two great inventions, and there would also be a satisfactory end of the two inventors. The world has a great respect for inventive genius, but when a man continually announces for a long period that he has invented a new motor which he is never quite ready to exhibit, the desire to kill him, and thus silence his aggravating claims forever, becomes one of the strongest passions ever developed in the human breast.

The wheelbarrow in politics

It is undeniable that the American is fond of betting on elections. He does this from a variety of motives. Sometimes he bets because he is anxious to know who is to be elected, and remembers the reply of that profound investigator. Sir Isaac Newton, to an ignorant person who questioned the truth of the theory of gravitation — “How can you find out whether anything is true or not unless you bet on it?” At other times he bets because he is confident as to what the result will be, and desirous of winning money and hats. And, finally, he bets because he is a cheerful idiot, who longs to be publicly wheeled in a wheelbarrow, or to witness a congenial display of idiocy on the part of his opponent.

The extent to which the wheelbarrow pervades our system of popular government is one of the first things which strikes an intelligent foreigner who visits this country immediately after an election, and travels from New York to Niagara Falls and thence to Canada, in order to thoroughly study American institutions. On every road men are seen solemnly wheeling wheelbarrows which contain barrels of flour, barrels of apples, or exultant citizens. Occasionally the electoral wheelbarrow is empty — thus indicating that the intellect of the wheeler or of his betting opponent has been able to grasp the bold conception of an empty wheelbarrow, but has proved too feeble to simultaneously grapple with the idea of a wheelbarrow laden with citizens or barrels. All over the country the wheeler and the wheeled pursue their solemn way until they have accomplished the full mission of their idiocy as prescribed by the conditions of their respective wagers. The spectacle is one which necessarily fills the thoughtful foreigner with amazement, and it was perhaps only natural that the distinguished Italian historian and essayist, Signor G. Maccheroni, should have mistakenly asserted in his Storia Politica Degli Stati Uniti, that “after an election the defeated party is always wheeled by its successful antagonists many miles into the gloomy interior of that vast and savage country, where it is compelled to remain in exile until the next election, subsisting exclusively upon flour and apples, and cruelly deprived of the consolations of music and monkeys.”

There is no doubt that the man who makes a wheelbarrow bet fancies that if he is publicly wheeled by his opponent, the latter will be covered with ridicule Herein he shows a hopeless idiocy, nearly allied to that which is evinced by the alleged persons who bite off their personal noses in order to spite their respective faces. The wheeler is vastly less ridiculous than the wheeled. The latter cannot possibly maintain a dignified appearance when huddled together in a wheelbarrow, built without the slightest reference to the exigencies of the human legs, while the former has the priceless privilege of wheeling him over every stone in the road, and thus bumping him until he is unable to remember whether he was originally flavored with lemon or vanilla, and utterly careless as to what form of mold he is to be emptied into at the end of his ride. It is the wheeled and not the wheeler who absorbs the interest of the small-boy, and the fact that he cannot extricate himself from a wheelbarrow in motion in order to pursue a juvenile humorist renders him the target of every sarcastic cat and ironical cabbage that the small-boy can bring to his attention.

It is possible that a vague perception of the disadvantages of being wheeled may have led the less violent idiots to restrict their wheelbarrow bets to the wheeling of barrels of apples and of barrels of flour. The man who wheels a heavy barrel for several miles, while his successful opponent follows in a carriage and. reads the election returns in a loud and cheerful voice, is naturally, in public estimation, the more pitiable idiot of the two. Bat even he has at his command the means of relieving himself of his task, and of achieving sudden popularity. He has only to upset his barrel in a crowded street, and to sit quietly on the curbstone until the last apple or the last pound of flour has been carried off by the grateful populace. It is a convincing evidence of the weakness of the wheelbarrow idiot that he rarely thinks of this device, but calmly wheels his barrel to his own home and then confiscates it. Of course, if he thus prefers theft and ridicule to ease and popularity, it is his own affair, but it is sufficiently clear that no one with any glimmering of sense need look upon the wheeling of electoral barrels as a burdensome penalty for rash betting.

The recent Presidential election, the result of which was so long in doubt owing to the determined effort of the politicians to keep back the returns with the view of counting out Peter Cooper, affords an excellent opportunity for the final withdrawal of the wheelbarrow from American politics. The uncertainty which for so many days prevented the payment of bets caused the wheelbarrow betters to lose all interest in their prospective wheeling. A torchlight procession by daylight, waving banners inscribed with the names of last year’s defeated candidates, would be cheerful in comparison with feats of public wheeling performed in connection with an election, of which we are now all so thoroughly tired. Thus it is highly improbable that this year’s wheelbarrow wagers will be paid, and there is hence an opportunity for people to seriously ask themselves what good purpose such wagers can possibly serve? What benefit will the country derive if Mr. Bowles should persist in wheeling a rival editor from Springfield to Boston? Could the former nominate Mr. Adams with any more vigor and constancy than he has hitherto done, and could the latter conduct his paper any better for being bumped into a mass of palpitating protoplasm? Let these great men set the noble example of voluntarily canceling their bet, and let them henceforth urge upon the people the duty and expediency of totally eliminating the wheelbarrow from the political arena.

Royal quarrels

One of the chief objections to following the business of a reigning king or queen is the publicity which is given to every royal act and thought. The modern newspaper correspondent knows everything that takes place within the walls of every royal or imperial palace in Europe. Why it is that Victoria, and William, and Alexander, and the other members of the profession confide all their hopes, anxieties, and troubles to the correspondents of the Oshkosh Bugle of Freedom., or other leading beer journals of America, is not plain to the ordinary mind; but that such is the habitual conduct of those confiding monarchs there is no room for doubt. Thanks to the newspaper correspondents, the world knows exactly how often the crown prince of Germany boxes the ears of the crown princess, and precisely what the Emperor William remarked to his wayward son when he last caught him in the act of enforcing marital discipline, and gently checked his ardor by twisting his left ear. Especially are we familiar with the respective griefs of the members of the English royal family. We know how the Princess Beatrice told her mother that she would not walk behind any Russian minx that ever yet breakfasted on candles; and how the queen said: “Never mind, my dear, Mr. Disraeli shall give us the imperial title, and then no imported minx can take precedence over princesses of native manufacture.” Then we are told how the Duchess of Edinburgh resented this astute device, and said to the queen: “If you think, mum, that I shall recognize your Indian title, mum, you are mistaken; which I am not to be put upon in that way, mum, and am going back to Russia tomorrow, mum.” These and other stories might seem a trifle improbable did not the newspaper correspondents assure us of their truth, and unless we are to doubt their word, we must accept the painful certainty that royal families cannot indulge in the most private “tiff” without having a full report of their remarks subsequently laid before the public.

The latest domestic disagreement in the household of the Prince of Wales is so unique in its origin, and promises to be so serious in its results that it is strange that it has hitherto received only a passing notice from the enterprising correspondents. It is generally known that the prince brought home a large menagerie of wild animals from India, partly with the view of eclipsing the Skye terriers of which his brother Alfred is perpetually boasting, and partly to go into business as a traveling menagerie exhibitor in case Mr. Bradlaugh carries out his threat of refusing to permit him to ascend the throne. Among these animals were two fine ostriches of the most miscellaneous digestive powers. These ostriches were at first welcomed with delight by Alexandra, who is fond of singing birds, and were placed in the back yard of the Sandringham palace. On the very first night of their arrival they ate up the lawnmower, all the garden tools, and a set of camp stools. On discovering that these articles were missing, the prince instantly accused his wife of having put them away, according to the aggravating custom of orderly women, and expressed the wish that she would learn to leave his things alone. That day the correspondents were pained to know that Alexandra was constantly weeping, and that the prince remained sullen and silent. On the next day one of the ostriches was detected by the princess in the act of swallowing the very last article of the week’s wash, white the other was ravenously devouring the clothespins. This terrible scene afforded a clue to the disappearance of the lawnmower and the agricultural tools, and we can easily understand that the princess, indignant at the false accusations which had been leveled at her, and outraged by the loss of the week’s wash, demanded, with flashing eyes, that the ostriches should instantly have a few feet of their necks wrung, and should subsequently be sent to the poulterer’s. The prince refused to accede to this proposal, and asserted that he would keep ostriches in his own back yard in spite of all the princesses in England or Denmark, and the upshot of the whole affair was a complete estrangement between the once loving pair, and the promulgation of mutual threats of divorce and ostrich poisoning.

This curious illustration of royal manners and customs has not been minutely described by the correspondents, but the story is as intrinsically probable as any of the anecdotes of palace dissensions which are daily published. It is not saying too much to claim that it deserves precisely as much credit as is due to the elaborate accounts of the quarrel between the Princess Beatrice and the Duchess of Edinburgh, and the public which believes the latter ought to have no difficulty in accepting the former.

The express evil

There are certain moral evils which are always prominently developed in thickly populated towns. It may not be true that the inhabitants of a city are more frequently immoral than the inhabitants of rural villages, but it is very certain that forms of vice which are scarcely known among the latter are repulsively prominent among the former. How to deal with these vices is the problem of the legislator. They may be totally ignored, or the attempt may be made to regulate or suppress them. The latter, is, of course, the plan which the moralist instinctively advocates, but if experience demonstrates that repression is impossible, it is then the duty of the wise man to ascertain if another course may not lessen the evils which all decent men deplore.

Among these moral evils inseparable from city civilization is the express evil. It was unknown in the earlier and purer days of the Republic, but of late years it has made terrific strides. Our cities swarm with its ministers and votaries. The express man lies in wait for his prey not only in the streets and hotels, but he hunts for victims on the railway trains and steamboats that bring hither the innocent rural traveler. In the most prominent thoroughfares the temples of the express evil raise their shameless front, and the infamous work of ruining externally and internally the trunks of confiding tourists is practiced in broad daylight, and without a pretense of concealment. This state of things has now existed for many years, and it daily grows worse and worse. It is time that we seriously inquired what is our real duty in regard to it.

At an early period our legislatures seemed to have formed the decision that the express evil cannot be supposed by penal legislation. While men and women remain the same as they are at present, they will possess trunks, which they will inevitably insist upon moving from place to place. Even were the police to arrest every known professional express man, others would be found who would carry on the trade of trunk smashing in secrecy, and this very secrecy would be attended by evils perhaps greater than those which now characterize the express business. Holding these views, our legislators have despaired of crushing out the express evil, and they have hence undertaken to lessen its horrors by subjecting it to legal regulation. To the moralist there is something inexpressibly revolting in the idea of licensing express men, and thus giving the implied sanction of law to their trunk and valise destroying trade. But if the license system limits the number of express men, and lessens the number of trunks that would otherwise be irretrievably lost and ruined, does not the gain justify the system? We do not say that it does, but the question is not one to be lightly put aside and disregarded.

The license system has been in force so long that its result can easily be ascertained and its actual value ’ estimated. It is obvious that while it has prevented clandestine baggage smashing, it has greatly increased the number and boldness of professional express men. Where a dozen years ago there was one express office in this city there are now a dozen, and each one seems to vie with its rivals in the evil which it accomplishes. Every day there are hundreds of men and women who yield to the seductive wiles of the railroad express agent, and intrust him with trunks which he promises to deliver promptly and in an uninjured state. We all know what follows. Hours after the promised time the unfortunate trunks are returned to their owners — if indeed they are returned at all — in a condition of dilapidation which shocks the most hardened traveler. Even if they are not irretrievably ruined, their straps have departed forever, and no repentance for misplaced confidence can ever restore the integrity of their hinges. In many cases trunks that falls into the hand of the express men are never seen again. They are swallowed up in the whirlpool of the express evil, and are lost as irretrievably as though they had sunk to the bottom of the river.

If this has been the result of the license system, it is difficult to see how we can refrain from calling it a failure. And yet we should probably gain nothing by adopting the policy of repression, while the idea of ignoring the whole matter and permitting every one to ply the vocation of an express man without the slightest restraint is, of course, out of the question. It cannot be that the enlightened nineteenth century is incapable of grappling with this formidable evil and rendering it henceforth innocuous. Still the true method of so doing has yet to be devised, and the subject is one which ought to engage the earnest attention of moralists and social reformers.

Porcine prodigies

Every one knows that the law of Moses forbade the ancient Israelites to eat pork. It does not follow, however, that the Jews despised the pig. Their abstinence from pork may have been a proof not that they loved pork less but pig more. Among the Gentiles, on the other hand, the pig has been universally prized as containing the promise and potency of ham, bacon, roast pork, and sausages. He is found all over the globe, and it is a touching thought that the morning squeak of the hungry pig follows the sun in his rising and that the universal habit of gathering swill for the sustenance and comfort of swine indicates the common origin of all mankind, and binds humanity together by a fragrant and semi-liquid bond.

In all ages the pig has been the friend and companion of a man. In the cottage of the Irish peasant he shares the bed and board of his proprietor, and in our Western land the pig’s palatial sty is built close under the eyes and noses of the farmer’s family. In Polynesia so greatly is the pig venerated that the simple islander can find no better way in which to describe the tender and wholesome missionary than to call him “long pig.” In some parts of the world the pig has been made the standard of value, and used as currency. Thus, in the Fiji islands, pigs were formerly made a legal tender for the purchase of wives, and were regarded by native financiers as a wonderfully convenient, satisfactory, and non-exportable species of currency. It was found, however, that unprincipled Fijian speculators would occasionally inflate their pigs with dried apples and water, and thus defraud their creditors and disturb the national finances, whereupon the king called in the whole outstanding volume of pigs, and decreed a return to the old fashioned system under which the strong paid the weak with clubs and battleaxes.

Aside from his uses as food and currency, the pig possesses many charming qualities of head and heart, together with accomplishments that endear him to every cultivated mind. He has a powerful and beautiful voice, and when he lifts it up to sing his passionate and despairing death song in the presence of the remorseless butcher, he frequently surpasses the best efforts of certain popular interpreters of the Verdian opera. It is only fair to admit that his habit of soliloquizing when analyzing the contents of the swill tub is not an evidence of good breeding. Still, if we knew the meaning of his remarks we might be forced to recognize him as a profound philosopher, and hence a beast absolved from a close compliance with the artificial laws of social intercourse. Indirectly the pig has had a large share in the achievements of art for which men have basely taken the exclusive credit. The pig built the two great cities of Cincinnati and Chicago, and it was with his inspired bristles that Rubens painted his greatest pictures, and our leading African artists whitewashed our walls and ceilings.

The pig’s intellect is clear and strong. What has been mistakenly called his “obstinacy” is only his intense individuality. He disdains to yield to coercion, and before blaming the pig for refusing to be dragged in a given direction by a string tied to his hind leg, his critics should ask themselves whether in like circumstances they too would not protest with equal shrillness against so indecent an outrage. That the pig has a remarkable capacity for learning has been repeatedly proved. Pigs have been taught, to solve mathematical problems without the aid of slate and pencil, which men calling themselves intelligent and accomplished could not have solved with a whole schoolroom full of blackboards and absolutely unlimited chalk. The crowning intellectual achievement of the pig has been his mastery of the game of whist. There have been learned pigs who could sit down to a whist table and play a brilliant and successful game without once grunting at an opponent who was slow in leading, or yelling at a partner who timidly held on to five trumps and an honor. We might seek in vain at our best clubs for so much skill, combined with such careful courtesy, at the whist table, and even if the story of the California pig, who played poker and dealt himself four aces every time, be untrue, the fact that the pig is a whist playing animal demonstrates his rare intellectual capacity.

And now a Kentucky pig has suddenly developed a genius for gymnastics and engineering which eclipses the proudest previous achievements of his race. This eminent pig was recently placed by his owner in a pasture surrounded by a high wall and ornamented by elm trees festooned with wild grapevines. The walls, however, could not confine his bold and vagrant spirit. Selecting a tree standing near the western wall of the pasture, he carefully bit loose the lower end of a stout grapevine which was attached by its tendrils to a limb of the tree, and taking this improvised rope in his mouth, swung himself in the air until he had gathered an impetus which sent him entirely over the wall and landed him in the next field. Though often recaptured, he has constantly repeated this extraordinary feat, and his intelligent owner, instead of cutting down his elm trees to restrain his pig’s wandering propensity, has wisely decided to educate him for the trapeze business, provided so noble a spirit proves willing to minister to the amusement of a circus audience.

Henceforth men will have a higher estimate than ever of the abilities of the pig. It is impossible to say what education may not do in the way of developing the porcine intellect. If the pig can turn somersaults on the trapeze, why may he not become a successful politician? He has the obstinacy, the lung power, and the innate love of dirt which distinguish the politician. Let the Kentucky inflationists nominate the particular pig above described for Congress on the broad platform of “Reform and Repudiation,” and the next House of Representatives will have a leader who will instantly eclipse the fame of the noisiest and most agile of the present members.

Crushed truth

Truth, when crushed to earth by a single blow, may very likely rise up and vanquish her enemies; but when Truth, in addition to being knocked down, is set upon by quantities of heavy scientific persons and hosts of hotel keepers for long successive years, there is very little chance that she will ever get up again. This nefarious outrage is now, and has been for a quarter of a century, in progress in connection with the Old Stone Mill at Newport, and there is no reasonable doubt that the true origin and nature of that ugly edifice will be utterly forgotten in the course of the next hundred years; and that the myth which assigns the Northmen as its builders will be universally received by our great-grandchildren. The annual summer investigation into its origin by a “party of antiquarians” occupying front rooms at the leading Newport hotels has just been finished, with the usual result that every antiquarian decided that it must have been built by the Northmen, and that he would like to have a fresh box of cigars sent up to his room. Every such investigation has its effect upon the young and thoughtless, and thus assists in crushing into a permanent and hopeless jelly the real truth of the matter.

Thirty years ago every resident of Newport who was not interested in the hotel or in the real estate business knew that the Old Stone Mill was simply a. mill and nothing more, and that it was built at a comparatively recent date by a Rhode Island miller. It so happened that the hotel keepers at Nahant, which was then the sole New England rival of Newport as a watering place, hit upon the happy thought of attracting patronage by means of a sea serpent, and thus drew away from Newport those thrifty summer loiterers who held that a watering place which offered free sea serpents was preferable to one that could boast of nothing better than an occasional shark. Now, it would have been easy for the Newport hotel keepers to manufacture a score of witnesses who would have sworn that they had seen sea serpents in Narragansett Bay a thousand feet long, and with blue monkeys sitting on their backs. This result, however, could not have been achieved without first giving the proposed witnesses a fortnight’s free use of the hotel barrooms, with all that the name implies. The hotel keepers therefore preferred to invent a prehistoric ruin, and to father its construction upon the shadowy Northmen whom a doubtful legend names as the discoverers of Rhode Island. Thus Newport offered its Old Stone Mill, rechristened the “Northmen’s fortress,” as an offset to Nahant’s sea serpent; and proudly claimed that while the latter appealed only to a depraved and vulgar taste for the horrible, the majestic tower of the ancient Sea Kings was eminently adopted to satisfy the immortal longings of a refined and cultured spirit.

Of course, so bold and violent a conversion of a Yankee grist mill into a Norse fortress needed to be constantly supported by fresh and plausible evidence. It may not be true that during the last thirty years every Newport hotel keeper has kept a scientific person — falsely so called — who was under a written obligation to make an annual report, setting forth his belief in the Tower of the Northmen. So, too, the story that the real estate owners of Newport club together and advertise every spring for half a dozen antiquarians who would have no objection to spend a few weeks in the country at a popular watering place, may be a mere invention of the envious owners of Long Branch property. Still, it is a significant fact that no Newport hotel is without its special scientific person, who is as learned as blue spectacles and a large cotton umbrella can make him, and who confidentially expresses the opinion to every newly arrived guest that he ought to spend at least a month in examining the most interesting ruin in this or any other country, and in studying the history of the Northmen in the very place where they reared their strongest tower, and where posterity has built the most admirable hotels.

The latest scientific investigation of the mill has been made by a number of ingenious antiquarians, who have certified that it is covered with Masonic emblems, and was hence built by Northmen belonging to the fraternity of Freemasons. It is a little odd that nobody has hitherto been able to perceive these emblems, and it is equally odd that the Northmen should have sculptured them on a building alleged to antedate modern Freemasonry by at least a hundred years. Still, when people once accept as a plausible assertion the story that a shipload of wandering Vikings touched for twenty-four hours on the shore of Rhode Island, and employed that brief period in building a stone mill on the exact pattern of those built a few centuries later by Yankee farmers, they will believe anything. It is quite probable ‘that Masonic lodges will now make pilgrimages to Newport and try. to decipher the Masonic emblems which the last half dozen antiquarians have discovered. At any rate, if they do not, their successors certainly will, and the latter will religiously believe that the emblems which they cannot see were plainly visible in 1876.

For it is useless for the isolated lover of historic truth to struggle against the organized propaganda of Newport. The Norse myth will be reiterated until it is universally accepted. Another hundred years will suffice to establish the imposture on an impregnable basis, and when our next Centennial celebration is held, there will not be an American citizen who v/ill dream of doubting that the mill was built by Northmen as a defense against the fierce and dangerous woodchuck, who in that remote period devastated the country.

Dye and diet

It is all very well for certain theologians to argue that man is a free agent, but they can hardly reconcile this dogma with the fact that he cannot select his own hair. Nature deals out the regulation supply of hair to each new infant without consulting in the slightest degree the taste of the infant or that of its parents. It thus happens that there is a vast amount of dissatisfaction among mankind in respect to hair. The light haired sigh vainly for dark hair, and the dark haired yearn for unattainable golden locks. Men whose moral nature imperatively demand curly hair are mocked with hair that is as hopelessly straight as the spine of a ritualistic clergyman; while the African, whose hair curls naturally and closely longs for heaven as a place where crooked hair is made forever straight.

Of course, there are expedients by which sanguine natures try to modify and improve their hair, but they are, after all, vain and unsatisfactory. Those who hanker after golden hair, which just at present is the variety most ardently desired, can have their original hair bleached and painted, but the result is not worth the trouble and expense. The intelligent public is never deceived into confounding counterfeit hair with genuine golden hair, or into mistaking the blue-black dye that conceals the grizzled locks of an ancient beau for the work of nature. Moreover, the process of dyeing the hair is at best a risky one, A black ear, or a golden nose are not to be desired, and yet a slight accident with the dye bottle may suddenly produce those startling phenomena. Occasionally, too, the dye penetrates to the brain of the user, and the result is a yellow brained, or black minded lunatic. Still more unsatisfactory is that hollow mockery, the wig. No matter how skilfully it may be made, its insincerity forces itself upon the notice of every observer. It is the invariable decision of those who have yielded to temptation in the shape of hair dye that it is better to wear the hair we have than to dye with drugs that cannot satisfy the soul; and there is not a wig wearer in existence who does not know in his secret heart that even the wild Indian of the plains would view that wig with scorn and hatred, were it brought to the notice of his discriminating tomahawk.

Painful and hopeless as have hitherto been man’s relations with his hair, a great discovery has just been made, which will not only enable us all to undergo a permanent change of hair, but which even places within reach of the intelligent leopard a sure and easy method of changing his spots. Like many other great discoveries, this was made by accident, and though it incidentally cost a number of lives, it will be held, in the estimation of most ladies, an extremely cheap discovery at the price.

In 1875 the British ship Strathmore was wrecked on one of the Crozet Islands, a group of rocks that are situated below the bottom of the page in most geographies, and are, indeed, among the most southern bits of land on the globe. The survivors, who at first fancied themselves extremely unfortunate in being cast away upon a desolate island, were obliged to subsist exclusively upon penguin’s eggs. The penguin, as all students of natural history know, is a large, fat bird, which sits on the extremity of its tail feathers, and divides its time between laying eggs and laying plans for the capture of fish. The eggs are not savory, for, though they are well planned in point of size, they are injudiciously mixed with more sulphuretted hydrogen than an epicure really needs. We can imagine with what wry faces the people of the Strathmore began to devour these eggs; but we cannot imagine the delight with which they recognized the remarkable effect wrought upon them by their unaccustomed diet. First, their complexions grew clear and fair, and then their brown, black, or gray hair slowly assumed a gorgeous golden tint. When, after six months of egg diet, they were rescued by a passing vessel, they resembled a theatrical company of blonde burlesquers, especially as their supply of clothing was remarkably scant. What is still more strange, their return to the English climate, and to English beef and beer, has made no alteration in the brilliancy of their locks, and there is no reason to doubt that they will remain blonde and golden for the rest of their happy lives.

With what joy will those who vainly sigh for golden hair learn that there is balm in the Crozet Islands in the shape of penguin’s eggs. They can sail for that marvelous region, shipwreck themselves upon the magic rocks, and eat themselves into a state of bewildering beauty. That thousands of our countrywomen will demand to be sent to the Crozet Islands without delay is, of course, self-evident, but a little reflection will show that the desired end can be attained without the discomforts of a long voyage and a hazardous shipwreck.

What is the ingredient in penguin’s eggs which colors the hair of those who eat them? No chemist will have the slightest hesitation in replying that it is the excessive amount of sulfur which they contain. Every one knows that sulfur possesses the property of bleaching vegetable fibers which are submitted to the action of its fumes, and it can easily be comprehended that the survivors of the Strathmore were thus transformed by the bleaching powers of the sulfur which, in the condition of sulphuretted hydrogen, was so conspicuously present in the penguin’s eggs. Hence, those who wish to change themselves into yellow haired blondes need not go to the Crozet Islands, neither need they live upon penguin eggs. All they have to do is to remain quietly at home and confine themselves to a diet consisting chiefly of sulfur. The use of sulfur baths, sulfur ointments and smelling bottles containing sulphuretted hydrogen would doubtless hasten the desired effect, and it is possible that in the course of two or three months of persistent sulphurization even Gen. Logan could transform himself into a sunny haired blonde whose beauty would inspire unusual confidence and esteem. Hereafter we shall hear no more of hair dye or hair dyers, and the demand for sulfur will be so enormous as to task the resources of our best volcanoes to their utmost limits.

A benevolent scheme

Sacred history informs us that the Jewish public was greatly astonished when the rather disreputable King Saul suddenly assumed the character of a prophet. With similar astonishment the English reading public finds the cynical Saturday Review proposing without the slightest warning a grand philanthropic scheme, which is second in point of practical benevolence only to the famous plan for supplying silk pocket handkerchiefs to juvenile Africans. Improbable as such conduct on the part of the Saturday Review may seem, there is no doubt that it has seriously proposed the benevolent enterprise of stocking uninhabited islands with pigs and rabbits, so that shipwrecked sailors can celebrate their escape from the waves by cheap and abundant dinners.

That certain features of this plan are practicable no one can deny. If a “Society for the Propagation of Pigs and the Diffusion of Rabbits” were, to be formed, its agents would have no difficulty in collecting large quantities of these nutritious animals. Large bins, resembling in everything but size the collection boxes now in common use, might be placed at church doors and in railway stations. In these bins charitable men and women could drop their spare pigs, and children could drop their extra rabbits. At the meetings of the society in Exeter Hall or elsewhere collections of pigs and rabbits could be taken up by ushers provided with wheelbarrows, while every Sunday scholar might be urged to bring a rabbit or a young pig to his teacher on the first Sunday in every month. That plenty of pigs and almost unlimited quantities of rabbits could be obtained by these and other means there is no doubt, and so far the Saturday Revieiu’s scheme is certainly feasible.

It will be a much more difficult matter, however, for the Society for the Propagation of Pigs, etc., to find its uninhabited islands. Of course, there is Kerguelen’s Land, and the Falkland Islands, and a few other extremely remote places that are both islands and uninhabited. These places, however, would not be available for any large disbursement of pigs. They are not only small in area, but as they contain nothing that either pigs or rabbits could eat, it would be useless to stock them with these animals unless an auxiliary society were first organized to supply the pigs with mud and the rabbits with young and valuable pear trees. Unless more uninhabited islands can be found than are at present known to the geographers, it is plain that the “S. P. P. D. R.,” etc., would suffer from a plethora of pigs and a surplus of rabbits in its treasury. This would be unprecedented in the history of charitable societies, and would offer temptations to the managers to embezzle their trust pigs for purposes of private speculations, or to abscond with thirty or forty thousand rabbits concealed about their persons, leaving the society bankrupt. But by far the most formidable difficulty in the way of the society will be to procure their shipwrecked sailors. If it is supposed that sailors in the North Atlantic trade can be induced to go and wreck themselves on Kerguelen’s Land merely in order to eat pigs and rabbits, the supposition is founded on a total ignorance of seafaring character. Were the society to stock its desert islands with rum and tobacco, no doubt large numbers of sailors would come forward to consent to go and be wrecked in the society’s vessels, but no such enlightened scheme of inducing voluntary shipwrecks has as yet occurred to the Saturday Review philanthropist. Of course, vessels occasionally pass in the vicinity of certain uninhabited islands in the Pacific Ocean, and their officers and crews might be hired by the society to cast their ships away. Still, it is hardly possible, in view of the high wages which would be demanded as the price of voluntary shipwreck, that the society could really accomplish much good in this way. In any circumstances, such shipwrecks, being limited to vessels in the Pacific trade, would be few in number, and the members of the society who should read in its annual reports of only two or three cases of shipwrecks directly resulting from the society’s efforts, would feel that their pigs and rabbits had been virtually squandered.

It should be remembered, moreover, that, unless frequent shipwrecks can be achieved, the society’s animals will suffer greatly. It is true that when the pigs placed on Kerguelen’s Land feel the pangs of hunger, they can eat the rabbits; but the day will certainly come when the pigs, having increased to an enormous extent, and having extirpated the rabbits, would find starvation staring them in the snout. If at that precise period a few shipwrecked sailors should come ashore, they would be instantly devoured by the delighted pigs; but no reasonable breeder of swine would be willing to depend upon an occasional shipwrecked sailor as the sole fodder for an entire islandful of pigs. The pigs would unquestionably starve to death, and as the result of its labors the “S. V. P. D. R.,” etc., would have the blood of the massacred rabbits and the death of the starved pigs forever staining its corporate soul.

Looking at the scheme calmly, and with a disposition to encourage the benevolent inventors, it is only too evident that it is impracticable. Uninhabited islands are scarce, and as a rule are addicted to savage and unendurable climates, in which neither pigs nor rabbits would find sufficient inducements to live. Sailors are singularly prejudiced against undergoing the process of being shipwrecked, and no society could hire any respectable number of them to go and be wrecked on an exclusively pig and rabbit island. If the people of England subscribe their domestic animals to any society formed to carry out so impracticable a scheme, they will be sure to regret their heedless liberality. If the Saturday Review really wants to promote shipwrecks, it must first build an artificial island in the middle of the North Atlantic, stock it with rum and tobacco, and guarantee to every sailor who will consent to be wrecked upon it a free passage home at the end of six weeks, and a small bonus — say, five pounds — when he presents himself at the manager’s office.

A new plea

The need of some new plea in defense of the poor — but honest — murderer has for some time been generally recognized by both the legal and the murderous professions. The plea of insanity was originally an excellent one, but it has lost somewhat of its weight through excessive use. At first the juryman was easily convinced that every man who had had a remote ancestor with a headache, and who had became addicted to the small vice of murder, was unquestionably insane, and hence deserved to be acquitted and licensed to kill on his own or any other man’s premises. Of late, however, the conscientious and philosophic juryman has fallen into the habit of recollecting that his own personal grandmother was a victim of headache, and has hence argued that inasmuch as he must be hereditarily insane, he is bound to commit the lunacy of convicting insane murderers. Psychologists tell us that the strength of the plea depended upon the assumption of the congenital idiocy of juries; and now that juries have discovered this fact, they are determined to show the murderer and his lawyers that the more idiotic they may be, the more consistency requires them to punish irresponsible criminals.

Nature always makes a point of supplying whatever new want may be developed. Thus, when the Atlantic cable was laid, there was no insect which was competent to gnaw through its gutta-percha envelope. In a very few years, however, beneficent nature invented an insect for that express purpose, and at the present time the gutta-percha casings of marine cables are being devoured in the most thorough and satisfactory way. We might have been reasonably sure that a new plea in behalf of the murderer would be invented as soon as the want of such a plea should be distinctly perceived. That time having arrived, the needed plea has also made its appearance, and we read that in Belgium a man who had been convicted of two separate and aggravated murders has been recommended to mercy on the ground that he possessed a wooden leg.

While it is certain that the Belgian jury has adopted the great principle that a murderer with a wooden leg must not be hanged, it is not quite clear whether the wooden leg plea was urged in the case in question as a general defense to the charge of murder, or simply as an extenuating circumstance. It will readily be admitted that a man with a wooden leg is peculiarly liable to the temptation of carrying a sharp knife. In moments of idleness he is naturally apt to while away the time by cutting the initials of his lady love on the upper part of his leg, or by shaving down his ankle or scraping his calf At such moments, if he is irritated by an enemy, he may readily be tempted to use his knife in less artistic but more serious and inexcusable carving. Moreover, the wooden leg itself is equivalent to a concealed and deadly weapon. The wearer has only to unscrew it in order to provide himself with a stout and serviceable club, and in circumstances where a man with two merely fleshly legs would quietly withdraw from a quarrel, the wooden legged man, if of a hasty temperament, would probably shoulder his leg and prepare for combat. It thus needs no elaborate argument to show that in many cases the mere fact that one wears a wooden leg is a direct incentive to strife and violence, and may be very properly urged as an extenuating circumstance in behalf of the wooden legged homicide.

But it is more probable that the Belgian murderer to whom reference has been made was recommended to mercy not so much because his leg was looked upon as an extenuating circumstance, but because it was held to be a valid answer to the charge of murder. The wooden legged man is manifestly different from the rest of his species. A foreign and purely vegetable element has entered into one leg 6f his trousers, and who shall say what effect its presence may not have upon his moral and intellectual, as well as his physical, nature? If we remove part of the skull and a quantity of the brains of a patient, and fill up the hole with silver, all physicians agree that the man should not be held strictly responsible for such mental vagaries as he may subsequently develop. Similarly, if we cut off a man’s leg and supply its place with either wood or cork, it is only reasonable to hold that a decided change in the man’s character may ensue. How much wooden leg can be introduced into the human system without any perceptible effect, we have, as yet, no means of knowing; but it would be rash to assume that a man can have twenty-eight or thirty-inches of wooden leg suddenly incorporated with his body without developing distinctly wooden mental habits. If the leg is made of pine, we should expect to find him becoming light and inflammable. If it is made of oak, a dull, heavy, sullen demeanor would probably be manifested by its possessor. When we recall the viciousness of mahogany furniture, and its malignant fondness for abrading us with its corners, and tripping us up at unwary moments, we can scarcely doubt that a man with three or four pounds of mahogany in his constitution would become a prey to cruel and homicidal impulses.

Whether porcelain teeth or glass eyes should also be considered in the light of pleas in defense of murder has not yet been decided. Doubtless, however, the next time that a murderer with artificial eyes or teeth is tried by a Belgian jury, he will escape as easily as did the wooden legged murderer. We shall have no more of the insanity plea except in behalf of unmutilated murderers, and the great principle that crime committed under the influence of wooden legs, false teeth, and glass eyes should excite pity rather than reproach will be urged by all skilful criminal lawyers. The courts will recognize the distinction between whole men and composite men, and the latter will become a privileged class, and will succeed to the honors and immunities heretofore conceded to murderers gifted with emotional insanity.

Another distressing case

The British mariner is seeing altogether too many sea serpents, and those, too, of unnecessarily large size. A few weeks ago, we had the story of a British captain and one of his mates who saw an immense sea serpent of a unique pattern, both as to shape and color, somewhere near the Straits of Sunda, and who were so terribly frightened that as soon as they reached port they went before a magistrate and solemnly swore never to touch — that is to say, swore to the truth of their story. A little later, a retired sea captain in the Coast Guard service was walking along the shore near Plymouth, England, when he saw a large ship at a distance of about three miles from shore suddenly vanish as though it had made itself air, like a Shakespearean witch. While he was yet wondering at this phenomenon, he saw in the place lately occupied by the vanished ship what he took to be a large steamer with two funnels, but which a little observation proved to be an enormous serpent with two upright dorsal fins, painted with alternate black and white stripes. Had it been night, the snake would doubtless have carried the usual red and green lights, and would have burned a private Coston signal. As nearly as the Coast Guard man could judge, this sea serpent was six hundred feet long, and there is but little doubt that he had just gorged the vanished ship, and was on the look out for a tender long boat or an appetizing life raft.

Neither of these unhappy British mariners, however, saw sea serpents to the terrible extent to which the captain of a British bark has recently seen them. On the 8th of July, 1875, while the bark was off Cape St. Roque, the weather being fine and clear, and the steward opening one of the last half dozen, the captain noticed an unusual commotion in the water at a distance of about two miles on the lee bow. Ordering the man at the wheel to “keep her off four pints, your eyes,” and requesting the watch to “take a small pull of them weather braces, you lazy; slack the lee ones handsomely, you,” the warm hearted Christian sailor steered for the scene of disturbance, thinking that he might, perhaps, find a fragment of wreck bearing the body of some unhappy fellow being with a bottle in his pocket. He soon, however, discovered the true state of the case. A tremendous battle was in progress between a sperm whale and a sea serpent, while two other sperm whales, who had formed a ring, were watching the conflict with faces expressive of grief and alarm. The snake, which was from 160 to 170 feet in length and 7 or 8 feet in circumference, had taken two turns with his tail around the whale, bringing the tail around the standing part of him and passing it through the bight, thus making an imperfect but still sufficiently trustworthy “stunsail-halyard-bend.” Having thus a firm hold of the whale, the serpent was tossing him up in the air and bringing him down again on the surface of the water with a violence that must have proved excessively trying to the whale. The battle did not last long, for the whale soon became totally exhausted, and the serpent sank with him in order to swallow him without the presence of spectators. The two other whales then swam away, too much depressed in spirits to think of spouting, and the captain felt a “cold shiver” run through his frame. Fortunately, he had taken the precaution to lean against the lee rail, and to keep a firm grasp of the mizzen rigging. He thus escaped making a spectacle of himself by sinking fainting to the deck, and successfully concealed his emotions.

In spite of the care which he naturally took of himself after having received this terrible warning, the captain saw another serpent eight days after, when about eighty miles from Cape St. Roque. This serpent stood on his tail, with some sixty feet of his body out of the water, and grimly scrutinized the bark as if in search of the unhappy captain. That fearless mariner instantly shouted, “Gimmenaxe?” and the carpenter having brought him the best axe on board the vessel, he carefully emptied his boots overboard, to avoid any attack in the rear, and announced that, if the sea serpent wanted to attack an honest and sober sailor, he would show him who was the master of that vessel. The monster, however, thought better of it, and slowly disappeared, when the captain was escorted to his cabin by the steward, where he subsequently wrote out a full account of the affair for the London medical journals and temperance societies.

Why this account was not published until a year and a half after the affair took place we are not informed; neither is it known whether the captain has changed his habits, or is still in danger of another attack. There is no doubt, however, that his case is rather the worst on record. Other mariners have seen sea serpents of great size and ferocity, some of which have shown a persistence in coiling themselves around the spectator’s neck and stowing themselves away in his pockets, which must have been very trying; but a sea serpent engaged in beating the breath out of a whale is quite unprecedented. The captain makes a feeble attempt to excuse himself by referring to the prolonged heat of the weather in the neighborhood of Cape St. Roque. This is not an excuse which can be accepted. If the weather was hot the captain should have tried cold baths and light diet, and should have avoided heating beverages with the utmost care. It is certainly to be hoped that he is a thoroughly reformed man, but the public would have more confidence in him if he had honestly confessed his fault without attempting to apologize for It.

It is plain that something must be done to improve the condition of the British mercantile marine. Where one captain confesses that he has seen a sea serpent, there are probably a dozen others who keep their own counsel. It is a terrible thought that at this moment there may be a hundred vessels at sea, under the command of men who are seeing sea serpents day and night. Where is Mr. Plimsoll, that he does not expose this frightful source of danger to life and property, and insist that no vessel shall be permitted to go to sea except in charge of a captain who is a member of the Good Templars or the Infant Band of Hope?

The recent calamity

In the face of the recent awful calamity at Bloomingville, Iowa, the most reckless man can hardly avoid remembering that he is more or less human, and the coldest cynic must for once admit that all men are his brothers, up to a certain point. When a horrible catastrophe strikes down men and women in the vigor of health and the glow of happiness, we are compelled to pause and ask ourselves a series of philosophical and humanitarian conundrums. Why was it that we were not put to death by Nero, or overwhelmed by the Lisbon earthquake, or banished to Siberia by Peter the Great? When everything around us is bright and fair, we may perhaps answer these and similar questions with the flippant remark that we were not born in time to share in any such calamities; but when we are in the very presence of some horrible tragedy, flippancy and skepticism can no longer sustain us. Undoubtedly, one of the chief uses of other peoples’ sorrows is to lead us to ask why such and such things are so and so. Let us recognize this great fact, and strive to bear the griefs that beset other men with cheerful resignation.

It was late in the season when the mania for skating on roller skates reached Bloomingville, and the construction of a rink was begun and carried forward with more haste than ought to have characterized so important a work. It was determined that the rink should be ready for use by the 1st of February, but it was not actually completed until near the end of the month. The greatest interest in the undertaking was manifested by all classes. The local Baptist minister gave a lecture on the “Tortures of the Inquisition” in aid of the rink, and a leading citizen who had been in Europe followed with a lecture upon the Crusades, illustrated with a plan of Solomon’s temple and a chromo showing an army of blue Israelites crossing the Red Sea and pursued by green and yellow Egyptians. The ladies of the town gave a “Martha Washington Reception,” and the Dorcas Society decided to divide the profits of its annual fair between the missionaries and the rink. Even the local small-boys caught the enthusiasm, and worked pious mottoes upon cardboard, which they would have sold had they not quarreled over the question which motto was the most attractive, and so strewn the streets with fragments of “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” and “Love one Another,” mingled with hair and buttons.

In time the necessary funds were raised and the rink was completed. The floor was covered with a composite pavement made of tar, fine sand, and other abstruse chemicals, and the building was warmed by a furnace, the “registers” connected with which were judiciously placed here and there in the floor, so that the skaters could readily warm their feet. On the evening of the 26th of February, the rink was formally opened with a prayer by the Methodist minister and singing by the Presbyterian choir, together with an address on general topics by a former justice of the peace. Then, amid the inspiring strains of the Bloomingville brass band, the skaters adjusted their rollers and the sport began.

All went as merry as an Indiana marriage bell, which is as ready to ring for a divorce as a wedding. At least sixty persons were on the floor, and a large number were ranged along the raised platform at the sides of the building, enjoying the spectacle and peanuts. Before long, however, the rink became oppressively warm. The engineer in charge of the furnace was new to the business, and had injudiciously filled it too full of pine logs. Slowly the thermometer climbed upward. It began at 58°, but at 9 o’clock it had reached 80°, and was still rising. At precisely 9.20, Judge Bowman, who weighed 213 pounds, was seen to sit violently down, and to remain seated in spite of the efforts of his friends. A few moments later, a lady of great moral worth and cubic dimensions followed the judge’s example, and a panic at once began.

There were fourteen “registers” on the floor, and for a space of several yards around each one of these registers the tar pavement had suddenly yielded to the excessive heat. As the frightened skaters, warned by the fate of the first two victims, tried to reach the platforms, many of them skated too near the registers, and involuntarily sat down in the most pronounced manner. Within ten minutes after the panic began, fifteen leading citizens of Bloomingville and twenty-two ladies were fastened to the floor as firmly as if they were express labels pasted upon nicely polished articles of furniture. Again and again was some leading citizen partially pried loose, but to the sound of rending garments was uniformly added his piercing entreaty to be allowed to resume his meditative attitude until he could be furnished with an Ulster overcoat. The ladies, with characteristic inconsistency, implored their friends to aid them, but when approached by charitable young men with crowbars, fiercely demanded to be let alone. Over the horrors of this scene humanity requires that a veil should be dropped. It was midnight before a full supply of Ulsters was obtained, and the simultaneously happy thought of putting out the lights occurred to an intelligent man. The fifteen leading citizens and the twenty-two ladies were finally extricated and carried to their several homes, and on the very next night the rink accidentally took fire and burned to the ground.

How pointedly this sad calamity teaches us that in the midst of life we may sometimes happen to be in the midst of tar! This is a solemn thought, and it is to be hoped that it will not be lightly put aside, and that the Bloomingville calamity may inspire us all with a firm determination never to go and do likewise.

Quackery and science

To mistake a mere symptom for a disease is the common error of ignorant people and quacks; and, of course, the medical treatment which is based upon such an error must be entirely useless, if not actually hurtful. For example, a pain in the foot is usually a symptom of tight boot; and when the symptom is mistaken for the disease, and the foot is treated with all sorts of lotions and other palliatives, the patient receives no benefit whatever. If, however, he calls in a scientific physician, the latter makes a careful diagnosis; finds that the real seat of the difficulty is in the boot, and thereupon blisters and scarifies the offending boot, instead of the inoffensive foot. No matter what the quack may do to cure the symptomatic pain in the foot, the patient does not improve, but no sooner does the intelligent physician begin to plaster and blister the outside of the boot, and to fill up its interior with laxative and antispasmodic pills than the patient feels strong enough to rise up and place that boot where it will do the most good. Thus we see that there is a wide difference between quackery and science, and that symptoms ought never to be confounded with disease.

Although medical science has made vast strides within the last century, and several novel and entirely incurable diseases have been discovered, there is still an almost universal ignorance displayed in the ordinary methods of treating the back fence. In this matter quackery monopolizes the field, and our strength is wasted in futile efforts to suppress the symptoms instead of the disease. Now the worst — and in most cases the only — symptom of a well defined back fence is the nocturnal development of cats. It is this symptom which we attempt to combat with palliatives, while we leave the disease itself untouched j and we need not wonder at our total want of success.

It would be impracticable to give in this place a list of the popular quack remedies for cats. They are as numerous as the infallible remedies for consumption, and quite as useless. Stones, coal, bottles, crockery of all sorts, boot jacks, other people’s boots, borrowed books, and firearms have all been recommended as infallible remedies for cats on the back fence. That among these quack remedies there are several which may have a slightly sedative action may be frankly admitted. Thus, when Rev. Mr. Smith, Pastor of the Eleventh Day Baptist Church of Oshkosh, writes to the proprietor of one of these remedies, saying: “I have used your ‘Infallible Feline Boot Jack’ with the best results, and have slept peacefully for two consecutive nights. Please send me two dozen more without delay, and make whatever use of this letter you see fit,” we need not doubt the reverend gentleman’s word. If a boot jack, or a bottle be suddenly applied to a cat, the cat will temporarily disappear. The difficulty is, the cat is sure to return the moment the effect of the boot jack or bottle has passed off. Like all other palliatives, the best of these so-called cat cures have only a temporary effect, and if often repeated, they lose their power and have no effect whatever There are few householders living in a neighborhood where back fences prevail who have not tried all the popular cat cures, and found them useless. It is for this reason that the nocturnal cat is so generally believed to be entirely incurable, except by a total change of climate. Persons who have suffered from nocturnal cats for years have been completely cured by camping out in the Maine woods or taking a sea voyage. Nevertheless, they have always experienced a relapse on returning home, and as a rule they are perfectly convinced that in this climate the cat is incurable.

If we examine this subject In the light of science we shall soon arrive at a very different judgment. It is notorious that the nocturnal cat is uniformly connected with the back fence, and that, in point of fact, where there are no back fences — as in the Maine woods or on the ocean — the nocturnal cat is unknown. A very little observation, intelligently made, will demonstrate that the cat is simply a symptom of the back’ fence, and that the latter is the real disease to be attacked. We should discard all boot jacks and other palliatives — except, of course, in emergencies, when the patient must have temporary rest at any cost — and should strive to cure the back fence. When once this has been thoroughly accomplished, the symptomatic cats will disappear, and the rear rooms of city houses will become once more inhabitable by others than deaf persons. The most obvious remedy which suggests itself is the total extirpation of the back fence by a surgical operation. This, however, would be so difficult and hazardous in many cases that we should seek rather to render the back fence harmless by the use of remedies less violent than the saw and axe. An alleged remedy of this sort has recently been discovered by a scientific person, and deserves to be briefly described. It consists of a parallelogram of wood, or any other material, two feet in length, and as wide as the back fence to which it is to be applied. The parallelogram is fitted with upright wires, set close together and ending in sharp points. When placed on the back fence, it presents a complete barrier to the passage of any cat. It is claimed that this Back Fence Irritant, as it is called, acts upon the principle of an ordinary counter-irritant, and creates in the back fence to which it is applied sufficient strength to throw off even the most chronic cats, and to resist the development of any new ones.

Very possibly this remedy may not be so efficacious as it is said to be, but at all events the inventor comprehends that the back fence, and not the cat, should engage the attention of the medical man. If we once cure our back fences, we shall hear no more of the nocturnal cat. The wonder is that mankind has so long mistaken the symptomatic cat for the back fence disease, and now that a scientific diagnosis of the matter has been made, we may expect that before very long a specific remedy will be discovered.

The boy of Dundee

A boy with two stomachs has recently been produced at Dundee, in Scotland, and his inventor has the effrontery to describe him as an improved style of boy. Useless inventions are numberless, but they do not need the condemnation of public spirited people, for the obvious reason that they can never be brought into general use. It is different with inventions that are demoralizing and otherwise hurtful in their tendency. Such inventions should be exposed and denounced by an honest and enlightened press. The improved boy of Dundee is not only the most uncalled for boy now living, but he is a peculiarly atrocious example of the very worst type of objectionable inventions.

There is nothing more evident even to the most superficial observer than that the ordinary boy has a disproportionate quantity of stomach. It has been calculated by Sunday school superintendents with much experience in point of picnics, that the small-boy between the ages of ten and thirteen can devour at a single picnic thirty-two pints of ice cream, eleven cubic feet of cake, seventeen and a half pounds of candy, and a practically unlimited quantity of peanuts. The consequence of this vast stowage capacity on the part of the small-boy is that the cost of one average sized picnic is equal to that of ten assorted heathen. It is well known that nearly every large Sunday school keeps a private heathen in Hindostan or elsewhere, who is fed, educated, clothed with old hats, and occasionally washed at the expense of the school. It is a painful thought that the value of ten heathen must be annually expended in a picnic in order to attract enough Sunday school scholars to pay for a single heathen. This lavish outlay is directly traceable to the large capacity of the small-boy’s stomach, and no earnest superintendent will venture to deny this fact.

In the domestic circle the immense quantity of food which the small-boy can consume is a source of constant anxiety to affectionate parents. How much jam can be put into one boy has never yet been ascertained. Sir Isaac Newton tried to test the matter by experimenting upon a borrowed boy; but he tells us that, after consuming thirty-seven pots of jam — the size of which he strangely forgot to mention — the boy calmly remarked that he was “ready to begin to prepare for to eat that there jam,” and was abruptly driven out of the house by Sir Isaac’s exasperated and misanthropic housekeeper. There is no doubt that, next to his pocket, the average boy’s stomach is by far the most capacious of his organs, and the criminal folly of doubling his stomachic capacity must be evident to the most obtuse mind.

It may be urged that inasmuch as the people of Scotland notoriously eat nothing but oatmeal and an occasional haggis, — a bird so tough and fishy in its flavor that it is never shot for the table south of the Scottish border, — it matters very little whether a Scotch boy has one or many stomachs. It must not be forgotten, however, that Scotch ideas have a marked tendency to spread into other countries. Scotch philosophy, Scotch theology, and Scotch whiskey are found wherever the English speaking races exist, and if the Scottish boys were to be generally constructed with two stomachs each, we may be sure that among the thousands of Englishmen and Americans who have adopted Scotch Presbyterianism, the new style of boy would sooner or later make’ his way. Moreover, it will not do to assume that even in Scotland boys can be safely provided with two stomachs. The quantity of oatmeal and the number of haggises in that sterile, mountainous country is not unlimited, and if we double the stomachs of all the Scottish boys, a famine would be almost unavoidable.

We might learn a lesson from the results which have attended the construction of boys with two pockets. A century ago a boy with more than one pocket would have been regarded as a lusus naturae; but now every boy has two pockets, and boys with three or even four pockets, are by no means rare. Mark the result of this unfortunate change. Whereas, a boy could formerly carry about his person not more than a peck of miscellaneous hardware, glass, cutlery, and tops, he can now put all his own portable property in one pocket, and conceal fully one-half of his father’s personal property in the other. If we provide our boys with extra stomachs, we may be sure that they will be constantly filled, either openly or by stealth. The boy baby with two stomachs will have twice as much colic as the usual baby, and will ruin his father by an inordinate consumption of paregoric, and bring down his mother’s knees in rheumatism to the grave by the constant trotting which will be necessary if he is to be successfully jolted into quiet. Many an honest and industrious man has been ruined by the ill judged present of a pair of twins — a gift described in the old Greek legend as the box of Pandora. One boy with two stomachs will be fully as dangerous as a pair of single stomached twins, and we can imagine what will be the effect of two duplex stomached boys, upon any father of moderate means.

It is understood that the perverse Dundee inventor claims that this boy will be of immense service in African exploration, since he is built upon the principle of the six-stomached camel, who is said to utilize his stomachs for the storage of water during long journeys in the desert. In answer to this it is only necessary to say that the camel’s ability as a water carrier has been enormously overrated. Very possibly that intelligent beast would fill himself up with water if he could find nothing better, but in point of fact he usually fills his stomachs with something more satisfactory. Many a traveler who believed that his camel was a whole series of receiving and distributing reservoirs has killed him and cut him open on the desert only to find his entire complement of stomachs overloaded with whetstones, nails, broken crockery, sewing machines, and other delicacies. As a peripatetic Croton aqueduct the camel is a failure, and the “temperance” people have much to answer for in disseminating erroneous and water-colored views of that omnivorous beast.

Even were the boy of Dundee to grow up and become an African explorer, he would not waste his stomachs by filling them with water. Accustomed from his earliest youth to take a little Scotch whiskey for both his stomachs’ sake, we can easily imagine with what he would fill them on setting out with the expectation of meeting with a desert. The consequence would be that he would go reeling over Africa singing wild mathematical songs, rehearsing the Shorter Catechism, and otherwise scandalizing the native kings with untimely Scottish humor. The simple truth is that the boy of Dundee is an irredeemably vicious invention, and the local Dundee authorities ought to lose no time in suppressing him, and in appropriately punishing his misanthropical inventor.

The mule abroad

When Mr. Carlyle raised his warning voice against the Americanization of England, or as he preferred to call it, the shooting of a political Niagara, he asked what was to happen after the irrevocable leap over the cataract. Nobody answered his question, partly because nobody knew what the true answer was, and partly because every one dreaded to have Mr. Carlyle retort, “You are wrong, as fools mostly are.” But time, which is said to set all things right, — though it was never yet known to set a cheap clock right, — has answered the philosopher’s question. After the shooting of Niagara, the American army mule has invaded England. The worst forebodings of Carlyle are now realized, and the bitterest enemy of England may well forget his hatred, and extend his pity to the unhappy British Empire.

Only those whose lot has been cast in the vicinity of an American mule, and have been so far repaired as to be able to communicate their thoughts, know the true character of that extraordinary beast. The mule looks upon the world as a place in which to kick. Archimedes, who was the earliest scientific person who mentioned the mule, remarked that if he were to give his mule a place detached from the earth on which to stand, that energetic animal would kick all creation into kindling wood. This was by no means an exaggerated estimate of the army mule, and the fact that Archimedes was familiar with the animal shows that the voyages of the Phoenician sailors were even more extensive than has usually been supposed. But this is a digression.

The mule’s full capabilities never became known until he was introduced into the army during the civil war. In the presence of strife and lawlessness, the animal promptly undertook to have his due share of both. When in camp the mule generally managed to keep an average of at least one brigadier general and three regimental officers constantly in the air, and the enemy frequently learned the situation of a Federal encampment by noticing the constant rise and fall of blue clad soldiers as displayed against the clear background of the sky. The losses resulting from mule accidents were so enormous that they would seem scarcely credible were they to be mentioned, but in the absence of official figures they cannot here be given without running the risk of inaccuracy. As is well known, the mule is not the only animal that kicks, for the horse, the cow, and even Dr. Mary Walker have been known to kick to a greater or less extent. The peculiar characteristic of the mule as a kicker is the practically illimitable distance at which he can kick his victims. The horse and the other animals just mentioned, can kick only within a circle of which the extreme length of the leg is the radius. Thus cautious persons, by keeping out of the circle, can save themselves from all injury. The mule, on the other hand, can send a brigadier general into the air whenever the latter approaches within forty or fifty feet of his hind legs. It was the universal belief in the army that no man was safe in the vicinity of a mule unless he kept himself directly in front of the beast’s head. This, however, was a mistake. A learned scientific person — either Prof. Peters or Prof. Plarkness of the Smithsonian Institute — investigated the matter in the winter of 1864, at the request of the Government, and claimed that the range of a mule’s hind legs was capable of being accurately calculated. The rule as given (Smithsonian Transactions, vol. vi., p. 84,) is to multiply the square of the radius — or the mule’s leg — by 3.14159.

Thus, if the hind leg of a given mule is four feet long, its range for kicking purposes will be 77.52 feet. This corresponds closely with the majority of the known facts as to the army mule, but it must be mentioned that several scientific persons refuse to admit the truth of this formula, and that the apparently well authenticated case of a sutler who was found with his head bruised and without his whiskey keg, 107 feet from the mule which, according to the testimony of seven disinterested soldiers, had kicked him, seems directly in conflict with the so-called Smithsonian law.

It is this terrible animal which has been introduced into England, and is destined to produce results in comparison with which the ravages of the potato bug will seem trivial. How the mule was brought to England we are not informed; but in all probability the animal secreted itself in the cargo of some vessel. In this way the potato bug and other objectionable animals have performed long sea voyages and have avoided the most stringent quarantine. How the mule reached England is, however, a matter of small importance. He is there now, and it will not be long before the astonished Englishman, as he sails swiftly through the air, will be comparing the merits of a mule and a volcano, with a strong preference for the latter.

England is a small and densely populated island, A mule that can kick over the area of a moderate sized English county can fracture more Englishman in a day than all the surgeons in the kingdom can repair in a month. Before many weeks are over, the air of England will be dense with British subjects ascending and descending, and the insecurity bred by the presence of an animal which can kick a man who is out of sight around the corner will create a dissatisfaction which the Government will find it hard to allay. Mr. Gladstone will write a ponderous pamphlet, proving by an elaborate course of reasoning that the mule is addicted to kicking, and calling upon Englishmen, for the sake of humanity and the Protestant faith, to turn the Tories out of office and to put Mr. Gladstone in. Let us hope that the mule will not kick the British Empire to pieces, but at present it cannot be denied that the prospect is anything but hopeful.

Shooting stars

Shooting stars was originally published in 1878 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Shooting stars

From time immemorial the shooting star has ministered to the happiness of lovers. When two hearts that beat as one, with, of course, the usual accompanying organs, limbs, and clothes, are seated on the piazza in the quiet of a summer evening, a kiss may properly be exchanged whenever a meteor is seen. Upon this point all the authorities from Anacreon to the Sun, are unanimous. Socrates, indeed, went so far as to hold that nature provides shooting stars and bridges for the sole benefit of lovers, for in the eighteenth book of the “Memorabilia,” he is reported to have said to Alcibiades, in the course of an argument for the existence of the gods, based upon the evidences of design in nature: “You, yourself, O, Alcibiades, know that if you or I cross a bridge while sleighing, or discover a meteor in the firmament, we consecrate a kiss to Zeus. Why, then, did Zeus create bridges and meteors unless in order that you and I should —” At this moment, as Xenophon informs us, Xantippe entered, and the sage, suddenly recollecting that he had an appointment down town, abruptly dismissed his class in philosophy. We do not, however, need the authority of the ancients to prove the existence of a custom familiar to us all. This custom has naturally trained the youth of both sexes to great skill in the detection of meteors. It is not very long ago that a young lady of Oshkosh, while sitting with her betrothed on the back piazza, pointed out to him thirty-six meteors in the course of a single hour, and subsequently permitted her astronomical enthusiasm to lead her to insist that the flashes of a lantern in the hands of a brakeman engaged in coupling together a long freight train, were so many additional meteors of a peculiarly interesting type.

Vassar College, as every one knows, contains a vast collection of girls of all sizes, weights, and colors of hair. Those who control the institution have an intense horror of the coeducation of the sexes, and permit no male students to cross the threshold, or even to enter the front gate of the college. The girls are strictly secluded from all young men, and the members of the Faculty are united in a determined disbelief in the existence of all cousins and brothers. It has just been announced that since the 14th of September last the Vassar students have sighted two hundred meteors. Now, in view of the utter dearth of young men at Vassar, and the known uses ’ of meteors, the question arises, How were these two hundred meteors observed? The question is one which comes home with tremendous force to the parents of the Vassar young ladies, and which cannot be lightly set aside by the Vassar Faculty, who are directly responsible for the method in which the students pursue the study of astronomy.

Of course, every one knows that when girls are bent upon dancing, and young men are absolutely unattainable, a select number of girls are frequently temporarily transformed into theoretical young men, by simply tying handkerchiefs around their left arms. It may be pretended that a similar expedient has been employed to aid the Vassar young ladies in observing meteors. The Faculty may as well understand at once that no such flimsy pretense will satisfy the public. Theoretical young men may be made use of amid the excitement of a dance, but no young lady, no matter if she were to “make believe” with even greater skill than the “Marchioness,” would be able to convince herself that another young lady with a handkerchief around her left arm could constitute an efficient aid to the observation of meteors. The two hundred meteors lately observed at Vassar were never observed under such conditions. The girls may have sat in pairs on the back piazza, with a pretended view to meteors, but if so, their observations were confined to dresses, bonnets, and other feminine phenomena, and not to the starry heavens.

Are we, then, to assume either that the astronomical observatory of Vassar College has recently added three or four dozen young men to the rest of its apparatus, or that the alleged two hundred meteors were never really seen, but were the invention of a number of ingenious and somewhat too imaginative young ladies? Fortunately, we are not compelled to accept either of these hypotheses. To suppose that the Vassar Faculty have fitted up the observatory with young men, would be to impute to them a reckless determination to enforce the study of astronomy at the sacrifice of the very principle upon which Vassar College is founded, while to suppose that young ladies would profess to see meteors when none were visible, is to charge them with the one offense of which the sex is never guilty a want of veracity.

If, then, we concede that the two hundred meteors were really observed by the Vassar astronomical class without the aid of any additions to the usual apparatus of the observatory, we are brought face to face with the question, who is the Vassar Professor of Astronomy? He may be venerable in point of years, and absolutely full of science, but can he expect to be believed when he pretends that he teaches the young ladies the uses of meteors simply from pure love of science? Astronomers are fond of taxing human credulity, and it must be confessed that they usually succeed. For example, the pretense that they have discovered the names of the stars by aid of instruments and calculations is almost an insult to common sense, and yet it is universally believed. There is, however, a limit beyond which the boldest astronomical person cannot safely go, and the Vassar Professor of Astronomy will pass this limit if he attempts any such defense as that just mentioned. Possibly, he can explain the whole affair in a way that will be perfectly satisfactory to every one; but if he cannot, let him at least be frank and truthful. It will then be time to consider whether the study of shooting stars should be any longer pursued at Yassar. It is, of course, a fascinating study, but it can be pursued as a postgraduate study, under the direction of an accomplished cousin, with far better results than can attend the instruction of a class of immature girls by an ancient scientific person.

The Tombigbee incident

The Town of Clayville, situated some thirty miles from the mouth of the Tombigbee River, is at present greatly excited over the departure of the local colored minister, who recently started down the river on board a large and strongly built colored sister, and who has not since been heard from. The circumstances attending the minister’s departure were peculiar, and their publication may, perhaps, aid the recovery of the intrepid, though unintentional, voyager.

The minister in question was of the Colored Baptist persuasion, and was famed throughout the Tombigbee Valley for his skill as a baptizer, as well as for his ability as a preacher. There is no doubt that he was a fearless and conscientious man. Instead of maintaining that politic silence on the subject of chickens which many colored ministers insist is absolutely necessary, in order to avoid chilling the fervor of their hearers, this particular minister never hesitated to declare that a right of property in chickens existed, and that it should be respected in certain cases, and to a greater or less extent, by all honest men, especially during the season when hams are readily accessible. This bold doctrine, instead of injuring his popularity, actually increased the respect in which he was held by his congregation, and gave him much prominence among his ministerial brethren.

Among the colored ladies of Clayville was one who had long desired to submit to the rite of baptism, but who was deterred by a nervous dread of drowning and by a strong repugnance to the inevitable wetting which is inseparable from the rite. Scores of times this estimable lady had determined to be baptized at the next available opportunity, but at the last moment her courage always failed her. In the days prior to emancipation, she had been the slave of a Clayville planter, and she still retained a warm affection for the young master whom she had nursed in his infancy. Not very long ago this young man called to see her, and to him she lamented the lack of courage which shut her out from baptism. Whether he was influenced by genuine kindness, or by a wicked spirit of irreverence, will perhaps never be known; but the advice which he gave his confiding nurse was the cause of the painful tragedy which followed.

The young man professed to be surprised that the new safety baptismal robe, invented, as he alleged, by Rev. Dr. Paul Boyton, of New York, had not yet been adopted by the colored Baptists of the South. He said that he had one of these robes in his possession, and that the wearer would not only be safe against any possibility of drowning, but also against the possibility of getting wet. Moreover, it could be worn underneath the usual white cotton robe, without any danger of detection. The overjoyed candidate for baptism enthusiastically accepted the young man’s advice and his offer of the robe, and she immediately sent word to the minister that she would certainly be ready for baptism the very next Sunday.

There was such a general distrust of the sister’s courage that the colored people all assembled on the bank of the Tombigbee on the next day, confident that her courage would fail, and that she would endeavor to escape from the hands of the minister. The particular part of the river selected for the ceremony was comparatively shallow, but the current was swift, and a little lower down the depth was at least ten feet. In fact, the minister, in spite of his skill, had once lost a convert, who was carried away by the current, and who, on being rescued, promptly went over to the Methodists. The timid candidate was an unusually large woman, and was certain to tax the minister’s strength severely; so that there could be little doubt that the ceremony would be one of unusual interest.

The sister arrived at the appointed time, looking even larger than usual, and walking with much difficulty. The minister took her by the hand, and she fearlessly descended into the water. All went well until she reached the depth of about four feet, when she suddenly fell upon her back, and to the astonishment of the spectators, floated on the surface of the water. The excitement at this unprecedented event was tremendous, and the air was filled with enthusiastic shouts. The minister’s face, however, wore a troubled expression. He towed the unaccountably buoyant sister out into deeper water, and attempted to place her on her feet. The attempt proved impracticable, and he then tried to immerse her without changing her position. In spite of all his efforts, he could not force her under, and the spectators who witnessed the struggle soon became convinced that she was bewitched. They counseled the minister to exorcise the evil one by whom she was evidently possessed, with an axe, and volunteered to supply him with heavy weights wherewith to securely sink her. That devoted man, however, refused their counsel, and persisted in his effort to immerse the sister without the aid of weights. Finally he threw his whole weight upon her, and in a moment the current swept the pair beyond their depth.

In spite of the danger of his situation, the minister’s cheek did not blanch. With great presence of mind he seated himself comfortably upon the floating sister, and, waving a farewell to his congregation, began to sing a cheerful hymn. The current steadily carried him on at the rate of at least six miles an hour, and in a short time his weeping congregation was left out of sight and hearing. Without oars or sails he was unable to navigate the sister to the shore, and there is every reason to suppose that before the next morning he was far out on the Gulf of Mexico.

Captains of vessels navigating the Gulf have been requested to keep a sharp lookout for a colored sister in a Boyton lifesaving dress, carrying a colored minister on her deck. Let us hope that he will soon be picked up. He has now been afloat five days without provisions or water, and must be beginning to feel the need of refreshment. Of course, any Captain who may rescue him will not ask for a reward, but if he tows the sister into port he can claim salvage to a large amount, and libel her in the nearest admiralty court.

A Spanish smuggler

Here is another of those occasions which cause the conscientious journalist to wish that he had never been born. The cold world little thinks of the terrible cost at which it is sometimes furnished with the news of the day. There are events of which the public must be apprised, but which cannot be told without lacerating the feelings of the earnest and sensitive narrator. An event of this nature has just happened in Madrid. It would be cowardly and dishonest to suppress it. Moreover, the story comes directly from the State Department at Washington, and it is by no means certain that its suppression would not be an act of rebellion. Let us, then, go forward boldly and discharge a painful duty without murmuring.

The Spaniard is not usually thought to possess inventive genius. Among all the important inventions which have been made since the union of Castile and Arragon, the art of “walking Spanish” is the only one which has been attributed to the Spanish intellect. But there has at last appeared a Spaniard who is clearly entitled to be ranked as one of the ablest of living inventors, and it is the history of his invention which must now be laid before the public.

The city of Madrid is, as every one knows, a walled city. It is not, however, generally known that nearly all merchandise which is brought into the city has to pay a special duty, no matter if it is an imported article which has been already taxed at a Spanish custom house. This is the case with petroleum. It is heavily taxed when it enters Spanish territory and is again taxed still more heavily when it enters Madrid. Hence a great temptation to smuggle is offered to those who supply petroleum to the inhabitants of Madrid, and were the Spaniards an ingenious people, they would devote so much attention to smuggling that they would have no time left to celebrate their annual revolutions.

In the outskirts of Madrid Don Jose de Antiquedad y Yuelta-Abajo possesses a charming villa with extensive grounds and numerous outbuildings. He has long been known as an extremely benevolent man, always ready to approve of any act of charity, and eager to point out fields of philanthropic usefulness to other people. About six months ago he announced that the condition of the babies of Madrid filled him with grief, and that he was determined to alleviate their sufferings. In the course of an elaborate essay, which he published in pamphlet form, he demonstrated that infants could not be reared without artificial aid in a crowded city. He claimed that no matter how excellent might be the intentions of the mothers of Madrid, they could not furnish their infants with desirable board because their systems were affected in a deleterious manner by the unwholesome atmosphere of the city. As for the auxiliary bottle, he condemned it with much fierceness. “Never with my consent,” said this excellent man, “shall the youth of Madrid undergo the humiliation of the unsympathetic and unsatisfactory bottle.” The true solution of the problem how to feed the babies of Madrid was, however, a simple one in his estimation. He announced that he would keep constantly on hand a large supply of ‘unexceptionable nurses at his suburban estate. There is some difficulty in translating his exact descriptive phrase into English, but perhaps it will suffice to say that his nurses were warranted to be able to supply the wants of the Madrid infants without the aid of bottles. In short, they were to be self acting, perennial, and inexhaustible, and with their assistance Don Jose de Antiqued Ad y Vuelta-Abajo undertook to supply Madrid with pure Naranjos County well! at all events the Madrid infants were to be fed.

A few weeks later and Don Jose advertised that his establishment was in complete order, and that his nurses would enter the city daily to wait upon their customers. Apparently, he had a great many patrons, for a few days later a procession of at least a dozen extremely plump Spanish women, whose very appearance was sufficient to awaken the hunger of the most dainty infant, made their appearance at the city gate. The custom house officers gazed at them with respect and admiration, and warmly congratulated the Madrid infants upon their good fortune. The praises of the benevolent Don Jose were in every mouth. The local press published frequent leading articles asserting that the local infants were thriving to an extent hitherto unknown, and hinting that the grand regalia of the Order of St. Intimidad had been given to many men who deserved it less than did the beneficent Don Jose. For three months the procession of nurses entered the city at morning, noon, and night, and grew in numbers, until it was no unusual thing for sixty women to present themselves at the gate at one and the same time.

On the 4th day of March last, it happened that a new custom house officer, Lieut. Colorado Maduro, who was on duty at the Zarzuela gate when the noon procession of nurses made its appearance. He was a thoughtful, intelligent man, but he was not popular with the small-boys of Madrid. Just as the leading nurse, Senora Rosa Concha, entered the city, a stone, thrown at the officer, missed its mark and smote the nurse in the region of the lungs. To the officer’s great astonishment, the blow produced a hollow metallic sound which at once awakened his suspicions. Without a moment’s delay, Lieut. Maduro called out a file of soldiers, and arresting every nurse, sent for two female searchers and ordered them to do their duty. Twenty minutes later sixty exceptionally thin and sad looking women were marched to the city prison, and one hundred and twenty cans, of a curious hemispheric shape, filled with petroleum, were lying heaped together where the female searchers had thrown them.

Don Jose de Antiquedad y Vuelta-Abajo was thus discovered to be an impostor. He had not furnished a single Madrid infant with pure Naranjos county well, food. He was not a philanthropist, and he cared neither for nurses nor children. He was, however, an audacious and ingenious smuggler, and the long success of his artifice has so overthrown Spanish faith in woman, that none but the thinnest and most level of the sex can pass a Spanish custom house without undergoing the most rigid scrutiny.

Christmas at Windsor castle

It is rarely that the public obtains a glimpse of the private life of monarchs. They are never seen by their subjects except in full dress, and equipped with what New England people are accustomed to call “company manners.” Thus only the outer shell, so to speak, of the German Emperor or the British Queen is known to their people. We all know, of course, that the Emperor is mortal, and hence must at times put on a nightshirt, and that even Queen Victoria must do up her back hair on going to bed, just as though she were an ordinary British matron, but even the most enterprising special correspondent is unable to describe these imperial and royal acts from his own personal knowledge. We of this generation are, however, exceptionally fortunate in regard to the good and gracious Queen of England. In the Life of the Prince Consort, which is virtually written by her, we are taken into the interior of the royal palace and admitted to the privacy of the royal family. It is safe to say that the present generation is acquainted with the royal family of England more intimately than any previous generation has been acquainted with any other royal household. The Queen’s description of a Christmas at Windsor Castle is of especial interest just at present, and as it has not yet been published in this country, a summary of it, obtained from advance sheets, may interest the public.

The particular Christmas referred to was that of the year 1849. Especial efforts were made to render that occasion one of unusual domestic felicity. The Prince Consort had said, “Mother, we must have a first class shindy for the children this time,” and the amiable Queen had answered, “Albert, we will just make things whoop.” Accordingly, ah immense amount of presents was provided, and the royal parents determined to personally superintend the filling of the stockings a duty which ordinarily devolved upon Lord John Russell.

“On Christmas eve” so we are told “the Queen remarked, ‘Albert, I believe I will hang up my own stocking, and you shall fill it.’ The Prince, with that excellent good sense which never failed him, replied: ‘My dear, it will not do. There must be a limit to the size of stockings. Hang up a pillowcase, if you want to, or even a bolster, but remember that I can’t afford to sit up all night filling unlimited space with expensive presents.’” Her Majesty thereupon changed her mind, and full of anxiety to make her husband happy, volunteered to fill the stockings herself, so that the Prince could go to bed early.

During the evening the children were, of course, unusually wide awake. Half a dozen times was the Queen compelled to go to the foot of the front stairs and order them to go instantly to sleep. Threats were even necessary before they could be quieted, and the Prince Consort was finally obliged to remark, “If you children let me hear one more word out of you this night I shall come up stairs with a club.” Whereupon the children ceased their uproar, and by ten o’clock were soundly asleep.

“It was the wish of the Prince,” continues the narrative, “to sleep in the nursery with the children, so that he could see them open their stockings in the morning.” As the Queen desired to hang a portrait of herself over the Prince’s bed, as a pleasant surprise for him, she was compelled to wait until he was sound asleep. At 1 o’clock A. M. her Majesty stealthily entered the nursery, with seven well filled stockings hanging on her arm. Just as she crossed the threshold two of the stockings slipped from her grasp and fell with considerable noise, but without awakening the children or interrupting Prince Albert’s gentle snore. It so happened that the Duke of Wellington, when filling the stove for the night, had inadvertently left a coal scuttle in the middle of the floor, and the Queen, not dreaming of such an obstacle, fell over it with a loud crash. The Prince of Wales moved uneasily in his bed, but continued to sleep soundly, as did all the other children and their gracious father. Fortunately, the Queen fell on the stockings, which were largely stuffed with molasses candy of a yielding nature, and so sustained no injury. Finally the stockings were hung in their proper place and the Queen proceeded to place her portrait on the wall over the Prince Consort’s head. To do this it was necessary for her to stand on the bed. Now to walk over a well filled bed in a dimly lighted room is a difficult operation, and it thus happened that the Queen stepped somewhat heavily upon the Prince. It was the last straw that broke his princely slumbers, and also flattened his ribs. In those circumstances, instead of betraying impatience, he merely groaned heavily and exclaimed: “Go on: mash in the rest of them! Get the Princess of Cambridge to help you. Let joy be unconfined!” and further language to that effect. So moved was her Majesty by his suffering and fortitude that she burst into tears and nearly fell upon him, thereby eliciting a yell of terror. This woke up the children, who fancying that morning had arrived, clutched their stockings and began the joyful uproar which in every happy home ushers in the blessed Christmas morn.

“There was not a closed eye in the castle from that moment until breakfast time” continues the writer of the narrative. When the royal pair met at the breakfast table they were as tired as if they had attended a ball. The Prince withdrew to his own apartment as soon as the meal was ended, and played on the flute for several hours an exercise which always calmed his mind and fitted other persons to bear the prospect of his early death; while the Queen signed three death warrants with a firmness which she had never before displayed. Before night every one of the children was writhing in the agonies of colic, and the court physician had expressed the opinion that the Prince Consort’s ribs were in a most precarious condition. “It was then decided,” adds the royal biographer “that the custom of hanging up stockings should be abolished in the precincts of the castle, a resolution which has been strictly kept.”

We thus see from this pleasing glimpse of England’s royal household that Queens and Princes are much like other people. It is impossible to avoid honoring her Majesty’s kindly ways, and the Prince’s fortitude under suffering. No royal Briton can read this touching narrative without tears, and without asking himself the solemn question, how much the Queen weighed in 1849.

Serenading in St. Louis

There are two young men in St. Louis who at the present time are so diversified as to their surfaces with brown paper and sticking plaster that they might readily be mistaken for Bulgarian Christians who had just been receiving a good deal of protection from the Russian Cossacks. They do not bear their plasters with resignation, for they are not good young men. The testimony of large numbers of St. Louisians proves that the two young men in question frequent barrooms and quarrel in the public streets, make night hideous with uproar, and play upon musical instruments, like the beasts that perish. Their wounds and bruises are a just retribution for their misdeeds, and they deserve no sympathy whatever.

There is a young lady in St. Louis, living in a nice suburban cottage, with whom both these young men are madly in love. Being thus rivals, they naturally hate each other, and not very long ago discussed their respective fitness for the young lady’s hand in the public street, with the use of much strong Western language and the display of revolvers and knives. On this occasion, however, they did not actually assault one another, but each young man, after having solemnly pledged himself to cut the other into fine slices at their next meeting, went his way in search of privacy and rum. Two days later they met in a barroom, and, instead of carrying out their sanguinary intentions, they fell upon their respective necks and vowed eternal friendship. They decided that the young lady was not an object of sufficient importance to be permitted to envelop their newborn friendship in a cloud of suspicion and jealousy, and they resolved that, renouncing all claims to her affection, they would live for each other only. They mutually promised never to see or to think of her again, and finally separated on apparently the very warmest terms of friendship. It was noticed, however, by several unimpeachable witnesses, that as soon as they had put a large and opaque German between them, they stoutly shook their clenched fists and smiled in a ghastly and sarcastic manner. The truth is, their reconciliation was a hollow mockery, and’ their pretended abandonment of the young lady was an act of premeditated deceit and treachery. ‘Each desired to occupy unmolested the field of courtship, and believed that he had outwitted his rival and rendered him no longer dangerous.

It has been remarked that among their other vices was that of playing upon wind instruments. One of them played the cornet, while the other was habitually addicted to the bassoon. While the latter instrument is not so immediately fatal to the helpless listener as is the cornet, it is much more weakening to the mind, and the agonies which it inflicts are more prolonged and painful. It was the intention of these young men to serenade the object of their devotion on the very evening of the day when they formed their hollow and insincere alliance, and each of them presumed that he had secured a monopoly of her midnight ears. But as Burns has remarked, the best schemes of policy devised, either by mice or conciliatory Presidents, frequently go “aglee,” which, being interpreted, means “to eternal smash.” And such was the destiny of the serenading schemes of the two bad young men.

The young lady’s bedroom was in the north-east corner of the second story of her house, and the house stood in the midst of a large and beautiful lawn. Precisely at 11:15 P. M. the young man with the cornet opened upon her under her north window with the pathetic air of “Silver Threads among the Gold;” but almost at the same moment he metaphorically smote his breast, for he heard under the east window the loud bassoon in the act of wrestling with the “Arkansas Traveler.” In these circumstances few young men would have subordinated a thirst for immediate vengeance to their artistic pride, but the two bad young men, while mentally resolving to kill one another in the near future, were equally resolved not to permit their devotion to music to be interrupted. They threw their whole beings into their respective instruments, and the blare of the cornet mingled in wild confusion with the groans of the bassoon. The young lady, who was a girl of much spirit and practical common sense, very soon began to throw things, but neither water, old shoes, nor crockery could move the determined serenaders. They continued to blow until each had finished his allotted tune, after which, with a fierceness rivaling that of the wild cats of the nocturnal back fence, and with oaths at which the most hardened cat would have shuddered, they poised their musical weapons over their heads and rushed simultaneously to the combat.

The bassoon is longer than the cornet, but the latter has greater weight and hardness, and the two combatants were thus very equally matched as to their weapons. They fought with frightful energy, and were encouraged by the cheerful comments of the young lady, who, like the Blessed Damosel, leaned from her window, and with great impartiality urged each one to “everlastingly lay out” the other. The bassoon fell with resounding blows upon the head of the cornet player, and the sharp edge of the bell of the cornet gashed the bassoon player’s face and lacerated his knuckles. Neither would yield, and had not the young lady’s father risen from his couch, and with great presence of mind checked the further effusion of blood by firing upon the rivals with his shotgun, the fight would probably have had a fatal termination. As it was, as soon as their legs became overweighted with buckshot, the two young men laid down their weapons, and were soon after carried by the police to the nearest hospital for repairs.

This story teaches us how blessed a thing it is for two young men to serenade the same young woman at the same time, whereby their instruments are certain to be ruined, and they themselves are very likely to be permanently spoiled.

A patented child

The town of Sussex, Pennsylvania, has lately been profoundly stirred by an extraordinary and romantic lawsuit. The case was an entirely novel one, and no precedent bearing upon it is to be found in the common or statute law. While it is necessarily a matter of great interest to the legal profession, its romantic side cannot fail to attract the attention of persons of all ages and every kind of sex. In fact, it is destined to be one of the most celebrated cases in the annals of American jurisprudence.

Some time last winter a lady whom we will call Mrs. Smith, who kept a boardinghouse in Sussex, took her little girl, aged four, with her to make a call on Mrs. Brown, her near neighbor. Mrs. Brown was busy in her kitchen, where she received her visitor with her usual cordiality. There was a large fire blazing in the stove, and while the ladies were excitedly discussing the new bonnet of the local Methodist minister’s wife, the little girl incautiously sat down on the stove hearth. She was instantly convinced that the hearth was exceedingly hot, and on loudly bewailing the fact, was rescued by her mother and carried home for medical treatment. A few days later Mrs. Smith burst in great excitement into the room of a young law student, who was one of her boarders, and with tears and lamentations disclosed to him the fact that her child was indelibly branded with the legend, “Patented. 1872.” These words in raised letters had happened to occupy just that part of the stove hearth on which the child had seated herself, and being heated nearly to red heat they had reproduced themselves on the surface of the unfortunate child.

The law student entered into the mother’s sorrow with much sympathy, but after he had in some degree calmed her mind he informed her that a breach of law had been committed. “Your child,” he remarked, “has never been patented, but she is marked ( Patented. 1872.’ This is an infringement of the statute. You falsely represent by that brand that a child for whom no patent has issued is patented. This false representation is forgery, and subjects you to the penalty made and provided for that crime.”

Mrs. Smith was, as may be supposed, greatly alarmed at hearing this statement, and her first impulse was to beg the young man to save her from a convict’s cell. With a gravity suited to the occasion, he explained the whole law of patents. He told her that had she desired to patent the child, she should have either constructed a model of it or prepared accurate drawings, with specifications showing distinctly what parts of the child she claimed to have invented. This model or these drawings she should have forwarded to the Patent Office, and she would then have received in due time a patent provided, of course, the child was really patentable and would have been authorized to label it “Patented.” “Unfortunately,” he pursued, “it is now too late to take this course, and we must boldly claim that a patent was issued, but that the record was destroyed during the recent fire in the Patent Office.”

This suggestion cheered the spirits of Mrs. Smith, but they were again dashed by the further remarks of the young man. He reminded her that the child might find it very inconvenient to be patented. “If we claim” he went on to say “that she has been regularly patented, it follows that the ownership of the patent, including the child herself, belongs to you, and will pass at your death into the possession of your heirs. Holding the patent, they can prevent any husband taking possession of the girl by marriage., and they can sell, assign, transfer, and set over the patent right and the accompanying girl to any purchaser. If she is sold to a speculator or to a joint stock company, she will find her position a most unpleasant one. To sum up the case, madam, either your child is patented or she is not. If she is not patented, you are guilty of forgery. If she is patented, she is an object of barter and sale, or, in other words, a chattel.”

This was certainly a wretched state of things, and Mrs. Smith, to ease her mind, began to abuse Mrs. Brown, whose stove had branded the unfortunate little girl. She loudly insisted that the whole fault rested with Mrs. Brown, and demanded to know if the latter could not be punished. The young man, who was immensely learned in the law, thereupon began a new argument. He told her that where there is a wrong there must, in the nature of things, be a remedy. “Mrs. Brown, by means of her stove, has done you a great wrong. In accordance with the maxim, ‘qui facit per alium facit per se, Mrs. Brown, and not the stove, is the party from whom you must demand redress. She has wickedly and maliciously, and at the instigation of the devil, branded your child, and thus rendered you liable for an infringement of the patent law. It is my opinion, madam, that an action for assault and an action for libel will both lie against Mrs. Brown, and, ‘semble,’ that there is also ground for having her indicted for procurement of forgery.” Finally, after much further argument, the young man advised her to apply to a magistrate and procure the arrest and punishment of Mrs. Brown.

Accordingly, Mrs. Smith applied to the Mayor, who, after vainly trying to comprehend the case and to find out what was the precise crime alleged against Mrs. Brown, compromised the matter by unofficially asking that lady to appear before him. When both the ladies were in court, Mrs. Smith, prompted by the clerk, put her complaint in the shape of a charge that Mrs. Brown had branded the youthful Smith girl. The latter was then marked “Exhibit A,” and formally put in evidence, and both complainant and defendant told their respective stories.

The result was that the court, in a very able and voluminous opinion, decided that nobody was guilty of anything, but that, with a view of avoiding the penalty of infringing the patent law, the mother must apply to Congress for a special act declaring the child regularly and legally patented. If Congress finds time to attend to this important matter, little Miss Smith will be the first girl ever patented in this country, and the legal profession will watch with unflagging interest the lawsuits to which in future any infringement of the patent may lead.

Righteous retribution

Mrs. Col. Lewis, of Clinton, 111., is universally respected by those who know her. It is certainly not her fault that she was constructed at a period when the “sugar and spice, and everything nice,” which Dr. Watts assures us are the chief ingredients of girls, were apparently exhausted, and there were no materials available except vinegar and mustard. In spite of her severe and acrid disposition, no one doubts that she is a sincere and earnest woman. She has a soul above frivolity and pleasure, and she is unsparing in her denunciations of the wicked. Of course, she is not the sort of woman with whom, one would care to take long walks in the country, but her boldness and inflexible adherence to the path of duty compel public respect.

To this good woman her husband is a constant trial. Col. Lewis is a man of excellent moral character and sandy hair, but he has an undeniable fondness for innocent flirtation, which, in his wife’s estimation, is the gravest of all crimes. Naturally, she throws all possible obstacles in her husband’s objectionable path. But the world is full of girls and, except when the Colonel is locked up in his bedroom by his determined wife, she can never be absolutely sure that he is not wrecking her domestic happiness by bowing to young ladies, or by saying good morning to wicked married women who have the audacity to be beautiful, and who aggravate that crime by assuming a pleasant and genial manner.

Three weeks ago Clinton resolved to have its first masked ball. It is needless to say that Mrs. Lewis was shocked when she learned that this infamous scheme was advocated by several hitherto respectable people, and that it was reasonably certain to be successfully carried out. To her delight, Col. Lewis expressed to her his strong disapprobation of masked balls, and said that he was really glad that business interests would require his presence in Chicago on the night of the contemplated crime. A week before that date, however, she was horrified at discovering in the Colonel’s desk a catalog of fancy costumes which a Chicago tradesman offered to let upon very reasonable terms to persons about to attend masked balls. Among these costumes was one which was designed to enable the wearer to personate a horse. It consisted chiefly of a horse’s head and silk tights. An unfinished letter in the hand writing of the Colonel showed that the wretched man intended to be present at the masquerade in this revolting costume, and that his pretense of business at Chicago was merely designed to deceive the wife of his bosom. It was a crushing blow, but that intrepid woman bore it nobly. Instead of acquainting Col. Lewis with her knowledge of his guilt, Mrs. Lewis instantly wrote to the costumer, ordering the dress of a jockey to be sent to her. When, twelve hours before the evening of the ball, her husband bade her goodbye and ostensibly started for Chicago, she never intimated that she knew his plans, but she took leave of him almost tenderly. That misguided man went no further than the next street, where he concealed himself in the house of a depraved friend, and chuckled over the way in which he “had sold the old woman.”

It was not until ten o’clock in the evening that Col. Lewis, beautifully arrayed in his equine costume, and exhibiting the faultless proportions of his manly legs, entered the ballroom. The beauty and fashion of Clinton were already assembled, and among them was a closely masked lady wearing the dress of a horse jockey and carrying a riding whip. No one dreamed that she was the severe and earnest Mrs. Lewis, for a lavish use of the great staple of the Gulf States had wrought so marvelous a change in her dimensions that her husband mistook her for a blooming corn fed beauty of Peoria. In fact she was the very first lady to whom he addressed himself, and when his first compliment was answered by a blow of the whip on his unprotected legs, he almost doubted whether he would not follow her even at the risk of a second blow.

Prudence, however, prevailed, and the gallant Colonel selected another lady as the object of his attentions. He was just beginning a promising flirtation when the avenging jockey smote his calves, and in a thoroughly professional tone ordered him to “g’lang now.” His tights were very thin, and the blow wrung from him a hasty theological expression, which caused the object of his attentions to hurriedly leave him. Meanwhile, the cruel jockey had passed on and vanished in the crowd, and it was several minutes before Col. Lewis could bring himself to cease rubbing his suffering legs, and to resume the attempt to enjoy the ball. When next he accosted a fair masker, he looked anxiously around for the jockey, and not perceiving her, took courage and began a new flirtation. He was just about to request the honor of a waltz when two swift and cruel blows descended upon his already lacerated extremities, and the voice of the terrible jockey counseled him to “g’lang,” and likewise to “gettup.” The miserable man forgot his partner, and limping to a seat, sat down and indulged in language which, had he not spoken in a suppressed tone, would have cast a sulphurous glare over the assembly.

Twice more during the evening did the wretched Colonel try to mingle in the gayeties of the ball, but each time the awful jockey, inexorable as fate, lashed him with constantly increasing violence. When he was about to enter the supper room she followed him closely, and so emphasized her suggestion that he should descend to the stable in search of oats, that in mingled despair and rage he fled from the ballroom to return no more. The jockey lingered until the ball was over, and then, full of peace and triumphant joy, sought her home.

For once Mrs. Lewis, although she was a woman, was magnanimous. When her unhappy husband returned from his pretended trip to Chicago, she never once mentioned the ball to him, but quietly handing him her jockey costume, told him to send it to the owner and pay the bill, adding that he would find a bottle of arnica in his room. The cotton was, it is believed, subsequently used in the manufacture of two “comfortables” of extra thickness, and the Colonel presented his wife with a new silk dress, a set of furs, and a costly bracelet. It is thought that he will never attend another masked ball, and that he will shoot any man who mentions the subject in his hearing.

Practice among the Piutes

The Piutes are not among the most intelligent or warlike of our Indian tribes. Indeed, they are generally treated with contempt by the bold miners of the Pacific slope, who speak of them much in the same tone as that used by a practical statesman when discussing the question of civil service reform with the frequenters of his barroom. Still, the Piutes are by no means stupid. If a solitary and unarmed white man, with a good head of hair, comes within a Piute’s reach, he knows what to do with that hair quite as well as if he were a Sioux or an Apache. Similarly, he fully comprehends the uses of whiskey, and there are said to be occasional Piutes who have mastered the profound principles of draw poker. When it is also mentioned that the Piutes have thrown open the profession of medicine to women, with a hearty liberality as yet unknown among whiter and more civilized people, the fair sex can hardly fail to conceive a warm regard for that peaceful and progressive tribe.

There are certain features connected with the practice of medicine among the Piutes by female physicians which show that the whole community takes a warm interest in the matter. In England and among the white people of this country the female doctor can hope for nothing more than cold toleration. No venerable male physician, for example, pats Dr. Mary Walker on the shoulder, and smilingly remarks, “Go on, dear little girl, in your noble career, and may your drugs prove half as efficacious as your beautiful smile and the soft rustle of your coattails.” If our female doctors happen to cure a patient, the cold world ignores their skill and insinuates that nature alone deserves the credit of the cure; while if the patient dies no one pays the female doctor the common courtesy of suggesting that she is in partnership with the undertaker. The general attitude of the public toward female physicians is that of affected disbelief in their ability either to kill or to cure, and of entire indifference as to the actual results if any of their practice. How differently this matter is viewed by the Piutes will appear from the following incident in the career of a Piute medicine woman.

The medicine woman in question wore the simple, modest, yet picturesque name of “Heap-Chokee,” a name given to her in memory of the able manner in which, during her fifteenth year, she strangled two wounded emigrants whom her dear father had previously scalped. She became a widow at the age of sixty, and having been duly examined by the chief men of the tribe and pronounced to be far too ugly for matrimonial purposes, she was duly licensed to practice medicine according to the tenets of the regular Piute medical school.

Shortly afterward Dr. Heap-Chokee was called in to prescribe for a squaw who was in the last stages of consumption. Having made a careful examination of the patient by punching her in tender places with the handle of a hoe, the doctor decided that the case was one which did not call for drugs, but for “pow-wow.” She therefore shut herself up in the patient’s wigwam, and danced and howled with much vigor for several hours, at the expiration of which the patient was found to be dead, It so happened that the consumptive squaw was not a valuable one, and, in fact, her husband was rather glad that she was dead. Still, the death of the doctor’s first patient was not adapted to give her a reputation for medical skill, and the affair was therefore investigated by a council of able warriors. The council decided that the doctor had committed an error in not prescribing medicine, and while it was expressly conceded that it was not worth while to severely reprimand her for the death of a valueless squaw, she was affectionately warned that she would do well in future to prescribe a good dose of real medicine.

A fortnight later a young warrior was brought into camp suffering from an acute attack of grizzly bear, the leading symptoms of which were the fracture of a dozen or two of his ribs and a general mashing of the internal organs. This time the doctor compounded a medicine that really ought to hare worked wonders. It was made by boiling together a collection of miscellaneous weeds, a handful of chewing tobacco, the heads of four rattlesnakes, and a select assortment of worn out moccasins. The decoction thus obtained was seasoned with a little crude petroleum and a large quantity of red pepper, and the patient was directed to take a pint of the mixture every half hour. He was a brave man, conspicuous for his fortitude under suffering, but after taking his first dose, he turned over and died with the utmost expedition.

Again the council of leading warriors investigated the case. They analyzed and tasted the medicine, and agreed that it was faultless in its way, and strong enough to cure any reasonable disease. While they fully approved of the prescription, they found that the doctor had relied upon it alone, and had omitted to dance and yell to any extent worth mentioning. This innovation upon the recognized method of treating diseases could not be passed over in silence, and Dr. Heap-Chokee was solemnly warned that she must either practice medicine properly or meet the consequences, and that young and valuable warriors could not be wasted with impunity.

Soon after the daughter of the leading chief was attacked by what was undoubtedly an inflammation of the brain. Warned by experience, the doctor brought the entire resources of the medical art to bear upon the case. She not only administered large doses of her favorite decoction, but she took a large tin pan into the patient’s wigwam and hammered it for twenty-four hours, during which time she never ceased to dance and to yell at the top of her lungs. Her zeal called forth the admiration of the whole tribe, and it was considered certain that the patient must recover, but, strange as it may seem, the doctor emerged from the wigwam in the morning of the second day and sadly announced that the girl was dead.

Once more the council met, but its deliberations were short. Dr. Heap-Chokee had attended three patients and every one had died. There could be no doubt that she was an unsuccessful physician, and that if she continued to practice the tribe would soon, become extinct. The course to be pursued was too plain to be ignored. The doctor was summoned, and was mildly but firmly told that her professional. career was at an end. Three warriors then led her outside the limits of the camp, and administered to her six revolver bullets, after which lots were drawn for the possession of her scalp, and the rest of her was quietly buried.

The Piutes may be dull and ignorant savages in comparison with ourselves, but it is a false pride which would forbid us to learn from them any really useful lesson. The warm interest which they take in the success of female physicians is conspicuously at variance with the indifference which we exhibit, and there is certainly something in the example which they set us that we might do well to follow.

Gibberish

It is estimated that there are at this moment seven million small boys in this country. Of this number if we except those who are deaf, dumb, blind, and idiotic there is not one who is not familiar with that mystic formula known as “aina maina mona mike,” and who does not habitually use it as a means of divining who shall be “it,” in the various games incident to boyhood. How each successive generation of small-boys comes into the possession of this formula is one of the most profound and difficult questions of the age.

The superficial thinker fancies that the solution of this problem is a very simple one. He hastily assumes that one generation teaches “aina maina” to its successors, and that the knowledge of the formula is thus handed down from father to son. But is there a single instance on record in which a father has deliberately imparted this knowledge to his son? We all know from our own experience that long before we have arrived at manhood, and become seized and possessed of our personal small-boy, we have forgotten the lore of our childhood, and, hence, are not in a condition to impart it to any one. There always comes a period in our lives when we hear our sons rehearsing “aina maina” with confidence and accuracy, and as we suddenly remember that we, too, once knew those mystic words, we wonder from whence the new generation of small-boys learned them. The fact that fathers do not teach them to their sons will appear so plain, upon a very little reflection, that it is unnecessary to dwell longer upon it at this time. In whatever way the venerable formula comes into the possession of one generation, it is quite certain that it is not learned from the previous generation.

It is a noteworthy fact that no small-boy is ever able to tell from whom he learned “aina maina.” If we ask any casual small-boy who taught him the mysterious syllables, he will invariably reply “Dunno,” and promptly change the subject. We cannot tell how we ourselves learned them, and all our memory can tell us is that there was an exceedingly remote period when we did not know them, and a somewhat later period when they were perfectly familiar to us. Here then we have the remarkable phenomenon of an elaborate formula in an unknown tongue, which every boy knows, without knowing from what source he learned it, and as to which we simply know that he does not learn it from the preceding generation. Whence comes this knowledge, and in what way is it handed down through the centuries? This is a problem which Sir Isaac Newton said he “would be hanged if he could solve,” and of which Comte remarked “that it is beyond the limit of our intellectual powers, and hence should not receive the slightest attention.”

The ancient sages and philosophers were as much in the dark as to this matter as we are. Plato mentions that Iphigenia was selected for the sacrifice by a soothsayer, who repeated “aina maina” until the lot fell upon that unhappy damsel; and he adds, “that this method of divination was brought to Greece by Cadmus, who doubtless learned it from the barbarians.” This may or may not be true, but in either case it throws no light upon the question how the formula has been handed down to the present day. Socrates alluded to the matter once, if not twice, and is reported to have said to Alcibiades: “Tell me now, Alcibiades, whence did you learn to divine through (or by means of) ‘aina maina’?” to which Alcibiades replied, “I dunno.” “Then,” continued the sage, “it is impious for you to ask me how it happened that I was last night banged as to the head with the dirt devouring broom; for he has no right to propose delicate personal conundrums who is unable, whether through his own dullness or the displeasure of the gods, to answer simple and easy questions in two syllables.” This conversation shows that Socrates perceived the mystery which enshrouds the subject, but it does not appear that he ever successfully penetrated it.

Now, it is evident that if the knowledge of this strange formula is not taught by one generation to another and we know perfectly well that it is not it must be developed spontaneously in every small-boy’s mind. The small-boy has his measles and chickenpox, and other strictly juvenile physical diseases, and he ought, by analogy, to have some form of mental disease peculiar to his age. Medical men are well aware that talking in unknown tongues or gibbering, as it is usually called is a symptom of certain forms of brain disease, and it is credibly asserted that most of the remarks made in unknown tongues by the followers of the erratic Edward Irving, were simply repetitions of “aina maina.” Let us, then, suppose that when the small-boy suddenly breaks out with the same curious formula, it is a symptom of a juvenile brain disease, just as the eruption which at some time roughens every small-boy’s surface is a symptom of chickenpox. This hypothesis fully explains the whole mystery. No small-boy learns the chickenpox from his father, and yet every small-boy has it. No small-boy learns “aina maina” from his father, and yet if a small-boy were to be kept in solitary confinement from his birth up to his fourteenth year, he would infallibly break out with the knowledge of “aina maina.” When a hypothesis meets all the facts of any given case, it may properly be accepted until another and better hypothesis is devised. The hypothesis that this knowledge of “aina maina” is a symptom of brain disease, stands precisely upon the same ground as the hypothesis of development, and the moment this fact is brought to Professor Huxley’s attention he will adopt the one as eagerly as he has adopted the other.

Carrie’s comedy

Bartholomew, of Towanda Falls, Pennsylvania, is the proud possessor of an extremely precocious child. Miss Carrie Bartholomew is only ten years old, but, nevertheless, she is a young person of extraordinary acquirements and conspicuous culture. At the age of six she could read with great ease, and before reaching her eighth birthday she had developed a marked taste for novel reading. About the same period she made her first attempt at authorship, and soon achieved an enviable reputation in several local nurseries, where her fairy tales were recited with immense applause. In her ninth year she wrote a novel, of which, unfortunately, no copies are now in existence, and began an epic in six books upon “St. Bartholomew’s Day” which sanguinary event she classed among the ancestors of her family. The epic was discontinued after the completion of the second book, owing to the premature extermination of the Huguenots, but the young author lashed the Catholic party with great vigor, and denounced Charles IX. as the scarlet person mentioned in the Apocalypse. The latest effort of Miss Bartholomew was, in all respects, her crowning work. It was a drama in blank verse and in five acts, entitled “Robinson Crusoe; or, the Exile of Twenty Years,” and it was publicly performed in the Baptist lecture room by a company of children drilled by the author. The proceeds of the entertainment were designed for the conversion of the heathen, and it was attended by a large and hilarious audience.

The entire work of mounting the drama fell upon the shoulders of the author. The stage was beautifully ornamented with borrowed shawls; and three fire screens, covered with wallpaper and with tree and flower patterns, did duty as scenery. The costumes were unique and beautiful, and a piano ably played by a grownup young lady supplied the place of an orchestra. The curtain rose at the appointed time, and displayed Crusoe in his English home in the act of taking tea with his wife. A cradle in the corner held a young Crusoe played with much dignity by Miss Bartholomew’s best doll and a wooden dog reposed on the hearth rug. Crusoe, after finding fault with the amount of sugar in his tea a touch that was recognized as wonderfully true to life announced that he was to sail the next morning on a voyage to South America. Mrs. Crusoe instantly burst into tears, and remarked: “Our wedded life has scarce begun! But three months since you led me to the altar, and now you leave me, friendless and forlorn!”

Crusoe, however, soon comforted his wife, and bidding her teach her surprisingly precipitate infant to revere his absent father, put on his ulster, and after a last passionate embrace, departed for South America.

The second act presented Crusoe in his island home, clad chiefly in sealskin jackets, and much given to pacing the ground and soliloquizing. According to his account, he had now been on the island three years, and was beginning to feel rather lonesome. He referred in the most affectionate terms to the sole comrade of his joys and sorrows, his gentle goat which animal, hired for the occasion, from a Towanda Falls Irishman, was conspicuously tethered in the background, and would obviously have butted Crusoe into remote futurity if he could have broken loose. Presently Crusoe heard a faint yell in the distance, and decided that it was made by. a cannibal picnic party, whereupon he announced that he would go for his gun and sweep the wicked cannibals into the Gulf.

Act three was brought to an unexpected but effective climax. It opened with the entrance of a dozen assorted cannibals dragging two helpless prisoners, who were securely bound. After an effective war dance, one of the prisoners was killed with a club, and was placed on a painted fire. Just as the chief cannibal had announced that the dinner was nearly cooked, Crusoe s goat, which had managed to escape from the green room, burst upon the cannibals. Two of them were knocked over into the audience, where they wept bitterly; others were strewn over the stage, while a remnant escaped behind the scenes. The prisoner, in spite of the fact that he was dead and roasted, fled at the first onset of the goat, and the curtain was dropped amid wild applause. After the goat had been captured by some male members of the audience, and Crusoe himself had explained that his proposed massacre of the cannibals had been unintentionally anticipated, the stage was set for the fourth act, and the play went on.

This particular act was a magnificent proof of the author’s originality. The rising of the curtain displayed Crusoe sitting on a grassy bank, surrounded by four children, whom he calmly alleged to be his own. Beyond vaguely alluding to them as the gift of heaven sent to cheer his lonely hours, that astonishing father did not offer to account for their origin. The author’s chief object in introducing them was, however, soon disclosed. Friday, who presently appeared, and whose lack of any ostensible origin was doubtless due to the recent interference of the goat, was requested to sit down and undergo instruction in the Westminster Catechism. The scene that followed was closely modeled after the exercises of an ordinary Sunday school; and Crusoe s four inexplicable children sang songs to an extent that clearly proved that singing was the object of their remarkable creation. Lest this scene should appear somewhat too solemn, the author judiciously lightened it by the happy expedient of making Friday a negro, who constantly said “Yes! Massa,” and “yah yah!” and who always spoke of himself as “dis child.” Altogether, the act was a delightful one, and whenever Crusoe alluded to his “dear children,” and regretted that they had never seen their dear mamma, the audience howled with rapture.

How Crusoe and his interesting family escaped from the island the author omitted to mention. The fifth and last act depicted his arrival home and his final reunion with the bride of his youth. Mrs. Crusoe was sitting at her original tea table, precisely as she was in the habit of doing twenty years earlier, when there was a knock at the door, and Crusoe entered, followed by his four children and Friday carrying a large carpetbag and a bundle of shawls. Mutually exclaiming “’Tis he,” and “’Tis she,” the long separated husband and wife rushed into each other’s arms. After the first greetings were over, Crusoe remarking in the most elegant blank verse that though he had brought neither gold nor gems, he had nevertheless returned rich, presented in evidence thereof his four children. Whereupon that noble woman, remarking that she, too, had been wonderfully blest, brought in seven children from the next room and told them to kiss their father. After which the drama was brought to a graceful end by the singing of “Home, Sweet Home,” by the entire strength of the Crusoe family.

For originality and rare dramatic genius, it is clear that this play has never been equaled by any previous American dramatist; and we may be sure Miss Carrie Bartholomew will in future look back upon it with at least as much wonder as pride.

A Chicago idyl

A great intellect can be confined in a small body, but a large foot cannot be comfortably compressed into a small shoe. Mr. Stanley Matthews, for example, who is believed to have at least twenty-seven more cubic feet of intellect than any other man now living, is able to successfully conceal the whole of it in one or another part of his body, but he would be utterly unable to crowd one of his feet into Mrs. Matthews’ slipper. Nevertheless, man is so constituted as to be a constant prey to the belief that he can wear shoes several sizes too small for him, from whence arise physical agony, vexation of spirit, and grievous violations of the third commandment.

It is rare that a young man is as modest and bashful as is a certain young man now residing in Chicago. He is an excellent youth, but it has been frequently asserted by his female acquaintances that should he ever be placed in circumstances where it would be his duty to remark “boo” to a goose, he would fail to make that remark. His present occupation is the study of chemistry, and he has blown himself up so many times that the small stock of self confidence which he may originally have had has completely vanished. Nevertheless, he had the strange audacity to fall violently in love with a beautiful young lady, the daughter of a grim and prosaic Chicago pork person, and continued to prosecute his suit in spite of the brutal want of respect shown to him by the father, who would frequently call down over the banisters to his daughter, in whose society the bashful young man was lingering “Jane! it’s eleven o’clock. Turn out that there gas and come to bed this minute.”

Not very long ago there was a concert at the Chicago opera house, to which the bashful lover escorted the object of his affections. It was the first time that he had ever visited a public place in company with a lady, and he was naturally extremely nervous. He dressed himself with the greatest care, and put on a new pair of patent leather gaiters purchased expressly for the occasion. Of course, the gaiters were much too small for him, for, as Sir Isaac Newton conclusively shows, the size of a lover’s shoes varies inversely as the force of his passion. It took him a long while to get into his gaiters, but he accomplished the feat after tremendous efforts, and in due time found himself seated in the parquet of the opera house, with the beautiful young lady by his side.

There was one of his shoes in particular which inflicted upon him absolutely fiendish tortures, and the latter increased in intensity as the moments came and went. Before the first half of the performance was ended he was nearly wild with pain. It was perfectly obvious to him that either he must obtain immediate relief or become a demonstrative idiot on the spot; and he therefore availed himself of the screen afforded by the lady’s skirts to remove the offending shoe and give liberty to the captive foot. It was his intention to put the gaiter on again, at the close of the concert, without attracting attention, and had it not been for an unforeseen accident his purpose might have been carried into effect.

It so happened that he occupied a seat next to the aisle. Soon after he had removed the shoe, a lady who sat on the same row of seats rose up to leave the house. As she brushed by the bashful young man his disengaged shoe became entangled under her skirts and was swept away. Half way up the aisle it escaped from confinement, and became an object of intense interest to several thoughtless young men, one of whom finally seized it and tossed it in a playful Chicago fashion into the lowest gallery.

The full horror of his situation smote the shoeless youth. His face became first scarlet and then pale as he thought of the spectacle he would present when the time should come for him to limp out of the theater, with one shoe off and one shoe on, in little better plight than was the allegorical Richard Doubt mentioned in Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress. There was no possible lie which he could frame to account for the absence of that shoe, and he knew that his beloved companion would accuse him either of intoxication, of idiocy, or of a penuriousness which permitted him to buy only one shoe at a time. In his great distress, he even attempted to possess himself of one of a pair of India rubber overshoes which a man sitting in front of him had deposited within reach of his cane, but as he was in the act of drawing the overshoe to him with the handle of his cane he was detected and scowled at with such violence that he was glad to abandon the effort and to murmur an incoherent apology. All this time he kept his unshod foot concealed under the hem of his companion’s dress, but he well knew that the hour was rapidly approaching when concealment would be no longer possible. The idea of raising a false alarm of fire, and of imputing the loss of his shoe to the panic which would inevitably ensue, occurred to him; but his better feelings prevailed, and he resigned himself to his fate. A few days afterward he remembered how he had wished that his lady love was a St. Louis girl, in which case he would have told her all, in the expectation that she would nobly say: “Never mind. Share one of my shoes with me, for it is large enough for us both;” but perhaps the Chicago press is mistaken in its description of the shoes of the girls of St. Louis, in spite of the attention which it has paid to the subject, and perhaps the average St. Louis female shoe is not of abnormal size.

The concert came to an end. With the calmness of desperation the unhappy youth escorted his companion to her carriage amid the sneers and laughter of the heartless public. As he left her at her door, she freezingly remarked that he would never have another opportunity to insult her, and that her father would take prompt measures to punish his outrageous conduct. It is believed that the young man is still alive, and that he has concealed himself in his laboratory. The St. Louis papers, however, think that if he is not dead he ought to be, and that his failure to borrow the young lady’s glove and to use it as a temporary substitute for his shoe, no matter how loosely it might have fitted, stamps him as a person devoid of all intelligence and ingenuity.

Scientific mendacity

The dog is a noble animal. No one who has kept a dog in his cellar and noticed the way in which the intelligent beast lays hold of the man who comes to inspect the gas meter, can help loving and admiring him. Of course, the more we can improve the dog physically, mentally, and morally, the better, and hence every effort at developing new and improved breeds of dogs ought to be warmly welcomed.

Scientific persons also, as well as dogs, deserve, as a general rule, our respect and admiration. Science, if indulged in moderately by men who have strength of mind enough to avoid all mathematical excesses, is a useful and pleasing thing. Every honest and fair minded man prefers to put confidence in scientific persons, rather than to view them with doubt and suspicion. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that at times certain scientific persons will make assertions which are utterly incredible. Such, it is sad to say, is the conduct of the Scientific Person who, in a recent number of the Scientific American, has described a new breed of dog, which he calls “an improved sawmill dog.” The ordinary sawmill dog, although of mixed and indefinite breed, is a useful animal, and can be trained to catch small pieces of timber that go adrift, as well as to warn children away from the buzz saw.. An improved sawmill dog would, undoubtedly, be very acceptable, but the alleged animal described by the Scientific Person in question is not merely unprofitable, but is so thoroughly impossible as to be an affront to human intelligence. It is a public duty to expose the mendacious character of this description, and to convict the writer of the unparalleled impudence of which he has ventured to be guilty.

He begins, with a certain degree of moderation, by informing us that the “improved sawmill dog” is constructed of “the best material, is strong and durable, has very few joints, and retains the log with great firmness.” While we do not at once perceive what is gained by diminishing the number of joints with which nature originally provided dogs, there is nothing in the statement just quoted which is absolutely incredible. The writer, however, soon yields to the temptation to play upon public credulity, and informs us that the dog’s teeth “are easily taken out and sharpened, or replaced by duplicates!” Is this credible? Who ever heard of taking out a dog’s teeth, sharpening them, and returning them to their sockets; or of putting artificial teeth in a dog’s mouth? Even were such a thing possible, it would be an atrocious act of cruelty. The Scientific Fabulist, however, is quite willing to be thought guilty of cruelty to animals. He proceeds to say that “shafts” meaning, of course, clubs are “convenient and effective in forcing the dogs on to the log and holding them with a relentless grip.” That is to say, the poor animals are to be beaten until they bite so deeply in the log which they are required to hold that they may be said to be “forced into it.” We don’t believe a word of this, for mendacious as the Scientific Person is, he cannot be as cruel as he pretends to be.

He next proceeds to tell us that the dog is “made to slide on an upright bar.” This is mere nonsense. A dog might be trained to slide on a nearly horizontal bar, but to make him slide on an upright bar would be impossible. What does this man mean by his preposterous stories? Does he suppose that we are all as ignorant as Western statesmen, or as credulous as Communists? He pretends that the dog’s “lower end is pivoted to the knee, and that the upper end will recede and allow large logs to come back.” O! it is, is it? How would the Scientific Person like to have himself pivoted in a similar way; and if so pivoted would his upper end recede and allow large logs to come back? Does he expect us to believe that logs are intelligent; that they will run away when the dog is at large, and will have courage to return when they see that he is securely pivoted? It is positively blood curdling to read the atrocious falsehoods which this shameless person tries to palm off upon us.

The dog’s forelegs are courteously spoken of as arms. This is unobjectionable, but when intelligent men are told that these arms are “made adjustable by spring pins,” and can be lengthened or shortened at pleasure, the desire to go and. kill the audacious author of such atrocious stories can hardly be restrained. Think of lengthening or shortening a dog’s forelegs at pleasure, either with spring pins or with early summer needles! This is too much. Of course, this is a free country, and a man has a right to free speech, provided he always expresses the sentiments of the majority; but are our homes to be polluted with pretended scientific statements concerning alleged dogs with adjustable forelegs? If science has come to this, let Mr. Comstock look to it. The United States mails must not and shall not be used to disseminate monstrous scientific falsehoods, subversive of the very first principles of canine anatomy.

Toward the end of his description the scientific moral monster became incoherent. He alludes without any explanation to a “board dog” who, it appears, is “carried in a socket.” This may be madness combined with mendacity, and in all probability it is. Then we are told that “the single dog” what single dog? “with straight tooth or bit is easily kept in order and easily operated.” Who ever said the contrary? Any dog, whether single or wedded, can be kept in order without the slightest trouble if his owner understands the nature and habits of dogs. The Scientific Person, however, may have alluded to the docility of the single dog in order to contrast him with what he calls “improved yielding spring dogs,” for he goes on to say that the latter “catch the under side of the cant and hold its lower edge.” This man must die. There is nothing else that will satisfy an outraged public. Who ever heard of “improved yielding spring dogs,” and what in the name of zoology and sawmills is “the under side of the cant”? We know what scientific cant is, and that it is as disgusting as religious cant, but how can its under side be seized by spring or fall or winter dogs? If there are any improved yielding spring dogs in existence with a fondness for seizing the under side of things, let them be loosed upon the Scientific Munchausen and kept in operation. Such is the very mildest punishment which should be inflicted upon him.

The belle of Vallejo

Vallejo, California, possesses a young lady of extraordinary beauty. She is, moreover, as intelligent and bold as she is beautiful, and in grappling with a sudden emergency she is probably unequaled by any one of her sex. Naturally, she is the admiration of every young man in the town. In fact, she is beyond the reach of rivalry. The other young ladies of Vallejo are perfectly well aware that it is hopeless for them to enter the lists with her. They never expect to receive calls from marriageable young men except on the off nights of the Vallejo belle, and, though they doubtless murmur secretly against this dispensation, they apparently accept it as a law of nature.

For two years the beauty in question, whom we will call Miss Ecks, received the homage of her multitudinous admirers, and took an evident delight in adding to their number. So far from selecting any particular young man for front gate or back piazza duty, she preferred to entertain one or two dozen simultaneous admirers in the full blaze of the brilliantly lighted front parlor. It is only fair to add that she was an earnest young woman, who despised coquetry and never dreamed of showing favor to one young man in order to exasperate the rest.

That so brilliant a girl should have finally selected a meek young minister on whom to lavish her affections was certainly a surprise to all who knew her, and when it was first rumored that she had made such a selection, Vallejo refused to believe it. The minister made his regular nightly calls upon the object of his affections, but an average quantity of eleven other young men never failed to be present. Of course, he could not obtain a single moment of private happiness with his eleven rivals sitting all round the room, unless he made his evening call at a preposterously early hour. He did try this expedient once or twice, but the only result was that the eleven admirers at once followed his example. In these circumstances he began to grow thin with suppressed affection, and the young lady, alarmed at his condition, made up her mind that something must be done without delay.

About three weeks ago the young minister presented himself in his beloved’s front parlor at 6:50 P. M., and in the ten minutes that elapsed before the first of his rivals rang the bell, he painted the misery of courting by battalions in the most harrowing terms. Miss Ecks listened to him with deep sympathy, and promised him that if he would stay until nine o’clock, the last of the objectionable young men would be so thoroughly disposed of that for the rest of the evening he would have the field to himself. Full of confidence in the determination and resources of his betrothed, his spirits returned, and he was about to express his gratitude with his lips, as well as his heart, when the first young man was ushered into the room.

Miss Ecks received her unwelcome guest with great cordiality, and invited him to sit on a chair the back of which was placed close to a door. The door in question opened outward and upon the top of a flight of stairs leading to the cellar. The latch was old and out of order, and the least pressure would cause it to fly open. In pursuance of a deep laid plan, Miss Ecks so molded her conversation as to place the visitor at his ease. In a very few moments, he ceased to twist his fingers and writhe his legs, and presently tilted back his chair after the manner of a contented and happy man. No sooner did the back of the chair touch the door than the latter flew open, and the unhappy guest disappeared into the cellar with a tremendous crash. Checking the cry that arose from the astonished clergyman, Miss Ecks quietly reclosed the fatal door, placed a fresh chair in its vicinity, and calmly remarked, “That’s one of them.”

In five minutes more the second young man entered. Like his predecessor, he seated himself on the appointed chair, tipped back upon its hind legs, and instantly vanished. “That’s two of them,” remarked the imperturbable beauty, as she closed the door and once more reset the trap. From this time until nine o’clock a constant succession of young men went down those cellar stairs. Some of them groaned slightly after reaching the bottom, but not one returned. It was an unusually good night for young men, and Miss Ecks caught no less than fourteen between seven and nine o’clock. As the last one disappeared she turned to her horrified clergyman and said, “That’s the last of them! Now for business!” but that mild young man had fainted. His nerves were unable to bear the strain, and when the moment of his wished for monopoly of his betrothed had arrived he was unable to enjoy it.

Later in the evening he revived sufficiently to seek a railway station and fly forever from his remorseless charmer. The inquest that was subsequently held upon the fourteen young men will long be remembered as a most impressive scene. Miss Ecks was present with her back hair loose, and the tears stood in her magnificent eyes as she testified that she could not imagine what induced the young men to go down cellar. The jury without the slightest hesitation found that they had one and all committed suicide, and the coroner personally thanked the young lady for her lucid testimony. She is now more popular than ever, and, with the loss of her own accepted lover, has renewed her former fondness for society, and nightly entertains all the surviving young men of Vallejo.

This shows what the magnificent climate of California can accomplish in the production of girls when it really tries.

The slipper report

The rapidity with which the Bureau of Statistics does its work is admirable. Within a week after New Year’s day, the Bureau was able to publish its annual Clerical Slipper Report, which includes complete returns from nearly every Protestant minister in the United States, of whatever denomination. Were it not that the presentation of slippers is a ceremony not recognized by the’ Church of Rome, the report would, of course, have included a still greater aggregate of slippers, and the task of preparing it would have been proportionally greater. When it is remembered that the 6/,418 ministers mentioned in this report are scattered over an entire continent, and that the slippers of each one of them have been accurately enumerated, an approximate idea of the enormous work done by the bureau can be formed.

The total number of clerical slippers presented during the last holiday season was 887,215. These figures represent single slippers and not pairs, as might be hastily imagined the bureau having been compelled to take cognizance of single slippers only in consequence of the fact that there is a number of one legged ministers who are never presented with more than one slipper at a time. Even if we divide the figures given in the report by two, and assume that they represent 443,607 pairs of slippers, and only one solitary single slipper, we may well be startled at the immense proportions to which clerical slipper presentation has arrived. The previous report showed that 717,508 single slippers were presented during the holiday season of 1875-6, or 169,707 less than the number mentioned in the present report. A like increase next year will bring more than a million slippers to the parsonages of our land, and it is probable that the number will fall little, if any, short of 1,200,000.

The number of Protestant ministers among whom these slippers were divided is 67,418. This gives an average of about thirteen slippers to each minister. Of course, there was no such impartial distribution. While the one legged Methodist minister at Grand Rapids, Washington Territory, received a solitary slipper made of birch bark by an aboriginal parishioner, the fortunate Bishop of a New England diocese received 73 pairs. The latter was the highest number of slippers received by any one clergyman, though a Methodist Pastor in Chicago and a Cumberland Presbyterian in Louisville, who received respectively 71 and 70 pairs, were but little behind. About three-sevenths of all ministers received two and three pairs each, thus leaving an enormous quantity to be distributed among the other four-sevenths. It will not escape the notice of students of the report that Baptist ministers receive in proportion fewer slippers than ministers of other denominations. This, however, is easily explicable upon the theory that the love and admiration of their flocks are expressed mainly in the shape of waterproof boots which latter articles cannot, of course, be included among slipper statistics.

A new feature has been added to the report this year, which much increases its interest. This is a classification of the slippers in accordance with their patterns. Thus, there are “ecclesiastical” slippers,” or slippers bearing ecclesiastical emblems, such as crosses and open Bibles; “slippers of the affections,” upon which hearts, clasped hands, and such like devices are embroidered; and “textual slippers,” which are ornamented with the chapter and verse of some particular text; as, for example, “Luke XCVIII: 17.” Apparently, slippers of this kind are presented chiefly to unmarried ministers, since the majority of them refer to texts inculcating the duty of marriage. “Motto slippers” are evidently extremely popular, for it appears that no less than 2,170 slippers bore the legend “Bless our Pastor.” Among “miscellaneous slippers,” a pair which were embroidered with a beautiful picture of Daniel in the Lion’s Den is mentioned, and it is to be regretted that the artist, owing to want of space, was compelled to put the lions on one slipper and Daniel on the other; thus seriously interfering with the unity of. the design.

What becomes of all these slippers? It is well known that a popular clergyman never ventures to wear his Christmas slippers, for the reason that whatever pair he may wear, he thereby incurs the anger of the givers of the other pairs. Of course, he cannot openly sell his superfluous slippers, and he cannot give them away or destroy them. It is thus seen that the question “what does he do with them?” is one that touches a great and solemn mystery. Hitherto no one has been able to solve this mystery, but unless we are grossly deceived, the clue to it is at length in our hands.

It would occur to the dullest mind that the existence of a “Clerical Cooperative Slipper Society and India rubber Guild” must have some connection with clerical Christmas slippers, but a copy of the constitution and bylaws of the Society, which, in spite of the secrecy in which the matter has hitherto been shrouded, recently came into the hands of a well known resident of this city, throws a flood of light upon the slipper problem. Under the rules of the Society every member forwards his slippers and India rubbers to the Central Agency, in Boston. The agency forwards them to London, where they are quietly sold by a sub-agent. From the proceeds are first paid the salaries of the chief agent and his assistants and the cost of handling the slippers. The rest of the money is then divided pro rata among the original slipper owners, each of whom pledges himself to devote a tenth of his annual receipts to purchasing shoes for barefooted children. The Society recognizes no ecclesiastical or sectarian differences. The Episcopal Bishop and the Primitive Methodist minister are united by the common bond of superfluous slippers. At what rate the slippers are sold and what is the average amount per pair which each member of the Society receives the public will doubtless learn at a later day. All that is now known of the society is its existence and its method of operation. Of these there can be no doubt, provided, of course, the well known citizen to whom reference has just been made is as trustworthy as he is universally believed to be.

Hitherto Congress has not ordered the Slipper Report to be printed for public distribution, but it is earnestly to be hoped that the present report will be printed, and that every citizen will receive and study a copy of what is really one of the most able documents ever prepared.

Popular electricity

Within the present century vast progress has been made in the study of the nature and applications of electricity. From the first sparks drawn from the back of the primeval cat by her cave dwelling master, to the discovery of the phonograph, there is an immense distance. Nevertheless, it is believed by many scientific persons that we are as yet merely on the threshold of electricity, and that in the future we shall make discoveries infinitely more important than those which the ablest electricians have hitherto made.

It is only just beginning to be understood that the electric currents of the earth have an intimate connection with a great quantity of things. The aurora borealis is believed to be in some mysterious way connected with spots on the solar disk, and these spots in their turn have an influence upon our climate, and upon the spread of pestilential diseases. Recently it has been asserted that no man can sleep well unless the major axis of his bed, and consequently his personal major axis, corresponds with the position of the axis of the earth. This is due to the fact that the currents of earthly electricity flow in the direction of the earth’s axis; or, in other words, from pole to pole. If they enter a recumbent human being at his feet, and pass out at his head, he becomes sleepy, while if, owing to the wrong position of his bed, they enter him from one side or the other, their struggles to get out again produce such a derangement of his nervous system, as to render it impossible for him to sleep. These are but a few of the hosts of facts which might be mentioned to prove the influence of earth currents upon man and his surroundings, and we shall yet make discoveries in this particular field, which no one outside of an insane asylum will be capable of believing.

The reason why the cats whose howls disturb our nocturnal slumbers are uniformly found on back fences running in a direction perpendicular, or nearly perpendicular to the axis of the earth, has never hitherto been ascertained. Sir Isaac Newton attempted to explain the fact by asserting that the great majority of fences are built parallel to the equator, but this explanation is glaringly at variance with well ascertained facts. Buffon suggested that cats are mysteriously influenced by the moon, and that hence they prefer fences which are built in the general direction of the plane of the moon’s orbit. This is certainly a plausible explanation, but it has yet to be proved that moonlight is the cause, rather than a mere incident, of nocturnal cat concerts. The other explanations which have been hazarded by lesser authorities are scarcely worth mentioning. All that we really know is the single fact that nocturnal cats are distributed around the earth in belts parallel to the equator. Fully ninety-three per cent of the cats that bring us from our midnight couches with boot jacks in our hands and rage in our hearts, are found perched upon the east and west fences, and to the truth of this assertion every New Yorker will readily agree.

In examining this very interesting and important problem, let us begin by asking why the midnight cat howls. Superficial observers have alleged that howling is the natural expression of the tender passion among cats, and that the intensity of a cat’s admiration for the female of his species may be accurately measured by the hideousness of his howls. This is an insult to human intelligence and feline self respect. Would any young man, desiring to plead his suit with the lady of his heart, place himself under her window and yell as if he were undergoing the severest torments? Of course he would not, and equally of course, no intelligent cat would be guilty of a like folly. The yells of the midnight cat bear every sign of being the expression of the keenest suffering, and only the most perverse ingenuity can regard them as the voice of love.

We have thus learned that the cat perched on a back fence perpendicularly to the axis of the earth, and to the direction of the earth currents of electricity, howls because he or she, as the case may be is undergoing acute agony. Very possibly cats pass over fences running from north to south quite as frequently as they do over fences running in the direction of the equator, but in the former case they experience no pain, and hence do not attract attention by their outcries. The moment, however, that a cat finds himself on an east and west fence he is racked by internal pains; he tries to relieve his mind by howls and profanity, and he thereby excites the rage of his human audiences. Now, if we ascertain what produces these pains, we shall have found the true answer to the question under discussion. May it not be that electricity is really at the bottom of the whole affair?

The cat, be it remembered, is more addicted to electricity than any other animal, except the electrical eel, and hence is peculiarly susceptible to the influence of the earth currents. So long as the cat walks over fences running from north to south his axis is coincident with the direction of these currents. They pass smoothly through his spinal column, and beyond gently stimulating his mind and tail, they have no perceptible effect upon him. When, however, he tries to walk on a fence built parallel to the equator, his private axis becomes perpendicular to the earth currents. They penetrate his vitals and they wrench him all to pieces in their efforts to force their way through him. Filled with anguish, he stops, clings fiercely to the fence, and lifts up his voice in frenzied agony. To some extent the muscles of his legs are paralyzed, and he is unable to move until the unfeeling boot jack comes hurtling through the air and stimulates him into action. He then springs from the fence; his pains vanish, and his voice is silent. Is not this a complete and scientific explanation of the question which has so long defied the ablest scientific minds?

We thus see how beautiful are the reasoning processes by which true science investigates abstruse questions. We also see that one of the most common incidents of every night life is due to the electricity of the earth. Let us, then, be thankful that we live in a scientific age, and that there are more uses for electricity than any one has yet dreamed of.

Long Island hunting

More than six months have come and gone since the Long Island Hunt was organized. During that time the gallant hunters have chased the wild anise seed hag at least twice every week. One would suppose that by this time every member of the hunt must have been in at the death, but, strange as it may seem, not a single anise seed bag has been killed. A matter so serious as this cannot be passed over in silence, and it becomes necessary to inquire why the chase has in every instance proved unsuccessful.

It will not do to say that the hunters have abstained from killing anise seed bags in order to avoid the premature extirpation of the animal. Although our most learned naturalists were until recently unaware of the existence of the anise seed bag on Long Island, there can be no doubt that the animal is abundant in Queens and Suffolk Counties. In every instance the dogs have struck the scent without any difficulty. This shows conclusively that the covers of Long Island are full of anise seed bags, and refutes the pretext that the hunters forbear to kill because they fear that the animal will be exterminated.

It is, perhaps, hardly worth while to notice the ludicrous mistake made by certain provincial papers, that the anise seed bag is a literal cloth bag, filled with a supposed substance called anise seed, and dragged on the ground by a mounted groom. The absurdity of this supposition is glaringly apparent. Is it probable that a dozen or more men would ride after a pack of hounds in pursuit of a miserable prosaic bag? Very small boys might agree to make believe that a bag is a live animal, just as very little girls sometimes make believe that a dust brush wrapped in a towel is a living infant, but men have outgrown such childish plays. This preposterous mistake of the rural press is mentioned here because it may be reiterated by Philadelphian or Oshkoshian papers in explanation of the failure to kill. Chasing wild animals may or may not be an improving occupation, but the supposition that the Long Island hunters deliberately chase a “make believe” animal, does them a gross injustice. The anise seed bag is somewhat larger and fiercer than the fox, but rather smaller than the wolf. It is of a light brown color, with an enormous mouth and a fierce disposition. Nevertheless, it shuns the sight of man, and lurks in the depths of the forest, or makes its way across the country by availing itself of the shelter of ditches and stone walls. It is much fleeter than the fox, but a good pack of hounds can always run it down. The anise seed bag, in spite of its fierceness when driven to bay, rarely attacks man except in numbers, and when suffering from hunger. In the early history of the Plymouth colonists the anise seed bags were very numerous and bold. They would gather at the outskirts of the settlement in packs of several hundred, and sit on end howling dismally, and longing to stay their stomachs with even the most sour and angular pilgrim in all Plymouth. Still, it does not appear that any of the colonists were actually killed by these animals. True, we read in the journal of Capt. Miles Standish an entry to the effect that “it is said that Mr. John Alden was last night devoured by anise seed bags, and that his vain and fickle widow is in much tribulation. There are those who think that he hath received his deserts;” but it subsequently proved that the rumor was false. Buffon asserts that the anise seed bag will fight desperately when its means of escape are cut off, and that the hunter frequently pays for his temerity with his life. This, however, was written of the larger species which inhabits the desert of Gobi, and may not be true of the Long Island variety. The latter may be as dangerous as local legends claim that it is; but there is no well authenticated case of the death of any Long Islander at the hands, or rather the teeth, of an anise seed bag.

Can it be possible that the gallant huntsmen who have hitherto ridden so unsuccessfully are really afraid to bring the animal to bay, lest they or their dogs should suffer serious injury? Although this supposition does no credit to their bravery, it cannot be said to be without some foundation. The huntsmen follow the flying anise seed bag until the hounds are within a short distance of the animal, when the horses are pulled up, the dogs called off, and the panting anise seed bag allowed to make its escape. The other day the hounds were so nearly successful in running the beast to earth, that a tame fox was let out of a bag expressly to divert their attention, while the anise seed bag escaped. As the fox insisted upon lying down to sleep, it was necessary to whip him into activity, and even when this was done, he refused to run, and permitted the master of the hunt to kill him with a club. Why should all this trouble have been taken to prevent the hounds and the huntsmen from reaching the flying anise seed bag, unless it was that the huntsmen feared to risk an encounter with the desperate animal?

This sort of thing cannot go on indefinitely. Man’s dominion over the animals is due to their consciousness that he does not fear them. The smallest puppy will attack the largest man if the latter shows any signs of fear. The anise seed bags will soon arrive at the opinion that the hunters are afraid of them, and will then introduce a pleasing variety into Long Island hunting. We shall witness the novel spectacle of a dozen scarlet clad horsemen and a pack of dogs with downcast tails flying across the country with a score of anise seed bags in swift pursuit. The mind shudders to think what the consequences would be should the unfortunate huntsmen be overtaken, but we cannot shut our eyes to the possibility that such a catastrophe may occur.

The huntsmen must make up their minds to let no more anise seed bags escape. At the end of the next hunt the brush of the dead animal must be taken. If they are afraid to close with the anise seed bag at bay, let them abandon the sport at once. If they are not afraid, let them show it by bringing home the brush and pads of the next anise seed bag that is driven from cover. Their reputation is at stake and it rests with themselves to redeem it.

Mr. Simpkins’ downfall

Man is the only animal that wears short socks. This is not only a more accurate definition than any hitherto devised by scientific persons, but it shows the inferiority of man to all other animals, and ought to have even more effect in humbling our wicked pride than has the famous story of the little girl who was excessively proud of her silk dress until she was told that it was spun, woven, cut out, made up, and trimmed by a loathsome worm.

The great trouble with the short sock is that it will not keep its place. There being nothing whatever to hold it, the force of gravitation necessarily drags it down about the ankle. This causes an amount of misery which is appalling. There is no man who can feel any confidence in his socks. Whether he is walking or sitting, he knows that his socks are slowly but surely slipping down. Garters being out of the question, since the shortness of the sock does not permit a garter to be placed in a position where it will not slip, there is absolutely no remedy for what we may fairly call the giant evil of the age. Pins and mucilage have both been tried by desperate men, but they have proved useless, and have merely added to the misery of the user. In these circumstances there is nothing left for man to do except to bear the sock in silence, or to boldly cast it aside and adopt the full grown stocking.

The latter alternative was recently chosen by that eloquent but unfortunate clergyman, Rev. Charles Simpkins, of Westbridge, Pennsylvania. Previous to the catastrophe which lately overtook him, the Church did not possess a more popular and promising young clergyman. He could repeat the opening exhortation all the way from “Dearly beloved” to “forgiveness for the same,” without once pausing for breath, and it has been asserted that he could monotone the entire Apostles’ Creed while breathing only three times. As he was unmarried, and not yet twenty-seven years old, he was regarded with peculiar reverence by the unmarried ladies of his parish, and he received more annual slippers than any other clergyman in the United States.

Neatness was one of the distinguishing characteristics of Mr. Simpkins, and there are probably few men who have suffered more keenly from short socks. When walking through the village, he was in continual dread lest his socks should descend into public view, and even while preaching his most eloquent sermons, the perspiration would gather on his brow as he felt that one of his socks was gradually slipping down. This wore upon him to that extent that his massive intellect threatened to totter, and on the morning of the eighty-first Sunday after Trinity he deliberately paused, after remarking “here endeth” and stooped down to repair damages. That night he resolved that vigorous measures must be taken, and he accordingly wrote a confidential letter to his sister’s husband, who resided in this city, and inclosed the necessary measurements. Shortly afterward he received, ostensibly from the husband, but really from the affectionate sister, two dozen pair of Balbriggan hose, together with a pair of scarlet elastics an inch in width, and of precisely the right size.

As soon as Mr. Simpkins had learned by repeated experiment how to wear the scarlet appliances, his spirit began to rise. He was no longer a prey to doubt and despair. His stockings firmly kept their place, and he felt that he could even attend a church picnic and climb over a fence without fear of consequences. Accordingly, for the first time during his residence at Westbridge, he consented to attend the Sunday school picnic of the 21st of October last, and thereby filled with unutterable delight the souls of all the unmarried teachers of the church.

Mr, Simpkins, being free from care, entered into the sports of the picnic with great zest, and the children insisted that he, together with their teachers, should take part in a game of blind man’s buff. The request was acceded to, and the usual running, laughing, and shrieking followed. It was while Mr. Simpkins was fleeing, in company with six excited teachers, from the pursuit of a blindfolded small boy, that he suddenly noticed that one of his elastics had become unclasped and had fallen to the ground. At the same moment it was perceived by the prettiest of the teachers, who made a frantic effort to seize it, but was anticipated by the unhappy clergyman. It was bad enough for him to know that the teacher had discovered his misfortune, but what was his horror and amazement when, with every appearance of anger, she demanded that he should “hand her that” instantly. He was so astonished at her evident desire to make sport of him that lie did not deign to answer her, but put the disputed article in his pocket and walked away. Whereupon the teacher burst into tears and informed her confidential friends that Mr. Simpkins had had the inconceivable audacity to steal one of her in fact, her private property. The scandal spread rapidly and widely, and grew as rapidly as it spread. At the end of half an hour every lady at the picnic had cut the clergyman in the most marked manner. Burning with shame and indignation, he forgot to repair the deficiencies of his toilet, and went home feeling rather more crestfallen than did the prophet Daniel when he found that the lions would not recognize his existence. It was not until he was on the point of seeking a sleepless pillow that he discovered that both his scarlet elastics were in their proper place, while the one which he had picked up at the picnic lay on his table. The full horror of his situation flashed upon him. The teacher had really dropped a scarlet elastic, and he had seized it under the impression that it was his own.

The utter hopelessness of ever making any satisfactory explanation of the affair was only too apparent. Early the next morning Mr. Simpkins fled from Westbridge a ruined man. The fatal articles which had caused his downfall he left behind him, and they teach with mute but powerful eloquence the lesson that we should bear the socks we have, and never dream of flying to stockings, of which we know nothing except by hearsay.

The six button principle

Although the female dress reformers always demonstrate at their annual conventions that the practice of supporting stockings by what are deliberately termed ligatures insures the moral and physical ruin of the sex, no successful substitute for the denounced article of dress has yet been invented. Certain dress reformers have, it is true, devised a system of halyards, brails, and down hauls, which they assert are far superior to the deadly ligature, but the intricacy of all this running rigging, and the difficulty which inexperienced persons find in its management, have prevented it from coming into use. The inexperienced woman when thus rigged is very apt to make mistakes, and to find herself scudding under bare poles, in consequence of having hauled away on the downhaul when she had merely intended to take a small pull at the halyards. Thus, few persons except dress reformers are rigged with the improved stocking gear, and even these confess that, for the purpose of catching an early morning train, the despised ligature has its manifest advantages.

About two months ago the ladies of three contiguous counties in Pennsylvania were successively visited by a slight, graceful, and unassuming young woman, who announced that she was the agent of a “Women’s Dress Reform Benevolent Association,” and that she desired to call their attention to a new invention of immense hygienic value. The new invention consisted of the application of the six button glove principle to hosiery. Of course, this is a delicate subject, but, in the interest of reform and public morality, it must be discussed. It is idle for us to ignore the existence of stockings, and it is cowardly to shrink from performing a public duty because it involves an allusion to a delicate topic. Let us, then, go boldly forward and relate the strange conduct of the unassuming young woman, as reported among the police news of a Pennsylvania paper.

While the substitution of buttons for ligatures or running rigging struck the ladies of the three counties as an admirable invention, the amazing cheapness with which the agent of the alleged association offered to sell the improved garments created immense enthusiasm. She said that the only object of the association was to do good, and that it was therefore prepared to sell the best quality of six buttoned goods at one-half of their original cost. In confirmation of this statement she submitted lithographic copies of letters from President Hayes, Mr. Tilden. Peter Cooper, Stanley Matthews, and other eminent statesmen, all of whom asserted that they felt that the introduction of six buttoned hosiery was the greatest boon which could be conferred upon the women of America, and simultaneously ordered six dozen pairs of assorted sizes to be sent to their respective addresses. In addition to these letters, the agent exhibited a sample of the garment in question, which appeared to be of the very best quality. The opportunity was one which no prudent lady could permit to pass unimproved, and nearly every one to whom the agent applied ordered at least half a dozen pairs, to be paid for upon delivery.

There was, however, one little preliminary which the agent insisted was indispensable, if she was to execute her orders to the satisfaction of her customers. The human mind shrinks from mentioning this preliminary, but it cannot be ignored. If the buttons were to be of any use, they must be so placed in relation to the buttonholes that the garment would be neither too tight nor too loose. Hence, when the agent produced a tape measure and a notebook, her view of the matter was at once conceded to be correct, and the agent’s notebook was furnished with the required data. Thus, that unassuming agent went from house to house throughout almost the whole of three counties, cheering the female population with the hope of miraculously cheap and beautiful hosiery, and filled her notebook with statistics. Unfortunately, that otherwise astute agent drank too much whiskey at the last town which she visited, and being arrested for disorderly conduct, confessed that she was a man.

When the ladies who had ordered six button hosiery learned the truth as to the unassuming agent and the fate which had befallen him, they denounced the wretch with great vigor, and were unanimously of the opinion that a combination of wild horses and red hot pincers could alone do justice to him. To this outburst of indignation succeeded the terrible thought, what had the felonious agent done with his collection of statistics? Naturally, this thought led straight to hysterics, and for the next week the sale of sal volatile in Central Pennsylvania increased to an unprecedented extent.

A deputation of indignant fathers waited upon the inconceivable villain in jail, and demanded the immediate destruction of his notebook. To this request he declined to accede. He admitted that his pretended association did not exist, and that he had no intention of executing the orders which his deceived customers had given him, but he explained that he was an earnest reformer, and that he intended to publish the statistics in question, in order that the medical fraternity might become convinced of the blighting effect of the ordinary ligature. Nothing could shake his determination. He said that he had a great duty to perform, and that much as it pained him to grieve anybody, he must perform that duty. The indignant parents left his cell much cast down in spirits, and after vainly applying to the local court for an injunction forbidding the false agent to publish his statistics, went home and reported their failure to their wives and daughters.

The one question now agitating the public mind in Pennsylvania is whether that wretched felon will really publish his statistics. The contingency is one which cannot be contemplated without a shudder; but at the same time, it is possible that there is more or less merit in the pretended plan of adapting the six button glove principle to more esoteric garments, and that the pretended reformer has really solved the problem with which professional dress reformers have proved themselves incompetent to grapple.

A remedy for brass instruments

In order to be a great military commander it is generally conceded that a certain amount of indifference to human suffering is requisite. Grant would never have dealt his terrible blows at the army of Gen. Lee, had he been constantly filled with pity for the tattered and battle worn Confederates, and our President could hardly have achieved his present proud position as the great conciliator of the age had his heart continued to bleed for the poor negro as it bled before the election. A like callousness of heart is a necessary characteristic of the man who undertakes to learn to play upon a musical instrument.

The sum of human agony caused by the early efforts of players upon stringed, reed, and brass instruments, is incalculable, and it is noticeable that wherever musical amateurs abound the Universalist faith makes no progress, and the Calvinistic doctrine, that a place of future torment is a moral necessity, finds multitudes of believers. Many learned commentators have discussed the nature of the insanity under which King Saul frequently suffered, but it is odd that no one has perceived that it was due to the youthful David’S persistent practice upon the harp. We know that on one occasion, while David was playing an air, which doubtless closely resembled “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” Saul, remarking “S’help me Father Abraham, this is too much,” flung a javelin at the musician and drove him away. Doubtless, the king was hasty, but let us remember his extreme provocation. As for David, not content with having already killed the leading Philistine giant, he went and played the harp to that unhappy nation, with the view of demoralizing the people so that he could make an easy conquest of them on coming to the Israelitish throne.

While the javelin is probably a specific for all suffering due to accordions, violins, cornets, and flutes, it is not a remedy which is available at the present day. The most successful mode of treatment which has been devised is that which was recently tried, with admirable results, in the case of a young man residing in a Twenty-second street boardinghouse, who was addicted to the French Lorn; and it is due to the medical profession that the history of the case should be briefly given.

The young man in question occupied the second story front hall bedroom. He was apparently a quiet and well meaning person, but under a smooth and spotless shirt bosom he concealed a heart heedless of human suffering. It would not have made much difference where he concealed his heart, for it would have been quite as callous had he kept it under his waistband, or inside of his boot. That he preferred to learn the French horn rather than any other and more common instrument of torture, does not palliate his offense; for although the horn lacks the ear piercing shrillness of the cornet, its tone has a wonderfully penetrating power, and is to the last degree depressing to the spirits. Unfortunately, he was free from those forms of vice which lead young men to spend their evenings elsewhere than in their rooms and to lie in bed late in the morning. Moreover, he paid his room rent in advance with cold blooded punctuality. Hence, although he rose up early and sat up late to practice the horn, his landlady could not make up her mind either to request him to leave or to hint to him, by the discreet method of helping him exclusively to cold coffee and bare bones, that his presence in her house was undesirable.

The man who begins to play a wind instrument employs the most of his time in what may be called “sighting shots.” For example, when this particular young man desired to sound B flat, it would take him a long while before he could get his elevation and his wind gauge regulated. He would hit three or four notes above B flat, and three or four notes below it, a score of times before he would finally make a bull’s eye. Even when, after long effort, he succeeded in hitting the desired note, the sound produced would be what is technically called a “blaat,” or, in other words, an uncertain, toneless, and most unmusical sound. It is needless to speak of the effect which this sort of thing had upon his fellow boarders. At the end of two weeks public indignation had grown to that extent that it was seriously proposed to melt the horn and to pour the metal down the throat of the player, as a warning that unless he promptly reformed he would be dealt with severely. It was then that a homeopathic physician residing in the house called a meeting of the aggrieved boarders in order to propose what he believed would prove a radical cure.

After describing with great clearness the painful symptoms which prolonged practice upon the horn develop in the unfortunate and unwilling listeners, and unfolding at much length Hahnemann’s theory of cure, he asserted that in order to successfully combat the effects of horn playing, the use of other instruments which produce analogous symptoms was clearly indicated. Hence, he proposed that each boarder should provide himself with a cornet, a violin, an accordion, a flute, or a drum, and administer these remedies whenever any symptoms of the French horn were manifested. Few of the boarders believed in homeopathy, but they were in that state of mind in which men clutch at any nostrum which promises relief. They therefore resolved to follow the doctor’s prescription, and immediately laid in a full supply of the indicated instruments.

The next evening at seven o’clock the familiar gasp of the horn was heard. Instantly it was followed by the screech of the violin, the spasmodic choking of the cornet, the drone of the accordion, the wail of the flute, and the fierce uproar of the drum. In two minutes a crowd was collected in the street, under the impression that a large orchestra was rehearsing Wagner’s “Meister singer,” and the young man with the French horn was lying on the floor of his room in strong convulsions.

The cure was complete. Early the next morning the French horn player was removed to a lunatic asylum, where he still remains. He is quiet and harmless, but he believes that he is a remnant of the wall of Jericho, which fell down under the assault of the Hebrew trumpets, and constantly insists that Congress should make an appropriation to repair him and mount him with barbette guns. His horn has vanished, no one knows whither, and the inmates of his former boardinghouse are contented and happy. We thus see that homeopathic treatment is certain to cure brass instrument players, and we may be reasonably sure that it would prove equally efficacious in cases of violin and accordion playing.

Snoring

There is a wide popular misapprehension as to the true nature of snoring. It is almost universally regarded as a mere weakness of the flesh, whereas it is really a crime, and should be treated as such. Instead of being an involuntary act, it is a willful and shameless outrage. It is true that the snorer is usually a person who lacks nervous force and whose physical frame not being kept in constant restraint, becomes limp and loose during sleep and thus readily yields to the temptation to snore. The drunkard is likewise a fickle and irresolute person, who is unable to govern his bodily appetites, but we do not accept this as an excuse for drunkenness. It is the duty of every man to abstain from snoring, no matter how strongly he may be tempted. St. Paul remarked that he “kept his body under,” or, in other words, that he did not permit himself to snore, and every person should follow his example. As a matter of fact, it is notorious that no self respecting person is ever guilty of snoring. Women never snore, except in those rare instances where age has dulled their delicacy, and led them to neglect their hair, and to wear slippers several sizes too large for them. Such women occasionally shock their friends by snoring, but youth and beauty never snore. Among men, snoring must be preceded by a loss of self respect, and an indifference to the feelings of others. Weak men and coarse men may snore, but no great and good man ever mocked the calm midnight with the brawling of a brutal nose.

In these days when men constantly travel in sleeping cars, some efficacious prescription for the prevention and cure of snoring is eagerly desired. The most popular remedy for the end in question is a liberal dose of soap the yellow variety being preferable inserted in the mouth of the snorer. As a rule, the criminal always lies on his back, and keeps his mouth open. If a wedge shaped piece of soap, of about the size of a piece of cheese, or say a trifle smaller than a piece of chalk, is placed in the snorer’s mouth, he will undergo temporary strangulation, and then sit up and make theological remarks. The trouble with this remedy is that it is not lasting in its effects. The snorer who is soaped will in most cases resume his loathsome practice as soon as he falls asleep. Of course, if he be killed, his snoring is permanently cured, but the sickly sentimentality that is so common in our day renders men shamefully loath to kill even the most abandoned snorer. The recent treatment to which a snorer was subjected on board a Union Pacific sleeping car was certainly effective, and may afford a useful hint to the traveling public, although it will not, perhaps, prove feasible in all circumstances. The train was bound west, and the rear sleeping car was nearly full. At the usual hour the beds were made, and the travelers climbed into them with comparatively few contusions. Precisely half an hour afterward a man in one of the lower berths began to snore. His was not the brilliant, brassy snore of the New England nose, but the heavy, sonorous, trombone like snore of the middle aged German. In range, power, and tone it was unique, and it instantly awoke the entire company several of the passengers being impressed with the belief that a collision had occurred, and that a hostile locomotive had entered the car. The noise was endured for a time, with the faint hope that the snorer would strangle himself, but as he settled down to a uniform rhythmic snore, that was evidently meant to last all night, it was felt that active measures were imperatively needed.

The porter was found and bribed to shake the snorer, and to explain to him that his conduct was really intolerable. The culprit awoke with a wild start, made a few feeble remarks in German, and then, sinking back to his pillow, recommenced his refrain. In these circumstances it was plain that the only hope lay in keeping him awake for the rest of the night, and a stalwart Texan, nobly offering to sacrifice his own rest for the benefit of the others, was detailed to constantly prod the German with a stick. Even this plan proved a failure. The snorer could not be thoroughly aroused, and the only effect of the constant insertion of the stick in his ribs was to vary the character of his snore, and to render it rather worse than it had been.

By this time the passengers were convinced that mild measures would never do. A vigilance committee of six members was therefore appointed, and the German, who was a small man, was dragged from his bed and placed on the wood box in the rear of the car. He was now thoroughly awake, and protested with great vehemence against his treatment. A number of shawl straps were produced, and he was firmly fastened to a staple, and warned that if he indulged in any further language, or ventured to fall asleep again, he would be taken apart with a screwdriver and distributed along the track. Although he was an obstinate man, he did not lack discretion, and so relapsed into silence.

Gradually the vigilance committee yielded to the desire to sleep, and at eleven o’clock the snorer was left in sole charge of the noble Texan. At 11:15 his head sank on his bosom, and he uttered a prolonged snore that jarred the very framework of the car. Grimly the Texan produced from his valise a porous plaster, which he firmly applied to the mouth of the unhappy wretch. The snoring ceased; a few convulsive kicks marred the varnish on the side of the wood box, and all was still. In the morning the corpse was removed into the baggage car, and the enthusiastic passengers made up a purse of three hundred dollars, which, together with a beautifully engraved copy of laudatory resolutions, was presented to the ingenious Texan.

It thus appears that a porous plaster when applied to the mouth and nose of a snorer will effect a permanent cure. The only objectionable feature of this mode of treatment consists in the difficulty of disposing of the body. In a city like New York, the meddlesome interference of coroners would prove troublesome. Still, it is something to know that there is a way of silencing the loudest snore, and at the same time doing something like justice to the wretched victim, of an atrocious and wholly inexcusable vice.

The baffled boy

According to the best scientific authorities the small-boy becomes a boy at the age of sixteen. At that age he ought to put away small-boyish things, and to put on the bashful awkwardness of semi-intelligent boyhood. At all events, he ought to know that his presence is not desired by young men who come to see his sister. We do not expect this amount of intelligence in the small-boy, and it is often necessary to bribe him with candy or to persuade him with clubs before he will consent to treat his sister with common humanity; but the sixteen year old boy usually perceives when an area of courting, accompanied with gradually increasing pressure in the region of the waist and marked depression of the parlor gas, is about to set in, and thereupon discreetly, even if sneeringly, withdraws.

Master Henry T. Johnson, of Warrensburg, Illinois, is a boy who has just reached the period of boyhood, and who is remarkably clever in the invention of traps. If you were to ask him to make you any variety of trap, from a rattrap to a mantrap, he would satisfy your demand with promptness and skill. His father’s premises, both in doors and out, are infested with traps, and there is no style of animal inhabiting Warrensburg that has not been caught in one or another of these traps. On one morning, early in January, it is confidently asserted that no less than two cats, a tramp, a small dog, six chickens, and three small-boys were found in Mr. Johnson’s yard in the close embrace of a corresponding number of traps. The truth is the boy has real mechanical genius, and it is a great pity that he is totally lacking in modesty and a regard for the rights of others.

Last fall a young man who had met Master Johnson’s sister at a picnic and escorted her home, was seized with a great admiration of Master Johnson’s traps, and evinced a great fondness for that ingenious boy’s society. In fact, he engaged the boy to give him a series of lessons in trap making, and seemed to throw his whole soul into rattraps. Gradually this passion began to fade, and the young man, instead of studying traps in the back yard, formed the habit of resting himself as he called it in the parlor with Master Johnson’s sister. The boy, of course, could not consent to hurt his friend’s feelings by abandoning him to the society of a mere girl, and, therefore, followed him into the parlor, and monopolized the conversation. After a time the young man openly abandoned traps, and only visited the house in the evenings; but Master Johnson, mindful of the laws of hospitality, always spent the evenings in the parlor, and more than once apologized to his friend for the silence and general uselessness of his sister. His astonishment, when on one eventful evening the young man, with the full approbation of his sister, deliberately told him to “get out,” and informed him that if he had not sense enough to know that he was a nuisance, he would try to knock sense into him with a baseball club, cannot be expressed in words. Not only did he wonder at the unscientific idea that sense can be imparted with a baseball club, but he could not comprehend the young man’s sudden dislike of his once courted society. However, he promptly withdrew, and devoted himself to schemes of swift and deadly vengeance.

For the next week Master Johnson spent a large part of his time in the parlor with the doors locked, alleging that he was perfecting a new invention, and that his intellect could not work except in quiet and seclusion. Strange as it may appear, he told the truth. He was perfecting a new kind of trap intended for the benefit of the rude young man and of his unnatural sister. The former was accustomed to sit in a large easy chair and the latter in a small and fragile rocking chair

on the opposite side of the room. To each of these chairs the boy affixed a most ingenious trap, which was concealed underneath the seat, and was so contrived as to be sprung by the weight of any person who might sit in the chair. If the young man, for example, were to sit down in his accustomed chair, he would be instantly clasped around the waist by a pair of iron arms, while two other iron clasps would seize him by the ankles. A like result would follow any attempt of the sister to seat herself in the rocking chair, and it was Master Johnson’s intention, after having caught his game, to leave them for an hour or two in close confinement, and to then read them a severe lecture upon their rudeness.

The young man was due on the next Saturday evening, and Master Johnson set his new traps at precisely 7:35 P. M. At 8:40 the young man arrived, and Master Johnson ostentatiously marched out of the front gate just as the young man rang the front door bell. An hour passed, and the revengeful boy returned and listened at the parlor door, expecting to hear low wails of agony. On the contrary, he heard what seemed to him the outward expressions of much contentment on the part of the young man, and he thereupon entered the room full of fear lest his revenge had miscarried.

He found that the trap which he had set for the rude young man had fulfilled its mission, and that he was held in the firm embrace of the iron bands. To his unutterable surprise, his sister was also caught although her particular trap was unsprung and her chair unoccupied. One pair of iron arms clasped both the victims, and one male and one female ankle were held in close confinement. As the astonished boy entered his sister faintly struggled, but soon resigned herself with Christian patience to her bonds, while the shameless young man pleasantly remarked, “Thank you, Harry! this trap is worth all the others you ever made, and we wouldn’t be let out of it for more than six million dollars.” Master Harry listened to these taunting words; listened also to a renewal of the sounds that he had accurately interpreted as evidence of contentment, and then angrily opening the trap and smashing it to pieces, withdrew to weep in solitude over the failure of his revenge.

This shows that wickedness often overreaches itself, and that to set two distinct traps for one’s sister and her private young man is as useless as was the superfluous hole which Sir Isaac Newton cut for the kitten, he having previously cut a larger one for the cat.

Carthaginian pirates

The town of Carthage, Mo., was lately surprised by the disappearance of two local small-boys, but the pleasure which this disappearance naturally excited was marred by the fact that two small girls also disappeared. The small-boys were thirteen and fourteen years of age respectively, and were thus too old to be kidnapped and too young to be killed in any “difficulty” or affair of honor. Although, of course, Carthage did not want to recover the missing small-boys, the missing girls were considered sufficiently valuable to be sought for with carefulness and dogs. For a whole week the search was fruitless, and had not one of the small-boys weakly confided in another small-boy, who betrayed him, Carthage would still be mourning its missing children. The story of their disappearance has a fine flavor of romance, and will be of interest to all who have felt a youthful yearning for piracy.

James and Henry, the two erratic young Carthaginians, were violently in love with two contemporaneous small girls. They had full reason to know that their love was returned, and they confided to each other their hopes and fears. Up to a certain point the course of their true loves ran smoothly. They met the girls daily at school, and presented them with apples, slate pencils, and other pledges of affection. They were not, however, permitted to call upon their beloved objects at the respective homes of the latter, under penalty of being hooted at by cold and brutal small-boys, who had never felt the sacred flame, and who held that a small-boy could not play with a girl without a serious loss of dignity. Of course, they yearned for the uninterrupted society of the loved ones, and after much consultation they decided that the easiest way in which to attain this object would be to seize upon their brides, to make their way to the Spanish Main, and to enter upon a career of piracy. At first the question which one should assume command of the proposed piratical schooner was discussed with a warmth that threatened to wreck the entire scheme, but it was finally agreed that the command should be given to James, but that the first prize captured should be placed under the independent command of Henry, and that he should at the same time be presented with a two bladed penknife and a set of jack stones.

This important preliminary being arranged, a night was fixed upon for the intended elopement, and half a pound of molasses candy, four apples, and a set of chessmen were laid in by way of supplies. Each small-boy armed himself with a stout stick, and James also carried a pistol, the efficiency of which was somewhat impaired by the absence of ammunition, and the fact that the pistol had no hammer. In the dead of night, or to be precise, at 7:15 in the evening, the two girls stealthily met their lovers by appointment, behind the barn, and after exchanging a few rapturous endearments, started for the Spanish Main. For obvious reasons, they preferred the short cut through the fields rather than the turnpike, and after two hours of easy marching they reached a solitary haystack four miles from the town, and in close proximity to an orchard. Here they halted for the night, and excavating niches in the hay, made themselves comparatively comfortable. In fact, they would have been very comfortable had not Capt. James thought it necessary to smoke a cigar in order to keep up his reputation as a bold and hardened pirate. The cigar made him dreadfully sick, and his companions were naturally somewhat cast down at the sight of their commander hovering for hours on the very confines of the basin. Of course, there was no actual basin in the camp, but if there had been, the gallant pirate would have hovered over it to a very great extent.

It is sad to be compelled to mention that pitiless nature, instead of smiling on these preposterous little pirates, rained on them for six consecutive days, confining them closely to the friendly haystack. Marching in the rain was not to be thought of, for although the small-boys calculated that they could reach the Spanish Main in two days, in spite of the weather, they could not ask their delicate brides, who had neither umbrellas nor overshoes, to brave the fury of the elements. In these circumstances provisions soon became scarce. Apples were abundant, but apples, when eaten without other food, pall upon the appetite after two or three days. The energetic Captain James led a gallant cutting out expedition on a neighboring chicken coop and captured a hen; but owing to the absence of matches, the hen could not be cooked. Finally, the Captain secretly returned to town in search of provisions, and revealed the location of the haystack to a heartless small-boy who promptly conveyed the information to the Captain’s father. A company of coarse, prosaic men thereupon captured the entire expedition, and the two pirates expiated in their respective wood sheds their unholy longing for the Spanish Main. Bereft of their brides, and placed under strict surveillance, they are now undergoing grinding torments, and it is feared that, thwarted in their practical aspirations, they will become reckless, and grow up to be savings bank presidents or life insurance officers.

What is remarkable is the fact that in spite of a week spent in a damp haystack without any food but apples, not one member of the expedition wanted to go home. Both the girls and their piratical lovers were thoroughly happy, and protested against being dragged back to Carthage. There are few grown people whose ardor would outlast a week of wet and hunger, and the happiness of the pirates and their brides may well be envied by older and wiser lovers.

Too much cabbage

The donation party is a shrewd device on the part of thrifty churchgoers to compound for their failure to pay their minister a proper salary by giving him a collection of bulky and cheap articles which he does not want. Still, upon the broad principle that something is better than nothing, the impecunious minister clings to the donation party, and cheerfully hopes that the day will come when his parishioners will cease to believe that a full grown minister and a growing family can subsist exclusively upon beans and pen wipers. In its inception, the donation party was, of course, a voluntary affair; but in many places it is now as regular and inevitable as Christmas. Occasionally a congregation endeavors to let the season pass by unnoticed, but in most cases the minister boldly meets the emergency by announcing from the pulpit that “the annual visit to the pastor” will take place on such a day; whereupon the congregation meekly collects its beans and pen wipers, and testifies in the usual manner its love for its pastor.

The donation party is a very depressing affair. When people who do not want to give away anything, give to their pastor things which he does not want, the ceremony does not promote hilarity. In order to render the donation party somewhat less gloomy than a funeral those who bring gifts usually include among them a supply of cake, sandwiches, and in some cases ice cream. These refreshments are distributed in equal proportion between the interior of the visitors and the exterior of the minister’s carpets and chair cushions, and a hollow pretense of cheerfulness is thus kept up. Meanwhile, all the children of the congregation retire to the second story front bedroom, where they play various games and break a good deal of furniture. The children have much the best of the whole affair, and they add materially to the anguish of the minister’s wife, as she wonders how many of them will fall against the stove, and whether they will set the house on fire when they upset the lamp.

The peculiar character of Rev. Mr. Wilcox’s recent donation party and the unfortunate results which followed it, were due solely to his small-boy’s disgust at being forbidden to take part in the juvenile cake orgies of the party. A week before the date fixed for the annual visit to the pastor, this small-boy had been detected in the act of creeping into his bedroom window at midnight, after a secret visit to the circus. The ensuing interview with his father did not materially depress his spirits, since he took the precaution to plate the vital portion of his trousers with concealed shingles, but when he was sternly told that, as a further penalty, he would be put to bed at precisely six o’clock on the night of the donation party, he felt that his punishment was inhuman, and resolved to be revenged.

During the next six days that astute but fearfully depraved small-boy called upon every one of his father’s parishioners, and first pledging them to secrecy, explained, with tears in his eyes, that his dear father was passionately fond of cabbages, and if any one desired to gladden the parental heart they would bring a few cabbages to the donation party. The small-boy further asserted that his father’s sense of delicacy forbade him to make the most distant allusion to cabbages, but that as an affectionate son, he the small-boy felt it to be his duty to mention the matter to some noble and generous man. Each parishioner was delighted by this display of filial affection and the recollection that cabbages were extremely cheap, and unhesitatingly promised that he would bring a whole load of cabbages.

The night of the donation party arrived, and the small-boy went to bed but not to sleep. With much forethought he had stolen the key of his bedroom, and thus rendered it impossible for his father to keep him a close prisoner. Each parishioner arrived in a large farm wagon, which, after having discharged its human freight at the front door was driven into the yard. The minister and his wife did not, of course, know the contents of the wagons, but supposing that the popular feeling was expressing itself to an unprecedented extent in wood, flour barrels, and winter apples, were greatly delighted. At 8:30 sixty-three wagons had entered the yard, and only three pecks of beans and eleven pen wipers had been deposited on the parlor table. The happy minister was beginning to think that at least twenty cords of wood, together with say a dozen barrels of flour, must have been delivered in the back yard, when suddenly his small-boy, confident that he would not be punished in public, entered the parlor and exclaimed in an exulting tone: “Father, there’s more’n a million loads of cabbage outdoors.” At this moment the sixty-fourth wagon arrived, and the owner, Deacon Lyman, put his head in the front door and remarked that he “had brought a few cabbages, but see’n as the yard was chock full, he calculated he might as well dump them under the front windows.”

The alarmed minister went out hastily, and beheld a mountain of cabbages. There was not a stick of wood, nor a barrel of flour, nor a bushel of apples in sight. Sixty-three full loads of cabbages were piled up nearly to the second story windows of the parsonage, and Deacon Lyman was just about to add his contingent to the pile. With a stern and angry countenance Mr. Wilcox went back to his parlor, and coldly informing his guests that to make a jest of sacred things in his own back yard was an insult which he could not pardon, bade them goodnight and withdrew to the recesses of a back bedroom. The guests, in their turn filled with indignation at his apparent ingratitude and rudeness, went to their homes and determined to change their minister at the earliest opportunity, and the depraved small-boy, after gorging himself with cake, went chuckling to his room and stood on his head in ecstatic bliss. The cabbages have since been sold at three cents per dozen, the minister has resigned his charge, and the small-boy, having too late perceived the ruin he had wrought, is now earnestly hoping that the doctrine of Universalism may be true.

Very popular science

Of late years there has grown up a large demand for what is called “popular science,” or, in other words, a presentation of the facts of science in terms intelligible to the uncultured public. Scores of lecturers and hundreds of writers have endeavored, with more or less success, to popularize science, and their labors have been warmly appreciated. As a result, almost every man who knows how to read knows that the sun is some distance from the earth; that the cold of winter is caused by a diminution of heat; that the earth and most of the South American Republics complete one revolution every year, together with various other interesting scientific facts. It is remarkable, however, that in spite of all that has been said upon the subject, the new doctrine in regard to heat is yet very far from being generally comprehended. When scientific persons taught that heat was an invisible substance, the presence of which in any given object made it warm, while its absence made the same object cold, there was no difficulty in understanding the matter. Now, however, when people are told that this theory is all wrong, and that heat is a mode of motion, they fail to understand what is meant, There is so much ignorance and misapprehension in regard to this subject that a familiar and lucid exposition of the true theory of heat ought to be generally useful and acceptable to our readers.

Heat is a mode of motion. In order to understand this definition we must know what motion is, and according to the best authorities motion is a correlative of heat. To make the matter clearer to the Western mind it may be said that motion is a sort of interconvertible currency that can be always exchanged for heat, while, in its turn, heat can be converted into motion. Having thus shown in the clearest possible manner what heat is, we can proceed to prove the truth of the definition by experiments.

Friction, it will be conceded, is motion, and it infallibly produces heat if it is kept up long enough. Thus, if we take a scientific person and rub his hair with great violence, we produce a brilliant display of heated temper. In this case, just as in the more familiar and less scientific experiment of rubbing a match on the wall, motion is converted into heat. The law illustrated by this experiment is universal and admits of no exceptions. If you take a slab of water, say two inches thick, six inches wide and a foot long, and placing it on a common dining table, rub it vigorously with sandpaper, it will ultimately be brought to the boiling point, or in other words the motion of the sandpaper over its surface will be converted into heat. In like manner, the human boot, if brushed long enough, will be calcined with the heat set free by the movement of the brush, to such an extent that it will be undistinguishable from the beefsteak of commerce which is familiar to the inmates of an American boardinghouse. An unlimited number of experiments of the same general nature may be tried, with a uniform result. Thus, we see that the mode of motion called friction is always convertible into heat, just as a Western debtor is convertible into an advocate of the Silver bill.

There is another class of experiments which shows that motion, when suddenly arrested, is instantaneously changed into heat. If a cannon ball strikes an iron target, the latter immediately becomes hot. In fact, a blow always produces heat, or, in other words, the motion inseparable from a blow is always converted into heat. The experiments which illustrate this are of exceptional interest. If you take a cold foot, whether your own or some one else’s though this experiment is more conclusive if the foot is your own and strike it a series of heavy blows with a large hammer or the back of an axe, the foot will become warm. Of course, a single blow may not develop a very appreciable amount of heat, but if the experiment is continued for some time, and the hammer or axe is used vigorously, the foot will soon cease to feel cold. A similar experiment is often tried by a school teacher with the aid of a small-boy and a club. When the latter is applied to the former with force and rapidity, the boy becomes thoroughly warm whence we have the popular juvenile expression descriptive of this kind of experiment, “the teacher just everlastingly warmed him, you bet”!

The important fact that heat is developed by suddenly arrested motion might be applied to various useful purposes were it generally known. Eggs can be cooked without fire simply by pounding them with a hammer until sufficient heat is developed to fry them nicely. Furnaces, grates, and stoves could be dispensed with were the members of every family to provide themselves with the old fashioned flails formerly in use among farmers, and to thrash one another, together with the walls and furniture of their houses, until the thermometer should indicate a pleasant and healthful temperature. In fact, if you have motion enough, you can produce any amount of heat, or if you have heat enough, you can produce any amount of motion; of which latter fact the familiar experiment of kindling a straw fire under a balky horse affords a convincing illustration.

Had Professor Tyndall and his fellow lecturers presented the new theory of heat in a clear and intelligible way, it would not have been necessary to thus put them to the blush. Still, it is unendurable that the public should be ignorant of the grand doctrine of the correlation of forces, and the scientific persons ought not to feel jealous if our explanation leaves them nothing further to explain.

A sleighing tragedy

Mr. Johnston, of North Lyme, Connecticut, is an upright man, and in many respects a wise one. He is, however, weak enough to imagine that he can keep his pretty daughter from all amusements except the weekly prayer meeting and the annual donation party. The amusements in which young girls delight, no matter how innocent they may be in the eyes of other men, Mr. Johnston summarily condemns as vain and frivolous. Of course, this line of conduct cannot be commended, but it is, nevertheless, true that Miss Johnston ought to obey the commands of her father while she is yet in her minority and under his roof. It is painful to be compelled to mention that such is not the view of the matter taken by the spirited and undutiful girl. While she does not venture to openly defy the author of her existence, she does not hesitate to deceive him. She snatches surreptitious joys whenever the paternal back is turned, and such is her versatility that she has been known to entertain three distinct and simultaneous young men one in the woodshed, another at the back gate, and a third under the lilac bush in the front yard, at the very time when Mr. Johnston fondly imagined that she was in her room studying the Shorter Catechism by lamplight. The neighbors, from sympathy with youth and beauty subjected to parental tyranny, assist her in her undutiful conduct, and conceal from her unsuspecting father her indulgence in picnics and skating parties.

Among the young lady’s warmest admirers is the young man who presides over the local public school. He is an unexceptionable person, except in point of muscle. He is not strong, and he is not familiar with out of door sports. Still, these faults do not affect his moral character, and most certainly did not justify Mr. Johnston in leading him out of the house by his left ear on the solitary occasion on which he had rashly ventured to call on the stern old gentleman’s daughter. As was only natural, this want of delicacy and hospitality exasperated the schoolteacher, and though, as he afterward explained to a friend who happened to be passing the house at the moment when the pedagogical ear was undergoing undue familiarity, he did not feel at liberty to inflict personal chastisement upon Miss Johnston’s father, he was, nevertheless, determined to “get square” with him, let the consequences be what they might.

A few weeks later the first heavy fall of snow occurred in North Lyme, and Mr. Parker for that was the schoolteacher’s name determined to invite Miss Johnston to accompany him on a sleigh ride. He knew that she would be delighted to accept an invitation, and that her father regarded sleigh riding as one of the worst vices in which his daughter could possibly indulge. To please himself and the young lady and to triumph over her objectionable parent, presented itself to his mind as a delicious combination of pleasure and revenge, and accordingly he wrote to Miss Johnston to meet him in a quiet lane a short distance from the village, and proceeded to the livery stable to hire a sleigh.

Mr. Parker was not, as the event proved, a judge of sleighs. Moreover, there was just at that time an excessive demand upon the resources of the livery stable, and every sleigh but one was engaged. This one was an aged “cutter” of a decidedly rickety appearance, but Mr. Parker found no fault with it, and, after hiring a horse warranted to be old and gentle, he entered the sleigh and drove cautiously to the rendezvous. Miss Johnston, with her cheeks and nose glowing with frost and expectation, was waiting for him, and his heart beat high as he alighted and prepared to assist her to the seat.

A surfeit of small-boys and a prolonged course of boardinghouse beefsteak had reduced Mr. Parker’s weight to 103 pounds, as he afterward testified before the Justice of the Peace. Miss Johnston, on the other hand, was a plump young person, who weighed 139 pounds without her back hair. The sleigh had borne the schoolteacher, though with much ominous creaking, but it was unequal to the strain of 139 pounds of girl. As Miss Johnston stepped into the middle of the “cutter,” and paused to arrange her skirts with a view to sitting down, a sharp crackling sound was heard, and the unhappy girl suddenly went through the bottom, and was held fast by cruel splinters, with her feet just touching the snow.

Mr. Parker rushed to the rescue with the utmost promptness, and mounting on the seat, strove to extricate his companion from the wreck; but the inexorable splinters would not yield. He tried to break the entire bottom out of the sleigh, but his strength was unequal to the feat. With rare inventive genius, he next proposed to crawl under the sleigh to extricate Miss Johnston by cutting away the splinters with his knife, but she declared with vigorous eloquence that if he dared to even bend his head down she would never speak to him again the longest day she lived. Just at this point the horse showed signs of restlessness, and the young lady insisted that the animal should be instantly cast loose from the sleigh, lest his movements should further complicate her misfortune. Accordingly, the horse was sent adrift, and the discouraged Mr. Parker was left alone with his weeping companion, who constantly upbraided him, and as constantly refused all his offers of assistance.

At the end of half an hour Miss Johnston began to suffer from the cold, and as she firmly refused to allow a blanket to be wrapped around that is to say, to be placed in position beneath the sleigh, the situation became alarming. Finally, Mr. Parker hit upon the idea of gently dragging the sleigh, while the imprisoned fair one feebly imitated the movement of walking. This gentle exercise prevented her from freezing, but it was obviously impossible for her to enter the village in such an unprecedented style, and she actually hailed with delight the sudden appearance of her father, in connection with a load of wood. That gentleman was naturally surprised at the spectacle which he beheld, but he was wrong in characterizing it as a wicked and willful attempt to play at circus.

Mr. Johnston, with the help of his whip, convinced the schoolteacher that he had better hasten home; and he then extricated his daughter, by summarily knocking the sleigh to pieces. He has since sued Mr. Parker for damages inflicted upon Miss Johnston by means of splinters and exposure to the weather, and though the case has not yet been decided, it is generally thought that the plaintiff will succeed. The story is a very sad one, and is well adapted to awaken within us a variety of painful, though salutary, emotions.

The managing young man

This world is full of painful duties which are constantly assigned to the conscientious journalist. Close upon the sleigh riding tragedy at North Lyme comes the news of a still more appalling incident of sleighing in New Jersey, which demands to be delicately, yet firmly, set before the public. It is not the journalist’s fault that these things happen. It has long been the opinion of thoughtful men that the constant tendency of things to happen ought to be checked; but alas! we are as yet powerless to check it. Every man will wish that the tragedy which it now becomes necessary to relate had never occurred, but regrets are useless. We can only strive to draw from it lessons that may teach us to guard against similar calamities, and that may sustain and strengthen us in moments of heated anguish.

The whole responsibility of the affair belongs to a young man whose name it would be an unnecessary act of cruelty to mention. It is out of regard to this well meaning but unfortunate person that the name of the New Jersey village in which the tragedy occurred is not here specified. It is sufficient to say that he was regarded as an expert in young ladies, and had won universal female gratitude by his intelligent efforts to please the sex. When, therefore, he undertook to manage what in the New Jersey dialect is called a “straw sleigh ride,” it was generally believed that the success of the affair was already assured.

The essential ingredients of a “straw sleigh ride” are from fifteen to twenty-five young men and women, a large box sleigh without seats, and a quantity of straw. The straw is strewn in the bottom of the sleigh, and the pleasure seekers sit on the straw, leaning their respective backs against the sides of the sleigh. Of course, they are uncomfortable, but the sense of doing something unusual and unconventional gives a zest to a straw sleigh ride which renders it immensely popular with the young. There is, however, one serious drawback to the pleasure of such an excursion. The cold air will penetrate through the bottom of the sleigh in spite of the straw, and will exercise a chilling influence upon the mirth and the geniality of the party. On this particular occasion the Managing Young Man undertook to provide means for keeping the young ladies thoroughly warm, and the latter placed unreserved confidence in his wisdom and skill.

Everybody knows that bricks when thoroughly heated and wrapped up in paper will preserve their warmth for many hours. The Managing Young Man determined to warm the young ladies of the sleighing party with bricks, and by an elaborate calculation arrived at the conclusion that each young lady would require four bricks. As the party was to consist of eleven girls and seven young men, he laid in no less than forty-four bricks, all of which he heated for several hours in the furnace of the Town Hall, and subsequently placed in the bottom of the sleigh, having first neatly wrapped them in copies of the Tribune so that the girls might feel thoroughly at home while sitting on them.

At about 8 o’clock in the evening the sleigh received its precious freight, and the Managing Young Man was overwhelmed with thanks for his thoughtful conduct in protecting the young ladies from cold. The heat from the bricks was at first exceedingly welcome, but after a time a certain uneasiness on the part of the young ladies was manifested. They conversed in an absentminded and preoccupied manner, and evinced that constant tendency to uneasy movements which is said by scientific persons to characterize a hen when placed on a hot griddle, although there is no authentic record that any such brutal experiment has ever been tried. A little later and the girls abandoned all attempts to join in general conversation, and whispered to one another with every appearance of anxiety and alarm. Presently they began with one accord to grope nervously and stealthily in the straw, and several of them suddenly shrieked and blew violently upon their fingers. At last the astonished Managing Young Man was unanimously called upon with frenzied energy to instantly stop the sleigh, and as soon as the order was obeyed the young ladies sprang out with a haste that disdained any masculine assistance.

The smell of singed paper had by this time suggested an explanation of the mystery, and the demand which was presently made that every brick should be thrown out of the sleigh left no further room for doubt in the mind of the Managing Young Man. He burned his fingers severely while handling the overheated bricks, but he cared not for his own physical pain. The thought that instead of making the girls comfortable he had inflicted upon them the tortures of St. Lawrence, filled him with humiliation. The girls were merely human, and it was natural that they should feel extremely dissatisfied with him, but it was scarcely just for them to refuse to accept his apologies and to treat him with cold disdain. The conduct of one particular young lady, whom he ardently admired, and whom he had secretly provided with an extra brick, pierced him to the heart. She persistently sat on a snowbank, and refused to be comforted or to concede that he was not a hateful, unfeeling brute. When the cargo of bricks was finally thrown out and the girls resumed their places in the sleigh, the whole pleasure of the excursion was manifestly wrecked, and the Managing Young Man, who had exiled himself to the driver’s seat, felt that he was a combination of half a dozen distinct and infamous kinds of criminals.

It is all over now. The young ladies have recovered their spirits, and would perhaps forgive the Managing Young Man were he to return and sue for forgiveness. But he is far away, having fled the village and buried himself in the wilds of Chicago. May his fate be a warning to us all, and may we remember that, though a warm brick has its uses, there may be too much of a good thing.

Sedentary abilities

President Bascom, who presides over a Western college to which young ladies, as well as young men, are admitted, has recently expressed his warm approval of the co-education of the sexes and has asserted that girls are better students than boys, for the reason that they are better adapted to sedentary pursuits. In other words, he claims that girls can sit down more successfully than boys, and that this fact enables them to surpass the other sex in study and in whatever business or profession involves a large amount of sitting down. Far be it from us to dispute the learned President’s facts. Doubtless he knows whereof he affirms, and we should cheerfully concede that the members of the gentler sex are unequaled in the capacity for sitting down. Still, the inferences which President Bascom draws from this fact are not necessarily true. A person, of whatever sex, may be able to sit down to an immense extent and may, nevertheless, be wholly unable to study. The professional fat man and fat woman spend the greater part of their lives in the sedentary occupation of being looked at and pinched by curious people, but they have never, in a single instance, been noted for scholarship. As for the theory that because girls are peculiarly adapted to rocking chairs they should therefore be admitted to young men’s colleges, there is abundant reason why we should unhesitatingly reject it.

While girls unquestionably have their uses in the economy of nature, and possess merits exclusively their own, it may be boldly asserted that they are totally unfit to pursue in company with young men the studies which constitute the curriculum of every respectable college. One of the earliest studies of the Freshman year is the art of getting the janitor’s cow into the fourth story of the dormitory. This can be readily mastered by any young man of good abilities and habits of industry and perseverance; but between girls and cows there is a great gulf fixed. The girl, from her earliest youth, looks upon the cow as a ferocious beast, prone to keep young ladies in the air in positions fatal to the proper arrangement of the back hair. To suppose that three or four young lady students are capable of the complicated pushing and pulling necessary to induce a cow to climb several flights of stairs, is to suppose that the natural feminine fear of cows can be eradicated by the mere process of matriculation. Thus we see that one of the very easiest of college studies is quite beyond the range of the female intellect.

The Sophomore year in most of our colleges is devoted to baseball. Will President Bascom have the temerity to assert that this is a sedentary pursuit, or that it is one in which it is possible for girls to excel? We all know that nature has so constructed the girl that she cannot throw a ball with any force or accuracy. If the most accomplished of President Bascom’s young ladies were to attempt to pitch a baseball, the chances are that, instead of coming within reach of the batsman, it would describe a parabolic curve and smash the President’s front window. Nor can young lady students strike or catch a ball when thrown with the proper degree of force. In short, baseball is a study in which it is morally impossible that girls should ever successfully compete with men. The same may be said of football, which, in some colleges, is an optional study, which those who do not fancy baseball are permitted to substitute for the latter. It is barely possible, judging from the remarks which Chicago and St. Louis newspapers constantly make in regard to the feet of the ladies of those cities, that Western girls are better adapted for football than are the girls this side of the Alleghanies, but it may be safely asserted that no girl can graduate in football, especially in colleges where the Rugby method is studied, with any. honor, or, indeed, with any high standing in her class. By far the most important study pursued ’ at any American college is that of rowing. From this study girls are virtually debarred simply by reason of their sex. Man is so constituted that he can reduce his clothing to a close fitting undershirt and a pair of attenuated trousers, which add scarcely anything to his weight in a six-oared shell. It is asserted by all scientific authorities that girls are encased in many successive layers of clothing, which are believed to be permanently affixed to them, and the aggregate weight of which is enormous. This would alone render girls unfit to pursue the fascinating and improving study of rowing, but there are other obstacles equally impossible to be overcome. Girls cannot run to any extent worth mentioning; and are hence unable to run along the shore while a boat race is in progress, yelling encouragement to the oarsmen, and announcing the odds which they are prepared to bet upon their favorite crews. Nor are they able to Tie with the other sex in making hideous the night after the race. Perhaps they would submit to the deprivation of caramels and the total abstinence from tea which are necessary while undergoing training, but what plump young lady would be willing to reduce herself to a gaunt and sunburned oarswoman, even in order to beat the Yale or the Columbia crew? It might also be mentioned that a race is rowed principally with the muscles of the oarsmen’s legs, and it is well known that the gentler sex But this is, perhaps, a branch of the subject which can be discussed with proper delicacy only by a convention of strong minded women.

In several of the minor studies of the college course, such as euchre, the amputation of the clapper of the chapel bell, the nailing up of the tutor’s door, and the introduction of goats and other comparatively innocuous animals into the recitation room, girls may very possibly be able to maintain something like an equality with boys. Still, enough has been said to show that they are very far from being adapted to pursue those more important studies which convert the industrious undergraduate into a healthy, earnest, learned, and Christian man. What, then, does President Bascom mean by his assuming that merely because girls can sit down rather more than boys, they are peculiarly adapted to pursue the regular studies of the Yale and Columbia students?

Cat fishing

Many and ingenious are the remedies that have been proposed for nocturnal cats, but none of them seem to have proved thoroughly successful. It was pointed out not very long ago that the extirpation of all fences which run in a direction parallel, or nearly parallel, with the equator, would exempt cats from electrical difficulties in their internal organs, and would thus hush the cries that now render night hideous; but there is a practical difficulty in dispensing with these fences. Another remedy, which is a certain cure for nocturnal cats, is suggested by the fact that cats cannot live at a greater elevation than 13,000 feet above the sea. If we build our back fences 13,500 feet high, not a cat will scale their lofty summits; but the labor and expense of constructing fences of this height would be so great as to forbid their erection by persons of small incomes. Mere palliatives, such as boot jacks and lumps of coal, never accomplish any lasting benefit; they may discourage an occasional cat, but his place will instantly be filled. With all their habitual caution, cats are bold, and will often rush in where an average angel would fear to tread. To deal effectually with them is a task which calls for the highest form of inventive genius, combined with patience and a reckless indifference to Mr. Bergh’s opinions.

The young man in West Thirty-fifth street who lately introduced cat fishing as a manly and beneficent sport, can scarcely be said to have devised an absolute specific for cats, but he has unquestionably contributed to lessen the number of cats in his immediate vicinity. Early last fall a vast area of cats, accompanied with marked depression of the spirits of the inhabitants of West Thirty-fifth street, overspread that unfortunate region. After a thorough trial of most of the popular remedies, a young man residing on the block between Fifth and Sixth avenues, and who may be called not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith by the name of Thompson, hit upon the idea of angling for cats. To the end of a strong blue fish line he affixed a salmon hook, baited with delicate morsels of meat. At first, this hook, deftly dropped from a back window, was permitted to lie on the top of the back fence. The first cat that passed over the fence would investigate the bait, and, finding it apparently free from fraud, would begin to eat it. A slight pull at the line would usually fix the hook in the cat’s mouth, and the angler would haul in his prey and knock it on the head. It frequently happened, however, that the cat could not be successfully “struck,” and would escape and warn his associates to beware of concealed hooks. Moreover, the angler had his bait gorged, upon one occasion, by a tramp, who had climbed the fence with a view to gaining access to the kitchen, and, though the game was successfully landed in the second-story back room, after having been gaffed with a sword bayonet, he had so much difficulty in subsequently disposing of the body that he dreaded a repetition of the incident He therefore altered his method of angling, and adopted a modified style of fly fishing.

This latter sport was carried on with the aid of a long bamboo fishing pole. The hook was baited as before, but instead of being permitted to lie on the top of the fence, was suffered to dangle in the air, about two feet above it. As soon as a cat perceived the bait, he assumed, with the intense self conceit characteristic of his race, that it was a supernatural recognition of his extraordinary merits, and could be fearlessly appropriated. In order to seize it he was, of course, compelled to leap upward, and it was very seldom that he failed to hook himself. By this plan, not only was the necessity of “striking” the cat obviated, but the danger that the bait would be seized by tramps was greatly lessened, while the excitement and interest of the sport were increased.

The young man became greatly fascinated with his new occupation, and having effected an arrangement with a popular French restaurant, was enabled to dispose of his game easily and profitably. On moonlight nights, when the late fall cats were in season, he often caught a string of from three to four dozen during a single night, many of them weighing ten or fifteen pounds each. So few cats escaped after having once leaped at the bait, that no general suspicion of the deadly nature of apparently aerial meat was disseminated among the feline population of the neighborhood. Before the winter was over cats had become so scarce that the sportsman was seriously contemplating the necessity of artificially stocking the back fences of Thirty-fifth street, when an unfortunate accident brought his beneficent occupation to a sudden end. An old gentleman, residing in a house on Thirty-sixth street, the back yard of which adjoined the fence where the young man practiced his sport, noticed one evening that something attached to a string was dangling over his back fence. As he had a pretty daughter, he immediately suspected that it was a surreptitious note, and stole softly out to seize and confiscate it. Mounting on a barrel he clutched the supposed note, and was instantly hooked.

The tackle was strong, and he would perhaps have been, landed had not the hook torn out when he was about forty feet from the ground. After he had recovered from the injuries caused by the fall and the weakness consequent upon the amputation of his legs, he showed so much annoyance at the so called outrage which had been inflicted upon him, that the young man, who was a person of the most delicate feelings, promised to give up cat fishing. Of course, had the old gentleman been thoroughly gaffed, he would not have fallen, and perhaps the young man felt that his failure to gaff him was an inexcusable error, which really called for his graceful retirement from cat fishing.

This example ought to bear fruit. At a very small expense for tackle, any resident of this city who occupies a back room, can secure excellent sport, and at the same time can render a great service to humanity by reducing the number of cats. The sport ought speedily to become a very popular one, and there can be but little doubt that in time cat fishing will rival trout fishing in the estimation of American sportsmen.

A mournful incident

The temperance crusade in Georgetown, Michigan, which was carried on by the earnest women of the village last winter, was a great success. When the crusade began there were five “saloons,” at which various immoral beverages, from mild lager beer to fiery benzine whiskey, were sold, but before spring only one of the “saloon keepers” insulted female public sentiment by continuing to prosecute his business. Of the others, three had sold out their entire stock to the crusaders, at a profit of nearly 200 per cent, and had removed to the next town, where they opened larger and more attractive “saloons;” while the fourth reformed rum seller openly repented for $750 cash, and became a temperance lecturer, at $50 a night, which, together with his income from a gambling house, made him very comfortable. In fact, he was accustomed to say that, as between selling liquor for a profit of $800 a year, and practicing as a reformer for $11.000 a year, no intelligent man could hesitate to choose the latter, and that he hoped in the course of a few months to find an opening as a reformed gambler that would make his fortune at one blow.

The one obdurate liquor dealer was without doubt one of the most exasperating ruffians on record. Night after night did the devoted women of Georgetown enter his “saloon” and hold a prayer meeting of great size and strength, but he never once openly insulted them, so as to enable the male crusaders to smash his bottles about his ears. On the contrary, he provided a parlor organ and six dozen hymnbooks, and joined in the singing with great ardor. When he was personally exhorted to give up his nefarious business, he always expressed a great desire to reform, but fixed his price at $3,000, which was considered to be altogether too high. It was useless to labor with such a hardened reprobate, and after six months of unremitting effort, the earnest women shook his sawdust from their feet and abandoned the attempt to reform him. When he was told that no more prayer meetings would be held in his “saloon,” he expressed sincere regret, and offered to reform for only $2,500, but even this offer was rejected, and then, for the first time, he lost his temper, and remarked that people who refused to save an immortal soul and put an end to drunkenness at the low price of $2,500 were insincere, and should no longer pollute his premises with their hypocritical prayers. In spite of this one failure, the crusaders had accomplished so much that, on the 23d of November last, the anniversary of the formation of the “Earnest Women’s Anti Rum, Beer and Tobacco League,” they determined to celebrate the occasion by a public procession and a cold water festival in the Baptist meetinghouse. The procession was to march in front of the obdurate liquor seller’s “saloon,” with any quantity of banners the Earnest Women singing temperance hymns, thus dispensing with the services of a beer drinking German brass band. When the “saloon” keeper heard of the intended celebration, he smiled grimly, and announced that if the procession did not halt in front of his “saloon,” he should feel personally slighted.

Now, the sidewalk in front of that wicked man’s “saloon” was wide and was paved with a peculiar mixture of tar and gravel. It was slightly out of repair, and the liquor seller remarked that he should show his respect for the temperance cause by having it put in complete repair. He, however, postponed the work from day to day, until it was generally thought that he had abandoned his design, but on the very night before the procession a gang of men, with lanterns and tar barrels, appeared on the scene, and before daylight the sidewalk was finished. In the morning two sentinels were stationed to warn pedestrians not to step on the newly laid pavement, which, however, the liquor dealer asserted would be perfectly hard before the hour fixed for the procession.

It was nearly 11 o’clock before the Earnest Women, singing a powerful hymn and carrying more banners than a torchlight political procession, turned the corner and advanced toward the “saloon.” The two sentinels were hastily withdrawn, and the liquor seller, with his hat in his hand, stood at his doorway to do homage to the reformers. As they neared him they averted their gaze, and would have passed him without recognizing his existence, but, unfortunately, the procession, instead of passing his door, halted before it, and standing perfectly still, ceased singing, and remarked with great unanimity “goodness gracious,” and other words to the same general effect.

Contrary to the prediction of the liquor seller, the new pavement was not dry. The composition had been spread to the unusual depth of six inches, and the head of the procession, including twenty-six Earnest Women, was securely stuck in the adhesive compound. To lift their feet was an impossibility, and two ladies who rashly sat down with the view of removing their boots, and thus making their escape, found it impossible to rise again. The wicked “saloon” keeper at first pretended not to notice the misfortune which had befallen the procession, and assuming that the ladies had paused for refreshments, loudly begged the ladies “to name their poison and he would be delighted to supply them.” Of course, he was soon compelled to recognize the true cause of the stoppage of the procession, and he then professed to’ be so overwhelmed with sorrow that he felt unable to gaze upon the scene, and so put up his shutters and retired by the back door into an adjoining street.

The Earnest Women were ultimately pried out with fence rails, after hot crowbars had been used to soften the tenacious tar, and they were then taken home in carriages and scraped by their devoted husbands. The affair, however, cast a gloom over the reformers and seriously injured the cause. The wicked liquor dealer had a sudden increase of custom, and it is understood that two new saloons are to be opened at an early day. This melancholy event may well fill us with sorrow, while it conveys the solemn lesson that reformers should take heed to their footsteps, lest haply they fall into the snares of the wicked.

Dogs and ghosts

It is all very well to be a philosopher and to make all sorts of investigations with all sorts of things; but when it comes to trifling with the holiest feelings of an honest Scotch terrier, under the pretext of investigating his religious views, it is time that prying philosophers should be told to exercise some little self restraint and decency.

M. Comte, the philosopher who invented an ingenious religion, based upon the cheerful and sustaining doctrines that there is no God and that the soul is not immortal, held that dogs have a religion closely resembling fetichism. An English philosopher, one Mr. George J. Romanes, who is evidently on intimate terms with dogs, but who is obviously undeserving of that precious privilege, has recently been investigating the alleged fetichism of dogs, and has decided that while they are not really fetich worshipers, they are firm believers in ghosts and spiritualism. It is not with Mr. Romanes’ conclusions that we need find fault, but with his methods of investigation. That prying and indelicate person arrived at his alleged facts by a series of experiments upon a Skye terrier of culture and refinement, which, if generally known in polite dog circles, would subject him to severe barking, if not to actual biting.

His first experiment was made with a bone. This is alone sufficient to show the heartless and irreverent character of the man. If there is any thing which a dog holds peculiarly sacred, it is a bone. A terrier will submit to be deluded by false representations that there are eligible cats in the coal scuttle, or that the piano is full of rats, but he feels that bones are too sacred to be made the subject of jest. But what did Mr. Romanes do? According to his own confession, he tied a small silk thread to a bone and gave it to a dog. After that animal had convinced himself that it was in all respects a genuine and substantial bone, the philosopher possessed himself of the end of the thread and drew the bone slowly across the floor. The astonished dog watched the unprecedented spectacle of an apparently self moving bone with startled ears and terrified tail until he convinced himself that he was not dreaming, but that a ghostly bone had materialized itself in front of his nose. When this conviction had mastered his mind, he fled, howling and with every symptom of terror, to his kennel, where he undoubtedly spent a miserable night, torturing himself with inquiries as to what this supernatural appearance might portend, and whether he had committed some grave sin in point of cats or rats for which the vision of the ghostly bone was intended as a punishment.

Mr. Romanes argues from this cruel experiment that his dog recognizes the existence of supernatural things and dreads them. Of course, the philosopher fails to notice that the conduct of the dog was far more sensible than is the conduct of the average man who thinks he sees something supernatural. In all probability had Mr. Romanes ever seen a piece of roast beef in the act of cruising unassisted around the table, he would instantly have asked it preposterous questions, and would subsequently have let his hair grow long, and have become a confirmed Spiritualist. His intelligent dog did none of these things, but as soon as he decided that he had seen a spiritual bone, he refused to have anything more to do with it, and continued to wear his hear of the usual length, and to cling to that faith in which he was educated. Still, although the experiment proved that the dog was far superior to his master, it was a cruel trifling with the most sacred feelings of his canine soul, and the philosopher deserves to be classed with the scarcely less cruel and far less mischievous practitioners of vivisection.

Not content with his first experiment, Mr. Romanes tried another. He blew soap bubbles, suffered them to roll along the carpet, and called his dog’s attention to them. It took some time to convince the dog that they were not a new kind of particularly dangerous rat, but he ultimately made up his mind to attack them. The first bubble upon which he placed his paw instantly vanished, much to his amazement. However, he was not easily discouraged, and he attacked a second bubble with a similar result. Then there flashed upon him the recollection of the ghostly bone, and he decided that soap bubbles were also supernatural. Again he fled, manifesting every symptom of extreme terror, and has never since consented to remain in a room in company with even the smallest bubble.

Finally, Mr. Romanes tried the dignified experiment of “making faces” at his unfortunate dog. Whether he is a handsome man in his normal state or not, he refrains from informing us, but it is certain that he made his face so hideously ugly that the dog mistook him for a worse ghost than any he had yet seen, and thereupon crept under the sofa and tried to die. A world abounding in supernatural bones and soap bubbles, and infested with an atrocious demon in the clothes, though not the likeness, of his master, had no further charms for him, and he preferred to leave it, and to hunt the unsubstantial cats of the other world, in the appropriate character of an unsubstantial and ghostly dog.

If that outraged dog had as little generosity as the average man, he would tell his miserable tale to all his acquaintances, and enlist their sympathies in his behalf. If this were done Mr. Romanes would be fitly punished. Avenging dogs would lie in wait for him at every corner and bite his sacrilegious legs. They would take turns in howling before his midnight windows, until the lack of sleep would drive him into insanity, and they would finally convert his grave into a canine baseball ground. He ought not, however, to be left exclusively to the vengeance of the dogs. He has done his best to disseminate among dogs a belief in ghosts which tends to unfit them for the duties of their station. This is a direct injury to every dog owner, and Mr. Romanes should not be permitted to lead our dogs into evil ways with impunity.

Red hair

The name of the lady who a few weeks since dropped her back hair on the sidewalk of a street in Clinton, Illinois, has never been ascertained. The hair in question was of a bright red color, and few persons imagined that it was dangerous when unconnected with its owner. Nevertheless, that seemingly innocent back hair led to a tragedy that nearly ruined the peace of two happy and respectable families.

Messrs. Smith and Brown are two leading citizens engaged in the grocery business in Clinton. They are men of great worth of character, and have reached middle age without incurring the breath of slander. One evening Mr. Smith returned from the store and sitting down at the tea table, produced a Chicago paper from his pocket and remarked with much indignation, “That revolting Beech er scandal has been revived, and its loathsome details are again polluting the press and corrupting the minds of the public.” Mrs. Smith replied that “it was a shameful outrage that the papers were allowed to publish such disgusting things,” and asked her husband “which paper had the fullest account of the matter.” That excellent man said that he believed the Gazette contained more about it than any other paper, and that after tea he would send one of the boys to get a copy of it. His wife thanked him, and was in the act of remarking that he was always thoughtful and considerate, when the oldest boy exclaimed, “Pa, you’ve got a long red hair on your coat collar!”

A prompt investigation made by Mrs. Smith confirmed the boy’s accusation. There was an unmistakably female hair on the collar of Mr. Smith’s coat, and it was obtrusively red. Mr. Smith said that it was a very extraordinary thing, and Mrs. Smith also remarking “very extraordinary, indeed,” in a dry, sarcastic voice, expressed deep disgust at red hair, and a profound contempt for the “nasty creatures” who wore it.

About the same hour Mr. Brown was also seated at his tea table, and was endeavoring to excuse, himself to Mrs. Brown for having forgotten to bring home a paper. That lady, after having expressed the utmost indignation at the revival of the Beecher scandal, had asked for the paper in order to see who was dead and married, and was, of course, indignant because her husband had not brought it home. In the heat of the discussion she noticed a long red hair on Mr. Brown’s coat collar, and, holding it up before him, she demanded an explanation. In vain did Mr. Brown allege that he had not the least idea how the hair became attached to his collar. His wife replied that what he said was simply ridiculous. “Red hair don’t blow round like thistle down, and at your time of life, Mr. Brown, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. The less you say the better, but I can tell you that you can’t deceive me. I’m not a member of Plymouth Church, and you can’t make me believe that black is white.”

Now, both Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith were perfectly innocent. Of course, they were annoyed by the remarks of their respective wives, but like sensible men, they avoided any unnecessary discussion of the painful topic. The next day they each brought home all the Chicago papers that contained any reference to the Beecher matter, and, as the papers were received by Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Smith with many protestations of the disgust which they felt at hearing any mention of the scandal, they naturally supposed that they had made peace. But marital suspicion once awakened is not easily put to sleep. While Mr. Brown was handing his wife the bundle of newspapers, she was closely scrutinizing his coat collar, and, after she had laid the papers on her plate and told the children not to touch them, she quietly took two long red hairs from her unfortunate husband’s coat, and held them solemnly before his face.

“Mary, I give you my solemn word,” began the alarmed Mr. Brown; but he was not permitted to finish his sentence. “Don’t say one word,” exclaimed Mrs. Brown. “Falsehoods won’t help you; I am a faithful and loving wife, and I’ll have you exposed and punished if there is any law in Illinois.” Thus saying she gathered up her newspapers and rushing to her room, locked herself in. It was not until later in the evening that Mrs. Smith, as she was about to turn down her husband’s lamp, which was smoking, perceived that two red hairs were attached to his shoulder. She said nothing, but after laying them on the table before him, burst into tears and refused to be comforted until Mr. Smith solemnly swore that he had not seen a red haired girl for months and years, and offered to buy her a new parlor carpet the very next day.

Of the two ladies, Mrs. Brown was much the stronger and the more determined. The next evening, when Mr. Brown brought back from the store no less than five red hairs on his coat collar, she broke a pie plate over his head, and leaving him weltering in dried apples, put on her bonnet and left the house. Mrs. Smith, on the same evening, found four of the mysterious red hairs on her husband’s coat, but she refrained from violence, and merely telling him that she would not believe in his innocence if he was to swear till he was black in the face, called loudly for her sainted mother, and was about to faint when Mrs. Brown burst into the room. Mr. Smith, like a wise man, fled from the scene, and the two ladies soon confided their wrongs to one another.

When Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith met the next day, the former confessed to the latter that he was in a terrible scrape. Confidence begat confidence, and they soon became convinced that they were the victims of a frightful conspiracy to which some unknown wearer of red back hair was a party. Their distress was increased early in the afternoon by the appearance of their respective wives, who walked up and down the opposite side of the street for hours, each carrying a conspicuous rawhide, and evidently lying in wait for the imaginary red haired woman. Messrs. Smith and Brown felt that they were ruined men, and that a tremendous scandal was about to overwhelm them. They even wished that they were dead.

About 4 o’clock P. M. Mrs. Smith clutched her companion’s arm and bade her listen to a small-boy who was relating one of his recent crimes to a youthful companion. “I just picked up that there hair,” remarked the wicked youth, “and put some of it on old Smith’s and old Brown’s coats; I kep’ a puttin’ of it on every day, and you just bet they ketched it from their old women when they went home. Smith, he’s as solemn as an owl, and old Brown looks as if he was a goin’ to be hung.”

The remains of the boy were removed by the constable, and the Smith and Brown families are once more united and happy.

The periodicity of stories

No intelligent man now doubts the Copernican theory. We know that the planets revolve around the sun, and that every satellite revolves around its own private planet. Still, mankind has been curiously slow to perceive that the law upon which the Copernican theory is based is of vastly wider application than astronomers suppose. All things do not literally revolve, but all things have their periodic times. For many years after the death of Copernicus it was imagined that the comets were exempt from the laws which govern the planets, and it is only within a few years that astronomers have discovered that the whole stellar universe is revolving around some central point. With the solitary exception of the seventeen year locusts and certain forms of epidemic disease, the law of periodicity is universally believed to have no application to mundane affairs. Nevertheless, everything revolves, either actually or figuratively, around something else, and has its set times for appearing and disappearing; and this great truth will yet be recognized by scientific persons, as well as by the small boys who have made a profound study of the orbits and periods of circuses.

Take, for example, the British drumbeat. Daniel Webster long ago announced the scientific fact that this drumbeat encircles the earth, and that its time of revolution is precisely that of the axial revolution of the earth. But who, among all our scientific persons, has noticed that the British drumbeat revolves not in the plane of the equator, but nearly in that of the ecliptic? Its path may be traced by a line drawn from Gibraltar, through Jamaica, British Guiana, and the Fiji Islands, to Australia, and thence bending northerly through India, Suez, and Malta to the place of beginning. It is idle to suppose that this a mere accident. Nature, which caused Greenwich to be placed precisely equidistant between the first parallels of east and west longitude, knew what she was about when she ordained that the British drumbeat should circle the earth in a plane but slightly inclined to that of the ecliptic.

The appearance in a Chicago paper of the story of an alleged marriage ceremony which came to an abrupt end because the bride and groom mutually accused each other of awkwardness, furnishes a fitting occasion to call attention to the fact that all stories have their periodic times. The story in question was a popular one precisely twenty-six years ago, as will appear by an examination of the comic almanacs of the year 1851, and its reappearance at this time shows that its periodic time is, in round numbers, twenty-six years. The Chicago paper, ignorant of this fact, supposes that the story is a new one, just discovered by one of its reporters. It is doubtful if any story can be called new except in the qualified sense in which the detection of a hitherto unobserved comet is called the discovery of a new comet. All comets and all stories have existed during incalculable ages, and their regular reappearances do not justify us in assuming that they are new.

There is a vast difference in the periodic time of different stories, and it is probable that some of them revisit the earth not oftener than once in many millions of years. There is the story of “Bridget and the Unpremeditated Cat,” which appeared in the year 1794, but of which no previous or subsequent observation has ever been made. The periodic time of this improving and retractile anecdote is at least six thousand years, and may, for all we know, be six or sixty million. There is a lamentable want of data in regard to the revolution of stories, but from such imperfect data as are accessible we can predict with much confidence the reappearance of several prominent stories. The one which appeared in the Chicago paper will, of course if its time has been accurately computed reappear in 1902, when it will suddenly dawn upon a score of simultaneous newspapers, all of which will hail it as a genuine novelty. Vastly longer is the period of the story of the man who, with the aid of his father, a widow, and the widow’s daughter, and an intricate system of intermarriage, became his own grandfather. The first recorded appearance of this is in a Sanscrit work, translated by Burton, the African explorer. Its second appearance was in this city, in 1857, when it was told with much applause at a negro minstrel entertainment. Between these two appearances there was an interval of not far from 3,500 years. We need, therefore, fear no recurrence of the story until about the year 5650; a fact upon which we may fairly congratulate ourselves, in view of its almost unique tediousness and intricacy. In contrast with the long cycle through which the grandfather story sweeps, is the brief period of the anecdote of the Irishman who thought that he would never be able to put on a pair of tight boots without previously wearing them for a day or two. This reappears every two years with unvarying regularity, and though it has been slightly modified since the date when the sandal expanded into the boot, it has maintained the same period for at least 3,000 years.

It would be impossible, within moderate limits, to discuss the causes which first set stories in motion and regulated them by law. Neither can the perturbations and phases which certain stories manifest, nor the disturbing influence which one sometimes exerts upon another, be more than barely alluded to at this time. Very little observation is, however, needed to establish the fact that every story has its periodic time, and that its path and its speed are governed by natural and inflexible laws, as truly as are the path and speed of the moon, or the British drumbeat.

The latest case of hazing

Hazing has of late become altogether too frequent as the Herald often remarks of murder and other atrocious crimes. At several of our leading colleges unhappy Freshmen have lately been hazed, much to their astonishment and dissatisfaction. Bad as hazing is when it is perpetrated by boys, it is infinitely worse when young ladies are the hazers. Their little hands were never made to pull each other’s hair down, and that they should take part in scenes of riot and violence is particularly revolting to our nobler instincts. Nevertheless we must expect that the students of female colleges will emulate the practices of the students of male colleges, and we need not be surprised to learn that a peculiarly atrocious case of hazing recently occurred at a female college the name of which shall, from obvious motives, be suppressed.

Among the Freshwomen of this nameless college was one who possessed an unusually independent spirit, and refused to humble herself before the haughty Sophomoresses. Although the latter had forbidden Freshwomen to wear ribbons, or to bang their hair, she openly fluttered the showiest ribbons, and flaunted the most tightly crimped bang in the faces of her natural superiors. Moreover, she wore a sealskin sack a garment which, by prescription, had become the badge of the upper class women and being an intrinsically pretty girl, she attracted a degree of attention when within sight of young men which was construed as a personal insult to the older students. There is no doubt that in these and other ways she not only exasperated the Sophomoresses, but formed a sort of nucleus around which other mutinous Freshwomen might be expected to gather.

About 12 o’clock on the night of the 23d of March, last the independent Fresh woman was aroused by a gentle knock at her door. On demanding who was there, the reply was made, “It’s me, dear; I’ve got a letter for you from a young man.” In her excitement she did not pause to consider the essential improbability of this reply, but hastily unlocked the door. Instantly seven girls rushed into the room, locked the door behind them, and seizing the unhappy Freshwoman, gagged her with a “puff,” and bound her hand and foot with two of her own sashes. This done, she was placed in a chair, and forbidden to move a muscle under pain of having a live mouse, which one of the aggressors had brought in a small box, let loose on the floor.

Such a threat would have curdled the blood in the veins of most girls, but this girl was made of firmer material, and, instead of fainting, she sat perfectly still and watched the hazers. The latter were led by one of the most riotous students of the college, a girl who had repeatedly made surreptitious tea in her own room after bedtime, and had more than once been known to wave her handkerchief at casual young men. The whole party had prepared themselves for their lawless work by leaving their overskirts and their back hair in their rooms. They were evidently already under the influence of green tea, and they constantly made use of such revolting expressions as “my gracious,” “my goodness me,” and other equally shocking blasphemies. They had brought with them two quart bottles of cold tea, a supply of dry toast, and a jar of jelly. Seating themselves around the table, they rapidly consumed these intoxicating refreshments, and the helpless Freshwoman’s heart sank within her as she perceived that they were deliberately stimulating themselves to a height of recklessness which would fit them for the most atrocious outrages.

For half an hour the revelers drank the fiery green tea, and made the midnight air ring with the rollicking songs of Messrs. Moody and Sankey. At length the leader judged that her companions were ripe for any sort of crime, and thereupon summoned them to carry out their nefarious design. They began by taking out and confiscating their victim’s crimping pins. They then carefully cut off with a pair of sharp scissors every vestige of her bang, leaving in its place a short stubble that closely resembled a masculine beard of three days’ growth. The entire contents of the victim’s own bottle of bandoline was then emptied upon her head, and her hair, after being combed straight back from her forehead, was secured in that position by a circular comb. Every particle of ribbon in her possession was seized by the hazers, who, in cruel mockery of her fondness for ribbons of becoming tints, proceeded to trim all her dresses with a hideous parti-colored red and yellow ribbon. All this time the victim of these outrages made no sound, although the powder with which the “puff” was filled was several times on the point of choking her. When the hazers had finished their loathsome work they removed the gag, and forced the Freshwoman to solemnly promise on a volume of Emerson’s Essays to wear only red and yellow ribbons, to send her sealskin sack home by express, and to henceforth wear her hair in the simple and excessively unbecoming fashion in which they had arranged it.

Probably she would have refused at any cost to make such a promise had she not caught sight of herself in the mirror and thus sustained a shock which completely unnerved her.

It remains to be seen whether the college authorities will permit this brutal assault upon a defenseless student to remain unpunished; or whether the spirit of hazing is to be permitted to spread among our female colleges, ruining the ribbons and obliterating the bangs of innocent Freshwomen.

Told by the Colonel

Told by the Colonel was originally published in 1893 by J. Selwin Tait & Sons.

An ornithological romance

Four Americans were sitting in the smoking room of a Paris hotel. One of them was a grizzled, middle aged man, who sat silent and apart from the others and consumed his heavy black cigar with a somewhat gloomy air. The other three were briskly talking. They had been three days in Paris, and had visited the Moulin Rouge, the tomb of Napoleon, and the sewers, and naturally felt that they were thoroughly acquainted with the French capital, the French government, and the French people. They were unanimously of the opinion that Paris was in all things fifty years behind the age, and at least sixty behind Chicago. There was nothing fit to eat, drink, or smoke in Paris. The French railway carriages were wretched and afforded no facilities for burning travelers in case of an accident. The morals of French society as studied at the Moulin Rouge were utterly corrupt, owing possibly to that absence of free trade in wives and husbands which a liberal system of divorce permits. The French people did not understand English, which was alone sufficient to prove them unfit for self-government, and their preference for heavy five-franc pieces when they might have adopted soft and greasy dollar bills showed their incurable lack of cleanliness.

Suddenly the silent man touched the bell and summoned a waiter.

“Waiter,” he said, as that functionary entered the room, “bring me an owl.”

“If you please, sir?” suggested the waiter, timidly.

“I said, bring me an owl! If you pretend to talk English you ought to understand that.”

“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. How would you please to have the nowl?”

“Never you mind. You go and bring me an owl, and don’t be too long about it.”

The waiter was gone some little time, and, then returning, said, “I am very sorry, sir, but we cannot give you a nowl tonight. The barkeeper is out of one of the materials for making nowls. But I can bring you a very nice cocktail.”

“Never mind,” replied the American. “That’ll do. You can go now.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said one of the three anatomizers of the French people, speaking with that air of addressing a vast popular assemblage which is so characteristic of dignified American conversationalists. “Would you do me the favor to tell me and these gentlemen why you ordered an owl?”

“I don’t mind telling you,” was the answer, “but I can’t very well do it without telling you a story first.”

“All right, Colonel. Give us the story, by all means.”

The elderly American leaned back in his chair searching for inspiration with his gaze fixed on the chandelier. He rolled his cigar lightly from one corner of his mouth to the other and back again, and presently began:

“A parrot, gentlemen, is the meanest of all creation. People who are acquainted with parrots, and I don’t know that you are, generally admit that there is nothing that can make a parrot ashamed of himself. Now this is a mistake, for I’ve seen a parrot made ashamed of himself, and he was the most conceited parrot that was ever seen outside of Congress. It happened in this way.

“I came home one day and found a parrot in the house. My daughter Mamie had bought him from a sailor who was tramping through the town. Said he had been shipwrecked, and he and the parrot were the only persons saved. He had made up his mind never to part with that bird, but he was so anxious to get to the town where his mother lived that he would sell him for a dollar. So Mamie she buys him, and hangs him up in the parlor and waits for him to talk.

“It turned out that the parrot couldn’t talk anything but Spanish, and very little of that. And he wouldn’t learn a word of English, though my daughter worked over him as if he had been a whole Sunday school. But one day he all at once began to teach himself English. Invented a sort of Ollendorff way of studying, perhaps because he had heard Mamie studying French that way. He’d begin by saying, ‘Does Polly want a cracker?’ and then he’d go on and ring the changes. For example, just to give you an idea of the system, he’d say, ‘Does Polly want the lead cracker of the plumber or the gold cracker of the candlestick maker?’ and then he’d answer, ‘No, Polly does not want the lead cracker of the plumber nor the gold cracker of the candlestick maker, but the large steel cracker of the blacksmith.’ He used to study in this way three hours every morning and three every afternoon, and never stop for Sundays, being, as I suppose, a Roman Catholic, and not a Sabbath keeping bird. I never saw a bird so bent on learning a language as this one was, and he fetched it. In three months’ time that parrot could talk English as well as you or I, and a blamed sight better than that waiter who pretends that he talks English. The trouble was the parrot would talk all the time when he was not asleep. My wife is no slouch at talking, but I’ve seen her burst into tears and say, ‘It’s no use, I can’t get in a word edgewise.’ And no more could she. That bird was just talking us deaf, dumb, and blind. The cat, he gave it up at an early stage of the proceedings. The parrot was so personal in his remarks asking the cat if he had ever seen a mouse in his whole life, and wanting to know who it was that helped him to paint the back fence red the other night, till the cat, after cursing till all was blue, went out of the house and never showed up again. He hadn’t the slightest regard for anybody’s feelings, that bird hadn’t. No parrot ever has.

“He wasn’t content with talking three-fourths of the time, but he had a habit of thinking out loud which was far worse than his conversation. For instance, when young Jones called of an evening on my daughter, the parrot would say, ‘Well, I suppose that young idiot will stay till midnight, and keep the whole house awake as usual.’ Or when the Unitarian minister came to see my wife the parrot would just as likely as not remark, ‘Why don’t he hire a hall if he must preach, instead of coming here and wearing out the furniture?’ Nobody would believe that the parrot made these remarks of his own accord, but insisted that we must have taught them to him. Naturally, folks didn’t like this sort of thing, and after a while hardly anybody came inside our front door.

“And then that bird developed a habit of bragging that was simply disgusting. He would sit up by the hour and brag about his superiority to other birds, and the beauty of his feathers, and his cage, and the gorgeousness of the parlor, and the general meanness of everything except himself and his possessions. He made me so tired that I sometimes wished I were deaf. You see, it was the infernal ignorance of the bird that aggravated me. He didn’t know a thing of the world outside of our parlor; and yet he’d brag and brag till you couldn’t rest.

“You may ask why didn’t we kill him, or sell him, or give him to the missionaries, or something of that sort. Well, Mamie, she said it would be the next thing to murder if we were to wring his neck; and that selling him would be about the same as the slave trade. She wouldn’t let me take the first step toward getting rid of the parrot, and the prospect was that he’d drive us clean out of the house.

“One day a man who had had considerable experience of parrots happened to come in, and when I complained of the bird he said, ‘Why don’t you get an owl? You get an owl and hang him up close to that parrot’s cage, and in about two days you’ll find that your bird’s dead sick of unprofitable conversation.’

“Well, I got a small owl and put him in a cage close to the parrot’s cage. The parrot began by trying to dazzle the owl with his conversation, but it wouldn’t work. The owl sat and looked at the parrot just as solemn as a minister whose salary has been cut down, and after a while the parrot tried him with Spanish. It wasn’t of any use. Not a word would the owl let on to understand. Then the parrot tried bragging, and laid himself out to make the owl believe that of all the parrots in existence he was the ablest. But he couldn’t turn a feather of the owl. That noble bird sat silent as the grave, and looked at the parrot as if to say, ‘This is indeed a melancholy exhibition of imbecility!’ Well, before night that parrot was so ashamed of himself that he closed for repairs, and from that day forth he never spoke an unnecessary word. Such, gentlemen, is the influence of example even on the worst of birds.”

The American lit a fresh cigar, and pulling his hat over his eyes, fell into profound meditation. His three auditors made no comment on his story, and did not repeat the inquiry why he had asked the waiter for an owl. They smoked in silence for some moments, and then one of them invited the other two to step over to Henry’s and take something an invitation which they promptly accepted, and the smoking room knew them no more that night.

Jewseppy

“Yes, sir!” said the Colonel. “Being an American, I’m naturally in favor of elevating the oppressed and downtrodden, provided, of course, they live in other countries. All Americans are in favor of Home Rule for Ireland, because it would elevate the Irish masses and keep them at home; but if I were living in Ireland, perhaps I might prefer elevating Russian Jews or Bulgarian Christians. You see, the trouble with elevating the oppressed at home is that the moment you get them elevated they begin to oppress you. There is no better fellow in the world than the Irishman, so long as you govern him; but when he undertakes to govern you it’s time to look out for daybreak to westward. You see, we’ve been there and know all about it.

“Did I ever tell you about Jewseppy? He was an organ grinder, and, take him by and large, he was the best organ grinder I ever met. He could throw an amount of expression into ‘Annie Rooney,’ or, it might be, ‘The Old Folks at Home,’ that would make the strongest men weep and heave anything at him that they could lay their hands to. He wasn’t a Jew, as you might suppose from his name, but only an Italian ‘Jewseppy’ being what the Italians would probably call a Christian name if they were Christians. I knew him when I lived in Oshkosh, some twenty years ago. My daughter, who had studied Italian, used to talk to him in his native language; that is, she would ask him if he was cold, or hungry, or ashamed, or sleepy, as the books direct, but as he never answered in the way laid down in the books, my daughter couldn’t understand a word he said, and so the conversation would begin to flag. I used to talk to him in English, which he could speak middling well, and I found him cranky, but intelligent.

“He was a little, wizened, half-starved looking man, and if he had only worn shabby black clothes, you would have taken him for a millionaire’s confidential clerk, he was so miserable in appearance. He had two crazes one was for monkeys, who were, he said, precisely like men, only they had four hands and tails, which they could use as lassoes, all of which were in the nature of modern improvements, and showed that they were an advance on the original pattern of men. His other craze was his sympathy for the oppressed. He wanted to liberate everybody, including convicts, and have every one made rich by law and allowed to do anything he might want to do. He was what you would call an Anarchist today, only he didn’t believe in disseminating his views by dynamite.

“He had a monkey that died of consumption, and the way that Jewseppy grieved for the monkey would have touched the heart of an old fashioned Calvinist, let alone a heart of ordinary stone. For nearly a month he wandered around without his organ, occasionally doing odd jobs of work, which made most people think that he was going out of his mind. But one day a menagerie came to town, and in the menagerie was what the show bill called a gorilla. It wasn’t a genuine gorilla, as Professor Amariah G. Twitchell, of our university, proved after the menagerie men had refused to give him and his family free tickets. However, it was an animal to that effect, and it would probably have made a great success, for our public, though critical, is quick to recognize real merit, if it wasn’t that the beast was very sick. This was Jewseppy’s chance, and he went for it as if he had been a born speculator. He offered to buy the gorilla for two dollars, and the menagerie men, thinking the animal was as good as dead, were glad to get rid of it, and calculated that Jewseppy would never get the worth of the smallest fraction of his two dollars. There is where they got left, for Jewseppy knew more about monkeys than any man living, and could cure any sick monkey that called him in, provided, of course, the disease was one which medical science could collar. In the course of a month he got the gorilla thoroughly repaired, and was giving him lessons in the theory and practice of organ grinding.

“The gorilla didn’t take to the work kindly, which, Jewseppy said, was only another proof of his grand intellect, but Jewseppy trained him so well that it was not long before he could take the animal with him when he went out with the organ, and have him pass the plate. The gorilla always had a line round his waist, and Jewseppy held the end of it, and sort of telegraphed to him through it when he wanted him to come back to the organ. Then, too, he had a big whip, and he had to use it on the gorilla pretty often. Occasionally he had to knock the animal over the head with the butt end of the whip handle, especially when he was playing something on the organ that the gorilla didn’t like, such as ‘Marching through Georgia,’ for instance. The gorilla was a great success as a plate passer, for all the men were anxious to see the animal, and all the women were afraid not to give something when the beast put the plate under their noses. You see, he was as strong as two or three men, and his arms were as long as the whole of his body, not to mention that his face was a deep blue, all of which helped to make him the most persuasive beast that ever took up a collection.

“Jewseppy had so much to say to me about the gorilla’s wonderful intelligence that he made me tired, and one day I asked him if he thought it was consistent with his principles to keep the animal in slavery. ‘You say he is all the same as a man,’ said I. ‘Then why don’t you give him a show? You keep him oppressed and downtrodden the whole time. Why don’t you let him grind the organ for a while, and take up the collection yourself? Turn about is fair play, and I can’t see why the gorilla shouldn’t have his turn at the easy end of the business.’ The idea seemed to strike Jewseppy where he lived. He was a consistent idiot. I’ll give him credit for that. He wasn’t ready to throw over his theories every time he found they didn’t pay. Now that I had pointed out to him his duty toward the gorilla, he was disposed to do it.

“You see, he reasoned that while it would only be doing justice to the beast to change places with him, it would probably increase the receipts. When a man can do his duty and make money by it his path is middling plain; and after Jewseppy had thought it over he saw that he must do justice to the gorilla without delay.

“It didn’t take the beast long to learn the higher branches of hand organing.

“He saw the advantages of putting the money in his own pocket instead of collecting it and handing it over to Jewseppy, and he grasped the idea that when he was pushing the little cart that carried the organ and turning the handle, he was holding a much better place in the community than when he was dancing and begging at the end of a rope. I thought, a day or two after I had talked to Jewseppy, that there was considerable uproar in town, but I didn’t investigate it until toward evening, when there seemed to be a sort of riot or temperance meeting, or something of the kind, in front of my house, and I went out to see about it. There were nearly two thousand people there watching Jewseppy and his gorilla, or rather the gorilla and his Jewseppy. The little man had been elevating the oppressed with great success. A long rope was tied around his waist, and he was trotting around among the people, taking up the collection and dancing between times.

“The gorilla was wearing Jewseppy’s coat, and was grinding away at the organ with one hand and holding Jewseppy’s rope with the other. Every few minutes he would haul in the rope, hand over hand, empty all the money out of Jewseppy’s pocket, and start him out again. If the man stopped to speak to anybody for a moment the gorilla would haul him in and give him a taste of the whip, and if he didn’t collect enough money to suit the gorilla’s idea, the animal would hold him out at arm’s length with one hand and lay into him with the other till the crowd were driven wild with delight. Nothing could induce them to think that Jewseppy was in earnest when he begged them to protect him. They supposed it was all a part of the play, and the more he implored them to set him free, the more they laughed and said that ‘thish yer Eyetalian was a bang up actor.’

“As soon as Jewseppy saw me he began to tell me of his sufferings. His story lacked continuity, as you might say, for he would no sooner get started in his narrative than the gorilla would jerk the rope as a reminder to him to attend strictly to business if he wanted to succeed in his profession. Jewseppy said that as soon as he tied the rope around his waist and put the handle of the organ in the gorilla’s hand the beast saw his chance and proceeded to take advantage of it. He had already knocked the man down twice with the handle of the whip, and had lashed him till he was black and blue, besides keeping him at work since seven o’clock that morning without anything to eat or drink. “At this point the gorilla hauled Jewseppy in and gave him a fairly good thrashing for wasting his time in conversation. When the man came around again with the plate I told him that he was taking in more money than he had ever taken in before, and that this ought to console him, even if the consciousness that he was doing justice to the oppressed had no charms for him. I’m sorry to say that Jewseppy used such bad language that I really couldn’t stay and listen to him any longer. I understood him to say that the gorilla took possession of every penny that was collected, and would be sure to spend it on himself, but as this was only what Jewseppy had been accustomed to do it ought not to have irritated a man with a real sense of justice. Of course I was sorry that the little man was being ill treated, but he was tough, and I thought that it would not hurt him if the gorilla were to carry out his course of instruction in the duty of elevating the oppressed a little longer. I have always been sort of sorry that I did not interfere, for although Jewseppy was only a foreigner who couldn’t vote, and was besides altogether too set in his ideas, I didn’t want him to come to any real harm. After that day no man ever saw Jewseppy, dead or alive. He was seen about dusk two or three miles from town on the road to Sheboygan. He was still tied to the rope and was using a lot of bad language, while the gorilla was frequently reminding him with the whip of the real duties of his station and the folly of discontent and rebellion. That was the last anybody ever saw of the Italian. The gorilla turned up the next day at a neighboring town with his organ, but without anybody to take up the collection for him, and as the menagerie happened to be there the menagerie men captured him and put him back in his old cage, after having confiscated the organ. No one thought of making any search for Jewseppy, for, as I have said, he had never been naturalized and had no vote, and there were not enough Italians in that part of the country to induce any one to take an interest in bringing them to the polls. It was generally believed that the gorilla had made away with Jewseppy, thinking that he could carry on the organ business to more advantage without him. It’s always been my impression that if Jewseppy had lived he would have been cured of the desire to elevate the downtrodden, except, of course, in foreign countries. He was an excellent little man enthusiastic, warm hearted, and really believing in his talk about the rights of monkeys and the duty of elevating everybody. But there isn’t the least doubt that he made a mistake when he tried to do justice to that gorilla.

That little Frenchman

“Does anybody doubt my patriotism?” asked the Colonel. We all hastened to say that we should as soon doubt our own existence. Had he not made a speech no longer ago than last Fourth of July, showing that America was destined to have a population of 1,000,000,000 and that England was on the verge of extinction? Had he not perilled his life in the cause of freedom, and was he not tireless in insisting that every Chinaman should be driven out of the United States? If there ever was one American more patriotic than another it was the Colonel.

“Well, then,” continued the speaker, “you won’t misunderstand me when I say that the American railroad car is a hundred times more dangerous than these European compartment cars. In thirty years there have been just four felonious assaults in English railroad cars. There have been a few more than that in France, but not a single one in Germany. Now, I admit that you are in no danger of being shot in an American car, unless, of course, two gentlemen happen to have a difficulty and shoot wild, or unless the train is held up by train robbers who are a little too free with their weapons. But I do say that the way in which we heat our cars with coal stoves kills thousands of passengers with pneumonia and burns hundreds alive when the trains are wrecked.

“You see, I’ve looked into this thing and I’ve got the statistics down fine. I’m the only man I know who ever had any trouble with a passenger while travelling in Europe, and I don’t mind telling you about it, although it will be giving myself away. Kindly push me over those matches, will you? These French cigars take a lot of fuel, and you have to encourage them with a match every three minutes if you expect them to burn.

“When I was over here in Paris, ten years ago, there was a fellow here from Chicago who was trying to introduce American cars, and he gave me a pamphlet he had got up showing the horrors of the compartment system. It told of half a dozen murders, fifteen assaults, eleven cases of blackmail, and four cases in which a solitary traveler was shut up in a compartment with a lunatic all these incidents having occurred on European railways. I was on my way to Egypt, and when I had read the pamphlet I began to wonder if I should ever manage to live through the railroad journey without being killed, or blackmailed, or lunaticked, or something of the kind. You see, I believed the stories then, though I know now that about half of them were false.

“I took the express train the Peninsular and Oriental they call it from Paris about twelve o’clock one night. I went early to the train, and until just before we started I thought I was going to have the compartment to myself. All at once a man very much out of breath jumped in, the door was slammed, and we were off.

“I didn’t like the looks of the fellow. He was a Frenchman, though of course that wasn’t his fault. He was small but wiry looking, and his sharp black eyes were not the style of eyes that inspires me with confidence. Then he had no baggage except a small paper parcel, which was queer, considering that the train was a long distance one. I kept a close watch on him for a while, thinking that he might be one of the professional lunatics that, according to the Chicago chap’s pamphlet, are always travelling in order to frighten solitary passengers; but after a while I became so sleepy that I decided to lie down and take a nap and my chances of being killed at the same time. Just then the man gets up and begins to talk to me in French.

“Now, I needn’t say that I don’t speak French nor any of those fool languages. Good American is good enough for me. One reason why these Europeans have been enslaved for centuries is that they can’t make each other understand their views without shouting at the top of their lungs, and so bringing the police about their ears. But I did happen to know, or thought I did, the French word for going to sleep, and so I thought I would just heave it at this chap so that he would understand that I didn’t require his conversation. I have always found that if you talk to a Frenchman in English very slowly and impressively he will get the hang of what you say. That is, if he isn’t a cabman. You can’t get an idea into a French cabman’s head unless you work it in with a club. So I said to the fellow in the train: ‘My friend! I haven’t any time to waste in general conversation. I’m going to sleep, and I advise you to do the same. You can tell me all about your institutions and your revolutions and things in the morning.’ And then I hove in the French word ‘cochon,’ which I supposed meant something like ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’

“The fellow staggered back as if I had hit him, and then he began to sling the whole French language at me. I calculate that he could have given Bob Ingersoll fifty points in a hundred and beaten him, and, as you know,

Bob is the ablest vituperator now in the business. The Frenchman kept on raving and getting madder and madder every minute, and I saw that there wasn’t the least doubt that he was a dangerous lunatic.

“I stood up and let him talk for a while, occasionally saying ‘non comprenny’ and ‘cochon,’ just to soothe him, but presently he came close to me and shook his fist in my face. This was too much, so I took him by the shoulders and slammed him down in a corner seat, and said, ‘You sit there, sonny, and keep quiet, or you’ll end by getting me to argue with you.’ But the minute I let go of him he bounced up again as if he was made of India rubber, and came at me just as a terrier will come at a horse, pretending that he is going to tear him into small pieces. So I slammed him down into his corner again, and said, ‘This foolishness has gone far enough, and we’ll have it stopped right here. Didn’t you hear me say cochon? I’m going to cochon, and you’d better cochon, too, or I’ll make you.’

“This time he jumped up as soon as I had let go of him and tried to hit me. Of course I didn’t want to hit so small a chap, letting alone that he knew no more about handling his fists than the angel Gabriel, so I just took and twisted his arms behind his back and tied them with a shawl strap. Then, seeing as he showed a reprehensible disposition to kick, I put another strap around his legs and stretched him on the seat with his bundle under his head. But kindness was thrown away on that Frenchman. He tried to bite me, and not content with spitting like a cat, he set up a yell that was the next thing to the locomotive whistle, and rolling off the seat tried to kick at me with both legs.

“I let him exercise himself for a few minutes, while I got my hairbrush and some twine out of my bag. Then I put him back on the seat, gagged him with the handle of the hairbrush, and lashed him to the arm of the seat so that he couldn’t roll off. Then I offered him a drink, but he shook his head, not having any manners, in spite of what people say about the politeness of Frenchmen. Having secured my own safety and made the lunatic reasonably comfortable, I turned in and went to sleep. I must have slept very sound, for although the train stopped two or three times during the night, I never woke up until we pulled up for breakfast about eight o’clock the next morning. I sat up and looked at my lunatic, who was wide awake and glaring at me. I wished him good morning, for I couldn’t bear any grudge against a crazy man; but he only rolled his eyes and seemed madder than ever, so I let him lie and got out of the train.

“Two policemen were walking up and down the platform, and I took one of them by the arm and led him to the car, explaining what had happened. I don’t know whether he understood or not, but he pretended that he didn’t.

“As soon as he saw the lunatic there was a pretty row. He called two more policemen, and after they had ungagged the fellow they hauled us both before a magistrate who had his office in the railroad station. At least he acted like a magistrate, although he wore the same uniform as the policemen. Here the fellow I had traveled with was allowed to speak first, and he charged me, as I afterward found, with having first insulted and then assaulted him. He said he rather thought I was a lunatic, but at any rate he must have my blood. Then an interpreter was sent for, and I told my story, but I could see that nobody believed me.

“‘Accused,’ said the magistrate very sternly, ‘you called this gentleman a pig. What was your motive?’

“Of course I swore that I had never called him a pig, that I hardly knew half a dozen words of his infamous language, and that I had used only one of those. Being asked what it was, I said ‘cochon.’ And then that idiot ordered me to be locked up.

“By rare good luck there happened to be an American secretary of legation on the train. You know him. It was Hiram G. Trask, of West Centreopolis. He recognized me, and it didn’t take him very long to explain the whole affair. It seems that the Frenchman had asked me if I objected to smoking, and when I tried to tell him that we ought to go to sleep, I said ‘cochon,’ which means pig, instead of ‘couchons,’ which was the word I ought to have used. He was no more of a lunatic than a Frenchman naturally is, but he was disgusted at being carried two hundred miles beyond his destination, which was the first stopping place beyond Paris, and I don’t know that I blame him very much. And then, too, he seemed to feel that his dignity had been some ruffled by being gagged and bound. However, both he and the policemen listened to reason, and the man agreed to compromise on my paying him damages and with drawing the assertion that he was morally or physically a pig. The affair cost considerable, but it taught me a lesson, and I have quit believing that you can’t travel in a European railroad car without being locked up with a lunatic or a murderer. I admit that the whole trouble was due to my foolishness. When the Frenchman began to make a row, I ought to have killed him and dropped the body out of the door, instead of fooling with him half the night and trying to make him comfortable. But we can’t always command presence of mind or see just where our duty lies at all times.”

Thompson’s tombstone

We had just dined in the little Parisian restaurant where Americans are in the habit of going in order to obtain those truly French delicacies, pork and beans, buckwheat cakes, corned beef, apple pie, and overgrown oysters. I knew a man from Chicago who dined at this restaurant every day during the entire month spent by him in Paris, and who, at the end of that time, said that he was heartily sick of French cookery. Thus does the profound study of, the manners and customs of foreign nations enlighten the mind and ripen the judgment.

The Colonel had finished his twelfth buckwheat cake and had lighted his cigar, when he casually and reprovingly remarked to young Lathrop, who, on principle, was disputing the bill with the waiter, that “he was making more trouble than Thompson’s tombstone.” Being called upon to explain this dark saying, he stretched his legs to their limit, tipped back his chair, knocked the ashes of his cigar among the remnants of his pork and beans, and launched into his story.

“In the town where I was raised and I’m not going to give away the name of it at present there were two brothers, James and John Thompson. They were twins and about forty years old, as I should judge. James was a bachelor and John he was a widower, and they were both pretty well to do in the world, for those times at least. John was a farmer and James was a wagon maker and owned the village hearse besides, which he let out for funerals, generally driving it himself, so that any profit that was to be made out of a melancholy occasion he could make without sharing it with anybody. Both the men were close-fisted, and would look at a dollar until their eyesight began to fail before they could bring themselves to spend it. It was this miserly spirit that brought about the trouble that I’m going to tell you of.

“After John Thompson had been a widower so long that the unmarried women had given up calling on him to ask his advice about the best way of raising money for the heathen, and had lost all expectation that any one of them would ever gather him in, he suddenly ups and marries Maria Slocum, who used to keep a candy store next door to the school house and had been a confirmed old maid for twenty years. She had a little money, though, and folks did say that she could have married James Thompson if she had been willing to take the risk; but the fact that James always had the hearse standing in his carriage house made him unpopular with the ladies. She took John because his views on infant baptism agreed with hers, and he took her because she had a good reputation for making pies and was economical and religious. “The Thompson brothers owned burial lots in the new cemetery that were close together. James, of course, had, so far, no use for his lot, but John had begun to settle his by burying his first wife in about the middle of it. The lot was a good sized one, with accommodation for a reasonably large family without crowding them, and without, at the same time, scattering them in any unsocial way. I don’t know how it came about, but no sooner was John married than he took a notion to put up a tombstone over his first wife. He thought that as he was going to incur such an expense he would manage it so that he wouldn’t have to incur it again; and so he got up a design for a combination family tombstone, and had it made, and carved, and lettered, and set up in his burial lot.

“Near the top of the stone was John Thompson’s name, the date of his birth, and a blank space for the date of his death. Next came the name of ‘Sarah Jane, beloved wife of the above,’ and the date of her birth and death. Then came the name of ‘Maria, beloved and lamented wife of the above John Thompson,’ with the date of her birth and a space for the date of her death. You see, John worked in this little compliment about Maria being ‘lamented’ so as to reconcile her to having the date of her birth given away to the public. The lower half of the tombstone was left vacant so as to throw in a few children should any such contingency arise, and the whole advertisement ended with a verse of a hymn setting forth that the entire Thompson family was united in a better land above.

“The cost of the affair was about the same as that of one ordinary tombstone, the maker agreeing to enter the dates of John’s death and of his wife’s death free of charge whenever the time for so doing might arrive; and also agreeing to enter the names of any children that might appear at a very low rate. The tombstone attracted a great deal of attention, and the summer visitors from the city never failed to go and see it. John was proud of his stroke of economy, and used to say that he wasn’t in danger of being bankrupted by any epidemic, as those people were who held that every person must have his separate tombstone. Everybody admitted that the Thompson tombstone gave more general amusement to the public than any other tombstone in the whole cemetery. Every summer night John used to walk over to his lot and smoke his pipe, leaning on the fence and reading over the inscriptions. And then he would go and take a fresh look at the Rogers’ lot, where there were nine different tombstones, and chuckle to think how much they must have cost old man Rogers, who had never thought of a combination family tomb. In the course of about three years the inscriptions had grown, for there had been added the names of Charles Henry and William Everett Thompson, ‘children of the above John and Maria Thompson,’ and John calculated that with squeezing he could enter four more children on the same stone, though he didn’t really think that he would ever have any call so to do.

“Well, a little after the end of the third year John’s troubles began. He took up with Second Advent notions and believed that the end of the world would arrive, as per schedule, on the 21st of November, at 8:30 A.M. Maria said that this was not orthodox and that she wouldn’t allow any such talk around her house. Both of them were set in their ways, and what with John expressing his views with his whip handle and Maria expressing hers with the rolling pin, they didn’t seem to get on very well together, and one day Maria left the house and took the train to Chicago, where she got a divorce and came back a free and independent woman. That wasn’t all: James Thompson now saw his chance. He offered to sell out the hearse business, and after waiting ten months, so as to give no opportunity for scandal, Maria married him. “John didn’t seem to mind the loss of his wife very much until it happened to occur to him that his combination family tombstone would have to be altered, now that Maria was not his wife any longer. He was a truthful man, and he felt that he couldn’t sleep in peace under a tombstone that was constantly telling such a thumping lie as that Maria was resting in the same burying lot and that she was his beloved wife, when, in point of fact, she was another man’s wife and would be, at the proper time, lying in that other man’s part of the cemetery. So he made up his mind to have the marble cutter chisel out Maria’s name and the date of her birth. But before this was done he saw that it wouldn’t be the square thing so far as Charles Henry and William Everett were concerned. It would be playing it low down on those helpless children to allow that tombstone to assert that they were the children of John Thompson and some unspecified woman called Maria, who, whatever else she may have been, was certainly not John Thompson’s wife. Matters would not be improved if the name of Maria were to be cut out of the line which stated the parentage of the children, for in that case it would appear that they had been independently developed by John, without the intervention of any wife, which would be sure to give rise to gossip and all sorts of suspicions.

“Of course the difficulty could have been settled by erasing from the tombstone all reference to Maria and her two children, but in that case a separate stone for the children would some day become necessary, and, what was of more consequence, John’s grand idea of a combination tombstone would have to be completely abandoned. John was not a hasty man, and after thinking the matter over until the mental struggle turned his hair gray, he decided to compromise the matter by putting a sort of petticoat around the lower half of the tombstone, which would hide all reference to Maria and the children. This was easily done with the aid of an old pillowcase, and the tombstone became more an object of interest to the public than ever, while John, so to speak, sat down to wait for better times.

“Now, James had been thinking over the tombstone problem, and fancied that he had found a solution of it that would put money in his own pocket and at the same time satisfy his brother. He proposed to John that the inscription should be altered so as to read: ‘Maria, formerly wife of John and afterward of James Thompson,’ and that a hand should be carved on the stone with an index finger pointing toward James’ lot, and a line in small type saying, ‘See small tombstone.’ James said that he would pay the cost of putting up a small uninscribed stone in his own lot over the remains of Maria waiting, of course, until she should come to be remains and that John could pay the cost of altering the inscriptions on the large stone. The two brothers discussed this scheme for months, each of them being secretly satisfied with it, but John maintaining that James should pay all the expenses.

“This James would not do, for he reasoned that unless John came to his terms the combination tombstone would be of no good to anybody, and that if he remained firm John would come round to his proposal in time.

“There isn’t the least doubt that this would have been the end of the affair, if it had not been that James chuckled over it so much that one day he chuckled a fish bone into his throat and choked to death on the spot. He was buried in his own lot, with nothing but a wooden headboard to mark the spot. His widow said that if he had been anxious to have a swell marble monument he would have made provision for it in his lifetime, and as he had done nothing of the kind, she could not see that she had any call to waste her money on worldly vanities.

“How did this settle the affair of the combination tombstone? I’m just telling you. You see, by this time the world had not come to an end, and John, who always hated people who didn’t keep their engagements, seeing that the Second Adventists didn’t keep theirs, left them and returned to the regular Baptist fold. When his brother died he went to the funeral, and did what little he could, in an inexpensive way, to comfort the widow. The long and short of it was that they became as friendly as they ever had been, and John finally proposed that Maria should marry him again. ‘You know, Maria,’ he said, ‘that we never disagreed except about that Second Advent nonsense. You were right about that and I was wrong, as the event has proved, and now that we’re agreed once more, I don’t see as there is anything to hinder our getting married again. ‘

“Maria said that she had a comfortable support, and she couldn’t feel that it was the will of Providence for her to be married so often, considering how many poor women there were who couldn’t get a single husband.

“‘Well,’ continued John, ‘there is that there tombstone. It always pleased you and I was alwaj’s proud of it. If we don’t get married again that tombstone is as good as thrown away, and it seems unchristian to throw away a matter of seventy-five dollars when the whole thing could be arranged so easy.’

“The argument was one which Maria felt that she could not resist, and so, after she had mourned James Thompson for a fitting period, she married John a second time, and the tombstone’s reputation for veracity was restored. John and Maria often discussed the feasibility of selling James’ lot and burying him where the combination tombstone would take him in, but there was no more room for fresh inscriptions, and besides, John didn’t see his way clear to stating in a short and impressive way the facts as to the relationship between James and Maria. So, on the whole, he judged it best to let James sleep in his own lot, and let the combination tombstone testify only to the virtues of John Thompson and his family. That’s the story of Thompson’s tombstone, and if you don’t believe it I can show you a photograph of the stone with all the inscriptions. I’ve got it in my trunk at this very moment, and when we go back to the hotel, if you remind me of it, I’ll get it out.”

A union meeting

“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, “since you ask me what struck me most forcibly during my tour of England, and supposing that you want a civil answer to a civil question, I will say that the thing that astonished me more than anything else was the lack of religious enterprise in England.

“I have visited nearly every section of your country, and what did I find? Why, sir, in every town there was a parish church of the regulation pattern and one other kind of church, which was generally some sort of Methodist in its persuasion. Now, in America there is hardly a village which hasn’t half a dozen different kinds of churches, and as a rule at least one of them belongs to some brand new denomination, one that has just been patented and put on the market, as you might say. When I lived in. Middleopolis, Iowa, there were only fifteen hundred people in the place, but we had six kinds of churches. There was the Episcopalian, the Methodist, the Congregational, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Unitarian, and the Unleavened Disciples church, not to mention the colored Methodist church, which, of course, we didn’t count among respectable white denominations. All these churches were lively and aggressive, and the Unleavened Disciples, that had just been brought out, was as vigorous as the oldest of them. All of them were furnishing good preaching and good music, and striving to outdo one another in spreading the Gospel and raising the price of pew rents. I could go for two or three months to the Presbyterian church, and then I could take a hack at the Baptists and pass half a dozen Sundays with the Methodists, and all this variety would not cost me more than it would have cost to pay pew rent all the year round in any one church. And then, besides the preaching, there were the entertainments that each church had to get up if it didn’t want to fall behind its rivals. had courses of lectures, and returned missionaries, and ice cream festivals till you couldn’t rest. Why, although I am an old theatrical manager, I should not like to undertake to run a first class American church in opposition to one run by some young preacher who had been trained to the business and knew just what the popular religious taste demanded. I never was mixed up in church business but once, and then I found that I wasn’t in my proper sphere.”

The Colonel chuckled slowly to himself, as his custom was when anything amused him, and I asked him to tell me his ecclesiastical experience.

“Well, this was the way of it,” he replied. “One winter the leading citizens of the place decided to get up a series of union meetings. Perhaps you don’t know what a union meeting is? I thought so. It bears out what I was saying about your want of religious enterprise. Well, it’s a sort of monster combination, as we would say in the profession. All the churches agree to hold meetings together, and all the preaching talent of the whole of them is collected in one pulpit, and each man preaches in turn. Of course every minister has his own backers, who are anxious to see him do himself and his denomination credit, and who turn out in full force so as to give him their support. The result is that a union meeting will always draw, even in a town where no single church can get a full house, no matter what attractions it may offer.

“Now, a fundamental rule of a union meeting is that no doctrines are to be preached to which any one could object. The Baptist preacher is forbidden to say anything about baptism, and the Methodist can’t allude to falling from grace in a union meeting. This is supposed to keep things peaceful and to avoid arguments and throwing of hymn books and such-like proceedings, which would otherwise be inevitable.

“The union meetings had been in progress for three or four nights when I looked into the Presbyterian church, where they were held one evening, just to see how the thing was drawing. All the ministers in town, except the Episcopalian minister, were sitting on the platform waiting their cues. The Episcopalian minister had been asked to join in the services, but he had declined, saying that if it was all the same to his dissenting and partially Christian friends he would prefer to play a lone hand; and the colored minister was serving out his time in connection with some of his neighbors’ chickens that, he said, had flown into his kitchen and committed suicide there, so he couldn’t have been asked, even if the white ministers had been willing to unite with him.

“The Presbyterian minister was finishing his sermon when I entered, and soon as he had retired the Baptist minister got up and gave out a hymn which was simply crowded with Baptist doctrine. I had often heard it, and I remember that first verse, which ran this way:

I’d rather be a Baptist And wear a smiling face, Than for to be a Methodist And always fall from grace.

“The hymn was no sooner given out than the Methodist minister rose and claimed a foul, on the ground that Baptist doctrine had been introduced into a union meeting. There was no manner of doubt that he was right, but the Baptists in the congregation sang the hymn with such enthusiasm that they drowned the minister’s voice. But when the hymn was over there was just a heavenly row. One Presbyterian deacon actually went so far as to draw on a Baptist elder, and there would have been blood shed if the elder had not knocked him down with a kerosene lamp, and convinced him that drawing pistols in church was not the spirit of the Gospel. Everybody was talking at once, and the women who were not scolding were crying. The meeting was beginning to look like an enthusiastic political meeting in Cork, when I rapped on the pulpit and called for order. Everybody knew me and wanted to hear what I had to say, so the meeting calmed down, except near the door, where the Methodists had got a large Baptist jammed into the wood box, and in the vestibule, where the Unitarians had formed a ring to see the Unitarian minister argue with an Unleavened Disciple.

“I told the people that they were making a big mistake in trying to run that sort of an entertainment without an umpire. The idea pleased them, and before I knew what was going to be done they had passed a resolution making me umpire and calling on me to decide whether the Baptist hymn constituted a foul. I decided that it did not, on the ground that, according to the original agreement, no minister was to preach any sectarian doctrines, but that nothing was said about the hymns that might be sung. Then I proposed that in order to prevent any future disputes and to promote brotherly feeling, a new system of singing hymns should be adopted. I said, as far as I can recollect, that singing hymns did not come under the head of incidental music, but was a sort of entr’acte music, intended to relax and divert the audience while bracing up to hear the next sermon. This being the case, it stood to reason that hymn singing should be made a real pleasure, and not an occasion for hard feeling and the general heaving of books and footstools. ‘Now,’ said I, ‘that can be managed in this way. When you sing let everybody sing the same tune, but each denomination sing whatever words it prefers to sing. Everybody will sing his own doctrines, but nobody will have any call to feel offended. ‘

“The idea was received with general enthusiasm, especially among the young persons present, and the objections made by a few hardheaded old conservatives were overruled. The next time singing was in order the Unitarian minister selected a familiar short meter tune, and each minister told his private flock what hymn to sing to it. Everybody sang at the top of his or her lungs, and as nobody ever understands the words that anybody else is singing, there did not seem to be anything strange in the singing of six different hymns to the same tune. There was a moment when things were a little strained in consequence of the Presbyterians, who were a strong body, and had got their second wind, singing a verse about predestination with such vigor as partly to swamp their rivals, but I decided that there was no foul, and the audience, being rather tired with their exertions, settled down to listen to the next sermon.

“The next time it was the Methodist minister who gave out the tune, and he selected one that nobody who was not born and bred a Methodist had ever heard of. We used to sing something very much like it at the windlass when I was a sailor, and it had a regular hurricane chorus. When the Methodist contingent started in to sing their hymn to this tune, not a note could any of the rival denominations raise. They stood it in silence until two verses had been sung, and then

“Well, I won’t undertake to describe what followed. After about five minutes the Methodists didn’t feel like singing any more. In fact, most of them were outside the meeting house limping their way home, and remarking that they had had enough of ‘thish yer fellowship with other churches’ to last them for the rest of their lives. Inside the meeting house the triumphant majority were passing resolutions calling me a depraved worldling, who, at the instigation of the devil, had tried to convert a religious assemblage into an Orange riot. Even the Unitarians, who always maintained that they did not believe in the devil, voted for the resolutions, and three of them were appointed on the committee charged with putting me out. I didn’t stay to hear any more sermons, but I afterward understood that all the ministers preached at me, and that the amount of union displayed in putting the blame of everything on my shoulders was so touching that men who had been enemies for years shook hands and called one another brothers.

“Yes! we are an enterprising people in ecclesiastical matters, and I calculate that it will be a long time before an English village will see a first class union meeting.”

A clerical romance

“If you want to know my opinion of women preachers,” said the Colonel, “I can give it to you straight. They draw well at first, but you can’t depend upon them for a run. I have had considerable experience of them, and at one time I thought well of them, but a woman, I think, is out of place in the pulpit.

“Although I never was a full member of the New Berlinopolisville Methodist church, I was treated as a sort of honorary member, partly because I subscribed pretty largely to the pastor’s salary, the annual picnics, and that sort of thing, and partly because the deacons, knowing that I had some little reputation as a theatrical manager and was a man of from fair to middling judgment, used to consult me quietly about the management of the church. There

was a large Baptist church in the same town, and its opposition was a little too much for us. The Baptist house was crowded every Sunday, while ours was thin and discouraging. We had a good old gentleman for a minister, but he was over seventy, and a married man besides, which kept the women from taking much interest in him; while his old fashioned notions didn’t suit the young men of the congregation. The Baptists, on the other hand, had a young unmarried preacher, with a voice that you could hear a quarter of a mile off, and a way of giving it to the Jews, and the Mormons, and other safe and distant sinners that filled his hearers with enthusiasm and offended nobody. It was growing more and more evident every day that our establishment was going behindhand, and that something must be done unless we were willing to close our doors and go into bankruptcy; so one day the whole board of trustees and all the deacons came round to talk the matter over with me.

“My mind was already made up, and I was only waiting to have my advice asked before giving it. ‘What we want,’ said I, ‘is a woman preacher. She’ll be a sensation that will take the wind out of that Baptist windmill, and if she is good looking, which she has got to be, I will bet you that is, I am prepared to say that within a fortnight there will be standing room only in the old Methodist church.’

“‘But what are we to do with Dr. Brewster?’ asked one of the deacons. l He has been preaching to us now for forty years, and it don’t seem quite the square thing to turn him adrift. ‘

“ ‘Oh! that’s all right,’ said I. ‘We’ll retire him on a pension, and he’ll be glad enough to take it. As for your woman preacher, I’ve got just what you want. At least, I know where she is and how much we’ll have to pay to get her. She’ll come fast enough for the same salary that we are paying Dr. Brewster, and if she doesn’t double the value of your pew rents in six months, I will make up the deficit myself. ‘

“The trustees were willing to take my advice, and in the course of a few days Dr. Brewster had been retired on half pay, the church had extended a call to the Rev. Matilda Marsh, and the reverend girl, finding that the salary was satisfactory, accepted it.

“She was only about twenty-five years old, and as pretty as a picture when she stood in the pulpit in her black silk dress with a narrow white collar, something like the sort of thing that your clergymen wear. I couldn’t help feeling sad, when I first saw her, to think that she did not go into the variety business or a circus, where she would have made her fortune and the fortune of any intelligent manager. As a dance and song artiste she would have been worth a good six hundred dollars a week. But women are always wasting their talents, when they have any, and doing exactly what Nature didn’t mean them to do.

“Miss Marsh was a success from the moment that she came among us. Being both unmarried and pretty, she naturally fetched the young men, and as she let it be understood that she believed in the celibacy of the clergy and never intended to marry under any circumstances, the greater part of the women were willing to forgive her good looks. Then she could preach a first class. sermon, and I call myself a judge of sermons, for at one time I managed an agency for supplying preachers with ready made sermons, and I never put a single one on the market that I hadn’t read myself. I don’t mean to say that Miss Marsh was strong on doctrinal sermons, but every one knows that the public doesn’t want doctrinal sermons. What it wants is poetry and pathos, and Miss Marsh used to ladle them out as if she had been born and bred an undertaker’s poet.

“As I had prophesied, the Baptists couldn’t stand the competition when we opened with our woman preacher. Their minister took to going to the gymnasium to expand his chest, and by that means increased his lung power until he could be heard almost twice as far as formerly, but it didn’t do any good. His congregation thinned out week by week, and while our church was crowded, his pew rents fell below what was necessary to pay his salary, not to speak of the other incidental expenses. A few of the young men continued to stick by him until our minister began her series of sermons ‘To Young Men Only,’ and that brought them in. I had the sermons advertised with big colored posters, and they proved to be the most attractive thing ever offered to the religious public. The church was crammed with young men, while lots of men of from fifty to seventy years old joined the Young Men’s Christian Association as soon as they heard of the course of sermons, and by that means managed to get admission to hear them. Miss Marsh preached to young men on the vices of the day, such as drinking, and card playing, and dancing, and going to the theater, and she urged them to give up these dissipations and cultivate their minds. Some of them started a Browning Club that for a time was very popular. Every time the club met one of Browning’s poems would be selected by the president, and each member who put up a dollar was allowed to guess its meaning. The man who made the best guess took all the money, and sometimes there was as much as thirty dollars in the pool. The young men told Miss Marsh that they had given up poker and gone in for Browning, and of course she was greatly pleased. Then some of the older men started a Milton Club, and used to cut for drinks by putting a knife blade into ‘Paradise Lost’ the man who made it open at a page the first letter of which was nearer to the head of the alphabet than any letter cut by any other man winning the game. Under Miss Marsh’s influence a good many other schemes for mental cultivation were invented and put into operation, and everybody said that that noble young woman was doing an incalculable amount of good.

“As a matter of course, at least half the young men of the congregation fell in love with the girl preacher. They found it very difficult to make any progress in courting her, for she wouldn’t listen to any conversation on the subject. When Christmas came, the question what to give her kept the young men awake night after night. The women had an easy job, for they could give the preacher clothes, and lace, and hairpins, and such, which the young men knew that they could not give without taking a liberty. If she had been a man, slippers would, of course, have been the correct thing, but the young men felt that they couldn’t work slippers for a girl that always wore buttoned boots, and that if they did venture upon such a thing the chances were that she would feel herself insulted. One chap thought of working on the front of an underskirt if that is the right name of it I mean one of those petticoats that are built for show rather than use the words, ‘Bless our Pastor,’ in yellow floss silk, but when he asked his sister to lend him one of her skirts as a model, she told him that he was the champion fool of the country. You may ask, why didn’t the preacher’s admirers give her jewelry? For the reason that she never wore anything of the kind except a pair of earrings that her mother had given her, and which she had promised always to wear. They represented chestnut burs, and it is clear to my mind that her mother knew that no young man who had much regard for his eyesight would come very near a girl defended by that sort of earring. Miss Marsh used to say that other people could wear what they thought right, but she felt it to be inconsistent with her holy calling to wear any jewelry except the earrings that her sainted mother had given her.

“The best running was undoubtedly made by the cashier of the savings bank and a young lawyer. Not that either of them had any real encouragement from Miss Marsh, but she certainly preferred them to the rest of the field, and was on what was certainly entitled to be called friendly terms with both of them. Of the two the cashier was by far the most devoted. He was ready to do anything that might give him a chance of winning. He even wanted to take a class in the Sunday school, but the bank directors forbade it. They said it would impair the confidence of the public in the bank, and would be pretty sure to bring about a run which the bank might not be able to stand. They consented, however, that he should become the president of the new temperance society which the Rev. Miss Marsh had started, as the president had the right to buy wines and liquors at wholesale in order to have them analyzed, and thus show how poisonous they were. As the cashier offered to stand in with the bank directors and let them fill their cellars at wholesale rates, both he and the directors made a good thing of it.

“The other young man, the lawyer, was a different sort of chap. He was one of those fellows that begin to court a girl by knocking her down with a club. I don’t mean to say that he ever actually knocked a woman down, but his manner toward women was that of a superior being, instead of a slave, and I am bound to say that as a general thing the women seemed to like it. He wasn’t a handsome man, like the cashier, but he had a big yellow beard that any sensible girl would have held to be worth twice the smooth shaved cheek of his rival. He never tried to join the Sunday school or the temperance society, or do anything else of the kind to curry favor with the minister; but he used occasionally to give her good advice, and to tell her that this or that thing which she was doing was a mistake. Indeed, he didn’t hesitate to tell her that she had no business in the pulpit, and had better go out as a governess or a circus rider, and so conform to the dictates of Nature.

“I used to watch the game pretty closely, because I had staked my professional reputation on the financial success of the girl preacher, and I didn’t want her to marry and so put an end to her attractiveness with the general public. I didn’t really think that there was much danger of any such thing, for Miss Marsh seemed to be entirely absorbed in her work, and her salary was exceptionally large. Still, you can never tell when a woman will break the very best engagement, and that is one reason why they will never succeed as preachers. You pay a man a good salary, and he will never find that Providence calls him elsewhere, unless, of course, he has a very much better offer; but a woman preacher is capable of throwing up a first class salary because she don’t like the color of a deacon’s hair, or because the upholstery of the pulpit doesn’t match with her complexion.

“That winter we had a very heavy fall of snow, and after that the sleighing was magnificent for the next month or two. The cashier made the most of it by taking the minister out sleigh riding two or three times a week. The lawyer did not seem to care anything about it, even when he saw the minister whirling along the road behind the best pair of horses in the town, with the cashier by her side and her lap full of caramels. But one Saturday afternoon, when he knew that the cashier would be detained at the bank until very late the president having just skipped to Canada, and it being necessary to ascertain the amount of the deficit without delay the lawyer hired a sleigh and called for the minister. Although she was preparing her next day’s sermon by committing to memory a lot of Shelley’s poetry, she dropped Shelley and had on her best hat and was wrapped in the buffalo robe by the side of the lawyer in less than half an hour after she had told him that she positively wouldn’t keep him waiting three minutes.

“You remember what I said about the peculiar pattern of her earrings. It is through those earrings that the Methodist church lost its minister, and I became convinced that a female ministry is not a good thing to tie to. Miss Marsh and her admirer were driving quietly along and enjoying themselves in a perfectly respectable way, when one runner of the sleigh went over a good sized log that had dropped from somebody’s load of wood and had been left in the road. The sleigh didn’t quite upset, but Miss Marsh was thrown against the lawyer with a shock for which she apologized, and he thanked her. But it happened that one of her earrings caught in the lawyer’s beard, and was so twisted up with it that it was impossible to disentangle it. Unless Miss Marsh was ready to drag about half her companion’s beard out by the roots, there was nothing to be done except for her to sit with her cheek close against his until some third person could manage to disentangle the earring. While she was in this painful position at least she said at the time that it was painful a sleigh containing two of her deacons and a prominent Baptist drove by. Miss Marsh saw them and saw the horrified expression on their faces. She knew quick enough that her usefulness as a minister in New Berlinopolisville was at an end and that there was going to be a terrible scandal. So, being a woman, she burst into tears and said that she wished she were dead.

“But the lawyer was equal to the occasion. He told her that there was nothing left to be done except for them to be married and disentangled at the next town. Then he would take her on a long wedding trip, stopping at Chicago to buy some clothes, and that if she so wished they would afterward settle in some other town, instead of coming back to New Berlinopolisville. Of course she said that the proposal was not to be thought of for a moment, and of course she accepted it within the next ten minutes. They drove to the house of the nearest minister, and the minister’s wife disentangled them, to save time, while the minister was engaged in marrying them.

“That was the end of the experiment of playing a woman preacher on the boards of the First Methodist Church of Berlinopolisville. Everybody was content” to call a man in the place of Miss Marsh, and everybody agreed to blame me for the failure of the experiment. I don’t know whether the lawyer ever had any reason to regret his marriage or not, but when I saw his wife at a fancy dress ball at Chicago, a year or two later, I could see that she was not sorry that she had given up the ministry. Ever since that time I have been opposed to women preachers, and consider a woman in the pulpit as much out of place as a deacon in the ballet.”

A mystery

“Do I believe in spiritualism?” repeated the Colonel. “Well, you wouldn’t ask me that question if you knew that I had been in the business myself. I once ran a ‘Grand Spiritual Combination Show.’ I had three first class mediums, who did everything, from knocking on a table to materializing Napoleon, or Washington, or any of your dead friends. It was a good business while it lasted, but, unfortunately, we showed one night in a Texas town before a lot of cowboys. One of them brought his lasso under his coat, and when the ghost of William Penn appeared the cowboy lassoed him and hauled him in, hand over hand, for further investigation. The language William Penn used drove all the ladies out of the place, and his want of judgment in tackling the cowboy cost

him all his front teeth. I and the other mediums and the doorkeeper had to take a hand in the manifestation, and the result was that the whole Combination was locked up over night, and the fines that we had to pay made me tired of spiritualism.

“No, sir! I don’t believe in spiritualism, but for all that there are curious things in the world. Why is it that if a man’s name is Charles G. Haseltine he will lose his right leg in a railway accident? The police some years ago wanted a Charles G. Haseltine with a wooden right leg in the State of Massachusetts, and they found no less than five Charles G. Haseltines, and every one of them had lost his right leg in a railway accident. What makes it all the more curious is that they were no relation to one another, and not one of them had ever heard of the existence of the others. Then, will some one tell me what is the connection between darkies and chickens? I say ‘darkies’ instead of ‘niggers’ because I had a colored regiment on my right flank at the battle of Corinth, and that night I swore I would never say ‘nigger’ again. However, that don’t concern you. What I meant to say was that there is a connection between darkies and chickens which nobody has ever yet explained. Of course no darky can resist the temptation to steal a chicken. Everybody knows that. Why, I knew a colored minister who was as honest a man as the sun ever tried to tan and failed and I have known him to preach a sermon with a chicken that he had lifted on his way to meeting shoved up under his vest. He wouldn’t have stolen a dollar bill if he was starving, but he would steal every chicken that he could lay his hands on, no matter if his own chicken house was crowded with chickens. It’s in the blood or the skin and no darky can help it.

“What was I going to say about the connection between darkies and chickens? I had very nearly forgotten it. This was what I was referring to. A chicken will draw a darky just as a dead sheep will draw vultures in Egypt, though there may have been no vultures within twenty miles when the sheep was killed. You may be living in a town where there isn’t a single darky within ten miles, but if you put up a chicken house and stock it there will be darkies in the town within twenty-four hours, and just so long as your chicken house has a chicken in it fresh darkies will continue to arrive from all sections of the country. This beats any trick that I ever saw a spiritual medium perform, and I can’t see the explanation of it. You may say that some one carries word to the darkies that there is a new chicken house waiting to be visited, but the answer to this is that it isn’t true. My own idea is that it is a matter of instinct. When you carry a cat twenty miles away from home in a bag and let her out, we all know that her instinct will show her the way home again before you can get there yourself. Just in the same way instinct will draw a darky to a chicken house he has never seen or heard of. You’ll say that to talk about instinct doesn’t explain the matter. That is true enough, but it makes you feel as if you had struck the trail, which is some satisfaction at any rate. So far as I can see, that is about all that scientific theories ever do.

“If you care to listen, I’ll tell you what happened within my knowledge in connection with darkies and chickens. I was located a little after the war in the town of South Constantinople, in the western part of Illinois, and my next door neighbor was Colonel Ephraim J. Hickox, who commanded the 95th Rhode Island Regiment. The town was a growing place, and it had the peculiarity that there wasn’t a darky in it. The nearest one lived over at West Damascus, seven miles away, and there was only two of him he and his wife. Another curious thing about the place was the scarcity of labor. There weren’t above a dozen Irishmen in the place, and they wouldn’t touch a spade or a hoe under three dollars a day, and wouldn’t work more than four days in a week. You see, a certain amount of digging and gardening had to be done, and there wasn’t anybody to do it except these Irishmen, so they naturally made a good thing of it, working half the time and holding meetings for the redemption of Ireland the rest of the time in the barroom of the International Hotel.

“One day Colonel Ephraim, as I always used to call him, wanted to drain his pasture lot, and he hired the Irishmen to dig a ditch about a quarter of a mile long. They would dig for a day, and then they would knock off and attend to suffering Ireland, till Ephraim, who was a quick tempered man, was kept in a chronic state of rage. He had no notion of going into politics, so he didn’t care a straw what the Irishmen thought of him, and used to talk to them as free as if they couldn’t vote. Why, he actually refused to subscribe to a dynamite fund and for a gold crown to be presented to Mr. Gladstone, and you can judge how popular he was in Irish circles. I used to go down to Ephraim’s pasture every once in a while to see how his ditch was getting along, and one afternoon I found the whole lot of Irishmen lying on the grass smoking instead of working, and Ephraim in the very act of discharging them.

“‘Perhaps it’s “nagurs” that you’d be preferring,’ said one of the men, as they picked themselves up and made ready to leave.

“‘You bet it is,’ said Ephraim, ‘and, what’s more, I’ll have that ditch finished by darkies before the week is out.’ This seemed to amuse the Irishmen, for they went away in good spirits, in spite of the language that had been hove at them, and it amused me too, for I knew that there were no darkies to be had, no matter what wages a man might be willing to pay. I said as much to Ephraim, who, instead of taking it kindly, grew madder than ever, and said, ‘Colonel! I’ll bet you fifty dollars that I’ll have that ditch finished by darkies inside of four days, and that they’ll do all the digging without charging me a dollar.’

“‘If you’re going to send over into Kentucky and import negro labor,’ said I, ‘you can do it, and get your ditch dug, but you’ll have to pay either the darkies or the contractor who furnishes them.’

“‘I promise you not to pay a dollar to anybody, contractor or nigger. And I won’t ask anybody to send me a single man. What I’m betting on is that the darkies will come to my place of their own accord and work for nothing. Are you going to take the bet or ain’t you?’

“I didn’t hesitate any longer, but I took the bet, thinking that Ephraim’s mind was failing, and that it was a Christian duty in his friends to see that if he did fool away his money, it should go into their pockets instead of the pockets of outsiders. But, as you will see, Ephraim didn’t lose that fifty dollars.

“Early the next morning Ephraim had a couple of masons employed in turning his brick smokehouse into a chicken house, and he had two dozen chickens with their legs tied lying on the grass waiting for the chicken house to be finished. The masons broke a hole through the side of the house and lined it with steel rods about four feet long, which Ephraim had bought to use in some experiments in gun making that he was always working at. The rods were set in a circle which was about a foot and a half wide at one end and tapered to about four inches at the other end. The arrangement was just like the wire entrance to a mousetrap, of the sort that is meant to catch mice alive and never does it. It was nothing less than a darky trap, although Ephraim pretended that it was a combined ventilator and front door for the chickens. The masons, so far as I could judge, thought that Ephraim’s mind was going fast, and I made up my mind that it would be a sin to let the man bet with anybody who would be disposed to take advantage of his infirmity.

“The trap was finished before dark, and baited with two dozen young chickens. I came by the place a second time about sunset, just as Ephraim was locking up his chicken house, and I saw a small darky boy leaning on the fence. I asked him where he came from, but he only said ‘Dunno.’ I found out afterward that he came from a house at least ten miles away, and that those two dozen chickens had drawn him there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind. At the time,

however, I was a little afraid that Ephraim had begun to import colored labor, and that there was some trick about his bet that might prove that his mind was all right. Two days afterward I went down to the pasture and found sixteen darkies digging away at that ditch and Ephraim superintending with a twenty-five cent cigar in his mouth. ‘Come to pay that fifty dollars, I suppose!’ he said when he saw me. ‘You can wait till the ditch is finished, which will be some time today. You see I was as good as my word. ‘

“I asked him to explain how he had collected his darkies, and being in unusually good spirits he told me about it.

“He had made his trap just large enough to admit a good sized darky, who could push the steel rods apart as he crawled in. but who couldn’t crawl out again, no matter how hard he might try. The morning after he had set the trap Ephraim took his shotgun and went down to his chicken house. He found that the night’s catch had been larger than he had hoped. There were sixteen colored men of different sizes sitting on the ground or leaning up against the side of the house. There was a good deal of wool and cloth sticking to the ends of the steel rods, and some of the younger darkies looked as if they had been fighting with wildcats, but they didn’t try to explain things. Besides the darkies, there were two white tramps in the trap, but Ephraim just kicked them into the streets without even proposing work to them. Then he came back and told the darkies that the legislature had just passed a bill making it felony to break into a chicken house, and that he was very much afraid that they would be hung and dissected, unless they could show him some reason for being merciful to them.

“The darkies were frightened, besides being hungry and cold, and when Ephraim said that he had a job of ditching to be done, and that if they would do it for him he would let them off Scot free, they were delighted, and the whole chicken house was lit up with their teeth. They went into that ditch a happy and contented gang and finished it before night. Ephraim was a liberal man, and considering that he had won fifty dollars and had got his ditch finished for nothing, he was disposed to be generous. So he gave the darkies a lot of good advice and informed them that, with a view of removing temptation from their way, he should sell his chickens and go out of the business. The darkies went away as happy as if they had been well paid, and the next morning there wasn’t a darky in the whole town. They had gone back to their homes, or else they had been drawn somewhere else by other chickens.

“Do I mean to say that Ephraim had not made arrangements with some one to send him those sixteen darkies? That is just what I do mean to say. When he fitted up his chicken house he had no more idea where his darkies would come from than I had, but he knew that the chickens would draw darkies and that his trap would hold them, so he felt that he had a sure thing. I have no more doubt that those darkies were drawn to Ephraim’s place by those chickens than I have that a magnet will draw a needle. I can’t explain how it was done, but I believe it all the same. It is what is called a mystery, and the good book says that the less you try to explain mysteries the better.”

My brother Elijah

“I never told you about my brother, the inventor, did I?” asked the Colonel. “Speaking of flying machines reminds me of him, for he invented seven of them, and one of the lot was a stunning success. Stunned one darky and came very near stunning a whole camp meeting of darkies. My brother Lije his name was Elijah was what you might call a general inventor. He didn’t stick to any one line, such as electricity, for example, but he would invent anything, from a woman’s pocket to a new motive power. He invented a pocket for a woman’s skirt that was warranted never to be found by the most expert pickpocket, and he put the pocket in the skirt of his wife’s dress on trial. She searched for it for about a month not all the time, you understand, but on an average three or four hours a day and then gave it up. She said she could always find her usual old fashioned pocket in the course of a week or ten days, and that was as much time as she could afford to waste on the subject. As for Elijah’s perpetual motion machines, he invented a new one at least every year, and the loft in our barn was always full of them. Of course they were failures, but that did not discourage Lije. You can’t discourage a born inventor that is, unless he is in the chemical line and blows himself up with some new kind of dynamite. Lije’s inventions were, to my mind, as smart as those of Edison, but the trouble with them was that for the most part they wouldn’t work. However, they amused him and did no harm to anybody.

“My brother was not in the least like me in anything. He was short and stout and the best tempered man in the State. Everybody liked him, especially the darkies, who said that there was no more harm in him than if he was a child. I’ve seen him when he had just accidentally chopped off a finger or had burnt all his hair off, and I never heard him use the smallest swearword. I never could see why he got married. A man with that sort of heavenly temper doesn’t need the discipline that other folks need, and he was too much absorbed in science to have any time to associate with a wife. He spent nearly all his time in his workshop monkeying with his inventions, and his only companion was a darky boy, about twelve years old, named Aristophanes, who waited on him and was so fond of him that there is nothing that Lije told him to do that Aristophanes wouldn’t do. If Lije had invented a new guillotine and wanted to try it on Aristophanes’ neck, the boy would have consented to have his head chopped off, and would never have doubted that Massa Lije would put it on again without even leaving a scar.

“You were speaking of this new flying machine that somebody had just invented and that acts on the principle of a kite. ‘Resistance of an inclined plane to the air’ is what you called it, but that means kite, and nothing else. Why, Elijah invented that machine forty years ago, and it was one of his greatest successes, the only one, in fact, that I ever remember his making. When I say that it was successful, I don’t mean to say that it was practicable. It would rise and it would carry a man with it, but it never came into general use, for it was about impossible to get the man down again without killing him. Next to a Swiss excursion steamboat, it was the riskiest mode of locomotion ever invented.

“The way in which Lije’s machine was constructed was very simple. You must have seen what we boys used to call a spiderweb kite. If you haven’t, I might as well tell you that it is made with three sticks that cross one another at the same point in about the middle of the kite, or rather a little above the middle, and gave the kite something the shape and look of a big spiderweb. Lije was fond of kite flying, and was always trying to make improvements in kite building, which were naturally failures, for you can be sure that the millions of boys that have been making kites ever since boys were first invented know a great sight more about kites than any scientific man knows.

“Elijah’s flying machine was nothing more or less than the biggest spiderweb kite that was ever built. The sticks were ash poles an inch in diameter, and they were covered with silk instead of paper. I forget the exact dimensions of the kite, but according to Lije’s calculations it would sustain a hundred and fifty pounds of human being, in addition to its own weight and the weight of its tail. The question of the exact amount of tail that the kite would require gave Lije a good deal of trouble, but he solved it like a man of science by sending up an ordinary kite and finding by experiment how much tail it needed, after which he calculated by the rule of three how much tail to give his flying machine. In order to get the necessary weight without too great length, the tail of the flying machine was made of light iron chain, and at the end of it there was an iron hook, so that a lantern could be attached to it at night. As for the string that was to hold the kite, it was about the size of a ship’s signal halyards, and Lije calculated that it would bear twice the amount of any strain that could possibly be put on it.

“Aristophanes was to make the trial trip, and he was perfectly willing to go, never having the least doubt that Massa Lije would secure him a safe and pleasant trip to the moon or thereabouts. Lije fastened the boy in the center of the kite, in about the position of some celebrated Scotchman St. Andrew, wasn’t it? whose picture is in Fox’s ‘Book of Martyrs.’ Aristophanes’ arms and legs were lashed to the kite sticks, and he had a sort of rest for each foot, so as to take the strain from off the lashings. In order to make him comfortable, Lije fastened a pillow under the boy’s head, so that he could go to sleep in case he should feel sleepy, which he nearly always did. If Aristophanes could only have managed to take his dinner with him and eat it in the air, he would have been about as happy as a darky can be, and an average darky can hold more happiness to the square inch than any white man.

“The trial trip was made from the back yard of our house, and nobody was present except Lije and Aristophanes, for my brother was a little shy of exhibiting his inventions in public, owing to their habit of proving failures. The kite was laid on the ground, and Aristophanes was strapped to it and told that he must keep perfectly cool and remember everything that he might see in the clouds. When all was ready, the kite was leaned up against the side of the barn, with the tail neatly coiled so that it would not foul anything, and then Elijah, taking a good run with the string over his shoulder, had the satisfaction of making the kite climb up as if it had been made by the best boy kite builder in town.

“Holding the string was rather a tough job, for the kite pulled tremendously, and Lije was not a strong man. However, he paid out the line as fast as he could, and so managed to keep the kite steady. He was a little afraid that it would accidentally get away from him, so he tied the end of the string round his waist. There was where he made his great mistake.

“The kite attracted a good deal of attention in the town, and everybody agreed that the figure in the middle of the kite was a remarkably good representation of a darky, but nobody thought for a moment that it was a genuine darky. Lije had forgotten, in estimating the amount of tail that the kite required, the fact that the wind might rise while the kite was in the air, and that in such case the amount of tail might not be enough to keep it from diving. That is just what happened. After the kite had run out all the string and was as high as the string would let it go, the wind increased and the kite began to dive. Now, everybody knows that diving is one of the most dangerous things a kite can do, and that unless it can be stopped it is sure to bring the kite down and smash it to pieces. Moreover, in this particular case there was Aristophanes, who was pretty sure to be frightened by the diving of the kite that is, supposing that he was awake. When a kite dives the only remedy is to give it string. As Lije had no more string to let out he was obliged to do the next best thing, which was to slack the string by running with it toward the kite. That stopped the diving, but only for a moment. Every time that Lije tried to stop running and managed to hold back a little against the kite, it would begin to dive again, and about half the time was describing circles in the air and turning Aristophanes upside down. However, Lije knew that so long as he could keep the kite from dashing itself to the ground the darky would come to no harm.

“The wind kept on increasing and the kite pulled harder than ever. Even if Lije had not wanted to run, the kite would have dragged him. He went through the town at about eight miles an hour, yelling to everybody he met, ‘Gimme some string!’ But nobody understood what he said, and they all thought that it was a good joke to see a fat little man careering over the country in tow of a big kite. Of course they supposed that Lije was acting of his own free will and accord. They knew that he was peculiar in his ways, and they fancied that he was taking a little holiday after his hard work. So beyond encouraging him to keep it up and remarking to one another that ‘Lije was the most amusing darned fool in the county,’ they paid no attention to his outcries.

“My brother was not used to active exercise and had next to no wind. The longer he ran with the kite, the more he felt convinced that a tragedy was about to happen. If he kept on running he believed he would drop dead with stoppage of the heart, and if he stopped running he knew that the kite would dash Aristophanes to pieces; and though, of course, it was not as if Aristophanes had been a white boy, still there was the chance that his parents would be disagreeable if he were killed. They were ordinary ignorant darkies, with no sort of love for science. But Lije had grit in him, in spite of all the science that he had pumped into his head. He stuck to the kite string, and ran his level best until the moment came when he was unable to catch another breath. Then he threw himself against a telegraph pole and clung to it with all his might. The kite couldn’t drag him away from it, and so it gave one tremendous dive, and Lije felt by the sudden slackening of the string that the kite had reached the ground. “It came down in the middle of a negro camp meeting that was in progress about a quarter of a mile away. The spot was a sandy one, and the kite, which naturally fell head downward, buried the ends of its upper sticks in the sand, and did no injury whatever to Aristophanes. The chain tail, however, damaged the eye of the Rev. Hannibal Blue, and then hit the Rev. Julius Csesar Washington on the side of the head and stunned him for half an hour. There was a good deal of excitement in the camp when Aristophanes descended. Most of the colored people were of the opinion that he was an angel who had come down to express his satisfaction with the services, though the Rev. Mr. Blue was strongly of the opinion that Aristophanes was the devil in person, who was seeking to buffet the faithful. In time, however, Aristophanes was recognized as the private servant of Massa Lije, and was released from the kite and allowed to return to Lije’s workshop to report the result of his voyage in the flying machine. “The flying machine was never tried again. Lije had had enough of it, and besides, some of the Rev. Mr. Blue’s friends, who were not exactly what you would call law abiding citizens, sent Lije word that they rather thought that if he quit inventing things he would live longer than he otherwise might. Aristophanes didn’t seem to think anything of his adventure, and said he was ready to go up again whenever Massa Lije should want to send him. But Lije told him that he intended to make a little modification in his flying machine before using it again. That was what he always said when he gave an invention up as a bad job, and accordingly nobody ever saw or heard of the flying machine again. He was a remarkable man, was my brother, and the doctor of the asylum where he spent his declining years said that he was the most interesting lunatic that he had ever met.”

The St. Bernard myth

Some one had told a dog story showing the miraculous intelligence and profound piety of a French poodle. The Colonel listened with an incredulous smile on his grim face. When the story was ended and we had all expressed our surprise and admiration, as is the custom when dog stories are told, and had carefully suppressed our conviction that the man who told the story was as impudent as he was mendacious as is also the custom on these occasions I asked the Colonel to favor us with his views in regard to canine sagacity.

“There are dogs that show signs of good sense now and then, ” he replied. ” Even human beings do that occasionally. But as to these yarns about dogs who calculate eclipses and have conscientious objections to chasing cats on

Sunday, I don’t believe a word of them. Talk about fish stories! Why, there isn’t a fish caught or uncaught that can begin to stimulate the imagination to the extent that a dog will stimulate it. I have known fishermen who could convert two minnows into a string of thirty trout, averaging two pounds each, and I have seen these men slink away crestfallen before a man who told stories of what his fox terrier had done the day before. What I don’t understand is why people pretend to believe dog stories. We all know that the dog is a well meaning, stupid, parish vestry sort of an animal, but we listen to the thumpers that some men tell about him without even a cough.

“Look at the lies that have been told for the last hundred years about the St. Bernard dogs! People really believe that when a snowstorm comes on the St. Bernard dog goes out with a blanket, a flask of whiskey, a spirit lamp, a box of matches, some mustard plasters, and a foot bath strapped on his back. When he meets a frozen traveler we are told that he sits down and lights his spirit lamp, mixes some hot whiskey and pours it down the traveler’s throat, gives him a hot foot bath, puts mustard plasters on the soles of his feet, rubs him down and wraps him up in the blanket, and then hoists him on his back and brings him to the convent, where the monks put him to bed and read prayers to him till he feels strong enough to put some money in the contribution box and to continue his journey. Now, I’ve been to the St. Bernard Convent. I went there just to meet one of these dogs and see for myself what he could do. There was a pack of about forty of them, but the only thing they did was to sit up all night and bark at the moon, while the monks shied prayer books and wooden sandals at them out of the windows. I wanted to see a few travelers rescued from the snow, but the monks said the supply of travelers had been running low of late years; still, they added, if I’d go and sleep in a snowbank a mile or two from the convent, they would see what could be done. I wasn’t going to risk the forfeiture of my life insurance policy by any such foolishness as that, so I came away without seeing any dog performance. However, I saw enough, a little later on, to convince me that the St. Bernard dog is about the biggest kind of canine fool that ever imposed on credulous people.

“The monks had a whole pen full of genuine St. Bernard puppies, and I bought one. I am ashamed to tell you how much I paid for it. I could hire an army mule to kick me every time I think of the transaction. I took the puppy to the States with me I was living at New Berlinopolisville, in the State of Iowa, at the time and brought him up as carefully as if he had been my own son. He grew to be a big, rough haired dog one of the biggest I ever saw. And I can’t say that the monks cheated me in respect to his breed. Of course it was all a matter of luck that he didn’t turn out to be a poodle or a black and tan terrier. The fact is that no man or monk knows what one of those pure blooded St. Bernard pups that are sold at the convent will turn out to be when he gets his growth. He is liable to be anything in the line of dog, from a yellow cur up to a Siberian bloodhound. I once knew a man who bought a St. Bernard pup from one of the very holiest of the entire gang of monks, and that puppy grew up to be a red fox. But you all know of the St. Bernard puppy lottery, and I won’t take up your time commenting on it.

“The monks told me that the puppy would not need the least training. His instinct was so wonderful that the moment he should catch a glimpse of snow on the ground he would rush off to rescue travelers. ‘You just load him up with blankets and things,’ said the monk, ‘and send him out in the snow, and he’ll rescue travelers till you can’t rest.’ The dog was nearly a year old before I had a chance to try his powers, but one November we had a regular blizzard, and when the snow quit falling it was at least two feet deep on a level, not to speak of the drifts.

“After breakfast I tied a whiskey flask around the dog’s neck and put a blanket on his back, and told him to go out and begin his blessed work of mercy. I was alone in the house at the time, for my wife had gone on a visit to her mother and the cook had got herself arrested for being drunk and disorderly, so there was no one to make any objection to my use of one of my wife’s best blankets. The dog barked with delight when he saw the snow, and rolled in it for a few moments just so as to get the blanket good and wet, and then he started down the street at a gallop. I lived something more than a mile from the village, and there were no houses nearer than half a mile, and as the dog took the road leading away from the village, I did not think that he would stand much chance of picking up any travelers. He didn’t return until noon, and then he didn’t bring anybody home on his back. He did, however, bring six tramps with him, three of whom were pretty drunk, they having drank all the whiskey in the flask. The other three said that the dog had promised them a drink if they would follow him, and they hoped that I would be as good as the dog’s word. As I wasn’t armed, and as the tramps carried big sticks and evidently meant business, I judged it best to sustain the dog’s character for veracity and get rid of them peaceably. They went away after wrestling with a pint of good whiskey, and all the time that idiotic dog was wagging his tail as if he deserved the Humane Society’s medal, instead of deserving a thrashing for trying to rescue tramps when Nature had taken the trouble to furnish a blizzard expressly to thin them out.

“I explained to the dog with my riding whip the view that he must take of tramps in the future, and then I sent him out again, after filling up his whiskey flask and giving him another blanket in the place of the one that the tramps had stolen. I told him that in future I should prefer to have him rescue women and children, especially the latter, and that if he found a frozen male traveler he had better confine himself to giving information to the police, instead of lavishing whiskey on possibly undeserving people. He went off, somewhat humbled, but still in excellent spirits, and in a short time rushed up my front steps, dropped something on the doormat, and rushed off again. At first I thought that the idiot had been rescuing somebody’s linen that had been hung out to dry, but when the linen began to make remarks in a loud voice, I found that it was a particularly lively baby.

“Of course I couldn’t let the little innocent lie and freeze on my doorstep, so I brought it into the house and did my best to quiet it. As I had never had much experience with babies, I found myself in a pretty tight place. I had no milk to give the baby, so I mixed a little flour and water till it looked like milk and got a little of it down the baby’s throat. Then I shook it on my knee till it dropped asleep. I put it in my bed, intending to go out and find some woman who would come and attend to it, when I heard the dog barking, and on opening the front door saw his tail disappearing down the street, and saw that he had left another infant on the doormat.

“The first baby was a saint in comparison with this one, which was a sort of infantile tramp in appearance and was as noisy as it was dirty. It would not have anything to do with the flour and water, and though I shook it on my knee till I must have loosened all its organs, it refused to go to sleep. So I finally gave it a rubber overshoe to bite on, and put it in a bureau drawer in the spare room and told it to howl its head off if it felt that such was its duty toward mankind. Then I started a second time to search for a woman, and I nearly fell over a third baby on the doorstep. That infernal dog had brought it while I was struggling with the infantile tramp, and he was now off searching for more infants. I wrapped this one up in a blanket and sat down on the doorstep with it, resolved to wait till that dog came back and to lock him up till I could get enough babies off my hands to give me a chance to kill him. I was bound not to miss him, for if I did he would probably keep on till he had brought me all the babies in the county. This baby was the best of the lot, for it slept in my arms without saying a word or expressing the slightest desire to be shaken. In about twenty minutes the dog reappeared with another invoice of babies. This time he brought a brace of twins, as nearly as I could judge, but it was his last exploit that day. I got him by the collar before he could start out again and locked him up in the cellar. The babies I put in a heap in a big clothes basket that they could not climb out of, and left them to have a crying match for the championship till I could find a nurse.

“I didn’t have as much trouble in that matter as I had anticipated, for before I could get out of the house some one rang the front door bell and pounded and yelled as if it was a matter of life and death that the door should be opened instantly. I opened it, and there was a woman who called me every name she could lay her tongue to, and wanted me to give her back her baby instantly. I showed her the babies and told her to take her choice. In fact, I begged her to take away the whole lot, but she said I was worse than a murderer, and after selecting one of the least desirable of the babies, she rushed off with it, promising to send me a policeman immediately. I had never expressed the least desire to see a policeman, but such is female gratitude! I had offered that woman five babies, free, gratis, and for nothing, and instead of being grateful she wanted to get me into trouble.

“I had still four babies on my hands, and as they were now all awake and making all the noise they knew how to make, I put them all in the clothes basket together, so they could enjoy one another’s society. It wasn’t a bad plan, and I recommend it to any mother with a noisy pair of twins, as it is certain to reduce the noise by one-half. Two of my babies were so occupied with putting their fingers in the other babies’ eyes and in investigating their hair that they had no time to cry. I admit that the two who were undergoing investigation did their best to make a riot, but even then there was only half as much noise as there would have been had the other two joined the concert.

“I thought it so probable that the mother who had visited me was only the first of a procession of mothers, that I gave up the idea of going out to look for a nurse, and stayed at home to receive the mothers politely. It was not long before one presented herself. She was an Irishwoman and the only sensible one of the lot. When she saw that her baby was safe and contented and had a good grip on the hair of a black eyed baby, she sat down and laughed, and said that she never saw anything so sweet before. According to her account, she lived about a mile from my house, and she was standing at her front door looking at the landscape, when the dog bounded in, caught up the baby out of the cradle, and carried it off. At first she thought the dog was the devil, but presently she remembered that the devil’s time was too much occupied with Irish affairs to permit him to steal babies in Iowa, so she followed the dog as rapidly as she could make her way through the snow. She tracked him by the prints of his paws until she came to my door, and instead of calling me a kidnapper and talking about the police, she was full of pity for me, and volunteered to stay and take care of the whole menagerie until the last of the babies should be called for and taken away.

“The remaining mothers arrived in the course of an hour. I locked myself in the top of the house and left the Irishwoman to explain things. As I afterward learned, the intelligent dog had knocked two women down in the street and stolen their babies out of their arms, and had also broken into two houses, in the last one of which he had bagged his brace of twins. All the mothers, except the Irishwoman, were as unreasonable as they could possibly be. They insisted that I deliberately trained dogs to steal babies, and they had no doubt that my object in stealing them was to vivisect them. As for the dog, they were convinced that he was mad and that their babies would be sure to die of hydrophobia. Two of the women brought their husbands with them, who asked to see me, explaining that they desired to blow my head off. The Irishwoman nobly lied to them, telling them that she had driven me out of the house with a club, and that I was on my way to Chicago and far out of reach. The mothers and their husbands went away at last, and as soon as it was dark I stole out of the back door and took the first train for St. Paul. I didn’t show myself in New Berlinopolisville for the next year.

“What became of the dog? Oh! I forgot to say that the Irishwoman promised to take care of him and to cure him of his passion for babies. I am sorry to say that she did not succeed. She kept him tied up for six weeks, but one day he broke loose and captured a baby out of a baby wagon in the park. But the baby’s father happened to be with it, and he was one of the best pistol shots in town, having been a judge of the Montana Supreme Court. He got the drop on the dog before the beast had gone ten feet away with the baby, and though they afterward had to pry the dog’s jaws open in order to get the baby loose, no harm was done to the latter. I settled all the lawsuits without letting them go to trial, although it cost me considerable, and I finally judged it best to remove to another State.

“Now, I suppose that some one will be enough of an idiot to repeat this story with variations as a proof of the wonderful intelligence of the St. Bernard dog. If it is intelligence that leads a dog to steal other people’s babies and dump them on a respectable man, I’d like to see what idiocy would do for such a dog. No, sir! depend upon it, the stories about St. Bernard dogs are invented by the monks after stimulating their minds by reading the ‘Lives of the Saints’ and by going trout fishing. Probably the monks have gradually brought themselves to believe most of the stories. They look like a credulous set of people, and I should rather like to try them with a good American political speech, full of campaign statistics, and see if they could believe it. I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if they could.”

A matrimonial romance

“And by the way,” continued the Colonel, “a curious thing about this Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and never had any wife whatever. ‘

The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson which promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr. Wilson’s matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged him to interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to pass that Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.

“The marriage laws in the United States,” said the Colonel, giving his chair an increased tilt backward, which was his usual way of beginning a fresh anecdote, “are as peculiar in their way as are the divorce laws. You would think to look at them that they would permit

anybody to marry anybody else in any way that either of them might choose; but for all that they sometimes make it impossible for a man or a woman to get married. There was a couple who intended to be married in a balloon, which is a style of lunacy that is quite fashionable in some parts of the country, though I can’t see why a man should want to risk his neck in a balloon on his wedding day, unless it is that it takes so much courage to be married at all that a man forgets all about such minor dangers as are connected with ballooning. The bride, the minister, and two witnesses of assorted sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed time, and, naturally, the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he accidentally caught his foot in a neglected guy rope and went up head downward about twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon could not haul him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and the bride would not consent to give up the trip because the groom had always been a little shy, and she was afraid that if she let him go this time she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went on with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad language, and howled for help when he wasn’t swearing. When the ceremony was over the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without seriously damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two afterward, the bride wanted to get her divorce, the court held that there had never been any marriage, for the reason that both the groom and the bride had not appeared together in the presence of the officiating minister, and that, furthermore, there was no provision in the law which would permit a man to be married upside down.

“But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to the boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted Melinda Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountainside with her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be married, but her family were dead against it. You see, Josiah was a Republican and a Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and Baptists, and, naturally, they hated each other like poison; and one night as old man Smith and Josiah met on their way to rival prayer meetings they exchanged revolver shots, without, however, doing any harm. Then, once Josiah had most of the calf of his leg taken off by the Smiths’ bulldog, and twice the Smith boys came into the sitting room where Josiah was calling on Melinda, and suggested to him with their shotguns that he had better go home. Gradually Josiah and Melinda came to the conclusion that her family were resolved to discourage the match, so they determined to elope and be married without the knowledge or consent of anybody.

“One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under Melinda’s window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door, which was always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that if she was going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and that if Josiah had no respect for her she had some little respect for herself. She climbed down the ladder with a good deal of difficulty, because she insisted that Josiah should help her, and also that he should stand forty yards away, for reasons connected with her ankles, and he found it rather trying to follow out these contradictory orders. However, Melinda reached the ground at last, and the pair started in a carriage that had been waiting just around a bend in the road, in company with the Methodist minister. Their plan was to drive to the next town and there to be married, but it happened that one of the Smith boys, being restless, got up in the night, and, looking out of the” window, saw the ladder standing at Melinda’s window. In about twenty minutes after the young people had started, the whole Smith family and their shotguns were following the runaways in a wagon and gaining on them fast.

“The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard the sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young people that there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and would be overtaken in a very few minutes. ‘And then, you know,’ he added, ‘the chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first and ask for explanations afterward. The only thing for us to do is to get the marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will see that opposition is of no use and will listen to reason.’

“Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a little clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road and a flat sort of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married in a minister’s study. So the party hastily descended, the parson mounted the stone, Josiah and Melinda joined hands in front of him, and they were married and the parson had kissed the bride and pocketed his fee just as the Smiths’ wagon drove up and the Smith boys cocked their guns and covered the party. But the parson was wide awake. He had his revolver out and old man Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at him, but instead of shooting he remarked that he was a minister of the blessed gospel of peace, that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and that he would blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys lowered their weapons and consented to argue the matter. ‘The fact is, Colonel Smith,’ said the parson, ‘you’re too late.

The young people are legally married, and the sooner you accept the situation the better. I married them not two minutes ago, standing on that identical tombstone. ‘

“Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of the country. He saw the force of the minister’s remarks, so he told the boys to put up their guns and he shook hands with the minister. Then he inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda had stood while they were being married. The parson showed the footprints of the bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to Melinda and said, ‘You’ll come straight home with me. There hasn’t been any marriage yet. That stone is the boundary mark between Indiana and Illinois, and you were standing in Indiana and that other idiot was standing in Illinois when the parson tried to marry you. Nobody can marry in two States at the same time, and I shan’t recognize the pretended marriage till a court of law compels me to do so, which will be never. I hope this will teach you the folly of fooling with Methodism. When you want to get married next time try a Baptist minister, who will know the difference between a tombstone and a boundary mark.’ There were too many Smiths and they were too well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the upshot was that Melinda went home with her family and Josiah and the parson went to see a lawyer.

“The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda. It was a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to test the question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no man can get a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old man Smith conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named Starkweather, who is now a member of the Illinois Legislature, appeared for Josiah Wilson. Colonel Smith argued that while the parson who conducted the alleged marriage ceremony could undoubtedly have married a couple in the State of Indiana, he could not marry a woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois, for the reason that the man and the woman could not be in the same place while they were in two different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah and Melinda had not legally appeared together before the officiating minister. Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the pretended marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois, but on the boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as ‘an imaginary line’ running from such and such a point to such and such a point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginary locality stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any function of his calling.

“On the other hand, Josiah’s lawyer claimed that the minister had married Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she must have been married to somebody, and that that somebody was unquestionably Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood in an imaginary locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the boundary line, the lawyer maintained that it was a physical impossibility that a minister weighing two hundred and fifty pounds could stand in a purely imaginative place. Moreover, he was prepared to prove that while performing the ceremony at least one of the minister’s feet was in the State of Indiana, which was sufficient to make him legally present in that State.

“The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it was tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to deliver its verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally married to some person unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that Josiah Wilson was also married to some unknown woman, who was not Melinda Smith, whoever else she might be; that no marriage between the plaintiff and the defendant had ever taken place; and that no divorce could be granted, but that if either of them married any one else he or she would be guilty of bigamy.

“The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with the decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could never be recognized as her husband. She was a good deal cast down about it, for, like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward to being married and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it appeared that she was married, but in such an unsatisfactory way that she could never have a husband and never be divorced from any one. As for Josiah, he was furious, but there was no help for it; the law was against him, and, as a law abiding man, he was obliged to respect it, especially as. he could not hope to kill off all four of the Smiths if he decided to make a family feud of it; he himself having no family whatever, and no one to help him to keep up his end of the feud.

“For the next fifteen years Josiah lived a single man except in name, and Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father and brothers; but one day Josiah ‘s lawyer, who was by this time in the legislature, came to him and offered to have his marriage to Melinda made legal in all respects for five hundred dollars. The lawyer was so certain that he could do this that he was willing to wait for his pay until after he had gained a verdict, and Josiah, after a little bargaining such as every self respecting man would have made in his place, consented to the lawyer’s terms. It seems that the lawyer had accidentally discovered that there had been a mistake in the survey of part of the boundary line between Indiana and Illinois, and at the very place where Josiah and Melinda were married. A rectification of this mistake would move the line ten feet west, and so place the spot where the pair stood during their wedding entirely within the State of Indiana. The proper steps to obtain the rectification of the boundary were taken, and it was rectified. Then Melinda in her turn began a suit for divorce against Josiah, and had no difficulty in proving the marriage and in obtaining a decree. Josiah paid the lawyer his five hundred dollars and was overjoyed at being finally able to call his Melinda his own. But he met with a little disappointment. Now that Melinda had obtained her divorce, she thought she might as well live up to it and marry a fresh husband. So she married the Methodist minister, who had just lost his third wife, and lived happily ever afterward.

“It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little reckless by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I was going to tell you about when you interrupted me and wanted to hear about his marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you can never tell precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one reason why I was never married but once, though I spent ten years of my life in Chicago, and had friends at the bar who stood ready to obtain divorces for me at any moment and without a dollar of expense.”

Hoskins’ pets

“Yes!” said the Colonel reflectively, “I’ve been almost everywhere in my time except in jail, and I’ve been in a great deal worse places than a first class American jail with all the modern improvements. The fact is that philanthropic people have gone so far in improving the condition of prisoners that most of our prisons are rather better than most of our hotels. At any rate, they are less expensive and the guests are treated with more respect.

“I never could understand a craze that some people have for prisoners. For instance, in New York and Chicago the young ladies have a society for giving flowers to murderers. Whenever a man is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged, the girls begin to heave flowers into his cell till he can’t turn round without upsetting a vase of roses or a big basinful of pansies and getting his feet wet. I once knew a murderer who told me that if anything could reconcile him to being hung it would be in getting rid of the floral tributes that the girls lavished on him. You see, he was one of the leading murderers in that section of country, and consequently he received about a cart load of flowers every day.

“I had a neighbor when I lived in New Berlinopolisville who was President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, and he was the craziest man on the subject that I ever met. His name was Hoskins; Colonel Uriah Hoskins. He was the author of the Hoskins Bill that attracted so much attention when it was before the legislature, though it never became law. The bill provided that every prisoner should have a sitting room as well as a sleeping room, and that it should be furnished with a piano, a banjo, a library, a typewriter, a wine cooler, and a whist table; that the prisoner should be permitted to hold two weekly receptions, to which everybody should be allowed to come, and that he should be taught any branch of study that he might care to take up, books and masters being, of course, supplied free. Colonel Hoskins used to insist that the only thing that made a man go wrong was the lack of kindness, and that the sure way to reform a criminal was to treat him with so much kindness that he would grow ashamed of being wicked, and would fall on everybody’s neck and devote the rest of his life to weeping tears of repentance and singing hymns of joy.

“While Colonel Hoskins was fond of all styles of criminals, burglars were his particular pets. According to him, a burglar was more deserving of kindness than any other man. ‘How would you like it,’ he used to say, ‘if you had to earn your living by breaking into houses in the middle of the night, instead of sleeping peacefully in your bed? Do you think you would be full of good thoughts after you had been bitten by the watchdog and fired at by the man of the house, and earned nothing by your labor except a bad cold and the prospect of hydrophobia? There is nothing more brutal than the way in which society treats the burglar; and so long as society refuses to put him in the way of earning an easier and less dangerous living, he cannot be blamed if he continues to practice his midnight profession.’

“I must say this for Colonel Hoskins. He did not confine himself to talk, like many other philanthropists, but was always trying to carry out his principles. He really meant what he said about burglars, and there isn’t the least doubt that he had more sympathy for them than he had for the honest men of his acquaintance.

“When people asked him what he would do if he woke up in the night and found a burglar in his house, and whether or not he would shoot at him, he said that he would as soon think of shooting at his own wife, and that he would undertake to reform that burglar, then and there, by kindness alone. Once somebody said to Hoskins that he ought really to let the burglars know his feelings toward them, and Hoskins said that he would do it without delay.

“That same day he drew up a beautiful ‘Notice to Burglars,’ and had it printed in big letters and framed and hung up in the dining room of his house. It read in this way: ‘Burglars are respectfully informed that the silverware is all plated, and that the proprietor of this house never keeps ready money on hand. Cake and wine will be found in the dining room closet, and burglars are cordially invited to rest and refresh themselves. Please wipe your feet on the mat, and close the window when leaving the house. ‘

“Colonel Hoskins took a good deal of pride in that notice. He showed it to every one who called at the house, and said that if other people would follow his example and treat burglars like Christians and gentlemen, there would soon be an end of burglary, for the burglars would be so touched by the kindness of their treatment that they would abandon the business and become honored members of society insurance presidents, or bank cashiers, or church treasurers. He didn’t say how the reformed burglars were to find employment in banks and insurance offices and such, but that was a matter of detail, and he always preferred to devise large and noble schemes, and leave the working details of them to other men.

“One morning Colonel Hoskins, who was an early riser, went down to the dining room before breakfast, and was surprised to find that he had had a midnight visit from burglars. Two empty wine bottles stood on the table, and all the cake was eaten, which showed that the burglars had accepted the invitation to refresh themselves. But they did not seem to have accepted it in quite the right spirit. All Hoskins’ spoons and forks lay in a heap in the middle of the floor, and every one was twisted or broken so as to be good for nothing. The window had been left open and the rain had ruined the curtains, and on a dirty piece of paper the burglars had scrawled with a lead pencil the opinion that ‘Old Hoskins is the biggest fule and the gol-darndest skinflint in the country. You set out whiskey next time, or we’ll serve you out. ‘

“Hoskins was not in the least cast down by the rudeness of the burglars. ‘Poor fellows,’ he said, ‘they have been so used to bad treatment that they don’t altogether appreciate kindness at first. But they will learn.’ So he laid in some new spoons and forks and added a bottle of whiskey to the wine that he kept in the closet for the burglars, and was as confident as ever that the next gang that might break into his house would be melted into tears and repentance and would call him their best and dearest friend.

“A week or two later Mrs. Hoskins was awakened by a noise in the dining room, and after waking up her husband told him that there were burglars in the house, and that he must get out of the back window and go for the police. He told her that he was sorry to see her manifest such an unchristian spirit, and he would show her how burglars ought to be treated. There was not the least doubt that there were burglars in the house, and they were making a good deal more noise than was strictly consistent with the prospect of rising in their profession, for no able burglar ever makes any unnecessary noise while engaged in business, unless, of course, he falls over a coal scuttle, and then he naturally uses language. St. Paul himself would probably say something pretty strong in similar circumstances. Hoskins was sincerely delighted to have the opportunity to meet his burglarious friends, and he lost no time in dressing and descending to the dining room.

“He wore his slippers, and the burglars there were two of them did not hear him until he was fairly in the dining room. They were seated at the table, with their feet on the damask tablecloth, and the bottle of whiskey was nearly empty. The Colonel was much pleased to see that they had not damaged his silverware, and he was just about to thank them when they saw him. They started up, and one of them caught him by the throat, while the other held a pistol to his head and promised to blow out his brains if he made the slightest noise. Then they tied him hand and foot, gagged him, and laid him on the floor, and then sat down to finish the whiskey.

“Both the burglars were partly drunk, which accounted for the unprofessional noise they had been making. They talked in rather a low tone, but Hoskins could hear everything they said, and it was not particularly encouraging to a gagged and bound philanthropist. They agreed that he was a fool, and a stingy fool, or else he would have kept money in the house, and would have set out lemons and sugar as well as plain whiskey. They said that any man who treated poor workingmen in that way wasn’t fit to live, and that Hoskins would have t ) be killed, even if it was not necessary as it plainly was in this case to kill him in order to prevent him from appearing at any future time as a witness against them. They admitted that the whiskey was not bad of its kind, but they were of the opinion that Hoskins had left it in their way so that they might get drunk and be caught by the police.

“Colonel Hoskins listened to this conversation with horror, and the prospect that the drunken rascals would be as good as their word, and kill him before they left the house, was only a little more painful than the conviction that his method, appealing to the better nature of burglars, had failed for the second time. When the whiskey was exhausted the men rose up and looked at Hoskins, and a happy thought struck one of them. ‘Thishyer idiot,’ he said, ‘may not have any money in the house, but he’s bound to have some in the bank, and he’s going to write us a check for a thousand dollars, provided we let him off and don’t kick his brains out this time.’ The other burglar, who was in that benevolent frame of mind that Irish whiskey and conscious virtue sometimes produce, agreed to the suggestion, and Hoskins was therefore unbound and seated at the table, and told to draw a check at once if he had the least regard for his life. As he was gagged he could not explain to the burglars the kind feelings that he still had toward them, and the fact that they could not draw the money on the check without being captured by the police. So he simply signed the check, and groaned to think that the poor burglars were so slow to be reformed in the way that he had hoped they would be.

“When this business was over, the burglars tied Hoskins’ wrists together again and then tied him in a chair. Then they set to work to do all the damage they could do without making too much noise. They tore the curtains and hacked the piano with knives, and poured a jug of golden syrup over the carpet. Then they plastered Colonel Hoskins’ face with raspberry jam and emptied a sack of flour over his head, and went away, telling him that if he ever again ventured to trifle with the feelings of poor but self respecting men, they would put him to death by slow tortures.

“Hoskins sat in the chair for a couple of hours, till his wife timidly crept downstairs and released him. It took him a good hour to get the jam and the flour out of his hair and whiskers, and as Mrs. Hoskins said that he was in no state to enter a decent bedroom and made him wash at the pump in the back yard, he found it a rather cold operation. Perhaps it was the remarks that Mrs. Hoskins addressed to him during the operation that irritated him, for she intimated very plainly that he was no better than a professional idiot, and when a man’s hair is stuck together with jam, remarks of this sort from the wife of his bosom seem to be lacking in tenderness. However that may be, Colonel Hoskins had no sooner got himself into what his wife condescended to call a state of comparative decency, than he took down his ‘Notice to Burglars’ and tore it into a thousand pieces. That day he had an electric burglar alarm put into his house, he bought the savagest dog that he could find, and he stopped the payment of the check, which, however, was never presented. He continued to be the President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, but he steadily refused to ameliorate a single prisoner convicted of burglary, and while he was always a lunatic in regard to other criminals, he openly maintained that a burglar was the worst of men and that kindness was utterly thrown away upon him. He never had any more burglars in his house, though the dog now and then lunched off warm leg when some stranger to that part of the country ventured into the Hoskins premises at night. Hoskins was very fond of the animal, which was quite right, but his practice of leaving a bottle of whiskey, with an ounce of strychnine in it, on the dining room table every night, in case a burglar should succeed in getting into the house, was, in my opinion, going a little too far. Antimonial wine would have been much more humane and sufficiently effective. But there is no man who is more severe than a philanthropist who has been turned sour.”

The cat’s revenge

We had been discussing the Darwinian hypothesis, and the Colonel had maintained a profound silence, which was sufficient evidence that he did not believe in the development of man from the lower animals. Some one, however, asked him plumply his opinion of Darwinism, and he sententiously replied, ” Darned nonsense!”

Feeling that this view of the matter possibly merited expansion, the Colonel caused his chair to assume its customary oratorical attitude on its two rear legs, and began to discourse.

“There are some things,” he remarked, “which do look as if there might be a grain of truth in this monkey theory. For instance, when I was in France I was pretty nearly convinced that the monkey is the connecting link

between man and the Frenchmen, but after all there is no proof of it. That’s what’s the matter with Darwinism. When you produce a man who can remember that his grandfather was a monkey, or when you show me a monkey that can produce papers to prove that he is my second cousin, I’ll believe all Darwin said on the subject; but as the thing stands I’ve nothing but Darwin’s word to prove that men and monkeys are near relations. So far as I can learn, Darwin didn’t know as much about animals as a man ought to know who undertakes to invent a theory about them. He never was intimate with dogs and he never drove an army mule. He had a sort of bowing acquaintance with monkeys and a few other animals of no particular standing in the community, but he couldn’t even understand a single animal language. Now, if he had gone to work and learned to read and write and speak the monkey language, as that American professor that you were just speaking of has done, he might have been able to give us some really valuable information.

“Do I believe that animals talk? I don’t simply believe it, I know it. When I was a young man I had a good deal to do with animals, and I learned to understand the cat language just as well as I understood English. It’s an easy language when once you get the hang of it, and from what I hear of German the two are considerably alike. You look as if you didn’t altogether believe me, though why you should doubt that a man can learn cat language when the world is full of men that pretend to have learned German, and nobody calls their word in question, I don’t precisely see.

“Of course, I don’t pretend to understand all the cat dialects. For example, I don’t know a word of the Angora dialect and can only understand a sentence here and there of the tortoise shell dialect; but so far as good, pure standard cat language goes, it’s as plain as print to me today, though I haven’t paid any attention to it for forty years. I don’t want you to understand that I ever spoke it. I always spoke English when I was talking with cats. They all understand English as well as you do. They pick it up just as a child picks up a language from hearing it spoken.

“Forty years ago I was a young man, and, like most young men, I fancied that I was in love with a young woman of our town. There isn’t the least doubt in my mind that I should have married her if I had not known the cat language. She afterward married a man whom she took away to Africa with her as a missionary. I knew him well, and he didn’t want to go to Africa. Said he had no call to be a missionary, and that all he wanted was to live in a Christian country where he could go and talk with the boys in the barroom evenings. But his wife carried him off, and it’s my belief that if I had married her she would have made me turn missionary, or pirate, or anything else that she thought best. I shall never cease to be grateful to Thomas Aquinas for saving me from that woman.

“This was the way of it. I was living in a little cottage that belonged to my uncle, and that he let me have rent free on condition that I should take care of it and keep the grounds in an attractive state until he could sell it. I had an old negro housekeeper and two cats. One of them, Martha Washington by name, was young and handsome, and about as bright a cat as I ever knew. She had a strong sense of humor, too, which is unusual with cats, and when something amused her she would throw back her head and open her mouth wide, and laugh a silent laugh that was as hearty and rollicking as a Meth; dist parson’s laugh when he hears a gray haired joke at a negro minstrel show. Martha was perhaps the most popular cat in the town, and there was scarcely a minute in the day when there wasn’t some one of her admirers in the back yard. As for serenades, she had three or four every night that it didn’t rain. There was a quartette club formed by four first class feline voices, and the club used to give Martha and me two or three hours of music three times a week. I used sometimes to find as many as six or seven old boots in the back yard of a morning that had been contributed by enthusiastic neighbors. As for society, Martha Washington was at the top of the heap. There wasn’t a more fashionable cat in the whole State of Ohio I was living in Ohio at the time and in spite of it all she was as simple and unaffected in her ways as if she had been born and bred in a Quaker meeting house.

“One afternoon Martha was giving a four o’clock milk on the veranda next to my room. I always gave her permission to give that sort of entertainment whenever she wanted to, for the gossip of her friends used to be very amusing to me. Among the guests that afternoon was Susan’s Maltese cat. Susan was the young lady I wanted to marry. Now, this cat had always pretended to be very fond of me, and Susan often said that her cat never made a mistake in reading character, and that the cat’s approval of me was equivalent to a first class Sunday school certificate of moral character. I didn’t care anything about the cat myself, for somehow I didn’t place any confidence in her professions. There was an expression about her tail which, to my mind, meant that she was insincere and treacherous. The Maltese cat had finished her milk, when the conversation drifted around to the various mistresses of the cats, and presently some one spoke of Susan. Then the Maltese began to say things about Susan that made my blood boil. It was not only what she said, but what she insinuated, and according to her Susan was one of the meanest and most contemptible women in the whole United States. I stood it as long as I could, and then I got up and said to Martha Washington, ‘I think your Maltese friend is needed at her home, and the sooner she goes the better if she doesn’t want to be helped home with a club.’ That was enough. The Maltese, who was doing up her back fur when I spoke, stopped, looked at me as if she could tear me into pieces, and then flounced out of the house without saying a word. I understood that there was an end to her pretense of friendship for me, and that henceforth I should have an enemy in Susan’s house who might, perhaps, be able to do me a good deal of harm.

“The next time I called to see Susan the Maltese was in the room, and she instantly put up her back and tail and swore at me as if I was a Chinaman on the lookout for material for a stolen dinner. ‘What can be the matter with poor pussy?’ said Susan. ‘She seems to be so terribly afraid of you all of a sudden. I hope it doesn’t mean that you have been doing something that she doesn’t approve of.’ I didn’t make any reply to this insinuation, except to say that the cat might perhaps be going mad, but this didn’t help me any with Susan, who was really angry at the idea that her cat could be capable of going mad.

“The same sort of thing happened every time I went to the house. The cat was always in the room, and always expressed, in the plainest way, the opinion that I was a thief and a murderer and an enemy of the temperance society. When I asked her what she meant to do, she would give me no reply except a fresh oath or other bad language. Threats had no effect on her, for she knew that I could not touch her in Susan’s house, and she didn’t intend that I should catch her outside of the house. Nothing was clearer than that the Maltese was bound to make a quarrel between me and Susan, in revenge for what I had said at Martha’s four o’clock milk.

“Meanwhile Susan began to take the thing very seriously, and hinted that the cat’s opposition to me might be a providential warning against me. ‘I never knew her to take such a prejudice against any one before,’ she said, ‘except against that converted Jew who afterward turned out to be a burglar, and nearly murdered poor dear Mr. Higby, the Baptist preacher, the night he broke into Mr. Higby’s house and stole all his hams.’ Once when I did manage to give the Maltese a surreptitious kick, and she yelled as if she was half killed, Susan said, ‘I am really afraid I shall have to ask you to leave us now. Poor pussy’s nerves are so thoroughly upset that I must devote all my energies to soothing her. I do hope she is mistaken in her estimate of you.’ This was not very encouraging, and I saw clearly that if the Maltese kept up her opposition the chances that Susan would marry me were not worth a rush.

“Did I tell you that I had a large gray cat by the name of Thomas Aquinas? He was in some respects the most remarkable cat I ever met. Most people considered him rather a dull person, but among cats he was conceded to have a colossal mind. Cats would come from miles away to ask his advice about things. I don’t mean such trifling matters as his views on mice catching which, by the way, is a thing that has very little interest for most cats or his opinion of the best way in which to get a canary bird through the bars of a cage. They used to consult him on matters of the highest importance, and the opinions that he used to give would have laid over those of Benjamin Franklin himself. Why, Martha Washington told me that Thomas Aquinas knew more about bringing up kittens than the oldest and most experienced feline matron that she had ever known. As for common sense, Thomas Aquinas was just a solid chunk of it, as you might say, and I get into the habit of consulting him whenever I wanted a good, safe, cautious opinion. He would see at a glance where the trouble was, and would give me advice that no lawyer could have beaten, no matter how big a fee he might have charged.

“Well, I went home from Susan’s house, and I said to Thomas Aquinas, ‘Thomas,’ for he was one of those cats that you would no more have called ‘Tom’ than you would call Mr. Gladstone ‘Bill’ ‘Thomas,’ I said, ‘I want you to come with me to Miss Susan’s and tell that Maltese beast that if she doesn’t quit her practice of swearing at me whenever I come into the room it will be the worse for her. ‘

“‘That’s easy enough,’ said Thomas. ‘I know one or two little things about that cat that would not do to be told, and she knows that I know them. Never you fear but that I can shut her up in a moment. I heard that she was going about bragging that she would get square with you for something you said to her one day, but I didn’t feel called upon to interfere without your express approval.’

“The next day Thomas and I strolled over to Susan’s, and, as luck would have it, we were shown into her reception room before she came downstairs. The Maltese cat was in the room, and began her usual game of being filled with horror at the sight of such a hardened wretch as myself. Of course, Thomas Aquinas took it up at once, and the two had a pretty hot argument. Now Thomas, in spite of his colossal mind, was a quick tempered cat, and he was remarkably free spoken when he was roused. One word led to another, and presently the Maltese flew at Thomas, and for about two minutes that room was so thick with fur that you could hardly see the fight. Of course, there could have been only one end to the affair. My cat weighed twice what the Maltese weighed, and after a few rounds he had her by the neck, and never let go until he had killed her. I was just saying ‘Hooray! Thomas!’ when Susan came into the room.

“I pass over what she said. Its general sense was that a man who encouraged dumb animals to fight, and who brought a great savage brute into her house to kill her sweet little pussy in her own parlor, wasn’t fit to live. She would listen to no explanations, and when I said that Thomas had called at my request to reason with the Maltese about her unkind conduct toward me, Susan said that my attempt to turn an infamous outrage into a stupid joke made the matter all the worse, and that she must insist that I and my prize fighting beast should leave her house at once and never enter it again.

“So you see that if it had not been that I understood what the Maltese cat said at Martha Washington’s milk party, I should probably never have quarreled with either Susan or her cat, and should now have been a missionary in Central Africa, if I hadn’t blown my brains out or taken to drink. I have often thought that the man Susan did marry might have been saved if he had known the cat language in time and had made the acquaintance of the Maltese.”

The Colonel paused, and presently I asked him if he really expected us to believe his story.

“Why not?” he replied. ” It isn’t any stiffer than Darwin’s yarn about our being descended from monkeys. You believe that on the word of a man you never saw, and I expect you to believe my story that I understand the cat language on my unsupported word. Perhaps the story is a little tough, but if you are going in for science you shouldn’t let your credulity be backed down by any story.”

Silver plated

The Etruria was nearing New York, and the prospect of the inevitable interview with the custom house officers had already cast a gloom over the passengers. For the most part they were silent, and their faces wore an anxious and solemn expression. The Rev. Mr. Waterman, of the Eighth Day Baptist Church, who had bought largely of ready made clothing in London, even suggested that it might be well to hold a prayer meeting in the saloon.

A group of half a dozen men were sitting in the lee of one of the deck houses, smoking silently, when one of the number, a young and sanguine person, suddenly exclaimed:

“I don’t believe any honest man ever has any trouble with the custom house. It’s the fellows who want to defraud the Government who make all the complaints. “

“What you say may be patriotism and it may be ignorance “

“What’s the difference?” murmured a cynical interrupter.

“But,” continued the speaker, “it isn’t true. I never tried to defraud the Government, but for all that I’ve had more trouble with the custom house than if I’d been an honest collector of the port trying not to mix up politics with the business of the office.”

“America expects every man to pay his duty, Colonel,” replied the sanguine young man, with a vague reminiscence of Nelson. “Tell us about your trouble, and I rather think you’ll have to admit that it was because you didn’t want to pay duty on something.”

The Colonel was generally understood by the rest of the passengers to be a sort of theatrical manager, a position which in the United States entitles a man to the relative rank of colonel in the militia and commodore in the canal boat service. He had on several occasions shown a knowledge of music and of professional musicians which had won for him some respect among those of his fellow passengers who did not know the difference between a hurdy-gurdy and a hautboy, and were therefore fond of posing as musical critics. He was a shrewd, good tempered colonel, and the barkeeper said that he was the most elegant, high toned gentleman he had ever crossed with.

“Electricity, gentlemen,” resumed the Colonel,” is the biggest thing of the century, but it has its drawbacks. Did any of you ever happen to ride on that electric railroad in Berlin? Well, I have, and ‘most anybody who goes to Berlin is liable to ride on it. It taught me, however, that a man ought to be pretty careful when he trusts himself in an electric car.

“It happened in this way. I was an agent in the general show business, and was collecting an opera company for a friend of mine who was going to open in Chicago. I had come across a first class tenor found him in a country church choir in Germany and was bringing him home with me under a contract, when he and I took that ride on that Berlin electric road. He was a careless sort of chap, and he sat down in a corner of the car where the electricity had been leaking and the seat was pretty wet.”

“I never knew before, ” remarked the young man, ” that electricity could make a seat wet. “

“Probably not,” retorted the Colonel. “I should judge that there might be a right smart lot of things that you mightn’t know. Most of these gentlemen here, however, have probably heard that nowadays electricity is put up for use in bottles and metallic cans. It stands to reason that anything capable of being put into a bottle is capable of leaking, and wetting whatever it leaks on. If there is anybody here who knows more about bottles than I do, I’m ready to let him tell this story.

“As I was saying, my man sat down in a sort of pool of electric fluid, and sat there for about half an hour. He was wearing in the fob pocket of his trousers a cheap silver watch. I had given it to him so that he might get some exercise and prevent himself from getting too fat. He never suspected my motive, but he tired himself all out winding it up for two hours every night. Now you may not believe it, but I give you my word that the electricity completely dissolved that watch case and deposited the silver around the man’s waist. He didn’t find it out till night, and you never saw a man so scared as when he found that there was a band about four inches wide silver plated all round his waist. The doctor told him that the only possible way of getting it off would be to dissolve it with acid, but that the acid would eat clean through to his spine and injure his voice. So my tenor had to let bad enough alone, and be satisfied with another ten-and-sixpenny gymnasium that I gave him to mollify his feelings.

“We came over on the Arizona, and it got around during the passage that my man was silver plated. There was a custom house spy on board, and it happened that after the tenor had sworn that he had nothing dutiable with him, the inspector ordered him to strip and be personally examined. Of course when this was done it was discovered that he was silver plated, and he was held for duty under the general heading in the tariff of ‘all other articles, silver plated, or in whole, and not elsewhere enumerated,’ and taxed fifty per cent ad valorem and fined two hundred and fifty dollars for failing to declare that he was plated. He couldn’t pay and I wouldn’t pay, and so he was locked up in a bonded warehouse, and I went to consult my lawyer.

“I laid all the facts before him, and told him I would pay him handsomely if he could get my man out of the custom house without paying either duty or fine. Now, the lawyer knew the tariff from beginning to end, and if any man could help me I knew he could. He didn’t promise anything at first, but he discussed the question by and large and in all its bearings.

“‘I’m afraid,’ said he, ‘that there is no hope of getting your friend out without paying duty, but we may succeed in having him classified so as to make the duty very low. For instance, you say the man is a professional singer. Now, we might have him classed as a musical instrument and taxed forty-five per cent ad valorem. By the bye, what did you agree to pay him?’

“‘I agreed to pay him,’ says I, ‘a hundred dollars per week. ‘

“‘That’s bad,’ says the lawyer. ‘A hundred dollars a week is fifty-two hundred per year, which is about the interest at six per cent on eighty-seven thousand dollars. You wouldn’t like to pay forty-three or four thousand dollars duty on him. ‘

“‘I’d see him sent to Congress first!’ says I.

“‘Very well,’ says the lawyer. ‘Then perhaps we could classify him as machinery or parts thereof. But you wouldn’t save much in that way. You’d have to pay forty per cent ad valorem, and very likely the appraisers would say that you had undervalued the man, and would value him at double what your contract seems to say he is worth. They’re bound to protect American machinery against the pauper labor of Europe every time.’

“‘How would it do to classify him as old family plate?’ said I.

“‘Worse and worse,’ said the lawyer. ‘He’d have to pay sixty per cent, and you’d have a good deal of difficulty in proving that he is old family plate. Of course it could be done, but it would probably cost you more than the whole amount of the duty. They’re a perfectly honest set of men, the appraisers, and they naturally come high. ‘

“‘What will I do, then?’ said I; ‘let him die in the custom house and then sue for damages?’

“‘There might’ be something worth while done in that way,’ says the lawyer, ‘but it would be middling hard on the man. But I’ll tell you what we can do. Didn’t you say that the man was singing in a church choir when you hired him?’

“‘I did so,’ says I.

“‘All right,’ says the lawyer. ‘We’ll classify him as an ” article used in the service of religion,” and get him in free of any duty whatever. You go and get him an engagement in a church without an hour’s delay, and then come to me. We’ll beat the custom house this time, sure enough. ‘

“I got the man an engagement to sing for a week in a Methodist meeting house, and before the week was out he was decided to be an article used in the service of religion, and was returned to me free of duty, and cursing the head off of every officer in the revenue service. The end of it was that my tenor claimed that I had broken my contract by setting him to sing in a church, and he sued me for damages, and got them too. So you see, my young friend, that a man may have trouble with the custom house who does not want to defraud the Government out of anything, not even the duty on that sealskin sack that I hear you have taken apart and packed in a spare pair of boots.”

Among the freaks

Among the freaks was originally published in 1902 by Street & Smith.

The wild man of Borneo

How I became acquainted with the doorkeeper is of no consequence. He assisted me to pass away several weary hours that I once spent in Chicago. I know very well that they ought not to have been weary hours. I should have visited the pork-packing establishments, and gazed at and duly admired the fifteen and twenty- story buildings that Chicago will continue to pride herself upon until an earthquake comes and convinces the occupants of the upper stories that it would have been better for them if they had never been born. It happened, however, that I was snowbound and waiting until the snowploughs should succeed in opening the way for the trains. Being thus compelled to wait against my will, I was discontented, and took no delight in pork or tail buildings. It was in these circumstances that I met the doorkeeper, and found him to be, in the words of the landlord of my hotel, “One of the nicest gentlemen and spryest fighters in all Chicago. ”

The doorkeeper was the chief owner and manager of a dime museum. The American dime museum does not bear the most distant resemblance to the British museum. It is simply an exhibition of monstrosities, genuine and artificial, and the public is admitted to view them on payment of a dime. These monstrosities, known in the “profession” as “freaks,” seem to be produced in quantities to supply the demand. Every dime museum professes to have the tallest giant, the smallest dwarf, the fattest woman, and the most beautiful Circassian girl in existence. There are three or four dime museums in nearly every city in the United States, not to speak of those that are on the road. How they all manage to find the necessary stock of genuine “freaks” is a mystery which the outside public cannot solve.

My doorkeeper was, as I have said, the proprietor of his museum, but he occupied the post of doorkeeper for the reason that he could thus make sure of receiving the money paid for admission, and, being a powerfully-built man, could prevent the entrance of disorderly persons, and thus preserve the reputation of his museum as an “unequaled family resort” — a claim made for it by the handbills. He loved to talk of his professional experiences and in unfolding to me the private life of his “freaks” he opened up a new world. This is the story he told me concerning his “wild man of Borneo.”

“Yes, sir! As I was saying, managing a company of ‘freaks’ ain’t no picnic. They’re the most quarrelsome lot that was ever got together outside of a meeting of politicians who want to bring about harmony in the party. A fat woman puts on more airs than any two Eyetalian primy-donners, and for bad temper there is nothing that can touch a beautiful Circassian girl. I have to spend about one-third of my time in keeping my people from throwing crockery and pulling hair. Except when they’re falling in love, there ain’t a day that some one of them don’t come to the tattooed lady. It was Barnum that invented the tattooed business, and for a while it was the best line of business in the profession. Every museum was bound to have a tattooed girl, with a yarn about her having been captured by the Indians and tattooed when she was a little girl. My Circassian girl jumped at the chance of changing her line, for Circassian girls don’t begin to draw as they did twenty years ago, and when I proposed to her to do the tattooed-girl act, she set to work at once to draw patterns for the tattooing, and, being a mighty smart girl, she got up some of the best designs that I ever saw.

“My wild man of Borneo was a thin, cadaverous little chap, chock full of sentiment and poetry and all that sort of nonsense. When he got on his paint, and danced his war dance, and howled — in what folks thought was the Borneo language — and swallowed raw meat, you’d have thought that he was about as murdering a style of savage as could be found, though he really wouldn’t have hurt a fly. We kept him in a cage labeled ‘dangerous’ until his part in the performance came round, and then a keeper would take him out and lead him, with a chain around his waist, to the platform, where he went through with his dancing and raw meat eating. I paid him a good salary, and he was worth it. I wish I had him back again in his cage. The wild man I’ve got now is an Irishman, and he can’t howl with- out a brogue that’s bound to give him away some day.

“Now, this wild man, the first one I mentioned, you understand, was the kind of chap that is always falling in love, and, of course, he fell in love with the beautiful Circassian. He wanted to marry her, and, seeing as she didn’t draw very well, and was getting tired of the business, and, knowing that he was getting a good salary and was a leading man in his line, she agreed to marry him. I never liked the girl, for she was bad-tempered and selfish, and I knew she didn’t care a straw for the wild man, but I told her and him that if they’d wait six months I’d give them a bang-up wedding that shouldn’t cost them a cent, and, of course, she insisted on waiting.

“When she went into the tattooed business, the wild man, being engaged to her, naturally insisted on doing the stenciling. I know you won’t give it away, so I don’t mind telling you that the tattooing is put on every Monday with a stencil plate and brush, and is generally washed off on Saturday night when it begins to get faded. It takes about two dozen different stencil plates to do a girl up in style, and give her a variety of patterns. These plates were always kept in the property-room, and when Monday morning came around the wild man would get them out and tattoo his ladylove as gently as if he was a great artist, painting a first-class, hand-made picture. He took about twice as long as was necessary for the job, and I will say that when he was done, he turned out the best tattooed girl that Chicago ever saw.

“Well, one day I hired a Chinese sword swallower. He was a Frenchman, though I didn’t know it when I hired him. If I had, he would never have come into my show, for a Frenchman is the most trouble- some ‘freak’ in the whole profession, not excepting even the dwarf, and he’s, generally speaking, a holy terror. Naturally, this Frenchman began to make love to the tattooed girl. I don’t blame him for that, for, being a French- man, he had to act according to his nature; but he knew she was engaged to the wild man, and he had no business to meddle with an engaged girl, especially as there was the fat woman, who hadn’t anybody attached to her, and would have been thankful even for a Frenchman.

“Now, this sword swallower was a rather handsome young fellow, with lots of swagger about him, and he gathered that tattooed girl in without the least trouble. She threw over the wild man and wouldn’t have anything more to do with him. She wouldn’t even let him tattoo her, and said that the sword swallower was twice the artist that he was in handling a stencil brush. The poor chap came to me and said that he had made up his mind to commit suicide or leave the business. He said that Jemima, for that was the girl’s name, seemed to hate him. ‘Once she used to admire me in my great meat eating act said the wild man. ‘Now she says that it is perfectly disgusting to eat raw meat, and she can’t endure my black paint. She tells me that it’s a low line of business to be a wild man, and that she thinks that sword swallowing is perfectly lovely. I say it ain’t nothing of the sort. A sword ain’t half as digestible as raw beef, and I don’t care who says it is.’

“‘You give her up, my boy,’ I said. ‘Don’t waste your time over her. You’re in the very front rank in your line, and that is something to be proud of.’

“ ‘I know it,’ said he; ‘but I can’t stay in this show if that sword swallower stays. My contract will be up next month, and you might as well let me off now. If you don’t, there is nothing for me except the cold and silent grave.’

“‘You drop that nonsense!’ said I. ‘The grave’s no sort of place for a man of talent like you. Leave this business to me, and I promise you that inside of a week Jemima will give that Frenchman his walking ticket, and you’ll have the field to yourself again.’

“He was a trusting little beggar, and had no end of confidence in me. What I said brought up his spirits again, and that afternoon he howled better than he had ever howled before, and two women fainted away when he jumped at them with his spear, as if he was going to run them through then and there.

“Now, I happened to have a lot of stencil plates that I used to mark boxes with, and, knowing that the Frenchman couldn’t read or write, I felt pretty sure that I could put up a job on him that would settle his business with the tattooed girl. In the course of the day I took six of her stencil plates out of the drawer where they were kept and put six of mine on the top of the pile in their place, and waited for next Monday morning to come round.

“Naturally, it came round, and, naturally, the Frenchman was on hand at eleven o’clock to stencil the girl, so as to be ready for the afternoon exhibition. He never noticed any difference between the plates he had been using and the ones I had furnished, for, besides not being able to read, he was so taken up with making love to the girl, that he never had no time to notice anything else. It was the same way with her. She supposed that the stenciling was going on all right, and she never so much as looked at the plates, knowing that the Frenchman always used them in regular order, beginning with the top of the pile.

“He always began with her back, and when he had used up six of the stencil plates, he had her shoulders and forehead stenciled, and then went to work on her neck. The plates he used for this part of his work were the regular ones, and, as the girl couldn’t see her forehead or her back, she supposed they were all right. Which they wasn’t, as you will presently understand.

“After the tattooing was over, and the Frenchman had gone to dinner, I took the girl into my office and kept her there till the performance began, so that nobody should be able to see her. While the show was going on, she had to sit in a chair on a raised platform, where everybody could see her, and when her turn came the chair was slowly twisted round, while the lecturer told the yarn about her having been captured by Indians, and explained her diagrams. She couldn’t help noticing that people stared at her more than usual when they came in, and she supposed that the stenciling must have been done extra particular well.

“What they were staring at, however, was her forehead, which was stenciled ‘J. H. M.,’ being my initials, and they naturally wondered how the Indians came to tattoo a girl with English letters. But it was when the lecturer began to explain her, and turned her chair round, so as to show her back, that the fun began. Across the back of her neck was ‘Keep Dry,’ in big letters; a little farther down was ‘Very Fragile’ and ‘Handle with Care.’ One arm was marked ‘Strictly Private,’ and the other ‘This Side Up,’ and, as good luck would have it, the Frenchman had not got a single plate upside down.

“Well, when the people saw it, they first laughed themselves sick, and then got mad. They said they had been swindled, and that the girl had never been near no Indians. One fellow said that seeing as she wasn’t a leopard she couldn’t change her own spots, and that, consequently, I had changed them for her, and was a thief and an impostor. And how they chaffed that poor girl! I really felt sorry for her, though I knew she deserved it all. As for the lecturer, he left as soon as the first egg hit him on the head, and the girl would have left, too, if she had been able to get out of the crowd.

“I let the row run along a little in hopes that the Frenchman would get mixed up in it, but he was no such man, and he bolted the minute it began. So, seeing as there was no danger that the crowd would wreck the establishment, I went in with three policemen and my four teamsters, and we cleared out the people without much trouble. I told them that there had been a mistake, and that the tattooed girl being sick couldn’t show that day, and my secretary, not wishing to disappoint the people, had got a substitute without consulting me. What with offering them free tickets for the next day, and licking half-a-dozen or so of the most cheeky, I settled the affair up, and the next day the show was as peaceful as ever.

“What became of the wild man? Oh! I ’most forgot to tell you. When the tattooed girl found out what the row had been about, she swore that the Frenchman had done it on purpose, and that she would never see him again, barring such time as might be necessary to tear his eyes out. He heard of this, and had sense enough to keep on his side of the house, and she never had a chance to get at his eyes. After the month was up he left me, and that was the last I ever saw of him. The field being clear, the wild man makes up to the girl again, and she takes him back, making it a condition, however, that he should give up the wild- man business and go into some other. So he set to work and learned the sword-swallowing act, though a sword swallower doesn’t command more than half the ave- rage wages of a first-class wild man. He’s doing sword swallowing in my museum now, and don’t like it very much. He told me the other day that he hankered for his old life. ‘This hyer swallowing business is too conventional for me,’ he said. ‘There ain’t no room for the display of histrionic talent like there was in that raw-meat act. But she won’t have it, and I must do what pleases her.’

“They calculate to be married in about two months, and then I’ll lose them both, for, of course, they’ll quarrel, so that I shall have to get rid of the pair of them. Well, it was what might have been expected after letting a Frenchman into the show. If it wasn’t that she is a mighty handsome woman, and has got the best stenciling in the profession. I’d bribe her to leave on the sly, and I’d get her lover to go back to the wild-man business. It’s the only line fit for a man of his talent, and he’s just throwing himself away, as you might say, now that he is only a Chinese sword swallower.”

How the fat woman eloped

“Yes, sir,’ continued the doorkeeper; “fat women are more sentimental than any other women. The fatter they are the more they fall in love. Though, to tell the truth, the most sentimental fat woman I ever had wasn’t by any means the fattest. She only weighed two hundred and eighty pounds when she came to me, and I lost her when she had just got up to three hundred and forty; and very sorry I was to lose her, for she had a great future before her, if she had only been willing to stick to business and had kept up her pride in her profession.

“For the first six months I had her I thought she was a jewel. She never took the least bit of exercise, and she dieted as carefully as if she had been a dyspeptic with a stomach in ruins, who was trying to put himself to rights again by eating nothing but the most disagreeable kinds of food. By the way, did you ever notice that the only way to get even with a stomach that has once gone back on you is to starve it, or give it nothing that any rational stomach likes? The minute you begin to treat a stomach kindly, and let it have the sort of meat and drink it wants, that minute you are on the road to dyspepsia. A stomach is just like a small boy— you’ll spoil it if you ever let it have its own way.

“I hadn’t had this fat woman a week when I saw that she was as bad as all the rest of them, so fat as falling in love goes. Our giant was taken with the scarlet fever, which was a most ridiculous sort of disease for a man of six feet and a half high, and mighty sick he was. Of course, I couldn’t send him to a hospital, where everybody could see him, without destroying his market value, so he had to be nursed in his room at the museum. Nobody was willing to nurse him till the fat woman came forward and said that she would nurse the poor man if everybody else was afraid. Naturally, everybody applauded her bravery, as everybody always does when a person under- takes to do something that other people- are afraid to do, and are glad to get rid of doing. I didn’t altogether like the idea of temporarily losing the services of the fat woman as well as the giant, but I like to let my people have all the pleasure they can, so I told the fat woman to go ahead, and I would pay her half her salary while she was off duty.

“Of course, the fat woman fell in love with the giant before she had been twenty-four hours in the sick room, but I will say that she made a first-class nurse. There was no walking around the room, and knocking over bottles, and putting the furniture in order, and sweeping the floor up, as is always going on when you have an ordinary- sized nurse. The fat woman spent the whole day and night sitting in her chair, except when the giant wanted his medicine, or when he tried to get up, being delirious, and go on the platform in his nightshirt. Whenever this fit was on him, the fat woman would just lean her weight on him till he quieted down.

“Once she accidentally leaned a little too much on his chest, and the man was pretty nearly suffocated before she noticed that anything unusual was the matter, but generally speaking she did her duty in a way that laid over any regular hospital nurse that I ever saw.

“When the giant got well the fat woman, who considered herself engaged to him, though he swore that he had never said a word of the kind, expected him to marry her, and when she found out that he hadn’t the least idea of any such foolishness she was destroyed, as you might say. For about a week she lost her appetite and didn’t eat enough to keep her alive, not to speak of making progress in her profession, and I had to speak pretty sharply to her about the dishonesty of growing thin when she had a contract with me that obliged her to increase her weight by all legitimate means. However, at the end of the week she braced up again and soon got over her passion.

“That’s the way with fat women. They get over their disappointments, and are looking out for fresh ones quicker than any other woman outside of a dime museum. I’d like to find some intelligent man, say a parson or a doctor, who could tell me the reason of this. I can’t see myself why there should be any difference between a fat woman and a thin woman in the matter of their affections; but there is a big difference. If you want just to carry on with a girl, take a middling fat one, and she’ll get over it without giving you any trouble. But if you mean business, and want to marry a girl who’ll stick to you, don’t you take any girl weighing more than a hundred and twenty pounds.

“In course of time, the fat woman forgot all about her affair with the giant, and the two were excellent friends, both being good- tempered and goodhearted in their way. But pretty soon the fat woman fell in love again, and this time it was with an outsider. He was a sort of ticket speculator, and about as worthless a fellow as there was in all Cincinnati, which was where my show was located at the time, and anybody except a fat woman would have known that if he made love to a woman, it was because he thought there was money in it. He supposed that the fat woman was well-to-do in the world, as most of them are, seeing as they draw good salaries and have no expenses to speak of. Besides, he was sharp enough to see that she was putting on flesh day by day, and would naturally command more salary according as her weight increased. He used to come into my place pretty nearly every day and have a little talk with the fat woman, and say how-de-do to the other ‘freaks’ and maybe try to borrow fifty cents of me, for I had known him a good many years — which naturally made him feel that he had a right to borrow money of me.

“One day I noticed that the fat woman looked a good deal smaller round the waist than usual, and I charged her with lacing. At first she denied it, but I told her it was no use, and that she couldn’t deceive me, and then she admitted that she was wearing a corset. ‘What’s got into you?’ I asked her. ‘Haven’t you no sense, and no pride in your profession? Here you are actually trying to make yourself look smaller than you are, when you know perfectly well that you ought to be trying to do just the opposite. I tell you what it is, Melinda, you’ve got your eye on some young man, and want to make yourself look pretty.’

“‘And what if I do?’ said she. ‘Do you think that a fat woman hasn’t got any feelings? I’m a woman, if I do weigh three hundred pounds, and I’ve got a woman’s feelings, though none of you men ever seem to think so.’ I told her that there wasn’t any question about her feelings, and that I had no concern with anything but her weight, and that if she began to lose flesh she couldn’t expect me to stick to the contract. ‘Just put all this foolishness out of your mind,’ I said, ‘and try to work yourself up to four hundred pounds. That’s an ambition worthy of a sensible woman, while this hyer falling in love is only fit for women who haven’t got brains or flesh to earn their own living.’

“But my advice was wasted, as advice always is, and in a few days the fat woman came to me and asked to be let off her contract, so that she could be married and go to keeping house for her husband. It made me mad to see her so willing to throw away her future, and so careless about my interests, considering that I had treated her kindly and liberally, and I told her that I should hold her to her con- tract, which had two years more to run, and would sue her for damages if she left me, or if she neglected to keep herself up to her usual weight. This made her pretty angry, and she said that she should do as she pleased, and that I was a horrid brute. So I saw that I was going to have trouble with her.

“That night the fat woman had a long talk with her admirer after the performance was over, and for the next day or two was in such good spirits that I knew she must mean mischief. The fact was that the fellow had induced her to agree to elope with him, and she felt so sure that her professional career was coming to a happy end that she openly took to drinking vinegar and eating meat, and drew in her waist till she looked as if she was on the edge of apoplexy.

“The fat woman’s room was just over mine, and, naturally, she couldn’t move around much without waking me, though I am a pretty middling sound sleeper. Soon after she had taken to vine- gar, I was waked up one night by hearing her walking about her room in her boots, and, as my watch said it was two o’clock, I knew something was up. By-and-by she came downstairs as softly as she could, though the stairs did groan as stairs will when you put three hundred pounds of woman on them in the middle of the night. I got up and looked out of the window, and there was a carriage standing by the stage door. I saw the fat woman’s little game at once. She was going to run away with the ticket speculator.

“My first thought was to dress and run out and stop her, but presently I remembered how narrow the stage door was, and I made up my mind to wait and see the fun, my window being where it commanded a good view of the scene of action. Just as I anticipated, the fat woman halted when she came to the stage door, and presently I heard her call, in a low voice: Tom, come and help me;

I’m stuck in the door!’ Tom climbed down out of the carriage, and, getting a good hold of the fat woman’s arms, braced himself against the jamb of the door and pulled his level best. But he couldn’t start her, and, though she stood it like a heroine, she had to tell him, after he had pulled a while, that she couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Then Tom tried to push her back into the corridor, so that she could take a fresh start and maybe get herself through the door edge- wise, but he couldn’t budge her.

So the two whispered together a while, and then Tom called the driver of the carriage to come and help him. The driver was the most intelligent of the lot, -and he said that the only way to get the lady loose was for Tom to climb over her and then push from the in- side while the driver pulled from the outside. It didn’t seem to be an easy job for Tom to climb over her, but he managed to do it, though she screamed a little when his boots sunk into her shoulders. Then I heard him say, ‘Now, driver, while you pull I’ll try running the length of the corridor and bumping her. The shock may loosen her if you pull just as I bump.’ I don’t know how the fat woman liked it, but she held her tongue, and after a while some- thing gave way, and she suddenly shot out into the road, falling on the driver, and making him think his last end had come. When he got himself free, and he and Tom together had set the fat woman on her legs again, I heard him say: Til have to be after charging you, sor, for a suit of clothes, being as my own is spoilt entirely, and my left arm is sprained.’ But Tom told him to hurry up and help boost the fat woman into the carriage, and he’d see that everything was made right when the time came to pay.

“You may ask why I didn’t interfere about this time and keep the woman from running away. Because I knew just what her weight was, and how much the bottom of an ordinary carriage will bear, and I wanted to see how the thing would end.

“Well, it ended just as I knew it would. It was the middle of summer, and daylight began about three o’clock, so Tom was in a hurry to get away before anybody would see him and recognize him or his companion. He and the driver gave the fat woman a most everlasting boost and shot her into the carriage, and Tom was going to get in after her when I heard something crack, and the fat woman gave a dismal yell. She had gone clean through the bottom of the car ’age, and was standing with her feet on the road, with the broken pieces of the flooring holding her so tight that she couldn’t stir. She gave up all pretense of keeping quiet, and called out at the top of her voice for the driver to hold the horses and keep the carriage from moving; and she begged Tom, if he had any love for her, to help her out of the carriage, and let her get into her own room once more.

‘“The fact is, the woman was in a very bad fix. The splinters must have hurt her like so many knives, and the more Tom tried to pull away the broken boards, the more they got their work in. Then, all of a sudden, the horses took it into their heads to start, and the woman yelled that they were killing her, and the driver cut them loose instantly.

“By the time the horses were unhitched Tom had given up the attempt to get the woman loose as a bad job, and was standing in a help- less sort of way by the carriage door, telling her for Heaven’s sake to hold her tongue before she waked up the whole neighborhood.

“I judged it was about time for me to take a hand in the proceedings, so I called out cf the window, ‘Melinda! If you’ve had enough of this yer foolishness, just say the word, and I’ll come down with an ax and help you out of your fix.’ She said all she wanted was to be let loose, and she would never try to leave me again, not for any man, let alone a cruel, heartless wretch that would stand by and see a woman suffer, and never lift a finger to help her. So I dressed slow and easy, so as to let the splinters sink into her mind, as you might say, and keep her from for- getting all she owed me, and then I got my ax and came down and broke her out without much trouble. Tom had nothing to say for himself. I will give him the credit of admitting that he stood around while I was working with the ax, till he saw that the woman was loose, and then he bolted, thinking, perhaps, that I might be disposed to use the ax on him, which would have been a waste of labor that I shouldn’t have thought of undertaking. The driver tackled up his horses in no time, and started after Tom as hard as he could drive, knowing that his chance of collecting payment would be middling small if he let Tom fairly out of his sight.

“The fat woman was a good deal tore up with the splinters, and. more or less exhausted by the mental strain she had gone through while the two men were trying to haul her through- the stage door. She hadn’t much strength left for conversation, and she went very quietly with me round to the front of the house and through the big door up to her room. When she was going into her room she turned and said:

“ ‘Colonel, I’ll never do it again, and I’ll do my best to fatten up after this.’

“‘That’s all right,’ said I. ‘You just go to bed again and forget all about it. We’re all liable to make mistakes, and it wasn’t your fault that you didn’t know how much a floor of a carriage would bear. I’ll send you up the arnica, and just you use it and forget all about Tom, who is no good anyway, and who’ll never come round you again, you can bet your bottom dollar.

“After that you never saw a more faithful and conscientious artist than that fat woman. She dieted herself more carefully than ever, and before the year was out she had got up to three hundred and forty pounds.”

The N’Shugie-Gumbo

“From what you have told me,” I said to the doorkeeper, “I gather that ‘freaks’ as a rule, are not overburdened with brains.”

“There ain’t brains enough in an ordinary dime museum, all put together, to fit out even a member of Congress. Why, if you could take the brains of all my company, barring the dwarfs, and put them in the skull of a second rate temperance orator, you’d find that they’d rattle round like dried peas. You see, ‘freaks’ make their living by careful cultivation of their bodies. Naturally, their minds are no sort of use to them. What’s the good of a mind to a fat woman? What she requires to succeed in her profession is flesh, not intellect. It’s the same way with all the rest of them, excepting the lightning calculator, and even he needs ‘cheek’ more than he does mind.

“Of course,” continued the door keeper, “there’s exceptions to every rule. Now, my dwarf is as bright a chap as you can find in any newspaper office in the country, and it is my experience that the smartest class of men we have are the newspaper reporters. I never try to fool a reporter. If I see one coming into my show I just open a bottle of wine for him, and I say, ‘You’ll see that the gorilla, or maybe the fat woman, isn’t quite according to the small bills; but strange coincidences will happen in this world, and if you shouldn’t give me away, and if you should receive a ten-dollar bill in an anonymous letter the next day, it would be a coincidence that would be pleasant as well as improving for all concerned.’ I never yet had a reporter prove himself unworthy of my confidence. They are a high minded, honorable class, provided you pay up handsomely, and never deceive them.

“But I was going to tell you about my dwarf. He is about forty years old, as I should judge, and he has spent the best part of his life in inventing things. Some of his inventions are useful ones, and he holds two or three patents that have involved him in a lot pf lawsuits and cost him no end of money, which, as everybody knows, is what a successful invention always does. He was working at one time on a patent umbrella gun and shield, which he expected would be adopted by every army in the world, and would make him a millionaire half-a-dozen times over. His first idea was to make a combined umbrella and sword cane. He made an umbrella with a stout handle, and fitted the handle with a sword, which, when it was thrown out by a spring, projected about two feet from the end of the stick.

“Well! he saw after a while that the only way this weapon could be used was by treating it like a gun with a fixed bayonet, so he modified his sword by turning it into a regular sword bayonet. Then it occurred to him that if he turned the umbrella stick into a rifle he would have a better weapon still, so he substituted a Remington rifle for his umbrella stick, and fitted an ordinary umbrella frame to it. What he really had at this stage of the proceedings was a rifle with an umbrella attachment. It was useful for keeping off the rain, provided any one wanted to carry such a heavy weight; but, as I told him one day when he was showing the model to me, most people would prefer an umbrella weighing less than sixteen pounds.

“The next thing he did with that invention was to make his umbrella shot proof. This was, according to him. the biggest invention since the invention of firearms. His idea was that a regiment of soldiers armed with his umbrella could advance on the enemy, firing as they advanced, and sheltering themselves behind their umbrellas so that it wouldn’t be possible for them to get hit, except, perhaps, in the lower part of the leg. He was so sure that he had made the greatest invention of the age that he got pretty angry with me when I asked him what material he calculated to make his umbrella out of. ‘Steel,’ said he. ‘Thin steel; just thick enough to resist a rifle bullet.’ ‘And how are you going to shut your steel umbrella when it ain’t in use?’ says I.‘Colonel!’ says he, very dignified, and mad enough to try his rifle on me, ‘if you’ll attend to your part of this yer show, I’ll attend to mine.’

“Well, that dwarf worked at that invention for more than a year. He managed to make a steel umbrella that would shut up after a fashion, but it weighed about a hundred pounds. Then he tried making his umbrella of steel chain work, like the sort of old armor those chaps in the Crusades used to wear, but it weighed almost as much as the solid steel, and then it let in water like a sieve, and was of no sort of use as an umbrella against the rain.

“Of course, this didn’t suit him, so he covered his chain armor with rubber cloth and made a small hole in it near the top, with a trapdoor to open and shut, so as a soldier could take aim through it when the umbrella was open. But he wasn’t satisfied yet, and that invention kept on growing. The dwarf made an extension of canvas to button on to the sides of the umbrella, so as to make a tent of the whole affair. All you had to do was to button on this extension, and then dig a hole in the ground for the butt of the gun. When you had planted the gun in this hole, and opened the umbrella and pegged it down all round, you had a first class circular tent.

“By this time the thing had got to weigh so much that no man could have carried it on a march, but the dwarf fitted a wheel on to the muzzle of the gun, so that the thing could be wheeled like a wheelbarrow. When he had put hooks on to the under side of the gun for a knapsack and a haversack, and a cartridge box, and a blanket, and all the rest of a man’s kit, he considered that the invention was about complete. But he couldn’t get the government or anybody else to do anything but laugh at it, so he finally gave it up as a bad job, and worked off his steel umbrella frames on the fat woman as the latest style of crinoline. But all this goes to show that the dwarf was a person with intellects into him. I can’t say much for his morals, or his temper, but there is no doubt that he did have brains.

“He came to me one day about two years ago and said, ‘Colonel, I understand that all your monkeys are dead.’ You see, I had taken a cage of six monkeys from a friend of mine who was in the menagerie line in payment of a bad debt, and the monkeys had proved a strong attraction while they lasted. However, the climate finished them after a while, as it always will do, and all that was left of them was the big empty cage.

“‘You know well enough the monkeys are dead,’ says I to the dwarf. ‘But what’s that to you? They weren’t any relation of yours, so far as I know.’

“ ‘How would you like a first class trained orangutang?’ says the dwarf. ‘One that could smoke, and let on to read a newspaper, and do all them sort of tricks?’

“ ‘Are you thinking of applying for the place?’ I asked, not feeling in particularly good temper myself that morning, for something, I forget what, had gone wrong with me.

“ ‘Just so,’ says he. ‘I’ve studied up the monkey business since you had those monkeys here, and I can do it as well as the best of them. Come along to the cage, and I’ll show you something.’

“I went along with him, and when we got to the cage the dwarf pulls off his shoes and stockings, and jumps up against the side of the cage, clutching the bars with his hands and feet at the same time, just as a monkey would do. Then he chatters, and makes a grab for my watch chain, and would have got it, too, if I hadn’t jumped back pretty spry.

“ ‘How do I do it?’ asked the dwarf.

“ ‘Better than the other monkeys,’ said I.

“‘Well!’ says he; ‘I’m ready to be an orangutang in the after- noon and a dwarf at night, if you’ll double my salary. That is, as soon as I get my tail perfected.’

“‘What are you giving us?’ said I. ‘Orangutangs don’t have no tails.’

“ ‘This here one does,’ said the dwarf, ‘and it’s going to be a practicable tail, too. I have been working at it for the last week, and I shall have it after a bit in such a state that I can hook it around a chandelier and swing head downwards. That will convince the public that I am genuine. It’s easy enough to dress up like any animal, except an elephant, or maybe a camelopard, but it’s the tail that always gives a man away. And if you don’t have a tail, people will think that you shirked it because you knew you were playing a game on them, and couldn’t succeed if you put on a tail. Now, my tail will be the very thing that will convince the public that they are looking at a real orangutang, and not at a Chinaman, like your last gorilla.’

“‘You might be a new sort of monkey discovered by Stanley in Central Africa, and sent over to me as a special testimonial of friendship,’ says I, for I was beginning to think that the little man’s idea was a good one. ‘You get up a practicable tail, and a good general disguise, and I’ll agree to your terms and maybe do something better still.’ So it was agreed that as soon as the dwarf could invent a satisfactory tail, he should be brought out as a learned ape.

“That tail was one of the best things the dwarf ever invented. It was made of steel, with no end of joints, and was about as flexible as the real article. It was contrived so that whenever the dwarf took a turn with it around anything, it would keep its hold till he released it by touching a spring somewhere about his waist. His general make up was superb. He wasn’t content with just putting on a skin, and painting his face a little, but he padded himself here and there, and wore a flexible mask that was twice as ugly and just as probable as any monkey’s face you ever saw. When he first showed himself to me in this get-up I saw at once that he was going to be a big success, and when he hooked his tail over the strong woman’s horizontal bar, and swung head downwards, and chattered and cussed in the monkey dialect, there wasn’t a scientific chap in all Chicago, to say nothing of a regular menagerie sharp, who could have supposed that he wasn’t genuine.

“What, with drawing two salaries, and having a fair opportunity to play tricks on the public, the dwarf was a middling happy man. There was always a crowd round his cage, and nobody seemed to read the notices warning the people not to go within reach of the N’Shugie-Gumbo, which was the name a friend of mine, who had read a lot about Central Africa, gave him. The dwarf would sit and look at the people in the solemnest kind of way for a few minutes, and then he would come to the front of the cage and put his arm through the bars to shake hands.

“Everybody would want to shake hands with him, and presently he would get a chance to snatch a woman’s bonnet. He would haul it through the bars, and then he would hook his tail over a horizontal bar that was in the cage, and swing comfortably while he pulled the bonnet into shreds. Of course, the woman would yell, but everybody else would be delighted, and the dwarf, having a natural love for malicious mischief, would be as happy as they make ’em. Then he would lay for spectacles, and if any man or woman wearing glasses came inside his reach, he would snatch their glasses and break them in bits before they could fairly realize what was the matter.

“Occasionally, when a man lost a pair of gold spectacles, he would appeal to me, and I would go into the cage with a whip, and make the monkey disgorge, which he always did after making sure that he had bent them up about as far as they could be bent.

“Then, in addition to his fun, the dwarf had lots of candy and apples and such given to him, and what he didn’t eat on the spot he used to hide under a blanket in the corner till the show was over. As for cigars, he used to get the best part of a box every day. The people were just wild to see him smoke, and they said he did it just like a human being. He used to smoke pretty near the whole afternoon, and when the show closed he would have a double handful of cigars to carry to his room. All the other ‘freaks’ were raging with envy at his good luck, and, being, as I said, naturally vicious, this only made him the happier. Nobody outside of my establishment had the least idea that N’Shugie-Gumbo wasn’t a genuine Central African monkey, and a scientific chap belonging to the Chicago University wrote a paper about him to show that he was a missing lynx, which, to my mind, showed how big an idiot a scientific chap can be, for the dwarf wasn’t missing, and he wasn’t the least bit like a lynx.

“He was climbing into his cage one afternoon, just before the show opened, and as I was passing by I asked him how things were going with him.

“ ‘I don’t feel easy about that tail,’ says he. ‘It don’t work altogether right. Yesterday, when I had it hooked round the bar I couldn’t get it loose again for about half-an-hour, and was afraid I should have to call for help, which would have been the ruin of me. I’ve examined it, and I can’t find anything the matter with it. I suppose it’s just the cussedness of the spring, that’ll work sometimes, and sometimes it won’t. I’m a little afraid that it’ll get me into a scrape yet before this thing is played out.’

“I remembered these remarks afterward, for they seemed to be sort of prophetic, as you might say. That very afternoon the tail failed to do its work, and the dwarf’s experience as a monkey had to be brought to a close. My own idea is. that the tail needed to be oiled, or else that the spring had got bent in some way. Anyway, it got the dwarf into the worst trouble that he ever got into while he was with me.

“It happened in the course of the afternoon, when the house was pretty full, and there was a big crowd round the monkey’s cage, that the dwarf accidentally let his tail slip through the bars and hang down where the people could reach it. There was a woman standing close to the cage, and she thought it would be smart to take hold of the end of the tail and give it a pull. Accordingly, she did so, and the minute she took the tail in her hand, it curled round her wrist, and there she was, held fast. As I told you, the tail acted automatically, and whatever it took hold it held onto till the dwarf touched the spring that released it.

“Of course, as soon as the dwarf saw what was up, he tried to let go his hold of the woman’s hand, but the spring wouldn’t work, and the woman began to get frightened, and cried for help. Two or three men came to her assistance, and tried their level best to untwist the tail, but it was made of the best steel, and they couldn’t do anything with it. Then, seeing that the woman was half frightened to death, a man pulled out a knife and started in to cut the monkey’s tail off. He hadn’t more than turned the edge of his knife on the steel, and cut his own fingers when another man — a big fellow, who had something to do with the Society for Prevention of Cruelty, fetched him one under the ear that laid him out, remarking as he did so, in a quiet way, that there wasn’t going to be no cruelty to no animals while he was on hand.

“All this time the dwarf was fumbling away, trying to make the spring work, and so get his tail loose before anything serious should happen. It wasn’t long before it did happen. The big man who was opposed to cruelty to animals said that all that was needed to make the monkey listen to reason was firmness and gentleness, and that if any one would pull steadily on the tail the monkey would be glad to let the woman loose. Accordingly, he laid hold of the tail, and two or three other chaps laid hold of it, too, just to show how anxious they were to help the poor woman. A gentle pull didn’t have any effect on the monkey, except to haul him tight up against the bars, and the man who had been knocked down for trying to use his knife began to relieve his feelings by getting the big man by the collar, and trying to pull him backward. What with hanging onto the tail so as to keep himself on his feet, and what with being a little excited, the big man pulled harder than he meant to, and the men that were helping him pulled their heaviest.

“The long and short of it was that the tail, which had never been built to stand such a strain, gave way, and most of the public that were standing close to the cage went down on the floor in a heap.

“When the big man got up, waving the tail in the air, with its leather fastenings and buckles and such in plain sight, the dwarf knew that it was all up with the N’Shugie-Gumbo. In similar circumstances an audience generally cleans out the establishment, and that is what would probably have happened on this occasion, if it hadn’t been that a free fight was going on among the men that had been knocked over when the tail gave way, and they had no time to attend to serious things. I called in a couple of policemen and had the whole lot arrested for breach of the peace, and, it being by that time about the hour for closing, I induced everybody to leave by offering them their money back. You can bet I felt relieved when the last man had gone, for, if the crowd had undertook to clean out the place they would have killed the dwarf for certain.

“ ‘I don’t so much mind giving up the monkey business,’ said the dwarf to me that evening, ‘for I was beginning to get tired of it; but I do hate to quit without ever having got hold of a wig. I’ve had more than thirty bonnets, and fifteen spectacles, but I’ve never been able to grab any man’s wig, though I’ve come near it two or three times. Well, I suppose we can’t have everything here to please us. I’ve had a good time while it lasted, and I suppose I ought to be satisfied. But I should like to have stole just one wig.’

“He was the most intelligent ‘freak’ I ever knew, and that steel tail of his was a mighty smart invention; but I told him that, after Considering all things, I should expect him to stick to the legitimate, and should refuse to give my sanction to any more plans for deluding the public, seeing as they are nearly always failures in the long run.”

A gorilla romance

The doorkeeper threw himself into one of the large armchairs of the smoking room of the Palmer House, which, as every one knows, is the chief hotel of Chicago, and one of the objects of which no stranger can speak disrespectfully to a Chicago man and live. He wiped his brow with his enormous yellow silk handkerchief, and ordered the waiter to bring him some whiskey. As he was ordinarily a total abstainer, it was evident that something very unusual had happened to disturb the even current of the doorkeeper’s habits, and I asked him what was the matter.

“If you’d been up to my museum an hour ago, you wouldn’t have asked what was the matter. You’d have seen for yourself the biggest row I’ve struck since I’ve been running a dime museum in this town, and I’ve been here now going on five years.”

“How did it happen?” I asked.

“It didn’t happen. It was the natural consequence of my cussed soft heartedness. That’s what’s stood in my light ever since I went into business for myself. Never you do a kind action — that is, unless you’re a millionaire and don’t have to depend on your own exertions for a living. What’s that song the Sunday school children sing? — ‘Kind words can never die!’ That’s just what’s the matter with them. They keep alive, and keep a getting even with you all the rest of your life. Why, I’d have been a rich man twenty times over if I’d had sense enough to be a little less darned benevolent.

“About three weeks ago a chap from California — so he said — came to see me in my office, and wanted a situation as a gorilla. He was , ragged and thin, and said that he was starving. When I asked him if he’d had any experience as a gorilla, he was honest enough to say that he hadn’t, but he said he had been a conductor on a Chicago street car, and he calculated that the gorilla business would come middling easy to him. Well! I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, and then I knew that a good gorilla is one of the strongest attractions a dime museum can have. I hadn’t any gorilla, for the last one I had died of delirium tremens, and I was waiting till I could find one who was a blue ribbon man. I asked the man if he was a steady drinker, or only a periodical drinker, and he swore that he had never touched a drop of whiskey in his life, and had a medal at the pawnbroker’s that John B. Gough had hung around his neck with his own hands. I was fool enough to believe this, though I know as well as anybody else that a Californian who says he never drinks is only saving up his thirst till it gets good and strong, and then just you look out for him. I hired that fellow then and there, and had him measured for a suit of gorilla skins that very afternoon.

“He took to the business quite naturally, and as I had a good, comfortable cage made for him, he led a pretty easy life. He enjoyed pulling off women’s bonnets when they came too near his cage, and the other women who had the sense to keep outside of his reach said it was just too sweet for anything to see the solemn way in which the poor dear beast would sit and pull those vulgar, ridiculous bonnets to pieces. After the show closed, and the gorilla had got his skin off, and washed the paint off his face and hands, he would sit down with the other freaks and make himself generally popular, being in the main a good tempered chap, with a lot 01 good stories, and two or three pretty good songs.

“There was one of our company that didn’t like the gorilla, and nothing he could do would make her admit that there was any good in him. This was the combined female contortionist and strongest woman in the world. She was genuine, and corresponded in every particular to the small bills, which is more than you can rightly expect in any show. To see her standing on her head and balancing the dwarf on one foot and the living skeleton on the other, was a sight to draw tears from the eyes of any one that knows what real genius is. Then you should have seen her hold the fat woman in her teeth. She would stand on a raised platform, and after a belt was fastened round the fat woman’s waist, she would take it in her teeth and swing her clear of the floor. The fat woman’s weight was genuine, too, for she wore a lead corset to bring her up to seven hundred pounds, she being naturally plump and weighing a good one hundred and fifty without her pads and her corset. She was a good girl, too, was the strongest woman, and her whole soul was in her profession. She didn’t want to get married, nor any such nonsense, and she used to say that she had rather be able to balance the fat woman on her feet, she standing on her head at the time, than to be married to Russell Sage, and have him die the next day. That was what she was trying to work up to, you understand — the balancing of the fat woman on both feet — same as she balanced the dwarf and the living skeleton; and I believe that she would have fetched it in time. What she will do now nobody knows, and he won’t tell.

“The living skeleton had never seemed to care for anything but his meals, he being a most tremendous eater, like most of his sort. That’s the way living skeletons are educated. Feed them on nothing but meat, and keep feeding them about once in every three hours, and you’ll turn out as many living skeletons as the market can hold. He had been with me going on for seven years, and had never showed the least grain of interest in any woman; but his time had come at last. He fell in love with the strongest woman, and he had it mighty bad. ‘It’s all on account of that balancing act,’ he said to me. ‘The very first time I sat on the sole of her foot and she stood on her head, so calm and sweet and like a first class regular angel, I knew it was all up with me. I don’t care for my meals no more, compared with what I used to, and if I can’t win her love I know I shall grow fat and choke to death, like that genuine fat boy we had last year.’

“I tried to get at the strongest woman’s views about the skeleton, and I didn’t have much difficulty about it. She said he was a nice, quiet, gentlemanly person, and if she was a marrying woman she might think seriously about him.

“ ‘As it is,’ she said, ‘I am wedded to my profession, and I won’t marry any man, at least not while I am before the public. I’ll be a sister to him, if that’ll suit him, but he had better forget me and take care of himself. I’m very much afraid it is telling on him, and he is gaining flesh.’

“Now, the gorilla, being sweet on the strongest woman himself, and she hating him as the devil does soda water, as the saying is, grew sulky. He took to getting angry at what the public said about him, and when a man would say, ‘What a horrid, ugly beast he is, to be sure/ the gorilla would want to talk back at him, though, of course, he had sense enough not to do it. However, I began to get uneasy, for I was afraid that the gorilla would take to drink, and do something that would create a scandal, or that he would break out into language, and slang the public till they would lose confidence not only in him, but in all the rest of the show. The fat woman, who sat next to him at the table, was a good deal worried, too, for she was afraid of him, and, as she afterward told me, was always expecting to see him try to ease his mind on the living skeleton, of whom he was naturally jealous. The poor woman, who was as kind hearted a soul as ever lived, was so taken up with the affair that she could think of nothing else, and often she would forget to scream when a boy would stick a pin into her ankle, which, of course, led to doubts as to her genuineness.

“The gorilla was always saying aggravating things to the skeleton; which was contemptible, seeing as the skeleton was as weak as a cat and had nothing of the fighting man about him. When I overheard anything of the kind, I, of course, gave the gorilla my views on his conduct, and warned him that I would discharge him if he made trouble in my happy family; but for all that I saw the day was coming when he would be sure to break out, and I more than half made up my mind to discharge him without waiting for any outbreak. But there again my cussed benevolence stood in my way, and I couldn’t quite brine myself to discharge a really efficient gorilla, just because he didn’t happen to like the living skeleton. Well, the crisis was bound to come, as a crisis always does, except, of course, it has something to do with politics. This morning the gorilla went out early and bought a bottle of whiskey and smuggled it into his cage, where he hid it under the straw. He would go and take a hack at it every half-hour or so, and when the show opened he was about as full as he could hold.

“At first the public didn’t notice anything peculiar, and probably thought that the gorilla had been fed pretty well, and was in unusually good spirits. The fact was that he was fighting drunk, and was cussin’ the public to himself in a way that would have led to somebody’s getting insulted and drawing on him if he had been understood. By and by a fat, big, stupid looking politician came along, and, after standing a while in front of the gorilla’s cage, remarked to a friend that the gorilla was almost as ugly as a nigger, and he wondered he didn’t have a place on the republican general committee. The gorilla happened to be a democrat of the p’isonest kind, and to be compared to a nigger, and called a republican all at Once, was more than he could stand. He shook his fist through the bars of his cage at the man and said, ‘Look here! if you’re man enough to take off your coat, I’ll smash the ugly face off you with all the pleasure in life!’ The man was so much astonished to hear the gorilla speak that at first it took his breath away, but, being a fighter from ’way back, as an active politician has got to be, he said, after about a minute: ‘Come out of that cage, you dirty beast, and we’ll see who is the better mon.’ With that the gorilla threw away the stick he always carried, pretending that he needed it to help him stand upright, and opened the door of his cage and jumped down.

“I wasn’t there at the start, and they tell me that I missed one of the prettiest fights that Chicago ever saw. The politician kept his end up middling well, but the gorilla was too much for him, and in three rounds knocked him clean out. By that time the excitement was tremendous — the women were screaming and fainting and making for the door all at once, and the men were trying to get in the front of the ring, and betting on the gorilla or the politician, according as their best judgment dictated, and yelling with as much enthusiasm as if they were attending a political convention. When the gorilla had finished his man he asked if any other gentleman would like to step forward, but nobody seemed to want to take a hand, so the gorilla judged that the time had come for him to attend to his private interests, and get square with the living skeleton. He made straight for the platform where the freaks were sitting, and went for that skeleton as if there were no hereafter for either of them. After he had offered to knock the skeleton’s head off for two cents, and had his offer declined, he reached for him, but the fat woman gave a shriek, and waddling between them, fell on the gorilla and floored him. The crowd cheered, and for a minute the betting on the fat woman and the gorilla was about even, but he managed to get on his feet again, and, owing to the fat woman’s having torn a hole in her stocking during the struggle, her bran began to flow, and, before she could get to the dressing room, she was reduced to her natural size, and her reputation was gone forever.

“The coast being now clear, the gorilla grabbed the skeleton by the waistband and was going to heave him clean across the room, when the strongest woman walks up to him, and, without saying a word, gives him one in the right eye, straight from the shoulder. It knocked him off the platform, and when he pulled himself together and got on his legs again, he was the most astonished gorilla you ever dreamed of. However, seeing as he was fighting drunk, he wasn’t going to be contented with one flooring. He climbed on the platform again and went for the skeleton a second time, but the strongest woman was there before him. She took him by the collar of his skin and his right leg, and giving him a gentle swing, so as to get the heft of him, you understand, she hove him about thirty feet straight through the air. He brought up against the side of his cage, and when some gentlemen, desiring to see the thing out, picked him up and sponged him off, he said he had had enough. About half of his ribs, I should judge, was stove in, and he’s in the hospital this very minute.

“I arrived just as they were picking him up, and as soon as I knew how things stood I made the people a speech. I asked them if, as honest men and gentlemen, they could deny that they had had their full money’s worth; and they owned that they had. I said: ‘Gentlemen! there’s tricks in every trade, and I don’t pretend to say that my gorilla and my fat woman are not to a certain extent works of art. But tell me in what other show you ever saw such a heavenly fight, and such a magnificent display of the beauty, nobility and purity of woman?’

“Well, they were pretty middling sensible people, I will give them that much credit, and they agreed that they had no reason to be dissatisfied, and after talking the fight over for a while, and taking up a collection for the strongest woman, which panned out more than thirty dollars, they left, giving three cheers for the strongest woman and for me.

“I consider that I am well out of a bad scrape, but for all that my losses this day have been pretty heavy. I’ve lost my gorilla, and, what is worse, the public has lost confidence in gorillas, and I shan’t be able to exhibit another for at least a year. Then the fat woman’s reputation is gone, and she can never show again in Chicago until people have forgotten her and she has changed her name. Besides, I shall have to get a genuine fat woman to take her place, and they come high, there not being enough of them to supply the demand. Taking one thing with another, I calculate that this day’s work will cost me, in the course of the year, not less than three hundred dollars, not including the cost of buying the gorilla’s remains, if it comes to that, as it probably will. If ever you go into the show business, you take my advice and never have anything to do with an American gorilla, no matter what State he comes from. Get a good sober German. They make the best and the most reliable gorillas in the profession.”

A case of dual consciousness

“Of course,” said the doorkeeper, “we calculate, in the dime museum business, to deceive the public a little now and then, but as it is done for the amusement and instruction of the public, I don’t see as anyone has any call to complain. Suppose I do exhibit a ‘freak’ that isn’t quite genuine ! If it draws, it is because the public likes it, in which case the public ought to be satisfied. If it doesn’t draw, the public doesn’t pay out any money to see it, and naturally doesn’t feel that it is swindled. Now, I was swindled once, and pretty bad, too, by an artificial ‘freak,’ and it was me and not the public that suffered. If you want to hear about it I’ll tell you the whole story, though I shouldn’t like it to be known in the profession, for it don’t do any credit to me as a professional man.

“I was exhibiting in Boston a good many years ago, and I am free to say that I was losing money. Boston don’t seem to care for natural ‘freaks.’ It goes in for philosophical and philanthropic ‘freaks.’ I’ve nothing against that style of ‘freak’ myself, but I claim that a genuine giant, or a real fat woman, is just as improving, and a sight more interesting, than any philosopher or philanthropist that Boston ever produced.

“I don’t like to lose money any more than you do, and things were looking pretty blue for me, when one day a carriage drives up to my door and a chap sends in word that he wanted to see me on professional business. I told my man to show him in, and when I saw him I put him down for a rascal without waiting to hear him speak. He told me that he had just arrived from Europe with a two-headed girl, and that she was the biggest thing that any museum had ever offered to the public. He had her with him in the carriage, and I was the first manager that he had called to see since he landed.

“Now, I knew well enough that a two-headed girl is about the scarcest thing that a museum can get hold of. I never knew of but one specimen of the kind, and she was worth pretty near her weight in gold. How this fellow should have got hold of a second specimen without my ever having heard of her existence was more than I could understand, for I kept as bright a lookout for attractions all over the world as Barnum himself. However, I went out to the carriage and had a look at the girl. There she sat, wrapped up in a big shawl, and, as far as I could see, she was all right. Anyway, there were two heads above the edge of the shawl, and they were as pretty heads as you could find in any young ladies’ seminary. If the two-headed girl only. corresponded to the sample I saw in the carriage, she would be the biggest attraction that Boston or any other city had ever seen.

“Well! I went back to my office, and the fellow and I talked the thing over. He said the girl was a Laplander, and couldn’t speak a single word of any language except Laplandish. She was sixteen years old, and had never been out of her native village until he had accidentally seen her, and hired her for a five years’ tour of the world. So far he had not exhibited her anywhere, and he wanted her to make her debut in my show, so as to give her a respectable standing in the profession, from the start. His terms were a hundred dollars a week, and a benefit every six months, and he said that he should ask any other manager a hundred and twenty-five.

“I told him to bring in his girl where I could have a fair look at her, and then it would be time enough to talk about terms. He brought her in, and I noticed that she climbed down out of the carriage with considerable difficulty. The agent helped her into my office, where she sat down on the sofa, and smiled at me with both heads in a way that would have been dangerous if she had tried it on some managers that I know.

“ ‘There she is,’ said the agent. ‘The only genuine white two-headed girl the world has ever seen. Above the waist, where she is joined together, she is perfect; two distinct girls, and good looking ones, too. She’s only got one pair of legs, which prevents her from walking easy, but she is as strong and healthy as they make ’em, and there ain’t the least danger that she’ll die on your hands.’

“Then he spoke some gibberish,, which I supposed was Laplandish, to the girl, and she drew up the hem of her dress so as to show two nice little feet, and no more. The size of those feet ought to have awakened my suspicion, for they were the regulation Boston size, which is about three sizes smaller than the average European foot. But I was so anxious to find that she was genuine that I didn’t notice that there was anything wrong about her feet.

“‘What do you say?’ said the agent. ‘Isn’t she a first class attraction?’

“ ‘She’ll draw safe enough,’ said I, ‘provided she’s genuine. I don’t mean to say she ain’t, but I’ve got to be sure about it before we can do any business.’

“ ‘Oh! It’s easy enough to prove that she is genuine,’ cays the fellow. ‘I’ve got certificates from three of the leading physicians in Lapland, besides the affidavit of her father and mother and the parish priest. If they don’t satisfy you, nothing will, and I shall have to take her to another manager.’

“ ‘Show me the certificates !’ said I.

“Well! he produced them on the spot, and they seemed all right. Of course I couldn’t read a word of them, but they had a lot of sealing wax on them, which is always convincing, and had a genuine official look. I wanted the girl so bad that, perhaps, it led me to be a little careless for once in my life; so I said to the agent that I would give him twenty-five dollars a week and sign a contract with him for a year. We argued the matter for about an hour, and finally we came to an agreement on the basis of seventy-five dollars a week and three benefits a year. It was the steepest price I ever paid, but I was losing money at the rate of fifty dollars a week, and I was ready to take almost any chance of bringing up the business again. Besides, I knew that if the two-headed girl didn’t draw I should be ruined anyhow, and it didn’t matter what I might agree to pay, as there would be no money to pay it with. Whereas, if she did draw, as I expected she would, I could easily afford to pay seventy-five dollars a week for her. I always did go on the principle of dealing liberally with people, especially when it is clear that there is nothing to be lost by it.

“While the agent and I were trying to get the best of one another the two-headed girl sat with some of her arms around both her necks, and was that patient and sweet tempered in appearance that I began to hope that for once I had found a ‘freak’ that wouldn’t be perpetually quarreling. As I have told you, I presume, ‘freaks’ do nothing but quarrel and fall in love. I don’t wonder at their quarreling, seeing that they are shut up together day and night, and haven’t anything else to do; but it was a long time before I found out why they are constantly falling in love. It is because they didn’t get any exercise, except now and then a drive in a closed carriage.

“You never hear of a trapeze performer or a strong man falling in love; that’s because they work off their affections on their muscles. On the other hand, a fat woman, who never gets any exercise at all, is always in love, and generally two or three deep. Naturally, the more ‘freaks’ fall in love the more they quarrel, and there is hardly a day that I don’t have to smooth two or three of them down, or threaten to lock them up till they quit heaving candlesticks and language at one another.

“Well, I advertised my two-headed girl the next day, and when night came the house was packed. Ralph Waldo Emerson himself couldn’t have drawn better. The very best classes of Boston society came to see the two-headed girl, and more women with more spectacles and more false teeth came into the show than I had ever seen before in my whole professional experience. The men and women used to stand by the hour in front of the sofa where the two-headed girl sat and argue about her soul, which, considering that her soul wasn’t on exhibition, seemed to me a loss of time. They made out in some way that I don’t pretend to understand, that the girl had something to do with philosophy, and that her two heads proved something or other that Mr. Emerson used to teach.

“You’ve heard of Mr. Emerson, of course. He was what they called a philosopher, and drew better than any ‘freak’ or primer donner that ever visited Boston. I couldn’t see anything in him myself. I went to hear him lecture once, and it seemed to me that he wasn’t to be compared with Artemus Ward. However, that was none of my business, though at one time I did think of making him a handsome offer to join my combination.

“There wasn’t the least doubt about the success of the two-headed girl. In the very first week I took in two hundred and thirty dollars more than I had ever taken in in any one week in my life before. The museum was crowded day and night, and every mother in Boston brought her children and told them that the two-headed girl taught some great moral lesson, and that they ought to imitate her, or avoid imitating her, or some other rubbish of that general kind. I never pretend to understand such things myself. I don’t associate with ‘freaks’ to learn moral lessons from them. When I want moral lessons I’ll go to Sunday school and get ’em, instead of lowering myself to ask ‘freaks’ to give me lessons.

“The two-headed girl, as I have said in the beginning, was a Laplander, and couldn’t speak anything but Laplandish. She had been with me about a month when I was astonished, one night after the exhibition had closed, and the ‘freaks’ had sat down to their usual banquet of pickles and cider, to hear one of her heads say to the other:

“‘You say that again, miss, and I’ll tear your eyes out!’

“‘Halloa!’ says I, ‘thought neither of you could speak any English?’

“The girl blushed a double blush on all four cheeks, and said: ‘We’ve learned considerable since we came to America, but we never try to speak English because it ain’t professional — not in our case, at any rate.

“ ‘That’s all right,’ said I. ‘Speak what you like, only remember that I don’t allow no quarreling among my people.’

“The next day I made inquiries about the two-headed girl, and found out that both of her were in love with the same young man. He came to the show every day and always brought both of her flowers.

I found out afterward that he was a philosopher, and was studying what he called ‘The Psychological Character of Female Dual Consciousness as Exemplified in the Two-Headed Girl of Lapland.’ I remember this, because he wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly with that title, which would have been a first class advertisement of the girl if she hadn’t happened to have retired to private life when the article was published. He was a rather good looking young fellow, and both the heads of the girl considered that he was in love with them. Mary, which is what we used to call the right hand head, was sure that the young man was after her, and only gave flowers to Jane, who was the left hand head, in order not to give away the real state of his affections to the general public; while Jane was equally certain that it was she the young man was in love with, and that he considered the other head to be very much in the way.

‘The fat woman, who sat close to the two-headed girl on the stage, was really frightened at the way the two heads used to go on. She could hear them whispering to each other when the audience couldn’t hear anything said. Mary would put her cheek up against Jane’s and smile so sweetly that the audience would say, ‘How perfectly lovely,’ but all the time she would be saying, I’d like to bite your ugly ear off, miss!’ and then presently Jane would put her arm around Mary’s neck and whisper: ‘You mean, deceitful thing! Wait till we get to our room, and I’ll let you know!’ The fat woman, who was all the time reading dime novels, said she was afraid some awful tragedy was preparing, and that presently the place would be drowned in blood. She wasn’t altogether wrong, as you’ll see presently.

“One night, just after the banquet was over, and the ‘freaks’ had mostly gone to their rooms, we heard such a dismal shrieking from the two-headed girl’s room that we all rushed to the door. That is, when I say ‘all,’ I mean the giant and the living skeleton, who had been sitting up with me a little later than usual. I never allow nothing improper on the part of nobody in my show, and I set the example in such matters myself. So I told the giant and the skeleton that we would withdraw, while the strong woman burst the door open and see what was the matter.

“Accordingly we did so, and the strong woman set her shoulder against the door, and it just sort of melted away, as you might say. She told me that she found the two-headed girl having the liveliest kind of a fight with herself. She was lying on the floor, and the half of her which was uppermost, and which happened to be Mary, was laying into the other half and hauling out the hair and the hairpins by handfuls. The strong woman, wanting to check the effusion of hair, went to work to separate them, and succeeded altogether too well. In fact, when she got hold of Mary, and tried to pull her clear of Jane’s hair, the two girls came apart altogether. The strong woman, who, like the rest of us, had believed in the two-headed girl, was that frightened when she saw that she had pulled her clean apart that she, in turn, yelled for help.

“This time I had to lay aside my scruples and see for myself what was the matter. There sat the strong woman on the floor, holding half of the two-headed girl in her arms, and there lay the other half, two or three yards off, on the carpet, crying her level best, and cussin’ the rest of her in language which, if I am any judge of language, and I ought to be, was learned somewhere down by the wharves. When I saw that Jane was more frightened than hurt, I told her to go to bed, and told the strong woman to take Mary into her room for the night. Mary went peaceably, for when the strong woman got hold of anybody, male or female, they generally did as she said.

“The next day I called up the two-headed girl and told them that our contract was at an end. T will never,’ I said, ‘be a party to a fraud on the public, especially when it is sure to be found out, as this fraud of yours is. A committee of Boston surgeons was going to examine you this very day, and I, believing you to be genuine, was to offer them every facility. What I am offering now is a free passage for you both from here to New York, and don’t you ever let me hear of your trying to exhibit again, or I’ll come out and tell the truth about you.’

“That was my only attempt at exhibiting a two-headed girl. I ought not to, be hard on the girls, for they pulled me through a very tight place in my professional career; but at the same time they took me in, and, not being a part of the public, I don’t like to be took in. However, it all happened long ago, and I defy any ‘freak’ to play any sort of game on me again. If there is any. deceit to be practiced in my show, I conceive that I am the one to do it, and not the one to be practiced on.”

The mermaid

“What I need,” said the doorkeeper one evening, when he had seemed more than usually thoughtful, “is some brand new attraction. This hyer thing of running the same show year after year, with the same giant and dwarf and fat woman and such, doesn’t seem worthy of an enterprising Christian man.”

I thought you had tried novel attractions a good many times?” said I.

“So I have, but they never panned out well. I told you about several of them, and you could see for yourself that they were failures. You’ve got to deal honestly with the public if you want to succeed. Of course, when I say honestly, I mean it in a reasonable sort of way. If you take your honesty straight, it won’t work. You’ve got to mix it with a little intelligent enterprise before it can really be called the best policy.

“One of the best things that I ever tried in the line of novel attractions,” continued the doorkeeper, after a smoky pause, “was the Marquesas mermaid. She drew full houses day and night all the time I had her, which was about six weeks. I judged that she was worth to me all of two hundred and fifty dollars a week above her expenses while she lasted, but I had to pay her in damages more than she ever brought me. Probably it served me right for deceiving the public more than the public ought to be deceived, but that isn’t any consolation to me. I’m willing to stand the loss of a fair amount of money, and I don’t mind being pitched into, to a moderate extent, by my conscience; but to lose your money and to have your conscience pegging away at you at the same time is a little too much, and that’s what happened to me in this mermaid affair.

“She was brought to me by a stranger one day. I knew him by reputation, and his reputation was pretty bad, but I had never dealt with him before. I was exhibiting in New York at the time, and was doing a fair to middling business, though it showed signs of falling off owing to the presidential campaign, which was then in progress. If ever you go into the show business you’ll wish you were living under a king. This hyer electing of a president takes the public’s attention away from all freaks excepting political ones, and people will walk ten miles to look at a presidential nominee sooner than walk around the corner to see a first class fat woman. I believed in a republic as much as anybody before I went into the show business, but there is no denying the fact that no museum of freaks can stand the active competition of American politics.

“Well, to go back to this hyer mermaid. I was sitting in my office one day when this agent comes to me and says:

“ ‘Colonel, if you want an attraction that will knock all competition sky high, including the Eyetalian opera and the Woman’s Temperance Society, I’ve got it for you.’

“‘What is it?’ said I. ‘Not that I’m in need of any attraction, considering that I’m turning about a thousand people away every day; but, for all that, I’m always ready to consider any fair offer. That is, providing it ain’t no two headed girl. One head apiece is all any freak that gets into my collection is allowed to have.’

“You see,” added the doorkeeper, “I’d been sold once, and put in a very bad position, by a two headed girl, and I wasn’t going to be caught in that way a second time.

“ ‘It’s a genuwine South Sea mermaid,’ said the agent, ‘and a mighty handsome one, too.’

“ ‘Then we can’t trade,’ said I. ‘I’ve got one of your South Sea mermaids in one of my packing boxes, and I’ll give her to you if you’ll carry her away. A mermaid won’t draw nowadays any more than a stuffed cat.’

“ ‘But,’ says the man, ‘this is none of your regular old style mermaids, made out of a fish and a monkey. I tell you she’s a genuwine mermaid, what sings and swims, and combs her hair, and talks. Mighty intelligent she is, too. She can speak French just as well as you or me speaks American, though, of course, she don’t speak it in public. If you’ll let me bring her here some morning and give you a private exhibition, you’ll admit that she is something altogether new in the mermaid line.’ “The next morning, when there was nobody in the museum except me, a van drove up, and a big packing box mounted on wheels was brought in. The agent was with it, and when he had sent away the men that brought the box, he opened it. There was a big glass tank inside of it, and inside of the tank was a very handsome young woman, got up as a mermaid. And she was mighty well got up, too. The upper part of her was covered with India rubber life preservers, fitted to her shape, and from the waist down she was covered with a blue and gold fish skin that ended in a practicable tail worked by her feet. What, with the life preservers, and the ballast that was enclosed in the fish skin, she was constructed so as to swim in the tank, with her head and arms and shoulders clear of the water, and with her back hair, which was about four feet long and genuine so far as I know, floating out behind her.

“The agent filled up the tank with water, and the mermaid gave a performance, although she grumbled a little at having to do it in cold water. She would swim around the tank singing to herself in some sort of gibberish that the agent said was the Marquesas language. Then she would sit on an artificial rock in the middle of the tank and comb her hair, and cuss a little to herself, as I afterwards found out, because the hair, being wet, would get in more or less of a tangle. Then she would keep on sitting on the rock while she would look at herself in a hand mirror, and sigh as if she thought she was beginning to grow gray and wrinkled, which she wasn’t. Presently she would start as if she saw some particular young man in the audience, and with a wild shriek she would dive in the tank and swim around under water for about ten minutes, as it seemed to me, though it was really only about four minutes. You see, she had begun her career as a champion woman fish, and as such was accustomed to eat and smoke under the water. This mermaid business was only an expansion, as you might say, of her original profession.

“‘What do you say to that?’ asked the agent when the exhibition was over and the mermaid had gone into my private office to get dry and to put on her citizen’s dress.

“Of course I told him that I didn’t think much of it, but that I was willing to give the girl an engagement, provided she would take a nominal salary. From that we argued the thing for pretty near an hour, I being determined that such a first class attraction shouldn’t escape me, and he being bound to stick me for a salary that was about equal to that of an Eyetalian primer donner. We came to an agreement after a while, and all three went to dinner together. I will say that, for a professional, the Marquesas mermaid was the most ladylike woman I have ever met, barring that she would drink more beer and whiskey than, to my mind, a regular private lady would drink. But she said she had to do something to keep her blood circulating, and. stave off the rheumatism, which was only reasonable, considering that she spent from three to four hours daily in her tank.

“Well! That mermaid was the very biggest success I ever had, and I’ve had a good many since I first went into the business, some thirty-seven years ago. About two-thirds of the people who came to see her believed the mermaid yam, and the other third could not help admiring the splendid way in which she played her part, especially her performances under water. She was a remarkably well behaved girl, too. I am sorry to say that she drank altogether too much, but she was always sober until after her day’s work was done; and if she did drink too much in her own bedroom, she never made a row and broke things, as a fat woman I once had (who took to drink in consequence of a disappointment in love) was in the habit of doing.

“But there was one person who hated the girl, and that was the beautiful Circassian girl. From the day the mermaid came into the show the Circassian might as well have been out of it altogether, so far as attracting any attention went. Naturally she was jealous, as were all the other freaks, though they did not show it so openly. The thing that made the Circassian girl the maddest was that the giant, who had been paying her attention for some months, went clean over to the mermaid, and hadn’t eyes in his head for any other girl.

“Now, the Circassian, who was a Spanish girl from Cuba, and about as bad tempered as they make ’em, combined with the dwarf, who was another bad lot, and got up a scheme for getting square with the mermaid. They worked it in this way: The girl was accustomed to stay in her tank for an hour and a half at each performance, and, of course, we had two performances a day. Naturally the water, no matter how warm it might be at the start, would grow cold in the course of an hour and a half, and, as it was late in the fall, and the weather was unseasonably cold, the mermaid could not stand such a change of temperature. So she had the tank supplied with warm water that was heated in a boiler in another room, and led into the tank by a pipe. This kept the tank at an even temperature — for the warm water was continually flowing into it, while the overflow of cooler water ran off through the escape pipe. She always saw for herself that the water in the boiler was of the right temperature before her performance began, and took care that the fire was brisk enough to keep the water properly heated without overheating it.

“One afternoon the dwarf pretended that he had the rheumatism so bad that he could not show, and so I gave him a day off. What does he do but hide himself in the room where the boiler was kept, and, after the mermaid had seen that the fire was all right, and had gone to her room to put on her mermaid clothes, he stirs up the fire, pours a lot of petroleum into the coal scuttle, and then fills up the furnace as full as it would hold. After which he sneaked out, and went to bed, pretending that he had been there all day.

“The mermaid went into her tank at two-thirty as usual, and, as I was standing close to her at the time, I noticed that she looked a little dissatisfied, the reason being, as I afterward found out, that she thought the water was too hot to be quite comfortable. She went through with the first part of her program as usual; combing her hair, and singing in the mermaid language, and swimming round the tank with her head and shoulders out of water, but all the time that look of dissatisfaction was growing and spreading, as you might say. Then she came on to the second part of the program, in which she performed her submarine feats, and no sooner had she sunk gracefully to the bottom of the tank, than she came up to the surface again, with the unhappiest expression I ever saw on a woman’s face. She supported herself by holding on to the edge of the tank, and kept as much of herself out of the water as she could, and I could see from the way that she looked at me that she was dying to say something to me. It wouldn’t do, however, for her to let the public suppose that she knew how to speak any human language, so I just smiled at her to encourage her, never thinking what the real matter was.

“You see, the dwarf had managed the fire so that the water was by this time pretty near up to the boiling point, and kept growing hotter every minute. The girl stood it like a hero, and the perspiration stood out all over her forehead. She kept moving herself around in the tank, trying to see if she could strike a cooler section of the water, but it was no use. The time came pretty soon when she had to take her choice between being boiled and giving herself away, and, naturally, she chose the latter. At first she tried to get out of the tank without opening her lips, but when she had swung herself up to the rim of the tank, and was hanging over it, the tank began to tip up, and presently the whole thing went over with a crash and pretty near drowned the people that were standing under it.

“The mermaid, when she saw what was going to happen, called out, ‘Save me!’ as loud as she could, and when she was picked up, with her fish skin extension burst open, and her feet showing through it, she knew the game was up, and she thought she might as well relieve her feelings with language. She stood up and made a speech to the public, saying that some scoundrel had tried to boil her, and threatening to kill him the first minute she could find him.

“I can overlook a good deal that people, and especially women, may say when they are excited, but the language the mermaid used was really too much, and the public wouldn’t stand it. As soon as they got over their first surprise they felt that they had been swindled, and they said so. It was a tough job for me to get the mermaid away, and to get rid of the people. Of course, I had to give them their money back, but they said things about me that were very discouraging to a man whose living depends on the confidence that the public has in his honesty. That affair broke up my New York season, for I didn’t dare to face the public again, and I just shut up shop and moved my company on to Philadelphia the next day.

“How did I find out that the dwarf and the Circassian girl had a hand in it? Why, because they naturally couldn’t help bragging about it. However, I never said anything to them about it. What was the use? ‘Let bad enough alone’ is my motto. But I can tell you I kept a sharp eye on the dwarf after that, and cured his rheumatism for him. The next time he came to me for a half holiday on account of rheumatism, I just said: ‘You get into a tank of boiling water, and your rheumatism won’t trouble you any more.’ He knew what I was referring to, and he never said rheumatism to me again.”

Major microbe

“I’ve been in the show business now going on for forty-three years,” said the doorkeeper, “and I haven’t yet found a dwarf with human feelings. I can’t understand why it is, but there ain’t the least manner of doubt that a dwarf is the meanest object in creation. Take General Bacillus, the dwarf I have with me now. He is well made, for a dwarf, and when he does his poses plastic, such as ‘Ajax Defying the Lightning,’ or ‘Samson Carrying off Delilah by the Hair,’ and all the rest of those Scripture tablows, he is as pretty as a picture, provided, of course, you don’t get too near him. He is healthy, and has a good appetite, and he draws a good salary, and has no one except himself to look after. And yet that dwarf ain’t happy! On the contrary, he is the most discontented, cantankerous, malicious little wretch that was ever admitted into a moral family show. And he ain’t much worse than an ordinary dwarf. Now, the other freaks, as a rule, are contented so long as they draw well and don’t fall in love.

“The living skeleton knows that he can’t expect to live long — most of them die at about thirty-five — but, for all that, he is happy and contented. ‘A short life and a merry one is what I goes in for,’ he often says to me, and he seems to think that his life is a merry one, though I can’t myself see where the merriment comes in. So with all the rest of my people. They all seem to enjoy themselves except the dwarf. Mv own belief is that the organ of happiness has got to be pretty big to get its work in, and that there ain’t room in a dwarfs head for it to work.

“I had a dwarf with me once — Major Microbe is what we called him on the bills, where he was advertised as the ‘Smallest Man in the World,’ which, of course, he wasn’t; but, then, every dwarf is always advertised that way. It’s a custom of the profession, and we don’t consider it to be lying, any more than a president considers the tough statements lying that he makes in his annual message. A showman and a politician must be allowed a little liberty of statement, or they couldn’t carry on their business. Well, as I was saying, this hyer Major Microbe was in my show a matter of ten years ago, when we were in Cincinnati, and he was about as vicious as they make them. The giant, who was a good seven-footer, working up to seven and a half feet, as an engineer might say, with the help of his boots and helmet, was the exact opposite of the dwarf in disposition. He was altogether too good tempered, for he was always trying to play practical jokes on the other freaks. He did this without any notion of annoying them, but it was injudicious; he being, like all other giants, weak and brittle.

“What do I mean by brittle? Why, I mean brittle, and nothing else. It’s a good United States word, I reckon. This hyer giant’s bones weren’t made of the proper materials, and they were always liable to break. He had to take the greatest care of himself, and to avoid arguing on politics or religion or anything like that, for a kick on the shins would be sure to break one of his legs, which would lay him on the shelf for a couple of months. As for his arms, he was forever breaking one or two of them, but that didn’t so much matter, for he could go on the stage with his arm in splints and a sling, and the public always supposed that he was representing a heroic soldier who had just returned from the battlefield.

“One day the giant put up a job on the dwarf that afterwards got them both into serious trouble. The giant was loafing around the place after dinner, and he found the dwarf asleep on a bench. What does he do but cover him up with a rug and then go off in search of the fat woman, who was a sure enough fat woman, and weighed in private life four hundred and nineteen pounds. The giant was popular with the sex, and the fat woman was glad to accept his invitation to come with him and listen to a scheme that he pretended to have for increasing the attractions of fat women. He led her up to where the dwarf was asleep on the bench and invited her to sit down, saying that he had arranged a cushion for her to make her comfortable. Of course she sat down, and sat down pretty solid, too, directly on the dwarf. The dwarf yelled as if he had room for the voice of two full grown men, and the fat woman, as soon as she felt something squirming under her, thought that one of the boa constrictors had got loose, and that she had sat down on it. So, naturally, she fainted away. I came running in with one of my men as soon as I heard the outcries, and, after a while, we managed to pry up the fat woman with a couple of cart rungs and get the dwarf out from under her, after which she came to in due time and got over her fright. But the dwarf was a good deal flattened out by the pressure, and I was afraid at first that his ribs had been stove in. It turned out in the end that he was not seriously injured; but he was in the worst rage against the giant that you can imagine, and would have killed him then and there if he had been able to do it.

“I knew well enough that in course of time the dwarf would get square with the giant, no matter how long it might take and how much it might cost. He was as revengeful as a Red Indian. I warned the giant that he must keep a sharp lookout, or the dwarf would do him a mischief; but he said ‘he calculated he was big enough to take care of himself, and that he wasn’t afraid of no two foot dwarf that ever breathed.’ Of course, this sounded brave, but my own belief is that the giant was pretty badly frightened. I noticed that he never allowed himself to be alone with the dwarf, and was always careful to mind where he stepped, so as not to get tripped up by strings stretched across the path, or anything of that sort. The dwarf pretended that he had forgotten the whole business, and was as friendly with the giant as he had ever been; but I knew him well enough to know that he never forgot anything, and was only waiting for a chance.

“Pretty soon little accidents began to happen to the giant. One day he would find that his helmet, which was made of pasteboard, had fallen into a tub of water, and gone to everlasting jelly. This would oblige him to show himself bareheaded, which took off several inches from his professional height. Another day his boots would be in the tub, and he wouldn’t be able to get them on. I’ve seen him go on the stage in a general’s uniform, with carpet slippers and no hat, which every one knew must be contrary to the regulations of the Arabian army, in which he was supposed to hold his commission.

“One night his bedstead broke down under him, and he came very near breaking a leg or so. In the morning he found out that some one had sawed a leg of the bedstead nearly all the way through, and, of course, he knew that the dwarf had done it. But you couldn’t prove anything against the dwarf. He would always swear that he never had any hand in the accidents, and there was never any evidence against him that anybody could get hold of. I didn’t mind what games he played on the giant as long as the giant wasn’t made to break anything that would lay him on the shelf, and I told the dwarf that I was the last man to interfere with any man’s innocent amusements, but that in case the giant happened to break a leg, I should go out of the giant and dwarf business at once. But that didn’t scare him a particle. He knew that he was worth his salary in any dime museum in America, and, more than that, he had money enough laid up in the bank to live on, assuming, of course, that he could draw it out before the cashier should bolt to Canada with it. So he was as independent as you please, and told me that if I chose to hold him responsible for other people’s legs he couldn’t help it, and had nothing to say about it.

“At that time I had a female Samson. She wasn’t the combined female contortionist and strongest woman in the world that is in my show at present, but she was in about the same line of business. These strong women are all genuine, you understand. You can embellish them a little on handbills, and you can announce that the cannon that the strong woman fires from her shoulder weighs a hundred or two pounds more than it actually weighs; but, unless a strong woman is really strong and no mistake, she might as well try to pass herself off as a living skeleton or a two headed girl at once. The fact is, the great majority of freaks are genuine, and the business is a thoroughly honest one at bottom. Why, if you told the. exact truth in the handbills about every freak in my show, barring the tattooed girl and the wild man, they would still constitute a good drawing attraction in any intelligent community.

‘This female Samson was a good sort of woman in her way, though she was a little rough and a bit what you might call masculine in her ways. She didn’t like the dwarf, and he didn’t like her.

“The freaks were all at supper one night when the dwarf said something insulting to the female Samson. He sat right opposite to her, and she just reached across the table and pulled him over to her by his collar. Then she stretched him across her lap and laid into him with her slipper till he howled as if he was a small boy who had gone in swimming on Sunday and his mother had just found it out. It wasn’t so much the slipper that hurt him, though the female Samson put all her muscle into the operation, but it was the disgrace of the thing; and when you remember that the dwarf was forty-two years old, you can understand that he felt that the woman had taken a liberty with him. However, the next day he seemed to have forgotten all about it, and when the giant reminded him of the circumstance, which he did every little while, the dwarf would grin and say that we must let the women do what they liked, for they were a superior sort of being.

“One of the female Samson’s best feats was done in company, with the dwarf and the giant. She had a horizontal bar fixed on the stage, about ten feet above the floor. On this bar she used to swing head downwards, just hooking her knees around it, as all the trapeze artists do. It looks sort of uncomfortable, but it is nothing when you are used to it. I had a trapeze chap once who would often go to sleep that way in hot weather. He said that all the blood in his body went into his head, and that made him feel sleepy, while it cooled off his body and legs. There’s no accounting for tastes, but as for me, give me a good bed where I can stretch out, and I’ll never ask to sleep on a trapeze bar.

“As I was saying, the female Samson would swing on this bar, and then she would take the dwarf’s belt in her teeth and hold him in that way for five minutes. There was a swivel in the belt, so that the dwarf would spin round while she was holding him, which he didn’t like much, but which pleased the public. After she had swung the dwarf she would do the same act with the giant. She had to be very careful not to drop the giant, for he was terribly afraid of breaking a leg, being, as I have said, particularly brittle; but she always said that he was as safe in her teeth as he would be if he was lying in his bed.

“It must have been about a fortnight after the dwarf was sat on by the fat woman, and a week or more after he had been corrected in public by the female Samson, that we had an unusually large evening audience, and everybody was in excellent spirits. The female Samson had swung the dwarf in her teeth, and after she had let go of him he had climbed up on a chair just behind her, and stood with his arms stretched out over her and the giant as if he was saying ‘Bless you, my children,’ which was a regular part of the act, and never failed to bring him a round of applause, and induce people to say, ‘What a jolly little chap that dwarf is!’ When the female Samson had got a good grip of the giant’s belt, and had raised him about five feet from the floor, the dwarf leaned a little bit forward and ran a pin into the female Samson’s ankle, or thereabouts. Nobody saw him do it, but it was easy to prove it on him afterwards, for he dropped the pin on the floor when he had finally got through with it, and everybody recognized it as one of his scarf pins.

“The woman would naturally have shrieked when she felt the pin, but she had her mouth full of the giant, and she couldn’t do more than mumble a little in a half-smothered sort of way. The dwarf paid no attention to that, but gave her another eye opener with the pin. It went in about an inch, judging from what the female Samson said when she described her sufferings, and it must have hurt her pretty bad; but she was full of pluck and bound to carry out her performance to the end. She stood three or four more prods, and then, not being able to stand it any longer without expressing her feelings in some way, she unhooked one leg and fetched the dwarf a kick on the side of the head that reminded him that it was about time for him to get into his own room and lock the door, and convinced him that there ain’t a bit of exaggeration in the tough stories that they tell about the kicking powers of an army mule. The kick sent the dwarf clean across the platform, and the people, not understanding the situation, began to cry ‘Shame.’ Whether this flurried the female Samson or not, or whether she lost her balance entirely on account of having um hooked one leg, I don’t know. What I do know is that she slipped off the bar, and she and the giant struck the floor with a crash that would have broken planks, if it had not been that the platform was built expressly to stand the strain of the fat woman.

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had just dropped the giant, and hung on to the bar herself. In that case he would probably have broken his left leg and arm and collar bone, just as he did break them, but his ribs would have been all right. As it was, the female Samson’s head came down just in the center of him, and stove in about three-fourths of his ribs. She wasn’t hurt at all, for, being a woman, and falling on her head, there was nothing for her to break, and the giant was so soft that falling on him didn’t even give her a headache. When some volunteers from the audience had picked up the giant and put him on a stretcher and carried him to the hospital, where the doctors did their best to mend him, the female Sampson had a chance to explain, and the finding of a long scarf pin on the platform, just under the bar, was evidence that she had told the truth, and corroborated the red stain on her stocking.

“It took four men and a policeman to hold her, and get her locked up in her room, she was that set on tearing the dwarf into small pieces, and she’d have done it, too, if she could have got at him. He had sense enough to see the situation, and to discharge himself without waiting for me to discharge him. He ran away in the course of the night, and I never saw him again/ I don’t think he ever went into; another dime museum, and I have heard that he got a situation as inspector of gas meters, which is very probable, considering what a malicious little rascal he was. Well, we have to deal with all sorts of people in our business, and I suppose it’s the same with you, though you haven’t mentioned what your business is. But you take my advice and steer clear of dwarfs. There ain’t a man living that can do anything with them except with a club, and no man likes to take a club to anything as small as a dwarf.”

Table of Contents

1. A tricycle made for two (1894)

2. Antonio’s Englishman (1894)

3. Hopkin’s safe (1894)

4. A ghost train (1895)

5. A very satisfactory fog (1895)

6. Professor van Wagener’s eye (1895)

7. The professor’s jump (1895)

8. A sleeping car tragedy (1896)

9. Foote’s catorium (1896)

10. The development of Furlani (1896)

11. Van Wagener’s flying cat (1896)

12. The American and Brescia (1904)

13. The cats of Piacenza (1906)

14. Psmith of Pavia (1907)

15. Monty’s friend (1921)

16. Domestic explosives and other sixth column fancies (1877)

1. Domestic explosives

2. Refuting Moses

3. A profitable fork

4. Vulcan

5. Underground classics

6. A converted philosopher

7. Forged fossils

8. The theoretical barber

9. A curious disease

10. Mrs. Arnold’s rig

11. A new point for Darwinians

12. The early American giant

13. A sad case

14. An inconsiderate gift

15. Pockets

16. The Kentucky meteors

17. Glass eyes

18. Mr. Long

19. The road to the Pole

20. Fish out of place

21. The decay of burglary

22. The kidnapped Klamath

23. The coming man

24. Spiritual candy

25. Two recent inventions

26. Raining cats

27. Tennessee pygmies

28. A new company

29. The achromatic small-boy

30. Sioux servants

31. Male girls

32. A growing vice

33. Ghost catching

34. Superfluous snakes

35. A new society

36. A mystery solved

37. The Hat Problem

38. The uses of dynamite

39. A model city

40. A benevolent ghost

41. Dr. Schliemann

42. The circulation of needles

43. The young man of Cheyenne

44. A remonstrance

45. The smoking infant

46. A national want

47. The happy yachtsman

48. The boy of Oshkosh

49. Too much prudence

50. The coming girl

51. An unnecessary invention

52. A beneficent invention

53. Smiting the heathen

54. Thanksgiving pie

55. Star traps

56. Solved at last

57. Boyton’s mistakes

58. Ghostly malignity

59. Found at last

60. Systematic villainy

61. The Greek Christmas

62. Bottled books

63. A steam horse

64. A new weapon

65. The Thomsonian theory

66. A western tragedy

67. A new branch of study

68. Going to the ant

69. Postal cats

70. Psammetichus and Taine

71. Food and poison

72. Surgical engineering

73. The Boston archeologists

74. The missing link

75. A warning to brides

76. The spirophore

77. Solar insecurity

78. Wandering houses

79. Ice water

80. Spiritual sport

81. The conflict of rods

82. Ivorine

83. Still another shower

84. The subtle tack hammer

85. Fossil forgeries

86. Taming the lamp chimney

87. The color cure

88. The emancipated costume

89. A new attraction for Sunday schools

90. Arms and the chair

91. Was it a coincidence

92. The spread of respectability

93. Social bandits

94. Going to the dogs

95. Enoch Arden

96. Riflewomen

97. Butter culture

98. The mosquito hypothesis

99. Justice to stoves

100. Inexpensive girls

101. Women in the pulpit

102. James Henry

103. Mounted missionaries

104. The buzz saw

105. The two Browns

106. The rival motors

107. The wheelbarrow in politics

108. Royal quarrels

109. The express evil

110. Porcine prodigies

111. Crushed truth

112. Dye and diet

113. A benevolent scheme

114. A new plea

115. Another distressing case

116. The recent calamity

117. Quackery and science

118. The boy of Dundee

119. The mule abroad

17. Shooting stars (1878)

1. Shooting stars

2. The Tombigbee incident

3. A Spanish smuggler

4. Christmas at Windsor castle

5. Serenading in St. Louis

6. A patented child

7. Righteous retribution

8. Practice among the Piutes

9. Gibberish

10. Carrie’s comedy

11. A Chicago idyl

12. Scientific mendacity

13. The belle of Vallejo

14. The slipper report

15. Popular electricity

16. Long Island hunting

17. Mr. Simpkins’ downfall

18. The six button principle

19. A remedy for brass instruments

20. Snoring

21. The baffled boy

22. Carthaginian pirates

23. Too much cabbage

24. Very popular science

25. A sleighing tragedy

26. The managing young man

27. Sedentary abilities

28. Cat fishing

29. A mournful incident

30. Dogs and ghosts

31. Red hair

32. The periodicity of stories

33. The latest case of hazing

18. Told by the Colonel (1893)

1. An ornithological romance

2. Jewseppy

3. That little Frenchman

4. Thompson’s tombstone

5. A union meeting

6. A clerical romance

7. A mystery

8. My brother Elijah

9. The St. Bernard myth

10. A matrimonial romance

11. Hoskins’ pets

12. The cat’s revenge

13. Silver plated

19. Among the freaks (1902)

1. The wild man of Borneo

2. How the fat woman eloped

3. The N’Shugie-Gumbo

4. A gorilla romance

5. A case of dual consciousness

6. The mermaid

7. Major microbe