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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce,
+Volume 8, by Ambrose Bierce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8
+       Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales
+
+Author: Ambrose Bierce
+
+Release Date: April 11, 2005 [EBook #15599]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Hollander, Govert Schipper and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Title Page]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+                THE COLLECTED
+
+                  WORKS OF
+
+               AMBROSE BIERCE
+
+
+
+                 VOLUME VIII
+
+
+
+              NEGLIGIBLE TALES
+
+              ON WITH THE DANCE
+
+                  EPIGRAMS
+
+
+
+                  NEW YORK
+
+             GORDIAN PRESS, INC.
+
+                    1966
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+          Originally Published 1911
+
+               Reprinted 1966
+
+
+
+                Published by
+
+             GORDIAN PRESS, INC.
+
+
+
+Library of Congress Card Catalog No 66-14638
+
+
+
+          Printed in the U.S.A. by
+
+            EDWARD BROTHERS INC.
+
+             Ann Arbor, Michigan
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+NEGLIGIBLE TALES
+  A BOTTOMLESS GRAVE                         9
+  JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER-GENERAL           23
+  THE WIDOWER TURMORE                       41
+  THE CITY OF THE GONE AWAY                 52
+  THE MAJOR'S TALE                          63
+  CURRIED COW                               76
+  A REVOLT OF THE GODS                      89
+  THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO                     95
+  THE RACE AT LEFT BOWER                   104
+  THE FAILURE OF HOPE & WANDEL             110
+  PERRY CHUMLY'S ECLIPSE                   115
+  A PROVIDENTIAL INTIMATION                122
+  MR. SWIDDLER'S FLIP-FLAP                 131
+  THE LITTLE STORY                         138
+
+THE PARENTICIDE CLUB
+  MY FAVORITE MURDER                       147
+  OIL OF DOG                               163
+  AN IMPERFECT CONFLAGRATION               171
+  THE HYPNOTIST                            177
+
+THE FOURTH ESTATE
+  MR. MASTHEAD, JOURNALIST                 187
+  WHY I AM NOT EDITING "THE STINGER"       195
+  CORRUPTING THE PRESS                     204
+  "THE BUBBLE REPUTATION"                  211
+
+THE OCEAN WAVE
+  A SHIPWRECKOLLECTION                     219
+  THE CAPTAIN OF "THE CAMEL"               226
+  THE MAN OVERBOARD                        239
+  A CARGO OF CAT                           258
+
+"ON WITH THE DANCE!" A REVIEW
+  THE PRUDE IN LETTERS AND LIFE            267
+  THE BEATING OF THE BLOOD                 270
+  THERE ARE CORNS IN EGYPT                 276
+  A REEF IN THE GABARDINE                  282
+  ENTER A TROUPE OF ANCIENTS, DANCING      285
+  CAIRO REVISITED                          296
+  JAPAN WEAR AND BOMBAY DUCKS              299
+  IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CRUCIBLE            311
+  COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE                  316
+  THEY ALL DANCE                           321
+  LUST, QUOTH'A                            330
+  OUR GRANDMOTHERS' LEGS                   332
+
+EPIGRAMS                                   343
+
+
+
+
+NEGLIGIBLE TALES
+
+
+
+
+
+A BOTTOMLESS GRAVE
+
+
+My name is John Brenwalter. My father, a drunkard, had a patent for an
+invention, for making coffee-berries out of clay; but he was an honest
+man and would not himself engage in the manufacture. He was, therefore,
+only moderately wealthy, his royalties from his really valuable
+invention bringing him hardly enough to pay his expenses of litigation
+with rogues guilty of infringement. So I lacked many advantages enjoyed
+by the children of unscrupulous and dishonorable parents, and had it not
+been for a noble and devoted mother, who neglected all my brothers and
+sisters and personally supervised my education, should have grown up in
+ignorance and been compelled to teach school. To be the favorite child
+of a good woman is better than gold.
+
+When I was nineteen years of age my father had the misfortune to die. He
+had always had perfect health, and his death, which occurred at the
+dinner table without a moment's warning, surprised no one more than
+himself. He had that very morning been notified that a patent had been
+granted him for a device to burst open safes by hydraulic pressure,
+without noise. The Commissioner of Patents had pronounced it the most
+ingenious, effective and generally meritorious invention that had ever
+been submitted to him, and my father had naturally looked forward to an
+old age of prosperity and honor. His sudden death was, therefore, a deep
+disappointment to him; but my mother, whose piety and resignation to the
+will of Heaven were conspicuous virtues of her character, was apparently
+less affected. At the close of the meal, when my poor father's body had
+been removed from the floor, she called us all into an adjoining room
+and addressed us as follows:
+
+"My children, the uncommon occurrence that you have just witnessed is
+one of the most disagreeable incidents in a good man's life, and one in
+which I take little pleasure, I assure you. I beg you to believe that I
+had no hand in bringing it about. Of course," she added, after a pause,
+during which her eyes were cast down in deep thought, "of course it is
+better that he is dead."
+
+She uttered this with so evident a sense of its obviousness as a
+self-evident truth that none of us had the courage to brave her surprise
+by asking an explanation. My mother's air of surprise when any of us
+went wrong in any way was very terrible to us. One day, when in a fit of
+peevish temper, I had taken the liberty to cut off the baby's ear, her
+simple words, "John, you surprise me!" appeared to me so sharp a reproof
+that after a sleepless night I went to her in tears, and throwing myself
+at her feet, exclaimed: "Mother, forgive me for surprising you." So now
+we all--including the one-eared baby--felt that it would keep matters
+smoother to accept without question the statement that it was better,
+somehow, for our dear father to be dead. My mother continued:
+
+"I must tell you, my children, that in a case of sudden and mysterious
+death the law requires the Coroner to come and cut the body into pieces
+and submit them to a number of men who, having inspected them, pronounce
+the person dead. For this the Coroner gets a large sum of money. I wish
+to avoid that painful formality in this instance; it is one which never
+had the approval of--of the remains. John"--here my mother turned her
+angel face to me-"you are an educated lad, and very discreet. You have
+now an opportunity to show your gratitude for all the sacrifices that
+your education has entailed upon the rest of us. John, go and remove the
+Coroner."
+
+Inexpressibly delighted by this proof of my mother's confidence, and by
+the chance to distinguish myself by an act that squared with my natural
+disposition, I knelt before her, carried her hand to my lips and bathed
+it with tears of sensibility. Before five o'clock that afternoon I had
+removed the Coroner.
+
+I was immediately arrested and thrown into jail, where I passed a most
+uncomfortable night, being unable to sleep because of the profanity of
+my fellow-prisoners, two clergymen, whose theological training had given
+them a fertility of impious ideas and a command of blasphemous language
+altogether unparalleled. But along toward morning the jailer, who,
+sleeping in an adjoining room, had been equally disturbed, entered the
+cell and with a fearful oath warned the reverend gentlemen that if he
+heard any more swearing their sacred calling would not prevent him from
+turning them into the street. After that they moderated their
+objectionable conversation, substituting an accordion, and I slept the
+peaceful and refreshing sleep of youth and innocence.
+
+The next morning I was taken before the Superior Judge, sitting as a
+committing magistrate, and put upon my preliminary examination. I
+pleaded not guilty, adding that the man whom I had murdered was a
+notorious Democrat. (My good mother was a Republican, and from early
+childhood I had been carefully instructed by her in the principles of
+honest government and the necessity of suppressing factional
+opposition.) The Judge, elected by a Republican ballot-box with a
+sliding bottom, was visibly impressed by the cogency of my plea and
+offered me a cigarette.
+
+"May it please your Honor," began the District Attorney, "I do not deem
+it necessary to submit any evidence in this case. Under the law of the
+land you sit here as a committing magistrate. It is therefore your duty
+to commit. Testimony and argument alike would imply a doubt that your
+Honor means to perform your sworn duty. That is my case."
+
+My counsel, a brother of the deceased Coroner, rose and said: "May it
+please the Court, my learned friend on the other side has so well and
+eloquently stated the law governing in this case that it only remains
+for me to inquire to what extent it has been already complied with. It
+is true, your Honor is a committing magistrate, and as such it is your
+duty to commit--what? That is a matter which the law has wisely and
+justly left to your own discretion, and wisely you have discharged
+already every obligation that the law imposes. Since I have known your
+Honor you have done nothing but commit. You have committed embracery,
+theft, arson, perjury, adultery, murder--every crime in the calendar and
+every excess known to the sensual and depraved, including my learned
+friend, the District Attorney. You have done your whole duty as a
+committing magistrate, and as there is no evidence against this worthy
+young man, my client, I move that he be discharged."
+
+An impressive silence ensued. The Judge arose, put on the black cap and
+in a voice trembling with emotion sentenced me to life and liberty. Then
+turning to my counsel he said, coldly but significantly:
+
+"I will see you later."
+
+The next morning the lawyer who had so conscientiously defended me
+against a charge of murdering his own brother--with whom he had a
+quarrel about some land--had disappeared and his fate is to this day
+unknown.
+
+In the meantime my poor father's body had been secretly buried at
+midnight in the back yard of his late residence, with his late boots on
+and the contents of his late stomach unanalyzed. "He was opposed to
+display," said my dear mother, as she finished tamping down the earth
+above him and assisted the children to litter the place with straw; "his
+instincts were all domestic and he loved a quiet life."
+
+My mother's application for letters of administration stated that she
+had good reason to believe that the deceased was dead, for he had not
+come home to his meals for several days; but the Judge of the Crowbait
+Court--as she ever afterward contemptuously called it--decided that the
+proof of death was insufficient, and put the estate into the hands of
+the Public Administrator, who was his son-in-law. It was found that the
+liabilities were exactly balanced by the assets; there was left only the
+patent for the device for bursting open safes without noise, by
+hydraulic pressure and this had passed into the ownership of the Probate
+Judge and the Public Administrator--as my dear mother preferred to
+spell it. Thus, within a few brief months a worthy and respectable
+family was reduced from prosperity to crime; necessity compelled us to
+go to work.
+
+In the selection of occupations we were governed by a variety of
+considerations, such as personal fitness, inclination, and so forth. My
+mother opened a select private school for instruction in the art of
+changing the spots upon leopard-skin rugs; my eldest brother, George
+Henry, who had a turn for music, became a bugler in a neighboring asylum
+for deaf mutes; my sister, Mary Maria, took orders for Professor
+Pumpernickel's Essence of Latchkeys for flavoring mineral springs, and I
+set up as an adjuster and gilder of crossbeams for gibbets. The other
+children, too young for labor, continued to steal small articles exposed
+in front of shops, as they had been taught.
+
+In our intervals of leisure we decoyed travelers into our house and
+buried the bodies in a cellar.
+
+In one part of this cellar we kept wines, liquors and provisions. From
+the rapidity of their disappearance we acquired the superstitious belief
+that the spirits of the persons buried there came at dead of night and
+held a festival. It was at least certain that frequently of a morning we
+would discover fragments of pickled meats, canned goods and such débris,
+littering the place, although it had been securely locked and barred
+against human intrusion. It was proposed to remove the provisions and
+store them elsewhere, but our dear mother, always generous and
+hospitable, said it was better to endure the loss than risk exposure: if
+the ghosts were denied this trifling gratification they might set on
+foot an investigation, which would overthrow our scheme of the division
+of labor, by diverting the energies of the whole family into the single
+industry pursued by me--we might all decorate the cross-beams of
+gibbets. We accepted her decision with filial submission, due to our
+reverence for her wordly wisdom and the purity of her character.
+
+One night while we were all in the cellar--none dared to enter it
+alone--engaged in bestowing upon the Mayor of an adjoining town the
+solemn offices of Christian burial, my mother and the younger children,
+holding a candle each, while George Henry and I labored with a spade and
+pick, my sister Mary Maria uttered a shriek and covered her eyes with
+her hands. We were all dreadfully startled and the Mayor's obsequies
+were instantly suspended, while with pale faces and in trembling tones
+we begged her to say what had alarmed her. The younger children were so
+agitated that they held their candles unsteadily, and the waving shadows
+of our figures danced with uncouth and grotesque movements on the walls
+and flung themselves into the most uncanny attitudes. The face of the
+dead man, now gleaming ghastly in the light, and now extinguished by
+some floating shadow, appeared at each emergence to have taken on a new
+and more forbidding expression, a maligner menace. Frightened even more
+than ourselves by the girl's scream, rats raced in multitudes about the
+place, squeaking shrilly, or starred the black opacity of some distant
+corner with steadfast eyes, mere points of green light, matching the
+faint phosphorescence of decay that filled the half-dug grave and seemed
+the visible manifestation of that faint odor of mortality which tainted
+the unwholesome air. The children now sobbed and clung about the limbs
+of their elders, dropping their candles, and we were near being left in
+total darkness, except for that sinister light, which slowly welled
+upward from the disturbed earth and overflowed the edges of the grave
+like a fountain.
+
+Meanwhile my sister, crouching in the earth that had been thrown out of
+the excavation, had removed her hands from her face and was staring with
+expanded eyes into an obscure space between two wine casks.
+
+"There it is!--there it is!" she shrieked, pointing; "God in heaven!
+can't you see it?"
+
+And there indeed it was!--a human figure, dimly discernible in the
+gloom--a figure that wavered from side to side as if about to fall,
+clutching at the wine-casks for support, had stepped unsteadily forward
+and for one moment stood revealed in the light of our remaining candles;
+then it surged heavily and fell prone upon the earth. In that moment we
+had all recognized the figure, the face and bearing of our father--dead
+these ten months and buried by our own hands!--our father indubitably
+risen and ghastly drunk!
+
+On the incidents of our precipitate flight from that horrible place--on
+the extinction of all human sentiment in that tumultuous, mad scramble
+up the damp and mouldy stairs--slipping, falling, pulling one another
+down and clambering over one another's back--the lights extinguished,
+babes trampled beneath the feet of their strong brothers and hurled
+backward to death by a mother's arm!--on all this I do not dare to
+dwell. My mother, my eldest brother and sister and I escaped; the others
+remained below, to perish of their wounds, or of their terror--some,
+perhaps, by flame. For within an hour we four, hastily gathering
+together what money and jewels we had and what clothing we could carry,
+fired the dwelling and fled by its light into the hills. We did not even
+pause to collect the insurance, and my dear mother said on her
+death-bed, years afterward in a distant land, that this was the only sin
+of omission that lay upon her conscience. Her confessor, a holy man,
+assured her that under the circumstances Heaven would pardon the
+neglect.
+
+About ten years after our removal from the scenes of my childhood I,
+then a prosperous forger, returned in disguise to the spot with a view
+to obtaining, if possible, some treasure belonging to us, which had been
+buried in the cellar. I may say that I was unsuccessful: the discovery
+of many human bones in the ruins had set the authorities digging for
+more. They had found the treasure and had kept it for their honesty. The
+house had not been rebuilt; the whole suburb was, in fact, a desolation.
+So many unearthly sights and sounds had been reported thereabout that
+nobody would live there. As there was none to question nor molest, I
+resolved to gratify my filial piety by gazing once more upon the face of
+my beloved father, if indeed our eyes had deceived us and he was still
+in his grave. I remembered, too, that he had always worn an enormous
+diamond ring, and never having seen it nor heard of it since his death,
+I had reason to think he might have been buried in it. Procuring a
+spade, I soon located the grave in what had been the backyard and began
+digging. When I had got down about four feet the whole bottom fell out
+of the grave and I was precipitated into a large drain, falling through
+a long hole in its crumbling arch. There was no body, nor any vestige of
+one.
+
+Unable to get out of the excavation, I crept through the drain, and
+having with some difficulty removed a mass of charred rubbish and
+blackened masonry that choked it, emerged into what had been that
+fateful cellar.
+
+All was clear. My father, whatever had caused him to be "taken bad" at
+his meal (and I think my sainted mother could have thrown some light
+upon that matter) had indubitably been buried alive. The grave having
+been accidentally dug above the forgotten drain, and down almost to the
+crown of its arch, and no coffin having been used, his struggles on
+reviving had broken the rotten masonry and he had fallen through,
+escaping finally into the cellar. Feeling that he was not welcome in his
+own house, yet having no other, he had lived in subterranean seclusion,
+a witness to our thrift and a pensioner on our providence. It was he who
+had eaten our food; it was he who had drunk our wine--he was no better
+than a thief! In a moment of intoxication, and feeling, no doubt, that
+need of companionship which is the one sympathetic link between a
+drunken man and his race, he had left his place of concealment at a
+strangely inopportune time, entailing the most deplorable consequences
+upon those nearest and dearest to him--a blunder that had almost the
+dignity of crime.
+
+
+
+
+JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER-GENERAL
+
+
+_From the Secretary of War to the Hon. Jupiter Doke, Hardpan Crossroads,
+Posey County, Illinois._
+
+WASHINGTON, November 3, 1861.
+
+Having faith in your patriotism and ability, the President has been
+pleased to appoint you a brigadier-general of volunteers. Do you accept?
+
+
+_From the Hon. Jupiter Doke to the Secretary of War._
+
+HARDPAN, ILLINOIS, November 9, 1861.
+
+It is the proudest moment of my life. The office is one which should be
+neither sought nor declined. In times that try men's souls the patriot
+knows no North, no South, no East, no West. His motto should be: "My
+country, my whole country and nothing but my country." I accept the
+great trust confided in me by a free and intelligent people, and with a
+firm reliance on the principles of constitutional liberty, and invoking
+the guidance of an all-wise Providence, Ruler of Nations, shall labor so
+to discharge it as to leave no blot upon my political escutcheon. Say to
+his Excellency, the successor of the immortal Washington in the Seat of
+Power, that the patronage of my office will be bestowed with an eye
+single to securing the greatest good to the greatest number, the
+stability of republican institutions and the triumph of the party in all
+elections; and to this I pledge my life, my fortune and my sacred honor.
+I shall at once prepare an appropriate response to the speech of the
+chairman of the committee deputed to inform me of my appointment, and I
+trust the sentiments therein expressed will strike a sympathetic chord
+in the public heart, as well as command the Executive approval.
+
+
+_From the Secretary of War to Major-General Blount Wardorg, Commanding
+the Military Department of Eastern Kentucky._
+
+WASHINGTON, November 14, 1861.
+
+I have assigned to your department Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, who
+will soon proceed to Distilleryville, on the Little Buttermilk River,
+and take command of the Illinois Brigade at that point, reporting to you
+by letter for orders. Is the route from Covington by way of Bluegrass,
+Opossum Corners and Horsecave still infested with bushwhackers, as
+reported in your last dispatch? I have a plan for cleaning them out.
+
+
+_From Major-General Blount Wardorg to the Secretary of War._
+
+LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, November 20, 1861.
+
+The name and services of Brigadier-General Doke are unfamiliar to me,
+but I shall be pleased to have the advantage of his skill. The route
+from Covington to Distilleryville _via_ Opossum Corners and Horsecave I
+have been compelled to abandon to the enemy, whose guerilla warfare made
+it possible to keep it open without detaching too many troops from the
+front. The brigade at Distilleryville is supplied by steamboats up the
+Little Buttermilk.
+
+
+_From the Secretary of War to Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, Hardpan,
+Illinois._
+
+WASHINGTON, November 26, 1861.
+
+I deeply regret that your commission had been forwarded by mail before
+the receipt of your letter of acceptance; so we must dispense with the
+formality of official notification to you by a committee. The President
+is highly gratified by the noble and patriotic sentiments of your
+letter, and directs that you proceed at once to your command at
+Distilleryville, Kentucky, and there report by letter to Major-General
+Wardorg at Louisville, for orders. It is important that the strictest
+secrecy be observed regarding your movements until you have passed
+Covington, as it is desired to hold the enemy in front of
+Distilleryville until you are within three days of him. Then if your
+approach is known it will operate as a demonstration against his right
+and cause him to strengthen it with his left now at Memphis, Tennessee,
+which it is desirable to capture first. Go by way of Bluegrass, Opossum
+Corners and Horsecave. All officers are expected to be in full uniform
+when _en route_ to the front.
+
+
+_From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to the Secretary of War._
+
+COVINGTON, KENTUCKY, December 7, 1861.
+
+I arrived yesterday at this point, and have given my proxy to Joel
+Briller, Esq., my wife's cousin, and a staunch Republican, who will
+worthily represent Posey County in field and forum. He points with pride
+to a stainless record in the halls of legislation, which have often
+echoed to his soul-stirring eloquence on questions which lie at the very
+foundation of popular government. He has been called the Patrick Henry
+of Hardpan, where he has done yeoman's service in the cause of civil and
+religious liberty. Mr. Briller left for Distilleryville last evening,
+and the standard bearer of the Democratic host confronting that
+stronghold of freedom will find him a lion in his path. I have been
+asked to remain here and deliver some addresses to the people in a local
+contest involving issues of paramount importance. That duty being
+performed, I shall in person enter the arena of armed debate and move in
+the direction of the heaviest firing, burning my ships behind me. I
+forward by this mail to his Excellency the President a request for the
+appointment of my son, Jabez Leonidas Doke, as postmaster at Hardpan. I
+would take it, sir, as a great favor if you would give the application a
+strong oral indorsement, as the appointment is in the line of reform. Be
+kind enough to inform me what are the emoluments of the office I hold in
+the military arm, and if they are by salary or fees. Are there any
+perquisites? My mileage account will be transmitted monthly.
+
+
+_From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to Major General Blount Wardorg._
+
+DISTILLERYVILLE, KENTUCKY, January 12, 1862.
+
+I arrived on the tented field yesterday by steamboat, the recent storms
+having inundated the landscape, covering, I understand, the greater part
+of a congressional district. I am pained to find that Joel Briller,
+Esq., a prominent citizen of Posey County, Illinois, and a far-seeing
+statesman who held my proxy, and who a month ago should have been
+thundering at the gates of Disunion, has not been heard from, and has
+doubtless been sacrificed upon the altar of his country. In him the
+American people lose a bulwark of freedom. I would respectfully move
+that you designate a committee to draw up resolutions of respect to his
+memory, and that the office holders and men under your command wear the
+usual badge of mourning for thirty days. I shall at once place myself at
+the head of affairs here, and am now ready to entertain any suggestions
+which you may make, looking to the better enforcement of the laws in
+this commonwealth. The militant Democrats on the other side of the river
+appear to be contemplating extreme measures. They have two large cannons
+facing this way, and yesterday morning, I am told, some of them came
+down to the water's edge and remained in session for some time, making
+infamous allegations.
+
+
+_From the Diary of Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, at Distilleryville,
+Kentucky._
+
+January 12, 1862.--On my arrival yesterday at the Henry Clay Hotel
+(named in honor of the late far-seeing statesman) I was waited on by a
+delegation consisting of the three colonels intrusted with the command
+of the regiments of my brigade. It was an occasion that will be
+memorable in the political annals of America. Forwarded copies of the
+speeches to the Posey _Maverick_, to be spread upon the record of the
+ages. The gentlemen composing the delegation unanimously reaffirmed
+their devotion to the principles of national unity and the Republican
+party. Was gratified to recognize in them men of political prominence
+and untarnished escutcheons. At the subsequent banquet, sentiments of
+lofty patriotism were expressed. Wrote to Mr. Wardorg at Louisville for
+instructions.
+
+January 13, 1862.--Leased a prominent residence (the former incumbent
+being absent in arms against his country) for the term of one year, and
+wrote at once for Mrs. Brigadier-General Doke and the vital
+issues--excepting Jabez Leonidas. In the camp of treason opposite here
+there are supposed to be three thousand misguided men laying the ax at
+the root of the tree of liberty. They have a clear majority, many of our
+men having returned without leave to their constituents. We could
+probably not poll more than two thousand votes. Have advised my heads of
+regiments to make a canvass of those remaining, all bolters to be read
+out of the phalanx.
+
+January 14, 1862.--Wrote to the President, asking for the contract to
+supply this command with firearms and regalia through my brother-in-law,
+prominently identified with the manufacturing interests of the country.
+Club of cannon soldiers arrived at Jayhawk, three miles back from here,
+on their way to join us in battle array. Marched my whole brigade to
+Jayhawk to escort them into town, but their chairman, mistaking us for
+the opposing party, opened fire on the head of the procession and by the
+extraordinary noise of the cannon balls (I had no conception of it!) so
+frightened my horse that I was unseated without a contest. The meeting
+adjourned in disorder and returning to camp I found that a deputation of
+the enemy had crossed the river in our absence and made a division of
+the loaves and fishes. Wrote to the President, applying for the
+Gubernatorial Chair of the Territory of Idaho.
+
+
+_From Editorial Article in the Posey, Illinois, "Maverick," January 20,
+1862._
+
+Brigadier-General Doke's thrilling account, in another column, of the
+Battle of Distilleryville will make the heart of every loyal Illinoisian
+leap with exultation. The brilliant exploit marks an era in military
+history, and as General Doke says, "lays broad and deep the foundations
+of American prowess in arms." As none of the troops engaged, except the
+gallant author-chieftain (a host in himself) hails from Posey County, he
+justly considered that a list of the fallen would only occupy our
+valuable space to the exclusion of more important matter, but his
+account of the strategic ruse by which he apparently abandoned his camp
+and so inveigled a perfidious enemy into it for the purpose of murdering
+the sick, the unfortunate _countertempus_ at Jayhawk, the subsequent
+dash upon a trapped enemy flushed with a supposed success, driving their
+terrified legions across an impassable river which precluded
+pursuit--all these "moving accidents by flood and field" are related
+with a pen of fire and have all the terrible interest of romance.
+
+Verily, truth is stranger than fiction and the pen is mightier than the
+sword. When by the graphic power of the art preservative of all arts we
+are brought face to face with such glorious events as these, the
+_Maverick's_ enterprise in securing for its thousands of readers the
+services of so distinguished a contributor as the Great Captain who made
+the history as well as wrote it seems a matter of almost secondary
+importance. For President in 1864 (subject to the decision of the
+Republican National Convention) Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke, of
+Illinois!
+
+
+_From Major-General Blount Wardorg to Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke._
+
+LOUISVILLE, January 22, 1862.
+
+Your letter apprising me of your arrival at Distilleryville was delayed
+in transmission, having only just been received (open) through the
+courtesy of the Confederate department commander under a flag of truce.
+He begs me to assure you that he would consider it an act of cruelty to
+trouble you, and I think it would be. Maintain, however, a threatening
+attitude, but at the least pressure retire. Your position is simply an
+outpost which it is not intended to hold.
+
+
+_From Major-General Blount Wardorg to the Secretary of War._
+
+LOUISVILLE, January 23, 1862.
+
+I have certain information that the enemy has concentrated twenty
+thousand troops of all arms on the Little Buttermilk. According to your
+assignment, General Doke is in command of the small brigade of raw
+troops opposing them. It is no part of my plan to contest the enemy's
+advance at that point, but I cannot hold myself responsible for any
+reverses to the brigade mentioned, under its present commander. I think
+him a fool.
+
+
+_From the Secretary of War to Major-General Blount Wardorg._
+
+WASHINGTON, February 1, 1862.
+
+The President has great faith in General Doke. If your estimate of him
+is correct, however, he would seem to be singularly well placed where he
+now is, as your plans appear to contemplate a considerable sacrifice for
+whatever advantages you expect to gain.
+
+
+_From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to Major-General Blount Wardorg._
+
+DISTILLERYVILLE, February 1, 1862.
+
+To-morrow I shall remove my headquarters to Jayhawk in order to point
+the way whenever my brigade retires from Distilleryville, as
+foreshadowed by your letter of the 22d ult. I have appointed a Committee
+on Retreat, the minutes of whose first meeting I transmit to you. You
+will perceive that the committee having been duly organized by the
+election of a chairman and secretary, a resolution (prepared by myself)
+was adopted, to the effect that in case treason again raises her hideous
+head on this side of the river every man of the brigade is to mount a
+mule, the procession to move promptly in the direction of Louisville and
+the loyal North. In preparation for such an emergency I have for some
+time been collecting mules from the resident Democracy, and have on hand
+2300 in a field at Jayhawk. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!
+
+
+_From Major-General Gibeon J. Buxter, C.S.A., to the Confederate
+Secretary of War._
+
+BUNG STATION, KENTUCKY, February 4, 1862.
+
+On the night of the 2d inst., our entire force, consisting of 25,000 men
+and thirty-two field pieces, under command of Major-General Simmons B.
+Flood, crossed by a ford to the north side of Little Buttermilk River at
+a point three miles above Distilleryville and moved obliquely down and
+away from the stream, to strike the Covington turnpike at Jayhawk; the
+object being, as you know, to capture Covington, destroy Cincinnati and
+occupy the Ohio Valley. For some months there had been in our front only
+a small brigade of undisciplined troops, apparently without a commander,
+who were useful to us, for by not disturbing them we could create an
+impression of our weakness. But the movement on Jayhawk having isolated
+them, I was about to detach an Alabama regiment to bring them in, my
+division being the leading one, when an earth-shaking rumble was felt
+and heard, and suddenly the head-of-column was struck by one of the
+terrible tornadoes for which this region is famous, and utterly
+annihilated. The tornado, I believe, passed along the entire length of
+the road back to the ford, dispersing or destroying our entire army; but
+of this I cannot be sure, for I was lifted from the earth insensible and
+blown back to the south side of the river. Continuous firing all night
+on the north side and the reports of such of our men as have recrossed
+at the ford convince me that the Yankee brigade has exterminated the
+disabled survivors. Our loss has been uncommonly heavy. Of my own
+division of 15,000 infantry, the casualties--killed, wounded, captured,
+and missing--are 14,994. Of General Dolliver Billow's division, 11,200
+strong, I can find but two officers and a nigger cook. Of the artillery,
+800 men, none has reported on this side of the river. General Flood is
+dead. I have assumed command of the expeditionary force, but owing to
+the heavy losses have deemed it advisable to contract my line of
+supplies as rapidly as possible. I shall push southward to-morrow
+morning early. The purposes of the campaign have been as yet but partly
+accomplished.
+
+
+_From Major-General Dolliver Billows, C.S.A., to the Confederate
+Secretary of War._
+
+BUHAC, KENTUCKY, February 5, 1862.
+
+... But during the 2d they had, unknown to us, been reinforced by fifty
+thousand cavalry, and being apprised of our movement by a spy, this vast
+body was drawn up in the darkness at Jayhawk, and as the head of our
+column reached that point at about 11 P.M., fell upon it with
+astonishing fury, destroying the division of General Buxter in an
+instant. General Baumschank's brigade of artillery, which was in the
+rear, may have escaped--I did not wait to see, but withdrew my division
+to the river at a point several miles above the ford, and at daylight
+ferried it across on two fence rails lashed together with a suspender.
+Its losses, from an effective strength of 11,200, are 11,199. General
+Buxter is dead. I am changing my base to Mobile, Alabama.
+
+
+_From Brigadier-General Schneddeker Baumschank, C.S.A., to the
+Confederate Secretary of War._
+
+IODINE, KENTUCKY, February 6, 1862.
+
+... Yoost den somdings occur, I know nod vot it vos--somdings
+mackneefcent, but it vas nod vor--und I finds meinselluf, afder leedle
+viles, in dis blace, midout a hors und mit no men und goons. Sheneral
+Peelows is deadt, You will blease be so goot as to resign me--I vights
+no more in a dam gontry vere I gets vipped und knows nod how it vos
+done.
+
+
+_Resolutions of Congress_, February 15, 1862.
+
+_Resolved_, That the thanks of Congress are due, and hereby tendered, to
+Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke and the gallant men under his command for
+their unparalleled feat of attacking--themselves only 2000 strong--an
+army of 25,000 men and utterly overthrowing it, killing 5327, making
+prisoners of 19,003, of whom more than half were wounded, taking 32
+guns, 20,000 stand of small arms and, in short, the enemy's entire
+equipment.
+
+_Resolved_, That for this unexampled victory the President be requested
+to designate a day of thanksgiving and public celebration of religious
+rites in the various churches.
+
+_Resolved_, That he be requested, in further commemoration of the great
+event, and in reward of the gallant spirits whose deeds have added such
+imperishable lustre to the American arms, to appoint, with the advice
+and consent of the Senate, the following officer:
+
+One major-general.
+
+
+_Statement of Mr. Hannibal Alcazar Peyton, of Jayhawk, Kentucky._
+
+Dat wus a almighty dark night, sho', and dese yere ole eyes aint wuf
+shuks, but I's got a year like a sque'l, an' w'en I cotch de mummer o'
+v'ices I knowed dat gang b'long on de far side o' de ribber. So I jes'
+runs in de house an' wakes Marse Doke an' tells him: "Skin outer dis fo'
+yo' life!" An' de Lo'd bress my soul! ef dat man didn' go right fru de
+winder in his shir' tail an' break for to cross de mule patch! An' dem
+twenty-free hunerd mules dey jes' t'nk it is de debble hese'f wid de
+brandin' iron, an' dey bu'st outen dat patch like a yarthquake, an' pile
+inter de upper ford road, an' flash down it five deep, an' it full o'
+Con-fed'rates from en' to en'!...
+
+
+
+
+THE WIDOWER TURMORE
+
+
+The circumstances under which Joram Turmore became a widower have never
+been popularly understood. I know them, naturally, for I am Joram
+Turmore; and my wife, the late Elizabeth Mary Turmore, is by no means
+ignorant of them; but although she doubtless relates them, yet they
+remain a secret, for not a soul has ever believed her.
+
+When I married Elizabeth Mary Johnin she was very wealthy, otherwise I
+could hardly have afforded to marry, for I had not a cent, and Heaven
+had not put into my heart any intention to earn one. I held the
+Professorship of Cats in the University of Graymaulkin, and scholastic
+pursuits had unfitted me for the heat and burden of business or labor.
+Moreover, I could not forget that I was a Turmore--a member of a family
+whose motto from the time of William of Normandy has been _Laborare est
+errare_. The only known infraction of the sacred family tradition
+occurred when Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore, an illustrious
+master burglar of the seventeenth century, personally assisted at a
+difficult operation undertaken by some of his workmen. That blot upon
+our escutcheon cannot be contemplated without the most poignant
+mortification.
+
+My incumbency of the Chair of Cats in the Graymaulkin University had
+not, of course, been marked by any instance of mean industry. There had
+never, at any one time, been more than two students of the Noble
+Science, and by merely repeating the manuscript lectures of my
+predecessor, which I had found among his effects (he died at sea on his
+way to Malta) I could sufficiently sate their famine for knowledge
+without really earning even the distinction which served in place of
+salary.
+
+Naturally, under the straitened circumstances, I regarded Elizabeth Mary
+as a kind of special Providence. She unwisely refused to share her
+fortune with me, but for that I cared nothing; for, although by the laws
+of that country (as is well known) a wife has control of her separate
+property during her life, it passes to the husband at her death; nor can
+she dispose of it otherwise by will. The mortality among wives is
+considerable, but not excessive.
+
+Having married Elizabeth Mary and, as it were, ennobled her by making
+her a Turmore, I felt that the manner of her death ought, in some sense,
+to match her social distinction. If I should remove her by any of the
+ordinary marital methods I should incur a just reproach, as one
+destitute of a proper family pride. Yet I could not hit upon a suitable
+plan.
+
+In this emergency I decided to consult the Turmore archives, a priceless
+collection of documents, comprising the records of the family from the
+time of its founder in the seventh century of our era. I knew that among
+these sacred muniments I should find detailed accounts of all the
+principal murders committed by my sainted ancestors for forty
+generations. From that mass of papers I could hardly fail to derive the
+most valuable suggestions.
+
+The collection contained also most interesting relics. There were
+patents of nobility granted to my forefathers for daring and ingenious
+removals of pretenders to thrones, or occupants of them; stars, crosses
+and other decorations attesting services of the most secret and
+unmentionable character; miscellaneous gifts from the world's greatest
+conspirators, representing an intrinsic money value beyond computation.
+There were robes, jewels, swords of honor, and every kind of
+"testimonials of esteem"; a king's skull fashioned into a wine cup; the
+title deeds to vast estates, long alienated by confiscation, sale, or
+abandonment; an illuminated breviary that had belonged to Sir Aldebaran
+Turmore de Peters-Turmore of accursed memory; embalmed ears of several
+of the family's most renowned enemies; the small intestine of a certain
+unworthy Italian statesman inimical to Turmores, which, twisted into a
+jumping rope, had served the youth of six kindred generations--mementoes
+and souvenirs precious beyond the appraisals of imagination, but by the
+sacred mandates of tradition and sentiment forever inalienable by sale
+or gift.
+
+As the head of the family, I was custodian of all these priceless
+heirlooms, and for their safe keeping had constructed in the basement of
+my dwelling a strong-room of massive masonry, whose solid stone walls
+and single iron door could defy alike the earthquake's shock, the
+tireless assaults of Time, and Cupidity's unholy hand.
+
+To this thesaurus of the soul, redolent of sentiment and tenderness, and
+rich in suggestions of crime, I now repaired for hints upon
+assassination. To my unspeakable astonishment and grief I found it
+empty! Every shelf, every chest, every coffer had been rifled. Of that
+unique and incomparable collection not a vestige remained! Yet I proved
+that until I had myself unlocked the massive metal door, not a bolt nor
+bar had been disturbed; the seals upon the lock had been intact.
+
+I passed the night in alternate lamentation and research, equally
+fruitless, the mystery was impenetrable to conjecture, the pain
+invincible to balm. But never once throughout that dreadful night did my
+firm spirit relinquish its high design against Elizabeth Mary, and
+daybreak found me more resolute than before to harvest the fruits of my
+marriage. My great loss seemed but to bring me into nearer spiritual
+relations with my dead ancestors, and to lay upon me a new and more
+inevitable obedience to the suasion that spoke in every globule of my
+blood.
+
+My plan of action was soon formed, and procuring a stout cord I entered
+my wife's bedroom finding her, as I expected, in a sound sleep. Before
+she was awake, I had her bound fast, hand and foot. She was greatly
+surprised and pained, but heedless of her remonstrances, delivered in a
+high key, I carried her into the now rifled strong-room, which I had
+never suffered her to enter, and of whose treasures I had not apprised
+her. Seating her, still bound, in an angle of the wall, I passed the
+next two days and nights in conveying bricks and mortar to the spot, and
+on the morning of the third day had her securely walled in, from floor
+to ceiling. All this time I gave no further heed to her pleas for mercy
+than (on her assurance of non-resistance, which I am bound to say she
+honorably observed) to grant her the freedom of her limbs. The space
+allowed her was about four feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of
+the top course, in contact with the ceiling of the strong-room, she bade
+me farewell with what I deemed the composure of despair, and I rested
+from my work, feeling that I had faithfully observed the traditions of
+an ancient and illustrious family. My only bitter reflection, so far as
+my own conduct was concerned, came of the consciousness that in the
+performance of my design I had labored; but this no living soul would
+ever know.
+
+After a night's rest I went to the Judge of the Court of Successions and
+Inheritances and made a true and sworn relation of all that I had
+done--except that I ascribed to a servant the manual labor of building
+the wall. His honor appointed a court commissioner, who made a careful
+examination of the work, and upon his report Elizabeth Mary Turmore
+was, at the end of a week, formally pronounced dead. By due process of
+law I was put into possession of her estate, and although this was not
+by hundreds of thousands of dollars as valuable as my lost treasures, it
+raised me from poverty to affluence and brought me the respect of the
+great and good.
+
+Some six months after these events strange rumors reached me that the
+ghost of my deceased wife had been seen in several places about the
+country, but always at a considerable distance from Graymaulkin. These
+rumors, which I was unable to trace to any authentic source, differed
+widely in many particulars, but were alike in ascribing to the
+apparition a certain high degree of apparent worldly prosperity combined
+with an audacity most uncommon in ghosts. Not only was the spirit
+attired in most costly raiment, but it walked at noonday, and even
+drove! I was inexpressibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking there
+might be something more than superstition in the popular belief that
+only the spirits of the unburied dead still walk the earth, I took some
+workmen equipped with picks and crowbars into the now long unentered
+strong-room, and ordered them to demolish the brick wall that I had
+built about the partner of my joys. I was resolved to give the body of
+Elizabeth Mary such burial as I thought her immortal part might be
+willing to accept as an equivalent to the privilege of ranging at will
+among the haunts of the living.
+
+In a few minutes we had broken down the wall and, thrusting a lamp
+through the breach, I looked in. Nothing! Not a bone, not a lock of
+hair, not a shred of clothing--the narrow space which, upon my
+affidavit, had been legally declared to hold all that was mortal of the
+late Mrs. Turmore was absolutely empty! This amazing disclosure, coming
+upon a mind already overwrought with too much of mystery and excitement,
+was more than I could bear. I shrieked aloud and fell in a fit. For
+months afterward I lay between life and death, fevered and delirious;
+nor did I recover until my physician had had the providence to take a
+case of valuable jewels from my safe and leave the country.
+
+The next summer I had occasion to visit my wine cellar, in one corner of
+which I had built the now long disused strong-room. In moving a cask of
+Madeira I struck it with considerable force against the partition wall,
+and was surprised to observe that it displaced two large square stones
+forming a part of the wall.
+
+Applying my hands to these, I easily pushed them out entirely, and
+looking through saw that they had fallen into the niche in which I had
+immured my lamented wife; facing the opening which their fall left, and
+at a distance of four feet, was the brickwork which my own hands had
+made for that unfortunate gentlewoman's restraint. At this significant
+revelation I began a search of the wine cellar. Behind a row of casks I
+found four historically interesting but intrinsically valueless objects:
+
+First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe of state (Florentine) of the
+eleventh century; second, an illuminated vellum breviary with the name
+of Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore inscribed in colors on the
+title page; third, a human skull fashioned into a drinking cup and
+deeply stained with wine; fourth, the iron cross of a Knight Commander
+of the Imperial Austrian Order of Assassins by Poison.
+
+That was all--not an object having commercial value, no papers--nothing.
+But this was enough to clear up the mystery of the strong-room. My wife
+had early divined the existence and purpose of that apartment, and with
+the skill amounting to genius had effected an entrance by loosening the
+two stones in the wall.
+
+Through that opening she had at several times abstracted the entire
+collection, which doubtless she had succeeded in converting into coin of
+the realm. When with an unconscious justice which deprives me of all
+satisfaction in the memory I decided to build her into the wall, by some
+malign fatality I selected that part of it in which were these movable
+stones, and doubtless before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she
+had removed them and, slipping through into the wine cellar, replaced
+them as they were originally laid. From the cellar she had easily
+escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant parts. I have
+endeavored to procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron of the Court of
+Indictment and Conviction reminds me that she is legally dead, and says
+my only course is to go before the Master in Cadavery and move for a
+writ of disinterment and constructive revival. So it looks as if I must
+suffer without redress this great wrong at the hands of a woman devoid
+alike of principle and shame.
+
+
+
+
+THE CITY OF THE GONE AWAY
+
+
+I was born of poor because honest parents, and until I was twenty-three
+years old never knew the possibilities of happiness latent in another
+person's coin. At that time Providence threw me into a deep sleep and
+revealed to me in a dream the folly of labor. "Behold," said a vision of
+a holy hermit, "the poverty and squalor of your lot and listen to the
+teachings of nature. You rise in the morning from your pallet of straw
+and go forth to your daily labor in the fields. The flowers nod their
+heads in friendly salutation as you pass. The lark greets you with a
+burst of song. The early sun sheds his temperate beams upon you, and
+from the dewy grass you inhale an atmosphere cool and grateful to your
+lungs. All nature seems to salute you with the joy of a generous servant
+welcoming a faithful master. You are in harmony with her gentlest mood
+and your soul sings within you. You begin your daily task at the plow,
+hopeful that the noonday will fulfill the promise of the morn, maturing
+the charms of the landscape and confirming its benediction upon your
+spirit. You follow the plow until fatigue invokes repose, and seating
+yourself upon the earth at the end of your furrow you expect to enjoy in
+fulness the delights of which you did but taste.
+
+"Alas! the sun has climbed into a brazen sky and his beams are become a
+torrent. The flowers have closed their petals, confining their perfume
+and denying their colors to the eye. Coolness no longer exhales from the
+grass: the dew has vanished and the dry surface of the fields repeats
+the fierce heat of the sky. No longer the birds of heaven salute you
+with melody, but the jay harshly upbraids you from the edge of the
+copse. Unhappy man! all the gentle and healing ministrations of nature
+are denied you in punishment of your sin. You have broken the First
+Commandment of the Natural Decalogue: you have labored!"
+
+Awakening from my dream, I collected my few belongings, bade adieu to my
+erring parents and departed out of that land, pausing at the grave of my
+grandfather, who had been a priest, to take an oath that never again,
+Heaven helping me, would I earn an honest penny.
+
+How long I traveled I know not, but I came at last to a great city by
+the sea, where I set up as a physician. The name of that place I do not
+now remember, for such were my activity and renown in my new profession
+that the Aldermen, moved by pressure of public opinion, altered it, and
+thenceforth the place was known as the City of the Gone Away. It is
+needless to say that I had no knowledge of medicine, but by securing the
+service of an eminent forger I obtained a diploma purporting to have
+been granted by the Royal Quackery of Charlatanic Empiricism at Hoodos,
+which, framed in immortelles and suspended by a bit of _crępe_ to a
+willow in front of my office, attracted the ailing in great numbers. In
+connection with my dispensary I conducted one of the largest undertaking
+establishments ever known, and as soon as my means permitted, purchased
+a wide tract of land and made it into a cemetery. I owned also some very
+profitable marble works on one side of the gateway to the cemetery, and
+on the other an extensive flower garden. My Mourner's Emporium was
+patronized by the beauty, fashion and sorrow of the city. In short, I
+was in a very prosperous way of business, and within a year was able to
+send for my parents and establish my old father very comfortably as a
+receiver of stolen goods--an act which I confess was saved from the
+reproach of filial gratitude only by my exaction of all the profits.
+
+But the vicissitudes of fortune are avoidable only by practice of the
+sternest indigence: human foresight cannot provide against the envy of
+the gods and the tireless machinations of Fate. The widening circle of
+prosperity grows weaker as it spreads until the antagonistic forces
+which it has pushed back are made powerful by compression to resist and
+finally overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my skill in medicine that
+patients were brought to me from all the four quarters of the globe.
+Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying was a perpetual grief to
+their friends; wealthy testators whose legatees were desirous to come by
+their own; superfluous children of penitent parents and dependent
+parents of frugal children; wives of husbands ambitious to remarry and
+husbands of wives without standing in the courts of divorce--these and
+all conceivable classes of the surplus population were conducted to my
+dispensary in the City of the Gone Away. They came in incalculable
+multitudes.
+
+Government agents brought me caravans of orphans, paupers, lunatics and
+all who had become a public charge. My skill in curing orphanism and
+pauperism was particularly acknowledged by a grateful parliament.
+
+Naturally, all this promoted the public prosperity, for although I got
+the greater part of the money that strangers expended in the city, the
+rest went into the channels of trade, and I was myself a liberal
+investor, purchaser and employer, and a patron of the arts and sciences.
+The City of the Gone Away grew so rapidly that in a few years it had
+inclosed my cemetery, despite its own constant growth. In that fact lay
+the lion that rent me.
+
+The Aldermen declared my cemetery a public evil and decided to take it
+from me, remove the bodies to another place and make a park of it. I was
+to be paid for it and could easily bribe the appraisers to fix a high
+price, but for a reason which will appear the decision gave me little
+joy. It was in vain that I protested against the sacrilege of disturbing
+the holy dead, although this was a powerful appeal, for in that land the
+dead are held in religious veneration. Temples are built in their honor
+and a separate priesthood maintained at the public expense, whose only
+duty is performance of memorial services of the most solemn and touching
+kind. On four days in the year there is a Festival of the Good, as it is
+called, when all the people lay by their work or business and, headed by
+the priests, march in procession through the cemeteries, adorning the
+graves and praying in the temples. However bad a man's life may be, it
+is believed that when dead he enters into a state of eternal and
+inexpressible happiness. To signify a doubt of this is an offense
+punishable by death. To deny burial to the dead, or to exhume a buried
+body, except under sanction of law by special dispensation and with
+solemn ceremony, is a crime having no stated penalty because no one has
+ever had the hardihood to commit it.
+
+All these considerations were in my favor, yet so well assured were the
+people and their civic officers that my cemetery was injurious to the
+public health that it was condemned and appraised, and with terror in my
+heart I received three times its value and began to settle up my affairs
+with all speed.
+
+A week later was the day appointed for the formal inauguration of the
+ceremony of removing the bodies. The day was fine and the entire
+population of the city and surrounding country was present at the
+imposing religious rites. These were directed by the mortuary priesthood
+in full canonicals. There was propitiatory sacrifice in the Temples of
+the Once, followed by a processional pageant of great splendor, ending
+at the cemetery. The Great Mayor in his robe of state led the
+procession. He was armed with a golden spade and followed by one hundred
+male and female singers, clad all in white and chanting the Hymn to the
+Gone Away. Behind these came the minor priesthood of the temples, all
+the civic authorities, habited in their official apparel, each carrying
+a living pig as an offering to the gods of the dead. Of the many
+divisions of the line, the last was formed by the populace, with
+uncovered heads, sifting dust into their hair in token of humility. In
+front of the mortuary chapel in the midst of the necropolis, the Supreme
+Priest stood in gorgeous vestments, supported on each hand by a line of
+bishops and other high dignitaries of his prelacy, all frowning with the
+utmost austerity. As the Great Mayor paused in the Presence, the minor
+clergy, the civic authorities, the choir and populace closed in and
+encompassed the spot. The Great Mayor, laying his golden spade at the
+feet of the Supreme Priest, knelt in silence.
+
+"Why comest thou here, presumptuous mortal?" said the Supreme Priest in
+clear, deliberate tones. "Is it thy unhallowed purpose with this
+implement to uncover the mysteries of death and break the repose of the
+Good?"
+
+The Great Mayor, still kneeling, drew from his robe a document with
+portentous seals: "Behold, O ineffable, thy servant, having warrant of
+his people, entreateth at thy holy hands the custody of the Good, to the
+end and purpose that they lie in fitter earth, by consecration duly
+prepared against their coming."
+
+With that he placed in the sacerdotal hands the order of the Council of
+Aldermen decreeing the removal. Merely touching the parchment, the
+Supreme Priest passed it to the Head Necropolitan at his side, and
+raising his hands relaxed the severity of his countenance and exclaimed:
+"The gods comply."
+
+Down the line of prelates on either side, his gesture, look and words
+were successively repeated. The Great Mayor rose to his feet, the choir
+began a solemn chant and, opportunely, a funeral car drawn by ten white
+horses with black plumes rolled in at the gate and made its way through
+the parting crowd to the grave selected for the occasion--that of a high
+official whom I had treated for chronic incumbency. The Great Mayor
+touched the grave with his golden spade (which he then presented to the
+Supreme Priest) and two stalwart diggers with iron ones set vigorously
+to work.
+
+At that moment I was observed to leave the cemetery and the country; for
+a report of the rest of the proceedings I am indebted to my sainted
+father, who related it in a letter to me, written in jail the night
+before he had the irreparable misfortune to take the kink out of a rope.
+
+As the workmen proceeded with their excavation, four bishops stationed
+themselves at the corners of the grave and in the profound silence of
+the multitude, broken otherwise only by the harsh grinding sound of
+spades, repeated continuously, one after another, the solemn invocations
+and responses from the Ritual of the Disturbed, imploring the blessed
+brother to forgive. But the blessed brother was not there. Full fathom
+two they mined for him in vain, then gave it up. The priests were
+visibly disconcerted, the populace was aghast, for that grave was
+indubitably vacant.
+
+After a brief consultation with the Supreme Priest, the Great Mayor
+ordered the workmen to open another grave. The ritual was omitted this
+time until the coffin should be uncovered. There was no coffin, no body.
+
+
+The cemetery was now a scene of the wildest confusion and dismay. The
+people shouted and ran hither and thither, gesticulating, clamoring, all
+talking at once, none listening. Some ran for spades, fire-shovels,
+hoes, sticks, anything. Some brought carpenters' adzes, even chisels
+from the marble works, and with these inadequate aids set to work upon
+the first graves they came to. Others fell upon the mounds with their
+bare hands, scraping away the earth as eagerly as dogs digging for
+marmots. Before nightfall the surface of the greater part of the
+cemetery had been upturned; every grave had been explored to the bottom
+and thousands of men were tearing away at the interspaces with as
+furious a frenzy as exhaustion would permit. As night came on torches
+were lighted, and in the sinister glare these frantic mortals, looking
+like a legion of fiends performing some unholy rite, pursued their
+disappointing work until they had devastated the entire area. But not a
+body did they find--not even a coffin.
+
+The explanation is exceedingly simple. An important part of my income
+had been derived from the sale of _cadavres_ to medical colleges, which
+never before had been so well supplied, and which, in added recognition
+of my services to science, had all bestowed upon me diplomas, degrees
+and fellowships without number. But their demand for _cadavres_ was
+unequal to my supply: by even the most prodigal extravagances they could
+not consume the one-half of the products of my skill as a physician. As
+to the rest, I had owned and operated the most extensive and thoroughly
+appointed soapworks in all the country. The excellence of my "Toilet
+Homoline" was attested by certificates from scores of the saintliest
+theologians, and I had one in autograph from Badelina Fatti the most
+famous living soaprano.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAJOR'S TALE
+
+
+In the days of the Civil War practical joking had not, I think, fallen
+into that disrepute which characterizes it now. That, doubtless, was
+owing to our extreme youth--men were much younger than now, and evermore
+your very young man has a boisterous spirit, running easily to
+horse-play. You cannot think how young the men were in the early
+sixties! Why, the average age of the entire Federal Army was not more
+than twenty-five; I doubt if it was more than twenty-three, but not
+having the statistics on that point (if there are any) I want to be
+moderate: we will say twenty-five. It is true a man of twenty-five was
+in that heroic time a good deal more of a man than one of that age is
+now; you could see that by looking at him. His face had nothing of that
+unripeness so conspicuous in his successor. I never see a young fellow
+now without observing how disagreeably young he really is; but during the
+war we did not think of a man's age at all unless he happened to be
+pretty well along in life. In that case one could not help it, for the
+unloveliness of age assailed the human countenance then much earlier
+than now; the result, I suppose, of hard service--perhaps, to some
+extent, of hard drink, for, bless my soul! we did shed the blood of the
+grape and the grain abundantly during the war. I remember thinking
+General Grant, who could not have been more than forty, a pretty well
+preserved old chap, considering his habits. As to men of middle age--say
+from fifty to sixty--why, they all looked fit to personate the Last of
+the Hittites, or the Madagascarene Methuselah, in a museum. Depend upon
+it, my friends, men of that time were greatly younger than men are
+to-day, but looked much older. The change is quite remarkable.
+
+I said that practical joking had not then gone out of fashion. It had
+not, at least, in the army; though possibly in the more serious life of
+the civilian it had no place except in the form of tarring and
+feathering an occasional "copperhead." You all know, I suppose, what a
+"copperhead" was, so I will go directly at my story without introductory
+remark, as is my way.
+
+It was a few days before the battle of Nashville. The enemy had driven
+us up out of northern Georgia and Alabama. At Nashville we had turned at
+bay and fortified, while old Pap Thomas, our commander, hurried down
+reinforcements and supplies from Louisville. Meantime Hood, the
+Confederate commander, had partly invested us and lay close enough to
+have tossed shells into the heart of the town. As a rule he
+abstained--he was afraid of killing the families of his own soldiers, I
+suppose, a great many of whom had lived there. I sometimes wondered what
+were the feelings of those fellows, gazing over our heads at their own
+dwellings, where their wives and children or their aged parents were
+perhaps suffering for the necessaries of life, and certainly (so their
+reasoning would run) cowering under the tyranny and power of the
+barbarous Yankees.
+
+To begin, then, at the beginning, I was serving at that time on the
+staff of a division commander whose name I shall not disclose, for I am
+relating facts, and the person upon whom they bear hardest may have
+surviving relatives who would not care to have him traced. Our
+headquarters were in a large dwelling which stood just behind our line
+of works. This had been hastily abandoned by the civilian occupants, who
+had left everything pretty much as it was--had no place to store it,
+probably, and trusted that Heaven would preserve it from Federal
+cupidity and Confederate artillery. With regard to the latter we were as
+solicitous as they.
+
+Rummaging about in some of the chambers and closets one evening, some of
+us found an abundant supply of lady-gear--gowns, shawls, bonnets, hats,
+petticoats and the Lord knows what; I could not at that time have named
+the half of it. The sight of all this pretty plunder inspired one of us
+with what he was pleased to call an "idea," which, when submitted to the
+other scamps and scapegraces of the staff, met with instant and
+enthusiastic approval. We proceeded at once to act upon it for the
+undoing of one of our comrades.
+
+Our selected victim was an aide, Lieutenant Haberton, so to call him. He
+was a good soldier--as gallant a chap as ever wore spurs; but he had an
+intolerable weakness: he was a lady-killer, and like most of his class,
+even in those days, eager that all should know it. He never tired of
+relating his amatory exploits, and I need not say how dismal that kind
+of narrative is to all but the narrator. It would be dismal even if
+sprightly and vivacious, for all men are rivals in woman's favor, and to
+relate your successes to another man is to rouse in him a dumb
+resentment, tempered by disbelief. You will not convince him that you
+tell the tale for his entertainment; he will hear nothing in it but an
+expression of your own vanity. Moreover, as most men, whether rakes or
+not, are willing to be thought rakes, he is very likely to resent a
+stupid and unjust inference which he suspects you to have drawn from his
+reticence in the matter of his own adventures--namely, that he has had
+none. If, on the other hand, he has had no scruple in the matter and his
+reticence is due to lack of opportunity to talk, or of nimbleness in
+taking advantage of it, why, then he will be surly because you "have the
+floor" when he wants it himself. There are, in short, no circumstances
+under which a man, even from the best of motives, or no motive at all,
+can relate his feats of love without distinctly lowering himself in the
+esteem of his male auditor; and herein lies a just punishment for such
+as kiss and tell. In my younger days I was myself not entirely out of
+favor with the ladies, and have a memory stored with much concerning
+them which doubtless I might put into acceptable narrative had I not
+undertaken another tale, and if it were not my practice to relate one
+thing at a time, going straight away to the end, without digression.
+
+Lieutenant Haberton was, it must be confessed, a singularly handsome man
+with engaging manners. He was, I suppose, judging from the imperfect
+view-point of my sex, what women call "fascinating." Now, the qualities
+which make a man attractive to ladies entail a double disadvantage.
+First, they are of a sort readily discerned by other men, and by none
+more readily than by those who lack them. Their possessor, being feared
+by all these, is habitually slandered by them in self-defense. To all
+the ladies in whose welfare they deem themselves entitled to a voice and
+interest they hint at the vices and general unworth of the "ladies' man"
+in no uncertain terms, and to their wives relate without shame the most
+monstrous falsehoods about him. Nor are they restrained by the
+consideration that he is their friend; the qualities which have engaged
+their own admiration make it necessary to warn away those to whom the
+allurement would be a peril. So the man of charming personality, while
+loved by all the ladies who know him well, yet not too well, must endure
+with such fortitude as he may the consciousness that those others who
+know him only "by reputation" consider him a shameless reprobate, a
+vicious and unworthy man--a type and example of moral depravity. To name
+the second disadvantage entailed by his charms: he commonly is.
+
+In order to get forward with our busy story (and in my judgment a story
+once begun should not suffer impedition) it is necessary to explain that
+a young fellow attached to our headquarters as an orderly was notably
+effeminate in face and figure. He was not more than seventeen and had a
+perfectly smooth face and large lustrous eyes, which must have been the
+envy of many a beautiful woman in those days. And how beautiful the
+women of those days were! and how gracious! Those of the South showed in
+their demeanor toward us Yankees something of _hauteur_, but, for my
+part, I found it less insupportable than the studious indifference with
+which one's attentions are received by the ladies of this new
+generation, whom I certainly think destitute of sentiment and
+sensibility.
+
+This young orderly, whose name was Arman, we persuaded--by what
+arguments I am not bound to say--to clothe himself in female attire and
+personate a lady. When we had him arrayed to our satisfaction--and a
+charming girl he looked--he was conducted to a sofa in the office of the
+adjutant-general. That officer was in the secret, as indeed were all
+excepting Haberton and the general; within the awful dignity hedging the
+latter lay possibilities of disapproval which we were unwilling to
+confront.
+
+When all was ready I went to Haberton and said: "Lieutenant, there is a
+young woman in the adjutant-general's office. She is the daughter of the
+insurgent gentleman who owns this house, and has, I think, called to see
+about its present occupancy. We none of us know just how to talk to her,
+but we think perhaps you would say about the right thing--at least you
+will say things in the right way. Would you mind coming down?"
+
+The lieutenant would not mind; he made a hasty toilet and joined me. As
+we were going along a passage toward the Presence we encountered a
+formidable obstacle--the general.
+
+"I say, Broadwood," he said, addressing me in the familiar manner which
+meant that he was in excellent humor, "there's a lady in Lawson's
+office. Looks like a devilish fine girl--came on some errand of mercy or
+justice, no doubt. Have the goodness to conduct her to my quarters. I
+won't saddle you youngsters with _all_ the business of this division,"
+he added facetiously.
+
+This was awkward; something had to be done.
+
+"General," I said, "I did not think the lady's business of sufficient
+importance to bother you with it. She is one of the Sanitary
+Commission's nurses, and merely wants to see about some supplies for the
+smallpox hospital where she is on duty. I'll send her in at once."
+
+"You need not mind," said the general, moving on; "I dare say Lawson
+will attend to the matter."
+
+Ah, the gallant general! how little I thought, as I looked after his
+retreating figure and laughed at the success of my ruse, that within the
+week he would be "dead on the field of honor!" Nor was he the only one
+of our little military household above whom gloomed the shadow of the
+death angel, and who might almost have heard "the beating of his wings."
+On that bleak December morning a few days later, when from an hour
+before dawn until ten o'clock we sat on horseback on those icy hills,
+waiting for General Smith to open the battle miles away to the right,
+there were eight of us. At the close of the fighting there were three.
+There is now one. Bear with him yet a little while, oh, thrifty
+generation; he is but one of the horrors of war strayed from his era
+into yours. He is only the harmless skeleton at your feast and
+peace-dance, responding to your laughter and your footing it featly,
+with rattling fingers and bobbing skull--albeit upon suitable occasion,
+with a partner of his choosing, he might do his little dance with the
+best of you.
+
+As we entered the adjutant-general's office we observed that the entire
+staff was there. The adjutant-general himself was exceedingly busy at
+his desk. The commissary of subsistence played cards with the surgeon in
+a bay window. The rest were in several parts of the room, reading or
+conversing in low tones. On a sofa in a half lighted nook of the room,
+at some distance from any of the groups, sat the "lady," closely veiled,
+her eyes modestly fixed upon her toes.
+
+"Madam," I said, advancing with Haberton, "this officer will be pleased
+to serve you if it is in his power. I trust that it is."
+
+With a bow I retired to the farther corner of the room and took part in
+a conversation going on there, though I had not the faintest notion what
+it was about, and my remarks had no relevancy to anything under the
+heavens. A close observer would have noticed that we were all intently
+watching Haberton and only "making believe" to do anything else.
+
+He was worth watching, too; the fellow was simply an _édition de luxe_
+of "Turveydrop on Deportment." As the "lady" slowly unfolded her tale of
+grievances against our lawless soldiery and mentioned certain instances
+of wanton disregard of property rights--among them, as to the imminent
+peril of bursting our sides we partly overheard, the looting of her own
+wardrobe--the look of sympathetic agony in Haberton's handsome face was
+the very flower and fruit of histrionic art. His deferential and
+assenting nods at her several statements were so exquisitely performed
+that one could not help regretting their unsubstantial nature and the
+impossibility of preserving them under glass for instruction and delight
+of posterity. And all the time the wretch was drawing his chair nearer
+and nearer. Once or twice he looked about to see if we were observing,
+but we were in appearance blankly oblivious to all but one another and
+our several diversions. The low hum of our conversation, the gentle
+tap-tap of the cards as they fell in play and the furious scratching of
+the adjutant-general's pen as he turned off countless pages of words
+without sense were the only sounds heard. No--there was another: at long
+intervals the distant boom of a heavy gun, followed by the approaching
+rush of the shot. The enemy was amusing himself.
+
+On these occasions the lady was perhaps not the only member of that
+company who was startled, but she was startled more than the others,
+sometimes rising from the sofa and standing with clasped hands, the
+authentic portrait of terror and irresolution. It was no more than
+natural that Haberton should at these times reseat her with infinite
+tenderness, assuring her of her safety and regretting her peril in the
+same breath. It was perhaps right that he should finally possess himself
+of her gloved hand and a seat beside her on the sofa; but it certainly
+was highly improper for him to be in the very act of possessing himself
+of _both_ hands when--boom, _whiz_, BANG!
+
+We all sprang to our feet. A shell had crashed into the house and
+exploded in the room above us. Bushels of plaster fell among us. That
+modest and murmurous young lady sprang erect.
+
+"Jumping Jee-rusalem!" she cried.
+
+Haberton, who had also risen, stood as one petrified--as a statue of
+himself erected on the site of his assassination. He neither spoke, nor
+moved, nor once took his eyes off the face of Orderly Arman, who was now
+flinging his girl-gear right and left, exposing his charms in the most
+shameless way; while out upon the night and away over the lighted camps
+into the black spaces between the hostile lines rolled the billows of
+our inexhaustible laughter! Ah, what a merry life it was in the old
+heroic days when men had not forgotten how to laugh!
+
+Haberton slowly came to himself. He looked about the room less blankly;
+then by degrees fashioned his visage into the sickliest grin that ever
+libeled all smiling. He shook his head and looked knowing.
+
+"You can't fool _me_!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CURRIED COW
+
+
+My Aunt Patience, who tilled a small farm in the state of Michigan, had
+a favorite cow. This creature was not a good cow, nor a profitable one,
+for instead of devoting a part of her leisure to secretion of milk and
+production of veal she concentrated all her faculties on the study of
+kicking. She would kick all day and get up in the middle of the night to
+kick. She would kick at anything--hens, pigs, posts, loose stones, birds
+in the air and fish leaping out of the water; to this impartial and
+catholic-minded beef, all were equal--all similarly undeserving. Like
+old Timotheus, who "raised a mortal to the skies," was my Aunt
+Patience's cow; though, in the words of a later poet than Dryden, she
+did it "more harder and more frequently." It was pleasing to see her
+open a passage for herself through a populous barnyard. She would flash
+out, right and left, first with one hind-leg and then with the other,
+and would sometimes, under favoring conditions, have a considerable
+number of domestic animals in the air at once.
+
+Her kicks, too, were as admirable in quality as inexhaustible in
+quantity. They were incomparably superior to those of the untutored kine
+that had not made the art a life study--mere amateurs that kicked "by
+ear," as they say in music. I saw her once standing in the road,
+professedly fast asleep, and mechanically munching her cud with a sort
+of Sunday morning lassitude, as one munches one's cud in a dream.
+Snouting about at her side, blissfully unconscious of impending danger
+and wrapped up in thoughts of his sweetheart, was a gigantic black
+hog--a hog of about the size and general appearance of a yearling
+rhinoceros. Suddenly, while I looked--without a visible movement on the
+part of the cow--with never a perceptible tremor of her frame, nor a
+lapse in the placid regularity of her chewing--that hog had gone away
+from there--had utterly taken his leave. But away toward the pale
+horizon a minute black speck was traversing the empyrean with the speed
+of a meteor, and in a moment had disappeared, without audible report,
+beyond the distant hills. It may have been that hog.
+
+Currying cows is not, I think, a common practice, even in Michigan; but
+as this one had never needed milking, of course she had to be subjected
+to some equivalent form of persecution; and irritating her skin with a
+currycomb was thought as disagreeable an attention as a thoughtful
+affection could devise. At least she thought it so; though I suspect her
+mistress really meant it for the good creature's temporal advantage.
+Anyhow my aunt always made it a condition to the employment of a
+farm-servant that he should curry the cow every morning; but after just
+enough trials to convince himself that it was not a sudden spasm, nor a
+mere local disturbance, the man would always give notice of an intention
+to quit, by pounding the beast half-dead with some foreign body and then
+limping home to his couch. I don't know how many men the creature
+removed from my aunt's employ in this way, but judging from the number
+of lame persons in that part of the country, I should say a good many;
+though some of the lameness may have been taken at second-hand from the
+original sufferers by their descendants, and some may have come by
+contagion.
+
+I think my aunt's was a faulty system of agriculture. It is true her
+farm labor cost her nothing, for the laborers all left her service
+before any salary had accrued; but as the cow's fame spread abroad
+through the several States and Territories, it became increasingly
+difficult to obtain hands; and, after all, the favorite was imperfectly
+curried. It was currently remarked that the cow had kicked the farm to
+pieces--a rude metaphor, implying that the land was not properly
+cultivated, nor the buildings and fences kept in adequate repair.
+
+It was useless to remonstrate with my aunt: she would concede
+everything, amending nothing. Her late husband had attempted to reform
+the abuse in this manner, and had had the argument all his own way until
+he had remonstrated himself into an early grave; and the funeral was
+delayed all day, until a fresh undertaker could be procured, the one
+originally engaged having confidingly undertaken to curry the cow at the
+request of the widow.
+
+Since that time my Aunt Patience had not been in the matrimonial market;
+the love of that cow had usurped in her heart the place of a more
+natural and profitable affection. But when she saw her seeds unsown, her
+harvests ungarnered, her fences overtopped with rank brambles and her
+meadows gorgeous with the towering Canada thistle she thought it best to
+take a partner.
+
+When it transpired that my Aunt Patience intended wedlock there was
+intense popular excitement. Every adult single male became at once a
+marrying man. The criminal statistics of Badger county show that in that
+single year more marriages occurred than in any decade before or since.
+But none of them was my aunt's. Men married their cooks, their
+laundresses, their deceased wives' mothers, their enemies'
+sisters--married whomsoever would wed; and any man who, by fair means or
+courtship, could not obtain a wife went before a justice of the peace
+and made an affidavit that he had some wives in Indiana. Such was the
+fear of being married alive by my Aunt Patience.
+
+Now, where my aunt's affection was concerned she was, as the reader will
+have already surmised, a rather determined woman; and the extraordinary
+marrying epidemic having left but one eligible male in all that county,
+she had set her heart upon that one eligible male; then she went and
+carted him to her home. He turned out to be a long Methodist parson,
+named Huggins.
+
+Aside from his unconscionable length, the Rev. Berosus Huggins was not
+so bad a fellow, and was nobody's fool. He was, I suppose, the most
+ill-favored mortal, however, in the whole northern half of
+America--thin, angular, cadaverous of visage and solemn out of all
+reason. He commonly wore a low-crowned black hat, set so far down upon
+his head as partly to eclipse his eyes and wholly obscure the ample
+glory of his ears. The only other visible article of his attire (except
+a brace of wrinkled cowskin boots, by which the word "polish" would have
+been considered the meaningless fragment of a lost language) was a
+tight-fitting black frock-coat, preternaturally long in the waist, the
+skirts of which fell about his heels, sopping up the dew. This he always
+wore snugly buttoned from the throat downward. In this attire he cut a
+tolerably spectral figure. His aspect was so conspicuously unnatural and
+inhuman that whenever he went into a cornfield, the predatory crows
+would temporarily forsake their business to settle upon him in swarms,
+fighting for the best seats upon his person, by way of testifying their
+contempt for the weak inventions of the husbandman.
+
+The day after the wedding my Aunt Patience summoned the Rev. Berosus to
+the council chamber, and uttered her mind to the following intent:
+
+"Now, Huggy, dear, I'll tell you what there is to do about the place.
+First, you must repair all the fences, clearing out the weeds and
+repressing the brambles with a strong hand. Then you will have to
+exterminate the Canadian thistles, mend the wagon, rig up a plow or two,
+and get things into ship-shape generally. This will keep you out of
+mischief for the better part of two years; of course you will have to
+give up preaching, for the present. As soon as you have--O! I forgot
+poor Phoebe. She"----
+
+"Mrs. Huggins," interrupted her solemn spouse, "I shall hope to be the
+means, under Providence, of effecting all needful reforms in the
+husbandry of this farm. But the sister you mention (I trust she is not
+of the world's people)--have I the pleasure of knowing her? The name,
+indeed, sounds familiar, but"----
+
+"Not know Phoebe!" cried my aunt, with unfeigned astonishment; "I
+thought everybody in Badger knew Phoebe. Why, you will have to scratch
+her legs, every blessed morning of your natural life!"
+
+"I assure you, madam," rejoined the Rev. Berosus, with dignity, "it
+would yield me a hallowed pleasure to minister to the spiritual needs of
+sister Phoebe, to the extent of my feeble and unworthy ability; but,
+really, I fear the merely secular ministration of which you speak must
+be entrusted to abler and, I would respectfully suggest, female hands."
+
+
+"Whyyy, youuu ooold, foooool!" replied my aunt, spreading her eyes with
+unbounded amazement, "Phoebe is a _cow_!"
+
+"In that case," said the husband, with unruffled composure, "it will, of
+course, devolve upon me to see that her carnal welfare is properly
+attended to; and I shall be happy to bestow upon her legs such time as I
+may, without sin, snatch from my strife with Satan and the Canadian
+thistles."
+
+With that the Rev. Mr. Huggins crowded his hat upon his shoulders,
+pronounced a brief benediction upon his bride, and betook himself to the
+barn-yard.
+
+Now, it is necessary to explain that he had known from the first who
+Phoebe was, and was familiar, from hearsay, with all her sinful traits.
+Moreover, he had already done himself the honor of making her a visit,
+remaining in the vicinity of her person, just out of range, for more
+than an hour and permitting her to survey him at her leisure from every
+point of the compass. In short, he and Phoebe had mutually reconnoitered
+and prepared for action.
+
+Amongst the articles of comfort and luxury which went to make up the
+good parson's _dot_, and which his wife had already caused to be
+conveyed to his new home, was a patent cast-iron pump, about seven feet
+high. This had been deposited near the barn-yard, preparatory to being
+set up on the planks above the barn-yard well. Mr. Huggins now sought
+out this invention and conveying it to its destination put it into
+position, screwing it firmly to the planks. He next divested himself of
+his long gaberdine and his hat, buttoning the former loosely about the
+pump, which it almost concealed, and hanging the latter upon the summit
+of the structure. The handle of the pump, when depressed, curved
+outwardly between the coat-skirts, singularly like a tail, but with this
+inconspicuous exception, any unprejudiced observer would have pronounced
+the thing Mr. Huggins, looking uncommonly well.
+
+The preliminaries completed, the good man carefully closed the gate of
+the barnyard, knowing that as soon as Phoebe, who was campaigning in the
+kitchen garden, should note the precaution she would come and jump in to
+frustrate it, which eventually she did. Her master, meanwhile, had laid
+himself, coatless and hatless, along the outside of the close board
+fence, where he put in the time pleasantly, catching his death of cold
+and peering through a knot-hole.
+
+At first, and for some time, the animal pretended not to see the figure
+on the platform. Indeed she had turned her back upon it directly she
+arrived, affecting a light sleep. Finding that this stratagem did not
+achieve the success that she had expected, she abandoned it and stood
+for several minutes irresolute, munching her cud in a half-hearted way,
+but obviously thinking very hard. Then she began nosing along the ground
+as if wholly absorbed in a search for something that she had lost,
+tacking about hither and thither, but all the time drawing nearer to the
+object of her wicked intention. Arrived within speaking distance, she
+stood for a little while confronting the fraudful figure, then put out
+her nose toward it, as if to be caressed, trying to create the
+impression that fondling and dalliance were more to her than wealth,
+power and the plaudits of the populace--that she had been accustomed to
+them all her sweet young life and could not get on without them. Then
+she approached a little nearer, as if to shake hands, all the while
+maintaining the most amiable expression of countenance and executing all
+manner of seductive nods and winks and smiles. Suddenly she wheeled
+about and with the rapidity of lightning dealt out a terrible kick--a
+kick of inconceivable force and fury, comparable to nothing in nature
+but a stroke of paralysis out of a clear sky!
+
+The effect was magical! Cows kick, not backward but sidewise. The impact
+which was intended to project the counterfeit theologian into the middle
+of the succeeding conference week reacted upon the animal herself, and
+it and the pain together set her spinning like a top. Such was the
+velocity of her revolution that she looked like a dim, circular cow,
+surrounded by a continuous ring like that of the planet Saturn--the
+white tuft at the extremity of her sweeping tail! Presently, as the
+sustaining centrifugal force lessened and failed, she began to sway and
+wabble from side to side, and finally, toppling over on her side, rolled
+convulsively on her back and lay motionless with all her feet in the
+air, honestly believing that the world had somehow got atop of her and
+she was supporting it at a great sacrifice of personal comfort. Then she
+fainted.
+
+How long she lay unconscious she knew not, but at last she unclosed her
+eyes, and catching sight of the open door of her stall, "more sweet than
+all the landscape smiling near," she struggled up, stood wavering upon
+three legs, rubbed her eyes, and was visibly bewildered as to the points
+of the compass. Observing the iron clergyman standing fast by its faith,
+she threw it a look of grieved reproach and hobbled heart-broken into
+her humble habitation, a subjugated cow.
+
+For several weeks Phoebe's right hind leg was swollen to a monstrous
+growth, but by a season of judicious nursing she was "brought round all
+right," as her sympathetic and puzzled mistress phrased it, or "made
+whole," as the reticent man of God preferred to say. She was now as
+tractable and inoffensive "in her daily walk and conversation" (Huggins)
+as a little child. Her new master used to take her ailing leg trustfully
+into his lap, and for that matter, might have taken it into his mouth if
+he had so desired. Her entire character appeared to be radically
+changed--so altered that one day my Aunt Patience, who, fondly as she
+loved her, had never before so much as ventured to touch the hem of her
+garment, as it were, went confidently up to her to soothe her with a pan
+of turnips. Gad! how thinly she spread out that good old lady upon the
+face of an adjacent stone wall! You could not have done it so evenly
+with a trowel.
+
+
+
+
+A REVOLT OF THE GODS
+
+
+My father was a deodorizer of dead dogs, my mother kept the only shop
+for the sale of cats'-meat in my native city. They did not live happily;
+the difference in social rank was a chasm which could not be bridged by
+the vows of marriage. It was indeed an ill-assorted and most unlucky
+alliance; and as might have been foreseen it ended in disaster. One
+morning after the customary squabbles at breakfast, my father rose from
+the table, quivering and pale with wrath, and proceeding to the
+parsonage thrashed the clergyman who had performed the marriage
+ceremony. The act was generally condemned and public feeling ran so high
+against the offender that people would permit dead dogs to lie on their
+property until the fragrance was deafening rather than employ him; and
+the municipal authorities suffered one bloated old mastiff to utter
+itself from a public square in so clamorous an exhalation that passing
+strangers supposed themselves to be in the vicinity of a saw-mill. My
+father was indeed unpopular. During these dark days the family's sole
+dependence was on my mother's emporium for cats'-meat.
+
+The business was profitable. In that city, which was the oldest in the
+world, the cat was an object of veneration. Its worship was the religion
+of the country. The multiplication and addition of cats were a perpetual
+instruction in arithmetic. Naturally, any inattention to the wants of a
+cat was punished with great severity in this world and the next; so my
+good mother numbered her patrons by the hundred. Still, with an
+unproductive husband and seventeen children she had some difficulty in
+making both ends cats'-meat; and at last the necessity of increasing the
+discrepancy between the cost price and the selling price of her carnal
+wares drove her to an expedient which proved eminently disastrous: she
+conceived the unlucky notion of retaliating by refusing to sell
+cats'-meat until the boycott was taken off her husband.
+
+On the day when she put this resolution into practice the shop was
+thronged with excited customers, and others extended in turbulent and
+restless masses up four streets, out of sight. Inside there was nothing
+but cursing, crowding, shouting and menace. Intimidation was freely
+resorted to--several of my younger brothers and sisters being threatened
+with cutting up for the cats--but my mother was as firm as a rock, and
+the day was a black one for Sardasa, the ancient and sacred city that
+was the scene of these events. The lock-out was vigorously maintained,
+and seven hundred and fifty thousand cats went to bed hungry!
+
+The next morning the city was found to have been placarded during the
+night with a proclamation of the Federated Union of Old Maids. This
+ancient and powerful order averred through its Supreme Executive Head
+that the boycotting of my father and the retaliatory lock-out of my
+mother were seriously imperiling the interests of religion. The
+proclamation went on to state that if arbitration were not adopted by
+noon that day all the old maids of the federation would strike--and
+strike they did.
+
+The next act of this unhappy drama was an insurrection of cats. These
+sacred animals, seeing themselves doomed to starvation, held a
+mass-meeting and marched in procession through the streets, swearing and
+spitting like fiends. This revolt of the gods produced such
+consternation that many pious persons died of fright and all business
+was suspended to bury them and pass terrifying resolutions.
+
+Matters were now about as bad as it seemed possible for them to be.
+Meetings among representatives of the hostile interests were held, but
+no understanding was arrived at that would hold. Every agreement was
+broken as soon as made, and each element of the discord was frantically
+appealing to the people. A new horror was in store.
+
+It will be remembered that my father was a deodorizer of dead dogs, but
+was unable to practice his useful and humble profession because no one
+would employ him. The dead dogs in consequence reeked rascally. Then
+they struck! From every vacant lot and public dumping ground, from every
+hedge and ditch and gutter and cistern, every crystal rill and the
+clabbered waters of all the canals and estuaries--from all the places,
+in short, which from time immemorial have been preëmpted by dead dogs
+and consecrated to the uses of them and their heirs and successors
+forever--they trooped innumerous, a ghastly crew! Their procession was a
+mile in length. Midway of the town it met the procession of cats in full
+song. The cats instantly exalted their backs and magnified their tails;
+the dead dogs uncovered their teeth as in life, and erected such of
+their bristles as still adhered to the skin.
+
+The carnage that ensued was too awful for relation! The light of the sun
+was obscured by flying fur, and the battle was waged in the darkness,
+blindly and regardless. The swearing of the cats was audible miles away,
+while the fragrance of the dead dogs desolated seven provinces.
+
+How the battle might have resulted it is impossible to say, but when it
+was at its fiercest the Federated Union of Old Maids came running down a
+side street and sprang into the thickest of the fray. A moment later my
+mother herself bore down upon the warring hosts, brandishing a cleaver,
+and laid about her with great freedom and impartiality. My father joined
+the fight, the municipal authorities engaged, and the general public,
+converging on the battle-field from all points of the compass, consumed
+itself in the center as it pressed in from the circumference. Last of
+all, the dead held a meeting in the cemetery and resolving on a general
+strike, began to destroy vaults, tombs, monuments, headstones, willows,
+angels and young sheep in marble--everything they could lay their hands
+on. By nightfall the living and the dead were alike exterminated, and
+where the ancient and sacred city of Sardasa had stood nothing remained
+but an excavation filled with dead bodies and building materials, shreds
+of cat and blue patches of decayed dog. The place is now a vast pool of
+stagnant water in the center of a desert.
+
+The stirring events of those few days constituted my industrial
+education, and so well have I improved my advantages that I am now Chief
+of Misrule to the Dukes of Disorder, an organization numbering thirteen
+million American workingmen.
+
+
+
+
+THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO
+
+
+It was a wicked thing to do, certainly. I have often regretted it since,
+and if the opportunity of doing so again were presented I should
+hesitate a long time before embracing it. But I was young then, and
+cherished a species of humor which I have since abjured. Still, when I
+remember the character of the people who were burlesquing and bringing
+into disrepute the letter and spirit of our holy religion I feel a
+certain satisfaction in having contributed one feeble effort toward
+making them ridiculous. In consideration of the little good I may have
+done in that way, I beg the reader to judge my conceded error as
+leniently as possible. This is the story.
+
+Some years ago the town of Harding, in Illinois, experienced "a revival
+of religion," as the people called it. It would have been more accurate
+and less profane to term it a revival of Rampageanism, for the craze
+originated in, and was disseminated by, the sect which I will call the
+Rampagean communion; and most of the leaping and howling was done in
+that interest. Amongst those who yielded to the influence was my friend
+Thomas Dobsho. Tom had been a pretty bad sinner in a small way, but he
+went into this new thing heart and soul. At one of the meetings he made
+a public confession of more sins than he ever was, or ever could have
+been guilty of; stopping just short of statutory crimes, and even
+hinting, significantly, that he could tell a good deal more if he were
+pressed. He wanted to join the absurd communion the very evening of his
+conversion. He wanted to join two or three communions. In fact, he was
+so carried away with his zeal that some of the brethren gave me a hint
+to take him home; he and I occupied adjoining apartments in the Elephant
+Hotel.
+
+Tom's fervor, as it happened, came near defeating its own purpose;
+instead of taking him at once into the fold without reference or
+"character," which was their usual way, the brethren remembered against
+him his awful confessions and put him on probation. But after a few
+weeks, during which he conducted himself like a decent lunatic, it was
+decided to baptise him along with a dozen other pretty hard cases who
+had been converted more recently. This sacrilegious ceremony I persuaded
+myself it was my duty to prevent, though I think now I erred as to the
+means adopted. It was to take place on a Sunday, and on the preceding
+Saturday I called on the head revivalist, the Rev. Mr. Swin, and craved
+an interview.
+
+"I come," said I, with simulated reluctance and embarrassment, "in
+behalf of my friend, Brother Dobsho, to make a very delicate and unusual
+request. You are, I think, going to baptise him to-morrow, and I trust
+it will be to him the beginning of a new and better life. But I don't
+know if you are aware that his family are all Plungers, and that he is
+himself tainted with the wicked heresy of that sect. So it is. He is, as
+one might say in secular metaphor, 'on the fence' between their grievous
+error and the pure faith of your church. It would be most melancholy if
+he should get down on the wrong side. Although I confess with shame I
+have not myself embraced the truth, I hope I am not too blind to see
+where it lies."
+
+"The calamity that you apprehend," said the reverend lout, after solemn
+reflection, "would indeed seriously affect our friend's interest and
+endanger his soul. I had not expected Brother Dobsho so soon to give up
+the good fight."
+
+"I think sir," I replied reflectively, "there is no fear of that if the
+matter is skilfully managed. He is heartily with you--might I venture to
+say with _us_--on every point but one. He favors immersion! He has been
+so vile a sinner that he foolishly fears the more simple rite of your
+church will not make him wet enough. Would you believe it? his
+uninstructed scruples on the point are so gross and materialistic that
+he actually suggested soaping himself as a preparatory ceremony! I
+believe, however, if instead of sprinkling my friend, you would pour a
+generous basinful of water on his head--but now that I think of it in
+your enlightening presence I see that such a proceeding is quite out of
+the question. I fear we must let matters take the usual course, trusting
+to our later efforts to prevent the backsliding which may result."
+
+The parson rose and paced the floor a moment, then suggested that he'd
+better see Brother Dobsho, and labor to remove his error. I told him I
+thought not; I was sure it would not be best. Argument would only
+confirm him in his prejudices. So it was settled that the subject should
+not be broached in that quarter. It would have been bad for me if it had
+been.
+
+When I reflect now upon the guile of that conversation, the falsehood of
+my representations and the wickedness of my motive I am almost ashamed
+to proceed with my narrative. Had the minister been other than an arrant
+humbug, I hope I should never have suffered myself to make him the dupe
+of a scheme so sacrilegious in itself, and prosecuted with so sinful a
+disregard of honor.
+
+The memorable Sabbath dawned bright and beautiful. About nine o'clock
+the cracked old bell, rigged up on struts before the "meeting-house,"
+began to clamor its call to service, and nearly the whole population of
+Harding took its way to the performance. I had taken the precaution to
+set my watch fifteen minutes fast. Tom was nervously preparing himself
+for the ordeal. He fidgeted himself into his best suit an hour before
+the time, carried his hat about the room in the most aimless and
+demented way and consulted his watch a hundred times. I was to accompany
+him to church, and I spent the time fussing about the room, doing the
+most extraordinary things in the most exasperating manner--in short,
+keeping up Tom's feverish excitement by every wicked device I could
+think of. Within a half hour of the real time for service I suddenly
+yelled out--
+
+"O, I say, Tom; pardon me, but that head of yours is just frightful!
+Please _do_ let me brush it up a bit!"
+
+Seizing him by the shoulders I thrust him into a chair with his face to
+the wall, laid hold of his comb and brush, got behind him and went to
+work. He was trembling like a child, and knew no more what I was doing
+than if he had been brained. Now, Tom's head was a curiosity. His hair,
+which was remarkably thick, was like wire. Being cut rather short it
+stood out all over his scalp like the spines on a porcupine. It had been
+a favorite complaint of Tom's that he never could do anything to that
+head. I found no difficulty--I did something to it, though I blush to
+think what it was. I did something which I feared he might discover if
+he looked in the mirror, so I carelessly pulled out my watch, sprung it
+open, gave a start and shouted--
+
+"By Jove! Thomas--pardon the oath--but we're late. Your watch is all
+wrong; look at mine! Here's your hat, old fellow; come along. There's
+not a moment to lose!"
+
+Clapping his hat on his head, I pulled him out of the house, with actual
+violence. In five minutes more we were in the meeting-house with ever so
+much time to spare.
+
+The services that day, I am told, were specially interesting and
+impressive, but I had a good deal else on my mind--was preoccupied,
+absent, inattentive. They might have varied from the usual profane
+exhibition in any respect and to any extent, and I should not have
+observed it. The first thing I clearly perceived was a rank of
+"converts" kneeling before the "altar," Tom at the left of the line.
+Then the Rev. Mr. Swin approached him, thoughtfully dipping his fingers
+into a small earthern bowl of water as if he had just finished dining. I
+was much affected: I could see nothing distinctly for my tears. My
+handkerchief was at my face--most of it inside. I was observed to sob
+spasmodically, and I am abashed to think how many sincere persons
+mistakenly followed my example.
+
+With some solemn words, the purport of which I did not quite make out,
+except that they sounded like swearing, the minister stood before
+Thomas, gave me a glance of intelligence and then with an innocent
+expression of face, the recollection of which to this day fills me with
+remorse, spilled, as if by accident, the entire contents of the bowl on
+the head of my poor friend--that head into the hair of which I had
+sifted a prodigal profusion of Seidlitz-powders!
+
+I confess it, the effect was magical--anyone who was present would tell
+you that. Tom's pow simmered--it seethed--it foamed yeastily, and
+slavered like a mad dog! It steamed and hissed, with angry spurts and
+flashes! In a second it had grown bigger than a small snowbank, and
+whiter. It surged, and boiled, and walloped, and overflowed, and
+sputtered--sent off feathery flakes like down from a shot swan! The
+froth poured creaming over his face, and got into his eyes. It was the
+most sinful shampooing of the season!
+
+I cannot relate the commotion this produced, nor would I if I could. As
+to Tom, he sprang to his feet and staggered out of the house, groping
+his way between the pews, sputtering strangled profanity and gasping
+like a stranded fish. The other candidates for baptism rose also,
+shaking their pates as if to say, "No you don't, my hearty," and left
+the house in a body. Amidst unbroken silence the minister reascended the
+pulpit with the empty bowl in his hand, and was first to speak:
+
+"Brethren and sisters," said he with calm, deliberate evenness of tone,
+"I have held forth in this tabernacle for many more years than I have
+got fingers and toes, and during that time I have known not guile, nor
+anger, nor any uncharitableness. As to Henry Barber, who put up this job
+on me, I judge him not lest I be judged. Let him take _that_ and sin no
+more!"--and he flung the earthern bowl with so true an aim that it was
+shattered against my skull. The rebuke was not undeserved, I confess,
+and I trust I have profited by it.
+
+
+
+
+THE RACE AT LEFT BOWER
+
+
+"It's all very well fer you Britishers to go assin' about the country
+tryin' to strike the trail o' the mines you've salted down yer loose
+carpital in," said Colonel Jackhigh, setting his empty glass on the
+counter and wiping his lips with his coat sleeve; "but w'en it comes to
+hoss racin', w'y I've got a cayuse ken lay over all the thurrerbreds yer
+little mantel-ornyment of a island ever panned out--bet yer britches I
+have! Talk about yer Durby winners--w'y this pisen little beast o'
+mine'll take the bit in her teeth and show 'em the way to the horizon
+like she was takin' her mornin' stroll and they was tryin' to keep an
+eye on her to see she didn't do herself an injury--that's w'at she
+would! And she haint never run a race with anything spryer'n an Injun in
+all her life; she's a green amatoor, _she_ is!"
+
+"Oh, very well," said the Englishman with a quiet smile; "it is easy
+enough to settle the matter. My animal is in tolerably good condition,
+and if yours is in town we can have the race to-morrow for any stake you
+like, up to a hundred dollars.
+
+"That's jest the figger," said the colonel; "dot it down, barkeep. But
+it's like slarterin' the innocents," he added, half-remorsefully, as he
+turned to leave; "it's bettin' on a dead sure thing--that's what it is!
+If my cayuse knew wa't I was about she'd go and break a laig to make the
+race a fair one."
+
+So it was arranged that the race was to come off at three o'clock the
+next day, on the _mesa_, some distance from town. As soon as the news
+got abroad, the whole population of Left Bower and vicinity knocked off
+work and assembled in the various bars to discuss it. The Englishman and
+his horse were general favorites, and aside from the unpopularity of the
+colonel, nobody had ever seen his "cayuse." Still the element of
+patriotism came in, making the betting very nearly even.
+
+A race-course was marked off on the _mesa_ and at the appointed hour
+every one was there except the colonel. It was arranged that each man
+should ride his own horse, and the Englishman, who had acquired
+something of the free-and-easy bearing that distinguishes the "mining
+sharp," was already atop of his magnificent animal, with one leg thrown
+carelessly across the pommel of his Mexican saddle, as he puffed his
+cigar with calm confidence in the result of the race. He was conscious,
+too, that he possessed the secret sympathy of all, even of those who had
+felt it their duty to bet against him. The judge, watch in hand, was
+growing impatient, when the colonel appeared about a half-mile away, and
+bore down upon the crowd. Everyone was eager to inspect his mount; and
+such a mount as it proved to be was never before seen, even in Left
+Bower!
+
+You have seen "perfect skeletons" of horses often enough, no doubt, but
+this animal was not even a perfect skeleton; there were bones missing
+here and there which you would not have believed the beast could have
+spared. "Little" the colonel had called her! She was not an inch less
+than eighteen hands high, and long out of all reasonable proportion. She
+was so hollow in the back that she seemed to have been bent in a
+machine. She had neither tail nor mane, and her neck, as long as a man,
+stuck straight up into the air, supporting a head without ears. Her eyes
+had an expression in them of downright insanity, and the muscles of her
+face were afflicted with periodical convulsions that drew back the
+corners of the mouth and wrinkled the upper lip so as to produce a
+ghastly grin every two or three seconds. In color she was "claybank,"
+with great blotches of white, as if she had been pelted with small bags
+of flour. The crookedness of her legs was beyond all comparison, and as
+to her gait it was that of a blind camel walking diagonally across
+innumerable deep ditches. Altogether she looked like the crude result of
+Nature's first experiment in equifaction.
+
+As this libel on all horses shambled up to the starting post there was a
+general shout; the sympathies of the crowd changed in the twinkling of
+an eye! Everyone wanted to bet on her, and the Englishman himself was
+only restrained from doing so by a sense of honor. It was growing late,
+however, and the judge insisted on starting them. They got off very well
+together, and seeing the mare was unconscionably slow the Englishman
+soon pulled his animal in and permitted the ugly thing to pass him, so
+as to enjoy a back view of her. That sealed his fate. The course had
+been marked off in a circle of two miles in circumference and some
+twenty feet wide, the limits plainly defined by little furrows. Before
+the animals had gone a half mile both had been permitted to settle down
+into a comfortable walk, in which they continued three-fourths of the
+way round the ring. Then the Englishman thought it time to whip up and
+canter in.
+
+But he didn't. As he came up alongside the "Lightning Express," as the
+crowd had begun to call her, that creature turned her head diagonally
+backward and let fall a smile. The encroaching beast stopped as if he
+had been shot! His rider plied whip, and forced him again forward upon
+the track of the equine hag, but with the same result.
+
+The Englishman was now alarmed; he struggled manfully with rein and whip
+and shout, amidst the tremendous cheering and inextinguishable laughter
+of the crowd, to force his animal past, now on this side, now on that,
+but it would not do. Prompted by the fiend in the concavity of her back,
+the unthinkable quadruped dropped her grins right and left with such
+seasonable accuracy that again and again the competing beast was struck
+"all of a heap" just at the moment of seeming success. And, finally,
+when by a tremendous spurt his rider endeavored to thrust him by, within
+half a dozen lengths of the winning post, the incarnate nightmare turned
+squarely about and fixed upon him a portentous stare--delivering at the
+same time a grimace of such prodigious ghastliness that the poor
+thoroughbred, with an almost human scream of terror, wheeled about, and
+tore away to the rear with the speed of the wind, leaving the colonel an
+easy winner in twenty minutes and ten seconds.
+
+
+
+
+THE FAILURE OF HOPE & WANDEL
+
+
+_From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans,
+December 2, 1877._
+
+I will not bore you, my dear fellow, with a narrative of my journey from
+New Orleans to this polar region. It is cold in Chicago, believe me, and
+the Southron who comes here, as I did, without a relay of noses and ears
+will have reason to regret his mistaken economy in arranging his outfit.
+
+To business. Lake Michigan is frozen stiff. Fancy, O child of a torrid
+clime, a sheet of anybody's ice, three hundred miles long, forty broad,
+and six feet thick! It sounds like a lie, Pikey dear, but your partner
+in the firm of Hope & Wandel, Wholesale Boots and Shoes, New Orleans, is
+never known to fib. My plan is to collar that ice. Wind up the present
+business and send on the money at once. I'll put up a warehouse as big
+as the Capitol at Washington, store it full and ship to your orders as
+the Southern market may require. I can send it in planks for skating
+floors, in statuettes for the mantel, in shavings for juleps, or in
+solution for ice cream and general purposes. It is a big thing!
+
+I inclose a thin slip as a sample. Did you ever see such charming ice?
+
+
+_From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago,
+December 24, 1877._
+
+Your letter was so abominably defaced by blotting and blurring that it
+was entirely illegible. It must have come all the way by water. By the
+aid of chemicals and photography, however, I have made it out. But you
+forgot to inclose the sample of ice.
+
+I have sold off everything (at an alarming sacrifice, I am sorry to say)
+and inclose draft for net amount. Shall begin to spar for orders at
+once. I trust everything to you--but, I say, has anybody tried to grow
+ice in _this_ vicinity? There is Lake Ponchartrain, you know.
+
+
+_From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans,
+February 27, 1878._
+
+Wannie dear, it would do you good to see our new warehouse for the ice.
+Though made of boards, and run up rather hastily, it is as pretty as a
+picture, and cost a deal of money, though I pay no ground rent. It is
+about as big as the Capitol at Washington. Do you think it ought to have
+a steeple? I have it nearly filled--fifty men cutting and storing, day
+and night--awful cold work! By the way, the ice, which when I wrote you
+last was ten feet thick, is now thinner. But don't you worry; there is
+plenty.
+
+Our warehouse is eight or ten miles out of town, so I am not much
+bothered by visitors, which is a relief. Such a giggling, sniggering lot
+you never saw!
+
+It seems almost too absurdly incredible, Wannie, but do you know I
+believe this ice of ours gains in coldness as the warm weather comes on!
+I do, indeed, and you may mention the fact in the advertisements.
+
+
+_From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago,
+March 7, 1878._
+
+All goes well. I get hundreds of orders. We shall do a roaring trade as
+"The New Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company." But you have not
+told me whether the ice is fresh or salt. If it is fresh it won't do for
+cooking, and if it is salt it will spoil the mint juleps.
+
+Is it as cold in the middle as the outside cuts are?
+
+
+_From Mr. Jebez Hope, from Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans,
+April 3, 1878._
+
+Navigation on the Lakes is now open, and ships are thick as ducks. I'm
+afloat, _en route_ for Buffalo, with the assets of the New Orleans and
+Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company in my vest pocket. We are busted out,
+my poor Pikey--we are to fortune and to fame unknown. Arrange a meeting
+of the creditors and don't attend.
+
+Last night a schooner from Milwaukee was smashed into match-wood on an
+enormous mass of floating ice--the first berg ever seen in these waters.
+It is described by the survivors as being about as big as the Capital at
+Washington. One-half of that iceberg belongs to you, Pikey.
+
+The melancholy fact is, I built our warehouse on an unfavorable site,
+about a mile out from the shore (on the ice, you understand), and when
+the thaw came--O my God, Wannie, it was the saddest thing you ever saw
+in all your life! You will be _so_ glad to know I was not in it at the
+time.
+
+What a ridiculous question you ask me. My poor partner, you don't seem
+to know very much about the ice business.
+
+
+
+
+PERRY CHUMLY'S ECLIPSE
+
+
+The spectroscope is a singularly beautiful and delicate instrument,
+consisting, essentially, of a prism of glass, which, decomposing the
+light of any heavenly body to which the instrument is directed, presents
+a spectrum, or long bar of color. Crossing this are narrow, dark and
+bright lines produced by the gases of metals in combustion, whereby the
+celestial orb's light is generated. From these dark and bright lines,
+therefore, we ascertain all that is worth knowing about the composition
+of the sun and stars.
+
+Now Ben had made some striking discoveries in spectroscopic analysis at
+his private garden observatory, and had also an instrument of superior
+power and capacity, invented, or at least much improved, by himself; and
+this instrument it was that he and I were arranging for an examination
+of the comet then flaming in the heavens. William sat by apparently
+uninterested. Finally we had our arrangements for an observation
+completed, and Ben said: "Now turn her on."
+
+"That reminds me," said William, "of a little story about Perry Chumly,
+who--"
+
+"For the sake of science, William," I interrupted, laying a hand on his
+arm, "I must beg you not to relate it. The comet will in a few minutes
+be behind the roof of yonder lodging house. We really have no time for
+the story."
+
+"No," said Ben, "time presses; and, anyhow, I've heard it before."
+
+"This Perry Chumly," resumed William, "believed himself a born
+astronomer, and always kept a bit of smoked glass. He was particularly
+great on solar eclipses. I have known him to sit up all night looking
+out for one."
+
+Ben had now got the spectroscope trained skyward to suit him, and in
+order to exclude all irrelevant light had let down the window-blind on
+the tube of it. The spectrum of the comet came out beautifully--a long
+bar of color crossed with a lovely ruling of thin dark and bright lines,
+the sight of which elicited from us an exclamation of satisfaction.
+
+"One day," continued William from his seat at another window, "some one
+told Perry Chumly there would be an eclipse of the sun that afternoon at
+three o'clock. Now Perry had recently read a story about some men who in
+exploring a deep cańon in the mountains had looked up from the bottom
+and seen the stars shining at midday. It occurred to him that this
+knowledge might be so utilized as to give him a fine view of the
+eclipse, and enable him at the same time to see what the stars would
+appear to think about it."
+
+"_This_," said Ben, pointing to one of the dark lines in the cometic
+spectrum, "_this_ is produced by the vapor of carbon in the nucleus of
+the heavenly visitant. You will observe that it differs but slightly
+from the lines that come of volatilized iron. Examined with this
+magnifying glass"--adjusting that instrument to his eye--"it will
+probably show--by Jove!" he ejaculated, after a nearer view, "it isn't
+carbon at all. _It is_ MEAT!"
+
+"Of course," proceeded William, "of course Perry Chumly did not have any
+cańon, so what did the fellow do but let himself down with his arms and
+legs to the bottom of an old well, about thirty feet deep! And, with the
+cold water up to his middle, and the frogs, pollywogs and aquatic
+lizards quarreling for the cosy corners of his pockets, there he stood,
+waiting for the sun to appear in the field of his 'instrument' and be
+eclipsed."
+
+"Ben, you are joking," I remarked with some asperity; "you are taking
+liberties with science, Benjamin. It _can't_ be meat, you know."
+
+"I tell you it _is_ though," was his excited reply; "it is just _meat_,
+I tell you! And this other line, which at first I took for sodium, is
+_bone_--bone, sir, or I'm an asteroid! I never saw the like; that comet
+must be densely peopled with butchers and horse-knackers!"
+
+"When Perry Chumly had waited a long time," William went on to say,
+"looking up and expecting every minute to see the sun, it began to get
+into his mind, somehow, that the bright, circular opening above his
+head--the mouth of the well--_was_ the sun, and that the black disk of
+the moon was all that was needed to complete the expected phenomenon.
+The notion soon took complete obsession of his brain, so that he forgot
+where he was and imagined himself standing on the surface of the earth."
+
+I was now scrutinizing the cometic spectrum very closely, being
+particularly attracted by a thin, faint line, which I thought Ben had
+overlooked.
+
+"Oh, that is nothing," he explained; "that's a mere local fault arising
+from conditions peculiar to the medium through which the light is
+transmitted--the atmosphere of this neighborhood. It is whisky. This
+other line, though, shows the faintest imaginable trace of soap; and
+these uncertain, wavering ones are caused by some effluvium not in the
+comet itself, but in the region beyond it. I am compelled to pronounce
+it tobacco smoke. I will now tilt the instrument so as to get the
+spectrum of the celestial wanderer's tail. Ah! there we have it.
+Splendid!"
+
+"Now this old well," said William, "was near a road, along which was
+traveling a big and particularly hideous nigger."
+
+"See here, Thomas," exclaimed Ben, removing the magnifying glass from
+his eye and looking me earnestly in the face, "if I were to tell you
+that the _coma_ of this eccentric heavenly body is really hair, as its
+name implies, would you believe it?"
+
+"No, Ben, I certainly should not."
+
+"Well, I won't argue the matter; there are the lines--they speak for
+themselves. But now that I look again, you are not entirely wrong: there
+is a considerable admixture of jute, moss, and I think tallow. It
+certainly is most remarkable! Sir Isaac Newton--"
+
+"That big nigger," drawled William, "felt thirsty, and seeing the mouth
+of the well thought there was perhaps a bucket in it. So he ventured to
+creep forward on his hands and knees and look in over the edge."
+
+Suddenly our spectrum vanished, and a very singular one of a quite
+different appearance presented itself in the same place. It was a dim
+spectrum, crossed by a single broad bar of pale yellow.
+
+"Ah!" said Ben, "our waif of the upper deep is obscured by a cloud; let
+us see what the misty veil is made of."
+
+He took a look at the spectrum with his magnifying glass, started back,
+and muttered: "Brown linen, by thunder!"
+
+"You can imagine the rapture of Perry Chumly," pursued the indefatigable
+William, "when he saw, as he supposed, the moon's black disk encroaching
+upon the body of the luminary that had so long riveted his gaze. But
+when that obscuring satellite had thrust herself so far forward that the
+eclipse became almost annular, and he saw her staring down upon a
+darkened world with glittering white eyes and a double row of flashing
+teeth, it is perhaps not surprising that he vented a scream of terror,
+fainted and collapsed among his frogs! As for the big nigger, almost
+equally terrified by this shriek from the abyss, he executed a
+precipitate movement which only the breaking of his neck prevented from
+being a double back-somersault, and lay dead in the weeds with his
+tongue out and his face the color of a cometic spectrum. We laid them in
+the same grave, poor fellows, and on many a still summer evening
+afterward I strayed to the lonely little church-yard to listen to the
+smothered requiem chanted by the frogs that we had neglected to remove
+from the pockets of the lamented astronomer.
+
+"And, now," added William, taking his heels from the window, "as you can
+not immediately resume your spectroscopic observations on that
+red-haired chamber-maid in the dormer-window, who pulled down the blind
+when I made a mouth at her, I move that we adjourn."
+
+
+
+
+A PROVIDENTIAL INTIMATION
+
+
+Mr. Algernon Jarvis, of San Francisco, got up cross. The world of Mr.
+Jarvis had gone wrong with him overnight, as one's world is likely to do
+when one sits up till morning with jovial friends, to watch it, and he
+was prone to resentment. No sooner, therefore, had he got himself into a
+neat, fashionable suit of clothing than he selected his morning
+walking-stick and sallied out upon the town with a vague general
+determination to attack something. His first victim would naturally have
+been his breakfast; but singularly enough, he fell upon this with so
+feeble an energy that he was himself beaten--to the grieved astonishment
+of the worthy _rôtisseur_, who had to record his hitherto puissant
+patron's maiden defeat. Three or four cups of _café noir_ were the only
+captives that graced Mr. Jarvis' gastric chariot-wheels that morning.
+
+He lit a long cigar and sauntered moodily down the street, so occupied
+with schemes of universal retaliation that his feet had it all their own
+way; in consequence of which, their owner soon found himself in the
+billiard-room of the Occidental Hotel. Nobody was there, but Mr. Jarvis
+was a privileged person; so, going to the marker's desk, he took out a
+little box of ivory balls, spilled them carelessly over a table and
+languidly assailed them with a long stick.
+
+Presently, by the merest chance, he executed a marvelous stroke. Waiting
+till the astonished balls had resumed their composure, he gathered them
+up, replacing them in their former position. He tried the stroke again,
+and, naturally, did not make it. Again he placed the balls, and again he
+badly failed. With a vexed and humilated air he once more put the
+indocile globes into position, leaned over the table and was upon the
+point of striking, when there sounded a solemn voice from behind:
+
+"Bet you two bits you don't make it!"
+
+Mr. Jarvis erected himself; he turned about and looked at the speaker,
+whom he found to be a stranger--one that most persons would prefer
+should remain a stranger. Mr. Jarvis made no reply. In the first place,
+he was a man of aristocratic taste, to whom a wager of "two bits" was
+simply vulgar. Secondly, the man who had proffered it evidently had not
+the money. Still it is annoying to have one's skill questioned by one's
+social inferiors, particularly when one has doubts of it oneself, and is
+otherwise ill-tempered. So Mr. Jarvis stood his cue against the table,
+laid off his fashionable morning-coat, resumed his stick, spread his
+fine figure upon the table with his back to the ceiling and took
+deliberate aim.
+
+At this point Mr. Jarvis drops out of this history, and is seen no more
+forever. Persons of the class to which he adds lustre are sacred from
+the pen of the humorist; they are ridiculous but not amusing. So now we
+will dismiss this uninteresting young aristocrat, retaining merely his
+outer shell, the fashionable morning-coat, which Mr. Stenner, the
+gentleman, who had offered the wager, has quietly thrown across his arm
+and is conveying away for his own advantage.
+
+An hour later Mr. Stenner sat in his humble lodgings at North Beach,
+with the pilfered garment upon his knees. He had already taken the
+opinion of an eminent pawnbroker on its value, and it only remained to
+search the pockets. Mr. Stenner's notions concerning gentlemen's coats
+were not so clear as they might have been. Broadly stated, they were
+that these garments abounded in secret pockets crowded with a wealth of
+bank notes interspersed with gold coins. He was therefore disappointed
+when his careful quest was rewarded with only a delicately perfumed
+handkerchief, upon which he could not hope to obtain a loan of more than
+ten cents; a pair of gloves too small for use and a bit of paper that
+was not a cheque. A second look at this, however, inspired hope. It was
+about the size of a flounder, ruled in wide lines, and bore in
+conspicuous characters the words, "Western Union Telegraph Company."
+Immediately below this interesting legend was much other printed matter,
+the purport of which was that the company did not hold itself
+responsible for the verbal accuracy of "the following message," and did
+not consider itself either morally or legally bound to forward or
+deliver it, nor, in short, to render any kind of service for the money
+paid by the sender.
+
+Unfamiliar with telegraphy, Mr. Stenner naturally supposed that a
+message subject to these hard conditions must be one of not only grave
+importance, but questionable character. So he determined to decipher it
+at that time and place. In the course of the day he succeeded in so
+doing. It ran as follows, omitting the date and the names of persons and
+places, which were, of course, quite illegible:
+
+"Buy Sally Meeker!"
+
+Had the full force of this remarkable adjuration burst upon Mr. Stenner
+all at once it might have carried him away, which would not have been so
+bad a thing for San Francisco; but as the meaning had to percolate
+slowly through a dense dyke of ignorance, it produced no other immediate
+effect than the exclamation, "Well, I'll be bust!"
+
+In the mouths of some persons this form of expression means a great
+deal. On the Stenner tongue it signified the hopeless nature of the
+Stenner mental confusion.
+
+It must be confessed--by persons outside a certain limited and sordid
+circle--that the message lacks amplification and elaboration; in its
+terse, bald diction there is a ghastly suggestion of traffic in human
+flesh, for which in California there is no market since the abolition of
+slavery and the importation of thoroughbred beeves. If woman suffrage
+had been established all would have been clear; Mr. Stenner would at
+once have understood the kind of purchase advised; for in political
+transactions he had very often changed hands himself. But it was all a
+muddle, and resolving to dismiss the matter from his thoughts, he went
+to bed thinking of nothing else; for many hours his excited imagination
+would do nothing but purchase slightly damaged Sally Meekers by the
+bale, and retail them to itself at an enormous profit.
+
+Next day, it flashed upon his memory who Sally Meeker was--a racing
+mare! At this entirely obvious solution of the problem he was overcome
+with amazement at his own sagacity. Rushing into the street he
+purchased, not Sally Meeker, but a sporting paper--and in it found the
+notice of a race which was to come off the following week; and, sure
+enough, there it was:
+
+"Budd Doble enters g.g. Clipper; Bob Scotty enters b.g. Lightnin';
+Staley Tupper enters s.s. Upandust; Sim Salper enters b.m. Sally
+Meeker."
+
+It was clear now; the sender of the dispatch was "in the know." Sally
+Meeker was to win, and her owner, who did not know it, had offered her
+for sale. At that supreme moment Mr. Stenner would willingly have been a
+rich man! In fact he resolved to be. He at once betook him to Vallejo,
+where he had lived until invited away by some influential citizens of
+the place. There he immediately sought out an industrious friend who had
+an amiable weakness for draw poker, and in whom Mr. Stenner regularly
+encouraged that passion by going up against him every payday and
+despoiling him of his hard earnings. He did so this time, to the sum of
+one hundred dollars.
+
+No sooner had he raked in his last pool and refused his friend's appeal
+for a trifling loan wherewith to pay for breakfast than he bought a
+check on the Bank of California, enclosed it in a letter containing
+merely the words "Bi Saly Meker," and dispatched it by mail to the only
+clergyman in San Francisco whose name he knew. Mr. Stenner had a vague
+notion that all kinds of business requiring strict honesty and fidelity
+might be profitably intrusted to the clergy; otherwise what was the use
+of religion? I hope I shall not be accused of disrespect to the cloth in
+thus bluntly setting forth Mr. Stenner's estimate of the parsons,
+inasmuch as I do not share it.
+
+This business off his mind, Mr. Stenner unbent in a week's revelry; at
+the end of which he worked his passage down to San Francisco to secure
+his winnings on the race, and take charge of his peerless mare. It will
+be observed that his notions concerning races were somewhat confused;
+his experience of them had hitherto been confined to that branch of the
+business requiring, not technical knowledge but manual dexterity. In
+short, he had done no more than pick the pockets of the spectators.
+Arrived at San Francisco he was hastening to the dwelling of his
+clerical agent, when he met an acquaintance, to whom he put the
+triumphant question, "How about Sally Meeker?"
+
+"Sally Meeker? Sally Meeker?" was the reply. "Oh, you mean the hoss? Why
+she's gone up the flume. Broke her neck the first heat. But ole Sim
+Salper is never a-goin' to fret hisself to a shadder about it. He struck
+it pizen in the mine she was named a'ter and the stock's gone up from
+nothin' out o' sight. You couldn't tech that stock with a ten-foot
+pole!"
+
+Which was a blow to Mr. Stenner. He saw his error; the message in the
+coat had evidently been sent to a broker, and referred to the stock of
+the "Sally Meeker" mine. And he, Stenner, was a ruined man!
+
+Suddenly a great, monstrous, misbegotten and unmentionable oath rolled
+from Mr. Stenner's tongue like a cannon shot hurled along an uneven
+floor! Might it not be that the Rev. Mr. Boltright had also
+misunderstood the message, and had bought, not the mare, but the stock?
+The thought was electrical: Mr. Stenner ran--he flew! He tarried not at
+walls and the smaller sort of houses, but went through or over them! In
+five minutes he stood before the good clergyman--and in one more had
+asked, in a hoarse whisper, if he had bought any "Sally Meeker."
+
+"My good friend," was the bland reply--"my fellow traveler to the bar of
+God, it would better comport with your spiritual needs to inquire what
+you should do to be saved. But since you ask me, I will confess that
+having received what I am compelled to regard as a Providential
+intimation, accompanied with the secular means of obedience, I did put
+up a small margin and purchase largely of the stock you mention. The
+venture, I am constrained to state, was not wholly unprofitable."
+
+Unprofitable? The good man had made a square twenty-five thousand
+dollars on that small margin! To conclude--he has it yet.
+
+
+
+
+MR. SWIDDLER'S FLIP-FLAP
+
+
+Jerome Bowles (said the gentleman called Swiddler) was to be hanged on
+Friday, the ninth of November, at five o'clock in the afternoon. This
+was to occur at the town of Flatbroke, where he was then in prison.
+Jerome was my friend, and naturally I differed with the jury that had
+convicted him as to the degree of guilt implied by the conceded fact
+that he had shot an Indian without direct provocation. Ever since his
+trial I had been endeavoring to influence the Governor of the State to
+grant a pardon; but public sentiment was against me, a fact which I
+attributed partly to the innate pigheadness of the people, and partly to
+the recent establishment of churches and schools which had corrupted the
+primitive notions of a frontier community. But I labored hard and
+unremittingly by all manner of direct and indirect means during the
+whole period in which Jerome lay under sentence of death; and on the
+very morning of the day set for the execution, the Governor sent for me,
+and saying "he did not purpose being worried by my importunities all
+winter," handed me the document which he had so often refused.
+
+Armed with the precious paper, I flew to the telegraph office to send a
+dispatch to the Sheriff at Flatbroke. I found the operator locking the
+door of the office and putting up the shutters. I pleaded in vain; he
+said he was going to see the hanging, and really had no time to send my
+message. I must explain that Flatbroke was fifteen miles away; I was
+then at Swan Creek, the State capital.
+
+The operator being inexorable, I ran to the railroad station to see how
+soon there would be a train for Flatbroke. The station man, with cool
+and polite malice, informed me that all the employees of the road had
+been given a holiday to see Jerome Bowles hanged, and had already gone
+by an early train; that there would be no other train till the next day.
+
+I was now furious, but the station man quietly turned me out, locking
+the gates. Dashing to the nearest livery stable, I ordered a horse. Why
+prolong the record of my disappointment? Not a horse could I get in that
+town; all had been engaged weeks before to take people to the hanging.
+So everybody said, at least, though I now know there was a rascally
+conspiracy to defeat the ends of mercy, for the story of the pardon had
+got abroad.
+
+It was now ten o'clock. I had only seven hours in which to do my fifteen
+miles afoot; but I was an excellent walker and thoroughly angry; there
+was no doubt of my ability to make the distance, with an hour to spare.
+The railway offered the best chance; it ran straight as a string across
+a level, treeless prairie, whereas the highway made a wide detour by way
+of another town.
+
+I took to the track like a Modoc on the war path. Before I had gone a
+half-mile I was overtaken by "That Jim Peasley," as he was called in
+Swan Creek, an incurable practical joker, loved and shunned by all who
+knew him. He asked me as he came up if I were "going to the show."
+Thinking it was best to dissemble, I told him I was, but said nothing of
+my intention to stop the performance; I thought it would be a lesson to
+That Jim to let him walk fifteen miles for nothing, for it was clear
+that he was going, too. Still, I wished he would go on ahead or drop
+behind. But he could not very well do the former, and would not do the
+latter; so we trudged on together. It was a cloudy day and very sultry
+for that time of the year. The railway stretched away before us, between
+its double row of telegraph poles, in rigid sameness, terminating in a
+point at the horizon. On either hand the disheartening monotony of the
+prairie was unbroken.
+
+I thought little of these things, however, for my mental exaltation was
+proof against the depressing influence of the scene. I was about to save
+the life of my friend--to restore a crack shot to society. Indeed I
+scarcely thought of That Jim, whose heels were grinding the hard gravel
+close behind me, except when he saw fit occasionally to propound the
+sententious, and I thought derisive, query, "Tired?" Of course I was,
+but I would have died rather than confess it.
+
+We had gone in this way, about half the distance, probably, in much less
+than half the seven hours, and I was getting my second wind, when That
+Jim again broke the silence.
+
+"Used to bounce in a circus, didn't you?"
+
+This was quite true! in a season of pecuniary depression I had once put
+my legs into my stomach--had turned my athletic accomplishments to
+financial advantage. It was not a pleasant topic, and I said nothing.
+That Jim persisted.
+
+"Wouldn't like to do a feller a somersault now, eh?"
+
+The mocking tongue of this jeer was intolerable; the fellow evidently
+considered me "done up," so taking a short run I clapped my hands to my
+thighs and executed as pretty a flip-flap as ever was made without a
+springboard! At the moment I came erect with my head still spinning, I
+felt That Jim crowd past me, giving me a twirl that almost sent me off
+the track. A moment later he had dashed ahead at a tremendous pace,
+laughing derisively over his shoulder as if he had done a remarkably
+clever thing to gain the lead.
+
+I was on the heels of him in less than ten minutes, though I must
+confess the fellow could walk amazingly. In half an hour I had run past
+him, and at the end of the hour, such was my slashing gait, he was a
+mere black dot in my rear, and appeared to be sitting on one of the
+rails, thoroughly used up.
+
+Relieved of Mr. Peasley, I naturally began thinking of my poor friend in
+the Flatbroke jail, and it occurred to me that something might happen to
+hasten the execution. I knew the feeling of the country against him, and
+that many would be there from a distance who would naturally wish to get
+home before nightfall. Nor could I help admitting to myself that five
+o'clock was an unreasonably late hour for a hanging. Tortured with these
+fears, I unconsciously increased my pace with every step, until it was
+almost a run. I stripped off my coat and flung it away, opened my
+collar, and unbuttoned my waistcoat. And at last, puffing and steaming
+like a locomotive engine, I burst into a thin crowd of idlers on the
+outskirts of the town, and flourished the pardon crazily above my head,
+yelling, "Cut him down!--cut him down!"
+
+Then, as every one stared in blank amazement and nobody said anything, I
+found time to look about me, marveling at the oddly familiar appearance
+of the town. As I looked, the houses, streets, and everything seemed to
+undergo a sudden and mysterious transposition with reference to the
+points of the compass, as if swinging round on a pivot; and like one
+awakened from a dream I found myself among accustomed scenes. To be
+plain about it, I was back again in Swan Creek, as right as a trivet!
+
+It was all the work of That Jim Peasley. The designing rascal had
+provoked me to throw a confusing somersault, then bumped against me,
+turning me half round, and started on the back track, thereby inciting
+me to hook it in the same direction. The cloudy day, the two lines of
+telegraph poles, one on each side of the track, the entire sameness of
+the landscape to the right and left--these had all conspired to prevent
+my observing that I had put about.
+
+When the excursion train returned from Flatbroke that evening the
+passengers were told a little story at my expense. It was just what they
+needed to cheer them up a bit after what they had seen; for that
+flip-flap of mine had broken the neck of Jerome Bowles seven miles away!
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE STORY
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONĆ--_A Supernumerary Editor. A Probationary Contributor_.
+
+SCENE--"_The Expounder" Office_.
+
+PROBATIONARY CONTRIBUTOR--Editor in?
+
+SUPERNUMERARY EDITOR--Dead.
+
+P.C.--The gods favor me. (_Produces roll of manuscript_.) Here is a
+little story, which I will read to you.
+
+S.E.--O, O!
+
+P.C.--(_Reads_.) "It was the last night of the year--a naughty, noxious,
+offensive night. In the principal street of San Francisco"--
+
+S.E.--Confound San Francisco!
+
+P.C.--It had to be somewhere. (_Reads_.)
+
+"In the principal street of San Francisco stood a small female orphan,
+marking time like a volunteer. Her little bare feet imprinted cold
+kisses on the paving-stones as she put them down and drew them up
+alternately. The chilling rain was having a good time with her scalp,
+and toyed soppily with her hair--her own hair. The night-wind shrewdly
+searched her tattered garments, as if it had suspected her of smuggling.
+She saw crowds of determined-looking persons grimly ruining themselves
+in toys and confectionery for the dear ones at home, and she wished she
+was in a position to ruin a little--just a little. Then, as the happy
+throng sped by her with loads of things to make the children sick, she
+leaned against an iron lamp-post in front of a bake-shop and turned on
+the wicked envy. She thought, poor thing, she would like to be a
+cake--for this little girl was very hungry indeed. Then she tried again,
+and thought she would like to be a tart with smashed fruit inside; then
+she would be warmed over every day and nobody would eat her. For the
+child was cold as well as hungry. Finally, she tried quite hard, and
+thought she could be very well content as an oven; for then she would be
+kept always hot, and bakers would put all manner of good things into her
+with a long shovel."
+
+S.E.--I've read that somewhere.
+
+P.C.--Very likely. This little story has never been rejected by any
+paper to which I have offered it. It gets better, too, every time I
+write it. When it first appeared in _Veracity_ the editor said it cost
+him a hundred subscribers. Just mark the improvement! (_Reads_.)
+
+"The hours glided by--except a few that froze to the pavement--until
+midnight. The streets were now deserted, and the almanac having
+predicted a new moon about this time, the lamps had been conscientiously
+extinguished. Suddenly a great globe of sound fell from an adjacent
+church-tower, and exploded on the night with a deep metallic boom. Then
+all the clocks and bells began ringing-in the New Year--pounding and
+banging and yelling and finishing off all the nervous invalids left over
+from the preceding Sunday. The little orphan started from her dream,
+leaving a small patch of skin on the frosted lamp-post, clasped her thin
+blue hands and looked upward, 'with mad disquietude,'"--
+
+S.E.--In _The Monitor_ it was "with covetous eyes."
+
+P.C.--I know it; hadn't read Byron then. Clever dog, Byron. (_Reads._)
+
+"Presently a cranberry tart dropped at her feet, apparently from the
+clouds."
+
+S.E.--How about those angels?
+
+P.C.--The editor of _Good Will_ cut 'em out. He said San Francisco was
+no place for them; and I don't believe----
+
+S.E.--There, there! Never mind. Go on with the little story.
+
+P.C.--(_Reads_.) "As she stooped to take up the tart a veal sandwich
+came whizzing down, and cuffed one of her ears. Next a wheaten loaf made
+her dodge nimbly, and then a broad ham fell flat-footed at her toes. A
+sack of flour burst in the middle of the street; a side of bacon impaled
+itself on an iron hitching-post. Pretty soon a chain of sausages fell in
+a circle around her, flattening out as if a road-roller had passed over
+them. Then there was a lull--nothing came down but dried fish, cold
+puddings and flannel under-clothing; but presently her wishes began to
+take effect again, and a quarter of beef descended with terrific
+momentum upon the top of the little orphan's head."
+
+S.E.--How did the editor of _The Reasonable Virtues_ like that quarter
+of beef?
+
+P.C.--Oh, he swallowed it like a little man, and stuck in a few dressed
+pigs of his own. I've left them out, because I don't want outsiders
+altering the Little Story. (_Reads_.)
+
+"One would have thought that ought to suffice; but not so. Bedding,
+shoes, firkins of butter, mighty cheeses, ropes of onions, quantities of
+loose jam, kegs of oysters, titanic fowls, crates of crockery and
+glassware, assorted house-keeping things, cooking ranges, and tons of
+coal poured down in broad cataracts from a bounteous heaven, piling
+themselves above that infant to a depth of twenty feet. The weather was
+more than two hours in clearing up; and as late as half-past three a
+ponderous hogshead of sugar struck at the corner of Clay and Kearney
+Streets, with an impact that shook the peninsula like an earthquake and
+stopped every clock in town.
+
+"At daybreak the good merchants arrived upon the scene with shovels and
+wheelbarrows, and before the sun of the new year was an hour old, they
+had provided for all of these provisions--had stowed them away in their
+cellars, and nicely arranged them on their shelves, ready for sale to
+the deserving poor."
+
+S.E.--And the little girl--what became of _her_?
+
+P.C.--You musn't get ahead of the Little Story. (_Reads_.)
+
+"When they had got down to the wicked little orphan who had not been
+content with her lot some one brought a broom, and she was carefully
+swept and smoothed out. Then they lifted her tenderly, and carried her
+to the coroner. That functionary was standing in the door of his office,
+and with a deprecatory wave of his hand, he said to the man who was
+bearing her:
+
+"'There, go away, my good fellow; there was a man here three times
+yesterday trying to sell me just such a map.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE PARENTICIDE CLUB
+
+
+
+
+MY FAVORITE MURDER
+
+
+Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity, I
+was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years. In
+charging the jury, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked that it
+was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to
+explain away.
+
+At this, my attorney rose and said:
+
+"May it please your Honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by
+comparison. If you were familiar with the details of my client's
+previous murder of his uncle you would discern in his later offense (if
+offense it may be called) something in the nature of tender forbearance
+and filial consideration for the feelings of the victim. The appalling
+ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent with any
+hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not been for the fact that the
+honorable judge before whom he was tried was the president of a life
+insurance company that took risks on hanging, and in which my client
+held a policy, it is hard to see how he could decently have been
+acquitted. If your Honor would like to hear about it for instruction and
+guidance of your Honor's mind, this unfortunate man, my client, will
+consent to give himself the pain of relating it under oath."
+
+The district attorney said: "Your Honor, I object. Such a statement
+would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is
+closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three years
+ago, in the spring of 1881."
+
+"In a statutory sense," said the judge, "you are right, and in the Court
+of Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling in your favor.
+But not in a Court of Acquittal. The objection is overruled."
+
+"I except," said the district attorney.
+
+"You cannot do that," the judge said. "I must remind you that in order
+to take an exception you must first get this case transferred for a time
+to the Court of Exceptions on a formal motion duly supported by
+affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office was
+denied by me during the first year of this trial. Mr. Clerk, swear the
+prisoner."
+
+The customary oath having been administered, I made the following
+statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the
+comparative triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he
+made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply
+instructed the jury to acquit, and I left the court, without a stain
+upon my reputation:
+
+"I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee, Mich., of honest and reputable
+parents, one of whom Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in my
+later years. In 1867 the family came to California and settled near
+Nigger Head, where my father opened a road agency and prospered beyond
+the dreams of avarice. He was a reticent, saturnine man then, though his
+increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity of his
+disposition, and I believe that nothing but his memory of the sad event
+for which I am now on trial prevents him from manifesting a genuine
+hilarity.
+
+"Four years after we had set up the road agency an itinerant preacher
+came along, and having no other way to pay for the night's lodging that
+we gave him, favored us with an exhortation of such power that, praise
+God, we were all converted to religion. My father at once sent for his
+brother, the Hon. William Ridley of Stockton, and on his arrival turned
+over the agency to him, charging him nothing for the franchise nor
+plant--the latter consisting of a Winchester rifle, a sawed-off shotgun,
+and an assortment of masks made out of flour sacks. The family then
+moved to Ghost Rock and opened a dance house. It was called 'The Saints'
+Rest Hurdy-Gurdy,' and the proceedings each night began with prayer. It
+was there that my now sainted mother, by her grace in the dance,
+acquired the _sobriquet_ of 'The Bucking Walrus.'
+
+"In the fall of '75 I had occasion to visit Coyote, on the road to
+Mahala, and took the stage at Ghost Rock. There were four other
+passengers. About three miles beyond Nigger Head, persons whom I
+identified as my Uncle William and his two sons held up the stage.
+Finding nothing in the express box, they went through the passengers. I
+acted a most honorable part in the affair, placing myself in line with
+the others, holding up my hands and permitting myself to be deprived of
+forty dollars and a gold watch. From my behavior no one could have
+suspected that I knew the gentlemen who gave the entertainment. A few
+days later, when I went to Nigger Head and asked for the return of my
+money and watch my uncle and cousins swore they knew nothing of the
+matter, and they affected a belief that my father and I had done the job
+ourselves in dishonest violation of commercial good faith. Uncle William
+even threatened to retaliate by starting an opposition dance house at
+Ghost Rock. As 'The Saints' Rest' had become rather unpopular, I saw
+that this would assuredly ruin it and prove a paying enterprise, so I
+told my uncle that I was willing to overlook the past if he would take
+me into the scheme and keep the partnership a secret from my father.
+This fair offer he rejected, and I then perceived that it would be
+better and more satisfactory if he were dead.
+
+"My plans to that end were soon perfected, and communicating them to my
+dear parents I had the gratification of receiving their approval. My
+father said he was proud of me, and my mother promised that although her
+religion forbade her to assist in taking human life I should have the
+advantage of her prayers for my success. As a preliminary measure
+looking to my security in case of detection I made an application for
+membership in that powerful order, the Knights of Murder, and in due
+course was received as a member of the Ghost Rock commandery. On the day
+that my probation ended I was for the first time permitted to inspect
+the records of the order and learn who belonged to it--all the rites of
+initiation having been conducted in masks. Fancy my delight when, in
+looking over the roll of membership; I found the third name to be that
+of my uncle, who indeed was junior vice-chancellor of the order! Here
+was an opportunity exceeding my wildest dreams--to murder I could add
+insubordination and treachery. It was what my good mother would have
+called 'a special Providence.'
+
+"At about this time something occurred which caused my cup of joy,
+already full, to overflow on all sides, a circular cataract of bliss.
+Three men, strangers in that locality, were arrested for the stage
+robbery in which I had lost my money and watch. They were brought to
+trial and, despite my efforts to clear them and fasten the guilt upon
+three of the most respectable and worthy citizens of Ghost Rock,
+convicted on the clearest proof. The murder would now be as wanton and
+reasonless as I could wish.
+
+"One morning I shouldered my Winchester rifle, and going over to my
+uncle's house, near Nigger Head, asked my Aunt Mary, his wife, if he
+were at home, adding that I had come to kill him. My aunt replied with
+her peculiar smile that so many gentleman called on that errand and were
+afterward carried away without having performed it that I must excuse
+her for doubting my good faith in the matter. She said I did not look as
+if I would kill anybody, so, as a proof of good faith I leveled my rifle
+and wounded a Chinaman who happened to be passing the house. She said
+she knew whole families that could do a thing of that kind, but Bill
+Ridley was a horse of another color. She said, however, that I would
+find him over on the other side of the creek in the sheep lot; and she
+added that she hoped the best man would win.
+
+"My Aunt Mary was one of the most fair-minded women that I have ever
+met.
+
+"I found my uncle down on his knees engaged in skinning a sheep. Seeing
+that he had neither gun nor pistol handy I had not the heart to shoot
+him, so I approached him, greeted him pleasantly and struck him a
+powerful blow on the head with the butt of my rifle. I have a very good
+delivery and Uncle William lay down on his side, then rolled over on his
+back, spread out his fingers and shivered. Before he could recover the
+use of his limbs I seized the knife that he had been using and cut his
+hamstrings. You know, doubtless, that when you sever the _tendo
+Achillis_ the patient has no further use of his leg; it is just the same
+as if he had no leg. Well, I parted them both, and when he revived he
+was at my service. As soon as he comprehended the situation, he said:
+
+"'Samuel, you have got the drop on me and can afford to be generous. I
+have only one thing to ask of you, and that is that you carry me to the
+house and finish me in the bosom of my family.'
+
+"I told him I thought that a pretty reasonable request and I would do so
+if he would let me put him into a wheat sack; he would be easier to
+carry that way and if we were seen by the neighbors _en route_ it would
+cause less remark. He agreed to that, and going to the barn I got a
+sack. This, however, did not fit him; it was too short and much wider
+than he; so I bent his legs, forced his knees up against his breast and
+got him into it that way, tying the sack above his head. He was a heavy
+man and I had all that I could do to get him on my back, but I staggered
+along for some distance until I came to a swing that some of the
+children had suspended to the branch of an oak. Here I laid him down and
+sat upon him to rest, and the sight of the rope gave me a happy
+inspiration. In twenty minutes my uncle, still in the sack, swung free
+to the sport of the wind.
+
+"I had taken down the rope, tied one end tightly about the mouth of the
+bag, thrown the other across the limb and hauled him up about five feet
+from the ground. Fastening the other end of the rope also about the
+mouth of the sack, I had the satisfaction to see my uncle converted into
+a large, fine pendulum. I must add that he was not himself entirely
+aware of the nature of the change that he had undergone in his relation
+to the exterior world, though in justice to a good man's memory I ought
+to say that I do not think he would in any case have wasted much of my
+time in vain remonstrance.
+
+"Uncle William had a ram that was famous in all that region as a
+fighter. It was in a state of chronic constitutional indignation. Some
+deep disappointment in early life had soured its disposition and it had
+declared war upon the whole world. To say that it would butt anything
+accessible is but faintly to express the nature and scope of its
+military activity: the universe was its antagonist; its methods that of
+a projectile. It fought like the angels and devils, in mid-air, cleaving
+the atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve and descending
+upon its victim at just the exact angle of incidence to make the most of
+its velocity and weight. Its momentum, calculated in foot-tons, was
+something incredible. It had been seen to destroy a four year old bull
+by a single impact upon that animal's gnarly forehead. No stone wall had
+ever been known to resist its downward swoop; there were no trees tough
+enough to stay it; it would splinter them into matchwood and defile
+their leafy honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable
+brute--this incarnate thunderbolt--this monster of the upper deep, I had
+seen reposing in the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of
+conquest and glory. It was with a view to summoning it forth to the
+field of honor that I suspended its master in the manner described.
+
+"Having completed my preparations, I imparted to the avuncular pendulum
+a gentle oscillation, and retiring to cover behind a contiguous rock,
+lifted up my voice in a long rasping cry whose diminishing final note
+was drowned in a noise like that of a swearing cat, which emanated from
+the sack. Instantly that formidable sheep was upon its feet and had
+taken in the military situation at a glance. In a few moments it had
+approached, stamping, to within fifty yards of the swinging foeman, who,
+now retreating and anon advancing, seemed to invite the fray. Suddenly I
+saw the beast's head drop earthward as if depressed by the weight of its
+enormous horns; then a dim, white, wavy streak of sheep prolonged itself
+from that spot in a generally horizontal direction to within about four
+yards of a point immediately beneath the enemy. There it struck sharply
+upward, and before it had faded from my gaze at the place whence it had
+set out I heard a horrid thump and a piercing scream, and my poor uncle
+shot forward, with a slack rope higher than the limb to which he was
+attached. Here the rope tautened with a jerk, arresting his flight, and
+back he swung in a breathless curve to the other end of his arc. The ram
+had fallen, a heap of indistinguishable legs, wool and horns, but
+pulling itself together and dodging as its antagonist swept downward it
+retired at random, alternately shaking its head and stamping its
+fore-feet. When it had backed about the same distance as that from which
+it had delivered the assault it paused again, bowed its head as if in
+prayer for victory and again shot forward, dimly visible as before--a
+prolonging white streak with monstrous undulations, ending with a sharp
+ascension. Its course this time was at a right angle to its former one,
+and its impatience so great that it struck the enemy before he had
+nearly reached the lowest point of his arc. In consequence he went
+flying round and round in a horizontal circle whose radius was about
+equal to half the length of the rope, which I forgot to say was nearly
+twenty feet long. His shrieks, _crescendo_ in approach and _diminuendo_
+in recession, made the rapidity of his revolution more obvious to the
+ear than to the eye. He had evidently not yet been struck in a vital
+spot. His posture in the sack and the distance from the ground at which
+he hung compelled the ram to operate upon his lower extremities and the
+end of his back. Like a plant that has struck its root into some
+poisonous mineral, my poor uncle was dying slowly upward.
+
+"After delivering its second blow the ram had not again retired. The
+fever of battle burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxicated with
+the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who in his rage forgets his skill
+and fights ineffectively at half-arm's length, the angry beast
+endeavored to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps as he
+passed overhead, sometimes, indeed, succeeding in striking him feebly,
+but more frequently overthrown by its own misguided eagerness. But as
+the impetus was exhausted and the man's circles narrowed in scope and
+diminished in speed, bringing him nearer to the ground, these tactics
+produced better results, eliciting a superior quality of screams, which
+I greatly enjoyed.
+
+"Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce, the ram suspended
+hostilities and walked away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its
+great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch of grass and
+slowly munching it. It seemed to have tired of war's alarms and resolved
+to beat the sword into a plowshare and cultivate the arts of peace.
+Steadily it held its course away from the field of fame until it had
+gained a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile. There it stopped and
+stood with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud and apparently half
+asleep. I observed, however, an occasional slight turn of its head, as
+if its apathy were more affected than real.
+
+"Meantime Uncle William's shrieks had abated with his motion, and
+nothing was heard from him but long, low moans, and at long intervals my
+name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful to my ear.
+Evidently the man had not the faintest notion of what was being done to
+him, and was inexpressibly terrified. When Death comes cloaked in
+mystery he is terrible indeed. Little by little my uncle's oscillations
+diminished, and finally he hung motionless. I went to him and was about
+to give him the _coup de grâce_, when I heard and felt a succession of
+smart shocks which shook the ground like a series of light earthquakes,
+and turning in the direction of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust
+approaching me with inconceivable rapidity and alarming effect! At a
+distance of some thirty yards away it stopped short, and from the near
+end of it rose into the air what I at first thought a great white bird.
+Its ascent was so smooth and easy and regular that I could not realize
+its extraordinary celerity, and was lost in admiration of its grace. To
+this day the impression remains that it was a slow, deliberate movement,
+the ram--for it was that animal--being upborne by some power other than
+its own impetus, and supported through the successive stages of its
+flight with infinite tenderness and care. My eyes followed its progress
+through the air with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by contrast
+with my former terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward the
+noble animal sailed, its head bent down almost between its knees, its
+fore-feet thrown back, its hinder legs trailing to rear like the legs of
+a soaring heron.
+
+"At a height of forty or fifty feet, as fond recollection presents it to
+view, it attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant
+stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without altering the relative
+position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and steeper course
+with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me with a noise like
+the rush of a cannon shot and struck my poor uncle almost squarely on
+the top of the head! So frightful was the impact that not only the man's
+neck was broken, but the rope too; and the body of the deceased, forced
+against the earth, was crushed to pulp beneath the awful front of that
+meteoric sheep! The concussion stopped all the clocks between Lone Hand
+and Dutch Dan's, and Professor Davidson, a distinguished authority in
+matters seismic, who happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained
+that the vibrations were from north to southwest.
+
+"Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in point of artistic atrocity
+my murder of Uncle William has seldom been excelled."
+
+
+
+
+OIL OF DOG
+
+
+My name is Boffer Bings. I was born of honest parents in one of the
+humbler walks of life, my father being a manufacturer of dog-oil and my
+mother having a small studio in the shadow of the village church, where
+she disposed of unwelcome babes. In my boyhood I was trained to habits
+of industry; I not only assisted my father in procuring dogs for his
+vats, but was frequently employed by my mother to carry away the debris
+of her work in the studio. In performance of this duty I sometimes had
+need of all my natural intelligence for all the law officers of the
+vicinity were opposed to my mother's business. They were not elected on
+an opposition ticket, and the matter had never been made a political
+issue; it just happened so. My father's business of making dog-oil was,
+naturally, less unpopular, though the owners of missing dogs sometimes
+regarded him with suspicion, which was reflected, to some extent, upon
+me. My father had, as silent partners, all the physicians of the town,
+who seldom wrote a prescription which did not contain what they were
+pleased to designate as _Ol. can_. It is really the most valuable
+medicine ever discovered. But most persons are unwilling to make
+personal sacrifices for the afflicted, and it was evident that many of
+the fattest dogs in town had been forbidden to play with me--a fact
+which pained my young sensibilities, and at one time came near driving
+me to become a pirate.
+
+Looking back upon those days, I cannot but regret, at times, that by
+indirectly bringing my beloved parents to their death I was the author
+of misfortunes profoundly affecting my future.
+
+One evening while passing my father's oil factory with the body of a
+foundling from my mother's studio I saw a constable who seemed to be
+closely watching my movements. Young as I was, I had learned that a
+constable's acts, of whatever apparent character, are prompted by the
+most reprehensible motives, and I avoided him by dodging into the oilery
+by a side door which happened to stand ajar. I locked it at once and was
+alone with my dead. My father had retired for the night. The only light
+in the place came from the furnace, which glowed a deep, rich crimson
+under one of the vats, casting ruddy reflections on the walls. Within
+the cauldron the oil still rolled in indolent ebullition, occasionally
+pushing to the surface a piece of dog. Seating myself to wait for the
+constable to go away, I held the naked body of the foundling in my lap
+and tenderly stroked its short, silken hair. Ah, how beautiful it was!
+Even at that early age I was passionately fond of children, and as I
+looked upon this cherub I could almost find it in my heart to wish that
+the small, red wound upon its breast--the work of my dear mother--had
+not been mortal.
+
+It had been my custom to throw the babes into the river which nature had
+thoughtfully provided for the purpose, but that night I did not dare to
+leave the oilery for fear of the constable. "After all," I said to
+myself, "it cannot greatly matter if I put it into this cauldron. My
+father will never know the bones from those of a puppy, and the few
+deaths which may result from administering another kind of oil for the
+incomparable _ol. can_. are not important in a population which
+increases so rapidly." In short, I took the first step in crime and
+brought myself untold sorrow by casting the babe into the cauldron.
+
+The next day, somewhat to my surprise, my father, rubbing his hands with
+satisfaction, informed me and my mother that he had obtained the finest
+quality of oil that was ever seen; that the physicians to whom he had
+shown samples had so pronounced it. He added that he had no knowledge as
+to how the result was obtained; the dogs had been treated in all
+respects as usual, and were of an ordinary breed. I deemed it my duty to
+explain--which I did, though palsied would have been my tongue if I
+could have foreseen the consequences. Bewailing their previous ignorance
+of the advantages of combining their industries, my parents at once took
+measures to repair the error. My mother removed her studio to a wing of
+the factory building and my duties in connection with the business
+ceased; I was no longer required to dispose of the bodies of the small
+superfluous, and there was no need of alluring dogs to their doom, for
+my father discarded them altogether, though they still had an honorable
+place in the name of the oil. So suddenly thrown into idleness, I might
+naturally have been expected to become vicious and dissolute, but I did
+not. The holy influence of my dear mother was ever about me to protect
+me from the temptations which beset youth, and my father was a deacon in
+a church. Alas, that through my fault these estimable persons should
+have come to so bad an end!
+
+Finding a double profit in her business, my mother now devoted herself
+to it with a new assiduity. She removed not only superfluous and
+unwelcome babes to order, but went out into the highways and byways,
+gathering in children of a larger growth, and even such adults as she
+could entice to the oilery. My father, too, enamored of the superior
+quality of oil produced, purveyed for his vats with diligence and zeal.
+The conversion of their neighbors into dog-oil became, in short, the one
+passion of their lives--an absorbing and overwhelming greed took
+possession of their souls and served them in place of a hope in
+Heaven--by which, also, they were inspired.
+
+So enterprising had they now become that a public meeting was held and
+resolutions passed severely censuring them. It was intimated by the
+chairman that any further raids upon the population would be met in a
+spirit of hostility. My poor parents left the meeting broken-hearted,
+desperate and, I believe, not altogether sane. Anyhow, I deemed it
+prudent not to enter the oilery with them that night, but slept outside
+in a stable.
+
+At about midnight some mysterious impulse caused me to rise and peer
+through a window into the furnace-room, where I knew my father now
+slept. The fires were burning as brightly as if the following day's
+harvest had been expected to be abundant. One of the large cauldrons was
+slowly "walloping" with a mysterious appearance of self-restraint, as if
+it bided its time to put forth its full energy. My father was not in
+bed; he had risen in his nightclothes and was preparing a noose in a
+strong cord. From the looks which he cast at the door of my mother's
+bedroom I knew too well the purpose that he had in mind. Speechless and
+motionless with terror, I could do nothing in prevention or warning.
+Suddenly the door of my mother's apartment was opened, noiselessly, and
+the two confronted each other, both apparently surprised. The lady,
+also, was in her night clothes, and she held in her right hand the tool
+of her trade, a long, narrow-bladed dagger.
+
+She, too, had been unable to deny herself the last profit which the
+unfriendly action of the citizens and my absence had left her. For one
+instant they looked into each other's blazing eyes and then sprang
+together with indescribable fury. Round and round the room they
+struggled, the man cursing, the woman shrieking, both fighting like
+demons--she to strike him with the dagger, he to strangle her with his
+great bare hands. I know not how long I had the unhappiness to observe
+this disagreeable instance of domestic infelicity, but at last, after a
+more than usually vigorous struggle, the combatants suddenly moved
+apart.
+
+My father's breast and my mother's weapon showed evidences of contact.
+For another instant they glared at each other in the most unamiable way;
+then my poor, wounded father, feeling the hand of death upon him, leaped
+forward, unmindful of resistance, grasped my dear mother in his arms,
+dragged her to the side of the boiling cauldron, collected all his
+failing energies, and sprang in with her! In a moment, both had
+disappeared and were adding their oil to that of the committee of
+citizens who had called the day before with an invitation to the public
+meeting.
+
+Convinced that these unhappy events closed to me every avenue to an
+honorable career in that town, I removed to the famous city of Otumwee,
+where these memoirs are written with a heart full of remorse for a
+heedless act entailing so dismal a commercial disaster.
+
+
+
+
+AN IMPERFECT CONFLAGRATION
+
+
+Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a
+deep impression on me at the time. This was before my marriage, while I
+was living with my parents in Wisconsin. My father and I were in the
+library of our home, dividing the proceeds of a burglary which we had
+committed that night. These consisted of household goods mostly, and the
+task of equitable division was difficult. We got on very well with the
+napkins, towels and such things, and the silverware was parted pretty
+nearly equally, but you can see for yourself that when you try to divide
+a single music-box by two without a remainder you will have trouble. It
+was that music-box which brought disaster and disgrace upon our family.
+If we had left it my poor father might now be alive.
+
+It was a most exquisite and beautiful piece of workmanship--inlaid with
+costly woods and carven very curiously. It would not only play a great
+variety of tunes, but would whistle like a quail, bark like a dog, crow
+every morning at daylight whether it was wound up or not, and break the
+Ten Commandments. It was this last mentioned accomplishment that won my
+father's heart and caused him to commit the only dishonorable act of his
+life, though possibly he would have committed more if he had been
+spared: he tried to conceal that music-box from me, and declared upon
+his honor that he had not taken it, though I knew very well that, so far
+as he was concerned, the burglary had been undertaken chiefly for the
+purpose of obtaining it.
+
+My father had the music-box hidden under his cloak; we had worn cloaks
+by way of disguise. He had solemnly assured me that he did not take it.
+I knew that he did, and knew something of which he was evidently
+ignorant; namely, that the box would crow at daylight and betray him if
+I could prolong the division of profits till that time. All occurred as
+I wished: as the gaslight began to pale in the library and the shape of
+the windows was seen dimly behind the curtains, a long cock-a-doodle-doo
+came from beneath the old gentleman's cloak, followed by a few bars of
+an aria from _Tannhauser_, ending with a loud click. A small hand-axe,
+which we had used to break into the unlucky house, lay between us on the
+table; I picked it up. The old man seeing that further concealment was
+useless took the box from under his cloak and set it on the table. "Cut
+it in two if you prefer that plan," said he; "I tried to save it from
+destruction."
+
+He was a passionate lover of music and could himself play the concertina
+with expression and feeling.
+
+I said: "I do not question the purity of your motive: it would be
+presumptuous in me to sit in judgment on my father. But business is
+business, and with this axe I am going to effect a dissolution of our
+partnership unless you will consent in all future burglaries to wear a
+bell-punch."
+
+"No," he said, after some reflection, "no, I could not do that; it would
+look like a confession of dishonesty. People would say that you
+distrusted me."
+
+I could not help admiring his spirit and sensitiveness; for a moment I
+was proud of him and disposed to overlook his fault, but a glance at the
+richly jeweled music-box decided me, and, as I said, I removed the old
+man from this vale of tears. Having done so, I was a trifle uneasy. Not
+only was he my father--the author of my being--but the body would be
+certainly discovered. It was now broad daylight and my mother was likely
+to enter the library at any moment. Under the circumstances, I thought
+it expedient to remove her also, which I did. Then I paid off all the
+servants and discharged them.
+
+That afternoon I went to the chief of police, told him what I had done
+and asked his advice. It would be very painful to me if the facts became
+publicly known. My conduct would be generally condemned; the newspapers
+would bring it up against me if ever I should run for office. The chief
+saw the force of these considerations; he was himself an assassin of
+wide experience. After consulting with the presiding judge of the Court
+of Variable Jurisdiction he advised me to conceal the bodies in one of
+the bookcases, get a heavy insurance on the house and burn it down. This
+I proceeded to do.
+
+In the library was a book-case which my father had recently purchased of
+some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and size
+something like the old-fashioned "wardrobes" which one sees in bed-rooms
+without closets, but opened all the way down, like a woman's
+night-dress. It had glass doors. I had recently laid out my parents and
+they were now rigid enough to stand erect; so I stood them in this
+book-case, from which I had removed the shelves. I locked them in and
+tacked some curtains over the glass doors. The inspector from the
+insurance office passed a half-dozen times before the case without
+suspicion.
+
+That night, after getting my policy, I set fire to the house and started
+through the woods to town, two miles away, where I managed to be found
+about the time the excitement was at its height. With cries of
+apprehension for the fate of my parents, I joined the rush and arrived
+at the fire some two hours after I had kindled it. The whole town was
+there as I dashed up. The house was entirely consumed, but in one end of
+the level bed of glowing embers, bolt upright and uninjured, was that
+book-case! The curtains had burned away, exposing the glass-doors,
+through which the fierce, red light illuminated the interior. There
+stood my dear father "in his habit as he lived," and at his side the
+partner of his joys and sorrows. Not a hair of them was singed, their
+clothing was intact. On their heads and throats the injuries which in
+the accomplishment of my designs I had been compelled to inflict were
+conspicuous. As in the presence of a miracle, the people were silent;
+awe and terror had stilled every tongue. I was myself greatly affected.
+
+
+Some three years later, when the events herein related had nearly faded
+from my memory, I went to New York to assist in passing some counterfeit
+United States bonds. Carelessly looking into a furniture store one day,
+I saw the exact counterpart of that bookcase. "I bought it for a trifle
+from a reformed inventor," the dealer explained. "He said it was
+fireproof, the pores of the wood being filled with alum under hydraulic
+pressure and the glass made of asbestos. I don't suppose it is really
+fireproof--you can have it at the price of an ordinary book-case."
+
+"No," I said, "if you cannot warrant it fireproof I won't take it"--and
+I bade him good morning.
+
+I would not have had it at any price: it revived memories that were
+exceedingly disagreeable.
+
+
+
+
+THE HYPNOTIST
+
+
+By those of my friends who happen to know that I sometimes amuse myself
+with hypnotism, mind reading and kindred phenomena, I am frequently
+asked if I have a clear conception of the nature of whatever principle
+underlies them. To this question I always reply that I neither have nor
+desire to have. I am no investigator with an ear at the key-hole of
+Nature's workshop, trying with vulgar curiosity to steal the secrets of
+her trade. The interests of science are as little to me as mine seem to
+have been to science.
+
+Doubtless the phenomena in question are simple enough, and in no way
+transcend our powers of comprehension if only we could find the clew;
+but for my part I prefer not to find it, for I am of a singularly
+romantic disposition, deriving more gratification from mystery than from
+knowledge. It was commonly remarked of me when I was a child that my big
+blue eyes appeared to have been made rather to look into than look out
+of--such was their dreamful beauty, and in my frequent periods of
+abstraction, their indifference to what was going on. In those
+peculiarities they resembled, I venture to think, the soul which lies
+behind them, always more intent upon some lovely conception which it has
+created in its own image than concerned about the laws of nature and the
+material frame of things. All this, irrelevant and egotistic as it may
+seem, is related by way of accounting for the meagreness of the light
+that I am able to throw upon a subject that has engaged so much of my
+attention, and concerning which there is so keen and general a
+curiosity. With my powers and opportunities, another person might
+doubtless have an explanation for much of what I present simply as
+narrative.
+
+My first knowledge that I possessed unusual powers came to me in my
+fourteenth year, when at school. Happening one day to have forgotten to
+bring my noon-day luncheon, I gazed longingly at that of a small girl
+who was preparing to eat hers. Looking up, her eyes met mine and she
+seemed unable to withdraw them. After a moment of hesitancy she came
+forward in an absent kind of way and without a word surrendered her
+little basket with its tempting contents and walked away. Inexpressibly
+pleased, I relieved my hunger and destroyed the basket. After that I had
+not the trouble to bring a luncheon for myself: that little girl was my
+daily purveyor; and not infrequently in satisfying my simple need from
+her frugal store I combined pleasure and profit by constraining her
+attendance at the feast and making misleading proffer of the viands,
+which eventually I consumed to the last fragment. The girl was always
+persuaded that she had eaten all herself; and later in the day her
+tearful complaints of hunger surprised the teacher, entertained the
+pupils, earned for her the sobriquet of Greedy-Gut and filled me with a
+peace past understanding.
+
+A disagreeable feature of this otherwise satisfactory condition of
+things was the necessary secrecy: the transfer of the luncheon, for
+example, had to be made at some distance from the madding crowd, in a
+wood; and I blush to think of the many other unworthy subterfuges
+entailed by the situation. As I was (and am) naturally of a frank and
+open disposition, these became more and more irksome, and but for the
+reluctance of my parents to renounce the obvious advantages of the new
+_régime_ I would gladly have reverted to the old. The plan that I
+finally adopted to free myself from the consequences of my own powers
+excited a wide and keen interest at the time, and that part of it which
+consisted in the death of the girl was severely condemned, but it is
+hardly pertinent to the scope of this narrative.
+
+For some years afterward I had little opportunity to practice hypnotism;
+such small essays as I made at it were commonly barren of other
+recognition than solitary confinement on a bread-and-water diet;
+sometimes, indeed, they elicited nothing better than the
+cat-o'-nine-tails. It was when I was about to leave the scene of these
+small disappointments that my one really important feat was performed.
+
+I had been called into the warden's office and given a suit of
+civilian's clothing, a trifling sum of money and a great deal of advice,
+which I am bound to confess was of a much better quality than the
+clothing. As I was passing out of the gate into the light of freedom I
+suddenly turned and looking the warden gravely in the eye, soon had him
+in control.
+
+"You are an ostrich," I said.
+
+At the post-mortem examination the stomach was found to contain a great
+quantity of indigestible articles mostly of wood or metal. Stuck fast in
+the oesophagus and constituting, according to the Coroner's jury, the
+immediate cause of death, one door-knob.
+
+I was by nature a good and affectionate son, but as I took my way into
+the great world from which I had been so long secluded I could not help
+remembering that all my misfortunes had flowed like a stream from the
+niggard economy of my parents in the matter of school luncheons; and I
+knew of no reason to think they had reformed.
+
+On the road between Succotash Hill and South Asphyxia is a little open
+field which once contained a shanty known as Pete Gilstrap's Place,
+where that gentleman used to murder travelers for a living. The death of
+Mr. Gilstrap and the diversion of nearly all the travel to another road
+occurred so nearly at the same time that no one has ever been able to
+say which was cause and which effect. Anyhow, the field was now a
+desolation and the Place had long been burned. It was while going afoot
+to South Asphyxia, the home of my childhood, that I found both my
+parents on their way to the Hill. They had hitched their team and were
+eating luncheon under an oak tree in the center of the field. The sight
+of the luncheon called up painful memories of my school days and roused
+the sleeping lion in my breast. Approaching the guilty couple, who at
+once recognized me, I ventured to suggest that I share their
+hospitality.
+
+"Of this cheer, my son," said the author of my being, with
+characteristic pomposity, which age had not withered, "there is
+sufficient for but two. I am not, I hope, insensible to the hunger-light
+in your eyes, but--"
+
+My father has never completed that sentence; what he mistook for
+hunger-light was simply the earnest gaze of the hypnotist. In a few
+seconds he was at my service. A few more sufficed for the lady, and the
+dictates of a just resentment could be carried into effect. "My former
+father," I said, "I presume that it is known to you that you and this
+lady are no longer what you were?"
+
+"I have observed a certain subtle change," was the rather dubious reply
+of the old gentleman; "it is perhaps attributable to age."
+
+"It is more than that," I explained; "it goes to character--to species.
+You and the lady here are, in truth, two _broncos_--wild stallions both,
+and unfriendly."
+
+"Why, John," exclaimed my dear mother, "you don't mean to say that I
+am--"
+
+"Madam," I replied, solemnly, fixing my eyes again upon hers, "you are."
+
+
+Scarcely had the words fallen from my lips when she dropped upon her
+hands and knees, and backing up to the old man squealed like a demon and
+delivered a vicious kick upon his shin! An instant later he was himself
+down on all-fours, headed away from her and flinging his feet at her
+simultaneously and successively. With equal earnestness but inferior
+agility, because of her hampering body-gear, she plied her own. Their
+flying legs crossed and mingled in the most bewildering way; their feet
+sometimes meeting squarely in midair, their bodies thrust forward,
+falling flat upon the ground and for a moment helpless. On recovering
+themselves they would resume the combat, uttering their frenzy in the
+nameless sounds of the furious brutes which they believed themselves to
+be--the whole region rang with their clamor! Round and round they
+wheeled, the blows of their feet falling "like lightnings from the
+mountain cloud." They plunged and reared backward upon their knees,
+struck savagely at each other with awkward descending blows of both
+fists at once, and dropped again upon their hands as if unable to
+maintain the upright position of the body. Grass and pebbles were torn
+from the soil by hands and feet; clothing, hair, faces inexpressibly
+defiled with dust and blood. Wild, inarticulate screams of rage attested
+the delivery of the blows; groans, grunts and gasps their receipt.
+Nothing more truly military was ever seen at Gettysburg or Waterloo: the
+valor of my dear parents in the hour of danger can never cease to be to
+me a source of pride and gratification. At the end of it all two
+battered, tattered, bloody and fragmentary vestiges of mortality
+attested the solemn fact that the author of the strife was an orphan.
+
+Arrested for provoking a breach of the peace, I was, and have ever since
+been, tried in the Court of Technicalities and Continuances whence,
+after fifteen years of proceedings, my attorney is moving heaven and
+earth to get the case taken to the Court of Remandment for New Trials.
+
+Such are a few of my principal experiments in the mysterious force or
+agency known as hypnotic suggestion. Whether or not it could be employed
+by a bad man for an unworthy purpose I am unable to say.
+
+
+
+
+THE FOURTH ESTATE
+
+
+
+
+MR. MASTHEAD, JOURNALIST
+
+
+While I was in Kansas I purchased a weekly newspaper--the _Claybank
+Thundergust of Reform_. This paper had never paid its expenses; it had
+ruined four consecutive publishers; but my brother-in-law, Mr. Jefferson
+Scandril, of Weedhaven, was going to run for the Legislature, and I
+naturally desired his defeat; so it became necessary to have an organ in
+Claybank to assist in his political extinction. When the establishment
+came into my hands, the editor was a fellow who had "opinions," and him
+I at once discharged with an admonition. I had some difficulty in
+procuring a successor; every man in the county applied for the place. I
+could not appoint one without having to fight a majority of the others,
+and was eventually compelled to write to a friend at Warm Springs, in
+the adjoining State of Missouri, to send me an editor from abroad whose
+instalment at the helm of manifest destiny could have no local
+significance.
+
+The man he sent me was a frowsy, seedy fellow, named Masthead--not
+larger, apparently, than a boy of sixteen years, though it was difficult
+to say from the outside how much of him was editor and how much cast-off
+clothing; for in the matter of apparel he had acted upon his favorite
+professional maxim, and "sunk the individual;" his attire--eminently
+eclectic, and in a sense international--quite overcame him at all
+points. However, as my friend had assured me he was "a graduate of one
+of the largest institutions in his native State," I took him in and
+bought a pen for him. My instructions to him were brief and simple.
+
+"Mr. Masthead," said I, "it is the policy of the _Thundergust_ first,
+last, and all the time, in this world and the next, to resent the
+intrusion of Mr. Jefferson Scandril into politics."
+
+The first thing the little rascal did was to write a withering leader
+denouncing Mr. Scandril as a "demagogue, the degradation of whose
+political opinions was only equaled by the disgustfulness of the family
+connections of which those opinions were the spawn!"
+
+I hastened to point out to Mr. Masthead that it had never been the
+policy of the _Thundergust_ to attack the family relations of an
+offensive candidate, although this was not strictly true.
+
+"I am very sorry," he replied, running his head up out of his clothes
+till it towered as much as six inches above the table at which he sat;
+"no offense, I hope."
+
+"Oh, none in the world," said I, as carelessly as I could manage it;
+"only I don't think it a legitimate--that is, an effective, method of
+attack."
+
+"Mr. Johnson," said he--I was passing as Johnson at that time, I
+remember--"Mr. Johnson, I think it _is_ an effective method. Personally
+I might perhaps prefer another line of argument in this particular case,
+and personally perhaps you might; but in our profession personal
+considerations must be blown to the winds of the horizon; we must sink
+the individual. In opposing the election of your relative, sir, you have
+set the seal of your heavy displeasure upon the sin of nepotism, and for
+this I respect you; nepotism must be got under! But in the display of
+Roman virtues, sir, we must go the whole hog. When in the interest of
+public morality"--Mr. Masthead was now gesticulating earnestly with the
+sleeves of his coat--"Virginius stabbed his daughter, was he influenced
+by personal considerations? When Curtius leaped into the yawning gulf,
+did he not sink the individual?"
+
+I admitted that he did, but feeling in a contentious mood, prolonged the
+discussion by leisurely loading and capping a revolver; but, prescient
+of my argument, Mr. Masthead avoided refutation by hastily adjourning
+the debate. I sent him a note that evening, filling-in a few of the
+details of the policy that I had before sketched in outline. Amongst
+other things I submitted that it would be better for us to exalt Mr.
+Scandril's opponent than to degrade himself. To this Mr. Masthead
+reluctantly assented--"sinking the individual," he reproachfully
+explained, "in the dependent employee--the powerless bondsman!" The next
+issue of the _Thundergust_ contained, under the heading, "Invigorating
+Zephyrs," the following editorial article:
+
+"Last week we declared our unalterable opposition to the candidacy of
+Mr. Jefferson Scandril, and gave reasons for the faith that is in us.
+For the first time in its history this paper made a clear, thoughtful,
+and adequate avowal and exposition of eternal principle! Abandoning for
+the present the stand we then took, let us trace the antecedents of Mr.
+Scandril's opponent up to their source. It has been urged against Mr.
+Broskin that he spent some years of his life in the lunatic asylum at
+Warm Springs, in the adjoining commonwealth of Missouri. This cuckoo
+cry--raised though it is by dogs of political darkness--we shall not
+stoop to controvert, for it is accidentally true; but next week we shall
+show, as by the stroke of an enchanter's wand, that this great
+statesman's detractors would probably not derive any benefits from a
+residence in the same institution, their mental aberration being
+rottenly incurable!"
+
+I thought this rather strong and not quite to the point; but Masthead
+said it was a fact that our candidate, who was very little known in
+Claybank, had "served a term" in the Warm Springs asylum, and the issue
+must be boldly met--that evasion and denial were but forms of
+prostration beneath the iron wheels of Truth! As he said this he seemed
+to inflate and expand so as almost to fill his clothes, and the fire of
+his eye somehow burned into me an impression--since effaced--that a just
+cause is not imperiled by a trifling concession to fact. So, leaving the
+matter quite in my editor's hands I went away to keep some important
+engagements, the paragraph having involved me in several duels with the
+friends of Mr. Broskin. I thought it rather hard that I should have to
+defend my new editor's policy against the supporters of my own
+candidate, particularly as I was clearly in the right and they knew
+nothing whatever about the matter in dispute, not one of them having
+ever before so much as heard of the now famous Warm Springs asylum. But
+I would not shirk even the humblest journalistic duty; I fought these
+fellows and acquitted myself as became a man of letters and a
+politician. The hurts I got were some time healing, and in the interval
+every prominent member of my party who came to Claybank to speak to the
+people regarded it as a simple duty to call first at my house, make a
+tender inquiry as to the progress of my recovery and leave a challenge.
+My physician forbade me to read a line of anything; the consequence was
+that Masthead had it all his own way with the paper. In looking over the
+old files now, I find that he devoted his entire talent and all the
+space of the paper, including what had been the advertising columns, to
+confessing that our candidate had been an inmate of a lunatic asylum,
+and contemptuously asking the opposing party what they were going to do
+about it.
+
+All this time Mr. Broskin made no sign; but when the challenges became
+intolerable I indignantly instructed Mr. Masthead to whip round to the
+other side and support my brother-in-law. Masthead "sank the
+individual," and duly announced, with his accustomed frankness, our
+change of policy. Then Mr. Broskin came down to Claybank--to thank me!
+He was a fine, respectable-looking gentleman, and impressed me very
+favorably. But Masthead was in when he called, and the effect upon _him_
+was different. He shrank into a mere heap of old clothes, turned white,
+and chattered his teeth. Noting this extraordinary behavior, I at once
+sought an explanation.
+
+"Mr. Broskin," said I, with a meaning glance at the trembling editor,
+"from certain indications I am led to fear that owing to some mistake we
+may have been doing you an injustice. May I ask you if you were really
+ever in the Lunatic asylum at Warm Springs, Missouri?"
+
+"For three years," he replied, quietly, "I was the physician in charge
+of that institution. Your son"--turning to Masthead, who was flying all
+sorts of colors--"was, if I mistake not, one of my patients. I learn
+that a few weeks ago a friend of yours, named Norton, secured the young
+man's release upon your promise to take care of him yourself in future.
+I hope that home associations have improved the poor fellow. It's very
+sad!"
+
+It was indeed. Norton was the name of the man to whom I had written for
+an editor, and who had sent me one! Norton was ever an obliging fellow.
+
+
+
+
+WHY I AM NOT EDITING "THE STINGER"
+
+
+_J. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Monday, 9 A.M.
+
+A man has called to ask "who wrote that article about Mr. Muskler." I
+told him to find out, and he says that is what he means to do. He has
+consented to amuse himself with the exchanges while I ask you. I don't
+approve the article.
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor, to J. Munniglut, Proprietor_.
+
+13 LOFER STREET, Monday, 10 A.M.
+
+Do you happen to remember how Dacier translates _Difficile est proprie
+communia dicere_? I've made a note of it somewhere, but can't find it.
+If you remember please leave a memorandum of it on your table, and I'll
+get it when I come down this afternoon.
+
+P.S.--Tell the man to go away; we can't be bothered about that fellow
+Muskler.
+
+
+_J. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Monday, 11:30 A.M.
+
+I can't be impolite to a stranger, you know; I must tell him _somebody_
+wrote it. He has finished the exchanges, and is drumming on the floor
+with the end of his stick; I fear the people in the shop below won't
+like it. Besides, the foreman says it disturbs the compositors in the
+next room. Suppose you come down.
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor, to J. Munniglut, Proprietor._
+
+13 LOFER STREET, Monday, 1 P.M.
+
+I have found the note I made of that translation, but it is in French
+and I can't make it out. Try the man with the dictionary and the "Books
+of Dates." They ought to last him till it's time to close the office. I
+shall be down early to-morrow morning.
+
+P.S.--How big is he? Suggest a civil suit for libel.
+
+
+_J. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Monday, 3 P.M.
+
+He looks larger than he was when he came in. I've offered him the
+dictionary; he says he has read it before. He is sitting on my table.
+Come at once!
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor, to J. Munniglut, Proprietor._
+
+13 LOFER STREET, Monday, 5 P.M.
+
+I don't think I shall. I am doing an article for this week on "The
+Present Aspect of the Political Horizon." Expect me _very_ early
+to-morrow. You had better turn the man out and shut up the office.
+
+
+_Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Tuesday, 8 A.M.
+
+Mr. Munniglut has not arrived, but his friend, the large gentleman who
+was with him all day yesterday, is here again. He seems very desirous of
+seeing you, and says he will wait. Perhaps he is your cousin. I thought
+I would tell you he was here, so that you might hasten down.
+
+Ought I to allow dogs in the office? The gentleman has a bull-dog.
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor, to Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper._
+
+13 LOFER STREET, Tuesday, 9.30 A.M.
+
+Certainly _not;_ dogs have fleas. The man is an impostor. Oblige me by
+turning him out. I shall come down this afternoon--_early_.
+
+P.S.--Don't listen to the rascal's entreaties; out with him!
+
+
+_Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Tuesday, 12 M.
+
+The gentleman carries a revolver. Would you mind coming down and
+reasoning with him? I have a wife and five children depending on me, and
+when I lose my temper I am likely to go too far. I would prefer that
+_you_ should turn him out.
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor, to Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper._
+
+13 LOFER STREET, Tuesday, 2 P.M.
+
+Do you suppose I can leave my private correspondence to preserve you
+from the intrusion and importunities of beggars? Put the scoundrel out
+at once--neck and heels! I know him; he's Muskler--don't you remember?
+Muskler, the coward, who assaulted an old man; you'll find the whole
+circumstances related in last Saturday's issue. Out with him--the
+unmanly sneak!
+
+
+_Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Tuesday Evening.
+
+I have told him to go, and he laughed. So did the bull-dog. But he is
+going. He is now making a bed for the pup in one corner of your room,
+with some rugs and old newspapers, and appears to be about to go to
+dinner. I have given him your address. The foreman wants some copy to go
+on with. I beg you will come at once if I am to be left alone with that
+dog.
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor, to Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper._
+
+40 DUNTIONER'S ALLEY, Wednesday, 10 A.M.
+
+I should have come down to the office last evening, but you see I have
+been moving. My landlady was too filthy dirty for anything! I stood it
+as long as I could; then I left. I'm coming directly I get your answer
+to this; but I want to know, first, if my blotter has been changed and
+my ink-well refilled. This house is a good way out, but the boy can take
+the car at the corner of Cobble and Slush streets.
+
+O!--about that _man_? Of course you have not seen him since.
+
+
+_William Quoin, Foreman, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Wednesday, 12 M.
+
+I've got your note to Inxling; he ain't come down this morning. I
+haven't a line of copy on the hooks; the boys are all throwing in dead
+ads. There's a man and a dog in the proprietor's office; I don't believe
+they ought to be there, all alone, but they were here all Monday and
+yesterday, and may be connected with the business management of the
+paper; so I don't like to order them out. Perhaps you will come down and
+speak to them. We shall have to go away if you don't send copy.
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor, to William Quoin, Foreman._
+
+40 DUNTIONER'S ALLEY, Wednesday, 3 P.M.
+
+Your note astonishes me. The man you describe is a notorious thief. Get
+the compositors all together, and make a rush at him. Don't try to keep
+him, but hustle him out of town, and I'll be down as soon as I can get a
+button sewn on my collar.
+
+P.S.--Give it him good!--don't mention my address and he can't complain
+to me how you treat him. Bust his bugle!
+
+
+_J. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin, Editor._
+
+"STINGER" OFFICE, Friday, 2 P.M.
+
+Business has detained me from the office until now, and what do I find?
+Not a soul about the place, no copy, not a stickful of live matter on
+the galleys! There can be no paper this week. What you have all done
+with yourselves I am sure I don't know; one would suppose there had been
+smallpox about the place. You will please come down and explain this
+Hegira at once--at once, if you please!
+
+P.S.--That troublesome Muskler--you may remember he dropped in on Monday
+to inquire about something or other--has taken a sort of shop exactly
+opposite here, and seems, at this distance, to be doing something to a
+shotgun. I presume he is a gunsmith. So we are precious well rid of
+_him_.
+
+
+_Peter Pitchin, Editor to J. Munniglut, Proprietor_.
+
+PIER NO. 3, Friday Evening.
+
+Just a line or two to say I am suddenly called away to bury my sick
+mother. When that is off my mind I'll write you what I know about the
+Hegira, the Flight into Egypt, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, and
+whatever else you would like to learn. There is nothing mean about _me!_
+I don't think there has been any wilful desertion. You may engage an
+editor for, say, fifty years, with the privilege of keeping him
+regularly, if, at the end of that time, I should break my neck hastening
+back.
+
+P.S.--I hope that poor fellow Muskier will make a fair profit in the
+gunsmithing line. Jump him for an ad!
+
+
+
+
+CORRUPTING THE PRESS
+
+
+When Joel Bird was up for Governor of Missouri, Sam Henly was editing
+the Berrywood _Bugle_; and no sooner was the nomination made by the
+State Convention than he came out hot against the party. He was an able
+writer, was Sam, and the lies he invented about our candidate were
+shocking! That, however, we endured very well, but presently Sam turned
+squarely about and began telling the truth. _This_ was a little too
+much; the County Committee held a hasty meeting, and decided that it
+must be stopped; so I, Henry Barber, was sent for to make arrangements
+to that end. I knew something of Sam: had purchased him several times,
+and I estimated his present value at about one thousand dollars. This
+seemed to the committee a reasonable figure, and on my mentioning it to
+Sam he said "he thought that about the fair thing; it should never be
+said that the _Bugle_ was a hard paper to deal with." There was,
+however, some delay in raising the money; the candidates for the local
+offices had not disposed of their autumn hogs yet, and were in financial
+straits. Some of them contributed a pig each, one gave twenty bushels of
+corn, another a flock of chickens; and the man who aspired to the
+distinction of County Judge paid his assessment with a wagon. These
+things had to be converted into cash at a ruinous sacrifice, and in the
+meantime Sam kept pouring an incessant stream of hot shot into our
+political camp. Nothing I could say would make him stay his hand; he
+invariably replied that it was no bargain until he had the money. The
+committeemen were furious; it required all my eloquence to prevent their
+declaring the contract null and void; but at last a new, clean one
+thousand-dollar note was passed over to me, which in hot haste I
+transferred to Sam at his residence.
+
+That evening there was a meeting of the committee: all seemed in high
+spirits again, except Hooker of Jayhawk. This old wretch sat back and
+shook his head during the entire session, and just before adjournment
+said, as he took his hat to go, that p'r'aps'twas orl right and on the
+squar'; maybe thar war'n't any shenannigan, but _he_ war dubersome--yes,
+he war dubersome. The old curmudgeon repeated this until I was
+exasperated beyond restraint.
+
+"Mr. Hooker," said I, "I've known Sam Henly ever since he was _so_ high,
+and there isn't an honester man in old Missouri. Sam Henly's word is as
+good as his note! What's more, if any gentleman thinks he would enjoy a
+first-class funeral, and if he will supply the sable accessories, I'll
+supply the corpse. And he can take it home with him from this meeting."
+
+At this point Mr. Hooker was troubled with leaving.
+
+Having got this business off my conscience I slept late next day. When I
+stepped into the street I saw at once that something was "up." There
+were knots of people gathered at the corners, some reading eagerly that
+morning's issue of the _Bugle_, some gesticulating, and others stalking
+moodily about muttering curses, not loud but deep. Suddenly I heard an
+excited clamor--a confused roar of many lungs, and the trampling of
+innumerable feet. In this babel of noises I could distinguish the words
+"Kill him!" "Wa'm his hide!" and so forth; and, looking up the street, I
+saw what seemed to be the whole male population racing down it. I am
+very excitable, and, though I did not know whose hide was to be warmed,
+nor why anyone was to be killed, I shot off in front of the howling
+masses, shouting "Kill him!" and "Warm his hide!" as loudly as the
+loudest, all the time looking out for the victim. Down the street we
+flew like a storm; then I turned a corner, thinking the scoundrel must
+have gone up _that_ street; then bolted through a public square; over a
+bridge; under an arch; finally back into the main street; yelling like a
+panther, and resolved to slaughter the first human being I should
+overtake. The crowd followed my lead, turning as I turned, shrieking as
+I shrieked, and--all at once it came to me that _I_ was the man whose
+hide was to be warmed!
+
+It is needless to dwell upon the sensation this discovery gave me;
+happily I was within a few yards of the committee-rooms, and into these
+I dashed, closing and bolting the doors behind me, and mounting the
+stairs like a flash. The committee was in solemn session, sitting in a
+nice, even row on the front benches, each man with his elbows on his
+knees, and his chin resting in the palms of his hands--thinking. At each
+man's feet lay a neglected copy of the _Bugle_. Every member fixed his
+eyes on me, but no one stirred, none uttered a sound. There was
+something awful in this preternatural silence, made more impressive by
+the hoarse murmur of the crowd outside, breaking down the door. I could
+endure it no longer, but strode forward and snatched up the paper lying
+at the feet of the chairman. At the head of the editorial columns, in
+letters half an inch long, were the following amazing head-lines:
+
+"Dastardly Outrage! Corruption Rampant in Our Midst! The Vampires
+Foiled! Henry Barber at his Old Game! The Rat Gnaws a File! The
+Democratic Hordes Attempt to Ride Roughshod Over a Free People! Base
+Endeavor to Bribe the Editor of this Paper with _a Twenty-Dollar Note_!
+The Money Given to the Orphan Asylum."
+
+I read no farther, but stood stockstill in the center of the floor, and
+fell into a reverie. Twenty dollars! Somehow it seemed a mere trifle.
+Nine hundred and eighty dollars! I did not know there was so much money
+in the world. Twenty--no, eighty--one thousand dollars! There were big,
+black figures floating all over the floor. Incessant cataracts of them
+poured down the walls, stopped, and shied off as I looked at them, and
+began to go it again when I lowered my eyes. Occasionally the figures 20
+would take shape somewhere about the floor, and then the figures 980
+would slide up and overlay them. Then, like the lean kine of Pharaoh's
+dream, they would all march away and devour the fat naughts of the
+number 1,000. And dancing like gnats in the air were myriads of little
+caduceus-like, phantoms, thus--$$$$$. I could not at all make it out,
+but began to comprehend my position directly Old Hooker, without moving
+from his seat, began to drown the noise of countless feet on the stairs
+by elevating his thin falsetto:
+
+"P'r'aps, Mr. Cheerman, it's orl on the squar'. We know Mr. Henly can't
+tell a lie; but I'm powerful dubersome that thar's a balyance dyue this
+yer committee from the gent who hez the flo'--if he ain't done gone laid
+it yout fo' sable ac--ac--fo' fyirst-class funerals."
+
+I felt at that moment as if I should like to play the leading character
+in a first-class funeral myself. I felt that every man in my position
+ought to have a nice, comfortable coffin, with a silver door-plate, a
+foot-warmer, and bay-windows for his ears. How do you suppose you would
+have felt?
+
+My leap from the window of that committee room, my speed in streaking it
+for the adjacent forest, my self-denial in ever afterward resisting the
+impulse to return to Berrywood and look after my political and material
+interests there--these I have always considered things to be justly
+proud of, and I hope I am proud of them.
+
+
+
+
+"THE BUBBLE REPUTATION"
+
+HOW ANOTHER MAN'S WAS SOUGHT AND PRICKED
+
+
+It was a stormy night in the autumn of 1930. The hour was about eleven.
+San Francisco lay in darkness, for the laborers at the gas works had
+struck and destroyed the company's property because a newspaper to which
+a cousin of the manager was a subscriber had censured the course of a
+potato merchant related by marriage to a member of the Knights of
+Leisure. Electric lights had not at that period been reinvented. The sky
+was filled with great masses of black cloud which, driven rapidly across
+the star-fields by winds unfelt on the earth and momentarily altering
+their fantastic forms, seemed instinct with a life and activity of their
+own and endowed with awful powers of evil, to the exercise of which they
+might at any time set their malignant will.
+
+An observer standing, at this time, at the corner of Paradise avenue and
+Great White Throne walk in Sorrel Hill cemetery would have seen a human
+figure moving among the graves toward the Superintendent's residence.
+Dimly and fitfully visible in the intervals of thinner gloom, this
+figure had a most uncanny and disquieting aspect. A long black cloak
+shrouded it from neck to heel. Upon its head was a slouch hat, pulled
+down across the forehead and almost concealing the face, which was
+further hidden by a half-mask, only the beard being occasionally visible
+as the head was lifted partly above the collar of the cloak. The man
+wore upon his feet jack-boots whose wide, funnel-shaped legs had settled
+down in many a fold and crease about his ankles, as could be seen
+whenever accident parted the bottom of the cloak. His arms were
+concealed, but sometimes he stretched out the right to steady himself by
+a headstone as he crept stealthily but blindly over the uneven ground.
+At such times a close scrutiny of the hand would have disclosed in the
+palm the hilt of a poniard, the blade of which lay along the wrist,
+hidden in the sleeve. In short, the man's garb, his movements, the
+hour--everything proclaimed him a reporter.
+
+But what did he there?
+
+On the morning of that day the editor of the _Daily Malefactor_ had
+touched the button of a bell numbered 216 and in response to the summons
+Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, reporter, had been shot into the room out of an
+inclined tube.
+
+"I understand," said the editor, "that you are 216--am I right?"
+
+"That," said the reporter, catching his breath and adjusting his
+clothing, both somewhat disordered by the celerity of his flight through
+the tube,--"that is my number."
+
+"Information has reached us," continued the editor, "that the
+Superintendent of the Sorrel Hill cemetery--one Inhumio, whose very name
+suggests inhumanity--is guilty of the grossest outrages in the
+administration of the great trust confided to his hands by the sovereign
+people."
+
+"The cemetery is private property," faintly suggested 216.
+
+"It is alleged," continued the great man, disdaining to notice the
+interruption, "that in violation of popular rights he refuses to permit
+his accounts to be inspected by representatives of the press."
+
+"Under the law, you know, he is responsible to the directors of the
+cemetery company," the reporter ventured to interject.
+
+"They say," pursued the editor, heedless, "that the inmates are in many
+cases badly lodged and insufficiently clad, and that in consequence they
+are usually cold. It is asserted that they are never fed--except to the
+worms. Statements have been made to the effect that males and females
+are permitted to occupy the same quarters, to the incalculable detriment
+of public morality. Many clandestine villainies are alleged of this
+fiend in human shape, and it is desirable that his underground methods
+be unearthed in the _Malefactor_. If he resists we will drag his family
+skeleton from the privacy of his domestic closet. There is money in it
+for the paper, fame for you--are you ambitious, 216?"
+
+"I am--bitious."
+
+"Go, then," cried the editor, rising and waving his hand
+imperiously--"go and 'seek the bubble reputation'."
+
+"The bubble shall be sought," the young man replied, and leaping into a
+man-hole in the floor, disappeared. A moment later the editor, who after
+dismissing his subordinate, had stood motionless, as if lost in thought,
+sprang suddenly to the man-hole and shouted down it: "Hello, 216?"
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," came up a faint and far reply.
+
+"About that 'bubble reputation'--you understand, I suppose, that the
+reputation which you are to seek is that of the other man."
+
+In the execution of his duty, in the hope of his employer's approval, in
+the costume of his profession, Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, otherwise known
+as 216, has already occupied a place in the mind's eye of the
+intelligent reader. Alas for poor Mr. Inhumio!
+
+A few days after these events that fearless, independent and
+enterprising guardian and guide of the public, the San Francisco _Daily
+Malefactor_, contained a whole-page article whose headlines are here
+presented with some necessary typographical mitigation:
+
+"Hell Upon Earth! Corruption Rampant in the Management of the Sorrel
+Hill Cemetery. The Sacred City of the Dead in the Leprous Clutches of a
+Demon in Human Form. Fiendish Atrocities Committed in 'God's Acre.' The
+Holy Dead Thrown around Loose. Fragments of Mothers. Segregation of a
+Beautiful Young Lady Who in Life Was the Light of a Happy Household. A
+Superintendent Who Is an Ex-Convict. How He Murdered His Neighbor to
+Start the Cemetery. He Buries His Own Dead Elsewhere. Extraordinary
+Insolence to a Representative of the Public Press. Little Eliza's Last
+Words: 'Mamma, Feed Me to the Pigs.' A Moonshiner Who Runs an Illicit
+Bone-Button Factory in One Corner of the Grounds. Buried Head Downward.
+Revolting Mausoleistic Orgies. Dancing on the Dead. Devilish
+Mutilation--a Pile of Late Lamented Noses and Sainted Ears. No
+Separation of the Sexes; Petitions for Chaperons Unheeded. 'Veal' as
+Supplied to the Superintendent's Employees. A Miscreant's Record from
+His Birth. Disgusting Subserviency of Our Contemporaries and Strong
+Indications of Collusion. Nameless Abnormalities. 'Doubled Up Like a
+Nut-Cracker.' 'Wasn't Planted White.' Horribly Significant Reduction in
+the Price of Lard. The Question of the Hour: Whom Do You Fry Your
+Doughnuts In?"
+
+
+
+
+THE OCEAN WAVE
+
+
+
+
+A SHIPWRECKOLLECTION
+
+
+As I left the house she said I was a cruel old thing, and not a bit
+nice, and she hoped I never, never _would_ come back. So I shipped as
+mate on the _Mudlark_, bound from London to wherever the captain might
+think it expedient to sail. It had not been thought advisable to hamper
+Captain Abersouth with orders, for when he could not have his own way,
+it had been observed, he would contrive in some ingenious way to make
+the voyage unprofitable. The owners of the _Mudlark_ had grown wise in
+their generation, and now let him do pretty much as he pleased, carrying
+such cargoes as he fancied to ports where the nicest women were. On the
+voyage of which I write he had taken no cargo at all; he said it would
+only make the _Mudlark_ heavy and slow. To hear this mariner talk one
+would have supposed he did not know very much about commerce.
+
+We had a few passengers--not nearly so many as we had laid in basins and
+stewards for; for before coming off to the ship most of those who had
+bought tickets would inquire whither she was bound, and when not
+informed would go back to their hotels and send a bandit on board to
+remove their baggage. But there were enough left to be rather
+troublesome. They cultivated the rolling gait peculiar to sailors when
+drunk, and the upper deck was hardly wide enough for them to go from the
+forecastle to the binnacle to set their watches by the ship's compass.
+They were always petitioning Captain Abersouth to let the big anchor go,
+just to hear it plunge in the water, threatening in case of refusal to
+write to the newspapers. A favorite amusement with them was to sit in
+the lee of the bulwarks, relating their experiences in former
+voyages--voyages distinguished in every instance by two remarkable
+features, the frequency of unprecedented hurricanes and the entire
+immunity of the narrator from seasickness. It was very interesting to
+see them sitting in a row telling these things, each man with a basin
+between his legs.
+
+One day there arose a great storm. The sea walked over the ship as if it
+had never seen a ship before and meant to enjoy it all it could. The
+_Mudlark_ labored very much--far more, indeed, than the crew did; for
+these innocents had discovered in possession of one of their number a
+pair of leather-seated trousers, and would do nothing but sit and play
+cards for them; in a month from leaving port each sailor had owned them
+a dozen times. They were so worn by being pushed over to the winner that
+there was little but the seat remaining, and that immortal part the
+captain finally kicked overboard--not maliciously, nor in an unfriendly
+spirit, but because he had a habit of kicking the seats of trousers.
+
+The storm increased in violence until it succeeded in so straining the
+_Mudlark_ that she took in water like a teetotaler; then it appeared to
+get relief directly. This may be said in justice to a storm at sea: when
+it has broken off your masts, pulled out your rudder, carried away your
+boats and made a nice hole in some inaccessible part of your hull it
+will often go away in search of a fresh ship, leaving you to take such
+measures for your comfort as you may think fit. In our case the captain
+thought fit to sit on the taffrail reading a three-volume novel.
+
+Seeing he had got about half way through the second volume, at which
+point the lovers would naturally be involved in the most hopeless and
+heart-rending difficulties, I thought he would be in a particularly
+cheerful humor, so I approached him and informed him the ship was going
+down.
+
+"Well," said he, closing the book, but keeping his forefinger between
+the pages to mark his place, "she never would be good for much after
+such a shaking-up as this. But, I say--I wish you would just send the
+bo'sn for'd there to break up that prayer-meeting. The _Mudlark_ isn't a
+seamen's chapel, I suppose."
+
+"But," I replied, impatiently, "can't something be done to lighten the
+ship?"
+
+"Well," he drawled, reflectively, "seeing she hasn't any masts left to
+cut away, nor any cargo to--stay, you might throw over some of the
+heaviest of the passengers if you think it would do any good."
+
+It was a happy thought--the intuition of genius. Walking rapidly forward
+to the foc'sle, which, being highest out of water, was crowded with
+passengers, I seized a stout old gentleman by the nape of the neck,
+pushed him up to the rail, and chucked him over. He did not touch the
+water: he fell on the apex of a cone of sharks which sprang up from the
+sea to meet him, their noses gathered to a point, their tails just
+clearing the surface. I think it unlikely that the old gentleman knew
+what disposition had been made of him. Next, I hurled over a woman and
+flung a fat baby to the wild winds. The former was sharked out of sight,
+the same as the old man; the latter divided amongst the gulls.
+
+I am relating these things exactly as they occurred. It would be very
+easy to make a fine story out of all this material--to tell how that,
+while I was engaged in lightening the ship, I was touched by the
+self-sacrificing spirit of a beautiful young woman, who, to save the
+life of her lover, pushed her aged mother forward to where I was
+operating, imploring me to take the old lady, but spare, O, spare her
+dear Henry. I might go on to set forth how that I not only did take the
+old lady, as requested, but immediately seized dear Henry, and sent him
+flying as far as I could to leeward, having first broken his back across
+the rail and pulled a double-fistful of his curly hair out. I might
+proceed to state that, feeling appeased, I then stole the long boat and
+taking the beautiful maiden pulled away from the ill-fated ship to the
+church of St. Massaker, Fiji, where we were united by a knot which I
+afterward untied with my teeth by eating her. But, in truth, nothing of
+all this occurred, and I can not afford to be the first writer to tell a
+lie just to interest the reader. What really did occur is this: as I
+stood on the quarter-deck, heaving over the passengers, one after
+another, Captain Abersouth, having finished his novel, walked aft and
+quietly hove _me_ over.
+
+The sensations of a drowning man have been so often related that I shall
+only briefly explain that memory at once displayed her treasures: all
+the scenes of my eventful life crowded, though without confusion or
+fighting, into my mind. I saw my whole career spread out before me, like
+a map of Central Africa since the discovery of the gorilla. There were
+the cradle in which I had lain, as a child, stupefied with soothing
+syrups; the perambulator, seated in which and propelled from behind, I
+overthrew the schoolmaster, and in which my infantile spine received its
+curvature; the nursery-maid, surrendering her lips alternately to me and
+the gardener; the old home of my youth, with the ivy and the mortgage on
+it; my eldest brother, who by will succeeded to the family debts; my
+sister, who ran away with the Count von Pretzel, coachman to a most
+respectable New York family; my mother, standing in the attitude of a
+saint, pressing with both hands her prayer-book against the patent
+palpitators from Madame Fahertini's; my venerable father, sitting in his
+chimney corner, his silvered head bowed upon his breast, his withered
+hands crossed patiently in his lap, waiting with Christian resignation
+for death, and drunk as a lord--all this, and much more, came before my
+mind's eye, and there was no charge for admission to the show. Then
+there was a ringing sound in my ears, my senses swam better than I
+could, and as I sank down, down, through fathomless depths, the amber
+light falling through the water above my head failed and darkened into
+blackness. Suddenly my feet struck something firm--it was the bottom.
+Thank heaven, I was saved!
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF "THE CAMEL"
+
+
+This ship was named the _Camel_. In some ways she was an extraordinary
+vessel. She measured six hundred tons; but when she had taken in enough
+ballast to keep her from upsetting like a shot duck, and was provisioned
+for a three months' voyage, it was necessary to be mighty fastidious in
+the choice of freight and passengers. For illustration, as she was about
+to leave port a boat came alongside with two passengers, a man and his
+wife. They had booked the day before, but had remained ashore to get one
+more decent meal before committing themselves to the "briny cheap," as
+the man called the ship's fare. The woman came aboard, and the man was
+preparing to follow, when the captain leaned over the side and saw him.
+
+"Well," said the captain, "what do _you_ want?"
+
+"What do _I_ want?" said the man, laying hold of the ladder. "I'm
+a-going to embark in this here ship--that's what I want."
+
+"Not with all that fat on you," roared the captain. "You don't weigh an
+ounce less than eighteen stone, and I've got to have in my anchor yet.
+You wouldn't have me leave the anchor, I suppose?"
+
+The man said he did not care about the anchor--he was just as God had
+made him (he looked as if his cook had had something to do with it) and,
+sink or swim, he purposed embarking in that ship. A good deal of
+wrangling ensued, but one of the sailors finally threw the man a cork
+life-preserver, and the captain said that would lighten him and he might
+come abroad.
+
+This was Captain Abersouth, formerly of the _Mudlark_--as good a seaman
+as ever sat on the taffrail reading a three volume novel. Nothing could
+equal this man's passion for literature. For every voyage he laid in so
+many bales of novels that there was no stowage for the cargo. There were
+novels in the hold, and novels between-decks, and novels in the saloon,
+and in the passengers' beds.
+
+The _Camel_ had been designed and built by her owner, an architect in
+the City, and she looked about as much like a ship as Noah's Ark did.
+She had bay windows and a veranda; a cornice and doors at the
+water-line. These doors had knockers and servant's bells. There had been
+a futile attempt at an area. The passenger saloon was on the upper deck,
+and had a tile roof. To this humplike structure the ship owed her name.
+Her designer had erected several churches--that of St. Ignotus is still
+used as a brewery in Hotbath Meadows--and, possessed of the ecclesiastic
+idea, had given the _Camel_ a transept; but, finding this impeded her
+passage through the water, he had it removed. This weakened the vessel
+amidships. The mainmast was something like a steeple. It had a
+weathercock. From this spire the eye commanded one of the finest views
+in England.
+
+Such was the _Camel_ when I joined her in 1864 for a voyage of discovery
+to the South Pole. The expedition was under the "auspices" of the Royal
+Society for the Promotion of Fair Play. At a meeting of this excellent
+association, it had been "resolved" that the partiality of science for
+the North Pole was an invidious distinction between two objects equally
+meritorious; that Nature had marked her disapproval of it in the case of
+Sir John Franklin and many of his imitators; that it served them very
+well right; that this enterprise should be undertaken as a protest
+against the spirit of undue bias; and, finally, that no part of the
+responsibility or expense should devolve upon the society in its
+corporate character, but any individual member might contribute to the
+fund if he were fool enough. It is only common justice to say that none
+of them was. The _Camel_ merely parted her cable one day while I
+happened to be on board--drifted out of the harbor southward, followed
+by the execrations of all who knew her, and could not get back. In two
+months she had crossed the equator, and the heat began to grow
+insupportable.
+
+Suddenly we were becalmed. There had been a fine breeze up to three
+o'clock in the afternoon and the ship had made as much as two knots an
+hour when without a word of warning the sails began to belly the wrong
+way, owing to the impetus that the ship had acquired; and then, as this
+expired, they hung as limp and lifeless as the skirts of a clawhammer
+coat. The _Camel_ not only stood stock still but moved a little backward
+toward England. Old Ben the boatswain said that he'd never knowed but
+one deader calm, and that, he explained, was when Preacher Jack, the
+reformed sailor, had got excited in a sermon in a seaman's chapel and
+shouted that the Archangel Michael would chuck the Dragon into the brig
+and give him a taste of the rope's-end, damn his eyes!
+
+We lay in this woful state for the better part of a year, when, growing
+impatient, the crew deputed me to look up the captain and see if
+something could not be done about it. I found him in a remote cobwebby
+corner between-decks, with a book in his hand. On one side of him, the
+cords newly cut, were three bales of "Ouida"; on the other a mountain of
+Miss M.E. Braddon towered above his head. He had finished "Ouida" and
+was tackling Miss Braddon. He was greatly changed.
+
+"Captain Abersouth," said I, rising on tiptoe so as to overlook the
+lower slopes of Mrs. Braddon, "will you be good enough to tell me how
+long this thing is going on?"
+
+"Can't say, I'm sure," he replied without pulling his eyes off the page.
+"They'll probably make up about the middle of the book. In the meantime
+old Pondronummus will foul his top-hamper and take out his papers for
+Looney Haven, and young Monshure de Boojower will come in for a million.
+Then if the proud and fair Angelica doesn't luff and come into his wake
+after pizening that sea lawyer, Thundermuzzle, I don't know nothing
+about the deeps and shallers of the human heart."
+
+I could not take so hopeful a view of the situation, and went on deck,
+feeling very much discouraged. I had no sooner got my head out than I
+observed that the ship was moving at a high rate of speed!
+
+We had on board a bullock and a Dutchman. The bullock was chained by the
+neck to the foremast, but the Dutchman was allowed a good deal of
+liberty, being shut up at night only. There was bad blood between the
+two--a feud of long standing, having its origin in the Dutchman's
+appetite for milk and the bullock's sense of personal dignity; the
+particular cause of offense it would be tedious to relate. Taking
+advantage of his enemy's afternoon _siesta_, the Dutchman had now
+managed to sneak by him, and had gone out on the bowsprit to fish. When
+the animal waked and saw the other creature enjoying himself he
+straddled his chain, leveled his horns, got his hind feet against the
+mast and laid a course for the offender. The chain was strong, the mast
+firm, and the ship, as Byron says, "walked the water like a thing of
+course."
+
+After that we kept the Dutchman right where he was, night and day, the
+old _Camel_ making better speed than she had ever done in the most
+favorable gale. We held due south.
+
+We had now been a long time without sufficient food, particularly meat.
+We could spare neither the bullock nor the Dutchman; and the ship's
+carpenter, that traditional first aid to the famished, was a mere bag of
+bones. The fish would neither bite nor be bitten. Most of the
+running-tackle of the ship had been used for macaroni soup; all the
+leather work, our shoes included, had been devoured in omelettes; with
+oakum and tar we had made fairly supportable salad. After a brief
+experimental career as tripe the sails had departed this life forever.
+Only two courses remained from which to choose; we could eat one
+another, as is the etiquette of the sea, or partake of Captain
+Abersouth's novels. Dreadful alternative!--but a choice. And it is
+seldom, I think, that starving sailormen are offered a shipload of the
+best popular authors ready-roasted by the critics.
+
+We ate that fiction. The works that the captain had thrown aside lasted
+six months, for most of them were by the best-selling authors and were
+pretty tough. After they were gone--of course some had to be given to
+the bullock and the Dutchman--we stood by the captain, taking the other
+books from his hands as he finished them. Sometimes, when we were
+apparently at our last gasp, he would skip a whole page of moralizing,
+or a bit of description; and always, as soon as he clearly foresaw the
+_dénoűement_--which he generally did at about the middle of the second
+volume--the work was handed over to us without a word of repining.
+
+The effect of this diet was not unpleasant but remarkable. Physically,
+it sustained us; mentally, it exalted us; morally, it made us but a
+trifle worse than we were. We talked as no human beings ever talked
+before. Our wit was polished but without point. As in a stage broadsword
+combat, every cut has its parry, so in our conversation every remark
+suggested the reply, and this necessitated a certain rejoinder. The
+sequence once interrupted, the whole was bosh; when the thread was
+broken the beads were seen to be waxen and hollow.
+
+We made love to one another, and plotted darkly in the deepest obscurity
+of the hold. Each set of conspirators had its proper listener at the
+hatch. These, leaning too far over would bump their heads together and
+fight. Occasionally there was confusion amongst them: two or more would
+assert a right to overhear the same plot. I remember at one time the
+cook, the carpenter, the second assistant-surgeon, and an able seaman
+contended with handspikes for the honor of betraying my confidence. Once
+there were three masked murderers of the second watch bending at the
+same instant over the sleeping form of a cabin-boy, who had been heard
+to mutter, a week previously, that he had "Gold! gold!" the accumulation
+of eighty--yes, eighty--years' piracy on the high seas, while sitting as
+M.P. for the borough of Zaccheus-cum-Down, and attending church
+regularly. I saw the captain of the foretop surrounded by suitors for
+his hand, while he was himself fingering the edge of a packing-case, and
+singing an amorous ditty to a lady-love shaving at a mirror.
+
+Our diction consisted, in about equal parts, of classical allusion,
+quotation from the stable, simper from the scullery, cant from the
+clubs, and the technical slang of heraldry. We boasted much of ancestry,
+and admired the whiteness of our hands whenever the skin was visible
+through a fault in the grease and tar. Next to love, the vegetable
+kingdom, murder, arson, adultery and ritual, we talked most of art. The
+wooden figure-head of the _Camel_, representing a Guinea nigger
+detecting a bad smell, and the monochrome picture of two back-broken
+dolphins on the stern, acquired a new importance. The Dutchman had
+destroyed the nose of the one by kicking his toes against it, and the
+other was nearly obliterated by the slops of the cook; but each had its
+daily pilgrimage, and each constantly developed occult beauties of
+design and subtle excellences of execution. On the whole we were greatly
+altered; and if the supply of contemporary fiction had been equal to the
+demand, the _Camel_, I fear, would not have been strong enough to
+contain the moral and ćsthetic forces fired by the maceration of the
+brains of authors in the gastric juices of sailors.
+
+Having now got the ship's literature off his mind into ours, the captain
+went on deck for the first time since leaving port. We were still
+steering the same course, and, taking his first observation of the sun,
+the captain discovered that we were in latitude 83° south. The heat was
+insufferable; the air was like the breath of a furnace within a furnace.
+The sea steamed like a boiling cauldron, and in the vapor our bodies
+were temptingly parboiled--our ultimate meal was preparing. Warped by
+the sun, the ship held both ends high out of the water; the deck of the
+forecastle was an inclined plane, on which the bullock labored at a
+disadvantage; but the bowsprit was now vertical and the Dutchman's
+tenure precarious. A thermometer hung against the mainmast, and we
+grouped ourselves about it as the captain went up to examine the
+register.
+
+"One hundred and ninety degrees Fahrenheit!" he muttered in evident
+astonishment. "Impossible!" Turning sharply about, he ran his eyes over
+us, and inquired in a peremptory tone, "who's been in command while I
+was runnin' my eye over that book?"
+
+"Well, captain," I replied, as respectfully as I knew how, "the fourth
+day out I had the unhappiness to be drawn into a dispute about a game of
+cards with your first and second officers. In the absence of those
+excellent seamen, sir, I thought it my duty to assume control of the
+ship."
+
+"Killed 'em, hey?"
+
+"Sir, they committed suicide by questioning the efficacy of four kings
+and an ace."
+
+"Well, you lubber, what have you to say in defense of this extraordinary
+weather?"
+
+"Sir, it is no fault of mine. We are far--very far south, and it is now
+the middle of July. The weather is uncomfortable, I admit; but
+considering the latitude and season, it is not, I protest,
+unseasonable."
+
+"Latitude and season!" he shrieked, livid with rage--"latitude and
+season! Why, you junk-rigged, flat-bottomed, meadow lugger, don't you
+know any better than that? Didn't yer little baby brother ever tell ye
+that southern latitudes is colder than northern, and that July is the
+middle o' winter here? Go below, you son of a scullion, or I'll break
+your bones!"
+
+"Oh! very well," I replied; "I'm not going to stay on deck and listen to
+such low language as that, I warn you. Have it your own way."
+
+The words had no sooner left my lips, than a piercing cold wind caused
+me to cast my eye upon the thermometer. In the new régime of science the
+mercury was descending rapidly; but in a moment the instrument was
+obscured by a blinding fall of snow. Towering icebergs rose from the
+water on every side, hanging their jagged masses hundreds of feet above
+the masthead, and shutting us completely in. The ship twisted and
+writhed; her decks bulged upward, and every timber groaned and cracked
+like the report of a pistol. The _Camel_ was frozen fast. The jerk of
+her sudden stopping snapped the bullock's chain, and sent both that
+animal and the Dutchman over the bows, to accomplish their warfare on
+the ice.
+
+Elbowing my way forward to go below, as I had threatened, I saw the crew
+tumble to the deck on either hand like ten-pins. They were frozen stiff.
+Passing the captain, I asked him sneeringly how he liked the weather
+under the new régime. He replied with a vacant stare. The chill had
+penetrated to the brain, and affected his mind. He murmured:
+
+"In this delightful spot, happy in the world's esteem, and surrounded by
+all that makes existence dear, they passed the remainder of their lives.
+The End."
+
+His jaw dropped. The captain of the _Camel_ was dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OVERBOARD
+
+
+I
+
+The good ship _Nupple-duck_ was drifting rapidly upon a sunken coral
+reef, which seemed to extend a reasonless number of leagues to the right
+and left without a break, and I was reading Macaulay's "Naseby Fight" to
+the man at the wheel. Everything was, in fact, going on as nicely as
+heart could wish, when Captain Abersouth, standing on the
+companion-stair, poked his head above deck and asked where we were.
+Pausing in my reading, I informed him that we had got as far as the
+disastrous repulse of Prince Rupert's cavalry, adding that if he would
+have the goodness to hold his jaw we should be making it awkward for the
+wounded in about three minutes, and he might bear a hand at the pockets
+of the slain. Just then the ship struck heavily, and went down!
+
+Calling another ship, I stepped aboard, and gave directions to be taken
+to No. 900 Tottenham Court Road, where I had an aunt; then, walking aft
+to the man at the wheel, asked him if he would like to hear me read
+"Naseby Fight." He thought he would: he would like to hear that, and
+then I might pass on to something else--Kinglake's "Crimean War," the
+proceedings at the trial of Warren Hastings, or some such trifle, just
+to wile away the time till eight bells.
+
+All this time heavy clouds had been gathering along the horizon directly
+in front of the ship, and a deputation of passengers now came to the man
+at the wheel to demand that she be put about, or she would run into
+them, which the spokesman explained would be unusual. I thought at the
+time that it certainly was not the regular thing to do, but, as I was
+myself only a passenger, did not deem it expedient to take a part in the
+heated discussion that ensued; and, after all, it did not seem likely
+that the weather in those clouds would be much worse than that in
+Tottenham Court Road, where I had an aunt.
+
+It was finally decided to refer the matter to arbitration, and after
+many names had been submitted and rejected by both sides, it was agreed
+that the captain of the ship should act as arbitrator if his consent
+could be obtained, and I was delegated to conduct the negotiations to
+that end. With considerable difficulty, I persuaded him to accept the
+responsibility.
+
+He was a feeble-minded sort of fellow named Troutbeck, who was always in
+a funk lest he should make enemies; never reflecting that most men would
+a little rather be his enemies than not. He had once been the ship's
+cook, but had cooked so poisonously ill that he had been forcibly
+transferred from galley to quarter-deck by the dyspeptic survivors of
+his culinary career.
+
+The little captain went aft with me to listen to arguments of the
+dissatisfied passengers and the obstinate steersman, as to whether we
+should take our chances in the clouds, or tail off and run for the
+opposite horizon; but on approaching the wheel, we found both helmsman
+and passengers in a condition of profound astonishment, rolling their
+eyes about towards every point of the compass, and shaking their heads
+in hopeless perplexity. It was rather remarkable, certainly: the bank of
+cloud which had worried the landsmen was now directly astern, and the
+ship was cutting along lively in her own wake, toward the point from
+which she had come, and straight away from Tottenham Court Road!
+Everybody declared it was a miracle; the chaplain was piped up for
+prayers, and the man at the wheel was as truly penitent as if he had
+been detected robbing an empty poor-box.
+
+The explanation was simple enough, and dawned upon me the moment I saw
+how matters stood. During the dispute between the helmsman and the
+deputation, the former had renounced his wheel to gesticulate, and I,
+thinking no harm, had amused myself, during a rather tedious debate, by
+revolving the thing this way and that, and had unconsciously put the
+ship about. By a coincidence not unusual in low latitudes, the wind had
+effected a corresponding transposition at the same time, and was now
+bowling us as merrily back toward the place where I had embarked, as it
+had previously wafted us in the direction of Tottenham Court Road, where
+I had an aunt. I must here so far anticipate, as to explain that some
+years later these various incidents--particularly the reading of "Naseby
+Fight"--led to the adoption, in our mercantile marine, of a rule which I
+believe is still extant, to the effect that one must not speak to the
+man at the wheel unless the man at the wheel speaks first.
+
+
+II
+
+It is only by inadvertence that I have omitted the information that the
+vessel in which I was now a pervading influence was the _Bonnyclabber_
+(Troutbeck, master), of Malvern Heights.
+
+The _Bonnyclabber's_ reactionary course had now brought her to the spot
+at which I had taken passage. Passengers and crew, fatigued by their
+somewhat awkward attempts to manifest their gratitude for our miraculous
+deliverance from the cloud-bank, were snoring peacefully in unconsidered
+attitudes about the deck, when the lookout man, perched on the supreme
+extremity of the mainmast, consuming a cold sausage, began an apparently
+preconcerted series of extraordinary and unimaginable noises. He
+coughed, sneezed, and barked simultaneously--bleated in one breath, and
+cackled in the next--sputteringly shrieked, and chatteringly squealed,
+with a bass of suffocated roars. There were desolutory vocal explosions,
+tapering off in long wails, half smothered in unintelligible small-talk.
+He whistled, wheezed, and trumpeted; began to sharp, thought better of
+it and flatted; neighed like a horse, and then thundered like a drum!
+Through it all he continued making incomprehensible signals with one
+hand while clutching his throat with the other. Presently he gave it up,
+and silently descended to the deck.
+
+By this time we were all attention; and no sooner had he set foot
+amongst us, than he was assailed with a tempest of questions which, had
+they been visible, would have resembled a flight of pigeons. He made no
+reply--not even by a look, but passed through our enclosing mass with a
+grim, defiant step, a face deathly white, and a set of the jaw as of one
+repressing an ambitious dinner, or ignoring a venomous toothache. For
+the poor man was choking!
+
+Passing down the companion-way, the patient sought the surgeon's cabin,
+with the ship's company at his heels. The surgeon was fast asleep, the
+lark-like performance at the masthead having been inaudible in that
+lower region. While some of us were holding a whisky-bottle to the
+medical nose, in order to apprise the medical intelligence of the demand
+upon it, the patient seated himself in statuesque silence. By this time
+his pallor, which was but the mark of a determined mind, had given place
+to a fervent crimson, which visibly deepened into a pronounced purple,
+and was ultimately superseded by a clouded blue, shot through with
+opalescent gleams, and smitten with variable streaks of black. The face
+was swollen and shapeless, the neck puffy. The eyes protruded like pegs
+of a hat-stand.
+
+Pretty soon the doctor was got awake, and after making a careful
+examination of his patient, remarking that it was a lovely case of
+_stopupagus oesophagi_, took a tool and set to work, producing with no
+difficulty a cold sausage of the size, figure, and general bearing of a
+somewhat self-important banana. The operation had been performed amid
+breathless silence, but the moment it was concluded the patient, whose
+neck and head had visibly collapsed, sprang to his feet and shouted:
+
+"Man overboard!"
+
+That is what he had been trying to say.
+
+There was a confused rush to the upper deck, and everybody flung
+something over the ship's side--a life-belt, a chicken-coop, a coil of
+rope, a spar, an old sail, a pocket handkerchief, an iron crowbar--any
+movable article which it was thought might be useful to a drowning man
+who had followed the vessel during the hour that had elapsed since the
+initial alarm at the mast-head. In a few moments the ship was pretty
+nearly dismantled of everything that could be easily renounced, and some
+excitable passenger having cut away the boats there was nothing more
+that we could do, though the chaplain explained that if the ill-fated
+gentleman in the wet did not turn up after a while it was his intention
+to stand at the stern and read the burial service of the Church of
+England.
+
+Presently it occurred to some ingenious person to inquire who had gone
+overboard, and all hands being mustered and the roll called, to our
+great chagrin every man answered to his name, passengers and all!
+Captain Troutbeck, however, held that in a matter of so great importance
+a simple roll-call was insufficient, and with an assertion of authority
+that was encouraging insisted that every person on board be separately
+sworn. The result was the same; nobody was missing and the captain,
+begging pardon for having doubted our veracity, retired to his cabin to
+avoid further responsibility, but expressed a hope that for the purpose
+of having everything properly recorded in the log-book we would apprise
+him of any further action that we might think it advisable to take. I
+smiled as I remembered that in the interest of the unknown gentleman
+whose peril we had overestimated I had flung the log-book over the
+ship's side.
+
+Soon afterward I felt suddenly inspired with one of those great ideas
+that come to most men only once or twice in a lifetime, and to the
+ordinary story teller never. Hastily reconvening the ship's company I
+mounted the capstan and thus addressed them:
+
+"Shipmates, there has been a mistake. In the fervor of an ill-considered
+compassion we have made pretty free with certain movable property of an
+eminent firm of shipowners of Malvern Heights. For this we shall
+undoubtedly be called to account if we are ever so fortunate as to drop
+anchor in Tottenham Court Road, where I have an aunt. It would add
+strength to our defence if we could show to the satisfaction of a jury
+of our peers that in heeding the sacred promptings of humanity we had
+acted with some small degree of common sense. If, for example, we could
+make it appear that there really was a man overboard, who might have
+been comforted and sustained by the material consolation that we so
+lavishly dispensed in the form of buoyant articles belonging to others,
+the British heart would find in that fact a mitigating circumstance
+pleading eloquently in our favor. Gentlemen and ship's officers, I
+venture to propose that we do now throw a man overboard."
+
+The effect was electrical: the motion was carried by acclamation and
+there was a unanimous rush for the now wretched mariner whose false
+alarm at the masthead was the cause of our embarrassment, but on second
+thoughts it was decided to substitute Captain Troutbeck, as less
+generally useful and more undeviatingly in error. The sailor had made
+one mistake of considerable magnitude, but the captain's entire
+existence was a mistake altogether. He was fetched up from his cabin and
+chucked over.
+
+At 900 Tottenham Road Court lived an aunt of mine--a good old lady who
+had brought me up by hand and taught me many wholesome lessons in
+morality, which in my later life have proved of extreme value. Foremost
+among these I may mention her solemn and oft-repeated injunction never
+to tell a lie without a definite and specific reason for doing so. Many
+years' experience in the violation of this principle enables me to speak
+with authority as to its general soundness. I have, therefore, much
+pleasure in making a slight correction in the preceding chapter of this
+tolerably true history. It was there affirmed that I threw the
+_Bonnyclabber's_ log-book into the sea. The statement is entirely false,
+and I can discover no reason for having made it that will for a moment
+weigh against those I now have for the preservation of that log-book.
+
+The progress of the story has developed new necessities, and I now find
+it convenient to quote from that book passages which it could not have
+contained if cast into the sea at the time stated; for if thrown upon
+the resources of my imagination I might find the temptation to
+exaggerate too strong to be resisted.
+
+It is needless to worry the reader with those entries in the book
+referring to events already related. Our record will begin on the day of
+the captain's consignment to the deep, after which era I made the
+entries myself.
+
+"June 22nd.--Not much doing in the way of gales, but heavy swells left
+over from some previous blow. Latitude and longitude not notably
+different from last observation. Ship laboring a trifle, owing to lack
+of top-hamper, everything of that kind having been cut away in
+consequence of Captain Troutbeck having accidently fallen overboard
+while fishing from the bowsprit. Also threw over cargo and everything
+that we could spare. Miss our sails rather, but if they save our dear
+captain, we shall be content. Weather flagrant.
+
+"23d.--Nothing from Captain Troutbeck. Dead calm--also dead whale. The
+passengers having become preposterous in various ways, Mr. Martin, the
+chief officer, had three of the ringleaders tied up and rope's-ended. He
+thought it advisable also to flog an equal number of the crew, by way of
+being impartial. Weather ludicrous.
+
+"24th.--Captain still prefers to stop away, and does not telegraph. The
+'captain of the foretop'--there isn't any foretop now--was put in irons
+to-day by Mr. Martin for eating cold sausage while on look-out. Mr.
+Martin has flogged the steward, who had neglected to holy-stone the
+binnacle and paint the dead-lights. The steward is a good fellow all the
+same. Weather iniquitous.
+
+"25th.--Can't think whatever has become of Captain Troutbeck. He must be
+getting hungry by this time; for although he has his fishing-tackle with
+him, he has no bait. Mr. Martin inspected the entries in this book
+to-day. He is a most excellent and humane officer. Weather inexcusable.
+
+"26th.--All hope of hearing from the Captain has been abandoned. We have
+sacrificed everything to save him; but now, if we could procure the loan
+of a mast and some sails, we should proceed on our voyage. Mr. Martin
+has knocked the coxswain overboard for sneezing. He is an experienced
+seaman, a capable officer, and a Christian gentleman--damn his eyes!
+Weather tormenting.
+
+"27th.--Another inspection of this book by Mr. Martin. Farewell, vain
+world! Break it gently to my aunt in Tottenham Court Road."
+
+In the concluding sentences of this record, as it now lies before me,
+the handwriting is not very legible: they were penned under
+circumstances singularly unfavorable. Mr. Martin stood behind me with
+his eyes fixed on the page; and in order to secure a better view, had
+twisted the machinery of the engine he called his hand into the hair of
+my head, depressing that globe to such an extent that my nose was
+flattened against the surface of the table, and I had no small
+difficulty in discerning the lines through my eyebrows. I was not
+accustomed to writing in that position: it had not been taught in the
+only school that I ever attended. I therefore felt justified in bringing
+the record to a somewhat abrupt close, and immediately went on deck with
+Mr. Martin, he preceding me up the companion-stairs on foot, I
+following, not on horseback, but on my own, the connection between us
+being maintained without important alteration.
+
+Arriving on deck, I thought it advisable, in the interest of peace and
+quietness, to pursue him in the same manner to the side of the ship,
+where I parted from him forever with many expressions of regret, which
+might have been heard at a considerable distance.
+
+Of the subsequent fate of the _Bonnyclabber_, I can only say that the
+log-book from which I have quoted was found some years later in the
+stomach of a whale, along with some shreds of clothing, a few buttons
+and several decayed life-belts. It contained only one new entry, in a
+straggling handwriting, as if it had been penned in the dark:
+
+"july2th foundered svivors rescude by wale wether stuffy no nues from
+capting trowtbeck Sammle martin cheef Ofcer."
+
+Let us now take a retrospective glance at the situation. The ship
+_Nupple-duck_, (Abersouth, master) had, it will be remembered, gone down
+with all on board except me. I had escaped on the ship _Bonnyclabber_
+(Troutbeck) which I had quitted owing to a misunderstanding with the
+chief officer, and was now unattached. That is how matters stood when,
+rising on an unusually high wave, and casting my eye in the direction of
+Tottenham Court Road--that is, backward along the course pursued by the
+_Bonnyclabber_ and toward the spot at which the _Nupple-duck_ had been
+swallowed up--I saw a quantity of what appeared to be wreckage. It
+turned out to be some of the stuff that we had thrown overboard under a
+misapprehension. The several articles had been compiled and, so to
+speak, carefully edited. They were, in fact, lashed together, forming a
+raft. On a stool in the center of it--not, apparently navigating it, but
+rather with the subdued and dignified bearing of a passenger, sat
+Captain Abersouth, of the _Nupple-duck_, reading a novel.
+
+Our meeting was not cordial. He remembered me as a man of literary taste
+superior to his own and harbored resentment, and although he made no
+opposition to my taking passage with him I could see that his
+acquiescence was due rather to his muscular inferiority than to the
+circumstance that I was damp and taking cold. Merely acknowledging his
+presence with a nod as I climbed abroad, I seated myself and inquired if
+he would care to hear the concluding stanzas of "Naseby Fight."
+
+"No," he replied, looking up from his novel, "no, Claude Reginald Gump,
+writer of sea stories, I've done with you. When you sank the
+_Nupple-duck_ some days ago you probably thought that you had made an
+end of me. That was clever of you, but I came to the surface and
+followed the other ship--the one on which you escaped. It was I that the
+sailor saw from the masthead. I saw him see me. It was for me that all
+that stuff was hove overboard. Good--I made it into this raft. It was, I
+think, the next day that I passed the floating body of a man whom I
+recognized as, my old friend Billy Troutbeck--he used to be a cook on a
+man-o'-war. It gives me pleasure to be the means of saving your life,
+but I eschew you. The moment that we reach port our paths part. You
+remember that in the very first sentence of this story you began to
+drive my ship, the _Nupple-duck_, on to a reef of coral."
+
+I was compelled to confess that this was true, and he continued his
+inhospitable reproaches:
+
+"Before you had written half a column you sent her to the bottom, with
+me and the crew. But _you_--you escaped."
+
+"That is true," I replied; "I cannot deny that the facts are correctly
+stated."
+
+"And in a story before that, you took me and my mates of the ship
+_Camel_ into the heart of the South Polar Sea and left us frozen dead in
+the ice, like flies in amber. But you did not leave yourself there--you
+escaped."
+
+"Really, Captain," I said, "your memory is singularly accurate,
+considering the many hardships that you have had to undergo; many a man
+would have gone mad."
+
+"And a long time before that," Captain Abersouth resumed, after a pause,
+more, apparently, to con his memory than to enjoy my good opinion of it,
+"you lost me at sea--look here; I didn't read anything but George Eliot
+at that time, but I'm _told_ that you lost me at sea in the _Mudlark_.
+Have I been misinformed?"
+
+I could not say he had been misinformed.
+
+"You yourself escaped on that occasion, I think."
+
+It was true. Being usually the hero of my own stories, I commonly do
+manage to live through one, in order to figure to advantage in the next.
+It is from artistic necessity: no reader would take much interest in a
+hero who was dead before the beginning of the tale. I endeavored to
+explain this to Captain Abersouth. He shook his head.
+
+"No," said he, "it's cowardly, that's the way I look at it."
+
+Suddenly an effulgent idea began to dawn upon me, and I let it have its
+way until my mind was perfectly luminous. Then I rose from my seat, and
+frowning down into the upturned face of my accuser, spoke in severe and
+rasping accents thus:
+
+"Captain Abersouth, in the various perils you and I have encountered
+together in the classical literature of the period, if I have always
+escaped and you have always perished; if I lost you at sea in the
+_Mudlark_, froze you into the ice at the South Pole in the _Camel_ and
+drowned you in the _Nupple-duck_, pray be good enough to tell me whom I
+have the honor to address."
+
+It was a blow to the poor man: no one was ever so disconcerted. Flinging
+aside his novel, he put up his hands and began to scratch his head and
+think. It was beautiful to see him think, but it seemed to distress him
+and pointing significantly over the side of the raft I suggested as
+delicately as possible that it was time to act. He rose to his feet and
+fixing upon me a look of reproach which I shall remember as long as I
+can, cast himself into the deep. As to me--I escaped.
+
+
+
+
+A CARGO OF CAT
+
+
+On the 16th day of June, 1874, the ship _Mary Jane_ sailed from Malta,
+heavily laden with cat. This cargo gave us a good deal of trouble. It
+was not in bales, but had been dumped into the hold loose. Captain
+Doble, who had once commanded a ship that carried coals, said he had
+found that plan the best. When the hold was full of cat the hatch was
+battened down and we felt good. Unfortunately the mate, thinking the
+cats would be thirsty, introduced a hose into one of the hatches and
+pumped in a considerable quantity of water, and the cats of the lower
+levels were all drowned.
+
+You have seen a dead cat in a pond: you remember its circumference at
+the waist. Water multiplies the magnitude of a dead cat by ten. On the
+first day out, it was observed that the ship was much strained. She was
+three feet wider than usual and as much as ten feet shorter. The
+convexity of her deck was visibly augmented fore and aft, but she turned
+up at both ends. Her rudder was clean out of water and she would answer
+the helm only when running directly against a strong breeze: the rudder,
+when perverted to one side, would rub against the wind and slew her
+around; and then she wouldn't steer any more. Owing to the curvature of
+the keel, the masts came together at the top, and a sailor who had gone
+up the foremast got bewildered, came down the mizzenmast, looked out
+over the stern at the receding shores of Malta and shouted: "Land, ho!"
+The ship's fastenings were all giving way; the water on each side was
+lashed into foam by the tempest of flying bolts that she shed at every
+pulsation of the cargo. She was quietly wrecking herself without
+assistance from wind or wave, by the sheer internal energy of feline
+expansion.
+
+I went to the skipper about it. He was in his favorite position, sitting
+on the deck, supporting his back against the binnacle, making a V of his
+legs, and smoking.
+
+"Captain Doble," I said, respectfully touching my hat, which was really
+not worthy of respect, "this floating palace is afflicted with curvature
+of the spine and is likewise greatly swollen."
+
+Without raising his eyes he courteously acknowledged my presence by
+knocking the ashes from his pipe.
+
+"Permit me, Captain," I said, with simple dignity, "to repeat that this
+ship is much swollen."
+
+"If that is true," said the gallant mariner, reaching for his tobacco
+pouch, "I think it would be as well to swab her down with liniment.
+There's a bottle of it in my cabin. Better suggest it to the mate."
+
+"But, Captain, there is no time for empirical treatment; some of the
+planks at the water line have started."
+
+The skipper rose and looked out over the stern, toward the land; he
+fixed his eyes on the foaming wake; he gazed into the water to starboard
+and to port. Then he said:
+
+"My friend, the whole darned thing has started."
+
+Sadly and silently I turned from that obdurate man and walked forward.
+Suddenly "there was a burst of thunder sound!" The hatch that had held
+down the cargo was flung whirling into space and sailed in the air like
+a blown leaf. Pushing upward through the hatchway was a smooth, square
+column of cat. Grandly and impressively it grew--slowly, serenely,
+majestically it rose toward the welkin, the relaxing keel parting the
+mastheads to give it a fair chance. I have stood at Naples and seen
+Vesuvius painting the town red--from Catania have marked afar, upon the
+flanks of Ćtna, the lava's awful pursuit of the astonished rooster and
+the despairing pig. The fiery flow from Kilauea's crater, thrusting
+itself into the forests and licking the entire country clean, is as
+familiar to me as my mother-tongue. I have seen glaciers, a thousand
+years old and quite bald, heading for a valley full of tourists at the
+rate of an inch a month. I have seen a saturated solution of mining camp
+going down a mountain river, to make a sociable call on the valley
+farmers. I have stood behind a tree on the battle-field and seen a
+compact square mile of armed men moving with irresistible momentum to
+the rear. Whenever anything grand in magnitude or motion is billed to
+appear I commonly manage to beat my way into the show, and in reporting
+it I am a man of unscrupulous veracity; but I have seldom observed
+anything like that solid gray column of Maltese cat!
+
+It is unnecessary to explain, I suppose, that each individual grimalkin
+in the outfit, with that readiness of resource which distinguishes the
+species, had grappled with tooth and nail as many others as it could
+hook on to. This preserved the formation. It made the column so stiff
+that when the ship rolled (and the _Mary Jane_ was a devil to roll) it
+swayed from side to side like a mast, and the Mate said if it grew much
+taller he would have to order it cut away or it would capsize us.
+
+Some of the sailors went to work at the pumps, but these discharged
+nothing but fur. Captain Doble raised his eyes from his toes and
+shouted: "Let go the anchor!" but being assured that nobody was touching
+it, apologized and resumed his revery. The chaplain said if there were
+no objections he would like to offer up a prayer, and a gambler from
+Chicago, producing a pack of cards, proposed to throw round for the
+first jack. The parson's plan was adopted, and as he uttered the final
+"amen," the cats struck up a hymn.
+
+All the living ones were now above deck, and every mother's son of them
+sang. Each had a pretty fair voice, but no ear. Nearly all their notes
+in the upper register were more or less cracked and disobedient. The
+remarkable thing about the voices was their range. In that crowd were
+cats of seventeen octaves, and the average could not have been less than
+twelve.
+
+  Number of cats, as per invoice..... 127,000
+  Estimated number dead swellers.....   6,000
+                                      -------
+      Total songsters................ 121,000
+  Average number octaves per cat.....      12
+                                      -------
+      Total octaves................ 1,452,000
+
+It was a great concert. It lasted three days and nights, or, counting
+each night as seven days, twenty-four days altogether, and we could not
+go below for provisions. At the end of that time the cook came for'd
+shaking up some beans in a hat, and holding a large knife.
+
+"Shipmates," said he, "we have done all that mortals can do. Let us now
+draw lots."
+
+We were blindfolded in turn, and drew, but just as the cook was forcing
+the fatal black bean upon the fattest man, the concert closed with a
+suddenness that waked the man on the lookout. A moment later every
+grimalkin relaxed his hold on his neighbors, the column lost its
+cohesion and, with 121,000 dull, sickening thuds that beat as one, the
+whole business fell to the deck. Then with a wild farewell wail that
+feline host sprang spitting into the sea and struck out southward for
+the African shore!
+
+The southern extension of Italy, as every schoolboy knows, resembles in
+shape an enormous boot. We had drifted within sight of it. The cats in
+the fabric had spied it, and their alert imaginations were instantly
+affected with a lively sense of the size, weight and probable momentum
+of its flung bootjack.
+
+
+
+
+"ON WITH THE DANCE!" A REVIEW
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE PRUDE IN LETTERS AND LIFE
+
+
+It is deserving of remark and censure that American literature is become
+shockingly moral. There is not a doubt of it; our writers, if accused,
+would make explicit confession that morality is their only
+fault--morality in the strict and specific sense. Far be it from me to
+disparage and belittle this decent tendency to ignore the largest side
+of human nature, and liveliest element of literary interest. It has an
+eminence of its own; if it is not great art, it is at least great
+folly--a superior sort of folly to which none of the masters of letters
+has ever attained. Not Shakspeare, nor Cervantes, nor Goethe, nor
+Moličre, nor--no, not even Rabelais--ever achieved that shining pinnacle
+of propriety to which the latter-day American has aspired, by turning
+his back upon nature's broad and fruitful levels and his eyes upon the
+passionate altitudes where, throned upon congenial ice, Miss Nancy sits
+to censure letters, putting the Muses into petticoats and affixing a
+fig-leaf upon Truth. Ours are an age and country of expurgated editions,
+emasculated art, and social customs that look over the top of a fan.
+
+    Lo! prude-eyed Primdimity, mother of Gush,
+    Sex-conscious, invoking the difficult blush;
+    At vices that plague us and sins that beset
+    Sternly directing her private lorgnette,
+    Whose lenses, self-searching instinctive for sin,
+    Make image without of the fancies within.
+    Itself, if examined, would show us, alas!
+    A tiny transparency (French) on each glass.
+
+Now, prudery in letters, if it would but have the goodness not to
+coexist with prudery in life, might be suffered with easy fortitude,
+inasmuch as one needs not read what one does not like; and between the
+license of the dear old bucks above mentioned, and the severities of
+Miss Nancy Howells, and Miss Nancy James, Jr., of t'other school, there
+is latitude for gratification of individual taste. But it occurs that a
+literature rather accurately reflects all the virtues and other vices of
+its period and country, and its tendencies are but the matchings of
+thought with action. Hence, we may reasonably expect to find--and
+indubitably shall find--certain well-marked correspondences between the
+literary faults which it pleases our writers to commit and the social
+crimes which it pleases the Adversary to see their readers commit.
+Within the current lustrum the prudery which had already, for some
+seasons, been achieving a vinegar-visaged and corkscrew-curled certain
+age in letters, has invaded the ball-room, and is infesting it in
+quantity. Supportable, because evitable, in letters, it is here, for the
+contrary reason, insufferable; for one must dance and enjoy one's self
+whether one like it or not. Pleasure, I take it, is a duty not to be
+shirked at the command of disinclination. Youth, following the bent of
+inherited instinct, and loyally conforming himself to the centuries,
+must shake a leg in the dance, and Age, from emulation and habit, and
+for denial of rheumatic incapacity, must occasionally twist his heel
+though he twist it off in the performance. Dance we must, and dance we
+shall; that is settled; the question of magnitude is, Shall we caper
+jocundly with the good grace of an easy conscience, or submit to shuffle
+half-heartedly with a sense of shame, wincing under the slow stroke of
+our own rebuking eye? To this momentous question let us now
+intelligently address our minds, sacredly pledged, as becomes lovers of
+truth, to its determination in the manner most agreeable to our desires;
+and if, in pursuance of this laudable design, we have the unhappiness to
+bother the bunions decorating the all-pervading feet of the good people
+whose deprecations are voiced in _The Dance of Death_ and the clamatory
+literature of which that blessed volume was the honored parent, upon
+their own corns be it; they should not have obtruded these eminences
+
+                   when youth and pleasure meet
+    To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
+
+What, therefore, whence, and likewise why, is dancing? From what flower
+of nature, fertilized by what pollen of circumstance or necessity, is it
+the fruit? Let us go to the root of the matter.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BEATING OF THE BLOOD
+
+
+Nature takes a childish delight in tireless repetition. The days repeat
+themselves, the tides ebb and flow, the tree sways forth and back. This
+world is intent upon recurrences. Not the pendulum of a clock is more
+persistent of iteration than are all existing things; periodicity is the
+ultimate law and largest explanation of the universe--to do it over
+again the one insatiable ambition of all that is. Everything vibrates;
+through vibration alone do the senses discern it. We are not provided
+with means of cognizance of what is absolutely at rest; impressions come
+in waves. Recurrence, recurrence, and again recurrence--that is the sole
+phenomenon. With what fealty we submit us to the law which compels the
+rhythm and regularity to our movement--that makes us divide up passing
+time into brief equal intervals, marking them off by some method of
+physical notation, so that our senses may apprehend them! In all we do
+we unconsciously mark time like a clock, the leader of an orchestra with
+his _bâton_ only more perfectly than the smith with his hammer, or the
+woman with her needle, because his hand is better assisted by his ear,
+less embarrassed with _impedimenta_. The pedestrian impelling his legs
+and the idler twiddling his thumbs are endeavoring, each in his
+unconscious way, to beat time to some inaudible music; and the graceless
+lout, sitting cross-legged in a horse-car, manages the affair with his
+toe.
+
+The more intently we labor, the more intensely do we become absorbed in
+labor's dumb song, until with body and mind engaged in the ecstacy of
+repetition, we resent an interruption of our work as we do a false note
+in music, and are mightily enamored of ourselves afterward for the power
+of application which was simply inability to desist. In this rhythm of
+toil is to be found the charm of industry. Toil has in itself no spell
+to conjure with, but its recurrences of molecular action, cerebral and
+muscular, are as delightful as rhyme.
+
+Such of our pleasures as require movements equally rhythmic with those
+entailed by labor are almost equally agreeable, with the added advantage
+of being useless. Dancing, which is not only rhythmic movement, pure and
+simple, undebased with any element of utility, but is capable of
+performance under conditions positively baneful, is for these reasons
+the most engaging of them all; and if it were but one-half as wicked as
+the prudes have endeavored by method of naughty suggestion to make it
+would lack of absolute bliss nothing but the other half.
+
+This ever active and unabatable something within us which compels us
+always to be marking time we may call, for want of a better name, the
+instinct of rhythm. It is the ćsthetic principle of our nature.
+Translated into words it has given us poetry; into sound, music; into
+motion, dancing. Perhaps even painting may be referred to it, space
+being the correlative of time, and color the correlative of tone. We are
+fond of arranging our minute intervals of time into groups. We find
+certain of these groups highly agreeable, while others are no end
+unpleasant. In the former there is a singular regularity to be observed,
+which led hard-headed old Leibnitz to the theory that our delight in
+music arises from an inherent affection for mathematics. Yet musicians
+have hitherto obtained but indifferent recognition for feats of
+calculation, nor have the singing and playing of renowned mathematicians
+been unanimously commended by good judges.
+
+Music so intensifies and excites the instinct of rhythm that a strong
+volition is required to repress its physical expression. The
+universality of this is well illustrated by the legend, found in some
+shape in many countries and languages, of the boy with the fiddle who
+compels king, cook, peasant, clown, and all that kind of people, to
+follow him through the land; and in the myth of the Pied Piper of
+Hamelin we discern abundant reason to think the instinct of rhythm an
+attribute of rats. Soldiers march so much livelier with music than
+without that it has been found a tolerably good substitute for the hope
+of plunder. When the foot-falls are audible, as on the deck of a
+steamer, walking has an added pleasure, and even the pirate, with gentle
+consideration for the universal instinct, suffers his vanquished foeman
+to walk the plank.
+
+Dancing is simply marking time with the body, as an accompaniment to
+music, though the same--without the music--is done with only the head
+and forefinger in a New England meeting-house at psalm time. (The
+peculiar dance named in honor of St. Vitus is executed with or without
+music, at the option of the musician.) But the body is a clumsy piece of
+machinery, requiring some attention and observation to keep it
+accurately in time to the fiddling. The smallest diversion of the
+thought, the briefest relaxing of the mind, is fatal to the performance.
+'Tis as easy to fix attention on a sonnet of Shakspeare while working at
+whist as gloat upon your partner while waltzing. It can not be
+intelligently, appreciatively, and adequately accomplished--_crede
+expertum_.
+
+On the subject of poetry, Emerson says: "Metre begins with pulse-beat,
+and the length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the
+inhalation and exhalation of the lungs," and this really goes near to
+the root of the matter; albeit we might derive therefrom the unsupported
+inference that a poet "fat and scant of breath" would write in lines of
+a foot each, while the more able-bodied bard, with the capacious lungs
+of a pearl-diver, would deliver himself all across his page, with "the
+spacious volubility of a drumming decasyllabon."
+
+While the heart, working with alternate contraction and dilatation,
+sends the blood intermittently through the brain, and the outer world
+apprises us of its existence only by successive impulses, it must result
+that our sense of things will be rhythmic. The brain being alternately
+stimulated and relaxed we must think--as we feel--in waves, apprehending
+nothing continuously, and incapable of a consciousness that is not
+divisible into units of perception of which we make mental record and
+physical sign. That is why we dance. That is why we can, may, must,
+will, and shall dance, and the gates of Philistia shall not prevail
+against us.
+
+    La valse légčre, la valse légčre,
+    The free, the bright, the debonair,
+    That stirs the strong, and fires the fair
+    With joy like wine of vintage rare--
+    That lends the swiftly circling pair
+    A short surcease of killing care,
+    With music in the dreaming air,
+    With elegance and grace to spare.
+    Vive! vive la valse, la valse légčre!
+
+                            --_George Jessop_.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THERE ARE CORNS IN EGYPT
+
+
+Our civilization--wise child!--knows its father in the superior
+civilization whose colossal vestiges are found along the Nile. To those,
+then, who see in the dance a civilizing art, it can not be wholly
+unprofitable to glance at this polite accomplishment as it existed among
+the ancient Egyptians, and was by them transmitted--with various
+modifications, but preserving its essentials of identity--to other
+nations and other times. And here we have first to note that, as in all
+the nations of antiquity, the dance in Egypt was principally a religious
+ceremony; the pious old boys that builded the pyramids executed their
+jigs as an act of worship. Diodorus Siculus informs us that Osiris, in
+his proselyting travels among the peoples surrounding Egypt--for Osiris
+was what we would call a circuit preacher--was accompanied by dancers
+male and dancers female. From the sculptures on some of the oldest tombs
+of Thebes it is seen that the dances there depicted did not greatly
+differ from those in present favor in the same region; although it seems
+a fair inference from the higher culture and refinement of the elder
+period that they were distinguished by graces correspondingly superior.
+That dances having the character of religious rites were not always free
+from an element that we would term indelicacy, but which their
+performers and witnesses probably considered the commendable exuberance
+of zeal and devotion, is manifest from the following passage of
+Herodotus, in which reference is made to the festival of Bubastis:
+
+  Men and women come sailing all together, vast numbers in each boat,
+  many of the women with castanets, which they strike, while some of
+  the men pipe during the whole period of the voyage; the remainder of
+  the voyagers, male and female, sing the while, and make a clapping
+  with their hands. When they arrive opposite to any town on the banks
+  of the stream they approach the shore, and while some of the women
+  continue to play and sing, others call aloud to the females of the
+  place and load them with abuse, a certain number dancing and others
+  standing up, uncovering themselves. Proceeding in this way all along
+  the river course they reach Bubastis, where they celebrate the feast
+  with abundant sacrifice.
+
+Of the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, in which dancing played an
+important part, the character of the ceremonies is matter of dim
+conjecture; but from the hints that have come down to us like
+significant shrugs and whispers from a discreet past, which could say a
+good deal more if it had a mind to, I hasten to infer that they were no
+better than they should have been.
+
+Naturally the dances for amusement of others were regulated in movement
+and gesture to suit the taste of patrons: for the refined, decency and
+moderation; for the wicked, _a soupçon_ of the other kind of excellence.
+In the latter case the buffoon, an invariable adjunct, committed a
+thousand extravagances, and was a dear, delightful, naughty ancient
+Egyptian buffoon. These dances were performed by both men and women;
+sometimes together, more frequently in separate parties. The men seem to
+have confined themselves mostly to exercises requiring strength of leg
+and arm. The figures on the tombs represent men in lively and vigorous
+postures, some in attitude preliminary to leaping, others in the air.
+This feature of agility would be a novelty in the oriental dances of
+to-day; the indolent male spectator being satisfied with a slow,
+voluptuous movement congenial to his disposition. When, on the contrary,
+the performance of our prehistoric friends was governed and determined
+by ideas of grace, there were not infrequently from six to eight musical
+instruments, the harp, guitar, double-pipe, lyre, and tambourine of the
+period being most popular, and these commonly accompanied by a clapping
+of hands to mark the time.
+
+As with the Greeks, dancers were had in at dinner to make merry; for
+although the upper-class Egyptian was forbidden to practice the art,
+either as an accomplishment or for the satisfaction of his emotional
+nature, it was not considered indecorous to hire professionals to
+perform before him and his female and young. The she dancer usually
+habited herself in a loose, flowing robe, falling to the ankles and
+bound at the waist, while about the hips was fastened a narrow, ornate
+girdle. This costume--in point of opacity imperfectly superior to a
+gentle breeze--is not always discernible in the sculptures; but it is
+charitably believed that the pellucid garment, being merely painted over
+the figures, has been ravished away by the hand of Time--the wretch!
+
+One of the dances was a succession of pleasing attitudes, the hands and
+arms rendering important assistance--the body bending backward and
+forward and swaying laterally, the _figurante_ sometimes half-kneeling,
+and in that position gracefully posturing, and again balanced on one
+foot, the arms and hands waving slowly in time to the music. In another
+dance, the _pirouette_ and other figures dear to the bald-headed beaux
+of the modern play-house, were practiced in the familiar way. Four
+thousand years ago, the senses of the young ancient Egyptian--wild,
+heady lad!--were kicked into confusion by the dark-skinned belle of the
+ballet, while senility, with dimmed eyes, rubbed its dry hands in
+feverish approval at the self-same feat. Dear, dear, but it was a bad
+world four thousand years ago!
+
+Sometimes they danced in pairs, men with men and women with women,
+indifferently, the latter arrangement seeming to us preferable by reason
+of the women's conspicuously superior grace and almost equal agility;
+for it is in evidence on the tombs that tumblers and acrobats were
+commonly of the softer sex. Some of the attitudes were similar to those
+which drew from Socrates the ungallant remark that women were capable of
+learning anything which you will that they should know. The figures in
+this _pas de deux_ appear frequently to have terminated in what
+children, with their customary coarseness of speech, are pleased to call
+"wringing the dish-clout"--clasping the hands, throwing the arms above
+the head and turning rapidly, each as on a pivot, without loosing the
+hands of the other, and resting again in position.
+
+Sometimes, with no other music than the percussion of hands, a man would
+execute a _pas seul_, which it is to be presumed he enjoyed. Again, with
+a riper and better sense of musical methods, the performer accompanied
+himself, or, as in this case it usually was, herself, on the
+double-pipes, the guitar or the tambourine, while the familiar
+hand-clapping was done by attendants. A step not unlike that of the
+abominable clog dance of the "variety" stage and "music hall" of the
+present day consisted in striking the heel of first one foot and then
+the other, the hands and arms being employed to diminish the monotony of
+the movement. For amusement and instruction of the vulgar, buffoons in
+herds of ten or more in fested the streets, hopping and posing to the
+sound of a drum.
+
+As illustrating the versatility of the dance, its wide capacities of
+adaptation to human emotional needs, I may mention here the procession
+of women to the tomb of a friend or relative Punishing the tambourine or
+_dara booka_ drum, and bearing branches of palm or other symbolic
+vegetables, these sprightly mourners passed through the streets with
+songs and dances which, under the circumstances, can hardly have failed
+eminently to gratify the person so fortunate as to have his memory
+honored by so delicate and appropriate observance.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+A REEF IN THE GABARDINE
+
+
+The early Jew danced ritually and socially. Some of his dances and the
+customs connected therewith were of his own devising; others he picked
+up in Egypt, the latter, no doubt, being more firmly fixed in his memory
+by the necessity of practicing them--albeit behind the back of
+Moses--while he had them still fresh in his mind; for he would naturally
+resort to every human and inhuman device to wile away the dragging
+decades consumed in tracing the labyrinthine sinuosities of his course
+in the wilderness. When a man has assurance that he will not be
+permitted to arrive at the point for which he set out, perceiving that
+every step forward is a step wasted, he will pretty certainly use his
+feet to a better purpose than walking. Clearly, at a time when all the
+chosen people were Wandering Jews they would dance all they knew how. We
+know that they danced in worship of the Golden Calf, and that previously
+"Miriam the prophetess, sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and
+all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances." And
+ever so many generations before, Laban complained to Jacob that Jacob
+had stolen away instead of letting him send him off with songs and mirth
+and music on the tabret and harp, a method of speeding the parting guest
+which would naturally include dancing, although the same is not of
+explicit record.
+
+The religious ceremonies of the Jews had not at all times the restraint
+and delicacy which it is to be wished the Lord had exacted, for we read
+of King David himself dancing before the Ark in a condition so nearly
+nude as greatly to scandalize the daughter of Saul. By the way, this
+incident has been always a stock argument for the extinction and decent
+interment of the unhappy anti dancer. Conceding the necessity of his
+extinction, I am yet indisposed to attach much weight to the Davidian
+precedent, for it does not appear that he was acting under divine
+command, directly or indirectly imparted, and whenever he followed the
+hest of his own sweet will David had a notable knack at going wrong.
+Perhaps the best value of the incident consists in the evidence it
+supplies that dancing was not forbidden--save possibly by divine
+injunction--to the higher classes of Jews, for unless we are to suppose
+the dancing of David to have been the mere clumsy capering of a loutish
+mood (a theory which our respect for royalty, even when divested of its
+imposing externals, forbids us to entertain) we are bound to assume
+previous instruction and practice in the art. We have, moreover, the
+Roman example of the daughter of Herodias, whose dancing before Herod
+was so admirably performed that she was suitably rewarded with a
+testimonial of her step father's esteem. To these examples many more
+might be added, showing by cumulative evidence that among the ancient
+people whose religion was good enough for us to adopt and improve,
+dancing was a polite and proper accomplishment, although not always
+decorously executed on seasonable occasion.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+ENTER A TROUPE OF ANCIENTS, DANCING
+
+
+The nearly oldest authentic human records now decipherable are the
+cuneiform inscriptions from the archives of Assurbanipal, translated by
+the late George Smith, of the British Museum, and in them we find
+abundant reference to the dance, but must content ourselves with a
+single one.
+
+      The kings of Arabia who against my agreement,
+    sinned, whom in the midst of battle alive I had captured
+    in hand, to make that Bitrichiti  Heavy burdens I
+    caused them to carry and I caused them to take
+    building its brick work             with dancing and
+    music          with joy and shouting from the found
+    ation to its roof I built
+
+
+A Mesopotamian king, who had the genius to conceive the dazzling idea of
+communicating with the readers of this distant generation by taking
+impressions of carpet tacks on cubes of unbaked clay is surely entitled
+to a certain veneration, and when he associates dancing with such
+commendable actions as making porters of his royal captives it is not
+becoming in us meaner mortals to set up a contrary opinion. Indeed
+nothing can be more certain than that the art of dancing was not
+regarded by the ancients generally in the light of a frivolous
+accomplishment, nor its practice a thing wherewith to shoo away a
+tedious hour. In their minds it evidently had a certain dignity and
+elevation, so much so that they associated it with their ideas
+(tolerably correct ones, on the whole) of art, harmony, beauty, truth
+and religion With them, dancing bore a relation to walking and the
+ordinary movements of the limbs similar to that which poetry bears to
+prose, and as our own Emerson--himself something of an ancient--defines
+poetry as the piety of the intellect, so Homer would doubtless have
+defined dancing as the devotion of the body if he had had the
+unspeakable advantage of a training in the Emerson school of epigram.
+Such a view of it is natural to the unsophisticated pagan mind, and to
+all minds of clean, wholesome, and simple understanding. It is only the
+intellect that has been subjected to the strain of overwrought religious
+enthusiasm of the more sombre sort that can discern a lurking devil in
+the dance, or anything but an exhilarating and altogether delightful
+outward manifestation of an inner sense of harmony, joy and well being.
+Under the stress of morbid feeling, or the overstrain of religious
+excitement, coarsely organized natures see or create something gross and
+prurient in things intrinsically sweet and pure, and it happens that
+when the dance has fallen to their shaping and direction, as in
+religious rites, then it has received its most objectionable development
+and perversion. But the grossness of dances devised by the secular mind
+for purposes of ćsthetic pleasure is all in the censorious critic, who
+deserves the same kind of rebuke administered by Dr. Johnson to Boswell,
+who asked the Doctor if he considered a certain nude statue immodest.
+"No, sir, but your question is."
+
+It would be an unfortunate thing, indeed, if the "prurient prudes" of
+the meeting houses were permitted to make the laws by which society
+should be governed. The same unhappy psychological condition which makes
+the dance an unclean thing in their jaundiced eyes renders it impossible
+for them to enjoy art or literature when the subject is natural, the
+treatment free and joyous. The ingenuity that can discover an indelicate
+provocative in the waltz will have no difficulty in snouting out all
+manner of uncleanliness in Shakspeare, Chaucer, Boccacio--nay, even in
+the New Testament. It would detect an unpleasant suggestiveness in the
+Medicean Venus, and two in the Dancing Faun. To all such the ordinary
+functions of life are impure, the natural man and woman things to blush
+at, all the economies of nature full of shocking improprieties.
+
+In the Primitive Church dancing was a religious rite, no less than it
+was under the older dispensation among the Jews. On the eve of sacred
+festivals, the young people were accustomed to assemble, sometimes
+before the church door, sometimes in the choir or nave of the church,
+and dance and sing hymns in honor of the saint whose festival it was.
+Easter Sunday, especially, was so celebrated; and rituals of a
+comparatively modern date contain the order in which it is appointed
+that the dances are to be performed, and the words of the hymns to the
+music of which the youthful devotees flung up their pious heels But I
+digress.
+
+In Plato's time the Greeks held that dancing awakened and preserved in
+the soul--as I do not doubt that it does--the sentiment of harmony and
+proportion; and in accordance with this idea Simonides, with a happy
+knack at epigram, defined dances as "poems in dumb show."
+
+In his _Republic_ Plato classifies the Grecian dances as domestic,
+designed for relaxation and amusement, military, to promote strength and
+activity in battle; and religious, to accompany the sacred songs at
+pious festivals. To the last class belongs the dance which Theseus is
+said to have instituted on his return from Crete, after having abated
+the Minotaur nuisance. At the head of a noble band of youth, this public
+spirited reformer of abuses himself executed his dance. Theseus as a
+dancing-master does not much fire the imagination, it is true, but the
+incident has its value and purpose in this dissertation. Theseus called
+his dance _Geranos_, or the "Crane," because its figures resembled those
+described by that fowl aflight; and Plutarch fancied he discovered in it
+a meaning which one does not so readily discover in Plutarch's
+explanation.
+
+It is certain that, in the time of Anacreon[A], the Greeks loved the
+dance. That poet, with frequent repetition, felicitates himself that age
+has not deprived him of his skill in it. In Ode LIII, he declares that
+in the dance he renews his youth
+
+    When I behold the festive train
+    Of dancing youth, I'm young again
+
+    And let me, while the wild and young
+    Trip the mazy dance along
+    Fling my heap of years away
+    And be as wild, as young as they
+
+                                  --_Moore_
+
+
+[Footnote A: It may be noted here that the popular conception of this
+poet as a frivolous sensualist is unsustained by evidence and repudiated
+by all having knowledge of the matter. Although love and wine were his
+constant themes, there is good ground for the belief that he wrote of
+them with greater _abandon_ than he indulged in them--a not uncommon
+practice of the poet-folk, by the way, and one to which those who sing
+of deeds of arms are perhaps especially addicted. The great age which
+Anacreon attained points to a temperate life; and he more than once
+denounces intoxication with as great zeal as a modern reformer who has
+eschewed the flagon for the trencher. According to Anacreon, drunkenness
+is "the vice of barbarians;" though, for the matter of that, it is
+difficult to say what achievable vice is not. In Ode LXII, he sings:
+
+    Fill me, boy, as deep a draught
+    As e'er was filled, as e'er was quaffed;
+    But let the water amply flow
+    To cool the grape's intemperate glow.
+           *       *       *       *       *
+    For though the bowl's the grave of sadness
+    Ne'er let it be the birth of madness
+    No! banish from our board to night
+    The revelries of rude delight
+    To Scythians leave these wild excesses
+    Ours be the joy that soothes and blesses!
+    And while the temperate bowl we wreathe
+    In concert let our voices breathe
+    Beguiling every hour along
+    With harmony of soul and song
+
+Maximus of Tyre speaking of Polycrates the Tyrant (tyrant, be it
+remembered, meant only usurper, not oppressor) considered the happiness
+of that potentate secure because he had a powerful navy and such a
+friend as Anacreon--the word navy naturally suggesting cold water, and
+cold water, Anacreon.]
+
+
+And so in Ode LIX, which seems to be a vintage hymn.
+
+    When he whose verging years decline
+    As deep into the vale as mine
+    When he inhales the vintage cup
+    His feet new winged from earth spring up
+    And as he dances the fresh air
+    Plays whispering through his silvery hair
+
+                                          --_Id_
+
+In Ode XLVII, he boasts that age has not impaired his relish for, nor
+his power of indulgence in, the feast and dance.
+
+      Tis true my fading years decline
+      Yet I can quaff the brimming wine
+      As deep as any stripling fair
+      Whose cheeks the flush of morning wear,
+      And if amidst the wanton crew
+      I'm called to wind the dance's clew
+      Then shalt thou see this vigorous hand
+      Not faltering on the Bacchant's wand
+
+      For though my fading years decay--
+      Though manhood's prime hath passed away,
+      Like old Silenus sire divine
+      With blushes borrowed from the wine
+      I'll wanton mid the dancing tram
+      And live my follies o'er again
+
+                                       --_Id_
+
+Cornelius Nepos, I think, mentions among the admirable qualities of the
+great Epaminondas that he had an extraordinary talent for music and
+dancing. Epaminondas accomplishing his jig must be accepted as a
+pleasing and instructive figure in the history of the dance.
+
+Lucian says that a dancer must have some skill as an actor, and some
+acquaintance with mythology--the reason being that the dances at the
+festivals of the gods partook of the character of pantomime, and
+represented the most picturesque events and passages in the popular
+religion. Religious knowledge is happily no longer regarded as a
+necessary qualification for the dance, and, in point of fact no thing is
+commonly more foreign to the minds of those who excel in it.
+
+It is related of Aristides the Just that he danced at an entertainment
+given by Dionysius the Tyrant, and Plato, who was also a guest, probably
+confronted him in the set.
+
+The "dance of the wine press," described by Longinus, was originally
+modest and proper, but seems to have become in the process of time--and
+probably by the stealthy participation of disguised prudes--a kind of
+_can can_.
+
+In the high noon of human civilization--in the time of Pericles at
+Athens--dancing seems to have been regarded as a civilizing and refining
+amusement in which the gravest dignitaries and most renowned worthies
+joined with indubitable alacrity, if problematic advantage. Socrates
+himself--at an advanced age, too--was persuaded by the virtuous Aspasia
+to cut his caper with the rest of them.
+
+Horace (Ode IX, Book I,) exhorts the youth not to despise the dance:
+
+              Nec dulcis amores
+        Sperne puer, neque tu choreas.
+
+Which may be freely translated thus:
+
+    Boy, in Love's game don't miss a trick,
+    Nor be in the dance a walking stick.
+
+In Ode IV, Book I, he says:
+
+    Jam Cytherea choros ducit, inminente Luna
+    Junctćque Nymphis Gratić decentes
+    Alterno terram quatiunt pede, etc.
+
+    At moonrise, Venus and her joyous band
+    Of Nymphs and Graces leg it o'er the land
+
+In Ode XXXVI, Book I (supposed to have been written when Numida returned
+from the war in Spain, with Augustus, and referring to which an old
+commentator says "We may judge with how much tenderness Horace loved his
+friends, when he celebrates their return with sacrifices, songs, and
+dances") Horace writes
+
+    Cressa ne careat pulchra dies nota
+    Neu promtć modus amphorć
+    Neu morem in Salium sit requies pedum etc.
+
+    Let not the day forego its mark
+    Nor lack the wine jug's honest bark
+    Like Salian priests we'll toss our toes--
+    Choose partners for the dance--here goes!
+
+It has been hastily inferred that, in the time of Cicero, dancing was
+not held in good repute among the Romans, but I prefer to consider his
+ungracious dictum (in _De Ami citia_, I think,) "_Nemo sobrius
+saltat_"--no sober man dances--as merely the spiteful and envious fling
+of a man who could not himself dance, and am disposed to congratulate
+the golden youth of the Eternal City on the absence of the solemn
+consequential and egotistic orator from their festivals and merry
+makings whence his shining talents would have been so many several
+justifications for his forcible extrusion. No doubt his eminence
+procured him many invitations to balls of the period, and some of these
+he probably felt constrained to accept, but it is highly unlikely that
+he was often solicited to dance, he probably wiled away the tedious
+hours of inaction by instructing the fibrous virgins and gouty bucks in
+the principles of juris prudence. Cicero as a wall flower is an
+interesting object, and, turning to another branch of our subject, in
+this picturesque attitude we leave him. Left talking.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+CAIRO REVISITED
+
+
+Having glanced, briefly, and as through a glass darkly, at the dance as
+it existed in the earliest times of which we have knowledge in the
+country whence, through devious and partly obliterated channels, we
+derived much of our civilization, let us hastily survey some of its
+modern methods in the same region--supplying thereby some small means of
+comparison to the reader who may care to note the changes undergone and
+the features preserved.
+
+We find the most notable, if not the only, purely Egyptian dancer of our
+time in the _Alme_ or _Ghowazee_. The former name is derived from the
+original calling of this class--that of reciting poetry to the inmates
+of the harem, the latter they acquired by dancing at the festivals of
+the Ghors, or Memlooks. Reasonably modest at first, the dancing of the
+Alme became, in the course of time, so conspicuously indelicate that
+great numbers of the softer sex persuaded themselves to its acquirement
+and practice, and a certain viceregal Prude once contracted the powers
+of the whole Cairo contingent of Awalim into the pent up Utica of the
+town of Esuch, some five hundred miles removed from the viceregal
+dissenting eye. For a brief season the order was enforced, then the
+sprightly sinners danced out of bounds, and their successors can now be
+found by the foreign student of Egyptian morals without the fatigue and
+expense of a long journey up the Nile.
+
+The professional dress of the Alme consists of a short embroidered
+jacket, fitting closely to the arms and back, but frankly unreserved in
+front, long loose trousers of silk sufficiently opaque somewhat to
+soften the severity of the lower limbs, a Cashmere shawl bound about the
+waist and a light turban of muslin embroidered with gold. The long black
+hair, starred with small coins, falls abundantly over the shoulders. The
+eyelids are sabled with kohl, and such other paints, oils, varnishes and
+dyestuffs are used as the fair one--who is a trifle dark, by the
+way--may have proved for herself, or accepted on the superior judgment
+of her European sisters. Altogether, the girl's outer and visible aspect
+is not unattractive to the eye of the traveler, however faulty to the
+eye of the traveler's wife. When about to dance, the Alme puts on a
+lighter and more diaphanous dress, eschews her slippers, and with a slow
+and measured step advances to the centre of the room--her lithe figure
+undulating with a grace peculiarly serpentile. The music is that of a
+reed pipe or a tambourine--a number of attendants assisting with
+castanets. Perhaps the "argument" of her dance will be a love-passage
+with an imaginary young Arab. The coyness of a first meeting by chance
+her gradual warming into passion their separation, followed by her tears
+and dejection the hope of meeting soon again and, finally, the
+intoxication of being held once more in his arms--all are delineated
+with a fidelity and detail surprising to whatever of judgment the
+masculine spectator may have the good fortune to retain.
+
+One of the prime favorites is the "wasp dance," allied to the
+Tarantella. Although less pleasing in motive than that described, the
+wasp dance gives opportunity for movements of even superior
+significance--or, as one may say, suggestures. The girl stands in a
+pensive posture, her hands demurely clasped in front, her head poised a
+little on one side. Suddenly a wasp is heard to approach, and by her
+gestures is seen to have stung her on the breast. She then darts hither
+and thither in pursuit of that audacious insect, assuming all manner of
+provoking attitudes, until, finally, the wasp having been caught and
+miserably exterminated, the girl resumes her innocent smile and modest
+pose.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+JAPAN WEAR AND BOMBAY DUCKS
+
+
+Throughout Asia, dancing is marked by certain characteristics which do
+not greatly differ, save in degree, among the various peoples who
+practice it. With few exceptions, it is confined to the superior sex,
+and these ladies, I am sorry to confess, have not derived as great moral
+advantage from the monopoly as an advocate of dancing would prefer to
+record.
+
+Dancing--the rhythmical movement of the limbs and body to music--is, as
+I have endeavored to point out, instinctive, hardly a people, savage or
+refined, but has certain forms of it. When, from any cause, the men
+abstain from its execution it has commonly not the character of grace
+and agility as its dominant feature, but is distinguished by soft,
+voluptuous movements, suggestive posturing, and all the wiles by which
+the performer knows she can best please the other sex, the most
+forthright and effective means to that commendable end being evocation
+of man's baser nature. The Japanese men are anti-dancers from necessity
+of costume, if nothing else, and the effect is much the same as
+elsewhere under the same conditions the women dance, the men gloat and
+the gods grieve.
+
+There are two kinds of dances in Japan, the one not only lewd, but--to
+speak with accurate adjustment of word to fact--beastly, in the other
+grace is the dominating element, and decency as cold as a snow storm. Of
+the former class, the "Chon Nookee" is the most popular. It is, however,
+less a dance than an exhibition, and its patrons are the wicked, the
+dissolute and the European. It is commonly given at some entertainment
+to which respectable women have not the condescension to be
+invited--such as a dinner party of some wealthy gentleman's gentlemen
+friends. The dinner-served on the floor--having been impatiently tucked
+away, and the candies, cakes, hot saki and other necessary addenda of a
+Japanese dinner brought in, the "Chon Nookee" is demanded, and with a
+modest demeanor, worn as becomingly as if it were their every day habit,
+the performers glide in, seating themselves coyly on the floor, in two
+rows. Each dancing girl is appareled in such captivating bravery as her
+purse can buy or her charms exact. The folds of her varicolored gowns
+crossing her bosom makes combinations of rich, warm hues, which it were
+folly not to admire and peril to admire too much. The faces of these
+girls are in many instances exceedingly pretty, but with that
+natural--and, be it humbly submitted, not very creditable--tendency of
+the sex to revision and correction of nature's handiwork, they plaster
+them with pigments dear to the sign painter and temper the red glory of
+their lips with a bronze preparation which the flattered brass founder
+would no doubt deem kissable utterly. The music is made by beating a
+drum and twanging a kind of guitar, the musician chanting the while to
+an exceedingly simple air words which, in deference to the possible
+prejudices of those readers who may be on terms of familarity with the
+Japanese language, I have deemed it proper to omit--with an apology to
+the Prudes for the absence of an appendix in which they might be given
+without offense. (I had it in mind to insert the music here, but am told
+by credible authority that in Japan music is moral or immoral without
+reference to the words that may be sung with it. So I omit--with
+reluctance--the score, as well as the words.)
+
+The chanting having proceeded for a few minutes the girls take up the
+song and enter spiritedly into the dance. One challenges another and at
+a certain stage of the lively song with the sharp cry _"Hoi!"_ makes a
+motion with her hand. Failure on the part of the other instantaneously
+and exactly to copy this gesture entails the forfeiture of a garment,
+which is at once frankly removed. Cold and mechanical at the outset, the
+music grows spirited as the girls grow nude, and the dancers themselves
+become strangely excited as they warm to the work, taking, the while,
+generous potations of saki to assist their enthusiasm.
+
+Let it not be supposed that in all this there is anything of passion, it
+is with these women nothing more that the mere mental exaltation
+produced by music, exercise and drink. With the spectators (I have
+heard) it fares somewhat otherwise.
+
+When modesty's last rag has been discarded, the girls as if suddenly
+abashed at their own audacity, fly like startled fawns from the room,
+leaving their patrons to make a settlement with conscience and arrange
+the terms upon which that monitor will consent to the performance of the
+rest of the dance. For the dance proper--or improper--is now about to
+begin. If the first part seemed somewhat tropical, comparison with what
+follows will acquit it of that demerit. The combinations of the dance
+are infinitely varied, and so long as willing witnesses remain--which,
+in simple justice to manly fortitude it should be added, is a good
+while--so long will the "Chon Nookee" present a new and unexpected
+phase, but it is thought expedient that no more of them be presented
+here, and if the reader has done me the honor to have enough of it, we
+will pass to the consideration of another class of dances.
+
+Of this class those most in favor are the Fan and Umbrella dances,
+performed, usually, by young girls trained almost from infancy. The
+Japanese are passionately fond of these beautiful exhibitions of grace,
+and no manner of festivity is satisfactorily celebrated without them.
+The musicians, all girls, commonly six or eight in number, play on the
+guitar, a small ivory wand being used, instead of the fingers, to strike
+the strings. The dancer, a girl of some thirteen years, is elaborately
+habited as a page. Confined by the closely folded robe as by fetters,
+the feet and legs are not much used, the feet, indeed, never leaving the
+floor. Time is marked by undulations of the body, waving the arms, and
+deft manipulation of the fan. The supple figure bends and sways like a
+reed in the wind, advances and recedes, one movement succeeding another
+by transitions singularly graceful, the arms describing innumerable
+curves, and the fan so skilfully handled as to seem instinct with a life
+and liberty of its own. Nothing more pure, more devoid of evil
+suggestion, can be imagined. It is a sad fact that the poor children
+trained to the execution of this harmless and pleasing dance are
+destined, in their riper years, to give their charms and graces to the
+service of the devil in the 'Chon Nookee'. The umbrella dance is similar
+to the one just described, the main difference being the use of a small,
+gaily colored umbrella in place of the fan.
+
+Crossing from Japan to China, the Prude will find a condition of things
+which, for iron severity of morals, is perhaps unparalleled--no dancing
+whatever, by either profligate or virtuous women. To whatever original
+cause we may attribute this peculiarity, it seems eternal, for the women
+of the upper classes have an ineradicable habit of so mutilating their
+feet that even the polite and comparatively harmless accomplishment of
+walking is beyond their power, those of the lower orders have not sense
+enough to dance, and that men should dance alone is a proposition of
+such free and forthright idiocy as to be but obscurely conceivable to
+any understanding not having the gift of maniacal inspiration, or the
+normal advantage of original incapacity. Altogether, we may rightly
+consider China the heaven appointed _habitat_ of people who dislike the
+dance.
+
+In Siam, what little is known of dancing is confined to the people of
+Laos. The women are meek eyed, spiritless creatures, crushed under the
+heavy domination of the stronger sex. Naturally, their music and dancing
+are of a plaintive, almost doleful character, not without a certain
+cloying sweetness, however. The dancing is as graceful as the pudgy
+little bodies of the women are capable of achieving--a little more
+pleasing than the capering of a butcher's block, but not quite so much
+so as that of a wash tub. Its greatest merit is the steely rigor of its
+decorum. The dancers, however, like ourselves, are a shade less
+appallingly proper off the floor than on it.
+
+In no part of the world, probably, is the condition of women more
+consummately deplorable than in India, and, in consequence, nowhere than
+in the dances of that country is manifested a more simple
+unconsciousness or frank disregard of decency. As by nature, and
+according to the light that is in him, the Hindu is indolent and
+licentious, so, in accurately matching degree, are the dancing girls
+innocent of morality, and uninfected with shame. It would be difficult,
+more keenly to insult a respectable Hindu woman than to accuse her of
+having danced, while the man who should affect the society of the
+females justly so charged would incur the lasting detestation of his
+race. The dancing girls are of two orders of infamy--those who serve in
+the temples, and are hence called Devo Dasi, slaves of the gods, and the
+Nautch girls, who dance in a secular sort for hire. Frequently a mother
+will make a vow to dedicate her unborn babe, if it have the obedience to
+be a girl, to the service of some particular god, in this way, and by
+the daughters born to themselves, are the ranks of the Devo Dasi
+recruited. The sons of these miserable creatures are taught to play upon
+musical instruments for their mothers and sisters to dance by. As the
+ordinary Hindu woman is careless about the exposure of her charms, so
+these dancers take intelligent and mischievous advantage of the social
+situation by immodestly concealing their own. The Devo Dasi actually go
+to the length of wearing clothes! Each temple has a band of eight or ten
+of these girls, who celebrate their saltatory rites morning and evening.
+Advancing at the head of the religious procession, they move themselves
+in an easy and graceful manner, with gradual transition to a more
+sensuous and voluptuous motion, suiting their action to the religious
+frame of mind of the devout until their well-rounded limbs and lithe
+figures express a degree of piety consonant with the purpose of the
+particular occasion. They attend all public ceremonies and festivals,
+executing their audacious dances impartially for gods and men.
+
+The Nautch girls are purchased in infancy, and as carefully trained in
+their wordly way as the Devo Dasi for the diviner function, being about
+equally depraved. All the large cities contain full sets of these girls,
+with attendant musicians, ready for hire at festivals of any kind, and
+by leaving orders parties are served at their residences with fidelity
+and dispatch. Commonly they dance two at a time, but frequently some
+wealthy gentleman will secure the services of a hundred or more to
+assist him through the day without resorting to questionable expedients
+of time-killing. Their dances require strict attention, from the
+circumstance that their feet--like those of the immortal equestrienne of
+Banbury Cross--are hung with small bells, which must be made to sound in
+concert with the notes of the musicians. In attitude and gesture they
+are almost as bad as their pious sisters of the temples. The endeavor is
+to express the passions of love, hope, jealousy, despair, etc, and they
+eke out this mimicry with chanted songs in every way worthy of the
+movements of which they are the explanatory notes. These are the only
+women in Hindustan whom it is thought worth while to teach to read and
+write. If they would but make as noble use of their intellectual as they
+do of their physical education, they might perhaps produce books as
+moral as _The Dance of Death_.
+
+In Persia and Asia Minor, the dances and dancers are nearly alike. In
+both countries the Georgian and Circassian slaves who have been taught
+the art of pleasing, are bought by the wealthy for their amusement and
+that of their wives and concubines. Some of the performances are pure in
+motive and modest in execution, but most of them are interesting
+otherwise. The beautiful young Circassian slave, clad in loose robes of
+diaphanous texture, takes position, castanets in hand, on a square rug,
+and to the music of a kind of violin goes through the figures of her
+dance, her whiteness giving her an added indelicacy which the European
+spectator misses in the capering of her berry brown sisters in sin of
+other climes.
+
+The dance of the Georgian is more spirited. Her dress is a brief skirt
+reaching barely to the knees and a low cut chemise. In her night black
+hair is wreathed a bright red scarf or string of pearls. The music, at
+first low and slow increases by degrees in rapidity and volume, then
+falls away almost to silence, again swells and quickens and so
+alternates, the motions of the dancer's willowy and obedient figure
+accurately according now seeming to swim languidly, and anon her little
+feet having their will of her, and fluttering in midair like a couple of
+birds. She is an engaging creature, her ways are ways of pleasantness,
+but whether all her paths are peace depends somewhat, it is reasonable
+to conjecture, upon the circumspection of her daily walk and
+conversation when relegated to the custody of her master's wives.
+
+In some parts of Persia the dancing of boys appareled as women is held
+in high favor, but exactly what wholesome human sentiment it addresses I
+am not prepared to say.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CRUCIBLE
+
+
+From the rapid and imperfect review of certain characteristic oriental
+dances in the chapters immediately preceding--or rather from the studies
+some of whose minor results those chapters embody--I make deduction of a
+few significant facts, to which facts of contrary significance seem
+exceptional. In the first place, it is to be noted that in countries
+where woman is conspicuously degraded the dance is correspondingly
+depraved. By "the dance," I mean, of course, those characteristic and
+typical performances which have permanent place in the social life of
+the people. Amongst all nations the dance exists in certain loose and
+unrecognized forms, which are the outgrowth of the moment--creatures of
+caprice, posing and pranking their brief and inglorious season, to be
+superseded by some newer favorite, born of some newer accident or fancy.
+A fair type of these ephemeral dances--the comets of the saltatory
+system--in so far as they can have a type, is the now familiar _Can-Can_
+of the Jardin Mabille--a dance the captivating naughtiness of which has
+given it wide currency in our generation, the successors to whose aged
+rakes and broken bawds it will fail to please and would probably make
+unhappy. Dances of this character, neither national, universal, nor
+enduring, have little value to the student of anything but anatomy and
+lingerie. By study of a thousand, the product of as many years, it might
+be possible to trace the thread upon which such beads are
+strung--indeed, it is pretty obvious without research; but considered
+singly they have nothing of profit to the investigator, who will do well
+to contemplate without reflection or perform without question, as the
+bent of his mind may be observant or experimental.
+
+Dancing, then, is indelicate where the women are depraved, and to this
+it must be added that the women are depraved where the men are indolent.
+We need not trouble ourselves to consider too curiously as to cause and
+effect. Whether in countries where man is too lazy to be manly, woman
+practices deferential adjustment of her virtues to the loose exactions
+of his tolerance, or whether for ladies of indifferent modesty their
+lords will not make exertion--these are questions for the ethnologer. It
+concerns our purpose only to note that the male who sits cross-legged on
+a rug and permits his female to do the dancing for both gets a quality
+distinctly inferior to that enjoyed by his more energetic brother,
+willing himself to take a leg at the game. Doubtless the lazy fellow
+prefers the loose gamboling of nude girls to the decent grace and
+moderation of a better art, but this, I submit, is an error of taste
+resulting from imperfect instruction.
+
+And here we are confronted with the ever recurrent question. Is dancing
+immoral? The reader who has done me the honor attentively to consider
+the brief descriptions of certain dances, hereinbefore presented will,
+it is believed, be now prepared to answer that some sorts of dancing
+indubitably are--a bright and shining example of the type being the
+exploit wherein women alone perform and men alone admire. But one of the
+arguments by which it is sought to prove dancing immoral in
+itself--namely that it provokes evil passions--we are now able to
+analyze with the necessary discrimination, assigning to it its just
+weight, and tracing its real bearing on the question. Dances like those
+described (with, I hope a certain delicacy and reticence) are
+undoubtedly disturbing to the spectator. They have in that circumstance
+their _raison d'ętre_. As to that, then, there can be no two opinions.
+But observe the male oriental voluptuary does not himself dance. Why?
+Partly no doubt, because of his immortal indolence, but mainly, I
+venture to think, because he wishes to enjoy his reprehensible emotion,
+and this can not coexist with muscular activity If the reader--through
+either immunity from improper emotion or unfamiliarity with muscular
+activity--entertains a doubt of this, his family physician will be happy
+to remove it. Nothing is more certain than that the dancing girls of
+oriental countries themselves feel nothing of what they have the skill
+to simulate, and the ballet dancer of our own stage is icily unconcerned
+while kicking together the smouldering embers in the heart of the wigged
+and corseted old beau below her, and playing the duse's delight with the
+disobedient imagination of the he Prude posted in the nooks and shadows
+thoughtfully provided for him. Stendahl frankly informs us, "I have had
+much experience with the _danseuses_ of the ---- Theatre at Valence. I
+am convinced that they are, for the most part, very chaste. It is
+because their occupation is too fatiguing."
+
+The same author, by the way, says elsewhere
+
+  I would wish if I were legislator that they should adopt in France
+  as in Germany the custom of _soirées dansantes_. Four times a month
+  the young girls go with their mothers to a ball beginning at seven
+  o'clock, ending at midnight and requiring for all expense, a violin
+  and some glasses of water. In an adjacent room, the mothers perhaps
+  a little jealous of the happy education of their daughters play at
+  cards, in a third the fathers find the newspapers and talk politics.
+  Between midnight and one o'clock all the family are reunited and
+  have regained the paternal roof. The young girls learn to know the
+  young men, the fatuity, and the indiscretion that follows it, become
+  quickly odious, in a word they learn how to choose a husband. Some
+  young girls have unfortunate love affairs, but the number of
+  deceived husbands and unhappy households (_mauvaises ménages_)
+  diminishes in immense proportion.
+
+For an iron education in cold virtue there is no school like the
+position of sitting master to the wall flowers at a church sociable, but
+it is humbly conjectured that even the austere morality of a bald headed
+Prude might receive an added iciness if he would but attend one of these
+simple dancing bouts disguised as a sweet young girl.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE
+
+
+Nearly all the great writers of antiquity and of the medieval period who
+have mentioned dancing at all have done so in terms of unmistakable
+favor; of modern famous authors, they only have condemned it from whose
+work, or from what is known of their personal character, we may justly
+infer an equal aversion to pretty much everything in the way of pleasure
+that a Christian needs not die in order to enjoy English literature--I
+use the word in its noble sense, to exclude all manner of preaching,
+whether clerical or lay--is full of the dance; the sound of merry makers
+footing it featly to the music runs like an undertone through all the
+variations of its theme and fills all its pauses.
+
+In the "Miller's Tale," Chaucer mentions dancing among the
+accomplishments of the parish clerk, along with blood letting and the
+drawing of legal documents:
+
+    A merry child he was so God me save,
+    Wel coud he leten blood and clippe and shave,
+    And make a chartre of land, and a quitance,
+    In twenty maners could he trip and dance,
+    After the scole of Oxenforde tho
+    And with his legges casten to and fro[A]
+
+
+[Footnote A: On this passage Tyrwhit makes the following judicious
+comment: The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same
+estimation for its dancing as that of Stratford for its French--alluding
+of course to what is, said in the Prologue of the French spoken by the
+Prioress:
+
+  And French she spoke full fayre and fetisly
+  After the scole of Stratford atte bowe
+  For French of Paris was to hire unknowe]
+
+
+Milton, the greatest of the Puritans--intellectual ancestry of the
+modern degenerate Prudes--had a wholesome love of the dance, and nowhere
+is his pen so joyous as in its description in the well known passage
+from "Comus" which, should it occur to my memory while delivering a
+funeral oration, I am sure I could not forbear to quote, albeit this,
+our present argument, is but little furthered by its context
+
+    Meanwhile welcome joy and feast
+    Midnight shout and revelry
+    Tipsy dance and jollity
+    Braid your locks with rosy twine
+    Dropping odors dropping wine
+    Rigor now is gone to bed
+    And advice with scrupulous head
+    Strict age and sour severity
+    With their grave saws in slumber lie
+    We that are of purer fire
+    Imitate the starry quire
+    Who in their nightly watching spheres
+    Lead in swift round the months and years
+    The sounds and seas with all their finny drove
+    And on the tawny sands and shelves
+    Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves
+
+If Milton was not himself a good dancer--and as to that point my memory
+is unstored with instance or authority--it will at least be conceded
+that he was an admirable reporter, with his heart in the business.
+Somewhat to lessen the force of the objection that he puts the foregoing
+lines into a not very respectable mouth, on a not altogether reputable
+occasion, I append the following passage from the same poem, supposed to
+be spoken by the good spirit who had brought a lady and her two brothers
+through many perils, restoring them to their parents:
+
+    Noble lord and lady bright
+    I have brought ye new delight
+    Here behold so goodly grown
+    Three fair branches of your own
+    Heaven hath timely tried their youth
+    Their faith their patience and their truth
+    And sent them here through hard assays
+    With a crown of deathless praise
+    To triumph in victorious dance
+    O'er sensual folly and intemperance
+
+The lines on dancing--lines which themselves dance--in "L'Allegro," are
+too familiar, I dare not permit myself the enjoyment of quotation.
+
+Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most finished gentlemen of his
+time, otherwise laments in his autobiography that he had never learned
+to dance because that accomplishment "doth fashion the body, and gives
+one a good presence and address in all companies since it disposeth the
+limbs to a kind of _souplesse_ (as the French call it) and agility
+insomuch as they seem to have the use of their legs, arms, and bodies
+more than many others who, standing stiff and stark in their postures,
+seem as if they were taken in their joints, or had not the perfect use
+of their members." Altogether, a very grave objection to dancing in the
+opinion of those who discountenance it, and I take great credit for
+candor in presenting his lordship's indictment.
+
+In the following pertinent passage from Lemontey I do not remember the
+opinion he quotes from Locke, but his own is sufficiently to the point:
+
+  The dance is for young women what the chase is for young men: a
+  protecting school of wisdom--a preservative of the growing passions.
+  The celebrated Locke who made virtue the sole end of education,
+  expressly recommends teaching children to dance as early as they are
+  able to learn. Dancing carries within itself an eminently cooling
+  quality and all over the world the tempests of the heart await to
+  break forth the repose of the limbs.
+
+In "The Traveller," Goldsmith says:
+
+    Alike all ages dames of ancient days
+    Have led their children through the mirthful maze
+    And the gay grandsire skilled in gestic lore
+    Has frisked beneath the burden of three score.
+
+To the Prudes, in all soberness--Is it likely, considering the stubborn
+conservatism of age, that these dames, well seasoned in the habit, will
+leave it off directly, or the impenitent old grandsire abate one jot or
+tittle of his friskiness in the near future? Is it a reasonable hope? Is
+the outlook from the watch towers of Philistia an encouraging one?
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THEY ALL DANCE
+
+
+    Fountains dance down to the river,
+      Rivers to the ocean
+    Summer leaflets dance and quiver
+      To the breeze's motion
+    Nothing in the world is single--
+      All things by a simple rule
+    Nods and steps and graces mingle
+      As at dancing school
+
+    See the shadows on the mountain
+      Pirouette with one another
+    See the leaf upon the fountain
+      Dances with its leaflet brother
+    See the moonlight on the earth
+      Flecking forest gleam and glance!
+    What are all these dancings worth
+      If I may not dance?
+
+                          _--After Shelley_
+
+Dance? Why not? The dance is natural, it is innocent, wholesome,
+enjoyable. It has the sanction of religion, philosophy, science. It is
+approved by the sacred writings of all ages and nations--of Judaism,
+Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, of Zoroaster and Confucius. Not an altar,
+from Jupiter to Jesus, around which the votaries have not danced with
+religious zeal and indubitable profit to mind and body. Fire worshipers
+of Persia and Peru danced about the visible sign and manifestation to
+their deity. Dervishes dance in frenzy, and the Shakers jump up and come
+down hard through excess of the Spirit. All the gods have danced with
+all the goddesses--round dances, too. The lively divinities created by
+the Greeks in their own image danced divinely, as became them. Old Thor
+stormed and thundered down the icy halls of the Scandinavian mythology
+to the music of runic rhymes, and the souls of slain heroes in Valhalla
+take to their toes in celebration of their valorous deeds done in the
+body upon the bodies of their enemies. Angels dance before the Great
+White Throne to harps attuned by angel hands, and the Master of the
+Revels--who arranges the music of the spheres--looks approvingly on.
+Dancing is of divine institution.
+
+The elves and fairies "dance delicate measures" in the light of the moon
+and stars. The troll dances his gruesome jig on lonely hills the gnome
+executes his little pigeon wing in the obscure subterrene by the glimmer
+of a diamond. Nature's untaught children dance in wood and glade,
+stimulated of leg by the sunshine with which they are soaken top
+full--the same quickening emanation that inspires the growing tree and
+upheaves the hill. And, if I err not, there is sound Scripture for the
+belief that these self same eminences have capacity to skip for joy. The
+peasant dances--a trifle clumsily--at harvest feast when the grain is
+garnered. The stars in heaven dance visibly, the firefly dances in
+emulation of the stars. The sunshine dances on the waters. The humming
+bird and the bee dance about the flowers which dance to the breeze. The
+innocent lamb, type of the White Christ, dances on the green, and the
+matronly cow perpetrates an occasional stiff enormity when she fancies
+herself unobserved. All the sportive rollickings of all the animals,
+from the agile fawn to the unwieldly behemoth are dances taught them by
+nature.
+
+I am not here making an argument for dancing, I only assert its
+goodness, confessing its abuse. We do not argue the wholesomeness of
+sunshine and cold water, we assert it, admitting that sunstroke is
+mischievous and that copious potations of freezing water will founder a
+superheated horse, and urge the hot blood to the head of an imprudent
+man similarly prepared, killing him, as is right. We do not build
+syllogisms to prove that grains and fruits of the earth are of God's
+best bounty to man; we allow that bad whisky may--with difficulty--be
+distilled from rye to spoil the toper's nose, and that hydrocyanic acid
+can be got out of the bloomy peach. It were folly to prove that Science
+and Invention are our very good friends, yet the sapper who has had the
+misfortune to be blown to rags by the mine he was preparing for his
+enemy will not deny that gunpowder has aptitudes of mischief; and from
+the point of view of a nigger ordered upon the safety-valve of a racing
+steamboat, the vapor of water is a thing accurst. Shall we condemn music
+because the lute makes "lascivious pleasing?" Or poetry because some
+amorous bard tells in warm rhyme the story of the passions, and
+Swinburne has had the goodness to make vice offensive with his hymns in
+its praise? Or sculpture because from the guiltless marble may be
+wrought a drunken Silenus or a lechering satyr?--painting because the
+untamed fancies of a painter sometimes break tether and run riot on his
+canvas? Because the orator may provoke the wild passions of the mob,
+shall there be no more public speaking?--no further acting because the
+actor may be pleased to saw the air, or the actress display her ultimate
+inch of leg? Shall we upset the pulpit because poor dear Mr. Tilton had
+a prettier wife than poor, dear Mr. Beecher? The bench had its Jeffrey,
+yet it is necessary that we have the deliveries of judgment between
+ourselves and the litigious. The medical profession has nursed poisoners
+enough to have baned all the rats of christendom; but the resolute
+patient must still have his prescription--if he die for it. Shall we
+disband our armies because in the hand of an ambitious madman a
+field-marshal's baton may brain a helpless State?--our navies because in
+ships pirates have "sailed the seas over?" Let us not commit the
+vulgarity of condemning the dance because of its possibilities of
+perversion by the vicious and the profligate. Let us not utter us in hot
+bosh and baking nonsense, but cleave to reason and the sweet sense of
+things.
+
+Dancing never made a good girl bad, nor turned a wholesome young man to
+evil ways. "Opportunity!" simpers the tedious virgin past the
+wall-flower of her youth. "Opportunity!" cackles the _blasé_ beau who
+has outlasted his legs and gone deaconing in a church.
+
+Opportunity, indeed! There is opportunity in church and school-room, in
+social intercourse. There is opportunity in libraries, art-galleries,
+picnics, street-cars, Bible-classes and at fairs and matinées.
+Opportunity--rare, delicious opportunity, not innocently to be
+ignored--in moonlight rambles by still streams. Opportunity, such as it
+is, behind the old gentleman's turned back, and beneath the good
+mother's spectacled nose. You shall sooner draw out leviathan with a
+hook, or bind Arcturus and his sons, than baffle the upthrust of
+Opportunity's many heads. Opportunity is a veritable Hydra, Argus and
+Briareus rolled into one. He has a hundred heads to plan his poachings,
+a hundred eyes to spy the land, a hundred hands to set his snares and
+springes. In the country where young girls are habitually unattended in
+the street; where the function of chaperon is commonly, and, it should
+be added, intelligently performed by some capable young male; where the
+young women receive evening calls from young men concerning whose
+presence in the parlor mamma in the nursery and papa at the
+"office"--poor, overworked papa!--give themselves precious little
+trouble,--this prate of ball-room opportunity is singularly and
+engagingly idiotic. The worthy people who hold such language may justly
+boast themselves superior to reason and impregnable to light. The only
+effective reply to these creatures would be a cuffing, the well meant
+objections of another class merit the refutation of distinct
+characterization. It is the old talk of devotees about sin, of topers
+concerning water, temperance men of gin, and albeit it is neither wise
+nor witty, it is becoming in us at whom they rail to deal mercifully
+with them. In some otherwise estimable souls one of these harmless brain
+cracks may be a right lovable trait of character.
+
+Issues of a social import as great as a raid against dancing have been
+raised ere now. Will the coming man smoke? Will the coming man drink
+wine? These tremendous and imperative problems only recently agitated
+some of the "thoughtful minds" in our midst. By degrees they lost their
+preeminence, they were seen to be in process of solution without social
+cataclysm, they have, in a manner been referred for disposal to the
+coming man himself, that is to say, they have been dropped, and are
+to-day as dead as Julius Cćsar. The present hour has, in its turn,
+produced its own awful problem: Will the coming woman waltz?
+
+As a question of mere fact the answer is patent: She will. Dancing will
+be good for her; she will like it; so she is going to waltz. But the
+question may rather be put--to borrow phraseology current among her
+critics: Had she oughter?--from a moral point of view, now. From a moral
+point, then, let us seek from analogy some light on the question of
+what, from its actual, practical bearings, may be dignified by the name
+Conundrum.
+
+Ought a man not to smoke?--from a moral point of view. The economical
+view-point, the view-point of convenience, and all the rest of them, are
+not now in question; the simple question is: Is it immoral to smoke? And
+again--still from the moral point of view: Is it immoral to drink wine?
+Is it immoral to play at cards?--to visit theaters? (In Boston you go to
+some
+
+                         harmless "Museum,"
+  Where folks who like plays may religiously see 'em.)
+
+Finally, then--and always from the same elevated view-point: Is it
+immoral to waltz?
+
+The suggestions here started will not be further pursued in this place.
+It is quite pertinent now to note that we do smoke because we like it;
+and do drink wine because we like it; and do waltz because we like it,
+and have the added consciousness that it is a duty. I am sorry for a
+fellow-creature--male--who knows not the comfort of a cigar; sorry and
+concerned for him who is innocent of the knowledge of good and evil that
+lurk respectively in Chambertin and cheap "claret." Nor is my compassion
+altogether free from a sense of superiority to the object of
+it--superiority untainted, howbeit, by truculence. I perceive that life
+has been bestowed upon him for purposes inscrutable to me, though dimly
+hinting its own justification as a warning or awful example. So, too, of
+the men and women--"beings erect, and walking upon two [uneducated]
+legs"--whose unsophisticated toes have never, inspired by the rosy,
+threaded the labyrinth of the mazy ere courting the kindly offices of
+the balmy. It is only human to grieve for them, poor things!
+
+But if their throbbing bunions, encased in clumsy high-lows, be obtruded
+to trip us in our dance, shall we not stamp on them? Yea, verily, while
+we have a heel to crunch with and a leg to grind it home.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+LUST, QUOTH'A!
+
+
+You have danced? Ah, good. You have waltzed? Better. You have felt the
+hot blood hound through your veins, as your beautiful partner, compliant
+to the lightest pressure of your finger-tips, her breath responsive,
+matched her every motion with yours? Best of all--for you have served in
+the temple--you are of the priesthood of manhood. You cannot
+misunderstand, you will not deliver false oracle.
+
+Do you remember your first waltz with the lovely woman whom you had
+longed like a man but feared like a boy to touch--even so much as the
+hem of her garment? Can you recall the time, place and circumstance? Has
+not the very first bar of the music that whirled you away been singing
+itself in your memory ever since? Do you recall the face you then looked
+into, the eyes that seemed deeper than a mountain tarn, the figure that
+you clasped, the beating of the heart, the warm breath that mingled with
+your own? Can you faintly, as in a dream--_blasé_ old dancer that you
+are--invoke a reminiscence of the delirium that stormed your soul,
+expelling the dull demon in possession? Was it lust, as the Prudes
+aver--the poor dear Prudes, with the feel of the cold wall familiar to
+the leathery backs of them?
+
+It was the gratification--the decent, honorable, legal gratification--of
+the passion for rhythm; the unconditional surrender to the supreme law
+of periodicity, under conditions of exact observance by all external
+things. The notes of the music repeat and supplement each other; the
+lights burn with answering flame at sequent distances; the walls, the
+windows, doors, mouldings, frescoes, iterate their lines, their levels,
+and panels, interminable of combination and similarity; the inlaid floor
+matches its angles, multiplies its figures, does over again at this
+point what it did at that; the groups of dancers deploy in couples,
+aggregate in groups, and again deploy, evoking endless resemblances. And
+all this rhythm and recurrence, borne in upon the brain--itself
+rhythmic--through intermittent senses, is converted into motion, and the
+mind, yielding utterly to its environment, knows the happiness of faith,
+the ecstasy of compliance, the rapture of congruity. And this the dull
+dunces--the eyeless, earless, brainless and bloodless callosites of
+cavil--are pleased to call lust!
+
+    O ye, who teach the ingenuous youth of nations
+      The Boston Dip, the German and the Glide,
+    I pray you guard them upon all occasions
+      From contact of the palpitating side;
+    Requiring that their virtuous gyrations
+      Shall interpose a space a furlong wide
+    Between the partners, lest their thoughts grow lewd--
+      So shall we satisfy the exacting Prude.
+
+                                          --_Israfel Brown_.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+OUR GRANDMOTHERS' LEGS
+
+
+It is depressing to realize how little most of us know of the dancing of
+our ancestors. I would give value to behold the execution of a coranto
+and inspect the steps of a cinque-pace, having assurance that the
+performances assuming these names were veritably identical with their
+memorable originals. We possess the means of verifying somewhat as to
+the nature of the minuet; but after what fashion did our revered
+grandfather do his rigadoon and his gavot? What manner of thing was that
+pirouet in the deft execution of which he felt an honest exultation? And
+what were the steps of his contra (or country) and Cossack dances? What
+tune was that--"The Devil amongst the Fiddlers"--for which he clamored,
+to inspire his feats of leg?
+
+In our fathers' time we read:
+
+  I wore my blue coat and brass buttons, very high in the neck, short
+  in the waist and sleeves, nankeen trousers and white silk stockings,
+  and a white waistcoat. I performed all the steps accurately and with
+  great agility.
+
+Which, it appears, gained the attention of the company. And it well
+might, for the year was 1830, and the mode of performing the cotillion
+of the period was undergoing the metamorphosis of which the perfect
+development has been familiar to ourselves. In its next stage the male
+celebrant is represented to us as "hopping about with a face expressive
+of intense solemnity, dancing as if a quadrille"--mark the newer
+word--"were not a thing to be laughed at, but a severe trial to the
+feelings." There is a smack of ancient history about this, too; it lurks
+in the word "hopping." In the perfected development of this dance as
+known to ourselves, no stress of caricature would describe the movement
+as a hopping. But our grandfather not only hopped, he did more. He
+sprang from the floor and quivered. In midair he crossed his feet twice
+and even three times, before alighting. And our budding grandmother
+beheld, and experienced flutterings of the bosom at his manly
+achievements. Some memory of these feats survived in the performances of
+the male ballet-dancers--a breed now happily extinct. A fine old
+lady--she lives, aged eighty-two--showed me once the exercise of
+"setting to your partner," performed in her youth; and truly it was
+right marvelous. She literally bounced hither and thither, effecting a
+twisting in and out of the feet, a patting and a flickering of the toes
+incredibly intricate. For the celebration of these rites her partner
+would array himself in morocco pumps with cunningly contrived buckles of
+silver, silk stockings, salmon-colored silk breeches tied with abundance
+of riband, exuberant frills, or "chitterlings," which puffed out at the
+neck and bosom not unlike the wattles of a he-turkey; and under his
+arms--as the fowl roasted might have carried its gizzard--our
+grandfather pressed the flattened simulacrum of a cocked hat. At this
+interval of time charity requires us to drop over the lady's own costume
+a veil that, tried by our canons of propriety, it sadly needed. She was
+young and thoughtless, the good grandmother; she was conscious of the
+possession of charms and concealed them not.
+
+To the setting of these costumes, manners and practices, there was
+imported from Germany a dance called Waltz, which as I conceive, was the
+first of our "round" dances. It was welcomed by most persons who could
+dance, and by some superior souls who could not. Among the latter, the
+late Lord Byron--whose participation in the dance was barred by an
+unhappy physical disability--addressed the new-comer in characteristic
+verse. Some of the lines in this ingenious nobleman's apostrophe are not
+altogether intelligible, when applied to any dance that we know by the
+name of waltz. For example:
+
+  Pleased round the chalky floor, how well they trip,
+  One hand[A] reposing on the royal hip,
+  The other to the shoulder no less royal
+  Ascending with affection truly loyal.
+
+[Footnote A: _I.e._ one of the lady's hands.]
+
+These lines imply an attitude unknown to contemporary waltzers, but the
+description involves no poetic license. Our dear grandmothers (giddy,
+giddy girls!) did their waltz that way. Let me quote:
+
+  The lady takes the gentleman round the neck with one arm, resting
+  against his shoulder. During the motion, the dancers are continually
+  changing their relative situations: now the gentleman brings his arm
+  about the lady's neck, and the lady takes him round the waist.
+
+At another point, the lady may "lean gently on his shoulder," their arms
+(as it appears) "entwining." This description is by an eyewitness, whose
+observation is taken, not at the rather debauched court of the Prince
+Regent, but at the simple republican assemblies of New York. The
+observer is the gentle Irving, writing in 1807. Occasional noteworthy
+experiences they must have had--those modest, blooming grandmothers--for,
+it is to be borne in mind, tipsiness was rather usual with dancing
+gentlemen in the fine old days of Port and Madeira; and the blithe,
+white-armed grandmothers themselves did sip their punch, to a man.
+However, we may forbear criticism. We, at least, owe nothing but
+reverent gratitude to a generation from which we derive life, waltzing
+and the memory of Madeira. Even when read, as it needs should be read,
+in the light of that prose description of the dance to which it was
+addressed, Lord Byron's welcome to the waltz will be recognized as one
+more illustration of a set of hoary and moss-grown truths.
+
+    As parlor-soldiers, graced with fancy-scars,
+    Rehearse their bravery in imagined wars;
+    As paupers, gathered in congenial flocks,
+    Babble of banks, insurances, and stocks;
+    As each if oft'nest eloquent of what
+    He hates or covets, but possesses not;
+    As cowards talk of pluck; misers of waste;
+    Scoundrels of honor; country clowns of taste;
+    Ladies of logic; devotees of sin;
+    Topers of water; temperance men of gin--
+
+my lord Byron sang of waltzing. Let us forgive and--remembering his poor
+foot--pity him. Yet the opinions of famous persons possess an interest
+that is akin, in the minds of many plain folk, to weight. Let us, then,
+incline an ear to another: "Laura was fond of waltzing, as every brisk
+and innocent young girl should be," wrote he than who none has written
+more nobly in our time--he who "could appreciate good women and describe
+them; and draw them more truly than any novelist in the language, except
+Miss Austen." The same sentiment with reference to dancing appears in
+many places in his immortal pages. In his younger days as _attaché_ of
+legation in Germany, Mr. Thackeray became a practiced waltzer. As a
+censor he thus possesses over Lord Byron whatever advantage may accrue
+from knowledge of the subject whereof he wrote.
+
+We are happily not called upon to institute a comparison of character
+between the two distinguished moralists, though the same, drawn
+masterly, might not be devoid of entertainment and instruction. But two
+or three other points of distinction should be kept in mind as having
+sensible relation to the question of competency to bear witness. Byron
+wrote of the women of a corrupted court; Thackeray of the women of that
+society indicated by the phrase "Persons whom one meets"--and meets
+_now_. Byron wrote of an obsolete dance, described by Irving in terms of
+decided strength; Thackeray wrote of our own waltz. In turning off his
+brilliant and witty verses it is unlikely that any care as to their
+truthfulness disturbed the glassy copiousness of the Byronic utterance;
+this child of nature did never consider too curiously of justice,
+moderation and such inventions of the schools. The key-note of all the
+other wrote is given by his faithful pen when it avers that it never
+"signed the page that registered a lie." Byron was a "gentleman of wit
+and pleasure about town"; Thackeray the father of daughters. However,
+all this is perhaps little to the purpose. We owe no trifling debt to
+Lord Byron for his sparkling and spirited lines, and by no good dancer
+would they be "willingly let die." Poetry, music, dancing--they are one
+art. The muses are sisters, yet they do not quarrel. Of a truth, even as
+was Laura, so every brisk and innocent young girl should be. And it is
+safe to predict that she will be. If she would enjoy the advantage of
+belonging to Our Set she must be.
+
+As a rule, the ideas of the folk who cherish a prejudice against dancing
+are crude rather than unclean--the outcome much more of ignorance than
+salacity. Of course there are exceptions. In my great work on The Prude
+all will be attended to with due discrimination in apportionment of
+censure. At present the spirit of the dance makes merry with my pen, for
+from yonder "stately pleasure-dome" (decreed by one Kubla Khan, formerly
+of The Big Bonanza Mining Company) the strains of the _Blue Danube_
+float out upon the night. Avaunt, miscreants! lest we chase ye with
+flying feet and do our little dance upon your unwholesome carcasses.
+Already the toes of our partners begin to twiddle beneath their
+petticoats. Come, then, Stoopid--can't you move? No!--they change it to
+a galop--and eke the good old Sturm. Firm and steady, now, fair partner
+mine, whiles we run that _gobemouche_ down and trample him miserably.
+There: light and softly again--the servants will remove the remains.
+
+And hark! that witching strain once more:
+
+[Illustration: Music tablature]
+
+
+
+
+EPIGRAMS
+
+
+
+
+If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the
+country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike
+hypocrites of Canada.
+
+
+To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil,
+and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of
+interrogation.
+
+
+"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.
+
+
+In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be
+construed as indifference.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.
+
+
+Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.
+
+
+Reason is fallible and virtue vincible; the winds vary and the needle
+forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since
+it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is
+indispensable as a standard of constancy.
+
+
+In order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at
+meetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief.
+
+
+Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours.
+
+
+    A little heap of dust,
+    A little streak of rust,
+    A stone without a name--
+    Lo! hero, sword and fame.
+
+
+Our vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of
+temptation and man's lack of opportunity.
+
+
+"You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher. "May you
+live forever!"
+
+
+The man who thinks that a garnet can be made a ruby by setting it in
+brass is writing "dialect" for publication.
+
+
+"Who art thou, stranger, and what dost thou seek?"
+
+"I am Generosity, and I seek a person named Gratitude."
+
+"Then thou dost not deserve to find her."
+
+"True. I will go about my business and think of her no more. But who art
+thou, to be so wise?"
+
+"I am Gratitude--farewell forever."
+
+
+There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed
+himself; whereas he is a fool then only.
+
+
+The boundaries that Napoleon drew have been effaced; the kingdoms that
+he set up have disappeared. But all the armies and statecraft of Europe
+cannot unsay what you have said.
+
+
+  Strive not for singularity in dress;
+  Fools have the more and men of sense the less.
+  To look original is not worth while,
+  But be in mind a little out of style.
+
+
+A conqueror arose from the dead. "Yesterday," he said, "I ruled half the
+world." "Please show me the half that you ruled," said an angel,
+pointing out a wisp of glowing vapor floating in space. "That is the
+world."
+
+
+"Who art thou, shivering in thy furs?"
+
+"My name is Avarice. What is thine?"
+
+"Unselfishness."
+
+"Where is thy clothing, placid one?"
+
+"Thou art wearing it."
+
+
+To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To
+laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.
+
+
+If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much
+greater than they.
+
+
+To have something that he will not desire, nor know that he has--such is
+the hope of him who seeks the admiration of posterity. The character of
+his work does not matter; he is a humorist.
+
+
+Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
+
+
+To fatten pigs, confine and feed them; to fatten rogues, cultivate a
+generous disposition.
+
+
+Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that
+you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.
+
+
+When two irreconcilable propositions are presented for assent the safest
+way is to thank Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning brutes, and
+believe both.
+
+
+Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently
+presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it
+a numerical presumption.
+
+
+A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you
+dance, but you can't let go.
+
+
+Meeting Merit on a street-crossing, Success stood still. Merit stepped
+off into the mud and went round him, bowing his apologies, which Success
+had the grace to accept.
+
+
+  "I think," says the philosopher divine,
+  "Therefore I am." Sir, here's a surer sign:
+  We know we live, for with our every breath
+  We feel the fear and imminence of death.
+
+
+The first man you meet is a fool. If you do not think so ask him and he
+will prove it.
+
+
+He who would rather inflict injustice than suffer it will always have
+his choice, for no injustice can be done to him.
+
+
+There are as many conceptions of a perfect happiness hereafter as there
+are minds that have marred their happiness here.
+
+
+We yearn to be, not what we are, but what we are not. If we were
+immortal we should not crave immortality.
+
+
+A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the
+rabbit.
+
+
+Before praising the wisdom of the man who knows how to hold his tongue,
+ascertain if he knows how to hold his pen.
+
+
+The most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection.
+
+
+Love is unlike chess, in that the pieces are moved secretly and the
+player sees most of the game. But the looker-on has one incomparable
+advantage: he is not the stake.
+
+
+It is not for nothing that tigers choose to hide in the jungle, for
+commerce and trade are carried on, mostly, in the open.
+
+
+We say that we love, not whom we will, but whom we must. Our judgment
+need not, therefore, go to confession.
+
+
+Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in
+marriage.
+
+
+If you give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be "a
+deserving object"? No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of
+merit.
+
+
+Bereavement is the name that selfishness gives to a particular
+privation.
+
+
+  O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
+  To get by giving what you lost by gain.
+  With every gift you do but swell the cloud
+  Of witnesses against you, swift and loud--
+  Accomplices who turn and swear you split
+  Your life: half robber and half hypocrite.
+  You're least unsafe when most intact you hold
+  Your curst allotment of dishonest gold.
+
+
+The highest and rarest form of contentment is approval of the success of
+another.
+
+
+  If Inclination challenge, stand and fight--
+  From Opportunity the wise take flight.
+
+
+What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man
+most admires in a woman is devotion to himself.
+
+
+Those who most loudly invite God's attention to themselves when in peril
+of death are those who should most fervently wish to escape his
+observation.
+
+
+When you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair
+to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.
+
+
+How fascinating is Antiquity!--in what a golden haze the ancients lived
+their lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's
+great poets will sing immortal songs, and its archćologists will
+reverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. Meantime
+we swap jack-knives.
+
+
+Observe, my son, with how austere a virtue the man without a cent puts
+aside the temptation to manipulate the market or acquire a monopoly.
+
+
+For study of the good and the bad in woman two women are a needless
+expense.
+
+
+  "There's no free will," says the philosopher;
+    "To hang is most unjust."
+  "There is no free will," assents the officer;
+    "We hang because we must."
+
+
+Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know
+so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.
+
+
+Remembering that it was a woman who lost the world, we should accept the
+act of cackling geese in saving Rome as partial reparation.
+
+
+There are two classes of women who may do as they please; those who are
+rich and those who are poor. The former can count on assent, the latter
+on inattention.
+
+
+When into the house of the heart Curiosity is admitted as the guest of
+Love she turns her host out of doors.
+
+
+Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the
+Future; Age knows her as the Dream.
+
+
+"Who art thou, there in the mire?"
+
+"Intuition. I leaped all the way from where thou standest in fear on the
+brink of the bog."
+
+"A great feat, madam; accept the admiration of Reason, sometimes known
+as Dry-foot."
+
+
+In eradicating an evil, it makes a difference whether it is uprooted or
+rooted up. The difference is in the reformer.
+
+
+The Audible Sisterhood rightly affirms the equality of the sexes: no man
+is so base but some woman is base enough to love him.
+
+
+Having no eyes in the back of the head, we see ourselves on the verge of
+the outlook. Only he who has accomplished the notable feat of turning
+about knows himself the central figure in the universe.
+
+
+Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.
+
+
+If women did the writing of the world, instead of the talking, men would
+be regarded as the superior sex in beauty, grace and goodness.
+
+
+Love is a delightful day's journey. At the farther end kiss your
+companion and say farewell.
+
+
+Let him who would wish to duplicate his every experience prate of the
+value of life.
+
+
+The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats.
+It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or
+possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.
+
+
+The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake
+the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.
+
+
+Thought and emotion dwell apart. When the heart goes into the head there
+is no dissension; only an eviction.
+
+
+If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.
+
+
+"Where goest thou, Ignorance?"
+
+"To fortify the mind of a maiden against a peril."
+
+"I am going thy way. My name is Knowledge."
+
+"Scoundrel! Thou art the peril."
+
+
+A prude is one who blushes modestly at the indelicacy of her thoughts
+and virtuously flies from the temptation of her desires.
+
+
+The man who is always taking you by the hand is the same who if you were
+hungry would take you by the café.
+
+
+When a certain sovereign wanted war he threw out a diplomatic
+intimation; when ready, a diplomat.
+
+
+If public opinion were determined by a throw of the dice, it would in
+the long run be half the time right.
+
+
+The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the
+business known as gambling.
+
+
+A virtuous widow is the most loyal of mortals; she is faithful to that
+which is neither pleased nor profited by her fidelity.
+
+
+Of one who was "foolish" the creators of our language said that he was
+"fond." That we have not definitely reversed the meanings of the words
+should be set down to the credit of our courtesy.
+
+
+Rioting gains its end by the power of numbers. To a believer in the
+wisdom and goodness of majorities it is not permitted to denounce a
+successful mob.
+
+
+  Artistically set to grace
+  The wall of a dissecting-place,
+  A human pericardium
+  Was fastened with a bit of gum,
+  While, simply underrunning it,
+  The one word, "Charity," was writ
+  To show the student band that hovered
+  About it what it once had covered.
+
+
+Virtue is not necessary to a good reputation, but a good reputation is
+helpful to virtue.
+
+
+When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or
+doctrine go upward.
+
+
+We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled
+to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
+
+
+Pascal says that an inch added to the length of Cleopatra's nose would
+have changed the fortunes of the world. But having said this, he has
+said nothing, for all the forces of nature and all the power of
+dynasties could not have added an inch to the length of Cleopatra's
+nose.
+
+
+Our luxuries are always masquerading as necessaries. Woman is the only
+necessary having the boldness and address to compel recognition as a
+luxury.
+
+
+"I am the seat of the affections," said the heart.
+
+"Thank you," said the judgment, "you save my face."
+
+"Who art thou that weepest?"
+
+"Man."
+
+"Nay, thou art Egotism. I am the Scheme of the Universe. Study me and
+learn that nothing matters."
+
+"Then how does it matter that I weep?"
+
+
+A slight is less easily forgiven than an injury, because it implies
+something of contempt, indifference, an overlooking of our importance;
+whereas an injury presupposes some degree of consideration. "The
+black-guards!" said a traveler whom Sicilian brigands had released
+without ransom; "did they think me a person of no consequence?"
+
+
+The people's plaudits are unheard in hell.
+
+
+Generosity to a fallen foe is a virtue that takes no chances.
+
+
+If there was a world before this we must all have died impenitent.
+
+
+We are what we laugh at. The stupid person is a poor joke, the clever, a
+good one.
+
+
+If every man who resents being called a rogue resented being one this
+would be a world of wrath.
+
+
+Force and charm are important elements of character, but it counts for
+little to be stronger than honey and sweeter than a lion.
+
+
+  Grief and discomfiture are coals that cool:
+  Why keep them glowing with thy sighs, poor fool?
+
+
+A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites
+them to think something else.
+
+
+Asked to describe the Deity, a donkey would represent him with long ears
+and a tail. Man's conception is higher and truer: he thinks of him as
+somewhat resembling a man.
+
+
+Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.
+
+
+The sky is a concave mirror in which Man sees his own distorted image
+and seeks to propitiate it.
+
+
+Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land,
+but do not hope that the life insurance companies will offer thee
+special rates.
+
+
+Persons who are horrified by what they believe to be Darwin's theory of
+the descent of Man from the Ape may find comfort in the hope of his
+return.
+
+
+A strong mind is more easily impressed than a weak: you shall not so
+readily convince a fool that you are a philosopher as a philosopher that
+you are a fool.
+
+
+A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art
+accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination.
+
+
+When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a
+codefendant.
+
+
+    O lady fine, fear not to lead
+      To Hymen's shrine a clown:
+    Love cannot level up, indeed,
+      But he can level down.
+
+
+Men are polygamous by nature and monogamous for opportunity. It is a
+faithful man who is willing to be watched by a half-dozen wives.
+
+
+The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen.
+
+"I did not know that I was a virtue," she said. "Why did you not choose
+Innocence?"
+
+"Because of her ignorance," they replied. "She knows nothing but that
+she is a virtue."
+
+
+It is a wise "man's man" who knows what it is that he despises in a
+"ladies' man."
+
+
+If the vices of women worshiped their creators men would boast of the
+adoration they inspire.
+
+
+The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of
+conformity.
+
+
+Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their
+way to the dumps.
+
+
+A woman died who had passed her life in affirming the superiority of her
+sex.
+
+"At last," she said, "I shall have rest and honors."
+
+"Enter," said Saint Peter; "thou shalt wash the faces of the dear little
+cherubim."
+
+
+To woman a general truth has neither value nor interest unless she can
+make a particular application of it. And we say that women are not
+practical!
+
+
+The ignorant know not the depth of their ignorance, but the learned know
+the shallowness of their learning.
+
+
+He who relates his success in charming woman's heart may be assured of
+his failure to charm man's ear.
+
+
+  What poignant memories the shadows bring;
+  What songs of triumph in the dawning ring!
+  By night a coward and by day a king.
+
+
+When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine
+own is open at thy feet.
+
+
+As the physiognomist takes his own face as the highest type and
+standard, so the critic's theories are imposed by his own limitations.
+
+
+"Heaven lies about us in our infancy," and our neighbors take up the
+tale as we mature.
+
+
+  "My laws," she said, "are of myself a part:
+  I read them by examining my heart."
+  "True," he replied; "like those to Moses known,
+  Thine also are engraven upon stone."
+
+
+Love is a distracted attention: from contemplation of one's self one
+turns to consider one's dream.
+
+
+"Halt!--who goes there?"
+
+"Death."
+
+"Advance, Death, and give the countersign."
+
+"How needless! I care not to enter thy camp to-night. Thou shalt enter
+mine."
+
+"What! I a deserter?"
+
+"Nay, a great soldier. Thou shalt overcome all the enemies of mankind."
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Life and the Fear of Death."
+
+
+The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they
+signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most
+loves to close upon.
+
+
+  Ah, woe is his, with length of living cursed,
+  Who, nearing second childhood, had no first.
+  Behind, no glimmer, and before no ray--
+  A night at either end of his dark day.
+
+
+A noble enthusiasm in praise of Woman is not incompatible with a
+spirited zeal in defamation of women.
+
+
+The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for
+love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money.
+
+
+He who thinks that praise of mediocrity atones for disparagement of
+genius is like one who should plead robbery in excuse of theft.
+
+
+The most disagreeable form of masculine hypocrisy is that which finds
+expression in pretended remorse for impossible gallantries.
+
+
+Any one can say that which is new; any one that which is true. For that
+which is both new and true we must go duly accredited to the gods and
+await their pleasure.
+
+
+The test of truth is Reason, not Faith; for to the court of Reason must
+be submitted even the claims of Faith.
+
+
+"Whither goest thou?" said the angel.
+
+"I know not."
+
+"And whence hast thou come?"
+
+"I know not."
+
+"But who art thou?"
+
+"I know not."
+
+"Then thou art Man. See that thou turn not back, but pass on to the
+place whence thou hast come."
+
+
+If Expediency and Righteousness are not father and son they are the most
+harmonious brothers that ever were seen.
+
+
+Train the head, and the heart will take care of itself; a rascal is one
+who knows not how to think.
+
+
+  Do you to others as you would
+    That others do to you;
+  But see that you no service good
+  Would have from others that they could
+    Not rightly do.
+
+
+Taunts are allowable in the case of an obstinate husband: balky horses
+may best be made to go by having their ears bitten.
+
+
+Adam probably regarded Eve as the woman of his choice, and exacted a
+certain gratitude for the distinction of his preference.
+
+
+A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a
+dead ape and work downward through a million graves. He is like the
+lower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the right
+or the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the other
+links.
+
+
+He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a
+natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions,
+unlike those of the wise, harden with age.
+
+
+These are the prerogatives of genius: To know without having learned; to
+draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of
+things.
+
+
+Although one love a dozen times, yet will the latest love seem the
+first. He who says he has loved twice has not loved once.
+
+
+Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons
+of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural
+implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.
+
+
+To parents only, death brings an inconsolable sorrow. When the young die
+and the old live, nature's machinery is working with the friction that
+we name grief.
+
+
+Empty wine-bottles have a bad opinion of women.
+
+
+Civilization is the child of human ignorance and conceit. If Man knew
+his insignificance in the scheme of things he would not think it worth
+while to rise from barbarity to enlightenment. But it is only through
+enlightenment that he can know.
+
+
+Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by
+tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your
+arrival is already recorded.
+
+
+The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It
+will probably rain"--that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain"--that is
+natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists
+because so great is his humility that he does not think it important
+that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no
+artifice to make us forget him.
+
+
+  On fair foundations Theocrats unwise
+  Rear superstructures that offend the skies.
+  "Behold," they cry, "this pile so fair and tall!
+  Come dwell within it and be happy all."
+  But they alone inhabit it, and find,
+  Poor fools, 'tis but a prison for the mind.
+
+
+If thou wilt not laugh at a rich man's wit thou art an anarchist, and if
+thou take not his word thou shalt take nothing that he hath. Make haste,
+therefore, to be civil to thy betters, and so prosper, for prosperity is
+the foundation of the state.
+
+
+Death is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate.
+
+
+When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register.
+
+
+When Eve first saw her reflection in a pool, she sought Adam and accused
+him of infidelity.
+
+
+"Why dost thou weep?"
+
+"For the death of my wife. Alas! I shall
+never again see her!"
+
+"Thy wife will never again see thee, yet
+she does not weep."
+
+
+What theology is to religion and jurisprudence to justice, etiquette is
+to civility.
+
+
+"Who art thou that despite the piercing cold and thy robe's raggedness
+seemest to enjoy thyself?"
+
+"Naught else is enjoyable--I am Contentment."
+
+"Ha! thine must be a magic shirt. Off with it! I shiver in my fine
+attire."
+
+"I have no shirt. Pass on, Success."
+
+
+Ignorance when inevitable is excusable. It may be harmless, even
+beneficial; but it is charming only to the unwise. To affect a spurious
+ignorance is to disclose a genuine.
+
+
+Because you will not take by theft what you can have by cheating, think
+not yours is the only conscience in the world. Even he who permits you
+to cheat his neighbor will shrink from permitting you to cheat himself.
+
+
+"God keep thee, stranger; what is thy name?"
+
+"Wisdom. And thine?"
+
+"Knowledge. How does it happen that we meet?"
+
+"This is an intersection of our paths."
+
+"Will it ever be decreed that we travel always the same road?"
+
+"We were well named if we knew."
+
+
+Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind
+of infidelity.
+
+
+Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes
+dishonest.
+
+
+The philosopher's profoundest conviction is that which he is most
+reluctant to express, lest he mislead.
+
+
+When exchange of identities is possible, be careful; you may choose a
+person who is willing.
+
+
+The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself.
+
+
+In the Parliament of Otumwee the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a
+tax on fools.
+
+"The right honorable and generous gentleman," said a member, "forgets
+that we already have it in the poll tax."
+
+"Whose dead body is that?"
+
+"Credulity's."
+
+"By whom was he slain?"
+
+"Credulity."
+
+"Ah, suicide."
+
+"No, surfeit. He dined at the table of Science, and swallowed all that
+was set before him."
+
+
+Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat.
+
+
+Pray do not despise your delinquent debtor; his default is no proof of
+poverty.
+
+
+Courage is the acceptance of the gambler's chance: a brave man bets
+against the game of the gods.
+
+
+"Who art thou?"
+
+"A philanthropist. And thou?"
+
+"A pauper."
+
+"Away! you have nothing to relieve my need."
+
+
+Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind; Age backward, for nothing is
+before.
+
+
+  Think not, O man, the world has any need
+  That thou canst truly serve by word or deed.
+  Serve thou thy better self, nor care to know
+  How God makes righteousness and roses grow.
+
+
+In spiritual matters material aids are not to be despised: by the use of
+an organ and a painted window an artistic emotion can be made to seem a
+religious ecstasy.
+
+
+The poor man's price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his
+self-respect. It assures him a seat in the gallery.
+
+
+One may know oneself ugly, but there is no mirror for the understanding.
+
+
+
+If the righteous thought death what they think they think it they would
+search less diligently for divine ordinances against suicide.
+
+
+  Weep not for cruelty to rogues in jail:
+  Injustice can the just alone assail.
+  Deny compassion to the wretch who swerved,
+  Till all who, fainting, walked aright are served.
+
+
+The artless woman may be known by her costume: her gown is trimmed with
+feathers of the white blackbird.
+
+
+All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a
+philosopher.
+
+
+Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then
+sets up as a fountain.
+
+
+The present is the frontier between the desert of the past and the
+garden of the future. It is redrawn every moment.
+
+
+The virtue that is not automatic requires more attention than it is
+worth.
+
+
+At sunset our shadows reach the stars, yet we are no greater at death
+than at the noon of life.
+
+
+Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce the errors
+of youth for those of age.
+
+
+From childhood to youth is eternity; from youth to manhood, a season.
+Age comes in a night and is incredible.
+
+
+Avoid the disputatious. When you greet an acquaintance with "How are
+you?" and he replies: "On the contrary, how are _you_?" pass on.
+
+
+If all thought were audible none would be deemed discreditable. We know,
+indeed, that bad thoughts are universal, but that is not the same thing
+as catching them at being so.
+
+
+"All the souls in this place have been happy ever since you blundered
+into it," said Satan, ejecting Hope. "You make trouble wherever you go."
+
+
+Our severest retorts are unanswerable because nobody is present to
+answer them.
+
+
+The angels have good dreams and bad, and we are the dreams. When an
+angel wakes one of us dies.
+
+
+  The man of "honor" pays his bet
+  By saving on his lawful debt.
+  When he to Nature pays his dust
+  (Not for he would, but for he must)
+  Men say, "He settled that, 'tis true,
+  But, faith, it long was overdue."
+
+
+Do not permit a woman to ask forgiveness, for that is only the first
+step. The second is justification of herself by accusation of you.
+
+
+If we knew nothing was behind us we should discern our true relation to
+the universe.
+
+
+Youth has the sun and the stars by which to determine his position on
+the sea of life; Age must sail by dead reckoning and knows not whither
+he is bound.
+
+
+Happiness is lost by criticising it; sorrow by accepting it.
+
+
+As Nature can not make us altogether wretched she resorts to the trick
+of contrast by making us sometimes almost happy.
+
+
+When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in
+adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.
+
+
+When God saw how faulty was man He tried again and made woman. As to why
+He then stopped there are two opinions. One of them is woman's.
+
+
+She hated him because he discovered that her lark was a crow. He hated
+her because she unlocked the cage of his beast.
+
+
+"Who art thou?"
+
+"Friendship."
+
+"I am Love; let us travel together."
+
+"Yes--for a day's journey; then thou arrivest at thy grave."
+
+"And thou?"
+
+"I go as far as the grave of Advantage."
+
+
+Look far enough ahead and always thou shalt see the domes and spires of
+the City of Contentment.
+
+
+You would say of that old man: "He is bald and bent." No; in the
+presence of Death he uncovers and bows.
+
+
+If you saw Love pictured as clad in furs you would smile. Yet every year
+has its winter.
+
+
+You can not disprove the Great Pyramid by showing the impossibility of
+putting the stones in place.
+
+
+Men were singing the praises of Justice.
+
+"Not so loud," said an angel; "if you wake her she will put you all to
+death."
+
+
+Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the
+bogs through which he has floundered.
+
+
+Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly; by shadow only we
+perceive that all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philanthropos would
+abolish evil!
+
+
+One whose falsehoods no longer deceive has forfeited the right to speak
+truth.
+
+
+Wisdom is a special knowledge in excess of all that is known.
+
+
+To live is to believe. The most credulous of mortals is he who is
+persuaded of his incredulity.
+
+
+In him who has never wronged another, revenge is a virtue.
+
+
+That you can not serve God and Mammon is a poor excuse for not serving
+God.
+
+
+A fool's tongue is not so noisy but the wise can hear his ear commanding
+them to silence.
+
+
+If the Valley of Peace could be reached only by the path of love, it
+would be sparsely inhabited.
+
+
+To the eye of failure success is an accident with a presumption of
+crime.
+
+
+Wearing his eyes in his heart, the optimist falls over his own feet, and
+calls it Progress.
+
+
+You can calculate your distance from Hell by the number of wayside
+roses. They are thickest at the hither end of the route.
+
+
+The world was made a sphere in order that men should not push one
+another off, but the landowner smiles when he thinks of the sea.
+
+
+  Let not the night on thy resentment fall:
+  Strike when the wrong is fresh, or not at all.
+  The lion ceases if his first leap fail--
+  'Tis only dogs that nose a cooling trail.
+
+
+Having given out all the virtues that He had made, God made another.
+
+"Give us that also," said His children.
+
+"Nay," He replied, "if I give you that you will slay one another till
+none is left. You shall have only its name, which is Justice."
+
+"That is a good name," they said; "we will give it to a virtue of our
+own creation."
+
+So they gave it to Revenge.
+
+
+  The sea-bird speeding from the realm of night
+  Dashes to death against the beacon-light.
+  Learn from its evil fate, ambitious soul,
+  The ministry of light is guide, not goal.
+
+
+While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your
+past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor
+guide.
+
+
+"O dreadful Death, why veilest thou thy face?"
+
+"To spare me thine impetuous embrace."
+
+
+He who knows himself great accepts the truth in reverent silence, but he
+who only believes himself great has embraced a noisy faith.
+
+
+Life is a little plot of light. We enter, clasp a hand or two, and go
+our several ways back into the darkness. The mystery is infinitely
+pathetic and picturesque.
+
+
+Cheerfulness is the religion of the little. The low hills are a-smirk
+with flowers and greenery; the dominating peaks, austere and desolate,
+holding a prophecy of doom.
+
+
+It is not to our credit that women like best the men who are not as
+other men, nor to theirs that they are not particular as to the nature
+of the difference.
+
+
+In the journey of life when thy shadow falls to the westward stop until
+it falls to the eastward. Thou art then at thy destination.
+
+
+  Seek not for happiness--'tis known
+  To hope and memory alone;
+  At dawn--how bright the noon will be!
+  At eve--how fair it glowed, ah, me!
+
+
+Brain was given to test the heart's credibility as a witness, yet the
+philosopher's lady is almost as fine as the clown's wench.
+
+
+"Who art thou, so sorrowful?"
+
+"Ingratitude. It saddens me to look upon the devastations of
+Benevolence."
+
+"Then veil thine eyes, for I am Benevolence."
+
+"Wretch! thou art my father and my mother."
+
+
+Death is the only prosperity that we neither desire for ourselves nor
+resent in others.
+
+
+To the small part of ignorance that we can arrange and classify we give
+the name Knowledge.
+
+
+"I wish to enter," said the soul of the voluptuary.
+
+"I am told that all the beautiful women are here."
+
+"Enter," said Satan, and the soul of the voluptuary passed in.
+
+"They make the place what it is," added Satan, as the gates clanged.
+
+
+Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without
+falling into her hands.
+
+
+Think not to atone for wealth by apology: you must make restitution to
+the accuser.
+
+
+Study good women and ignore the rest,
+or he best knows the sex who knows the best.
+
+
+Before undergoing a surgical operation arrange your temporal affairs.
+You may live.
+
+
+Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies
+an assumption of superior wisdom.
+
+
+"Who art thou?" said Saint Peter at the Gate.
+
+"I am known as Memory."
+
+"What presumption!--go back to Hell. And who, perspiring friend, art
+thou?"
+
+"_My_ name is Satan. I am looking for----"
+
+"Take your penal apparatus and be off."
+
+And Satan, laying hold of Memory, said: "Come along, you scoundrel! you
+make happiness wherever you are not."
+
+
+Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In
+transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the
+original earth clinging to the roots.
+
+
+The heels of Detection are sore from the toes of Remorse.
+
+
+Twice we see Paradise. In youth we name it Life; in age, Youth.
+
+
+  There are but ten Commandments, true,
+  But that's no hardship, friend, to you;
+  The sins whereof no line is writ
+  You're not commanded to commit.
+
+
+Fear of the darkness is more than an inherited superstition--it is at
+night, mostly, that the king thinks.
+
+
+"Who art thou?" said Mercy.
+
+"Revenge, the father of Justice."
+
+"Thou wearest thy son's clothing."
+
+"One must be clad."
+
+"Farewell--I go to attend thy son."
+
+"Thou wilt find him hiding in yonder jungle."
+
+
+Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
+
+
+Men talk of selecting a wife; horses, of selecting an owner.
+
+
+You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing
+forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are
+avenged fourteen hundred and forty times a day.
+
+
+A sweetheart is a bottle of wine; a wife is a wine-bottle.
+
+
+He gets on best with women who best knows how to get on without them.
+
+
+"Who am I?" asked an awakened soul.
+
+"That is the only knowledge that is denied to you here," answered a
+smiling angel; "this is Heaven."
+
+
+Woman's courage is ignorance of danger; man's is hope of escape.
+
+
+  When God had finished this terrestrial frame
+  And all things else, with or without a name,
+  The Nothing that remained within His hand
+  Said: "Make me into something fine and grand,
+  Thine angels to amuse and entertain."
+  God heard and made it into human brain.
+
+
+If you wish to slay your enemy make haste, O make haste, for already
+Nature's knife is at his throat and yours.
+
+
+To most persons a sense of obligation is insupportable; beware upon whom
+you inflict it.
+
+
+    Bear me, good oceans, to some isle
+      Where I may never fear
+    The snake alurk in woman's smile,
+      The tiger in her tear.
+    Yet bear not with me her, O deeps,
+    Who never smiles and never weeps.
+
+
+Life and Death threw dice for a child.
+
+"I win!" cried Life.
+
+"True," said Death, "but you need a nimbler tongue to proclaim your
+luck. The stake is already dead of age."
+
+
+  How blind is he who, powerless to discern
+  The glories that about his pathway burn,
+  Walks unaware the avenues of Dream,
+  Nor sees the domes of Paradise agleam!
+  O Golden Age, to him more nobly planned
+  Thy light lies ever upon sea and land.
+  From sordid scenes he lifts his eyes at will,
+  And sees a Grecian god on every hill!
+
+
+In childhood we expect, in youth demand, in manhood hope, and in age
+beseech.
+
+
+  A violet softly sighed,
+    A hollyhock shouted above.
+  In the heart of the violet, pride;
+    In the heart of the hollyhock, love.
+
+
+If women knew themselves the fact that men do not know them would
+flatter them less and content them more.
+
+
+The angel with a flaming sword slept at his post, and Eve slipped back
+into the Garden. "Thank Heaven! I am again in Paradise," said Adam.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce,
+Volume 8, by Ambrose Bierce
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ***
+
+***** This file should be named 15599-8.txt or 15599-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/5/9/15599/
+
+Produced by Paul Hollander, Govert Schipper and the Online Distributed
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