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Title: The Best American Humorous Short Stories

Editor: Alexander Jessup

Contributor: H. C. Bunner
George Randolph Chester
Grace MacGowan Cooke
George William Curtis
Harry Stillwell Edwards
Edward Everett Hale
Bret Harte
Wells Hastings
O. Henry
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Richard Malcolm Johnston
Caroline M. Kirkland
William J. Lampton
Eliza Leslie
George Pope Morris
Edgar Allan Poe
Frank R. Stockton

Mark Twain

Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #10947]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10947

Credits: Etext produced by Keith M. Eckrich and PG Distributed
Proofreaders; HTML file produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST
AMERICAN HUMOROUS SHORT STORIES ***

THE BEST
AMERICAN HUMOROUS
SHORT STORIES

Edited by
ALEXANDER JESSUP
Editor of “Representative American Short Stories,”
“The Book of the Short Story,” the “Little
French Masterpieces” Series, etc.

INTRODUCTION
This volume does not aim to contain all “the best American humorous
short stories”; there are many other stories equally as good, I suppose, in
much the same vein, scattered through the range of American literature. I
have tried to keep a certain unity of aim and impression in selecting these
stories. In the first place I determined that the pieces of brief fiction which I
included must first of all be not merely good stories, but good short stories.
I put myself in the position of one who was about to select the best short
stories in the whole range of American literature,[1] but who, just before he
started to do this, was notified that he must refrain from selecting any of the
best American short stories that did not contain the element of humor to a
marked degree. But I have kept in mind the wide boundaries of the term
humor, and also the fact that the humorous standard should be kept second
—although a close second—to the short story standard.
In view of the necessary limitations as to the volume’s size, I could not
hope to represent all periods of American literature adequately, nor was this
necessary in order to give examples of the best that has been done in the
short story in a humorous vein in American literature. Probably all types of
the short story of humor are included here, at any rate. Not only copyright
restrictions but in a measure my own opinion have combined to exclude
anything by Joel Chandler Harris—Uncle Remus—from the collection.
Harris is primarily—in his best work—a humorist, and only secondarily a
short story writer. As a humorist he is of the first rank; as a writer of short
stories his place is hardly so high. His humor is not mere funniness and
diversion; he is a humorist in the fundamental and large sense, as are
Cervantes, Rabelais, and Mark Twain.
No book is duller than a book of jokes, for what is refreshing in small
doses becomes nauseating when perused in large assignments. Humor in

literature is at its best not when served merely by itself but when presented
along with other ingredients of literary force in order to give a wide
representation of life. Therefore “professional literary humorists,” as they
may be called, have not been much considered in making up this collection.
In the history of American humor there are three names which stand out
more prominently than all others before Mark Twain, who, however, also
belongs to a wider classification: “Josh Billings” (Henry Wheeler Shaw,
1815–1885), “Petroleum V. Nasby” (David Ross Locke, 1833–1888), and
“Artemus Ward” (Charles Farrar Browne, 1834–1867). In the history of
American humor these names rank high; in the field of American literature
and the American short story they do not rank so high. I have found nothing
of theirs that was first-class both as humor and as short story. Perhaps just
below these three should be mentioned George Horatio Derby (1823–1861),
author of Phoenixiana (1855) and the Squibob Papers (1859), who wrote
under the name “John Phoenix.” As has been justly said, “Derby, Shaw,
Locke and Browne carried to an extreme numerous tricks already invented
by earlier American humorists, particularly the tricks of gigantic
exaggeration and calm-faced mendacity, but they are plainly in the main
channel of American humor, which had its origin in the first comments of
settlers upon the conditions of the frontier, long drew its principal
inspiration from the differences between that frontier and the more settled
and compact regions of the country, and reached its highest development in
Mark Twain, in his youth a child of the American frontier, admirer and
imitator of Derby and Browne, and eventually a man of the world and one
of its greatest humorists.”[2] Nor have such later writers who were
essentially humorists as “Bill Nye” (Edgar Wilson Nye, 1850–1896) been
considered, because their work does not attain the literary standard and the
short story standard as creditably as it does the humorous one. When we
come to the close of the nineteenth century the work of such men as “Mr.
Dooley” (Finley Peter Dunne, 1867- ) and George Ade (1866- ) stands out.
But while these two writers successfully conform to the exacting critical
requirements of good humor and—especially the former—of good
literature, neither—though Ade more so—attains to the greatest excellence
of the short story. Mr. Dooley of the Archey Road is essentially a
wholesome and wide-poised humorous philosopher, and the author of
Fables in Slang is chiefly a satirist, whether in fable, play or what not.

This volume might well have started with something by Washington
Irving, I suppose many critics would say. It does not seem to me, however,
that Irving’s best short stories, such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and
Rip Van Winkle, are essentially humorous stories, although they are
o’erspread with the genial light of reminiscence. It is the armchair geniality
of the eighteenth century essayists, a constituent of the author rather than of
his material and product. Irving’s best humorous creations, indeed, are
scarcely short stories at all, but rather essaylike sketches, or sketchlike
essays. James Lawson (1799–1880) in his Tales and Sketches: by a
Cosmopolite (1830), notably in The Dapper Gentleman’s Story, is also
plainly a follower of Irving. We come to a different vein in the work of such
writers as William Tappan Thompson (1812–1882), author of the amusing
stories in letter form, Major Jones’s Courtship (1840); Johnson Jones
Hooper (1815–1862), author of Widow Rugby’s Husband, and Other Tales
of Alabama (1851); Joseph G. Baldwin (1815–1864), who wrote The Flush
Times of Alabama and Mississippi (1853); and Augustus Baldwin
Longstreet (1790–1870), whose Georgia Scenes (1835) are as important in
“local color” as they are racy in humor. Yet none of these writers yield the
excellent short story which is also a good piece of humorous literature. But
they opened the way for the work of later writers who did attain these
combined excellences.
The sentimental vein of the midcentury is seen in the work of Seba Smith
(1792–1868), Eliza Leslie (1787–1858), Frances Miriam Whitcher
(“Widow Bedott,” 1811–1852), Mary W. Janvrin (1830–1870), and Alice
Bradley Haven Neal (1828–1863). The well-known work of Joseph Clay
Neal (1807–1847) is so all pervaded with caricature and humor that it
belongs with the work of the professional humorist school rather than with
the short story writers. To mention his Charcoal Sketches, or Scenes in a
Metropolis (1837–1849) must suffice. The work of Seba Smith is
sufficiently expressed in his title, Way Down East, or Portraitures of Yankee
Life (1854), although his Letters of Major Jack Downing (1833) is better
known. Of his single stories may be mentioned The General Court and
Jane Andrews’ Firkin of Butter (October, 1847, Graham’s Magazine). The
work of Frances Miriam Whitcher (“Widow Bedott”) is of somewhat finer
grain, both as humor and in other literary qualities. Her stories or sketches,
such as Aunt Magwire’s Account of Parson Scrantum’s Donation Party
(March, 1848, Godey’s Lady’s Book) and Aunt Magwire’s Account of the

Mission to Muffletegawmy (July, 1859, Godey’s), were afterwards collected
in The Widow Bedott Papers (1855-56-80). The scope of the work of Mary
B. Haven is sufficiently suggested by her story, Mrs. Bowen’s Parlor and
Spare Bedroom (February, 1860, Godey’s), while the best stories of Mary
W. Janvrin include The Foreign Count; or, High Art in Tattletown (October,
1860, Godey’s) and City Relations; or, the Newmans’ Summer at
Clovernook (November, 1861, Godey’s). The work of Alice Bradley Haven
Neal is of somewhat similar texture. Her book, The Gossips of Rivertown,
with Sketches in Prose and Verse (1850) indicates her field, as does the
single title, The Third-Class Hotel (December, 1861, Godey’s). Perhaps the
most representative figure of this school is Eliza Leslie (1787–1858), who
as “Miss Leslie” was one of the most frequent contributors to the magazines
of the 1830’s, 1840’s and 1850’s. One of her best stories is The Watkinson
Evening (December, 1846, Godey’s Lady’s Book), included in the present
volume; others are The Batson Cottage (November, 1846, Godey’s Lady’s
Book) and Juliet Irwin; or, the Carriage People (June, 1847, Godey’s Lady’s
Book). One of her chief collections of stories is Pencil Sketches (1833–
1837). “Miss Leslie,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe, “is celebrated for the homely
naturalness of her stories and for the broad satire of her comic style.” She
was the editor of The Gift one of the best annuals of the time, and in that
position perhaps exerted her chief influence on American literature When
one has read three or four representative stories by these seven authors one
can grasp them all. Their titles as a rule strike the keynote. These writers,
except “the Widow Bedott,” are perhaps sentimentalists rather than
humorists in intention, but read in the light of later days their apparent
serious delineations of the frolics and foibles of their time take on a highly
humorous aspect.
George Pope Morris (1802–1864) was one of the founders of The New
York Mirror, and for a time its editor. He is best known as the author of the
poem, Woodman, Spare That Tree, and other poems and songs. The Little
Frenchman and His Water Lots (1839), the first story in the present volume,
is selected not because Morris was especially prominent in the field of the
short story or humorous prose but because of this single story’s
representative character. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) follows with The
Angel of the Odd (October, 1844, Columbian Magazine), perhaps the best
of his humorous stories. The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether
(November, 1845, Graham’s Magazine) may be rated higher, but it is not

essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire, with too biting an
undercurrent to pass muster in the company of the genial in literature. Poe’s
humorous stories as a whole have tended to belittle rather than increase his
fame, many of them verging on the inane. There are some, however, which
are at least excellent fooling; few more than that.
Probably this is hardly the place for an extended discussion of Poe, since
the present volume covers neither American literature as a whole nor the
American short story in general, and Poe is not a humorist in his more
notable productions. Let it be said that Poe invented or perfected—more
exactly, perfected his own invention of—the modern short story; that is his
general and supreme achievement. He also stands superlative for the quality
of three varieties of short stories, those of terror, beauty and ratiocination. In
the first class belong A Descent into the Maelstrom (1841), The Pit and the
Pendulum (1842), The Black Cat (1843), and The Cask of Amontillado
(1846). In the realm of beauty his notable productions are The Assignation
(1834), Shadow: a Parable (1835), Ligeia (1838), The Fall of the House of
Usher (1839), Eleonora (1841), and The Masque of the Red Death (1842).
The tales of ratiocination—what are now generally termed detective stories
—include The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and its sequel, The
Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842–1843), The Gold-Bug (1843), The Oblong
Box (1844), “Thou Art the Man” (1844), and The Purloined Letter (1844).
Then, too, Poe was a master of style, one of the greatest in English prose,
possibly the greatest since De Quincey, and quite the most remarkable
among American authors. Poe’s influence on the short story form has been
tremendous. Although the effects of structure may be astounding in their
power or unexpectedness, yet the means by which these effects are brought
about are purely mechanical. Any student of fiction can comprehend them,
almost any practitioner of fiction with a bent toward form can fairly master
them. The merit of any short story production depends on many other
elements as well—the value of the structural element to the production as a
whole depends first on the selection of the particular sort of structural
scheme best suited to the story in hand, and secondly, on the way in which
this is combined with the piece of writing to form a well-balanced whole.
Style is more difficult to imitate than structure, but on the other hand the
origin of structural influence is more difficult to trace than that of style. So
while, in a general way, we feel that Poe’s influence on structure in the

short story has been great, it is difficult rather than obvious to trace
particular instances. It is felt in the advance of the general level of short
story art. There is nothing personal about structure—there is everything
personal about style. Poe’s style is both too much his own and too
superlatively good to be successfully imitated—whom have we had who,
even if he were a master of structural effects, could be a second Poe?
Looking at the matter in another way, Poe’s style is not his own at all. There
is nothing “personal” about it in the petty sense of that term. Rather we feel
that, in the case of this author, universality has been attained. It was Poe’s
good fortune to be himself in style, as often in content, on a plane of
universal appeal. But in some general characteristics of his style his work
can be, not perhaps imitated, but emulated. Greater vividness, deft
impressionism, brevity that strikes instantly to a telling effect—all these an
author may have without imitating any one’s style but rather imitating
excellence. Poe’s “imitators” who have amounted to anything have not tried
to imitate him but to vie with him. They are striving after perfectionism. Of
course the sort of good style in which Poe indulged is not the kind of style
—or the varieties of style—suited for all purposes, but for the purposes to
which it is adapted it may well be called supreme.
Then as a poet his work is almost or quite as excellent in a somewhat
more restricted range. In verse he is probably the best artist in American
letters. Here his sole pursuit was beauty, both of form and thought; he is
vivid and apt, intensely lyrical but without much range of thought. He has
deep intuitions but no comprehensive grasp of life.
His criticism is, on the whole, the least important part of his work. He
had a few good and brilliant ideas which came at just the right time to make
a stir in the world, and these his logical mind and telling style enabled him
to present to the best advantage. As a critic he is neither broad-minded,
learned, nor comprehensive. Nor is he, except in the few ideas referred to,
deep. He is, however, limitedly original—perhaps intensely original within
his narrow scope. But the excellences and limitations of Poe in any one part
of his work were his limitations and excellences in all.
As Poe’s best short stories may be mentioned: Metzengerstein (Jan. 14,
1832, Philadelphia Saturday Courier), Ms. Found in a Bottle (October 19,
1833, Baltimore Saturday Visiter), The Assignation (January, 1834, Godey’s
Lady’s Book), Berenice (March, 1835, Southern Literary Messenger),

Morella (April, 1835, Southern Literary Messenger), The Unparalleled
Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (June, 1835, Southern Literary Messenger),
King Pest: a Tale Containing an Allegory (September, 1835, Southern
Literary Messenger), Shadow: a Parable (September, 1835, Southern
Literary Messenger), Ligeia (September, 1838, American Museum), The
Fall of the House of Usher (September, 1839, Burton’s Gentleman’s
Magazine), William Wilson (1839: Gift for 1840), The Conversation of
Eiros and Charmion (December, 1839, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine),
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (April, 1841, Graham’s Magazine), A
Descent into the Maelstrom (May, 1841, Graham’s Magazine), Eleonora
(1841: Gift for 1842), The Masque of the Red Death (May, 1842, Graham’s
Magazine), The Pit and the Pendulum (1842: Gift for 1843), The Tell-Tale
Heart (January, 1843, Pioneer), The Gold-Bug (June 21 and 28, 1843,
Dollar Newspaper), The Black Cat (August 19, 1843, United States
Saturday Post), The Oblong Box (September, 1844, Godey’s Lady’s Book),
The Angel of the Odd (October, 1844, Columbian Magazine), “Thou Art the
Man” (November, 1844, Godey’s Lady’s Book), The Purloined Letter (1844:
Gift for 1845), The Imp of the Perverse (July, 1845, Graham’s Magazine),
The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether (November, 1845, Graham’s
Magazine), The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (December, 1845,
American Whig Review), The Cask of Amontillado (November, 1846,
Godey’s Lady’s Book), and Lander’s Cottage (June 9, 1849, Flag of Our
Union). Poe’s chief collections are: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
(1840), Tales (1845), and The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (1850–
56). These titles have been dropped from recent editions of his works,
however, and the stories brought together under the title Tales, or under
subdivisions furnished by his editors, such as Tales of Ratiocination, etc.
Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland (1801–1864) wrote of the frontier
life of the Middle West in the mid-nineteenth century. Her principal
collection of short stories is Western Clearings (1845), from which The
Schoolmaster’s Progress, first published in The Gift for 1845 (out in 1844),
is taken. Other stories republished in that collection are The Ball at Thram’s
Huddle (April, 1840, Knickerbocker Magazine), Recollections of the Land-
Fever (September, 1840, Knickerbocker Magazine), and The Bee-Tree (The
Gift for 1842; out in 1841). Her description of the country schoolmaster, “a
puppet cut out of shingle and jerked by a string,” and the local color in
general of this and other stories give her a leading place among the writers

of her period who combined fidelity in delineating frontier life with
sufficient fictional interest to make a pleasing whole of permanent value.
George William Curtis (1824–1892) gained his chief fame as an essayist,
and probably became best known from the department which he conducted,
from 1853, as The Editor’s Easy Chair for Harper’s Magazine for many
years. His volume, Prue and I (1856), contains many fictional elements,
and a story from it, Titbottom’s Spectacles, which first appeared in Putnam’s
Monthly for December, 1854, is given in this volume because it is a good
humorous short story rather than because of its author’s general eminence
in this field. Other stories of his worth noting are The Shrouded Portrait (in
The Knickerbocker Gallery, 1855) and The Millenial Club (November,
1858, Knickerbocker Magazine).
Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) is chiefly known as the author of the
short story, The Man Without a Country (December, 1863, Atlantic
Monthly), but his venture in the comic vein, My Double; and How He
Undid Me (September, 1859, Atlantic Monthly), is equally worthy of
appreciation. It was his first published story of importance. Other
noteworthy stories of his are: The Brick Moon (October, November and
December, 1869, Atlantic Monthly), Life in the Brick Moon (February,
1870, Atlantic Monthly), and Susan’s Escort (May, 1890, Harper’s
Magazine). His chief volumes of short stories are: The Man Without a
Country, and Other Tales (1868); The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
(1873); Crusoe in New York, and Other Tales (1880); and Susan’s Escort,
and Others (1897). The stories by Hale which have made his fame all show
ability of no mean order; but they are characterized by invention and
ingenuity rather than by suffusing imagination. There is not much
homogeneity about Hale’s work. Almost any two stories of his read as if
they might have been written by different authors. For the time being
perhaps this is an advantage—his stories charm by their novelty and
individuality. In the long run, however, this proves rather a handicap. True
individuality, in literature as in the other arts, consists not in “being
different” on different occasions—in different works—so much as in being
samely different from other writers; in being consistently one’s self, rather
than diffusedly various selves. This does not lessen the value of particular
stories, of course. It merely injures Hale’s fame as a whole. Perhaps some
will chiefly feel not so much that his stories are different among

themselves, but that they are not strongly anything—anybody’s—in
particular, that they lack strong personality. The pathway to fame is strewn
with stray exhibitions of talent. Apart from his purely literary productions,
Hale was one of the large moral forces of his time, through “uplift” both in
speech and the written word.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), one of the leading wits of
American literature, is not at all well known as a short story writer, nor did
he write many brief pieces of fiction. His fame rests chiefly on his poems
and on the Breakfast-Table books (1858-1860-1872-1890). Old Ironsides,
The Last Leaf, The Chambered Nautilus and Homesick in Heaven are secure
of places in the anthologies of the future, while his lighter verse has made
him one of the leading American writers of “familiar verse.” Frederick
Locker-Lampson in the preface to the first edition of his Lyra Elegantiarum
(1867) declared that Holmes was “perhaps the best living writer of this
species of verse.” His trenchant attack on Homeopathy and Its Kindred
Delusions (1842) makes us wonder what would have been his attitude
toward some of the beliefs of our own day; Christian Science, for example.
He might have “exposed” it under some such title as The Religio-Medical
Masquerade, or brought the batteries of his humor to bear on it in the
manner of Robert Louis Stevenson’s fable, Something In It: “Perhaps there
is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is something in it after all. Let me
be thankful for that.” In Holmes’ long works of fiction, Elsie Venner (1861),
The Guardian Angel (1867) and A Mortal Antipathy (1885), the method is
still somewhat that of the essayist. I have found a short piece of fiction by
him in the March, 1832, number of The New England Magazine, called The
Début, signed O.W.H. The Story of Iris in The Professor at the Breakfast
Table, which ran in The Atlantic throughout 1859, and A Visit to the Asylum
for Aged and Decayed Punsters (January, 1861, Atlantic) are his only other
brief fictions of which I am aware. The last named has been given place in
the present selection because it is characteristic of a certain type and period
of American humor, although its short story qualities are not particularly
strong.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), who achieved fame as “Mark
Twain,” is only incidentally a short story writer, although he wrote many
short pieces of fiction. His humorous quality, I mean, is so preponderant,
that one hardly thinks of the form. Indeed, he is never very strong in

fictional construction, and of the modern short story art he evidently knew
or cared little. He is a humorist in the large sense, as are Rabelais and
Cervantes, although he is also a humorist in various restricted applications
of the word that are wholly American. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County was his first publication of importance, and it saw the
light in the Nov. 18, 1865, number of The Saturday Press. It was
republished in the collection, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, and Other Sketches, in 1867. Others of his best pieces of short
fiction are: The Canvasser’s Tale (December, 1876, Atlantic Monthly), The
£1,000,000 Bank Note (January, 1893, Century Magazine), The Esquimau
Maiden’s Romance (November, 1893, Cosmopolitan), Traveling with a
Reformer (December, 1893, Cosmopolitan), The Man That Corrupted
Hadleyburg (December, 1899, Harper’s), A Double-Barrelled Detective
Story (January and February, 1902, Harper’s) A Dog’s Tale (December,
1903, Harper’s), and Eve’s Diary (December, 1905, Harper’s). Among
Twain’s chief collections of short stories are: The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867); The Stolen White
Elephant (1882), The £1,000,000 Bank Note (1893), and The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories and Sketches (1900).
Harry Stillwell Edwards (1855– ), a native of Georgia, together with
Sarah Barnwell Elliott (? – ) and Will N. Harben (1858–1919) have
continued in the vein of that earlier writer, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet
(1790–1870), author of Georgia Scenes (1835). Edwards’ best work is to be
found in his short stories of black and white life after the manner of Richard
Malcolm Johnston. He has written several novels, but he is essentially a
writer of human-nature sketches. “He is humorous and picturesque,” says
Fred Lewis Pattee, “and often he is for a moment the master of pathos, but
he has added nothing new and nothing commandingly distinctive.”[3] An
exception to this might be made in favor of Elder Brown’s Backslide
(August, 1885, Harper’s), a story in which all the elements are so nicely
balanced that the result may well be called a masterpiece of objective
humor and pathos. Others of his short stories especially worthy of mention
are: Two Runaways (July, 1886, Century), Sister Todhunter’s Heart (July,
1887, Century), “De Valley an’ de Shadder” (January, 1888, Century), An
Idyl of “Sinkin’ Mount’in” (October, 1888, Century), The Rival Souls
(March, 1889, Century), The Woodhaven Goat (March, 1899, Century), and
The Shadow (December, 1906, Century). His chief collections are Two

Runaways, and Other Stories (1889) and His Defense, and Other Stories
(1898).
The most notable, however, of the group of short story writers of Georgia
life is perhaps Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822–1898). He stands between
Longstreet and the younger writers of Georgia life. His first book was
Georgia Sketches, by an Old Man (1864). The Goose Pond School, a short
story, had been written in 1857; it was not published, however, till it
appeared in the November and December, 1869, numbers of a Southern
magazine, The New Eclectic, over the pseudonym “Philemon Perch.” His
famous Dukesborough Tales (1871–1874) was largely a republication of the
earlier book. Other noteworthy collections of his are: Mr. Absalom
Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk (1888), Mr. Fortner’s Marital Claims,
and Other Stories (1892), and Old Times in Middle Georgia (1897). Among
individual stories stand out: The Organ-Grinder (July, 1870, New Eclectic),
Mr. Neelus Peeler’s Conditions (June, 1879, Scribner’s Monthly), The Brief
Embarrassment of Mr. Iverson Blount (September, 1884, Century); The
Hotel Experience of Mr. Pink Fluker (June, 1886, Century), republished in
the present collection; The Wimpy Adoptions (February, 1887, Century), The
Experiments of Miss Sally Cash (September, 1888, Century), and Our Witch
(March, 1897, Century). Johnston must be ranked almost with Bret Harte as
a pioneer in “local color” work, although his work had little recognition
until his Dukesborough Tales were republished by Harper & Brothers in
1883.
Bret Harte (1839–1902) is mentioned here owing to the late date of his
story included in this volume, Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff (March,
1901, Harper’s), although his work as a whole of course belongs to an
earlier period of our literature. It is now well-thumbed literary history that
The Luck of Roaring Camp (August, 1868, Overland) and The Outcasts of
Poker Flat (January, 1869, Overland) brought him a popularity that, in its
suddenness and extent, had no precedent in American literature save in the
case of Mrs. Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. According to Harte’s own
statement, made in the retrospect of later years, he set out deliberately to
add a new province to American literature. Although his work has been
belittled because he has chosen exceptional and theatric happenings, yet his
real strength came from his contact with Western life.

Irving and Dickens and other models served only to teach him his art.
“Finally,” says Prof. Pattee, “Harte was the parent of the modern form of
the short story. It was he who started Kipling and Cable and Thomas Nelson
Page. Few indeed have surpassed him in the mechanics of this most
difficult of arts. According to his own belief, the form is an American
product ... Harte has described the genesis of his own art. It sprang from the
Western humor and was developed by the circumstances that surrounded
him. Many of his short stories are models. They contain not a superfluous
word, they handle a single incident with grapic power, they close without
moral or comment. The form came as a natural evolution from his
limitations and powers. With him the story must of necessity be brief....
Bret Harte was the artist of impulse, the painter of single burning moments,
the flashlight photographer who caught in lurid detail one dramatic episode
in the life of a man or a community and left the rest in darkness.”[4]
Harte’s humor is mostly “Western humor” There is not always uproarious
merriment, but there is a constant background of humor. I know of no more
amusing scene in American literature than that in the courtroom when the
Colonel gives his version of the deacon’s method of signaling to the widow
in Harte’s story included in the present volume, Colonel Starbottle for the
Plaintiff. Here is part of it:
True to the instructions she had received from him, her lips
part in the musical utterance (the Colonel lowered his voice in a
faint falsetto, presumably in fond imitation of his fair client)
“Kerree!” Instantly the night becomes resonant with the
impassioned reply (the Colonel here lifted his voice in stentorian
tones), “Kerrow!” Again, as he passes, rises the soft “Kerree!”;
again, as his form is lost in the distance, comes back the deep
“Kerrow!”
While Harte’s stories all have in them a certain element or background of
humor, yet perhaps the majority of them are chiefly romantic or dramatic
even more than they are humorous.
Among the best of his short stories may be mentioned: The Luck of
Roaring Camp (August, 1868, Overland), The Outcasts of Poker Flat
(January, 1869, Overland), Tennessee’s Partner (October, 1869, Overland),
Brown of Calaveras (March, 1870, Overland), Flip: a California Romance

(in Flip, and Other Stories, 1882), Left Out on Lone Star Mountain
(January, 1884, Longman’s), An Ingenue of the Sierras (July, 1894,
McClure’s), The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s (in The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and
Other Stories, 1894), Chu Chu (in The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other
Stories, 1894), The Man and the Mountain (in The Ancestors of Peter
Atherly, and Other Tales, 1897), Salomy Jane’s Kiss (in Stories in Light and
Shadow, 1898), The Youngest Miss Piper (February, 1900, Leslie’s
Monthly), Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff (March, 1901, Harper’s), A
Mercury of the Foothills (July, 1901, Cosmopolitan), Lanty Foster’s
Mistake (December, 1901, New England), An Ali Baba of the Sierras
(January 4, 1902, Saturday Evening Post), and Dick Boyle’s Business Card
(in Trent’s Trust, and Other Stories, 1903). Among his notable collections of
stories are: The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches (1870), Flip,
and Other Stories (1882), On the Frontier (1884), Colonel Starbottle’s
Client, and Some Other People (1892), A Protégé of Jack Hamlin’s, and
Other Stories (1894), The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other Stories (1894),
The Ancestors of Peter Atherly, and Other Tales (1897), Openings in the
Old Trail (1902), and Trent’s Trust, and Other Stories (1903). The titles and
makeup of several of his collections were changed when they came to be
arranged in the complete edition of his works.[5]
Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896) is one of the humorous geniuses of
American literature. He is equally at home in clever verse or the brief short
story. Prof. Fred Lewis Pattee has summed up his achievement as follows:
“Another [than Stockton] who did much to advance the short story toward
the mechanical perfection it had attained to at the close of the century was
Henry Cuyler Bunner, editor of Puck and creator of some of the most
exquisite vers de société of the period. The title of one of his collections,
Made in France: French Tales Retold with a U.S. Twist (1893), forms an
introduction to his fiction. Not that he was an imitator; few have been more
original or have put more of their own personality into their work. His
genius was Gallic. Like Aldrich, he approached the short story from the
fastidious standpoint of the lyric poet. With him, as with Aldrich, art was a
matter of exquisite touches, of infinite compression, of almost
imperceptible shadings. The lurid splashes and the heavy emphasis of the
local colorists offended his sensitive taste: he would work with suggestion,
with microscopic focussings, and always with dignity and elegance. He was
more American than Henry James, more even than Aldrich. He chose

always distinctively American subjects—New York City was his favorite
theme—and his work had more depth of soul than Stockton’s or Aldrich’s.
The story may be trivial, a mere expanded anecdote, yet it is sure to be so
vitally treated that, like Maupassant’s work, it grips and remains, and, what
is more, it lifts and chastens or explains. It may be said with assurance that
Short Sixes marks one of the high places which have been attained by the
American short story.”[6]
Among Bunner’s best stories are: Love in Old Cloathes (September,
1883, Century), A Successful Failure (July, 1887, Puck), The Love-Letters
of Smith (July 23, 1890, Puck) The Nice People (July 30, 1890, Puck), The
Nine Cent-Girls (August 13, 1890, Puck), The Two Churches of ’Quawket
(August 27, 1890, Puck), A Round-Up (September 10, 1890, Puck), A
Sisterly Scheme (September 24, 1890, Puck), Our Aromatic Uncle (August,
1895, Scribner’s), The Time-Table Test (in The Suburban Sage, 1896). He
collaborated with Prof. Brander Matthews in several stories, notably in The
Documents in the Case (Sept., 1879, Scribner’s Monthly). His best
collections are: Short Sixes: Stories to be Read While the Candle Burns
(1891), More Short Sixes (1894), and Love in Old Cloathes, and Other
Stories (1896).
After Poe and Hawthorne almost the first author in America to make a
vertiginous impression by his short stories was Bret Harte. The wide and
sudden popularity he attained by the publication of his two short stories,
The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868) and The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1869),
has already been noted.[7] But one story just before Harte that astonished
the fiction audience with its power and art was Harriet Prescott Spofford’s
(1835– ) The Amber Gods (January and February, 1860, Atlantic), with its
startling ending, “I must have died at ten minutes past one.” After Harte the
next story to make a great sensation was Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Marjorie
Daw (April, 1873, Atlantic), a story with a surprise at the end, as had been
his A Struggle for Life (July, 1867, Atlantic), although it was only Marjorie
Daw that attracted much attention at the time. Then came George
Washington Cable’s (1844– ) “Posson Jone’,” (April 1, 1876, Appleton’s
Journal) and a little later Charles Egbert Craddock’s (1850– ) The Dancin’
Party at Harrison’s Cove (May, 1878, Atlantic) and The Star in the Valley
(November, 1878, Atlantic). But the work of Cable and Craddock, though
of sterling worth, won its way gradually. Even Edward Everett Hale’s

(1822–1909) My Double; and How He Undid Me (September, 1859,
Atlantic) and The Man Without a Country (December, 1863, Atlantic) had
fallen comparatively still-born. The truly astounding short story successes,
after Poe and Hawthorne, then, were Spofford, Bret Harte and Aldrich. Next
came Frank Richard Stockton (1834–1902). “The interest created by the
appearance of Marjorie Daw,” says Prof. Pattee, “was mild compared with
that accorded to Frank R. Stockton’s The Lady or the Tiger? (1884).
Stockton had not the technique of Aldrich nor his naturalness and ease.
Certainly he had not his atmosphere of the beau monde and his grace of
style, but in whimsicality and unexpectedness and in that subtle art that
makes the obviously impossible seem perfectly plausible and commonplace
he surpassed not only him but Edward Everett Hale and all others. After
Stockton and The Lady or the Tiger? it was realized even by the uncritical
that short story writing had become a subtle art and that the master of its
subtleties had his reader at his mercy.”[8] The publication of Stockton’s
short stories covers a period of over forty years, from Mahala’s Drive
(November, 1868, Lippincott’s) to The Trouble She Caused When She
Kissed (December, 1911, Ladies’ Home Journal), published nine years after
his death. Among the more notable of his stories may be mentioned: The
Transferred Ghost (May, 1882, Century), The Lady or the Tiger?
(November, 1882, Century), The Reversible Landscape (July, 1884,
Century), The Remarkable Wreck of the “Thomas Hyke” (August, 1884,
Century), “His Wife’s Deceased Sister” (January, 1884, Century), A Tale of
Negative Gravity (December, 1884, Century), The Christmas Wreck (in The
Christmas Wreck, and Other Stories, 1886), Amos Kilbright (in Amos
Kilbright, His Adscititious Experiences, with Other Stories, 1888), Asaph
(May, 1892, Cosmopolitan), My Terminal Moraine (April 26, 1892,
Collier’s Once a Week Library), The Magic Egg (June, 1894, Century), The
Buller-Podington Compact (August, 1897, Scribner’s), and The Widow’s
Cruise (in A Story-Teller’s Pack, 1897). Most of his best work was gathered
into the collections: The Lady or the Tiger?, and Other Stories (1884), The
Bee-Man of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales (1887), Amos Kilbright, His
Adscititious Experiences, with Other Stories (1888), The Clocks of
Rondaine, and Other Stories (1892), A Chosen Few (1895), A Story-Teller’s
Pack (1897), and The Queen’s Museum, and Other Fanciful Tales (1906).
After Stockton and Bunner come O. Henry (1862–1910) and Jack
London (1876–1916), apostles of the burly and vigorous in fiction. Beside

or above them stand Henry James (1843–1916)—although he belongs to an
earlier period as well—Edith Wharton (1862– ), Alice Brown (1857– ),
Margaret Wade Deland (1857– ), and Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879– ),
practitioners in all that O. Henry and London are not, of the finer fields, the
more subtle nuances of modern life. With O. Henry and London, though
perhaps less noteworthy, are to be grouped George Randolph Chester
(1869– ) and Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb (1876– ). Then, standing rather each
by himself, are Melville Davisson Post (1871– ), a master of psychological
mystery stories, and Wilbur Daniel Steele (1886– ), whose work it is hard to
classify. These ten names represent much that is best in American short
story production since the beginning of the twentieth century (1900). Not
all are notable for humor; but inasmuch as any consideration of the
American humorous short story cannot be wholly dissociated from a
consideration of the American short story in general, it has seemed not
amiss to mention these authors here. Although Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–
1909) lived on into the twentieth century and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
(1862– ) is still with us, the best and most typical work of these two writers
belongs in the last two decades of the previous century. To an earlier period
also belong Charles Egbert Craddock (1850– ), George Washington Cable
(1844– ), Thomas Nelson Page (1853– ), Constance Fenimore Woolson
(1848–1894), Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835– ), Hamlin Garland (1860– ),
Ambrose Bierce (1842–?), Rose Terry Cooke (1827–1892), and Kate
Chopin (1851–1904).
“O. Henry” was the pen name adopted by William Sydney Porter. He
began his short story career by contributing Whistling Dick’s Christmas
Stocking to McClure’s Magazine in 1899. He followed it with many stories
dealing with Western and South- and Central-American life, and later came
most of his stories of the life of New York City, in which field lies most of
his best work. He contributed more stories to the New York World than to
any other one publication—as if the stories of the author who later came to
be hailed as “the American Maupassant” were not good enough for the
“leading” magazines but fit only for the sensation-loving public of the
Sunday papers! His first published story that showed distinct strength was
perhaps A Blackjack Bargainer (August, 1901, Munsey’s). He followed this
with such masterly stories as: The Duplicity of Hargraves (February, 1902,
Junior Munsey), The Marionettes (April, 1902, Black Cat), A Retrieved
Reformation (April, 1903, Cosmopolitan), The Guardian of the Accolade

(May, 1903, Cosmopolitan), The Enchanted Kiss (February, 1904,
Metropolitan), The Furnished Room (August 14, 1904, New York World),
An Unfinished Story (August, 1905, McClure’s), The Count and the
Wedding Guest (October 8, 1905, New York World), The Gift of the Magi
(December 10, 1905, New York World), The Trimmed Lamp (August, 1906,
McClure’s), Phoebe (November, 1907, Everybody’s), The Hiding of Black
Bill (October, 1908, Everybody’s), No Story (June, 1909, Metropolitan), A
Municipal Report (November, 1909, Hampton’s), A Service of Love (in The
Four Million, 1909), The Pendulum (in The Trimmed Lamp, 1910),
Brickdust Row (in The Trimmed Lamp, 1910), and The Assessor of Success
(in The Trimmed Lamp, 1910). Among O. Henry’s best volumes of short
stories are: The Four Million (1909), Options (1909), Roads of Destiny
(1909), The Trimmed Lamp (1910), Strictly Business: More Stories of the
Four Million (1910), Whirligigs (1910), and Sixes and Sevens (1911).
“Nowhere is there anything just like them. In his best work—and his
tales of the great metropolis are his best—he is unique. The soul of his art is
unexpectedness. Humor at every turn there is, and sentiment and
philosophy and surprise. One never may be sure of himself. The end is
always a sensation. No foresight may predict it, and the sensation always is
genuine. Whatever else O. Henry was, he was an artist, a master of plot and
diction, a genuine humorist, and a philosopher. His weakness lay in the very
nature of his art. He was an entertainer bent only on amusing and surprising
his reader. Everywhere brilliancy, but too often it is joined to cheapness; art,
yet art merging swiftly into caricature. Like Harte, he cannot be trusted.
Both writers on the whole may be said to have lowered the standards of
American literature, since both worked in the surface of life with theatric
intent and always without moral background, O. Henry moves, but he never
lifts. All is fortissimo; he slaps the reader on the back and laughs loudly as
if he were in a bar-room. His characters, with few exceptions, are extremes,
caricatures. Even his shop girls, in the limning of whom he did his best
work, are not really individuals; rather are they types, symbols. His work
was literary vaudeville, brilliant, highly amusing, and yet vaudeville.”[9]
The Duplicity of Hargraves, the story by O. Henry given in this volume, is
free from most of his defects. It has a blend of humor and pathos that puts it
on a plane of universal appeal.

George Randolph Chester (1869– ) gained distinction by creating the
genial modern business man of American literature who is not content to
“get rich quick” through the ordinary channels. Need I say that I refer to
that amazing compound of likeableness and sharp practices, Get-Rich-
Quick Wallingford? The story of his included in this volume, Bargain Day
at Tutt House (June, 1905, McClure’s), was nearly his first story; only two
others, which came out in The Saturday Evening Post in 1903 and 1904,
preceded it. Its breathless dramatic action is well balanced by humor. Other
stories of his deserving of special mention are: A Corner in Farmers
(February, 29, 1908, Saturday Evening Post), A Fortune in Smoke (March
14, 1908, Saturday Evening Post), Easy Money (November 14, 1908,
Saturday Evening Post), The Triple Cross (December 5, 1908, Saturday
Evening Post), Spoiling the Egyptians (December 26, 1908, Saturday
Evening Post), Whipsawed! (January 16, 1909, Saturday Evening Post), The
Bubble Bank (January 30 and February 6, 1909, Saturday Evening Post),
Straight Business (February 27, 1909, Saturday Evening Post), Sam Turner:
a Business Man’s Love Story (March 26, April 2 and 9, 1910, Saturday
Evening Post), Fundamental Justice (July 25, 1914, Saturday Evening
Post), A Scropper Patcher (October, 1916, Everybody’s), and Jolly
Bachelors (February, 1918, Cosmopolitan). His best collections are: Get-
Rich-Quick Wallingford (1908), Young Wallingford (1910), Wallingford in
His Prime (1913), and Wallingford and Blackie Daw (1913). It is often
difficult to find in his books short stories that one may be looking for, for
the reason that the titles of the individual stories have been removed in
order to make the books look like novels subdivided into chapters.
Grace MacGowan Cooke (1863– ) is a writer all of whose work has
interest and perdurable stuff in it, but few are the authors whose
achievements in the American short story stand out as a whole. In A Call
(August, 1906, Harper’s) she surpasses herself and is not perhaps herself
surpassed by any of the humorous short stories that have come to the fore
so far in America in the twentieth century. The story is no less delightful in
its fidelity to fact and understanding of young human nature than in its
relish of humor. Some of her stories deserving of special mention are: The
Capture of Andy Proudfoot (June, 1904, Harper’s), In the Strength of the
Hills (December, 1905, Metropolitan), The Machinations of Ocoee
Gallantine (April, 1906, Century), A Call (August, 1906, Harper’s), Scott
Bohannon’s Bond (May 4, 1907, Collier’s), and A Clean Shave (November,

1912, Century). Her best short stories do not seem to have been collected in
volumes as yet, although she has had several notable long works of fiction
published, such as The Power and the Glory (1910), and several good
juveniles.
William James Lampton (?–1917), who was known to many of his
admirers as Will Lampton or as W.J.L. merely, was one of the most unique
and interesting characters of literary and Bohemian New York from about
1895 to his death in 1917. I remember walking up Fifth Avenue with him
one Sunday afternoon just after he had shown me a letter from the man who
was then Comptroller of the Currency. The letter was signed so illegibly
that my companion was in doubts as to the sender, so he suggested that we
stop at a well-known hotel at the corner of 59th Street, and ask the manager
who the Comptroller of the Currency then was, so that he might know
whom the letter was from. He said that the manager of a big hotel like that,
where many prominent people stayed, would be sure to know. When this
problem had been solved to our satisfaction, John Skelton Williams proving
to be the man, Lampton said, “Now you’ve told me who he is, I’ll show you
who I am.” So he asked for a copy of The American Magazine at a
newsstand in the hotel corridor, opened it, and showed the manager a full-
page picture of himself clad in a costume suggestive of the time of
Christopher Columbus, with high ruffs around his neck, that happened to
appear in the magazine the current month. I mention this incident to
illustrate the lack of conventionality and whimsical originality of the man,
that stood out no less forcibly in his writings than in his daily life. He had
little use for “doing the usual thing in the usual sort of way.” He first gained
prominence by his book of verse, Yawps (1900). His poems were free from
convention in technique as well as in spirit, although their chief innovation
was simply that as a rule there was no regular number of syllables in a line;
he let the lines be any length they wanted to be, to fit the sense or the length
of what he had to say. He once said to me that if anything of his was
remembered he thought it would be his poem, Lo, the Summer Girl. His
muse often took the direction of satire, but it was always good-natured even
when it hit the hardest. He had in his makeup much of the detached
philosopher, like Cervantes and Mark Twain.
There was something cosmic about his attitude to life, and this showed in
much that he did. He was the only American writer of humorous verse of

his day whom I always cared to read, or whose lines I could remember
more than a few weeks. This was perhaps because his work was never
merely humorous, but always had a big sweep of background to it, like the
ruggedness of the Kentucky mountains from which he came. It was Colonel
George Harvey, then editor of Harper’s Weekly, who had started the boom
to make Woodrow Wilson President. Wilson afterwards, at least seemingly,
repudiated his sponsor, probably because of Harvey’s identification with
various moneyed interests. Lampton’s poem on the subject, with its refrain,
“Never again, said Colonel George,” I remember as one of the most notable
of his poems on current topics. But what always seemed to me the best of
his poems dealing with matters of the hour was one that I suggested he
write, which dealt with gift-giving to the public, at about the time that
Andrew Carnegie was making a big stir with his gifts for libraries,
beginning:
Dunno, perhaps
One of the yaps
Like me would make
A holy break
Doing his turn
With money to burn.
Anyhow, I
Wouldn’t shy
Making a try!

and containing, among many effective touches, the pathetic lines,
. . . I’d help
The poor who try to help themselves,
Who have to work so hard for bread
They can’t get very far ahead.

When James Lane Allen’s novel, The Reign of Law, came out (1900), a
little quatrain by Lampton that appeared in The Bookman (September, 1900)
swept like wildfire across the country, and was read by a hundred times as
many people as the book itself:
“The Reign of Law”?
Well, Allen, you’re lucky;
It’s the first time it ever
Rained law in Kentucky!

The reader need not be reminded that at that period Kentucky family feuds
were well to the fore. As Lampton had started as a poet, the editors were

bound to keep him pigeon-holed as far as they could, and his ambition to
write short stories was not at first much encouraged by them. His
predicament was something like that of the chief character of Frank R.
Stockton’s story, “His Wife’s Deceased Sister” (January, 1884, Century),
who had written a story so good that whenever he brought the editors
another story they invariably answered in substance, “We’re afraid it won’t
do. Can’t you give us something like ‘His Wife’s Deceased Sister’?” This
was merely Stockton’s turning to account his own somewhat similar
experience with the editors after his story, The Lady or the Tiger?
(November, 1882, Century) appeared. Likewise the editors didn’t want
Lampton’s short stories for a while because they liked his poems so well.
Do I hear some critics exclaiming that there is nothing remarkable about
How the Widow Won the Deacon, the story by Lampton included in this
volume? It handles an amusing situation lightly and with grace. It is one of
those things that read easily and are often difficult to achieve. Among his
best stories are: The People’s Number of the Worthyville Watchman (May
12, 1900, Saturday Evening Post), Love’s Strange Spell (April 27, 1901,
Saturday Evening Post), Abimelech Higgins’ Way (August 24, 1001,
Saturday Evening Post), A Cup of Tea (March, 1902, Metropolitan),
Winning His Spurs (May, 1904, Cosmopolitan), The Perfidy of Major
Pulsifer (November, 1909, Cosmopolitan), How the Widow Won the Deacon
(April, 1911, Harper’s Bazaar), and A Brown Study (December, 1913,
Lippincott’s). There is no collection as yet of his short stories. Although
familiarly known as “Colonel” Lampton, and although of Kentucky, he was
not merely a “Kentucky Colonel,” for he was actually appointed Colonel on
the staff of the governor of Kentucky. At the time of his death he was about
to be made a brigadier-general and was planning to raise a brigade of
Kentucky mountaineers for service in the Great War. As he had just struck
his stride in short story writing, the loss to literature was even greater than
the patriotic loss.
Gideon (April, 1914, Century), by Wells Hastings (1878– ), the story
with which this volume closes, calls to mind the large number of notable
short stories in American literature by writers who have made no large
name for themselves as short story writers, or even otherwise in letters.
American literature has always been strong in its “stray” short stories of
note. In Mr. Hastings’ case, however, I feel that the fame is sure to come.

He graduated from Yale in 1902, collaborated with Brian Hooker (1880- )
in a novel, The Professor’s Mystery (1911) and alone wrote another novel,
The Man in the Brown Derby (1911). His short stories include: The New
Little Boy (July, 1911, American), That Day (September, 1911, American),
The Pick-Up (December, 1911, Everybody’s), and Gideon (April, 1914,
Century). The last story stands out. It can be compared without
disadvantage to the best work, or all but the very best work, of Thomas
Nelson Page, it seems to me. And from the reader’s standpoint it has the
advantage—is this not also an author’s advantage?—of a more modern
setting and treatment. Mr. Hastings is, I have been told, a director in over a
dozen large corporations. Let us hope that his business activities will not
keep him too much away from the production of literature—for to rank as a
piece of literature, something of permanent literary value, Gideon is surely
entitled.
ALEXANDER JESSUP.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] This I have attempted in Representative
American Short Stories (Allyn & Bacon:
Boston, 1922).
[2] Will D. Howe, in The Cambridge History of
American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 158–159 (G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1918).
[3] A History of American Literature Since
1870, p. 317 (The Century Co.: 1915).
[4] A History of American Literature Since
1870, pp 79–81.
[5] “The Works of Bret Harte,” twenty volumes.
The Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
[6] The Cambridge History of American
Literature, Vol. II, p. 386.
[7] See this Introduction.
[8] The Cambridge History of American
Literature, Vol. II, p. 385.

[9] Fred Lewis Pattee, in The Cambridge
History of American Literature, Vol. II, p. 394.

CONTENTS
Introduction v
Alexander Jessup
The Little Frenchman and His Water Lots (1839) 1
George Pope Morris
The Angel of the Odd (1844) 7
Edgar Allan Poe
The Schoolmaster’s Progress (1844) 18
Caroline M.S. Kirkland
The Watkinson Evening (1846) 34
Eliza Leslie
Titbottom’s Spectacles (1854) 52
George William Curtis
My Double; and How He Undid Me (1859) 75
Edward Everett Hale
A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed
(1861) 94
Punsters
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
(1865) 102
County
Mark Twain
Elder Brown’s Backslide (1885) 109
Harry Stillwell Edwards
The Hotel Experience of Mr. Pink Fluker (1886) 128

Richard Malcolm Johnston
The Nice People (1890) 141
Henry Cuyler Bunner
The Buller-Podington Compact (1897) 151
Frank Richard Stockton
Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff (1901) 170
Bret Harte
The Duplicity of Hargraves (1902) 199
O. Henry
Bargain Day at Tutt House (1905) 213
George Randolph Chester
A Call (1906) 237
Grace MacGowan Cooke
How the Widow Won the Deacon (1911) 252
William James Lampton
Gideon (1914) 260
Wells Hastings

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Nice People, by Henry Cuyler Bunner, is republished from his
volume, Short Sixes, by permission of its publishers, Charles Scribner’s
Sons. The Buller-Podington Compact, by Frank Richard Stockton, is from
his volume, Afield and Afloat, and is republished by permission of Charles
Scribner’s Sons. Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff, by Bret Harte, is from
the collection of his stories entitled Openings in the Old Trail, and is
republished by permission of the Houghton Mifflin Company, the
authorized publishers of Bret Harte’s complete works. The Duplicity of
Hargraves, by O. Henry, is from his volume, Sixes and Sevens, and is
republished by permission of its publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co. These
stories are fully protected by copyright, and should not be republished
except by permission of the publishers mentioned. Thanks are due Mrs.
Grace MacGowan Cooke for permission to use her story, A Call,
republished here from Harper’s Magazine; Wells Hastings, for permission
to reprint his story, Gideon, from The Century Magazine; and George
Randolph Chester, for permission to include Bargain Day at Tutt House,
from McClure’s Magazine. I would also thank the heirs of the late lamented
Colonel William J. Lampton for permission to use his story, How the Widow
Won the Deacon, from Harper’s Bazaar. These stories are all copyrighted,
and cannot be republished except by authorization of their authors or heirs.
The editor regrets that their publishers have seen fit to refuse him
permission to include George W. Cable’s story, “Posson Jone’,” and Irvin S.
Cobb’s story, The Smart Aleck. He also regrets he was unable to obtain a
copy of Joseph C. Duport’s story, The Wedding at Timber Hollow, in time
for inclusion, to which its merits—as he remembers them—certainly entitle
it. Mr. Duport, in addition to his literary activities, has started an interesting
“back to Nature” experiment at Westfield, Massachusetts.

To
Charles Goodrich Whiting
Critic, Poet, Friend

THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN AND HIS WATER
LOTS[10]
By George Pope Morris (1802–1864)
Look into those they call unfortunate,
And, closer view’d, you’ll find they are unwise.—Young.

Let wealth come in by comely thrift,
And not by any foolish shift:
’Tis haste
Makes waste:
Who gripes too hard the dry and slippery sand
Holds none at all, or little, in his hand.—Herrick.

Let well alone.—Proverb.

How much real comfort every one might enjoy if he would be contented
with the lot in which heaven has cast him, and how much trouble would be
avoided if people would only “let well alone.” A moderate independence,
quietly and honestly procured, is certainly every way preferable even to
immense possessions achieved by the wear and tear of mind and body so
necessary to procure them. Yet there are very few individuals, let them be
doing ever so well in the world, who are not always straining every nerve to
do better; and this is one of the many causes why failures in business so
frequently occur among us. The present generation seem unwilling to
“realize” by slow and sure degrees; but choose rather to set their whole
hopes upon a single cast, which either makes or mars them forever!
Gentle reader, do you remember Monsieur Poopoo? He used to keep a
small toy-store in Chatham, near the corner of Pearl Street. You must
recollect him, of course. He lived there for many years, and was one of the
most polite and accommodating of shopkeepers. When a juvenile, you have
bought tops and marbles of him a thousand times. To be sure you have; and

seen his vinegar-visage lighted up with a smile as you flung him the
coppers; and you have laughed at his little straight queue and his dimity
breeches, and all the other oddities that made up the everyday apparel of my
little Frenchman. Ah, I perceive you recollect him now.
Well, then, there lived Monsieur Poopoo ever since he came from “dear,
delightful Paris,” as he was wont to call the city of his nativity—there he
took in the pennies for his kickshaws—there he laid aside five thousand
dollars against a rainy day—there he was as happy as a lark—and there, in
all human probability, he would have been to this very day, a respected and
substantial citizen, had he been willing to “let well alone.” But Monsieur
Poopoo had heard strange stories about the prodigious rise in real estate;
and, having understood that most of his neighbors had become suddenly
rich by speculating in lots, he instantly grew dissatisfied with his own lot,
forthwith determined to shut up shop, turn everything into cash, and set
about making money in right-down earnest. No sooner said than done; and
our quondam storekeeper a few days afterward attended an extensive sale of
real estate, at the Merchants’ Exchange.
There was the auctioneer, with his beautiful and inviting lithographic
maps—all the lots as smooth and square and enticingly laid out as possible
—and there were the speculators—and there, in the midst of them, stood
Monsieur Poopoo.
“Here they are, gentlemen,” said he of the hammer, “the most valuable
lots ever offered for sale. Give me a bid for them!”
“One hundred each,” said a bystander.
“One hundred!” said the auctioneer, “scarcely enough to pay for the
maps. One hundred—going—and fifty—gone! Mr. H., they are yours. A
noble purchase. You’ll sell those same lots in less than a fortnight for fifty
thousand dollars profit!”
Monsieur Poopoo pricked up his ears at this, and was lost in
astonishment. This was a much easier way certainly of accumulating riches
than selling toys in Chatham Street, and he determined to buy and mend his
fortune without delay.
The auctioneer proceeded in his sale. Other parcels were offered and
disposed of, and all the purchasers were promised immense advantages for

their enterprise. At last came a more valuable parcel than all the rest. The
company pressed around the stand, and Monsieur Poopoo did the same.
“I now offer you, gentlemen, these magnificent lots, delightfully situated
on Long Island, with valuable water privileges. Property in fee—title
indisputable—terms of sale, cash—deeds ready for delivery immediately
after the sale. How much for them? Give them a start at something. How
much?” The auctioneer looked around; there were no bidders. At last he
caught the eye of Monsieur Poopoo. “Did you say one hundred, sir?
Beautiful lots—valuable water privileges—shall I say one hundred for
you?”
“Oui, monsieur; I will give you von hundred dollar apiece, for de lot vid
de valuarble vatare privalege; c’est ça.”
“Only one hundred apiece for these sixty valuable lots—only one
hundred—going—going—going—gone!”
Monsieur Poopoo was the fortunate possessor. The auctioneer
congratulated him—the sale closed—and the company dispersed.
“Pardonnez-moi, monsieur,” said Poopoo, as the auctioneer descended
his pedestal, “you shall excusez-moi, if I shall go to votre bureau, your
counting-house, ver quick to make every ting sure wid respec to de lot vid
de valuarble vatare privalege. Von leetle bird in de hand he vorth two in de
tree, c’est vrai—eh?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Vell den, allons.”
And the gentlemen repaired to the counting-house, where the six
thousand dollars were paid, and the deeds of the property delivered.
Monsieur Poopoo put these carefully in his pocket, and as he was about
taking his leave, the auctioneer made him a present of the lithographic
outline of the lots, which was a very liberal thing on his part, considering
the map was a beautiful specimen of that glorious art. Poopoo could not
admire it sufficiently. There were his sixty lots, as uniform as possible, and
his little gray eyes sparkled like diamonds as they wandered from one end
of the spacious sheet to the other.

Poopoo’s heart was as light as a feather, and he snapped his fingers in the
very wantonness of joy as he repaired to Delmonico’s, and ordered the first
good French dinner that had gladdened his palate since his arrival in
America.
After having discussed his repast, and washed it down with a bottle of
choice old claret, he resolved upon a visit to Long Island to view his
purchase. He consequently immediately hired a horse and gig, crossed the
Brooklyn ferry, and drove along the margin of the river to the Wallabout,
the location in question.
Our friend, however, was not a little perplexed to find his property.
Everything on the map was as fair and even as possible, while all the
grounds about him were as undulated as they could well be imagined, and
there was an elbow of the East River thrusting itself quite into the ribs of
the land, which seemed to have no business there. This puzzled the
Frenchman exceedingly; and, being a stranger in those parts, he called to a
farmer in an adjacent field.
“Mon ami, are you acquaint vid dis part of de country—eh?”
“Yes, I was born here, and know every inch of it.”
“Ah, c’est bien, dat vill do,” and the Frenchman got out of the gig, tied
the horse, and produced his lithographic map.
“Den maybe you vill have de kindness to show me de sixty lot vich I
have bought, vid de valuarble vatare privalege?”
The farmer glanced his eye over the paper.
“Yes, sir, with pleasure; if you will be good enough to get into my boat, I
will row you out to them!”
“Vat dat you say, sure?”
“My friend,” said the farmer, “this section of Long Island has recently
been bought up by the speculators of New York, and laid out for a great
city; but the principal street is only visible at low tide. When this part of the
East River is filled up, it will be just there. Your lots, as you will perceive,
are beyond it; and are now all under water.”

At first the Frenchman was incredulous. He could not believe his senses.
As the facts, however, gradually broke upon him, he shut one eye, squinted
obliquely at the heavens—-the river—the farmer—and then he turned away
and squinted at them all over again! There was his purchase sure enough;
but then it could not be perceived for there was a river flowing over it! He
drew a box from his waistcoat pocket, opened it, with an emphatic knock
upon the lid, took a pinch of snuff and restored it to his waistcoat pocket as
before. Poopoo was evidently in trouble, having “thoughts which often lie
too deep for tears”; and, as his grief was also too big for words, he untied
his horse, jumped into his gig, and returned to the auctioneer in hot haste.
It was near night when he arrived at the auction-room—his horse in a
foam and himself in a fury. The auctioneer was leaning back in his chair,
with his legs stuck out of a low window, quietly smoking a cigar after the
labors of the day, and humming the music from the last new opera.
“Monsieur, I have much plaisir to fin’ you, chez vous, at home.”
“Ah, Poopoo! glad to see you. Take a seat, old boy.”
“But I shall not take de seat, sare.”
“No—why, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, beaucoup de matter. I have been to see de gran lot vot you sell me
to-day.”
“Well, sir, I hope you like your purchase?”
“No, monsieur, I no like him.”
“I’m sorry for it; but there is no ground for your complaint.”
“No, sare; dare is no ground at all—de ground is all vatare!”
“You joke!”
“I no joke. I nevare joke; je n’entends pas la raillerie, Sare, voulez-vous
have de kindness to give me back de money vot I pay!”
“Certainly not.”
“Den vill you be so good as to take de East River off de top of my lot?”
“That’s your business, sir, not mine.”

“Den I make von mauvaise affaire—von gran mistake!”
“I hope not. I don’t think you have thrown your money away in the
land.”
“No, sare; but I tro it avay in de vatare!”
“That’s not my fault.”
“Yes, sare, but it is your fault. You’re von ver gran rascal to swindle me
out of de l’argent.”
“Hello, old Poopoo, you grow personal; and if you can’t keep a civil
tongue in your head, you must go out of my counting-room.”
“Vare shall I go to, eh?”
“To the devil, for aught I care, you foolish old Frenchman!” said the
auctioneer, waxing warm.
“But, sare, I vill not go to de devil to oblige you!” replied the Frenchman,
waxing warmer. “You sheat me out of all de dollar vot I make in Shatham
Street; but I vill not go to de devil for all dat. I vish you may go to de devil
yourself you dem yankee-doo-dell, and I vill go and drown myself, tout de
suite, right avay.”
“You couldn’t make a better use of your water privileges, old boy!”
“Ah, miséricorde! Ah, mon dieu, je suis abîmé. I am ruin! I am done up! I
am break all into ten sousan leetle pieces! I am von lame duck, and I shall
vaddle across de gran ocean for Paris, vish is de only valuarble vatare
privalege dat is left me à present!”
Poor Poopoo was as good as his word. He sailed in the next packet, and
arrived in Paris almost as penniless as the day he left it.
Should any one feel disposed to doubt the veritable circumstances here
recorded, let him cross the East River to the Wallabout, and farmer J——
will row him out to the very place where the poor Frenchman’s lots still
remain under water.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] From The Little Frenchman and His Water
Lots, with Other Sketches of the Times (1839),
by George Pope Morris.

THE ANGEL OF THE ODD[11]
By Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
It was a chilly November afternoon. I had just consummated an
unusually hearty dinner, of which the dyspeptic truffe formed not the least
important item, and was sitting alone in the dining-room with my feet upon
the fender and at my elbow a small table which I had rolled up to the fire,
and upon which were some apologies for dessert, with some miscellaneous
bottles of wine, spirit, and liqueur. In the morning I had been reading
Glover’s Leonidas, Wilkie’s Epigoniad, Lamartine’s Pilgrimage, Barlow’s
Columbiad, Tuckerman’s Sicily, and Griswold’s Curiosities, I am willing to
confess, therefore, that I now felt a little stupid. I made effort to arouse
myself by frequent aid of Lafitte, and all failing, I betook myself to a stray
newspaper in despair. Having carefully perused the column of “Houses to
let,” and the column of “Dogs lost,” and then the columns of “Wives and
apprentices runaway,” I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter,
and reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable,
conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end
to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result. I was about throwing
away in disgust
This folio of four pages, happy work
Which not even critics criticise,

when I felt my attention somewhat aroused by the paragraph which follows:
“The avenues to death are numerous and strange. A London paper
mentions the decease of a person from a singular cause. He was playing at
‘puff the dart,’ which is played with a long needle inserted in some worsted,
and blown at a target through a tin tube. He placed the needle at the wrong
end of the tube, and drawing his breath strongly to puff the dart forward

with force, drew the needle into his throat. It entered the lungs, and in a few
days killed him.”
Upon seeing this I fell into a great rage, without exactly knowing why.
“This thing,” I exclaimed, “is a contemptible falsehood—a poor hoax—the
lees of the invention of some pitiable penny-a-liner, of some wretched
concocter of accidents in Cocaigne. These fellows knowing the extravagant
gullibility of the age set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable
possibilities, of odd accidents as they term them, but to a reflecting intellect
(like mine, I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to
the side of my nose), to a contemplative understanding such as I myself
possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these
‘odd accidents’ is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I
intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the ‘singular’
about it.”
“Mein Gott, den, vat a vool you bees for dat!” replied one of the most
remarkable voices I ever heard. At first I took it for a rumbling in my ears—
such as a man sometimes experiences when getting very drunk—but upon
second thought, I considered the sound as more nearly resembling that
which proceeds from an empty barrel beaten with a big stick; and, in fact,
this I should have concluded it to be, but for the articulation of the syllables
and words. I am by no means naturally nervous, and the very few glasses of
Lafitte which I had sipped served to embolden me a little, so that I felt
nothing of trepidation, but merely uplifted my eyes with a leisurely
movement and looked carefully around the room for the intruder. I could
not, however, perceive any one at all.
“Humph!” resumed the voice as I continued my survey, “you mus pe so
dronk as de pig den for not zee me as I zit here at your zide.”
Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and
there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript,
although not altogether indescribable. His body was a wine-pipe or a rum
puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In
its nether extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the
purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion of the
carcass two tolerably long bottles with the necks outward for hands. All the
head that I saw the monster possessed of was one of those Hessian canteens

which resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This
canteen (with a funnel on its top like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes)
was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and
through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very
precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and grumbling
noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk.
“I zay,” said he, “you mos pe dronk as de pig, vor zit dare and not zee me
zit ere; and I zay, doo, you mos pe pigger vool as de goose, vor to dispelief
vat iz print in de print. ’Tiz de troof—dat it iz—ebery vord ob it.”
“Who are you, pray?” said I with much dignity, although somewhat
puzzled; “how did you get here? and what is it you are talking about?”
“As vor ow I com’d ere,” replied the figure, “dat iz none of your
pizziness; and as vor vat I be talking apout, I be talk apout vat I tink proper;
and as vor who I be, vy dat is de very ting I com’d here for to let you zee
for yourself.”
“You are a drunken vagabond,” said I, “and I shall ring the bell and order
my footman to kick you into the street.”
“He! he! he!” said the fellow, “hu! hu! hu! dat you can’t do.”
“Can’t do!” said I, “what do you mean? I can’t do what?”
“Ring de pell,” he replied, attempting a grin with his little villainous
mouth.
Upon this I made an effort to get up in order to put my threat into
execution, but the ruffian just reached across the table very deliberately, and
hitting me a tap on the forehead with the neck of one of the long bottles,
knocked me back into the armchair from which I had half arisen. I was
utterly astounded, and for a moment was quite at a loss what to do. In the
meantime he continued his talk.
“You zee,” said he, “it iz te bess vor zit still; and now you shall know
who I pe. Look at me! zee! I am te Angel ov te Odd.”
“And odd enough, too,” I ventured to reply; “but I was always under the
impression that an angel had wings.”

“Te wing!” he cried, highly incensed, “vat I pe do mit te wing? Mein
Gott! do you take me for a shicken?”
“No—oh, no!” I replied, much alarmed; “you are no chicken—certainly
not.”
“Well, den, zit still and pehabe yourself, or I’ll rap you again mid me vist.
It iz te shicken ab te wing, und te owl ab te wing, und te imp ab te wing,
und te head-teuffel ab te wing. Te angel ab not te wing, and I am te Angel ov
te Odd.”
“And your business with me at present is—is——”
“My pizziness!” ejaculated the thing, “vy vat a low-bred puppy you mos
pe vor to ask a gentleman und an angel apout his pizziness!”
This language was rather more than I could bear, even from an angel; so,
plucking up courage, I seized a salt-cellar which lay within reach, and
hurled it at the head of the intruder. Either he dodged, however, or my aim
was inaccurate; for all I accomplished was the demolition of the crystal
which protected the dial of the clock upon the mantelpiece. As for the
Angel, he evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or three hard,
consecutive raps upon the forehead as before. These reduced me at once to
submission, and I am almost ashamed to confess that, either through pain or
vexation, there came a few tears into my eyes.
“Mein Gott!” said the Angel of the Odd, apparently much softened at my
distress; “mein Gott, te man is eder ferry dronk or ferry zorry. You mos not
trink it so strong—you mos put te water in te wine. Here, trink dis, like a
good veller, and don’t gry now—don’t!”
Hereupon the Angel of the Odd replenished my goblet (which was about
a third full of port) with a colorless fluid that he poured from one of his
hand-bottles. I observed that these bottles had labels about their necks, and
that these labels were inscribed “Kirschenwässer.”
The considerate kindness of the Angel mollified me in no little measure;
and, aided by the water with which he diluted my port more than once, I at
length regained sufficient temper to listen to his very extraordinary
discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but I gleaned from
what he said that he was a genius who presided over the contretemps of
mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which

are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my venturing
to express my total incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very
angry indeed, so that at length I considered it the wiser policy to say
nothing at all, and let him have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at
great length, while I merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and
amused myself with munching raisins and filiping the stems about the
room. But, by and by, the Angel suddenly construed this behavior of mine
into contempt. He arose in a terrible passion, slouched his funnel down over
his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a threat of some character, which I did
not precisely comprehend, and finally made me a low bow and departed,
wishing me, in the language of the archbishop in “Gil Bias,” beaucoup de
bonheur et un peu plus de bon sens.
His departure afforded me relief. The very few glasses of Lafitte that I
had sipped had the effect of rendering me drowsy, and I felt inclined to take
a nap of some fifteen or twenty minutes, as is my custom after dinner. At six
I had an appointment of consequence, which it was quite indispensable that
I should keep. The policy of insurance for my dwelling-house had expired
the day before; and some dispute having arisen it was agreed that, at six, I
should meet the board of directors of the company and settle the terms of a
renewal. Glancing upward at the clock on the mantelpiece (for I felt too
drowsy to take out my watch), I had the pleasure to find that I had still
twenty-five minutes to spare. It was half-past five; I could easily walk to the
insurance office in five minutes; and my usual siestas had never been
known to exceed five-and-twenty. I felt sufficiently safe, therefore, and
composed myself to my slumbers forthwith.
Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward the
timepiece, and was half inclined to believe in the possibility of odd
accidents when I found that, instead of my ordinary fifteen or twenty
minutes, I had been dozing only three; for it still wanted seven-and-twenty
of the appointed hour. I betook myself again to my nap, and at length a
second time awoke, when, to my utter amazement, it still wanted twenty-
seven minutes of six. I jumped up to examine the clock, and found that it
had ceased running. My watch informed me that it was half-past seven; and,
of course, having slept two hours, I was too late for my appointment. “It
will make no difference,” I said: “I can call at the office in the morning and
apologize; in the meantime what can be the matter with the clock?” Upon

examining it I discovered that one of the raisin stems which I had been
filiping about the room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd had
flown through the fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in the
keyhole, with an end projecting outward, had thus arrested the revolution of
the minute hand.
“Ah!” said I, “I see how it is. This thing speaks for itself. A natural
accident, such as will happen now and then!”
I gave the matter no further consideration, and at my usual hour retired to
bed. Here, having placed a candle upon a reading stand at the bed head, and
having made an attempt to peruse some pages of the Omnipresence of the
Deity, I unfortunately fell asleep in less than twenty seconds, leaving the
light burning as it was.
My dreams were terrifically disturbed by visions of the Angel of the Odd.
Methought he stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside the curtains, and in
the hollow, detestable tones of a rum puncheon, menaced me with the
bitterest vengeance for the contempt with which I had treated him. He
concluded a long harangue by taking off his funnel-cap, inserting the tube
into my gullet, and thus deluging me with an ocean of Kirschenwässer,
which he poured in a continuous flood, from one of the long-necked bottles
that stood him instead of an arm. My agony was at length insufferable, and I
awoke just in time to perceive that a rat had run off with the lighted candle
from the stand, but not in season to prevent his making his escape with it
through the hole, Very soon a strong, suffocating odor assailed my nostrils;
the house, I clearly perceived, was on fire. In a few minutes the blaze broke
forth with violence, and in an incredibly brief period the entire building was
wrapped in flames. All egress from my chamber, except through a window,
was cut off. The crowd, however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder.
By means of this I was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a
huge hog, about whose rotund stomach, and indeed about whose whole air
and physiognomy, there was something which reminded me of the Angel of
the Odd—when this hog, I say, which hitherto had been quietly slumbering
in the mud, took it suddenly into his head that his left shoulder needed
scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing-post than that
afforded by the foot of the ladder. In an instant I was precipitated, and had
the misfortune to fracture my arm.

This accident, with the loss of my insurance, and with the more serious
loss of my hair, the whole of which had been singed off by the fire,
predisposed me to serious impressions, so that finally I made up my mind to
take a wife. There was a rich widow disconsolate for the loss of her seventh
husband, and to her wounded spirit I offered the balm of my vows. She
yielded a reluctant consent to my prayers. I knelt at her feet in gratitude and
adoration. She blushed and bowed her luxuriant tresses into close contact
with those supplied me temporarily by Grandjean. I know not how the
entanglement took place but so it was. I arose with a shining pate, wigless;
she in disdain and wrath, half-buried in alien hair. Thus ended my hopes of
the widow by an accident which could not have been anticipated, to be sure,
but which the natural sequence of events had brought about.
Without despairing, however, I undertook the siege of a less implacable
heart. The fates were again propitious for a brief period, but again a trivial
incident interfered. Meeting my betrothed in an avenue thronged with the
elite of the city, I was hastening to greet her with one of my best considered
bows, when a small particle of some foreign matter lodging in the corner of
my eye rendered me for the moment completely blind. Before I could
recover my sight, the lady of my love had disappeared—irreparably
affronted at what she chose to consider my premeditated rudeness in
passing her by ungreeted. While I stood bewildered at the suddenness of
this accident (which might have happened, nevertheless, to any one under
the sun), and while I still continued incapable of sight, I was accosted by
the Angel of the Odd, who proffered me his aid with a civility which I had
no reason to expect. He examined my disordered eye with much gentleness
and skill, informed me that I had a drop in it, and (whatever a “drop” was)
took it out, and afforded me relief.
I now considered it high time to die (since fortune had so determined to
persecute me), and accordingly made my way to the nearest river. Here,
divesting myself of my clothes (for there is no reason why we cannot die as
we were born), I threw myself headlong into the current; the sole witness of
my fate being a solitary crow that had been seduced into the eating of
brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered away from his fellows. No
sooner had I entered the water than this bird took it into his head to fly
away with the most indispensable portion of my apparel. Postponing,
therefore, for the present, my suicidal design, I just slipped my nether

extremities into the sleeves of my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of
the felon with all the nimbleness which the case required and its
circumstances would admit. But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran
at full speed, with my nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the
purloiner of my property, I suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer
upon terra firma; the fact is, I had thrown myself over a precipice, and
should inevitably have been dashed to pieces but for my good fortune in
grasping the end of a long guide-rope, which depended from a passing
balloon.
As soon as I sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the terrific
predicament in which I stood, or rather hung, I exerted all the power of my
lungs to make that predicament known to the aeronaut overhead. But for a
long time I exerted myself in vain. Either the fool could not, or the villain
would not perceive me. Meanwhile the machine rapidly soared, while my
strength even more rapidly failed. I was soon upon the point of resigning
myself to my fate, and dropping quietly into the sea, when my spirits were
suddenly revived by hearing a hollow voice from above, which seemed to
be lazily humming an opera air. Looking up, I perceived the Angel of the
Odd. He was leaning, with his arms folded, over the rim of the car; and with
a pipe in his mouth, at which he puffed leisurely, seemed to be upon
excellent terms with himself and the universe. I was too much exhausted to
speak, so I merely regarded him with an imploring air.
For several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he said
nothing. At length, removing carefully his meerschaum from the right to the
left corner of his mouth, he condescended to speak.
“Who pe you,” he asked, “und what der teuffel you pe do dare?”
To this piece of impudence, cruelty, and affectation, I could reply only by
ejaculating the monosyllable “Help!”
“Elp!” echoed the ruffian, “not I. Dare iz te pottle—elp yourself, und pe
tam’d!”
With these words he let fall a heavy bottle of Kirschenwässer, which,
dropping precisely upon the crown of my head, caused me to imagine that
my brains were entirely knocked out. Impressed with this idea I was about

to relinquish my hold and give up the ghost with a good grace, when I was
arrested by the cry of the Angel, who bade me hold on.
“’Old on!” he said: “don’t pe in te ’urry—don’t. Will you pe take de
odder pottle, or ’ave you pe got zober yet, and come to your zenzes?”
I made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twice—once in the negative,
meaning thereby that I would prefer not taking the other bottle at present;
and once in the affirmative, intending thus to imply that I was sober and
had positively come to my senses. By these means I somewhat softened the
Angel.
“Und you pelief, ten,” he inquired, “at te last? You pelief, ten, in te
possibility of te odd?”
I again nodded my head in assent.
“Und you ave pelief in me, te Angel of te Odd?”
I nodded again.
“Und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk und te vool?”
I nodded once more.
“Put your right hand into your left preeches pocket, ten, in token ov your
vull zubmizzion unto te Angel ov te Odd.”
This thing, for very obvious reasons, I found it quite impossible to do. In
the first place, my left arm had been broken in my fall from the ladder, and
therefore, had I let go my hold with the right hand I must have let go
altogether. In the second place, I could have no breeches until I came across
the crow. I was therefore obliged, much to my regret, to shake my head in
the negative, intending thus to give the Angel to understand that I found it
inconvenient, just at that moment, to comply with his very reasonable
demand! No sooner, however, had I ceased shaking my head than—
“Go to der teuffel, ten!” roared the Angel of the Odd.
In pronouncing these words he drew a sharp knife across the guide-rope
by which I was suspended, and as we then happened to be precisely over
my own house (which, during my peregrinations, had been handsomely
rebuilt), it so occurred that I tumbled headlong down the ample chimney
and alit upon the dining-room hearth.

Upon coming to my senses (for the fall had very thoroughly stunned me)
I found it about four o’clock in the morning. I lay outstretched where I had
fallen from the balloon. My head groveled in the ashes of an extinguished
fire, while my feet reposed upon the wreck of a small table, overthrown,
and amid the fragments of a miscellaneous dessert, intermingled with a
newspaper, some broken glasses and shattered bottles, and an empty jug of
the Schiedam Kirschenwässer. Thus revenged himself the Angel of the Odd.

FOOTNOTES:
[11] From The Columbian Magazine, October,
1844.

THE SCHOOLMASTER’S PROGRESS[12]
By Caroline M.S. Kirkland (1801–1864)
Master William Horner came to our village to school when he was about
eighteen years old: tall, lank, straight-sided, and straight-haired, with a
mouth of the most puckered and solemn kind. His figure and movements
were those of a puppet cut out of shingle and jerked by a string; and his
address corresponded very well with his appearance. Never did that prim
mouth give way before a laugh. A faint and misty smile was the widest
departure from its propriety, and this unaccustomed disturbance made
wrinkles in the flat, skinny cheeks like those in the surface of a lake, after
the intrusion of a stone. Master Horner knew well what belonged to the
pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity stood high on the list of
indispensable qualifications. He had made up his mind before he left his
father’s house how he would look during the term. He had not planned any
smiles (knowing that he must “board round”), and it was not for ordinary
occurrences to alter his arrangements; so that when he was betrayed into a
relaxation of the muscles, it was “in such a sort” as if he was putting his
bread and butter in jeopardy.
Truly he had a grave time that first winter. The rod of power was new to
him, and he felt it his “duty” to use it more frequently than might have been
thought necessary by those upon whose sense the privilege had palled.
Tears and sulky faces, and impotent fists doubled fiercely when his back
was turned, were the rewards of his conscientiousness; and the boys—and
girls too—were glad when working time came round again, and the master
went home to help his father on the farm.
But with the autumn came Master Horner again, dropping among us as
quietly as the faded leaves, and awakening at least as much serious
reflection. Would he be as self-sacrificing as before, postponing his own

ease and comfort to the public good, or would he have become more
sedentary, and less fond of circumambulating the school-room with a switch
over his shoulder? Many were fain to hope he might have learned to smoke
during the summer, an accomplishment which would probably have
moderated his energy not a little, and disposed him rather to reverie than to
action. But here he was, and all the broader-chested and stouter-armed for
his labors in the harvest-field.
Let it not be supposed that Master Horner was of a cruel and ogrish
nature—a babe-eater—a Herod—one who delighted in torturing the
helpless. Such souls there may be, among those endowed with the awful
control of the ferule, but they are rare in the fresh and natural regions we
describe. It is, we believe, where young gentlemen are to be crammed for
college, that the process of hardening heart and skin together goes on most
vigorously. Yet among the uneducated there is so high a respect for bodily
strength, that it is necessary for the schoolmaster to show, first of all, that he
possesses this inadmissible requisite for his place. The rest is more readily
taken for granted. Brains he may have—a strong arm he must have: so he
proves the more important claim first. We must therefore make all due
allowance for Master Horner, who could not be expected to overtop his
position so far as to discern at once the philosophy of teaching.
He was sadly brow-beaten during his first term of service by a great
broad-shouldered lout of some eighteen years or so, who thought he needed
a little more “schooling,” but at the same time felt quite competent to direct
the manner and measure of his attempts.
“You’d ought to begin with large-hand, Joshuay,” said Master Horner to
this youth.
“What should I want coarse-hand for?” said the disciple, with great
contempt; “coarse-hand won’t never do me no good. I want a fine-hand
copy.”
The master looked at the infant giant, and did as he wished, but we say
not with what secret resolutions.
At another time, Master Horner, having had a hint from some one more
knowing than himself, proposed to his elder scholars to write after dictation,
expatiating at the same time quite floridly (the ideas having been supplied

by the knowing friend), upon the advantages likely to arise from this
practice, and saying, among other things,
“It will help you, when you write letters, to spell the words good.”
“Pooh!” said Joshua, “spellin’ ain’t nothin’; let them that finds the
mistakes correct ’em. I’m for every one’s havin’ a way of their own.”
“How dared you be so saucy to the master?” asked one of the little boys,
after school.
“Because I could lick him, easy,” said the hopeful Joshua, who knew
very well why the master did not undertake him on the spot.
Can we wonder that Master Horner determined to make his empire good
as far as it went?
A new examination was required on the entrance into a second term, and,
with whatever secret trepidation, the master was obliged to submit. Our law
prescribes examinations, but forgets to provide for the competency of the
examiners; so that few better farces offer than the course of question and
answer on these occasions. We know not precisely what were Master
Horner’s trials; but we have heard of a sharp dispute between the inspectors
whether a-n-g-e-l spelt angle or angel. Angle had it, and the school
maintained that pronunciation ever after. Master Horner passed, and he was
requested to draw up the certificate for the inspectors to sign, as one had left
his spectacles at home, and the other had a bad cold, so that it was not
convenient for either to write more than his name. Master Homer’s
exhibition of learning on this occasion did not reach us, but we know that it
must have been considerable, since he stood the ordeal.
“What is orthography?” said an inspector once, in our presence.
The candidate writhed a good deal, studied the beams overhead and the
chickens out of the window, and then replied,
“It is so long since I learnt the first part of the spelling-book, that I can’t
justly answer that question. But if I could just look it over, I guess I could.”
Our schoolmaster entered upon his second term with new courage and
invigorated authority. Twice certified, who should dare doubt his
competency? Even Joshua was civil, and lesser louts of course obsequious;

though the girls took more liberties, for they feel even at that early age, that
influence is stronger than strength.
Could a young schoolmaster think of feruling a girl with her hair in
ringlets and a gold ring on her finger? Impossible—and the immunity
extended to all the little sisters and cousins; and there were enough large
girls to protect all the feminine part of the school. With the boys Master
Horner still had many a battle, and whether with a view to this, or as an
economical ruse, he never wore his coat in school, saying it was too warm.
Perhaps it was an astute attention to the prejudices of his employers, who
love no man that does not earn his living by the sweat of his brow. The
shirt-sleeves gave the idea of a manual-labor school in one sense at least. It
was evident that the master worked, and that afforded a probability that the
scholars worked too.
Master Horner’s success was most triumphant that winter. A year’s
growth had improved his outward man exceedingly, filling out the limbs so
that they did not remind you so forcibly of a young colt’s, and supplying the
cheeks with the flesh and blood so necessary where mustaches were not
worn. Experience had given him a degree of confidence, and confidence
gave him power. In short, people said the master had waked up; and so he
had. He actually set about reading for improvement; and although at the end
of the term he could not quite make out from his historical studies which
side Hannibal was on, yet this is readily explained by the fact that he
boarded round, and was obliged to read generally by firelight, surrounded
by ungoverned children.
After this, Master Horner made his own bargain. When schooltime came
round with the following autumn, and the teacher presented himself for a
third examination, such a test was pronounced no longer necessary; and the
district consented to engage him at the astounding rate of sixteen dollars a
month, with the understanding that he was to have a fixed home, provided
he was willing to allow a dollar a week for it. Master Horner bethought him
of the successive “killing-times,” and consequent doughnuts of the twenty
families in which he had sojourned the years before, and consented to the
exaction.
Behold our friend now as high as district teacher can ever hope to be—
his scholarship established, his home stationary and not revolving, and the

good behavior of the community insured by the fact that he, being of age,
had now a farm to retire upon in case of any disgust.
Master Horner was at once the preëminent beau of the neighborhood,
spite of the prejudice against learning. He brushed his hair straight up in
front, and wore a sky-blue ribbon for a guard to his silver watch, and
walked as if the tall heels of his blunt boots were egg-shells and not leather.
Yet he was far from neglecting the duties of his place. He was beau only on
Sundays and holidays; very schoolmaster the rest of the time.
It was at a “spelling-school” that Master Horner first met the educated
eyes of Miss Harriet Bangle, a young lady visiting the Engleharts in our
neighborhood. She was from one of the towns in Western New York, and
had brought with her a variety of city airs and graces somewhat caricatured,
set off with year-old French fashions much travestied. Whether she had
been sent out to the new country to try, somewhat late, a rustic chance for
an establishment, or whether her company had been found rather trying at
home, we cannot say. The view which she was at some pains to make
understood was, that her friends had contrived this method of keeping her
out of the way of a desperate lover whose addresses were not acceptable to
them.
If it should seem surprising that so high-bred a visitor should be
sojourning in the wild woods, it must be remembered that more than one
celebrated Englishman and not a few distinguished Americans have farmer
brothers in the western country, no whit less rustic in their exterior and
manner of life than the plainest of their neighbors. When these are visited
by their refined kinsfolk, we of the woods catch glimpses of the gay world,
or think we do.
That great medicine hath
With its tinct gilded—

many a vulgarism to the satisfaction of wiser heads than ours.
Miss Bangle’s manner bespoke for her that high consideration which she
felt to be her due. Yet she condescended to be amused by the rustics and
their awkward attempts at gaiety and elegance; and, to say truth, few of the
village merry-makings escaped her, though she wore always the air of great
superiority.

The spelling-school is one of the ordinary winter amusements in the
country. It occurs once in a fortnight, or so, and has power to draw out all
the young people for miles round, arrayed in their best clothes and their
holiday behavior. When all is ready, umpires are elected, and after these
have taken the distinguished place usually occupied by the teacher, the
young people of the school choose the two best scholars to head the
opposing classes. These leaders choose their followers from the mass, each
calling a name in turn, until all the spellers are ranked on one side or the
other, lining the sides of the room, and all standing. The schoolmaster,
standing too, takes his spelling-book, and gives a placid yet awe-inspiring
look along the ranks, remarking that he intends to be very impartial, and
that he shall give out nothing that is not in the spelling-book. For the first
half hour or so he chooses common and easy words, that the spirit of the
evening may not be damped by the too early thinning of the classes. When a
word is missed, the blunderer has to sit down, and be a spectator only for
the rest of the evening. At certain intervals, some of the best speakers mount
the platform, and “speak a piece,” which is generally as declamatory as
possible.
The excitement of this scene is equal to that afforded by any city
spectacle whatever; and towards the close of the evening, when difficult and
unusual words are chosen to confound the small number who still keep the
floor, it becomes scarcely less than painful. When perhaps only one or two
remain to be puzzled, the master, weary at last of his task, though a favorite
one, tries by tricks to put down those whom he cannot overcome in fair
fight. If among all the curious, useless, unheard-of words which may be
picked out of the spelling-book, he cannot find one which the scholars have
not noticed, he gets the last head down by some quip or catch. “Bay” will
perhaps be the sound; one scholar spells it “bey,” another, “bay,” while the
master all the time means “ba,” which comes within the rule, being in the
spelling-book.
It was on one of these occasions, as we have said, that Miss Bangle,
having come to the spelling-school to get materials for a letter to a female
friend, first shone upon Mr. Horner. She was excessively amused by his
solemn air and puckered mouth, and set him down at once as fair game. Yet
she could not help becoming somewhat interested in the spelling-school,

and after it was over found she had not stored up half as many of the
schoolmaster’s points as she intended, for the benefit of her correspondent.
In the evening’s contest a young girl from some few miles’ distance,
Ellen Kingsbury, the only child of a substantial farmer, had been the very
last to sit down, after a prolonged effort on the part of Mr. Horner to puzzle
her, for the credit of his own school. She blushed, and smiled, and blushed
again, but spelt on, until Mr. Horner’s cheeks were crimson with excitement
and some touch of shame that he should be baffled at his own weapons. At
length, either by accident or design, Ellen missed a word, and sinking into
her seat was numbered with the slain.
In the laugh and talk which followed (for with the conclusion of the
spelling, all form of a public assembly vanishes), our schoolmaster said so
many gallant things to his fair enemy, and appeared so much animated by
the excitement of the contest, that Miss Bangle began to look upon him
with rather more respect, and to feel somewhat indignant that a little rustic
like Ellen should absorb the entire attention of the only beau. She put on,
therefore, her most gracious aspect, and mingled in the circle; caused the
schoolmaster to be presented to her, and did her best to fascinate him by
certain airs and graces which she had found successful elsewhere. What
game is too small for the close-woven net of a coquette?
Mr. Horner quitted not the fair Ellen until he had handed her into her
father’s sleigh; and he then wended his way homewards, never thinking that
he ought to have escorted Miss Bangle to her uncle’s, though she certainly
waited a little while for his return.
We must not follow into particulars the subsequent intercourse of our
schoolmaster with the civilized young lady. All that concerns us is the result
of Miss Bangle’s benevolent designs upon his heart. She tried most
sincerely to find its vulnerable spot, meaning no doubt to put Mr. Homer on
his guard for the future; and she was unfeignedly surprised to discover that
her best efforts were of no avail. She concluded he must have taken a
counter-poison, and she was not slow in guessing its source. She had
observed the peculiar fire which lighted up his eyes in the presence of Ellen
Kingsbury, and she bethought her of a plan which would ensure her some
amusement at the expense of these impertinent rustics, though in a manner
different somewhat from her original more natural idea of simple coquetry.

A letter was written to Master Horner, purporting to come from Ellen
Kingsbury, worded so artfully that the schoolmaster understood at once that
it was intended to be a secret communication, though its ostensible object
was an inquiry about some ordinary affair. This was laid in Mr. Horner’s
desk before he came to school, with an intimation that he might leave an
answer in a certain spot on the following morning. The bait took at once, for
Mr. Horner, honest and true himself, and much smitten with the fair Ellen,
was too happy to be circumspect. The answer was duly placed, and as duly
carried to Miss Bangle by her accomplice, Joe Englehart, an unlucky pickle
who “was always for ill, never for good,” and who found no difficulty in
obtaining the letter unwatched, since the master was obliged to be in school
at nine, and Joe could always linger a few minutes later. This answer being
opened and laughed at, Miss Bangle had only to contrive a rejoinder, which
being rather more particular in its tone than the original communication, led
on yet again the happy schoolmaster, who branched out into sentiment,
“taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,” talked of hills and dales and rivulets,
and the pleasures of friendship, and concluded by entreating a continuance
of the correspondence.
Another letter and another, every one more flattering and encouraging
than the last, almost turned the sober head of our poor master, and warmed
up his heart so effectually that he could scarcely attend to his business. The
spelling-schools were remembered, however, and Ellen Kingsbury made
one of the merry company; but the latest letter had not forgotten to caution
Mr. Horner not to betray the intimacy; so that he was in honor bound to
restrict himself to the language of the eyes hard as it was to forbear the
single whisper for which he would have given his very dictionary. So, their
meeting passed off without the explanation which Miss Bangle began to
fear would cut short her benevolent amusement.
The correspondence was resumed with renewed spirit, and carried on
until Miss Bangle, though not overburdened with sensitiveness, began to be
a little alarmed for the consequences of her malicious pleasantry. She
perceived that she herself had turned schoolmistress, and that Master
Horner, instead of being merely her dupe, had become her pupil too; for the
style of his replies had been constantly improving and the earnest and
manly tone which he assumed promised any thing but the quiet, sheepish
pocketing of injury and insult, upon which she had counted. In truth, there

was something deeper than vanity in the feelings with which he regarded
Ellen Kingsbury. The encouragement which he supposed himself to have
received, threw down the barrier which his extreme bashfulness would have
interposed between himself and any one who possessed charms enough to
attract him; and we must excuse him if, in such a case, he did not criticise
the mode of encouragement, but rather grasped eagerly the proffered good
without a scruple, or one which he would own to himself, as to the
propriety with which it was tendered. He was as much in love as a man can
be, and the seriousness of real attachment gave both grace and dignity to his
once awkward diction.
The evident determination of Mr. Horner to come to the point of asking
papa brought Miss Bangle to a very awkward pass. She had expected to
return home before matters had proceeded so far, but being obliged to
remain some time longer, she was equally afraid to go on and to leave off, a
dénouement being almost certain to ensue in either case. Things stood thus
when it was time to prepare for the grand exhibition which was to close the
winter’s term.
This is an affair of too much magnitude to be fully described in the small
space yet remaining in which to bring out our veracious history. It must be
“slubber’d o’er in haste”—its important preliminaries left to the cold
imagination of the reader—its fine spirit perhaps evaporating for want of
being embodied in words. We can only say that our master, whose school-
life was to close with the term, labored as man never before labored in such
a cause, resolute to trail a cloud of glory after him when he left us. Not a
candlestick nor a curtain that was attainable, either by coaxing or bribery,
was left in the village; even the only piano, that frail treasure, was wiled
away and placed in one corner of the rickety stage. The most splendid of all
the pieces in the Columbian Orator, the American Speaker, the——but we
must not enumerate—in a word, the most astounding and pathetic
specimens of eloquence within ken of either teacher or scholars, had been
selected for the occasion; and several young ladies and gentlemen, whose
academical course had been happily concluded at an earlier period, either at
our own institution or at some other, had consented to lend themselves to
the parts, and their choicest decorations for the properties, of the dramatic
portion of the entertainment.

Among these last was pretty Ellen Kingsbury, who had agreed to
personate the Queen of Scots, in the garden scene from Schiller’s tragedy of
Mary Stuart; and this circumstance accidentally afforded Master Horner the
opportunity he had so long desired, of seeing his fascinating correspondent
without the presence of peering eyes. A dress-rehearsal occupied the
afternoon before the day of days, and the pathetic expostulations of the
lovely Mary—
Mine all doth hang—my life—my destiny—
Upon my words—upon the force of tears!—

aided by the long veil, and the emotion which sympathy brought into
Ellen’s countenance, proved too much for the enforced prudence of Master
Horner. When the rehearsal was over, and the heroes and heroines were to
return home, it was found that, by a stroke of witty invention not new in the
country, the harness of Mr. Kingsbury’s horses had been cut in several
places, his whip hidden, his buffalo-skins spread on the ground, and the
sleigh turned bottom upwards on them. This afforded an excuse for the
master’s borrowing a horse and sleigh of somebody, and claiming the
privilege of taking Miss Ellen home, while her father returned with only
Aunt Sally and a great bag of bran from the mill—companions about
equally interesting.
Here, then, was the golden opportunity so long wished for! Here was the
power of ascertaining at once what is never quite certain until we have
heard it from warm, living lips, whose testimony is strengthened by glances
in which the whole soul speaks or—seems to speak. The time was short, for
the sleighing was but too fine; and Father Kingsbury, having tied up his
harness, and collected his scattered equipment, was driving so close behind
that there was no possibility of lingering for a moment. Yet many moments
were lost before Mr. Horner, very much in earnest, and all unhackneyed in
matters of this sort, could find a word in which to clothe his new-found
feelings. The horse seemed to fly—the distance was half past—and at
length, in absolute despair of anything better, he blurted out at once what he
had determined to avoid—a direct reference to the correspondence.
A game at cross-purposes ensued; exclamations and explanations, and
denials and apologies filled up the time which was to have made Master
Horner so blest. The light from Mr. Kingsbury’s windows shone upon the
path, and the whole result of this conference so longed for, was a burst of

tears from the perplexed and mortified Ellen, who sprang from Mr.
Horner’s attempts to detain her, rushed into the house without vouchsafing
him a word of adieu, and left him standing, no bad personification of
Orpheus, after the last hopeless flitting of his Eurydice.
“Won’t you ’light, Master?” said Mr. Kingsbury.
“Yes—no—thank you—good evening,” stammered poor Master Horner,
so stupefied that even Aunt Sally called him “a dummy.”
The horse took the sleigh against the fence, going home, and threw out
the master, who scarcely recollected the accident; while to Ellen the issue of
this unfortunate drive was a sleepless night and so high a fever in the
morning that our village doctor was called to Mr. Kingsbury’s before
breakfast.
Poor Master Horner’s distress may hardly be imagined. Disappointed,
bewildered, cut to the quick, yet as much in love as ever, he could only in
bitter silence turn over in his thoughts the issue of his cherished dream; now
persuading himself that Ellen’s denial was the effect of a sudden
bashfulness, now inveighing against the fickleness of the sex, as all men do
when they are angry with any one woman in particular. But his exhibition
must go on in spite of wretchedness; and he went about mechanically,
talking of curtains and candles, and music, and attitudes, and pauses, and
emphasis, looking like a somnambulist whose “eyes are open but their
sense is shut,” and often surprising those concerned by the utter unfitness of
his answers.
It was almost evening when Mr. Kingsbury, having discovered, through
the intervention of the Doctor and Aunt Sally the cause of Ellen’s distress,
made his appearance before the unhappy eyes of Master Horner, angry,
solemn and determined; taking the schoolmaster apart, and requiring, an
explanation of his treatment of his daughter. In vain did the perplexed lover
ask for time to clear himself, declare his respect for Miss Ellen and his
willingness to give every explanation which she might require; the father
was not to be put off; and though excessively reluctant, Mr. Horner had no
resource but to show the letters which alone could account for his strange
discourse to Ellen. He unlocked his desk, slowly and unwillingly, while the
old man’s impatience was such that he could scarcely forbear thrusting in
his own hand to snatch at the papers which were to explain this vexatious

mystery. What could equal the utter confusion of Master Horner and the
contemptuous anger of the father, when no letters were to be found! Mr.
Kingsbury was too passionate to listen to reason, or to reflect for one
moment upon the irreproachable good name of the schoolmaster. He went
away in inexorable wrath; threatening every practicable visitation of public
and private justice upon the head of the offender, whom he accused of
having attempted to trick his daughter into an entanglement which should
result in his favor.
A doleful exhibition was this last one of our thrice approved and most
worthy teacher! Stern necessity and the power of habit enabled him to go
through with most of his part, but where was the proud fire which had
lighted up his eye on similar occasions before? He sat as one of three judges
before whom the unfortunate Robert Emmet was dragged in his shirt-
sleeves, by two fierce-looking officials; but the chief judge looked far more
like a criminal than did the proper representative. He ought to have
personated Othello, but was obliged to excuse himself from raving for “the
handkerchief! the handkerchief!” on the rather anomalous plea of a bad
cold. Mary Stuart being “i’ the bond,” was anxiously expected by the
impatient crowd, and it was with distress amounting to agony that the
master was obliged to announce, in person, the necessity of omitting that
part of the representation, on account of the illness of one of the young
ladies.
Scarcely had the words been uttered, and the speaker hidden his burning
face behind the curtain, when Mr. Kingsbury started up in his place amid
the throng, to give a public recital of his grievance—no uncommon resort in
the new country. He dashed at once to the point; and before some friends
who saw the utter impropriety of his proceeding could persuade him to
defer his vengeance, he had laid before the assembly—some three hundred
people, perhaps—his own statement of the case. He was got out at last, half
coaxed, half hustled; and the gentle public only half understanding what
had been set forth thus unexpectedly, made quite a pretty row of it. Some
clamored loudly for the conclusion of the exercises; others gave utterances
in no particularly choice terms to a variety of opinions as to the
schoolmaster’s proceedings, varying the note occasionally by shouting,
“The letters! the letters! why don’t you bring out the letters?”

At length, by means of much rapping on the desk by the president of the
evening, who was fortunately a “popular” character, order was partially
restored; and the favorite scene from Miss More’s dialogue of David and
Goliath was announced as the closing piece. The sight of little David in a
white tunic edged with red tape, with a calico scrip and a very primitive-
looking sling; and a huge Goliath decorated with a militia belt and sword,
and a spear like a weaver’s beam indeed, enchained everybody’s attention.
Even the peccant schoolmaster and his pretended letters were forgotten,
while the sapient Goliath, every time that he raised the spear, in the energy
of his declamation, to thump upon the stage, picked away fragments of the
low ceiling, which fell conspicuously on his great shock of black hair. At
last, with the crowning threat, up went the spear for an astounding thump,
and down came a large piece of the ceiling, and with it—a shower of letters.
The confusion that ensued beggars all description. A general scramble
took place, and in another moment twenty pairs of eyes, at least, were
feasting on the choice phrases lavished upon Mr. Horner. Miss Bangle had
sat through the whole previous scene, trembling for herself, although she
had, as she supposed, guarded cunningly against exposure. She had needed
no prophet to tell her what must be the result of a tête-à-tête between Mr.
Horner and Ellen; and the moment she saw them drive off together, she
induced her imp to seize the opportunity of abstracting the whole parcel of
letters from Mr. Horner’s desk; which he did by means of a sort of skill
which comes by nature to such goblins; picking the lock by the aid of a
crooked nail, as neatly as if he had been born within the shadow of the
Tombs.
But magicians sometimes suffer severely from the malice with which
they have themselves inspired their familiars. Joe Englehart having been a
convenient tool thus far thought it quite time to torment Miss Bangle a
little; so, having stolen the letters at her bidding, he hid them on his own
account, and no persuasions of hers could induce him to reveal this
important secret, which he chose to reserve as a rod in case she refused him
some intercession with his father, or some other accommodation, rendered
necessary by his mischievous habits.
He had concealed the precious parcels in the unfloored loft above the
school-room, a place accessible only by means of a small trap-door without

staircase or ladder; and here he meant to have kept them while it suited his
purposes, but for the untimely intrusion of the weaver’s beam.
Miss Bangle had sat through all, as we have said, thinking the letters
safe, yet vowing vengeance against her confederate for not allowing her to
secure them by a satisfactory conflagration; and it was not until she heard
her own name whispered through the crowd, that she was awakened to her
true situation. The sagacity of the low creatures whom she had despised
showed them at once that the letters must be hers, since her character had
been pretty shrewdly guessed, and the handwriting wore a more practised
air than is usual among females in the country. This was first taken for
granted, and then spoken of as an acknowledged fact.
The assembly moved like the heavings of a troubled sea. Everybody felt
that this was everybody’s business. “Put her out!” was heard from more
than one rough voice near the door, and this was responded to by loud and
angry murmurs from within.
Mr. Englehart, not waiting to inquire into the merits of the case in this
scene of confusion, hastened to get his family out as quietly and as quickly
as possible, but groans and hisses followed his niece as she hung half-
fainting on his arm, quailing completely beneath the instinctive indignation
of the rustic public. As she passed out, a yell resounded among the rude
boys about the door, and she was lifted into a sleigh, insensible from terror.
She disappeared from that evening, and no one knew the time of her final
departure for “the east.”
Mr. Kingsbury, who is a just man when he is not in a passion, made all
the reparation in his power for his harsh and ill-considered attack upon the
master; and we believe that functionary did not show any traits of
implacability of character. At least he was seen, not many days after, sitting
peaceably at tea with Mr. Kingsbury, Aunt Sally, and Miss Ellen; and he has
since gone home to build a house upon his farm. And people do say, that
after a few months more, Ellen will not need Miss Bangle’s intervention if
she should see fit to correspond with the schoolmaster.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] From The Gift for 1845, published late in
1844. Republished in the volume, Western
Clearings (1845), by Caroline M.S. Kirkland.

THE WATKINSON EVENING[13]
By Eliza Leslie (1787–1858)
Mrs. Morland, a polished and accomplished woman, was the widow of a
distinguished senator from one of the western states, of which, also, her
husband had twice filled the office of governor. Her daughter having
completed her education at the best boarding-school in Philadelphia, and
her son being about to graduate at Princeton, the mother had planned with
her children a tour to Niagara and the lakes, returning by way of Boston. On
leaving Philadelphia, Mrs. Morland and the delighted Caroline stopped at
Princeton to be present at the annual commencement, and had the happiness
of seeing their beloved Edward receive his diploma as bachelor of arts; after
hearing him deliver, with great applause, an oration on the beauties of the
American character. College youths are very prone to treat on subjects that
imply great experience of the world. But Edward Morland was full of kind
feeling for everything and everybody; and his views of life had hitherto
been tinted with a perpetual rose-color.
Mrs. Morland, not depending altogether upon the celebrity of her late
husband, and wishing that her children should see specimens of the best
society in the northern cities, had left home with numerous letters of
introduction. But when they arrived at New York, she found to her great
regret, that having unpacked and taken out her small traveling desk, during
her short stay in Philadelphia, she had strangely left it behind in the closet
of her room at the hotel. In this desk were deposited all her letters, except
two which had been offered to her by friends in Philadelphia. The young
people, impatient to see the wonders of Niagara, had entreated her to stay
but a day or two in the city of New York, and thought these two letters
would be quite sufficient for the present. In the meantime she wrote back to

the hotel, requesting that the missing desk should be forwarded to New
York as soon as possible.
On the morning after their arrival at the great commercial metropolis of
America, the Morland family took a carriage to ride round through the
principal parts of the city, and to deliver their two letters at the houses to
which they were addressed, and which were both situated in the region that
lies between the upper part of Broadway and the North River. In one of the
most fashionable streets they found the elegant mansion of Mrs. St.
Leonard; but on stopping at the door, were informed that its mistress was
not at home. They then left the introductory letter (which they had prepared
for this mischance, by enclosing it in an envelope with a card), and
proceeding to another street considerably farther up, they arrived at the
dwelling of the Watkinson family, to the mistress of which the other
Philadelphia letter was directed. It was one of a large block of houses all
exactly alike, and all shut up from top to bottom, according to a custom
more prevalent in New York than in any other city.
Here they were also unsuccessful; the servant who came to the door
telling them that the ladies were particularly engaged and could see no
company. So they left their second letter and card and drove off, continuing
their ride till they reached the Croton water works, which they quitted the
carriage to see and admire. On returning to the hotel, with the intention after
an hour or two of rest to go out again, and walk till near dinner-time, they
found waiting them a note from Mrs. Watkinson, expressing her regret that
she had not been able to see them when they called; and explaining that her
family duties always obliged her to deny herself the pleasure of receiving
morning visitors, and that her servants had general orders to that effect. But
she requested their company for that evening (naming nine o’clock as the
hour), and particularly desired an immediate answer.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Morland, “she intends asking some of her friends
to meet us, in case we accept the invitation; and therefore is naturally
desirous of a reply as soon as possible. Of course we will not keep her in
suspense. Mrs. Denham, who volunteered the letter, assured me that Mrs.
Watkinson was one of the most estimable women in New York, and a
pattern to the circle in which she moved. It seems that Mr. Denham and Mr.
Watkinson are connected in business. Shall we go?”

The young people assented, saying they had no doubt of passing a
pleasant evening.
The billet of acceptance having been written, it was sent off immediately,
entrusted to one of the errand-goers belonging to the hotel, that it might be
received in advance of the next hour for the dispatch-post—and Edward
Morland desired the man to get into an omnibus with the note that no time
might be lost in delivering it. “It is but right”—said he to his mother—“that
we should give Mrs. Watkinson an ample opportunity of making her
preparations, and sending round to invite her friends.”
“How considerate you are, dear Edward”—said Caroline—“always so
thoughtful of every one’s convenience. Your college friends must have
idolized you.”
“No”—said Edward—“they called me a prig.” Just then a remarkably
handsome carriage drove up to the private door of the hotel. From it
alighted a very elegant woman, who in a few moments was ushered into the
drawing-room by the head waiter, and on his designating Mrs. Morland’s
family, she advanced and gracefully announced herself as Mrs. St. Leonard.
This was the lady at whose house they had left the first letter of
introduction. She expressed regret at not having been at home when they
called; but said that on finding their letter, she had immediately come down
to see them, and to engage them for the evening. “Tonight”—said Mrs. St.
Leonard—“I expect as many friends as I can collect for a summer party.
The occasion is the recent marriage of my niece, who with her husband has
just returned from their bridal excursion, and they will be soon on their way
to their residence in Baltimore. I think I can promise you an agreeable
evening, as I expect some very delightful people, with whom I shall be most
happy to make you acquainted.”
Edward and Caroline exchanged glances, and could not refrain from
looking wistfully at their mother, on whose countenance a shade of regret
was very apparent. After a short pause she replied to Mrs. St. Leonard—“I
am truly sorry to say that we have just answered in the affirmative a
previous invitation for this very evening.”
“I am indeed disappointed”—said Mrs. St. Leonard, who had been
looking approvingly at the prepossessing appearance of the two young
people. “Is there no way in which you can revoke your compliance with this

unfortunate first invitation—at least, I am sure, it is unfortunate for me.
What a vexatious contretemps that I should have chanced to be out when
you called; thus missing the pleasure of seeing you at once, and securing
that of your society for this evening? The truth is, I was disappointed in
some of the preparations that had been sent home this morning, and I had to
go myself and have the things rectified, and was detained away longer than
I expected. May I ask to whom you are engaged this evening? Perhaps I
know the lady—if so, I should be very much tempted to go and beg you
from her.”
“The lady is Mrs. John Watkinson”—replied Mrs. Morland—“most
probably she will invite some of her friends to meet us.”
“That of course”—answered Mrs. St. Leonard—“I am really very sorry
—and I regret to say that I do not know her at all.”
“We shall have to abide by our first decision,” said Mrs. Morland. “By
Mrs. Watkinson, mentioning in her note the hour of nine, it is to be
presumed she intends asking some other company. I cannot possibly
disappoint her. I can speak feelingly as to the annoyance (for I have known
it by my own experience) when after inviting a number of my friends to
meet some strangers, the strangers have sent an excuse almost at the
eleventh hour. I think no inducements, however strong, could tempt me to
do so myself.”
“I confess that you are perfectly right,” said Mrs. St. Leonard. “I see you
must go to Mrs. Watkinson. But can you not divide the evening, by passing
a part of it with her and then finishing with me?”
At this suggestion the eyes of the young people sparkled, for they had
become delighted with Mrs. St. Leonard, and imagined that a party at her
house must be every way charming. Also, parties were novelties to both of
them.
“If possible we will do so,” answered Mrs. Morland, “and with what
pleasure I need not assure you. We leave New York to-morrow, but we shall
return this way in September, and will then be exceedingly happy to see
more of Mrs. St. Leonard.”
After a little more conversation Mrs. St. Leonard took her leave,
repeating her hope of still seeing her new friends at her house that night;

and enjoining them to let her know as soon as they returned to New York on
their way home.
Edward Morland handed her to her carriage, and then joined his mother
and sister in their commendations of Mrs. St. Leonard, with whose
exceeding beauty were united a countenance beaming with intelligence, and
a manner that put every one at their ease immediately.
“She is an evidence,” said Edward, “how superior our women of fashion
are to those of Europe.”
“Wait, my dear son,” said Mrs. Morland, “till you have been in Europe,
and had an opportunity of forming an opinion on that point (as on many
others) from actual observation. For my part, I believe that in all civilized
countries the upper classes of people are very much alike, at least in their
leading characteristics.”
“Ah! here comes the man that was sent to Mrs. Watkinson,” said Caroline
Morland. “I hope he could not find the house and has brought the note back
with him. We shall then be able to go at first to Mrs. St. Leonard’s, and pass
the whole evening there.”
The man reported that he had found the house, and had delivered the note
into Mrs. Watkinson’s own hands, as she chanced to be crossing the entry
when the door was opened; and that she read it immediately, and said “Very
well.”
“Are you certain that you made no mistake in the house,” said Edward,
“and that you really did give it to Mrs. Watkinson?”
“And it’s quite sure I am, sir,” replied the man, “when I first came over
from the ould country I lived with them awhile, and though when she saw
me to-day, she did not let on that she remembered my doing that same, she
could not help calling me James. Yes, the rale words she said when I handed
her the billy-dux was, ‘Very well, James.’”
“Come, come,” said Edward, when they found themselves alone, “let us
look on the bright side. If we do not find a large party at Mrs. Watkinson’s,
we may in all probability meet some very agreeable people there, and enjoy
the feast of reason and the flow of soul. We may find the Watkinson house
so pleasant as to leave it with regret even for Mrs. St. Leonard’s.”

“I do not believe Mrs. Watkinson is in fashionable society,” said
Caroline, “or Mrs. St. Leonard would have known her. I heard some of the
ladies here talking last evening of Mrs. St. Leonard, and I found from what
they said that she is among the élite of the lite.”
“Even if she is,” observed Mrs. Morland, “are polish of manners and
cultivation of mind confined exclusively to persons of that class?”
“Certainly not,” said Edward, “the most talented and refined youth at our
college, and he in whose society I found the greatest pleasure, was the son
of a bricklayer.”
In the ladies’ drawing-room, after dinner, the Morlands heard a
conversation between several of the female guests, who all seemed to know
Mrs. St. Leonard very well by reputation, and they talked of her party that
was to “come off” on this evening.
“I hear,” said one lady, “that Mrs. St. Leonard is to have an unusual
number of lions.”
She then proceeded to name a gallant general, with his elegant wife and
accomplished daughter; a celebrated commander in the navy; two highly
distinguished members of Congress, and even an ex-president. Also several
of the most eminent among the American literati, and two first-rate artists.
Edward Morland felt as if he could say, “Had I three ears I’d hear thee.”
“Such a woman as Mrs. St. Leonard can always command the best lions
that are to be found,” observed another lady.
“And then,” said a third, “I have been told that she has such exquisite
taste in lighting and embellishing her always elegant rooms. And her supper
table, whether for summer or winter parties, is so beautifully arranged; all
the viands are so delicious, and the attendance of the servants so perfect—
and Mrs. St. Leonard does the honors with so much ease and tact.”
“Some friends of mine that visit her,” said a fourth lady, “describe her
parties as absolute perfection. She always manages to bring together those
persons that are best fitted to enjoy each other’s conversation. Still no one is
overlooked or neglected. Then everything at her reunions is so well
proportioned—she has just enough of music, and just enough of whatever

amusement may add to the pleasure of her guests; and still there is no
appearance of design or management on her part.”
“And better than all,” said the lady who had spoken firsts “Mrs. St.
Leonard is one of the kindest, most generous, and most benevolent of
women—she does good in every possible way.”
“I can listen no longer,” said Caroline to Edward, rising to change her
seat. “If I hear any more I shall absolutely hate the Watkinsons. How
provoking that they should have sent us the first invitation. If we had only
thought of waiting till we could hear from Mrs. St. Leonard!”
“For shame, Caroline,” said her brother, “how can you talk so of persons
you have never seen, and to whom you ought to feel grateful for the
kindness of their invitation; even if it has interfered with another party, that
I must confess seems to offer unusual attractions. Now I have a
presentiment that we shall find the Watkinson part of the evening very
enjoyable.”
As soon as tea was over, Mrs. Morland and her daughter repaired to their
toilettes. Fortunately, fashion as well as good taste, has decided that, at a
summer party, the costume of the ladies should never go beyond an elegant
simplicity. Therefore our two ladies in preparing for their intended
appearance at Mrs. St. Leonard’s, were enabled to attire themselves in a
manner that would not seem out of place in the smaller company they
expected to meet at the Watkinsons. Over an under-dress of lawn, Caroline
Morland put on a white organdy trimmed with lace, and decorated with
bows of pink ribbon. At the back of her head was a wreath of fresh and
beautiful pink flowers, tied with a similar ribbon. Mrs. Morland wore a
black grenadine over a satin, and a lace cap trimmed with white.
It was but a quarter past nine o’clock when their carriage stopped at the
Watkinson door. The front of the house looked very dark. Not a ray gleamed
through the Venetian shutters, and the glimmer beyond the fan-light over
the door was almost imperceptible. After the coachman had rung several
times, an Irish girl opened the door, cautiously (as Irish girls always do),
and admitted them into the entry, where one light only was burning in a
branch lamp. “Shall we go upstairs?” said Mrs. Morland. “And what for
would ye go upstairs?” said the girl in a pert tone. “It’s all dark there, and

there’s no preparations. Ye can lave your things here a-hanging on the rack.
It is a party ye’re expecting? Blessed are them what expects nothing.”
The sanguine Edward Morland looked rather blank at this intelligence,
and his sister whispered to him, “We’ll get off to Mrs. St. Leonard’s as soon
as we possibly can. When did you tell the coachman to come for us?”
“At half past ten,” was the brother’s reply.
“Oh! Edward, Edward!” she exclaimed, “And I dare say he will not be
punctual. He may keep us here till eleven.”
“Courage, mes enfants,” said their mother, “et parlez plus doucement.”
The girl then ushered them into the back parlor, saying, “Here’s the
company.”
The room was large and gloomy. A checquered mat covered the floor, and
all the furniture was encased in striped calico covers, and the lamps,
mirrors, etc. concealed under green gauze. The front parlor was entirely
dark, and in the back apartment was no other light than a shaded lamp on a
large centre table, round which was assembled a circle of children of all
sizes and ages. On a backless, cushionless sofa sat Mrs. Watkinson, and a
young lady, whom she introduced as her daughter Jane. And Mrs. Morland
in return presented Edward and Caroline.
“Will you take the rocking-chair, ma’am?” inquired Mrs. Watkinson.
Mrs. Morland declining the offer, the hostess took it herself, and see-
sawed on it nearly the whole time. It was a very awkward, high-legged,
crouch-backed rocking-chair, and shamefully unprovided with anything in
the form of a footstool.
“My husband is away, at Boston, on business,” said Mrs. Watkinson. “I
thought at first, ma’am, I should not be able to ask you here this evening,
for it is not our way to have company in his absence; but my daughter Jane
over-persuaded me to send for you.”
“What a pity,” thought Caroline.
“You must take us as you find us, ma’am,” continued Mrs. Watkinson.
“We use no ceremony with anybody; and our rule is never to put ourselves
out of the way. We do not give parties [looking at the dresses of the ladies].

Our first duty is to our children, and we cannot waste our substance on
fashion and folly. They’ll have cause to thank us for it when we die.”
Something like a sob was heard from the centre table, at which the
children were sitting, and a boy was seen to hold his handkerchief to his
face.
“Joseph, my child,” said his mother, “do not cry. You have no idea,
ma’am, what an extraordinary boy that is. You see how the bare mention of
such a thing as our deaths has overcome him.”
There was another sob behind the handkerchief, and the Morlands
thought it now sounded very much like a smothered laugh.
“As I was saying, ma’am,” continued Mrs. Watkinson, “we never give
parties. We leave all sinful things to the vain and foolish. My daughter Jane
has been telling me, that she heard this morning of a party that is going on
to-night at the widow St. Leonard’s. It is only fifteen years since her
husband died. He was carried off with a three days’ illness, but two months
after they were married. I have had a domestic that lived with them at the
time, so I know all about it. And there she is now, living in an elegant
house, and riding in her carriage, and dressing and dashing, and giving
parties, and enjoying life, as she calls it. Poor creature, how I pity her!
Thank heaven, nobody that I know goes to her parties. If they did I would
never wish to see them again in my house. It is an encouragement to folly
and nonsense—and folly and nonsense are sinful. Do not you think so,
ma’am?”
“If carried too far they may certainly become so,” replied Mrs. Morland.
“We have heard,” said Edward, “that Mrs. St. Leonard, though one of the
ornaments of the gay world, has a kind heart, a beneficent spirit and a
liberal hand.”
“I know very little about her,” replied Mrs. Watkinson, drawing up her
head, “and I have not the least desire to know any more. It is well she has
no children; they’d be lost sheep if brought up in her fold. For my part,
ma’am,” she continued, turning to Mrs. Morland, “I am quite satisfied with
the quiet joys of a happy home. And no mother has the least business with
any other pleasures. My innocent babes know nothing about plays, and

balls, and parties; and they never shall. Do they look as if they had been
accustomed to a life of pleasure?”
They certainly did not! for when the Morlands took a glance at them,
they thought they had never seen youthful faces that were less gay, and
indeed less prepossessing.
There was not a good feature or a pleasant expression among them all.
Edward Morland recollected his having often read “that childhood is always
lovely.” But he saw that the juvenile Watkinsons were an exception to the
rule.
“The first duty of a mother is to her children,” repeated Mrs. Watkinson.
“Till nine o’clock, my daughter Jane and myself are occupied every evening
in hearing the lessons that they have learned for to-morrow’s school. Before
that hour we can receive no visitors, and we never have company to tea, as
that would interfere too much with our duties. We had just finished hearing
these lessons when you arrived. Afterwards the children are permitted to
indulge themselves in rational play, for I permit no amusement that is not
also instructive. My children are so well trained, that even when alone their
sports are always serious.”
Two of the boys glanced slyly at each other, with what Edward Morland
comprehended as an expression of pitch-penny and marbles.
“They are now engaged at their game of astronomy,” continued Mrs.
Watkinson. “They have also a sort of geography cards, and a set of
mathematical cards. It is a blessed discovery, the invention of these
educationary games; so that even the play-time of children can be turned to
account. And you have no idea, ma’am, how they enjoy them.”
Just then the boy Joseph rose from the table, and stalking up to Mrs.
Watkinson, said to her, “Mamma, please to whip me.”
At this unusual request the visitors looked much amazed, and Mrs.
Watkinson replied to him, “Whip you, my best Joseph—for what cause? I
have not seen you do anything wrong this evening, and you know my
anxiety induces me to watch my children all the time.”
“You could not see me,” answered Joseph, “for I have not done anything
very wrong. But I have had a bad thought, and you know Mr. Ironrule says
that a fault imagined is just as wicked as a fault committed.”

“You see, ma’am, what a good memory he has,” said Mrs. Watkinson
aside to Mrs. Morland. “But my best Joseph, you make your mother
tremble. What fault have you imagined? What was your bad thought?”
“Ay,” said another boy, “what’s your thought like?”
“My thought,” said Joseph, “was ‘Confound all astronomy, and I could
see the man hanged that made this game.’”
“Oh! my child,” exclaimed the mother, stopping her ears, “I am indeed
shocked. I am glad you repented so immediately.”
“Yes,” returned Joseph, “but I am afraid my repentance won’t last. If I
am not whipped, I may have these bad thoughts whenever I play at
astronomy, and worse still at the geography game. Whip me, ma, and
punish me as I deserve. There’s the rattan in the corner: I’ll bring it to you
myself.”
“Excellent boy!” said his mother. “You know I always pardon my
children when they are so candid as to confess their faults.”
“So you do,” said Joseph, “but a whipping will cure me better.”
“I cannot resolve to punish so conscientious a child,” said Mrs.
Watkinson.
“Shall I take the trouble off your hands?” inquired Edward, losing all
patience in his disgust at the sanctimonious hypocrisy of this young Blifil.
“It is such a rarity for a boy to request a whipping, that so remarkable a
desire ought by all means to be gratified.”
Joseph turned round and made a face at him.
“Give me the rattan,” said Edward, half laughing, and offering to take it
out of his hand. “I’ll use it to your full satisfaction.”
The boy thought it most prudent to stride off and return to the table, and
ensconce himself among his brothers and sisters; some of whom were
staring with stupid surprise; others were whispering and giggling in the
hope of seeing Joseph get a real flogging.
Mrs. Watkinson having bestowed a bitter look on Edward, hastened to
turn the attention of his mother to something else. “Mrs. Morland,” said
she, “allow me to introduce you to my youngest hope.” She pointed to a

sleepy boy about five years old, who with head thrown back and mouth
wide open, was slumbering in his chair.
Mrs. Watkinson’s children were of that uncomfortable species who never
go to bed; at least never without all manner of resistance. All her boasted
authority was inadequate to compel them; they never would confess
themselves sleepy; always wanted to “sit up,” and there was a nightly scene
of scolding, coaxing, threatening and manoeuvring to get them off.
“I declare,” said Mrs. Watkinson, “dear Benny is almost asleep. Shake
him up, Christopher. I want him to speak a speech. His schoolmistress takes
great pains in teaching her little pupils to speak, and stands up herself and
shows them how.”
The child having been shaken up hard (two or three others helping
Christopher), rubbed his eyes and began to whine. His mother went to him,
took him on her lap, hushed him up, and began to coax him. This done, she
stood him on his feet before Mrs. Morland, and desired him to speak a
speech for the company. The child put his thumb into his mouth, and
remained silent.
“Ma,” said Jane Watkinson, “you had better tell him what speech to
speak.”
“Speak Cato or Plato,” said his mother. “Which do you call it? Come
now, Benny—how does it begin? ‘You are quite right and reasonable,
Plato.’ That’s it.”
“Speak Lucius,” said his sister Jane. “Come now, Benny—say ‘your
thoughts are turned on peace.’”
The little boy looked very much as if they were not, and as if meditating
an outbreak.
“No, no!” exclaimed Christopher, “let him say Hamlet. Come now,
Benny—‘To be or not to be.’”
“It ain’t to be at all,” cried Benny, “and I won’t speak the least bit of it for
any of you. I hate that speech!”
“Only see his obstinacy,” said the solemn Joseph. “And is he to be given
up to?”

“Speak anything, Benny,” said Mrs. Watkinson, “anything so that it is
only a speech.”
All the Watkinson voices now began to clamor violently at the obstinate
child—“Speak a speech! speak a speech! speak a speech!” But they had no
more effect than the reiterated exhortations with which nurses confuse the
poor heads of babies, when they require them to “shake a day-day—shake a
day-day!”
Mrs. Morland now interfered, and begged that the sleepy little boy might
be excused; on which he screamed out that “he wasn’t sleepy at all, and
would not go to bed ever.”
“I never knew any of my children behave so before,” said Mrs.
Watkinson. “They are always models of obedience, ma’am. A look is
sufficient for them. And I must say that they have in every way profited by
the education we are giving them. It is not our way, ma’am, to waste our
money in parties and fooleries, and fine furniture and fine clothes, and rich
food, and all such abominations. Our first duty is to our children, and to
make them learn everything that is taught in the schools. If they go wrong,
it will not be for want of education. Hester, my dear, come and talk to Miss
Morland in French.”
Hester (unlike her little brother that would not speak a speech) stepped
boldly forward, and addressed Caroline Morland with: “Parlez-vous
Français, mademoiselle? Comment se va madame votre mère? Aimez-vous
la musique? Aimez-vous la danse? Bon jour—bon soir—bon repos.
Comprenez-vous?”
To this tirade, uttered with great volubility, Miss Morland made no other
reply than, “Oui—je comprens.”
“Very well, Hester—very well indeed,” said Mrs. Watkinson. “You see,
ma’am,” turning to Mrs. Morland, “how very fluent she is in French; and
she has only been learning eleven quarters.”
After considerable whispering between Jane and her mother, the former
withdrew, and sent in by the Irish girl a waiter with a basket of soda biscuit,
a pitcher of water, and some glasses. Mrs. Watkinson invited her guests to
consider themselves at home and help themselves freely, saying: “We never
let cakes, sweetmeats, confectionery, or any such things enter the house, as

they would be very unwholesome for the children, and it would be sinful to
put temptation in their way. I am sure, ma’am, you will agree with me that
the plainest food is the best for everybody. People that want nice things may
go to parties for them; but they will never get any with me.”
When the collation was over, and every child provided with a biscuit,
Mrs. Watkinson said to Mrs. Morland: “Now, ma’am, you shall have some
music from my daughter Jane, who is one of Mr. Bangwhanger’s best
scholars.”
Jane Watkinson sat down to the piano and commenced a powerful piece
of six mortal pages, which she played out of time and out of tune; but with
tremendous force of hands; notwithstanding which, it had, however, the
good effect of putting most of the children to sleep.
To the Morlands the evening had seemed already five hours long. Still it
was only half past ten when Jane was in the midst of her piece. The guests
had all tacitly determined that it would be best not to let Mrs. Watkinson
know their intention to go directly from her house to Mrs. St. Leonard’s
party; and the arrival of their carriage would have been the signal of
departure, even if Jane’s piece had not reached its termination. They stole
glances at the clock on the mantel. It wanted but a quarter of eleven, when
Jane rose from the piano, and was congratulated by her mother on the
excellence of her music. Still no carriage was heard to stop; no doorbell was
heard to ring. Mrs. Morland expressed her fears that the coachman had
forgotten to come for them.
“Has he been paid for bringing you here?” asked Mrs. Watkinson.
“I paid him when we came to the door,” said Edward. “I thought perhaps
he might want the money for some purpose before he came for us.”
“That was very kind in you, sir,” said Mrs. Watkinson, “but not very
wise. There’s no dependence on any coachman; and perhaps as he may be
sure of business enough this rainy night he may never come at all—being
already paid for bringing you here.”
Now, the truth was that the coachman had come at the appointed time,
but the noise of Jane’s piano had prevented his arrival being heard in the
back parlor. The Irish girl had gone to the door when he rang the bell, and
recognized in him what she called “an ould friend.” Just then a lady and

gentleman who had been caught in the rain came running along, and seeing
a carriage drawing up at a door, the gentleman inquired of the driver if he
could not take them to Rutgers Place. The driver replied that he had just
come for two ladies and a gentleman whom he had brought from the Astor
House.
“Indeed and Patrick,” said the girl who stood at the door, “if I was you
I’d be after making another penny to-night. Miss Jane is pounding away at
one of her long music pieces, and it won’t be over before you have time to
get to Rutgers and back again. And if you do make them wait awhile,
where’s the harm? They’ve a dry roof over their heads, and I warrant it’s
not the first waiting they’ve ever had in their lives; and it won’t be the last
neither.”
“Exactly so,” said the gentleman; and regardless of the propriety of first
sending to consult the persons who had engaged the carriage, he told his
wife to step in, and following her instantly himself, they drove away to
Rutgers Place.
Reader, if you were ever detained in a strange house by the non-arrival of
your carriage, you will easily understand the excessive annoyance of
finding that you are keeping a family out of their beds beyond their usual
hour. And in this case, there was a double grievance; the guests being all
impatience to get off to a better place. The children, all crying when
wakened from their sleep, were finally taken to bed by two servant maids,
and Jane Watkinson, who never came back again. None were left but
Hester, the great French scholar, who, being one of those young imps that
seem to have the faculty of living without sleep, sat bolt upright with her
eyes wide open, watching the uncomfortable visitors.
The Morlands felt as if they could bear it no longer, and Edward
proposed sending for another carriage to the nearest livery stable.
“We don’t keep a man now,” said Mrs. Watkinson, who sat nodding in
the rocking-chair, attempting now and then a snatch of conversation, and
saying “ma’am” still more frequently than usual. “Men servants are
dreadful trials, ma’am, and we gave them up three years ago. And I don’t
know how Mary or Katy are to go out this stormy night in search of a livery
stable.”

“On no consideration could I allow the women to do so,” replied Edward.
“If you will oblige me by the loan of an umbrella, I will go myself.”
Accordingly he set out on this business, but was unsuccessful at two
livery stables, the carriages being all out. At last he found one, and was
driven in it to Mr. Watkinson’s house, where his mother and sister were
awaiting him, all quite ready, with their calashes and shawls on. They
gladly took their leave; Mrs. Watkinson rousing herself to hope they had
spent a pleasant evening, and that they would come and pass another with
her on their return to New York. In such cases how difficult it is to reply
even with what are called “words of course.”
A kitchen lamp was brought to light them to the door, the entry lamp
having long since been extinguished. Fortunately the rain had ceased; the
stars began to reappear, and the Morlands, when they found themselves in
the carriage and on their way to Mrs. St. Leonard’s, felt as if they could
breathe again. As may be supposed, they freely discussed the annoyances of
the evening; but now those troubles were over they felt rather inclined to be
merry about them.
“Dear mother,” said Edward, “how I pitied you for having to endure Mrs.
Watkinson’s perpetual ‘ma’aming’ and ‘ma’aming’; for I know you dislike
the word.”
“I wish,” said Caroline, “I was not so prone to be taken with ridiculous
recollections. But really to-night I could not get that old foolish child’s play
out of my head—
Here come three knights out of Spain
A-courting of your daughter Jane.”

“I shall certainly never be one of those Spanish knights,” said Edward.
“Her daughter Jane is in no danger of being ruled by any ‘flattering tongue’
of mine. But what a shame for us to be talking of them in this manner.”
They drove to Mrs. St. Leonard’s, hoping to be yet in time to pass half an
hour there; though it was now near twelve o’clock and summer parties
never continue to a very late hour. But as they came into the street in which
she lived they were met by a number of coaches on their way home, and on
reaching the door of her brilliantly lighted mansion, they saw the last of the

guests driving off in the last of the carriages, and several musicians coming
down the steps with their instruments in their hands.
“So there has been a dance, then!” sighed Caroline. “Oh, what we have
missed! It is really too provoking.”
“So it is,” said Edward; “but remember that to-morrow morning we set
off for Niagara.”
“I will leave a note for Mrs. St. Leonard,” said his mother, “explaining
that we were detained at Mrs. Watkinson’s by our coachman disappointing
us. Let us console ourselves with the hope of seeing more of this lady on
our return. And now, dear Caroline, you must draw a moral from the
untoward events of to-day. When you are mistress of a house, and wish to
show civility to strangers, let the invitation be always accompanied with a
frank disclosure of what they are to expect. And if you cannot conveniently
invite company to meet them, tell them at once that you will not insist on
their keeping their engagement with you if anything offers afterwards that
they think they would prefer; provided only that they apprize you in time of
the change in their plan.”
“Oh, mamma,” replied Caroline, “you may be sure I shall always take
care not to betray my visitors into an engagement which they may have
cause to regret, particularly if they are strangers whose time is limited. I
shall certainly, as you say, tell them not to consider themselves bound to me
if they afterwards receive an invitation which promises them more
enjoyment. It will be a long while before I forget, the Watkinson evening.”

FOOTNOTES:
[13] From Godey’s Lady’s Book, December,
1846.

TITBOTTOM’S SPECTACLES[14]
By George William Curtis (1824–1892)
In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

Prue and I do not entertain much; our means forbid it. In truth, other
people entertain for us. We enjoy that hospitality of which no account is
made. We see the show, and hear the music, and smell the flowers of great
festivities, tasting as it were the drippings from rich dishes. Our own dinner
service is remarkably plain, our dinners, even on state occasions, are strictly
in keeping, and almost our only guest is Titbottom. I buy a handful of roses
as I come up from the office, perhaps, and Prue arranges them so prettily in
a glass dish for the centre of the table that even when I have hurried out to
see Aurelia step into her carriage to go out to dine, I have thought that the
bouquet she carried was not more beautiful because it was more costly. I
grant that it was more harmonious with her superb beauty and her rich
attire. And I have no doubt that if Aurelia knew the old man, whom she
must have seen so often watching her, and his wife, who ornaments her sex
with as much sweetness, although with less splendor, than Aurelia herself,
she would also acknowledge that the nosegay of roses was as fine and fit
upon their table as her own sumptuous bouquet is for herself. I have that
faith in the perception of that lovely lady. It is at least my habit—I hope I
may say, my nature, to believe the best of people, rather than the worst. If I
thought that all this sparkling setting of beauty—this fine fashion—these
blazing jewels and lustrous silks and airy gauzes, embellished with gold-
threaded embroidery and wrought in a thousand exquisite elaborations, so
that I cannot see one of those lovely girls pass me by without thanking God
for the vision—if I thought that this was all, and that underneath her lace
flounces and diamond bracelets Aurelia was a sullen, selfish woman, then I

should turn sadly homewards, for I should see that her jewels were flashing
scorn upon the object they adorned, and that her laces were of a more
exquisite loveliness than the woman whom they merely touched with a
superficial grace. It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum—bright to
see, but silent and dark within.
“Great excellences, my dear Prue,” I sometimes allow myself to say, “lie
concealed in the depths of character, like pearls at the bottom of the sea.
Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little they are suspected! Perhaps
love is nothing else than the sight of them by one person. Hence every
man’s mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody else. I have no doubt
that when Aurelia is engaged, people will say that she is a most admirable
girl, certainly; but they cannot understand why any man should be in love
with her. As if it were at all necessary that they should! And her lover, like a
boy who finds a pearl in the public street, and wonders as much that others
did not see it as that he did, will tremble until he knows his passion is
returned; feeling, of course, that the whole world must be in love with this
paragon who cannot possibly smile upon anything so unworthy as he.”
“I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue,” I continue to say to my wife, who
looks up from her work regarding me with pleased pride, as if I were such
an irresistible humorist, “you will allow me to believe that the depth may be
calm although the surface is dancing. If you tell me that Aurelia is but a
giddy girl, I shall believe that you think so. But I shall know, all the while,
what profound dignity, and sweetness, and peace lie at the foundation of her
character.”
I say such things to Titbottom during the dull season at the office. And I
have known him sometimes to reply with a kind of dry, sad humor, not as if
he enjoyed the joke, but as if the joke must be made, that he saw no reason
why I should be dull because the season was so.
“And what do I know of Aurelia or any other girl?” he says to me with
that abstracted air. “I, whose Aurelias were of another century and another
zone.”
Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite profane to interrupt. But
as we sit upon our high stools at the desk opposite each other, I leaning
upon my elbows and looking at him; he, with sidelong face, glancing out of

the window, as if it commanded a boundless landscape, instead of a dim,
dingy office court, I cannot refrain from saying:
“Well!”
He turns slowly, and I go chatting on—a little too loquacious, perhaps,
about those young girls. But I know that Titbottom regards such an excess
as venial, for his sadness is so sweet that you could believe it the reflection
of a smile from long, long years ago.
One day, after I had been talking for a long time, and we had put up our
books, and were preparing to leave, he stood for some time by the window,
gazing with a drooping intentness, as if he really saw something more than
the dark court, and said slowly:
“Perhaps you would have different impressions of things if you saw them
through my spectacles.”
There was no change in his expression. He still looked from the window,
and I said:
“Titbottom, I did not know that you used glasses. I have never seen you
wearing spectacles.”
“No, I don’t often wear them. I am not very fond of looking through
them. But sometimes an irresistible necessity compels me to put them on,
and I cannot help seeing.” Titbottom sighed.
“Is it so grievous a fate, to see?” inquired I.
“Yes; through my spectacles,” he said, turning slowly and looking at me
with wan solemnity.
It grew dark as we stood in the office talking, and taking our hats we
went out together. The narrow street of business was deserted. The heavy
iron shutters were gloomily closed over the windows. From one or two
offices struggled the dim gleam of an early candle, by whose light some
perplexed accountant sat belated, and hunting for his error. A careless clerk
passed, whistling. But the great tide of life had ebbed. We heard its roar far
away, and the sound stole into that silent street like the murmur of the ocean
into an inland dell.
“You will come and dine with us, Titbottom?”

He assented by continuing to walk with me, and I think we were both
glad when we reached the house, and Prue came to meet us, saying:
“Do you know I hoped you would bring Mr. Titbottom to dine?”
Titbottom smiled gently, and answered:
“He might have brought his spectacles with him, and I have been a
happier man for it.”
Prue looked a little puzzled.
“My dear,” I said, “you must know that our friend, Mr. Titbottom, is the
happy possessor of a pair of wonderful spectacles. I have never seen them,
indeed; and, from what he says, I should be rather afraid of being seen by
them. Most short-sighted persons are very glad to have the help of glasses;
but Mr. Titbottom seems to find very little pleasure in his.”
“It is because they make him too far-sighted, perhaps,” interrupted Prue
quietly, as she took the silver soup-ladle from the sideboard.
We sipped our wine after dinner, and Prue took her work. Can a man be
too far-sighted? I did not ask the question aloud. The very tone in which
Prue had spoken convinced me that he might.
“At least,” I said, “Mr. Titbottom will not refuse to tell us the history of
his mysterious spectacles. I have known plenty of magic in eyes”—and I
glanced at the tender blue eyes of Prue—“but I have not heard of any
enchanted glasses.”
“Yet you must have seen the glass in which your wife looks every
morning, and I take it that glass must be daily enchanted.” said Titbottom,
with a bow of quaint respect to my wife.
I do not think I have seen such a blush upon Prue’s cheek since—well,
since a great many years ago.
“I will gladly tell you the history of my spectacles,” began Titbottom. “It
is very simple; and I am not at all sure that a great many other people have
not a pair of the same kind. I have never, indeed, heard of them by the
gross, like those of our young friend, Moses, the son of the Vicar of
Wakefield. In fact, I think a gross would be quite enough to supply the
world. It is a kind of article for which the demand does not increase with

use. If we should all wear spectacles like mine, we should never smile any
more. Oh—I am not quite sure—we should all be very happy.”
“A very important difference,” said Prue, counting her stitches.
“You know my grandfather Titbottom was a West Indian. A large
proprietor, and an easy man, he basked in the tropical sun, leading his quiet,
luxurious life. He lived much alone, and was what people call eccentric, by
which I understand that he was very much himself, and, refusing the
influence of other people, they had their little revenges, and called him
names. It is a habit not exclusively tropical. I think I have seen the same
thing even in this city. But he was greatly beloved—my bland and bountiful
grandfather. He was so large-hearted and open-handed. He was so friendly,
and thoughtful, and genial, that even his jokes had the air of graceful
benedictions. He did not seem to grow old, and he was one of those who
never appear to have been very young. He flourished in a perennial
maturity, an immortal middle-age.
“My grandfather lived upon one of the small islands, St. Kit’s, perhaps,
and his domain extended to the sea. His house, a rambling West Indian
mansion, was surrounded with deep, spacious piazzas, covered with
luxurious lounges, among which one capacious chair was his peculiar seat.
They tell me he used sometimes to sit there for the whole day, his great,
soft, brown eyes fastened upon the sea, watching the specks of sails that
flashed upon the horizon, while the evanescent expressions chased each
other over his placid face, as if it reflected the calm and changing sea before
him. His morning costume was an ample dressing-gown of gorgeously
flowered silk, and his morning was very apt to last all day.
“He rarely read, but he would pace the great piazza for hours, with his
hands sunken in the pockets of his dressing-gown, and an air of sweet
reverie, which any author might be very happy to produce.
“Society, of course, he saw little. There was some slight apprehension
that if he were bidden to social entertainments he might forget his coat, or
arrive without some other essential part of his dress; and there is a sly
tradition in the Titbottom family that, having been invited to a ball in honor
of the new governor of the island, my grandfather Titbottom sauntered into
the hall towards midnight, wrapped in the gorgeous flowers of his dressing-
gown, and with his hands buried in the pockets, as usual. There was great

excitement, and immense deprecation of gubernatorial ire. But it happened
that the governor and my grandfather were old friends, and there was no
offense. But as they were conversing together, one of the distressed
managers cast indignant glances at the brilliant costume of my grandfather,
who summoned him, and asked courteously:
“‘Did you invite me or my coat?’
“‘You, in a proper coat,’ replied the manager.
“The governor smiled approvingly, and looked at my grandfather.
“‘My friend,” said he to the manager, ‘I beg your pardon, I forgot.’
“The next day my grandfather was seen promenading in full ball dress
along the streets of the little town.
“‘They ought to know,’ said he, ‘that I have a proper coat, and that not
contempt nor poverty, but forgetfulness, sent me to a ball in my dressing-
gown.’
“He did not much frequent social festivals after this failure, but he always
told the story with satisfaction and a quiet smile.
“To a stranger, life upon those little islands is uniform even to weariness.
But the old native dons like my grandfather ripen in the prolonged sunshine,
like the turtle upon the Bahama banks, nor know of existence more
desirable. Life in the tropics I take to be a placid torpidity. During the long,
warm mornings of nearly half a century, my grandfather Titbottom had sat
in his dressing-gown and gazed at the sea. But one calm June day, as he
slowly paced the piazza after breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by a
little vessel, evidently nearing the shore. He called for his spyglass, and
surveying the craft, saw that she came from the neighboring island. She
glided smoothly, slowly, over the summer sea. The warm morning air was
sweet with perfumes, and silent with heat. The sea sparkled languidly, and
the brilliant blue hung cloudlessly over. Scores of little island vessels had
my grandfather seen come over the horizon, and cast anchor in the port.
Hundreds of summer mornings had the white sails flashed and faded, like
vague faces through forgotten dreams. But this time he laid down the
spyglass, and leaned against a column of the piazza, and watched the vessel
with an intentness that he could not explain. She came nearer and nearer, a
graceful spectre in the dazzling morning.

“‘Decidedly I must step down and see about that vessel,’ said my
grandfather Titbottom.
“He gathered his ample dressing-gown about him, and stepped from the
piazza with no other protection from the sun than the little smoking cap
upon his head. His face wore a calm, beaming smile, as if he approved of
all the world. He was not an old man, but there was almost a patriarchal
pathos in his expression as he sauntered along in the sunshine towards the
shore. A group of idle gazers was collected to watch the arrival. The little
vessel furled her sails and drifted slowly landward, and as she was of very
light draft, she came close to the shelving shore. A long plank was put out
from her side, and the debarkation commenced. My grandfather Titbottom
stood looking on to see the passengers descend. There were but a few of
them, and mostly traders from the neighboring island. But suddenly the face
of a young girl appeared over the side of the vessel, and she stepped upon
the plank to descend. My grandfather Titbottom instantly advanced, and
moving briskly reached the top of the plank at the same moment, and with
the old tassel of his cap flashing in the sun, and one hand in the pocket of
his dressing gown, with the other he handed the young lady carefully down
the plank. That young lady was afterwards my grandmother Titbottom.
“And so, over the gleaming sea which he had watched so long, and which
seemed thus to reward his patient gaze, came his bride that sunny morning.
“‘Of course we are happy,’ he used to say: ‘For you are the gift of the sun
I have loved so long and so well.’ And my grandfather Titbottom would lay
his hand so tenderly upon the golden hair of his young bride, that you could
fancy him a devout Parsee caressing sunbeams.
“There were endless festivities upon occasion of the marriage; and my
grandfather did not go to one of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle
sweetness of his wife melted every heart into love and sympathy. He was
much older than she, without doubt. But age, as he used to say with a smile
of immortal youth, is a matter of feeling, not of years. And if, sometimes, as
she sat by his side upon the piazza, her fancy looked through her eyes upon
that summer sea and saw a younger lover, perhaps some one of those
graceful and glowing heroes who occupy the foreground of all young
maidens’ visions by the sea, yet she could not find one more generous and
gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and loving than my grandfather

Titbottom. And if in the moonlit midnight, while he lay calmly sleeping, she
leaned out of the window and sank into vague reveries of sweet possibility,
and watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon the water, until the
dawn glided over it—it was only that mood of nameless regret and longing,
which underlies all human happiness,—or it was the vision of that life of
society, which she had never seen, but of which she had often read, and
which looked very fair and alluring across the sea to a girlish imagination
which knew that it should never know that reality.
“These West Indian years were the great days of the family,” said
Titbottom, with an air of majestic and regal regret, pausing and musing in
our little parlor, like a late Stuart in exile, remembering England. Prue
raised her eyes from her work, and looked at him with a subdued
admiration; for I have observed that, like the rest of her sex, she has a
singular sympathy with the representative of a reduced family. Perhaps it is
their finer perception which leads these tender-hearted women to recognize
the divine right of social superiority so much more readily than we; and yet,
much as Titbottom was enhanced in my wife’s admiration by the discovery
that his dusky sadness of nature and expression was, as it were, the expiring
gleam and late twilight of ancestral splendors, I doubt if Mr. Bourne would
have preferred him for bookkeeper a moment sooner upon that account. In
truth, I have observed, down town, that the fact of your ancestors doing
nothing is not considered good proof that you can do anything. But Prue
and her sex regard sentiment more than action, and I understand easily
enough why she is never tired of hearing me read of Prince Charlie. If
Titbottom had been only a little younger, a little handsomer, a little more
gallantly dressed—in fact, a little more of the Prince Charlie, I am sure her
eyes would not have fallen again upon her work so tranquilly, as he
resumed his story.
“I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, although I was a very young
child, and he was a very old man. My young mother and my young
grandmother are very distinct figures in my memory, ministering to the old
gentleman, wrapped in his dressing-gown, and seated upon the piazza. I
remember his white hair and his calm smile, and how, not long before he
died, he called me to him, and laying his hand upon my head, said to me:
“My child, the world is not this great sunny piazza, nor life the fairy
stories which the women tell you here as you sit in their laps. I shall soon be

gone, but I want to leave with you some memento of my love for you, and I
know nothing more valuable than these spectacles, which your grandmother
brought from her native island, when she arrived here one fine summer
morning, long ago. I cannot quite tell whether, when you grow older, you
will regard it as a gift of the greatest value or as something that you had
been happier never to have possessed.’
“‘But grandpapa, I am not short-sighted.’
“‘My son, are you not human?’ said the old gentleman; and how shall I
ever forget the thoughtful sadness with which, at the same time he handed
me the spectacles.
“Instinctively I put them on, and looked at my grandfather. But I saw no
grandfather, no piazza, no flowered dressing-gown: I saw only a luxuriant
palm-tree, waving broadly over a tranquil landscape. Pleasant homes
clustered around it. Gardens teeming with fruit and flowers; flocks quietly
feeding; birds wheeling and chirping. I heard children’s voices, and the low
lullaby of happy mothers. The sound of cheerful singing came wafted from
distant fields upon the light breeze. Golden harvests glistened out of sight,
and I caught their rustling whisper of prosperity. A warm, mellow
atmosphere bathed the whole. I have seen copies of the landscapes of the
Italian painter Claude which seemed to me faint reminiscences of that calm
and happy vision. But all this peace and prosperity seemed to flow from the
spreading palm as from a fountain.
“I do not know how long I looked, but I had, apparently, no power, as I
had no will, to remove the spectacles. What a wonderful island must Nevis
be, thought I, if people carry such pictures in their pockets, only by buying
a pair of spectacles! What wonder that my dear grandmother Titbottom has
lived such a placid life, and has blessed us all with her sunny temper, when
she has lived surrounded by such images of peace.
“My grandfather died. But still, in the warm morning sunshine upon the
piazza, I felt his placid presence, and as I crawled into his great chair, and
drifted on in reverie through the still, tropical day, it was as if his soft,
dreamy eye had passed into my soul. My grandmother cherished his
memory with tender regret. A violent passion of grief for his loss was no
more possible than for the pensive decay of the year. We have no portrait of
him, but I see always, when I remember him, that peaceful and luxuriant

palm. And I think that to have known one good old man—one man who,
through the chances and rubs of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand,
like a palm branch, waving all discords into peace, helps our faith in God,
in ourselves, and in each other, more than many sermons. I hardly know
whether to be grateful to my grandfather for the spectacles; and yet when I
remember that it is to them I owe the pleasant image of him which I
cherish, I seem to myself sadly ungrateful.
“Madam,” said Titbottom to Prue, solemnly, “my memory is a long and
gloomy gallery, and only remotely, at its further end, do I see the glimmer
of soft sunshine, and only there are the pleasant pictures hung. They seem
to me very happy along whose gallery the sunlight streams to their very
feet, striking all the pictured walls into unfading splendor.”
Prue had laid her work in her lap, and as Titbottom paused a moment,
and I turned towards her, I found her mild eyes fastened upon my face, and
glistening with happy tears.
“Misfortunes of many kinds came heavily upon the family after the head
was gone. The great house was relinquished. My parents were both dead,
and my grandmother had entire charge of me. But from the moment that I
received the gift of the spectacles, I could not resist their fascination, and I
withdrew into myself, and became a solitary boy. There were not many
companions for me of my own age, and they gradually left me, or, at least,
had not a hearty sympathy with me; for if they teased me I pulled out my
spectacles and surveyed them so seriously that they acquired a kind of awe
of me, and evidently regarded my grandfather’s gift as a concealed magical
weapon which might be dangerously drawn upon them at any moment.
Whenever, in our games, there were quarrels and high words, and I began to
feel about my dress and to wear a grave look, they all took the alarm, and
shouted, ‘Look out for Titbottom’s spectacles,’ and scattered like a flock of
scared sheep.
“Nor could I wonder at it. For, at first, before they took the alarm, I saw
strange sights when I looked at them through the glasses. If two were
quarrelling about a marble or a ball, I had only to go behind a tree where I
was concealed and look at them leisurely. Then the scene changed, and no
longer a green meadow with boys playing, but a spot which I did not
recognize, and forms that made me shudder or smile. It was not a big boy

bullying a little one, but a young wolf with glistening teeth and a lamb
cowering before him; or, it was a dog faithful and famishing—or a star
going slowly into eclipse—or a rainbow fading—or a flower blooming—or
a sun rising—or a waning moon. The revelations of the spectacles
determined my feeling for the boys, and for all whom I saw through them.
No shyness, nor awkwardness, nor silence, could separate me from those
who looked lovely as lilies to my illuminated eyes. If I felt myself warmly
drawn to any one I struggled with the fierce desire of seeing him through
the spectacles. I longed to enjoy the luxury of ignorant feeling, to love
without knowing, to float like a leaf upon the eddies of life, drifted now to a
sunny point, now to a solemn shade—now over glittering ripples, now over
gleaming calms,—and not to determined ports, a trim vessel with an
inexorable rudder.
“But, sometimes, mastered after long struggles, I seized my spectacles
and sauntered into the little town. Putting them to my eyes I peered into the
houses and at the people who passed me. Here sat a family at breakfast, and
I stood at the window looking in. O motley meal! fantastic vision! The good
mother saw her lord sitting opposite, a grave, respectable being, eating
muffins. But I saw only a bank-bill, more or less crumpled and tattered,
marked with a larger or lesser figure. If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I saw it
tremble and flutter; it was thin, flat, impalpable. I removed my glasses, and
looked with my eyes at the wife. I could have smiled to see the humid
tenderness with which she regarded her strange vis-à-vis. Is life only a game
of blind-man’s-buff? of droll cross-purposes?
“Or I put them on again, and looked at the wife. How many stout trees I
saw,—how many tender flowers,—how many placid pools; yes, and how
many little streams winding out of sight, shrinking before the large, hard,
round eyes opposite, and slipping off into solitude and shade, with a low,
inner song for their own solace. And in many houses I thought to see
angels, nymphs, or at least, women, and could only find broomsticks, mops,
or kettles, hurrying about, rattling, tinkling, in a state of shrill activity. I
made calls upon elegant ladies, and after I had enjoyed the gloss of silk and
the delicacy of lace, and the flash of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles, and
saw a peacock’s feather, flounced and furbelowed and fluttering; or an iron
rod, thin, sharp, and hard; nor could I possibly mistake the movement of the
drapery for any flexibility of the thing draped,—or, mysteriously chilled, I

saw a statue of perfect form, or flowing movement, it might be alabaster, or
bronze, or marble,—but sadly often it was ice; and I knew that after it had
shone a little, and frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, it could
not be put away in the niches of palaces for ornament and proud family
tradition, like the alabaster, or bronze, or marble statues, but would melt,
and shrink, and fall coldly away in colorless and useless water, be absorbed
in the earth and utterly forgotten.
“But the true sadness was rather in seeing those who, not having the
spectacles, thought that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue warm. I
saw many a gallant heart, which seemed to me brave and loyal as the
crusaders sent by genuine and noble faith to Syria and the sepulchre,
pursuing, through days and nights, and a long life of devotion, the hope of
lighting at least a smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire in the icy heart. I
watched the earnest, enthusiastic sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the
generous faith, the fine scorn of doubt, the impatience of suspicion. I
watched the grace, the ardor, the glory of devotion. Through those strange
spectacles how often I saw the noblest heart renouncing all other hope, all
other ambition, all other life, than the possible love of some one of those
statues. Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give. The Parian
face was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow upon the
heart,—and, drearily often, no heart to be touched. I could not wonder that
the noble heart of devotion was broken, for it had dashed itself against a
stone. I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed for that hopeless sorrow;
but there was a pang beyond tears for those icy statues.
“Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,—I did not
comprehend the sights I was compelled to see. I used to tear my glasses
away from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to escape my own
consciousness. Reaching the small house where we then lived, I plunged
into my grandmother’s room and, throwing myself upon the floor, buried
my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with premature grief. But
when I awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my hot forehead, and heard
the low, sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told parable from the
Bible, with which she tried to soothe me, I could not resist the mystic
fascination that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to steal a glance at her through
the spectacles.

“Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and pensive beauty. Upon the
tranquil little islands her life had been eventless, and all the fine
possibilities of her nature were like flowers that never bloomed. Placid were
all her years; yet I have read of no heroine, of no woman great in sudden
crises, that it did not seem to me she might have been. The wife and widow
of a man who loved his own home better than the homes of others, I have
yet heard of no queen, no belle, no imperial beauty, whom in grace, and
brilliancy, and persuasive courtesy, she might not have surpassed.
“Madam,” said Titbottom to my wife, whose heart hung upon his story;
“your husband’s young friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a camelia in her
hair, and no diamond in the ball-room seems so costly as that perfect
flower, which women envy, and for whose least and withered petal men
sigh; yet, in the tropical solitudes of Brazil, how many a camelia bud drops
from a bush that no eye has ever seen, which, had it flowered and been
noticed, would have gilded all hearts with its memory.
“When I stole these furtive glances at my grandmother, half fearing that
they were wrong, I saw only a calm lake, whose shores were low, and over
which the sky hung unbroken, so that the least star was clearly reflected. It
had an atmosphere of solemn twilight tranquillity, and so completely did its
unruffled surface blend with the cloudless, star-studded sky, that, when I
looked through my spectacles at my grandmother, the vision seemed to me
all heaven and stars. Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what stately cities
might well have been built upon those shores, and have flashed prosperity
over the calm, like coruscations of pearls.
“I dreamed of gorgeous fleets, silken sailed and blown by perfumed
winds, drifting over those depthless waters and through those spacious
skies. I gazed upon the twilight, the inscrutable silence, like a God-fearing
discoverer upon a new, and vast, and dim sea, bursting upon him through
forest glooms, and in the fervor of whose impassioned gaze, a millennial
and poetic world arises, and man need no longer die to be happy.
“My companions naturally deserted me, for I had grown wearily grave
and abstracted: and, unable to resist the allurement of my spectacles, I was
constantly lost in a world, of which those companions were part, yet of
which they knew nothing. I grew cold and hard, almost morose; people
seemed to me blind and unreasonable. They did the wrong thing. They

called green, yellow; and black, white. Young men said of a girl, ‘What a
lovely, simple creature!’ I looked, and there was only a glistening wisp of
straw, dry and hollow. Or they said, ‘What a cold, proud beauty!’ I looked,
and lo! a Madonna, whose heart held the world. Or they said, ‘What a wild,
giddy girl!’ and I saw a glancing, dancing mountain stream, pure as the
virgin snows whence it flowed, singing through sun and shade, over pearls
and gold dust, slipping along unstained by weed, or rain, or heavy foot of
cattle, touching the flowers with a dewy kiss,—a beam of grace, a happy
song, a line of light, in the dim and troubled landscape.
“My grandmother sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw
that he was a smooth, round ferule—or an improper noun—or a vulgar
fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a
willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of cool,
deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. He gave me
all my schooling. With him I used to walk by the sea, and, as we strolled
and the waves plunged in long legions before us, I looked at him through
the spectacles, and as his eye dilated with the boundless view, and his chest
heaved with an impossible desire, I saw Xerxes and his army tossing and
glittering, rank upon rank, multitude upon multitude, out of sight, but ever
regularly advancing and with the confused roar of ceaseless music,
prostrating themselves in abject homage. Or, as with arms outstretched and
hair streaming on the wind, he chanted full lines of the resounding Iliad, I
saw Homer pacing the AEgean sands in the Greek sunsets of forgotten
times.
“My grandmother died, and I was thrown into the world without
resources, and with no capital but my spectacles. I tried to find
employment, but men were shy of me. There was a vague suspicion that I
was either a little crazed, or a good deal in league with the Prince of
Darkness. My companions who would persist in calling a piece of painted
muslin a fair and fragrant flower had no difficulty; success waited for them
around every corner, and arrived in every ship. I tried to teach, for I loved
children. But if anything excited my suspicion, and, putting on my
spectacles, I saw that I was fondling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a
worm in it, I sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it seemed to me
through the glasses that a cherub smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming
in my buttonhole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be

leading and training what was so essentially superior in quality to myself,
and I kissed the children and left them weeping and wondering.
“In despair I went to a great merchant on the island, and asked him to
employ me.
“‘My young friend,’ said he, ‘I understand that you have some singular
secret, some charm, or spell, or gift, or something, I don’t know what, of
which people are afraid. Now, you know, my dear,’ said the merchant,
swelling up, and apparently prouder of his great stomach than of his large
fortune, ‘I am not of that kind. I am not easily frightened. You may spare
yourself the pain of trying to impose upon me. People who propose to come
to time before I arrive, are accustomed to arise very early in the morning,’
said he, thrusting his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and spreading
the fingers, like two fans, upon his bosom. ‘I think I have heard something
of your secret. You have a pair of spectacles, I believe, that you value very
much, because your grandmother brought them as a marriage portion to
your grandfather. Now, if you think fit to sell me those spectacles, I will pay
you the largest market price for glasses. What do you say?’
“I told him that I had not the slightest idea of selling my spectacles.
“‘My young friend means to eat them, I suppose,’ said he with a
contemptuous smile.
“I made no reply, but was turning to leave the office, when the merchant
called after me—
“‘My young friend, poor people should never suffer themselves to get
into pets. Anger is an expensive luxury, in which only men of a certain
income can indulge. A pair of spectacles and a hot temper are not the most
promising capital for success in life, Master Titbottom.’
“I said nothing, but put my hand upon the door to go out, when the
merchant said more respectfully,—
“‘Well, you foolish boy, if you will not sell your spectacles, perhaps you
will agree to sell the use of them to me. That is, you shall only put them on
when I direct you, and for my purposes. Hallo! you little fool!’ cried he
impatiently, as he saw that I intended to make no reply.

“But I had pulled out my spectacles, and put them on for my own
purpose, and against his direction and desire. I looked at him, and saw a
huge bald-headed wild boar, with gross chops and a leering eye—only the
more ridiculous for the high-arched, gold-bowed spectacles, that straddled
his nose. One of his fore hoofs was thrust into the safe, where his bills
payable were hived, and the other into his pocket, among the loose change
and bills there. His ears were pricked forward with a brisk, sensitive
smartness. In a world where prize pork was the best excellence, he would
have carried off all the premiums.
“I stepped into the next office in the street, and a mild-faced, genial man,
also a large and opulent merchant, asked me my business in such a tone,
that I instantly looked through my spectacles, and saw a land flowing with
milk and honey. There I pitched my tent, and stayed till the good man died,
and his business was discontinued.
“But while there,” said Titbottom, and his voice trembled away into a
sigh, “I first saw Preciosa. Spite of the spectacles, I saw Preciosa. For days,
for weeks, for months, I did not take my spectacles with me. I ran away
from them, I threw them up on high shelves, I tried to make up my mind to
throw them into the sea, or down the well. I could not, I would not, I dared
not look at Preciosa through the spectacles. It was not possible for me
deliberately to destroy them; but I awoke in the night, and could almost
have cursed my dear old grandfather for his gift. I escaped from the office,
and sat for whole days with Preciosa. I told her the strange things I had seen
with my mystic glasses. The hours were not enough for the wild romances
which I raved in her ear. She listened, astonished and appalled. Her blue
eyes turned upon me with a sweet deprecation. She clung to me, and then
withdrew, and fled fearfully from the room. But she could not stay away.
She could not resist my voice, in whose tones burned all the love that filled
my heart and brain. The very effort to resist the desire of seeing her as I saw
everybody else, gave a frenzy and an unnatural tension to my feeling and
my manner. I sat by her side, looking into her eyes, smoothing her hair,
folding her to my heart, which was sunken and deep—why not forever?—in
that dream of peace. I ran from her presence, and shouted, and leaped with
joy, and sat the whole night through, thrilled into happiness by the thought
of her love and loveliness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, and answering
the airiest sigh of the breeze with music. Then came calmer days—the

conviction of deep love settled upon our lives—as after the hurrying,
heaving days of spring, comes the bland and benignant summer.
“‘It is no dream, then, after all, and we are happy,’ I said to her, one day;
and there came no answer, for happiness is speechless.
“We are happy then,” I said to myself, “there is no excitement now. How
glad I am that I can now look at her through my spectacles.”
“I feared lest some instinct should warn me to beware. I escaped from her
arms, and ran home and seized the glasses and bounded back again to
Preciosa. As I entered the room I was heated, my head was swimming with
confused apprehension, my eyes must have glared. Preciosa was frightened,
and rising from her seat, stood with an inquiring glance of surprise in her
eyes. But I was bent with frenzy upon my purpose. I was merely aware that
she was in the room. I saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for
nothing, but to see her through that magic glass, and feel at once, all the
fulness of blissful perfection which that would reveal. Preciosa stood before
the mirror, but alarmed at my wild and eager movements, unable to
distinguish what I had in my hands, and seeing me raise them suddenly to
my face, she shrieked with terror, and fell fainting upon the floor, at the
very moment that I placed the glasses before my eyes, and beheld—myself,
reflected in the mirror, before which she had been standing.
“Dear madam,” cried Titbottom, to my wife, springing up and falling
back again in his chair, pale and trembling, while Prue ran to him and took
his hand, and I poured out a glass of water—“I saw myself.”
There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid her hand gently upon the
head of our guest, whose eyes were closed, and who breathed softly, like an
infant in sleeping. Perhaps, in all the long years of anguish since that hour,
no tender hand had touched his brow, nor wiped away the damps of a bitter
sorrow. Perhaps the tender, maternal fingers of my wife soothed his weary
head with the conviction that he felt the hand of his mother playing with the
long hair of her boy in the soft West Indian morning. Perhaps it was only
the natural relief of expressing a pent-up sorrow. When he spoke again, it
was with the old, subdued tone, and the air of quaint solemnity.
“These things were matters of long, long ago, and I came to this country
soon after. I brought with me, premature age, a past of melancholy

memories, and the magic spectacles. I had become their slave. I had nothing
more to fear. Having seen myself, I was compelled to see others, properly to
understand my relations to them. The lights that cheer the future of other
men had gone out for me. My eyes were those of an exile turned backwards
upon the receding shore, and not forwards with hope upon the ocean. I
mingled with men, but with little pleasure. There are but many varieties of a
few types. I did not find those I came to clearer sighted than those I had left
behind. I heard men called shrewd and wise, and report said they were
highly intelligent and successful. But when I looked at them through my
glasses, I found no halo of real manliness. My finest sense detected no
aroma of purity and principle; but I saw only a fungus that had fattened and
spread in a night. They all went to the theater to see actors upon the stage. I
went to see actors in the boxes, so consummately cunning, that the others
did not know they were acting, and they did not suspect it themselves.
“Perhaps you wonder it did not make me misanthropical. My dear
friends, do not forget that I had seen myself. It made me compassionate, not
cynical. Of course I could not value highly the ordinary standards of
success and excellence. When I went to church and saw a thin, blue,
artificial flower, or a great sleepy cushion expounding the beauty of
holiness to pews full of eagles, half-eagles, and threepences, however
adroitly concealed in broadcloth and boots: or saw an onion in an Easter
bonnet weeping over the sins of Magdalen, I did not feel as they felt who
saw in all this, not only propriety, but piety. Or when at public meetings an
eel stood up on end, and wriggled and squirmed lithely in every direction,
and declared that, for his part, he went in for rainbows and hot water—how
could I help seeing that he was still black and loved a slimy pool?
“I could not grow misanthropical when I saw in the eyes of so many who
were called old, the gushing fountains of eternal youth, and the light of an
immortal dawn, or when I saw those who were esteemed unsuccessful and
aimless, ruling a fair realm of peace and plenty, either in themselves, or
more perfectly in another—a realm and princely possession for which they
had well renounced a hopeless search and a belated triumph. I knew one
man who had been for years a by-word for having sought the philosopher’s
stone. But I looked at him through the spectacles and saw a satisfaction in
concentrated energies, and a tenacity arising from devotion to a noble
dream, which was not apparent in the youths who pitied him in the aimless

effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentlemen who cracked their thin
jokes upon him over a gossiping dinner.
“And there was your neighbor over the way, who passes for a woman
who has failed in her career, because she is an old maid. People wag solemn
heads of pity, and say that she made so great a mistake in not marrying the
brilliant and famous man who was for long years her suitor. It is clear that
no orange flower will ever bloom for her. The young people make tender
romances about her as they watch her, and think of her solitary hours of
bitter regret, and wasting longing, never to be satisfied. When I first came to
town I shared this sympathy, and pleased my imagination with fancying her
hard struggle with the conviction that she had lost all that made life
beautiful. I supposed that if I looked at her through my spectacles, I should
see that it was only her radiant temper which so illuminated her dress, that
we did not see it to be heavy sables. But when, one day, I did raise my
glasses and glanced at her, I did not see the old maid whom we all pitied for
a secret sorrow, but a woman whose nature was a tropic, in which the sun
shone, and birds sang, and flowers bloomed forever. There were no regrets,
no doubts and half wishes, but a calm sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw
her blush when that old lover passed by, or paused to speak to her, but it
was only the sign of delicate feminine consciousness. She knew his love,
and honored it, although she could not understand it nor return it. I looked
closely at her, and I saw that although all the world had exclaimed at her
indifference to such homage, and had declared it was astonishing she should
lose so fine a match, she would only say simply and quietly—
“‘If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love him, how could I marry
him?’
“Could I be misanthropical when I saw such fidelity, and dignity, and
simplicity?
“You may believe that I was especially curious to look at that old lover of
hers, through my glasses. He was no longer young, you know, when I came,
and his fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I have heard of few men
more beloved, and of none more worthy to be loved. He had the easy
manner of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a poet, and the
charitable judgment of a wide traveller. He was accounted the most
successful and most unspoiled of men. Handsome, brilliant, wise, tender,

graceful, accomplished, rich, and famous, I looked at him, without the
spectacles, in surprise, and admiration, and wondered how your neighbor
over the way had been so entirely untouched by his homage. I watched their
intercourse in society, I saw her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked
his frank address, his lofty courtesy. Their manner told no tales. The eager
world was balked, and I pulled out my spectacles.
“I had seen her, already, and now I saw him. He lived only in memory,
and his memory was a spacious and stately palace. But he did not oftenest
frequent the banqueting hall, where were endless hospitality and feasting—
nor did he loiter much in reception rooms, where a throng of new visitors
was forever swarming—nor did he feed his vanity by haunting the
apartment in which were stored the trophies of his varied triumphs—nor
dream much in the great gallery hung with pictures of his travels. But from
all these lofty halls of memory he constantly escaped to a remote and
solitary chamber, into which no one had ever penetrated. But my fatal eyes,
behind the glasses, followed and entered with him, and saw that the
chamber was a chapel. It was dim, and silent, and sweet with perpetual
incense that burned upon an altar before a picture forever veiled. There,
whenever I chanced to look, I saw him kneel and pray; and there, by day
and by night, a funeral hymn was chanted.
“I do not believe you will be surprised that I have been content to remain
deputy bookkeeper. My spectacles regulated my ambition, and I early
learned that there were better gods than Plutus. The glasses have lost much
of their fascination now, and I do not often use them. Sometimes the desire
is irresistible. Whenever I am greatly interested, I am compelled to take
them out and see what it is that I admire.
“And yet—and yet,” said Titbottom, after a pause, “I am not sure that I
thank my grandfather.”
Prue had long since laid away her work, and had heard every word of the
story. I saw that the dear woman had yet one question to ask, and had been
earnestly hoping to hear something that would spare her the necessity of
asking. But Titbottom had resumed his usual tone, after the momentary
excitement, and made no further allusion to himself. We all sat silently;
Titbottom’s eyes fastened musingly upon the carpet: Prue looking wistfully
at him, and I regarding both.

It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go. He shook hands quietly,
made his grave Spanish bow to Prue, and taking his hat, went towards the
front door. Prue and I accompanied him. I saw in her eyes that she would
ask her question. And as Titbottom opened the door, I heard the low words:
“And Preciosa?”
Titbottom paused. He had just opened the door and the moonlight
streamed over him as he stood, turning back to us.
“I have seen her but once since. It was in church, and she was kneeling
with her eyes closed, so that she did not see me. But I rubbed the glasses
well, and looked at her, and saw a white lily, whose stem was broken, but
which was fresh; and luminous, and fragrant, still.”
“That was a miracle,” interrupted Prue.
“Madam, it was a miracle,” replied Titbottom, “and for that one sight I
am devoutly grateful for my grandfather’s gift. I saw, that although a flower
may have lost its hold upon earthly moisture, it may still bloom as sweetly,
fed by the dews of heaven.”
The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue put her arm in mine and
we went upstairs together, she whispered in my ear:
“How glad I am that you don’t wear spectacles.”

FOOTNOTES:
[14] From Putnam’s Monthly, December, 1854.
Republished in the volume, Prue and I (1856),
by George William Curtis (Harper & Brothers).

MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME[15]
By Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909)
It is not often that I trouble the readers of The Atlantic Monthly. I should
not trouble them now, but for the importunities of my wife, who “feels to
insist” that a duty to society is unfulfilled, till I have told why I had to have
a double, and how he undid me. She is sure, she says, that intelligent
persons cannot understand that pressure upon public servants which alone
drives any man into the employment of a double. And while I fear she
thinks, at the bottom of her heart, that my fortunes will never be re-made,
she has a faint hope, that, as another Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future
publics, from which they may profit, though we die. Owing to the behavior
of my double, or, if you please, to that public pressure which compelled me
to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write this communication.
I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was
settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the finest
water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a Western town in the heart of the
civilization of New England. A charming place it was and is. A spirited,
brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might have all “the joy of
eventful living” to our hearts’ content.
Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those
halcyon moments of our first housekeeping! To be the confidential friend in
a hundred families in the town—cutting the social trifle, as my friend
Haliburton says, “from the top of the whipped-syllabub to the bottom of the
sponge-cake, which is the foundation”—to keep abreast of the thought of
the age in one’s study, and to do one’s best on Sunday to interweave that
thought with the active life of an active town, and to inspirit both and make
both infinite by glimpses of the Eternal Glory, seemed such an exquisite

forelook into one’s life! Enough to do, and all so real and so grand! If this
vision could only have lasted.
The truth is, that this vision was not in itself a delusion, nor, indeed, half
bright enough. If one could only have been left to do his own business, the
vision would have accomplished itself and brought out new paraheliacal
visions, each as bright as the original. The misery was and is, as we found
out, I and Polly, before long, that, besides the vision, and besides the usual
human and finite failures in life (such as breaking the old pitcher that came
over in the Mayflower, and putting into the fire the alpenstock with which
her father climbed Mont Blanc)—besides, these, I say (imitating the style of
Robinson Crusoe), there were pitchforked in on us a great rowen-heap of
humbugs, handed down from some unknown seed-time, in which we were
expected, and I chiefly, to fulfil certain public functions before the
community, of the character of those fulfilled by the third row of
supernumeraries who stand behind the Sepoys in the spectacle of the
Cataract of the Ganges. They were the duties, in a word, which one
performs as member of one or another social class or subdivision, wholly
distinct from what one does as A. by himself A. What invisible power put
these functions on me, it would be very hard to tell. But such power there
was and is. And I had not been at work a year before I found I was living
two lives, one real and one merely functional—for two sets of people, one
my parish, whom I loved, and the other a vague public, for whom I did not
care two straws. All this was in a vague notion, which everybody had and
has, that this second life would eventually bring out some great results,
unknown at present, to somebody somewhere.
Crazed by this duality of life, I first read Dr. Wigan on the Duality of the
Brain, hoping that I could train one side of my head to do these outside
jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties. For Richard
Greenough once told me that, in studying for the statue of Franklin, he
found that the left side of the great man’s face was philosophic and
reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If you will go and look at
the bronze statue, you will find he has repeated this observation there for
posterity. The eastern profile is the portrait of the statesman Franklin, the
western of Poor Richard. But Dr. Wigan does not go into these niceties of
this subject, and I failed. It was then that, on my wife’s suggestion, I
resolved to look out for a Double.

I was, at first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating at
Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the
relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monsonpon House. We were
passing through one of the large halls, when my destiny was fulfilled! I saw
my man!
He was not shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green
baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But I saw
at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He had black
hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He stooped in walking. So
do I. His hands were large, and mine. And—choicest gift of Fate in all—he
had, not “a strawberry-mark on his left arm,” but a cut from a juvenile
brickbat over his right eye, slightly affecting the play of that eyebrow.
Reader, so have I!—My fate was sealed!
A word with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole thing. It
proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow, of the class
known as shiftless, who had sealed his fate by marrying a dumb wife, who
was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I left Stafford, I had hired
both for five years. We had applied to Judge Pynchon, then the probate
judge at Springfield, to change the name of Dennis Shea to Frederic
Ingham. We had explained to the Judge, what was the precise truth, that an
eccentric gentleman wished to adopt Dennis under this new name into his
family. It never occurred to him that Dennis might be more than fourteen
years old. And thus, to shorten this preface, when we returned at night to
my parsonage at Naguadavick, there entered Mrs. Ingham, her new dumb
laundress, myself, who am Mr. Frederic Ingham, and my double, who was
Mr. Frederic Ingham by as good right as I.
Oh, the fun we had the next morning in shaving his beard to my pattern,
cutting his hair to match mine, and teaching him how to wear and how to
take off gold-bowed spectacles! Really, they were electroplate, and the glass
was plain (for the poor fellow’s eyes were excellent). Then in four
successive afternoons I taught him four speeches. I had found these would
be quite enough for the supernumerary-Sepoy line of life, and it was well
for me they were. For though he was good-natured, he was very shiftless,
and it was, as our national proverb says, “like pulling teeth” to teach him.
But at the end of the next week he could say, with quite my easy and frisky
air:

1. “Very well, thank you. And you?” This for an answer to casual
salutations.
2. “I am very glad you liked it.”
3. “There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I
will not occupy the time.”
4. “I agree, in general, with my friend on the other side of the room.”
At first I had a feeling that I was going to be at great cost for clothing
him. But it proved, of course, at once, that, whenever he was out, I should
be at home. And I went, during the bright period of his success, to so few of
those awful pageants which require a black dress-coat and what the ungodly
call, after Mr. Dickens, a white choker, that in the happy retreat of my own
dressing-gowns and jackets my days went by as happily and cheaply as
those of another Thalaba. And Polly declares there was never a year when
the tailoring cost so little. He lived (Dennis, not Thalaba) in his wife’s room
over the kitchen. He had orders never to show himself at that window.
When he appeared in the front of the house, I retired to my sanctissimum
and my dressing-gown. In short, the Dutchman and, his wife, in the old
weather-box, had not less to do with, each other than he and I. He made the
furnace-fire and split the wood before daylight; then he went to sleep again,
and slept late; then came for orders, with a red silk bandanna tied round his
head, with his overalls on, and his dress-coat and spectacles off. If we
happened to be interrupted, no one guessed that he was Frederic Ingham as
well as I; and, in the neighborhood, there grew up an impression that the
minister’s Irishman worked day-times in the factory village at New
Coventry. After I had given him his orders, I never saw him till the next day.
I launched him by sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board.
The Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom
sixty-seven are necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under
the regulations laid down in old Judge Dudley’s will. I became one by being
ordained pastor of a church in Naguadavick. You see you cannot help
yourself, if you would. At this particular time we had had four successive
meetings, averaging four hours each—wholly occupied in whipping in a
quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at the next, by force of
three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third, thanks to two days’ canvassing by
Auchmuty and myself, begging men to come, we had sixty. Half the others

were in Europe. But without a quorum we could do nothing. All the rest of
us waited grimly for our four hours, and adjourned without any action. At
the fourth meeting we had flagged, and only got fifty-nine together. But on
the first appearance of my double—whom I sent on this fatal Monday to the
fifth meeting—he was the sixty-seventh man who entered the room. He was
greeted with a storm of applause! The poor fellow had missed his way—
read the street signs ill through his spectacles (very ill, in fact, without
them)—and had not dared to inquire. He entered the room—finding the
president and secretary holding to their chairs two judges of the Supreme
Court, who were also members ex officio, and were begging leave to go
away. On his entrance all was changed. Presto, the by-laws were amended,
and the Western property was given away. Nobody stopped to converse
with him. He voted, as I had charged him to do, in every instance, with the
minority. I won new laurels as a man of sense, though a little unpunctual—
and Dennis, alias Ingham, returned to the parsonage, astonished to see with
how little wisdom the world is governed. He cut a few of my parishioners in
the street; but he had his glasses off, and I am known to be nearsighted.
Eventually he recognized them more readily than I.
I “set him again” at the exhibition of the New Coventry Academy; and
here he undertook a “speaking part”—as, in my boyish, worldly days, I
remember the bills used to say of Mlle. Celeste. We are all trustees of the
New Coventry Academy; and there has lately been “a good deal of feeling”
because the Sandemanian trustees did not regularly attend the exhibitions. It
has been intimated, indeed, that the Sandemanians are leaning towards
Free-Will, and that we have, therefore, neglected these semi-annual
exhibitions, while there is no doubt that Auchmuty last year went to
Commencement at Waterville. Now the head master at New Coventry is a
real good fellow, who knows a Sanskrit root when he sees it, and often
cracks etymologies with me—so that, in strictness, I ought to go to their
exhibitions. But think, reader, of sitting through three long July days in that
Academy chapel, following the program from
Tuesday Morning. English Composition. Sunshine. Miss
Jones,
round to

Trio on Three Pianos. Duel from opera of Midshipman Easy.
Marryatt.
coming in at nine, Thursday evening! Think of this, reader, for men who
know the world is trying to go backward, and who would give their lives if
they could help it on! Well! The double had succeeded so well at the Board,
that I sent him to the Academy. (Shade of Plato, pardon!) He arrived early
on Tuesday, when, indeed, few but mothers and clergymen are generally
expected, and returned in the evening to us, covered with honors. He had
dined at the right hand of the chairman, and he spoke in high terms of the
repast. The chairman had expressed his interest in the French conversation.
“I am very glad you liked it,” said Dennis; and the poor chairman, abashed,
supposed the accent had been wrong. At the end of the day, the gentlemen
present had been called upon for speeches—the Rev. Frederic Ingham first,
as it happened; upon which Dennis had risen, and had said, “There has been
so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the
time.” The girls were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the year before, had
given them at this occasion a scolding on impropriety of behavior at lyceum
lectures. They all declared Mr. Ingham was a love—and so handsome!
(Dennis is good-looking.) Three of them, with arms behind the others’
waists, followed him up to the wagon he rode home in; and a little girl with
a blue sash had been sent to give him a rosebud. After this debut in
speaking, he went to the exhibition for two days more, to the mutual
satisfaction of all concerned. Indeed, Polly reported that he had pronounced
the trustees’ dinners of a higher grade than those of the parsonage. When
the next term began, I found six of the Academy girls had obtained
permission to come across the river and attend our church. But this
arrangement did not long continue.
After this he went to several Commencements for me, and ate the dinners
provided; he sat through three of our Quarterly Conventions for me—
always voting judiciously, by the simple rule mentioned above, of siding
with the minority. And I, meanwhile, who had before been losing caste
among my friends, as holding myself aloof from the associations of the
body, began to rise in everybody’s favor. “Ingham’s a good fellow—always
on hand”; “never talks much—but does the right thing at the right time”; “is
not as unpunctual as he used to be—he comes early, and sits through to the

end.” “He has got over his old talkative habit, too. I spoke to a friend of his
about it once; and I think Ingham took it kindly,” etc., etc.
This voting power of Dennis was particularly valuable at the quarterly
meetings of the Proprietors of the Naguadavick Ferry. My wife inherited
from her father some shares in that enterprise, which is not yet fully
developed, though it doubtless will become a very valuable property. The
law of Maine then forbade stockholders to appear by proxy at such
meetings. Polly disliked to go, not being, in fact, a “hens’-rights hen,” and
transferred her stock to me. I, after going once, disliked it more than she.
But Dennis went to the next meeting, and liked it very much. He said the
armchairs were good, the collation good, and the free rides to stockholders
pleasant. He was a little frightened when they first took him upon one of the
ferry-boats, but after two or three quarterly meetings he became quite brave.
Thus far I never had any difficulty with him. Indeed, being of that type
which is called shiftless, he was only too happy to be told daily what to do,
and to be charged not to be forthputting or in any way original in his
discharge of that duty. He learned, however, to discriminate between the
lines of his life, and very much preferred these stockholders’ meetings and
trustees’ dinners and commencement collations to another set of occasions,
from which he used to beg off most piteously. Our excellent brother, Dr.
Fillmore, had taken a notion at this time that our Sandemanian churches
needed more expression of mutual sympathy. He insisted upon it that we
were remiss. He said, that, if the Bishop came to preach at Naguadavick, all
the Episcopal clergy of the neighborhood were present; if Dr. Pond came,
all the Congregational clergymen turned out to hear him; if Dr. Nichols, all
the Unitarians; and he thought we owed it to each other that, whenever
there was an occasional service at a Sandemanian church, the other brethren
should all, if possible, attend. “It looked well,” if nothing more. Now this
really meant that I had not been to hear one of Dr. Fillmore’s lectures on the
Ethnology of Religion. He forgot that he did not hear one of my course on
the Sandemanianism of Anselm. But I felt badly when he said it; and
afterwards I always made Dennis go to hear all the brethren preach, when I
was not preaching myself. This was what he took exceptions to—the only
thing, as I said, which he ever did except to. Now came the advantage of his
long morning-nap, and of the green tea with which Polly supplied the
kitchen. But he would plead, so humbly, to be let off, only from one or two!

I never excepted him, however. I knew the lectures were of value, and I
thought it best he should be able to keep the connection.
Polly is more rash than I am, as the reader has observed in the outset of
this memoir. She risked Dennis one night under the eyes of her own sex.
Governor Gorges had always been very kind to us; and when he gave his
great annual party to the town, asked us. I confess I hated to go. I was deep
in the new volume of Pfeiffer’s Mystics, which Haliburton had just sent me
from Boston. “But how rude,” said Polly, “not to return the Governor’s
civility and Mrs. Gorges’s, when they will be sure to ask why you are
away!” Still I demurred, and at last she, with the wit of Eve and of
Semiramis conjoined, let me off by saying that, if I would go in with her,
and sustain the initial conversations with the Governor and the ladies
staying there, she would risk Dennis for the rest of the evening. And that
was just what we did. She took Dennis in training all that afternoon,
instructed him in fashionable conversation, cautioned him against the
temptations of the supper-table—and at nine in the evening he drove us all
down in the carryall. I made the grand star-entrée with Polly and the pretty
Walton girls, who were staying with us. We had put Dennis into a great
rough top-coat, without his glasses—and the girls never dreamed, in the
darkness, of looking at him. He sat in the carriage, at the door, while we
entered. I did the agreeable to Mrs. Gorges, was introduced to her niece.
Miss Fernanda—I complimented Judge Jeffries on his decision in the great
case of D’Aulnay vs. Laconia Mining Co.—I stepped into the dressing-
room for a moment—stepped out for another—walked home, after a nod
with Dennis, and tying the horse to a pump—and while I walked home, Mr.
Frederic Ingham, my double, stepped in through the library into the
Gorges’s grand saloon.
Oh! Polly died of laughing as she told me of it at midnight! And even
here, where I have to teach my hands to hew the beech for stakes to fence
our cave, she dies of laughing as she recalls it—and says that single
occasion was worth all we have paid for it. Gallant Eve that she is! She
joined Dennis at the library door, and in an instant presented him to Dr.
Ochterlong, from Baltimore, who was on a visit in town, and was talking
with her, as Dennis came in. “Mr. Ingham would like to hear what you were
telling us about your success among the German population.” And Dennis
bowed and said, in spite of a scowl from Polly, “I’m very glad you liked it.”

But Dr. Ochterlong did not observe, and plunged into the tide of
explanation, Dennis listening like a prime-minister, and bowing like a
mandarin—which is, I suppose, the same thing. Polly declared it was just
like Haliburton’s Latin conversation with the Hungarian minister, of which
he is very fond of telling. “Quoene sit historia Reformationis in Ungariâ?”
quoth Haliburton, after some thought. And his confrère replied gallantly, “In
seculo decimo tertio,” etc., etc., etc.; and from decimo tertio[16] to the
nineteenth century and a half lasted till the oysters came. So was it that
before Dr. Ochterlong came to the “success,” or near it, Governor Gorges
came to Dennis and asked him to hand Mrs. Jeffries down to supper, a
request which he heard with great joy.
Polly was skipping round the room, I guess, gay as a lark. Auchmuty
came to her “in pity for poor Ingham,” who was so bored by the stupid
pundit—and Auchmuty could not understand why I stood it so long. But
when Dennis took Mrs. Jeffries down, Polly could not resist standing near
them. He was a little flustered, till the sight of the eatables and drinkables
gave him the same Mercian courage which it gave Diggory. A little excited
then, he attempted one or two of his speeches to the Judge’s lady. But little
he knew how hard it was to get in even a promptu there edgewise. “Very
well, I thank you,” said he, after the eating elements were adjusted; “and
you?” And then did not he have to hear about the mumps, and the measles,
and arnica, and belladonna, and chamomile-flower, and dodecathem, till she
changed oysters for salad—and then about the old practice and the new, and
what her sister said, and what her sister’s friend said, and what the
physician to her sister’s friend said, and then what was said by the brother
of the sister of the physician of the friend of her sister, exactly as if it had
been in Ollendorff? There was a moment’s pause, as she declined
champagne. “I am very glad you liked it,” said Dennis again, which he
never should have said, but to one who complimented a sermon. “Oh! you
are so sharp, Mr. Ingham! No! I never drink any wine at all—except
sometimes in summer a little currant spirits—from our own currants, you
know. My own mother—that is, I call her my own mother, because, you
know, I do not remember,” etc., etc., etc.; till they came to the candied
orange at the end of the feast—when Dennis, rather confused, thought he
must say something, and tried No. 4—“I agree, in general, with my friend
the other side of the room”—which he never should have said but at a
public meeting. But Mrs. Jeffries, who never listens expecting to

understand, caught him up instantly with, “Well, I’m sure my husband
returns the compliment; he always agrees with you—though we do worship
with the Methodists—but you know, Mr. Ingham,” etc., etc., etc., till the
move was made upstairs; and as Dennis led her through the hall, he was
scarcely understood by any but Polly, as he said, “There has been so much
said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the time.”
His great resource the rest of the evening was standing in the library,
carrying on animated conversations with one and another in much the same
way. Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a discovery of mine, that it
is not necessary to finish your sentence in a crowd, but by a sort of mumble,
omitting sibilants and dentals. This, indeed, if your words fail you, answers
even in public extempore speech—but better where other talking is going
on. Thus: “We missed you at the Natural History Society, Ingham.” Ingham
replies: “I am very gligloglum, that is, that you were m-m-m-m-m.” By
gradually dropping the voice, the interlocutor is compelled to supply the
answer. “Mrs. Ingham, I hope your friend Augusta is better.” Augusta has
not been ill. Polly cannot think of explaining, however, and answers:
“Thank you, ma’am; she is very rearason wewahwewob,” in lower and
lower tones. And Mrs. Throckmorton, who forgot the subject of which she
spoke, as soon as she asked the question, is quite satisfied. Dennis could see
into the card-room, and came to Polly to ask if he might not go and play all-
fours. But, of course, she sternly refused. At midnight they came home
delightedly: Polly, as I said, wild to tell me the story of victory; only both
the pretty Walton girls said: “Cousin Frederic, you did not come near me all
the evening.”
We always called him Dennis at home, for convenience, though his real
name was Frederic Ingham, as I have explained. When the election day
came round, however, I found that by some accident there was only one
Frederic Ingham’s name on the voting-list; and, as I was quite busy that day
in writing some foreign letters to Halle, I thought I would forego my
privilege of suffrage, and stay quietly at home, telling Dennis that he might
use the record on the voting-list and vote. I gave him a ticket, which I told
him he might use, if he liked to. That was that very sharp election in Maine
which the readers of The Atlantic so well remember, and it had been
intimated in public that the ministers would do well not to appear at the
polls. Of course, after that, we had to appear by self or proxy. Still,

Naguadavick was not then a city, and this standing in a double queue at
townmeeting several hours to vote was a bore of the first water; and so,
when I found that there was but one Frederic Ingham on the list, and that
one of us must give up, I stayed at home and finished the letters (which,
indeed, procured for Fothergill his coveted appointment of Professor of
Astronomy at Leavenworth), and I gave Dennis, as we called him, the
chance. Something in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the
Frederic Ingham name; and at the adjourned election, next week, Frederic
Ingham was chosen to the legislature. Whether this was I or Dennis, I never
really knew. My friends seemed to think it was I; but I felt, that, as Dennis
had done the popular thing, he was entitled to the honor; so I sent him to
Augusta when the time came, and he took the oaths. And a very valuable
member he made. They appointed him on the Committee on Parishes; but I
wrote a letter for him, resigning, on the ground that he took an interest in
our claim to the stumpage in the minister’s sixteenths of Gore A, next No.
7, in the 10th Range. He never made any speeches, and always voted with
the minority, which was what he was sent to do. He made me and himself a
great many good friends, some of whom I did not afterwards recognize as
quickly as Dennis did my parishioners. On one or two occasions, when
there was wood to saw at home, I kept him at home; but I took those
occasions to go to Augusta myself. Finding myself often in his vacant seat
at these times, I watched the proceedings with a good deal of care; and once
was so much excited that I delivered my somewhat celebrated speech on the
Central School District question, a speech of which the State of Maine
printed some extra copies. I believe there is no formal rule permitting
strangers to speak; but no one objected.
Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all. But our experience this
session led me to think, that if, by some such “general understanding” as the
reports speak of in legislation daily, every member of Congress might leave
a double to sit through those deadly sessions and answer to roll-calls and do
the legitimate party-voting, which appears stereotyped in the regular list of
Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we should gain decidedly in working power. As
things stand, the saddest state prison I ever visit is that Representatives’
Chamber in Washington. If a man leaves for an hour, twenty
“correspondents” may be howling, “Where was Mr. Prendergast when the
Oregon bill passed?” And if poor Prendergast stays there! Certainly, the
worst use you can make of a man is to put him in prison!

I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to this
expedient long ago. Dumas’s novel of The Iron Mask turns on the brutal
imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth’s double. There seems little doubt, in
our own history, that it was the real General Pierce who shed tears when the
delegate from Lawrence explained to him the sufferings of the people there
—and only General Pierce’s double who had given the orders for the assault
on that town, which was invaded the next day. My charming friend, George
Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who preaches his afternoon
sermons for him. This is the reason that the theology often varies so from
that of the forenoon. But that double is almost as charming as the original.
Some of the most well-defined men, who stand out most prominently on the
background of history, are in this way stereoscopic men; who owe their
distinct relief to the slight differences between the doubles. All this I know.
My present suggestion is simply the great extension of the system, so that
all public machine-work may be done by it.
But I see I loiter on my story, which is rushing to the plunge. Let me stop
an instant more, however, to recall, were it only to myself, that charming
year while all was yet well. After the double had become a matter of course,
for nearly twelve months before he undid me, what a year it was! Full of
active life, full of happy love, of the hardest work, of the sweetest sleep,
and the fulfilment of so many of the fresh aspirations and dreams of
boyhood! Dennis went to every school-committee meeting, and sat through
all those late wranglings which used to keep me up till midnight and awake
till morning. He attended all the lectures to which foreign exiles sent me
tickets begging me to come for the love of Heaven and of Bohemia. He
accepted and used all the tickets for charity concerts which were sent to me.
He appeared everywhere where it was specially desirable that “our
denomination,” or “our party,” or “our class,” or “our family,” or “our
street,” or “our town,” or “our country,” or “our state,” should be fully
represented. And I fell back to that charming life which in boyhood one
dreams of, when he supposes he shall do his own duty and make his own
sacrifices, without being tied up with those of other people. My rusty
Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German
and English began to take polish. Heavens! how little I had done with them
while I attended to my public duties! My calls on my parishioners became
the friendly, frequent, homelike sociabilities they were meant to be, instead
of the hard work of a man goaded to desperation by the sight of his lists of

arrears. And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on Sunday
the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to speak to a
people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand friend! I
never tired on Sunday, and was in condition to leave the sermon at home, if
I chose, and preach it extempore, as all men should do always. Indeed, I
wonder, when I think that a sensible people like ours—really more attached
to their clergy than they were in the lost days, when the Mathers and
Nortons were noblemen—should choose to neutralize so much of their
ministers’ lives, and destroy so much of their early training, by this
undefined passion for seeing them in public. It springs from our balancing
of sects. If a spirited Episcopalian takes an interest in the almshouse, and is
put on the Poor Board, every other denomination must have a minister
there, lest the poorhouse be changed into St. Paul’s Cathedral. If a
Sandemanian is chosen president of the Young Men’s Library, there must be
a Methodist vice-president and a Baptist secretary. And if a Universalist
Sunday-School Convention collects five hundred delegates, the next
Congregationalist Sabbath-School Conference must be as large, “lest
‘they’—whoever they may be—should think ‘we’—whoever we may be—
are going down.”
Freed from these necessities, that happy year, I began to know my wife
by sight. We saw each other sometimes. In those long mornings, when
Dennis was in the study explaining to map-peddlers that I had eleven maps
of Jerusalem already, and to school-book agents that I would see them
hanged before I would be bribed to introduce their textbooks into the
schools—she and I were at work together, as in those old dreamy days—
and in these of our log-cabin again. But all this could not last—and at
length poor Dennis, my double, overtasked in turn, undid me.
It was thus it happened. There is an excellent fellow—once a minister—I
will call him Isaacs—who deserves well of the world till he dies, and after
—because he once, in a real exigency, did the right thing, in the right way,
at the right time, as no other man could do it. In the world’s great football
match, the ball by chance found him loitering on the outside of the field; he
closed with it, “camped” it, charged, it home—yes, right through the other
side—not disturbed, not frightened by his own success—and breathless
found himself a great man—as the Great Delta rang applause. But he did
not find himself a rich man; and the football has never come in his way

again. From that moment to this moment he has been of no use, that one can
see, at all. Still, for that great act we speak of Isaacs gratefully and
remember him kindly; and he forges on, hoping to meet the football
somewhere again. In that vague hope, he had arranged a “movement” for a
general organization of the human family into Debating Clubs, County
Societies, State Unions, etc., etc., with a view of inducing all children to
take hold of the handles of their knives and forks, instead of the metal.
Children have bad habits in that way. The movement, of course, was
absurd; but we all did our best to forward, not it, but him. It came time for
the annual county-meeting on this subject to be held at Naguadavick. Isaacs
came round, good fellow! to arrange for it—got the townhall, got the
Governor to preside (the saint!—he ought to have triplet doubles provided
him by law), and then came to get me to speak. “No,” I said, “I would not
speak, if ten Governors presided. I do not believe in the enterprise. If I
spoke, it should be to say children should take hold of the prongs of the
forks and the blades of the knives. I would subscribe ten dollars, but I
would not speak a mill.” So poor Isaacs went his way, sadly, to coax
Auchmuty to speak, and Delafield. I went out. Not long after, he came back,
and told Polly that they had promised to speak—the Governor would speak
—and he himself would close with the quarterly report, and some
interesting anecdotes regarding. Miss Biffin’s way of handling her knife and
Mr. Nellis’s way of footing his fork. “Now if Mr. Ingham will only come
and sit on the platform, he need not say one word; but it will show well in
the paper—it will show that the Sandemanians take as much interest in the
movement as the Armenians or the Mesopotamians, and will be a great
favor to me.” Polly, good soul! was tempted, and she promised. She knew
Mrs. Isaacs was starving, and the babies—she knew Dennis was at home—
and she promised! Night came, and I returned. I heard her story. I was sorry.
I doubted. But Polly had promised to beg me, and I dared all! I told Dennis
to hold his peace, under all circumstances, and sent him down.
It was not half an hour more before he returned, wild with excitement—
in a perfect Irish fury—which it was long before I understood. But I knew
at once that he had undone me!
What happened was this: The audience got together, attracted by
Governor Gorges’s name. There were a thousand people. Poor Gorges was
late from Augusta. They became impatient. He came in direct from the train

at last, really ignorant of the object of the meeting. He opened it in the
fewest possible words, and said other gentlemen were present who would
entertain them better than he. The audience were disappointed, but waited.
The Governor, prompted by Isaacs, said, “The Honorable Mr. Delafield will
address you.” Delafield had forgotten the knives and forks, and was playing
the Ruy Lopez opening at the chess club. “The Rev. Mr. Auchmuty will
address you.” Auchmuty had promised to speak late, and was at the school
committee. “I see Dr. Stearns in the hall; perhaps he will say a word.” Dr.
Stearns said he had come to listen and not to speak. The Governor and
Isaacs whispered. The Governor looked at Dennis, who was resplendent on
the platform; but Isaacs, to give him his due, shook his head. But the look
was enough. A miserable lad, ill-bred, who had once been in Boston,
thought it would sound well to call for me, and peeped out, “Ingham!” A
few more wretches cried, “Ingham! Ingham!” Still Isaacs was firm; but the
Governor, anxious, indeed, to prevent a row, knew I would say something,
and said, “Our friend Mr. Ingham is always prepared—and though we had
not relied upon him, he will say a word, perhaps.” Applause followed,
which turned Dennis’s head. He rose, flattered, and tried No. 3: “There has
been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not longer
occupy the time!” and sat down, looking for his hat; for things seemed
squally. But the people cried, “Go on! go on!” and some applauded. Dennis,
still confused, but flattered by the applause, to which neither he nor I are
used, rose again, and this time tried No. 2: “I am very glad you liked it!” in
a sonorous, clear delivery. My best friends stared. All the people who did
not know me personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening; the
Governor was beside himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone! Alas,
it was I! A boy in the gallery cried in a loud tone, “It’s all an infernal
humbug,” just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded silence, and tried
No. 4: “I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room.” The
poor Governor doubted his senses, and crossed to stop him—not in time,
however. The same gallery-boy shouted, “How’s your mother?”—and
Dennis, now completely lost, tried, as his last shot, No. 1, vainly: “Very
well, thank you; and you?”
I think I must have been undone already. But Dennis, like another
Lockhard chose “to make sicker.” The audience rose in a whirl of
amazement, rage, and sorrow. Some other impertinence, aimed at Dennis,
broke all restraint, and, in pure Irish, he delivered himself of an address to

the gallery, inviting any person who wished to fight to come down and do
so—stating, that they were all dogs and cowards—that he would take any
five of them single-handed, “Shure, I have said all his Riverence and the
Misthress bade me say,” cried he, in defiance; and, seizing the Governor’s
cane from his hand, brandished it, quarter-staff fashion, above his head. He
was, indeed, got from the hall only with the greatest difficulty by the
Governor, the City Marshal, who had been called in, and the Superintendent
of my Sunday School.
The universal impression, of course, was, that the Rev. Frederic Ingham
had lost all command of himself in some of those haunts of intoxication
which for fifteen years I have been laboring to destroy. Till this moment,
indeed, that is the impression in Naguadavick. This number of The Atlantic
will relieve from it a hundred friends of mine who have been sadly
wounded by that notion now for years—but I shall not be likely ever to
show my head there again.
No! My double has undone me.
We left town at seven the next morning. I came to No. 9, in the Third
Range, and settled on the Minister’s Lot, In the new towns in Maine, the
first settled minister has a gift of a hundred acres of land. I am the first
settled minister in No. 9. My wife and little Paulina are my parish. We raise
corn enough to live on in summer. We kill bear’s meat enough to carbonize
it in winter. I work on steadily on my Traces of Sandemanianism in the
Sixth and Seventh Centuries, which I hope to persuade Phillips, Sampson &
Co. to publish next year. We are very happy, but the world thinks we are
undone.

FOOTNOTES:
[15] From The Atlantic Monthly, September,
1859. Republished in the volume, The Man
Without a Country, and Other Tales (1868), by
Edward Everett Hale (Little, Brown & Co.).
[16] Which means, “In the thirteenth century,”
my dear little bell-and-coral reader. You have

rightly guessed that the question means, “What
is the history of the Reformation in Hungary?”

A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND
DECAYED PUNSTERS[17]
By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)
Having just returned from a visit to this admirable Institution in company
with a friend who is one of the Directors, we propose giving a short account
of what we saw and heard. The great success of the Asylum for Idiots and
Feeble-minded Youth, several of the scholars from which have reached
considerable distinction, one of them being connected with a leading Daily
Paper in this city, and others having served in the State and National
Legislatures, was the motive which led to the foundation of this excellent
charity. Our late distinguished townsman, Noah Dow, Esquire, as is well
known, bequeathed a large portion of his fortune to this establishment—
“being thereto moved,” as his will expressed it, “by the desire of N. Dowing
some public Institution for the benefit of Mankind.” Being consulted as to
the Rules of the Institution and the selection of a Superintendent, he replied,
that “all Boards must construct their own Platforms of operation. Let them
select anyhow and he should be pleased.” N.E. Howe, Esq., was chosen in
compliance with this delicate suggestion.
The Charter provides for the support of “One hundred aged and decayed
Gentlemen-Punsters.” On inquiry if there way no provision for females, my
friend called my attention to this remarkable psychological fact, namely:
There is no such thing as a female Punster.
This remark struck me forcibly, and on reflection I found that I never
knew nor heard of one, though I have once or twice heard a woman make a
single detached pun, as I have known a hen to crow.

On arriving at the south gate of the Asylum grounds, I was about to ring,
but my friend held my arm and begged me to rap with my stick, which I
did. An old man with a very comical face presently opened the gate and put
out his head.
“So you prefer Cane to A bell, do you?” he said—and began chuckling
and coughing at a great rate.
My friend winked at me.
“You’re here still, Old Joe, I see,” he said to the old man.
“Yes, yes—and it’s very odd, considering how often I’ve bolted, nights.”
He then threw open the double gates for us to ride through.
“Now,” said the old man, as he pulled the gates after us, “you’ve had a
long journey.”
“Why, how is that, Old Joe?” said my friend.
“Don’t you see?” he answered; “there’s the East hinges on the one side of
the gate, and there’s the West hinges on t’other side—haw! haw! haw!”
We had no sooner got into the yard than a feeble little gentleman, with a
remarkably bright eye, came up to us, looking very serious, as if something
had happened.
“The town has entered a complaint against the Asylum as a gambling
establishment,” he said to my friend, the Director.
“What do you mean?” said my friend.
“Why, they complain that there’s a lot o’ rye on the premises,” he
answered, pointing to a field of that grain—and hobbled away, his shoulders
shaking with laughter, as he went.
On entering the main building, we saw the Rules and Regulations for the
Asylum conspicuously posted up. I made a few extracts which may be
interesting:

Sect. I. Of Verbal Exercises.
5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely from
eight in the morning until ten at night, except during Service in

the Chapel and Grace before Meals.
6. At ten o’clock the gas will be turned off, and no further
Puns, Conundrums, or other play on words will be allowed to be
uttered, or to be uttered aloud.
9. Inmates who have lost their faculties and cannot any longer
make Puns shall be permitted to repeat such as may be selected
for them by the Chaplain out of the work of Mr. Joseph Miller.
10. Violent and unmanageable Punsters, who interrupt others
when engaged in conversation, with Puns or attempts at the
same, shall be deprived of their Joseph Millers, and, if
necessary, placed in solitary confinement.

Sect. III. Of Deportment at Meals.
4. No Inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same,
until the Blessing has been asked and the company are decently
seated.
7. Certain Puns having been placed on the Index
Expurgatorius of the Institution, no Inmate shall be allowed to
utter them, on pain of being debarred the perusal of Punch and
Vanity Fair, and, if repeated, deprived of his Joseph Miller.
Among these are the following:
Allusions to Attic salt, when asked to pass the salt-cellar.
Remarks on the Inmates being mustered, etc., etc.
Associating baked beans with the bene-factors of the
Institution.
Saying that beef-eating is befitting, etc., etc.
The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates
as may have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make
Puns of their own:
“——your own hair or a wig”; “it will be long enough,” etc.,
etc.; “little of its age,” etc., etc.; also, playing upon the following

words: hospital; mayor; pun; pitied; bread; sauce, etc., etc., etc.
See INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, printed for use of Inmates.
The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed: Why is Hasty
Pudding like the Prince? Because it comes attended by its sweet;
nor this variation to it, to wit: Because the ’lasses runs after it.

The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in
his time, and well known in the business world, but lost his customers by
making too free with their names—as in the famous story he set afloat in
’29 of four Jerries attaching to the names of a noted Judge, an eminent
Lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and the well-
known Landlord at Springfield. One of the four Jerries, he added, was of
gigantic magnitude. The play on words was brought out by an accidental
remark of Solomons, the well-known Banker. “Capital punishment!” the
Jew was overheard saying, with reference to the guilty parties. He was
understood, as saying, A capital pun is meant, which led to an investigation
and the relief of the greatly excited public mind.
The Superintendent showed some of his old tendencies, as he went round
with us.
“Do you know”—he broke out all at once—“why they don’t take steppes
in Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals?”
We both confessed ignorance.
“Because there are nomad people to be found there,” he said, with a
dignified smile.
He proceeded to introduce us to different Inmates. The first was a
middle-aged, scholarly man, who was seated at a table with a Webster’s
Dictionary and a sheet of paper before him.
“Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer?” said the Superintendent.
“Three or four only,” said Mr. Mowzer. “Will you hear ’em now—now
I’m here?”
We all nodded.
“Don’t you see Webster ers in the words center and theater?

“If he spells leather lether, and feather fether, isn’t there danger that he’ll
give us a bad spell of weather?
“Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he does not allow u to rest quietly
in the mould.
“And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts an illustration in his text, is
that any reason why Mr. Webster’s publishers should hitch one on in their
appendix? It’s what I call a Connect-a-cut trick.
“Why is his way of spelling like the floor of an oven? Because it is under
bread.”
“Mowzer!” said the Superintendent, “that word is on the Index!”
“I forgot,” said Mr. Mowzer; “please don’t deprive me of Vanity Fair this
one time, sir.”
“These are all, this morning. Good day, gentlemen.” Then to the
Superintendent: “Add you, sir!”
The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking old man. He had a heap of
block-letters before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying a
word, to the arrangements he had made with them on the table. They were
evidently anagrams, and had the merit of transposing the letters of the
words employed without addition or subtraction. Here are a few of them:
Times. Smite!
Post. Stop!

Tribune. True nib.
World. Dr. Owl.

Advertiser. { Res veri dat.
{ Is true. Read!

Allopathy. All o’ th’ Pay.
Homœopathy. O, the ——! O! O, my! Pah!

The mention of several New York papers led to two or three questions.
Thus: Whether the Editor of The Tribune was H.G. really? If the
complexion of his politics were not accounted for by his being an eager
person himself? Whether Wendell Fillips were not a reduced copy of John
Knocks? Whether a New York Feuilletoniste is not the same thing as a
Fellow down East?

At this time a plausible-looking, bald-headed man joined us, evidently
waiting to take a part in the conversation.
“Good morning, Mr. Riggles,” said the Superintendent, “Anything fresh
this morning? Any Conundrum?”
“I haven’t looked at the cattle,” he answered, dryly.
“Cattle? Why cattle?”
“Why, to see if there’s any corn under ’em!” he said; and immediately
asked, “Why is Douglas like the earth?”
We tried, but couldn’t guess.
“Because he was flattened out at the polls!” said Mr. Riggles.
“A famous politician, formerly,” said the Superintendent. “His
grandfather was a seize-Hessian-ist in the Revolutionary War. By the way, I
hear the freeze-oil doctrines don’t go down at New Bedford.”
The next Inmate looked as if he might have been a sailor formerly.
“Ask him what his calling was,” said the Superintendent.
“Followed the sea,” he replied to the question put by one of us. “Went as
mate in a fishing-schooner.”
“Why did you give it up?”
“Because I didn’t like working for two mast-ers,” he replied.
Presently we came upon a group of elderly persons, gathered about a
venerable gentleman with flowing locks, who was propounding questions to
a row of Inmates.
“Can any Inmate give me a motto for M. Berger?” he said.
Nobody responded for two or three minutes. At last one old man, whom I
at once recognized as a Graduate of our University (Anno 1800) held up his
hand.
“Rem a cue tetigit.”
“Go to the head of the class, Josselyn,” said the venerable patriarch.

The successful Inmate did as he was told, but in a very rough way,
pushing against two or three of the Class.
“How is this?” said the Patriarch.
“You told me to go up jostlin’,” he replied.
The old gentlemen who had been shoved about enjoyed the pun too much
to be angry.
Presently the Patriarch asked again:
“Why was M. Berger authorized to go to the dances given to the Prince?”
The Class had to give up this, and he answered it himself:
“Because every one of his carroms was a tick-it to the ball.”
“Who collects the money to defray the expenses of the last campaign in
Italy?” asked the Patriarch.
Here again the Class failed.
“The war-cloud’s rolling Dun,” he answered.
“And what is mulled wine made with?”
Three or four voices exclaimed at once:
“Sizzle-y Madeira!”
Here a servant entered, and said, “Luncheon-time.” The old gentlemen,
who have excellent appetites, dispersed at once, one of them politely asking
us if we would not stop and have a bit of bread and a little mite of cheese.
“There is one thing I have forgotten to show you,” said the
Superintendent, “the cell for the confinement of violent and unmanageable
Punsters.”
We were very curious to see it, particularly with reference to the alleged
absence of every object upon which a play of words could possibly be
made.
The Superintendent led us up some dark stairs to a corridor, then along a
narrow passage, then down a broad flight of steps into another passageway,
and opened a large door which looked out on the main entrance.

“We have not seen the cell for the confinement of ‘violent and
unmanageable’ Punsters,” we both exclaimed.
“This is the sell!” he exclaimed, pointing to the outside prospect.
My friend, the Director, looked me in the face so good-naturedly that I
had to laugh.
“We like to humor the Inmates,” he said. “It has a bad effect, we find, on
their health and spirits to disappoint them of their little pleasantries. Some
of the jests to which we have listened are not new to me, though I dare say
you may not have heard them often before. The same thing happens in
general society, with this additional disadvantage, that there is no
punishment provided for ‘violent and unmanageable’ Punsters, as in our
Institution.”
We made our bow to the Superintendent and walked to the place where
our carriage was waiting for us. On our way, an exceedingly decrepit old
man moved slowly toward us, with a perfectly blank look on his face, but
still appearing as if he wished to speak.
“Look!” said the Director—“that is our Centenarian.”
The ancient man crawled toward us, cocked one eye, with which he
seemed to see a little, up at us, and said:
“Sarvant, young Gentlemen. Why is a—a—a—like a—a—a—? Give it
up? Because it’s a—a—a—a—.”
He smiled a pleasant smile, as if it were all plain enough.
“One hundred and seven last Christmas,” said the Director. “Of late years
he puts his whole Conundrums in blank—but they please him just as well.”
We took our departure, much gratified and instructed by our visit, hoping
to have some future opportunity of inspecting the Records of this excellent
Charity and making extracts for the benefit of our Readers.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] From The Atlantic Monthly, January, 1861.
Republished in Soundings from the Atlantic
(1864), by Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose
authorized publishers are the Houghton Mifflin
Company.

THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF
CALAVERAS COUNTY[18]
By Mark Twain (1835–1910)
In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from
the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and
inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do,
and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas
W. Smiley is a myth; and that my friend never knew such a personage; and
that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would
remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore
me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as
tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the
dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel’s, and I noticed
that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning
gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and
gave me good-day. I told him a friend had commissioned me to make some
inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W.
Smiley—Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who he
had heard was at one time a resident of Angel’s Camp. I added that if Mr.
Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I
would feel under many obligations to him.
Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his
chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which
follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never
changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned his initial
sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all

through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive
earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his
imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he
regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men
of transcendent genius in finesse. I let him go on in his own way, and never
interrupted him once.
“Rev. Leonidas W. H’m, Reverend Le—well, there was a feller here once
by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of ’49—or may be it was the
spring of ’50—I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me
think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn’t
finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he was the curiousest
man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he
could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn’t he’d change
sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him—any way just so’s
he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he
most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a
chance; there couldn’t be no solit’ry thing mentioned but that feller’d offer
to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there
was a horse-race, you’d find him flush or you’d find him busted at the end
of it; if there was a dog-fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he’d
bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there was two
birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if
there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg’lar to bet on Parson
Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and he was, too,
and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he
would bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he was
going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to
Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long
he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley and can tell
you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him—he’d bet on any
thing—the dangest feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick once, for a
good while, and it seemed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one
morning he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he
said she was considerable better—thank the Lord for his inf’nit’ mercy—
and coming on so smart that with the blessing of Prov’dence she’d get well
yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, Well, I’ll risk two-and-a-half she
don’t anyway.’”

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag,
but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than
that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and
always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something
of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and
then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she’d get
excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and
scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out
to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-
o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose—and
always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could
cipher it down.
And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you’d think he
warn’t worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance
to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a different
dog; his under-jaw’d begin to stick out like the fo’-castle of a steamboat,
and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces. And a dog might
tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his
shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson—which was the name of
the pup—Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied,
and hadn’t expected nothing else—and the bets being doubled and doubled
on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a
sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j’int of his hind leg and
freeze to it—not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till
they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out
winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn’t have no hind
legs, because they’d been sawed off in a circular saw, and when the thing
had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make
a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a minute how he’d been imposed on, and
how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he ’peared
surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn’t try no
more to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He gave Smiley a
look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting
up a dog that hadn’t no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his
main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down
and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have
made a name for hisself if he’d lived, for the stuff was in him and he had

genius—I know it, because he hadn’t no opportunities to speak of, and it
don’t stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under
them circumstances if he hadn’t no talent. It always makes me feel sorry
when I think of that last fight of his’n, and the way it turned out.
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats
and all of them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch
nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He ketched a frog one day,
and took him home, and said he cal’lated to educate him; and so he never
done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to
jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He’d give him a little punch
behind, and the next minute you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a
doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a
good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him
up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep’ him in practice so constant,
that he’d nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a
frog wanted was education, and he could do ’most anything—and I believe
him. Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster down here on this floor—Dan’l
Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, “Flies, Dan’l, flies!” and
quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up and snake a fly off’n the
counter there, and flop down on the floor ag’in as solid as a gob of mud,
and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as
if he hadn’t no idea he’d been doin’ any more’n any frog might do. You
never see a frog so modest and straightfor’ard as he was, for all he was so
gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he
could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed
you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand;
and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he
had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be,
for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he laid over any
frog that ever they see.
Well, Smiley kep’ the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him
downtown sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller—a stranger in the
camp, he was—come acrost him with his box, and says:
“What might be that you’ve got in the box?”

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, “It might be a parrot, or it might
be a canary, maybe, but it ain’t—it’s only just a frog.”
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this
way and that, and says, “H’m—so ’tis. Well, what’s he good for?”
“Well,” Smiley says, easy and careless, “he’s good enough for one thing,
I should judge—he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.”
The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and
give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, “Well,” he says, “I don’t
see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Smiley says. “Maybe you understand frogs and
maybe you don’t understand ’em; maybe you’ve had experience, and
maybe you ain’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got my opinion
and I’ll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras
County.”
And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, “Well, I’m
only a stranger here, and I ain’t got no frog; but if I had a frog, I’d bet you.”
And then Smiley says, “That’s all right—that’s all right—if you’ll hold
my box a minute, I’ll go and get you a frog.” And so the feller took the box,
and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s, and set down to wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he
got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled
him full of quail shot—filled! him pretty near up to his chin—and set him
on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud
for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give
him to this feller, and says:
“Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, with his forepaws just
even with Dan’l’s, and I’ll give the word.” Then he says, “One—two—three
—git!” and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the
new frog hopped off lively, but Dan’l give a heave, and hysted up his
shoulders—so—like a Frenchman, but it warn’t no use—he couldn’t budge;
he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn’t no more stir than if he
was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted
too, but he didn’t have no idea what the matter was, of course.

The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out
at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder—so—at Dan’l, and
says again, very deliberate, “Well,” he says, “I don’t see no p’ints about that
frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long
time, and at last says, “I do wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off
for—I wonder if there ain’t something the matter with him—he ’pears to
look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan’l up by the nap of the
neck, and hefted him, and says, “Why blame my cats if he don’t weigh five
pounds!” and turned him upside down and he belched out a double handful
of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man—he set
the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And
——
(Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got
up to see what was wanted.) And turning to me as he moved away, he said:
“Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy—I ain’t going to be gone a
second.”
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the
enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much
information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.
At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me
and recommenced:
“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller, one-eyed cow that didn’t have no
tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and——”
However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about
the afflicted cow, but took my leave.

FOOTNOTES:
[18] From The Saturday Press, Nov. 18, 1865.
Republished in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867),

by Mark Twain, all of whose works are
published by Harper & Brothers.

ELDER BROWN’S BACKSLIDE[19]
By Harry Stillwell Edwards (1855- )

I

Elder Brown told his wife good-by at the farmhouse door as
mechanically as though his proposed trip to Macon, ten miles away, was an
everyday affair, while, as a matter of fact, many years had elapsed since
unaccompanied he set foot in the city. He did not kiss her. Many very good
men never kiss their wives. But small blame attaches to the elder for his
omission on this occasion, since his wife had long ago discouraged all
amorous demonstrations on the part of her liege lord, and at this particular
moment was filling the parting moments with a rattling list of directions
concerning thread, buttons, hooks, needles, and all the many etceteras of an
industrious housewife’s basket. The elder was laboriously assorting these
postscript commissions in his memory, well knowing that to return with any
one of them neglected would cause trouble in the family circle.
Elder Brown mounted his patient steed that stood sleepily motionless in
the warm sunlight, with his great pointed ears displayed to the right and left,
as though their owner had grown tired of the life burden their weight
inflicted upon him, and was, old soldier fashion, ready to forego the once
rigid alertness of early training for the pleasures of frequent rest on arms.
“And, elder, don’t you forgit them caliker scraps, or you’ll be wantin’
kiver soon an’ no kiver will be a-comin’.”
Elder Brown did not turn his head, but merely let the whip hand, which
had been checked in its backward motion, fall as he answered mechanically.
The beast he bestrode responded with a rapid whisking of its tail and a great

show of effort, as it ambled off down the sandy road, the rider’s long legs
seeming now and then to touch the ground.
But as the zigzag panels of the rail fence crept behind him, and he felt the
freedom of the morning beginning to act upon his well-trained blood, the
mechanical manner of the old man’s mind gave place to a mild exuberance.
A weight seemed to be lifting from it ounce by ounce as the fence panels,
the weedy corners, the persimmon sprouts and sassafras bushes crept away
behind him, so that by the time a mile lay between him and the life partner
of his joys and sorrows he was in a reasonably contented frame of mind,
and still improving.
It was a queer figure that crept along the road that cheery May morning.
It was tall and gaunt, and had been for thirty years or more. The long head,
bald on top, covered behind with iron-gray hair, and in front with a short
tangled growth that curled and kinked in every direction, was surmounted
by an old-fashioned stove-pipe hat, worn and stained, but eminently
impressive. An old-fashioned Henry Clay cloth coat, stained and
threadbare, divided itself impartially over the donkey’s back and dangled on
his sides. This was all that remained of the elder’s wedding suit of forty
years ago. Only constant care, and use of late years limited to extra
occasions, had preserved it so long. The trousers had soon parted company
with their friends. The substitutes were red jeans, which, while they did not
well match his court costume, were better able to withstand the old man’s
abuse, for if, in addition to his frequent religious excursions astride his
beast, there ever was a man who was fond of sitting down with his feet
higher than his head, it was this selfsame Elder Brown.
The morning expanded, and the old man expanded with it; for while a
vigorous leader in his church, the elder at home was, it must be admitted, an
uncomplaining slave. To the intense astonishment of the beast he rode, there
came new vigor into the whacks which fell upon his flanks; and the beast
allowed astonishment to surprise him into real life and decided motion.
Somewhere in the elder’s expanding soul a tune had begun to ring. Possibly
he took up the far, faint tune that came from the straggling gang of negroes
away off in the field, as they slowly chopped amid the threadlike rows of
cotton plants which lined the level ground, for the melody he hummed
softly and then sang strongly, in the quavering, catchy tones of a good old
country churchman, was “I’m glad salvation’s free.”

It was during the singing of this hymn that Elder Brown’s regular
motion-inspiring strokes were for the first time varied. He began to hold his
hickory up at certain pauses in the melody, and beat the changes upon the
sides of his astonished steed. The chorus under this arrangement was:
I’m glad salvation’s free,
I’m glad salvation’s free,
I’m glad salvation’s free for all,
I’m glad salvation’s free.

Wherever there is an italic, the hickory descended. It fell about as
regularly and after the fashion of the stick beating upon the bass drum
during a funeral march. But the beast, although convinced that something
serious was impending, did not consider a funeral march appropriate for the
occasion. He protested, at first, with vigorous whiskings of his tail and a
rapid shifting of his ears. Finding these demonstrations unavailing, and
convinced that some urgent cause for hurry had suddenly invaded the
elder’s serenity, as it had his own, he began to cover the ground with frantic
leaps that would have surprised his owner could he have realized what was
going on. But Elder Brown’s eyes were half closed, and he was singing at
the top of his voice. Lost in a trance of divine exaltation, for he felt the
effects of the invigorating motion, bent only on making the air ring with the
lines which he dimly imagined were drawing upon him the eyes of the
whole female congregation, he was supremely unconscious that his beast
was hurrying.
And thus the excursion proceeded, until suddenly a shote, surprised in his
calm search for roots in a fence corner, darted into the road, and stood for
an instant gazing upon the newcomers with that idiotic stare which only a
pig can imitate. The sudden appearance of this unlooked-for apparition
acted strongly upon the donkey. With one supreme effort he collected
himself into a motionless mass of matter, bracing his front legs wide apart;
that is to say, he stopped short. There he stood, returning the pig’s idiotic
stare with an interest which must have led to the presumption that never
before in all his varied life had he seen such a singular little creature. End
over end went the man of prayer, finally bringing up full length in the sand,
striking just as he should have shouted “free” for the fourth time in his
glorious chorus.

Fully convinced that his alarm had been well founded, the shote sped out
from under the gigantic missile hurled at him by the donkey, and scampered
down the road, turning first one ear and then the other to detect any sounds
of pursuit. The donkey, also convinced that the object before which he had
halted was supernatural, started back violently upon seeing it apparently
turn to a man. But seeing that it had turned to nothing but a man, he
wandered up into the deserted fence corner, and began to nibble
refreshment from a scrub oak.
For a moment the elder gazed up into the sky, half impressed with the
idea that the camp-meeting platform had given way. But the truth forced its
way to the front in his disordered understanding at last, and with painful
dignity he staggered into an upright position, and regained his beaver. He
was shocked again. Never before in all the long years it had served him had
he seen it in such shape. The truth is, Elder Brown had never before tried to
stand on his head in it. As calmly as possible he began to straighten it out,
caring but little for the dust upon his garments. The beaver was his special
crown of dignity. To lose it was to be reduced to a level with the common
woolhat herd. He did his best, pulling, pressing, and pushing, but the hat did
not look natural when he had finished. It seemed to have been laid off into
counties, sections, and town lots. Like a well-cut jewel, it had a face for
him, view it from whatever point he chose, a quality which so impressed
him that a lump gathered in his throat, and his eyes winked vigorously.
Elder Brown was not, however, a man for tears. He was a man of action.
The sudden vision which met his wandering gaze, the donkey calmly
chewing scrub buds, with the green juice already oozing from the corners of
his frothy mouth, acted upon him like magic. He was, after all, only human,
and when he got hands upon a piece of brush he thrashed the poor beast
until it seemed as though even its already half-tanned hide would be
eternally ruined. Thoroughly exhausted at last, he wearily straddled his
saddle, and with his chin upon his breast resumed the early morning tenor
of his way.

II

“Good-mornin’, sir.”

Elder Brown leaned over the little pine picket which divided the
bookkeepers’ department of a Macon warehouse from the room in general,
and surveyed the well-dressed back of a gentleman who was busily figuring
at a desk within. The apartment was carpetless, and the dust of a decade lay
deep on the old books, shelves, and the familiar advertisements of guano
and fertilizers which decorated the room. An old stove, rusty with the
nicotine contributed by farmers during the previous season while waiting by
its glowing sides for their cotton to be sold, stood straight up in a bed of
sand, and festoons of cobwebs clung to the upper sashes of the murky
windows. The lower sash of one window had been raised, and in the yard
without, nearly an acre in extent, lay a few bales of cotton, with jagged
holes in their ends, just as the sampler had left them. Elder Brown had time
to notice all these familiar points, for the figure at the desk kept serenely at
its task, and deigned no reply.
“Good-mornin’, sir,” said Elder Brown again, in his most dignified tones.
“Is Mr. Thomas in?”
“Good-morning, sir,” said the figure. “I’ll wait on you in a minute.” The
minute passed, and four more joined it. Then the desk man turned.
“Well, sir, what can I do for you?”
The elder was not in the best of humor when he arrived, and his state of
mind had not improved. He waited full a minute as he surveyed the man of
business.
“I thought I mout be able to make some arrangements with you to git
some money, but I reckon I was mistaken.” The warehouse man came
nearer.
“This is Mr. Brown, I believe. I did not recognize you at once. You are
not in often to see us.”
“No; my wife usually ’tends to the town bizness, while I run the church
and farm. Got a fall from my donkey this morning,” he said, noticing a
quizzical, interrogating look upon the face before him, “and fell squar’ on
the hat.” He made a pretense of smoothing it. The man of business had
already lost interest.
“How much money will you want, Mr. Brown?”

“Well, about seven hundred dollars,” said the elder, replacing his hat, and
turning a furtive look upon the warehouse man. The other was tapping with
his pencil upon the little shelf lying across the rail.
“I can get you five hundred.”
“But I oughter have seven.”
“Can’t arrange for that amount. Wait till later in the season, and come
again. Money is very tight now. How much cotton will you raise?”
“Well, I count on a hundr’d bales. An’ you can’t git the sev’n hundr’d
dollars?”
“Like to oblige you, but can’t right now; will fix it for you later on.”
“Well,” said the elder, slowly, “fix up the papers for five, an’ I’ll make it
go as far as possible.”
The papers were drawn. A note was made out for $552.50, for the interest
was at one and a half per cent. for seven months, and a mortgage on ten
mules belonging to the elder was drawn and signed. The elder then
promised to send his cotton to the warehouse to be sold in the fall, and with
a curt “Anything else?” and a “Thankee, that’s all,” the two parted.
Elder Brown now made an effort to recall the supplemental commissions
shouted to him upon his departure, intending to execute them first, and then
take his written list item by item. His mental resolves had just reached this
point when a new thought made itself known. Passersby were puzzled to
see the old man suddenly snatch his headpiece off and peer with an intent
and awestruck air into its irregular caverns. Some of them were shocked
when he suddenly and vigorously ejaculated:
“Hannah-Maria-Jemimy! goldarn an’ blue blazes!”
He had suddenly remembered having placed his memoranda in that hat,
and as he studied its empty depths his mind pictured the important scrap
fluttering along the sandy scene of his early-morning tumble. It was this
that caused him to graze an oath with less margin that he had allowed
himself in twenty years. What would the old lady say?
Alas! Elder Brown knew too well. What she would not say was what
puzzled him. But as he stood bareheaded in the sunlight a sense of utter

desolation came and dwelt with him. His eye rested upon sleeping Balaam
anchored to a post in the street, and so as he recalled the treachery that lay
at the base of all his affliction, gloom was added to the desolation.
To turn back and search for the lost paper would have been worse than
useless. Only one course was open to him, and at it went the leader of his
people. He called at the grocery; he invaded the recesses of the dry-goods
establishments; he ransacked the hardware stores; and wherever he went he
made life a burden for the clerks, overhauling show-cases and pulling down
whole shelves of stock. Occasionally an item of his memoranda would
come to light, and thrusting his hand into his capacious pocket, where lay
the proceeds of his check, he would pay for it upon the spot, and insist upon
having it rolled up. To the suggestion of the slave whom he had in charge
for the time being that the articles be laid aside until he had finished, he
would not listen.
“Now you look here, sonny,” he said, in the dry-goods store, “I’m
conducting this revival, an’ I don’t need no help in my line. Just you tie
them stockin’s up an’ lemme have ’em. Then I know I’ve got ’em.” As each
purchase was promptly paid for, and change had to be secured, the clerk
earned his salary for that day at least.
So it was when, near the heat of the day, the good man arrived at the
drugstore, the last and only unvisited division of trade, he made his
appearance equipped with half a hundred packages, which nestled in his
arms and bulged out about the sections of his clothing that boasted of
pockets. As he deposited his deck-load upon the counter, great drops of
perspiration rolled down his face and over his waterlogged collar to the
floor.
There was something exquisitely refreshing in the great glasses of
foaming soda that a spruce young man was drawing from a marble fountain,
above which half a dozen polar bears in an ambitious print were disporting
themselves. There came a break in the run of customers, and the spruce
young man, having swept the foam from the marble, dexterously lifted a
glass from the revolving rack which had rinsed it with a fierce little stream
of water, and asked mechanically, as he caught the intense look of the
perspiring elder, “What syrup, sir?”

Now it had not occurred to the elder to drink soda, but the suggestion,
coming as it did in his exhausted state, was overpowering. He drew near
awkwardly, put on his glasses, and examined the list of syrups with great
care. The young man, being for the moment at leisure, surveyed critically
the gaunt figure, the faded bandanna, the antique clawhammer coat, and the
battered stove-pipe hat, with a gradually relaxing countenance. He even
called the prescription clerk’s attention by a cough and a quick jerk of the
thumb. The prescription clerk smiled freely, and continued his assaults upon
a piece of blue mass.
“I reckon,” said the elder, resting his hands upon his knees and bending
down to the list, “you may gimme sassprilla an’ a little strawberry.
Sassprilla’s good for the blood this time er year, an’ strawberry’s good any
time.”
The spruce young man let the syrup stream into the glass as he smiled
affably. Thinking, perhaps, to draw out the odd character, he ventured upon
a jest himself, repeating a pun invented by the man who made the first soda
fountain. With a sweep of his arm he cleared away the swarm of insects as
he remarked, “People who like a fly in theirs are easily accommodated.”
It was from sheer good-nature only that Elder Brown replied, with his
usual broad, social smile, “Well, a fly now an’ then don’t hurt nobody.”
Now if there is anybody in the world who prides himself on knowing a
thing or two, it is the spruce young man who presides over a soda fountain.
This particular young gentleman did not even deem a reply necessary. He
vanished an instant, and when he returned a close observer might have seen
that the mixture in the glass he bore had slightly changed color and
increased in quantity. But the elder saw only the whizzing stream of water
dart into its center, and the rosy foam rise and tremble on the glass’s rim.
The next instant he was holding his breath and sipping the cooling drink.
As Elder Brown paid his small score he was at peace with the world. I
firmly believe that when he had finished his trading, and the little blue-
stringed packages had been stored away, could the poor donkey have made
his appearance at the door, and gazed with his meek, fawnlike eyes into his
master’s, he would have obtained full and free forgiveness.

Elder Brown paused at the door as he was about to leave. A rosy-cheeked
schoolgirl was just lifting a creamy mixture to her lips before the fountain.
It was a pretty picture, and he turned back, resolved to indulge in one more
glass of the delightful beverage before beginning his long ride homeward.
“Fix it up again, sonny,” he said, renewing his broad, confiding smile, as
the spruce young man poised a glass inquiringly. The living automaton went
through the same motions as before, and again Elder Brown quaffed the
fatal mixture.
What a singular power is habit! Up to this time Elder Brown had been
entirely innocent of transgression, but with the old alcoholic fire in his
veins, twenty years dropped from his shoulders, and a feeling came over
him familiar to every man who has been “in his cups.” As a matter of fact,
the elder would have been a confirmed drunkard twenty years before had
his wife been less strong-minded. She took the reins into her own hands
when she found that his business and strong drink did not mix well, worked
him into the church, sustained his resolutions by making it difficult and
dangerous for him to get to his toddy. She became the business head of the
family, and he the spiritual. Only at rare intervals did he ever “backslide”
during the twenty years of the new era, and Mrs. Brown herself used to say
that the “sugar in his’n turned to gall before the backslide ended.” People
who knew her never doubted it.
But Elder Brown’s sin during the remainder of the day contained an
element of responsibility. As he moved majestically down toward where
Balaam slept in the sunlight, he felt no fatigue. There was a glow upon his
cheek-bones, and a faint tinge upon his prominent nose. He nodded
familiarly to people as he met them, and saw not the look of amusement
which succeeded astonishment upon the various faces. When he reached the
neighborhood of Balaam it suddenly occurred to him that he might have
forgotten some one of his numerous commissions, and he paused to think.
Then a brilliant idea rose in his mind. He would forestall blame and disarm
anger with kindness—he would purchase Hannah a bonnet.
What woman’s heart ever failed to soften at sight of a new bonnet?
As I have stated, the elder was a man of action. He entered a store near at
hand.

“Good-morning,” said an affable gentleman with a Hebrew countenance,
approaching.
“Good-mornin’, good-mornin’,” said the elder, piling his bundles on the
counter. “I hope you are well?” Elder Brown extended his hand fervidly.
“Quite well, I thank you. What—”
“And the little wife?” said Elder Brown, affectionately retaining the
Jew’s hand.
“Quite well, sir.”
“And the little ones—quite well, I hope, too?”
“Yes, sir; all well, thank you. Something I can do for you?”
The affable merchant was trying to recall his customer’s name.
“Not now, not now, thankee. If you please to let my bundles stay untell I
come back—”
“Can’t I show you something? Hat, coat—”
“Not now. Be back bimeby.”
Was it chance or fate that brought Elder Brown in front of a bar? The
glasses shone bright upon the shelves as the swinging door flapped back to
let out a coatless clerk, who passed him with a rush, chewing upon a
farewell mouthful of brown bread and bologna. Elder Brown beheld for an
instant the familiar scene within. The screws of his resolution had been
loosened. At sight of the glistening bar the whole moral structure of twenty
years came tumbling down. Mechanically he entered the saloon, and laid a
silver quarter upon the bar as he said:
“A little whiskey an’ sugar.” The arms of the bartender worked like a
faker’s in a side show as he set out the glass with its little quota of “short
sweetening” and a cut-glass decanter, and sent a half-tumbler of water
spinning along from the upper end of the bar with a dime in change.
“Whiskey is higher’n used to be,” said Elder Brown; but the bartender
was taking another order, and did not hear him. Elder Brown stirred away
the sugar, and let a steady stream of red liquid flow into the glass. He
swallowed the drink as unconcernedly as though his morning tod had never

been suspended, and pocketed the change. “But it ain’t any better than it
was,” he concluded, as he passed out. He did not even seem to realize that
he had done anything extraordinary.
There was a millinery store up the street, and thither with uncertain step
he wended his way, feeling a little more elate, and altogether sociable. A
pretty, black-eyed girl, struggling to keep down her mirth, came forward
and faced him behind the counter. Elder Brown lifted his faded hat with the
politeness, if not the grace, of a Castilian, and made a sweeping bow. Again
he was in his element. But he did not speak. A shower of odds and ends,
small packages, thread, needles, and buttons, released from their prison,
rattled down about him.
The girl laughed. She could not help it. And the elder, leaning his hand
on the counter, laughed, too, until several other girls came half-way to the
front. Then they, hiding behind counters and suspended cloaks, laughed and
snickered until they reconvulsed the elder’s vis-à-vis, who had been making
desperate efforts to resume her demure appearance.
“Let me help you, sir,” she said, coming from behind the counter, upon
seeing Elder Brown beginning to adjust his spectacles for a search. He
waved her back majestically. “No, my dear, no; can’t allow it. You mout sile
them purty fingers. No, ma’am. No gen’l’man’ll ’low er lady to do such a
thing.” The elder was gently forcing the girl back to her place. “Leave it to
me. I’ve picked up bigger things ’n them. Picked myself up this mornin’.
Balaam—you don’t know Balaam; he’s my donkey—he tumbled me over
his head in the sand this mornin’.” And Elder Brown had to resume an
upright position until his paroxysm of laughter had passed. “You see this
old hat?” extending it, half full of packages; “I fell clear inter it; jes’ as
clean inter it as them things thar fell out’n it.” He laughed again, and so did
the girls. “But, my dear, I whaled half the hide off’n him for it.”
“Oh, sir! how could you? Indeed, sir. I think you did wrong. The poor
brute did not know what he was doing, I dare say, and probably he has been
a faithful friend.” The girl cast her mischievous eyes towards her
companions, who snickered again. The old man was not conscious of the
sarcasm. He only saw reproach. His face straightened, and he regarded the
girl soberly.
“Mebbe you’re right, my dear; mebbe I oughtn’t.”

“I am sure of it,” said the girl. “But now don’t you want to buy a bonnet
or a cloak to carry home to your wife?”
“Well, you’re whistlin’ now, birdie; that’s my intention; set ’em all out.”
Again the elder’s face shone with delight. “An’ I don’t want no one-hoss
bonnet neither.”
“Of course not. Now here is one; pink silk, with delicate pale blue
feathers. Just the thing for the season. We have nothing more elegant in
stock.” Elder Brown held it out, upside down, at arm’s-length.
“Well, now, that’s suthin’ like. Will it soot a sorter redheaded ’ooman?”
A perfectly sober man would have said the girl’s corsets must have
undergone a terrible strain, but the elder did not notice her dumb
convulsion. She answered, heroically:
“Perfectly, sir. It is an exquisite match.”
“I think you’re whistlin’ again. Nancy’s head’s red, red as a woodpeck’s.
Sorrel’s only half-way to the color of her top-knot, an’ it do seem like red
oughter to soot red. Nancy’s red an’ the hat’s red; like goes with like, an’
birds of a feather flock together.” The old man laughed until his cheeks
were wet.
The girl, beginning to feel a little uneasy, and seeing a customer entering,
rapidly fixed up the bonnet, took fifteen dollars out of a twenty-dollar bill,
and calmly asked the elder if he wanted anything else. He thrust his change
somewhere into his clothes, and beat a retreat. It had occurred to him that
he was nearly drunk.
Elder Brown’s step began to lose its buoyancy. He found himself utterly
unable to walk straight. There was an uncertain straddle in his gait that
carried him from one side of the walk to the other, and caused people whom
he met to cheerfully yield him plenty of room.
Balaam saw him coming. Poor Balaam. He had made an early start that
day, and for hours he stood in the sun awaiting relief. When he opened his
sleepy eyes and raised his expressive ears to a position of attention, the old
familiar coat and battered hat of the elder were before him. He lifted up his
honest voice and cried aloud for joy.

The effect was electrical for one instant. Elder Brown surveyed the beast
with horror, but again in his understanding there rang out the trumpet
words.
“Drunk, drunk, drunk, drer-unc, -er-unc, -unc, -unc.”
He stooped instinctively for a missile with which to smite his accuser, but
brought up suddenly with a jerk and a handful of sand. Straightening
himself up with a majestic dignity, he extended his right hand impressively.
“You’re a goldarn liar, Balaam, and, blast your old buttons, you kin walk
home by yourself, for I’m danged if you sh’ll ride me er step.”
Surely Coriolanus never turned his back upon Rome with a grander
dignity than sat upon the old man’s form as he faced about and left the brute
to survey with anxious eyes the new departure of his master.
He saw the elder zigzag along the street, and beheld him about to turn a
friendly corner. Once more he lifted up his mighty voice:
“Drunk, drunk, drunk, drer-unc, drer-unc, -erunc, -unc, -unc.”
Once more the elder turned with lifted hand and shouted back:
“You’re a liar, Balaam, goldarn you! You’re er iffamous liar.” Then he
passed from view.

III

Mrs. Brown stood upon the steps anxiously awaiting the return of her
liege lord. She knew he had with him a large sum of money, or should have,
and she knew also that he was a man without business methods. She had
long since repented of the decision which sent him to town. When the old
battered hat and flour-covered coat loomed up in the gloaming and
confronted her, she stared with terror. The next instant she had seized him.
“For the Lord sakes, Elder Brown, what ails you? As I live, if the man
ain’t drunk! Elder Brown! Elder Brown! for the life of me can’t I make you
hear? You crazy old hypocrite! you desavin’ old sinner! you black-hearted
wretch! where have you ben?”
The elder made an effort to wave her off.

“Woman,” he said, with grand dignity, “you forgit yus-sef; shu know
ware I’ve ben ’swell’s I do. Ben to town, wife, an’ see yer wat I’ve brought
—the fines’ hat, ole woman, I could git. Look’t the color. Like goes ’ith
like; it’s red an’ you’re red, an’ it’s a dead match. What yer mean? Hey!
hole on! ole woman!—you! Hannah!—you.” She literally shook him into
silence.
“You miserable wretch! you low-down drunken sot! what do you mean
by coming home and insulting your wife?” Hannah ceased shaking him
from pure exhaustion.
“Where is it, I say? where is it?”
By this time she was turning his pockets wrong side out. From one she
got pills, from another change, from another packages.
“The Lord be praised, and this is better luck than I hoped! Oh, elder!
elder! elder! what did you do it for? Why, man, where is Balaam?”
Thought of the beast choked off the threatened hysterics.
“Balaam? Balaam?” said the elder, groggily. “He’s in town. The infernal
ole fool ’sulted me, an’ I lef’ him to walk home.”
His wife surveyed him. Really at that moment she did think his mind was
gone; but the leer upon the old man’s face enraged her beyond endurance.
“You did, did you? Well, now, I reckon you’ll laugh for some cause, you
will. Back you go, sir—straight back; an’ don’t you come home ’thout that
donkey, or you’ll rue it, sure as my name is Hannah Brown. Aleck!—you
Aleck-k-k!”
A black boy darted round the corner, from behind which, with several
others, he had beheld the brief but stirring scene.
“Put a saddle on er mule. The elder’s gwine back to town. And don’t you
be long about it neither.”
“Yessum.” Aleck’s ivories gleamed in the darkness as he disappeared.
Elder Brown was soberer at that moment than he had been for hours.
“Hannah, you don’t mean it?”

“Yes, sir, I do. Back you go to town as sure as my name is Hannah
Brown.”
The elder was silent. He had never known his wife to relent on any
occasion after she had affirmed her intention, supplemented with “as sure as
my name is Hannah Brown.” It was her way of swearing. No affidavit
would have had half the claim upon her as that simple enunciation.
So back to town went Elder Brown, not in the order of the early morn,
but silently, moodily, despairingly, surrounded by mental and actual gloom.
The old man had turned a last appealing glance upon the angry woman,
as he mounted with Aleck’s assistance, and sat in the light that streamed
from out the kitchen window. She met the glance without a waver.
“She means it, as sure as my name is Elder Brown,” he said, thickly.
Then he rode on.

IV

To say that Elder Brown suffered on this long journey back to Macon
would only mildly outline his experience. His early morning’s fall had
begun to make itself felt. He was sore and uncomfortable. Besides, his
stomach was empty, and called for two meals it had missed for the first time
in years.
When, sore and weary, the elder entered the city, the electric lights shone
above it like jewels in a crown. The city slept; that is, the better portion of it
did. Here and there, however, the lower lights flashed out into the night.
Moodily the elder pursued his journey, and as he rode, far off in the night
there rose and quivered a plaintive cry. Elder Brown smiled wearily: it was
Balaam’s appeal, and he recognized it. The animal he rode also recognized
it, and replied, until the silence of the city was destroyed. The odd clamor
and confusion drew from a saloon near by a group of noisy youngsters, who
had been making a night of it. They surrounded Elder Brown as he began to
transfer himself to the hungry beast to whose motion he was more
accustomed, and in the “hail fellow well met” style of the day began to
bandy jests upon his appearance. Now Elder Brown was not in a jesting
humor. Positively he was in the worst humor possible. The result was that
before many minutes passed the old man was swinging several of the crowd

by their collars, and breaking the peace of the city. A policeman
approached, and but for the good-humored party, upon whom the elder’s
pluck had made a favorable impression, would have run the old man into
the barracks. The crowd, however, drew him laughingly into the saloon and
to the bar. The reaction was too much for his half-rallied senses. He yielded
again. The reviving liquor passed his lips. Gloom vanished. He became one
of the boys.
The company into which Elder Brown had fallen was what is known as
“first-class.” To such nothing is so captivating as an adventure out of the
common run of accidents. The gaunt countryman, with his battered hat and
clawhammer coat, was a prize of an extraordinary nature. They drew him
into a rear room, whose gilded frames and polished tables betrayed the
character and purpose of the place, and plied him with wine until ten
thousand lights danced about him. The fun increased. One youngster made
a political speech from the top of the table; another impersonated Hamlet;
and finally Elder Brown was lifted into a chair, and sang a camp-meeting
song. This was rendered by him with startling effect. He stood upright, with
his hat jauntily knocked to one side, and his coat tails ornamented with a
couple of show-bills, kindly pinned on by his admirers. In his left hand he
waved the stub of a cigar, and on his back was an admirable representation
of Balaam’s head, executed by some artist with billiard chalk.
As the elder sang his favorite hymn, “I’m glad salvation’s free,” his
stentorian voice awoke the echoes. Most of the company rolled upon the
floor in convulsions of laughter.
The exhibition came to a close by the chair overturning. Again Elder
Brown fell into his beloved hat. He arose and shouted: “Whoa, Balaam!”
Again he seized the nearest weapon, and sought satisfaction. The young
gentleman with political sentiments was knocked under the table, and
Hamlet only escaped injury by beating the infuriated elder into the street.
What next? Well, I hardly know. How the elder found Balaam is a
mystery yet: not that Balaam was hard to find, but that the old man was in
no condition to find anything. Still he did, and climbing laboriously into the
saddle, he held on stupidly while the hungry beast struck out for home.

V

Hannah Brown did not sleep that night. Sleep would not come. Hour
after hour passed, and her wrath refused to be quelled. She tried every
conceivable method, but time hung heavily. It was not quite peep of day,
however, when she laid her well-worn family Bible aside. It had been her
mother’s, and amid all the anxieties and tribulations incident to the life of a
woman who had free negroes and a miserable husband to manage, it had
been her mainstay and comfort. She had frequently read it in anger, page
after page, without knowing what was contained in the lines. But eventually
the words became intelligible and took meaning. She wrested consolation
from it by mere force of will.
And so on this occasion when she closed the book the fierce anger was
gone.
She was not a hard woman naturally. Fate had brought her conditions
which covered up the woman heart within her, but though it lay deep, it was
there still. As she sat with folded hands her eyes fell upon—what?
The pink bonnet with the blue plume!
It may appear strange to those who do not understand such natures, but to
me her next action was perfectly natural. She burst into a convulsive laugh;
then, seizing the queer object, bent her face upon it and sobbed hysterically.
When the storm was over, very tenderly she laid the gift aside, and
bareheaded passed out into the night.
For a half-hour she stood at the end of the lane, and then hungry Balaam
and his master hove in sight. Reaching out her hand, she checked the beast.
“William,” said she, very gently, “where is the mule?”
The elder had been asleep. He woke and gazed upon her blankly.
“What mule, Hannah?”
“The mule you rode to town.”
For one full minute the elder studied her face. Then it burst from his lips:
“Well, bless me! if I didn’t bring Balaam and forgit the mule!”
The woman laughed till her eyes ran water.
“William,” said she, “you’re drunk.”

“Hannah,” said he, meekly, “I know it. The truth is, Hannah, I—”
“Never mind, now, William,” she said, gently. “You are tired and hungry.
Come into the house, husband.”
Leading Balaam, she disappeared down the lane; and when, a few
minutes later, Hannah Brown and her husband entered through the light that
streamed out of the open door her arms were around him, and her face
upturned to his.

FOOTNOTES:
[19] From Harper’s Magazine, August, 1885;
copyright, 1885, by Harper & Bros.;
republished in the volume, Two Runaways, and
Other Stories (1889), by Harry Stillwell
Edwards (The Century Co.).

THE HOTEL EXPERIENCE OF MR. PINK
FLUKER[20]
By Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822–1898)

I

Mr. Peterson Fluker, generally called Pink, for his fondness for as stylish
dressing as he could afford, was one of that sort of men who habitually
seem busy and efficient when they are not. He had the bustling activity
often noticeable in men of his size, and in one way and another had made
up, as he believed, for being so much smaller than most of his adult
acquaintance of the male sex. Prominent among his achievements on that
line was getting married to a woman who, among other excellent gifts, had
that of being twice as big as her husband.
“Fool who?” on the day after his marriage he had asked, with a look at
those who had often said that he was too little to have a wife.
They had a little property to begin with, a couple of hundreds of acres,
and two or three negroes apiece. Yet, except in the natural increase of the
latter, the accretions of worldly estate had been inconsiderable till now,
when their oldest child, Marann, was some fifteen years old. These
accretions had been saved and taken care of by Mrs. Fluker, who was as
staid and silent as he was mobile and voluble.
Mr. Fluker often said that it puzzled him how it was that he made smaller
crops than most of his neighbors, when, if not always convincing, he could
generally put every one of them to silence in discussions upon agricultural
topics. This puzzle had led him to not unfrequent ruminations in his mind as
to whether or not his vocation might lie in something higher than the mere

tilling of the ground. These ruminations had lately taken a definite
direction, and it was after several conversations which he had held with his
friend Matt Pike.
Mr. Matt Pike was a bachelor of some thirty summers, a foretime clerk
consecutively in each of the two stores of the village, but latterly a trader on
a limited scale in horses, wagons, cows, and similar objects of commerce,
and at all times a politician. His hopes of holding office had been
continually disappointed until Mr. John Sanks became sheriff, and rewarded
with a deputyship some important special service rendered by him in the
late very close canvass. Now was a chance to rise, Mr. Pike thought. All he
wanted, he had often said, was a start. Politics, I would remark, however,
had been regarded by Mr. Pike as a means rather than an end. It is doubtful
if he hoped to become governor of the state, at least before an advanced
period in his career. His main object now was to get money, and he believed
that official position would promote him in the line of his ambition faster
than was possible to any private station, by leading him into more extensive
acquaintance with mankind, their needs, their desires, and their caprices. A
deputy sheriff, provided that lawyers were not too indulgent in allowing
acknowledgment of service of court processes, in postponing levies and
sales, and in settlement of litigated cases, might pick up three hundred
dollars, a good sum for those times, a fact which Mr. Pike had known and
pondered long.
It happened just about then that the arrears of rent for the village hotel
had so accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the owner, an
indulgent man, finally had said, what he had been expected for years and
years to say, that he could not wait on Mr. Spouter forever and eternally. It
was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr. Pike made to Mr. Fluker the
suggestion to quit a business so far beneath his powers, sell out, or rent out,
or tenant out, or do something else with his farm, march into town, plant
himself upon the ruins of Jacob Spouter, and begin his upward soar.
Now Mr. Fluker had many and many a time acknowledged that he had
ambition; so one night he said to his wife:
“You see how it is here, Nervy. Farmin’ somehow don’t suit my talons. I
need to be flung more ’mong people to fetch out what’s in me. Then thar’s
Marann, which is gittin’ to be nigh on to a growd-up woman; an’ the child

need the s’iety which you ’bleeged to acknowledge is sca’ce about here, six
mile from town. Your brer Sam can stay here an’ raise butter, chickens,
eggs, pigs, an’—an’—an’ so forth. Matt Pike say he jes’ know they’s money
in it, an’ special with a housekeeper keerful an’ equinomical like you.”
It is always curious the extent of influence that some men have upon
wives who are their superiors. Mrs. Fluker, in spite of accidents, had ever
set upon her husband a value that was not recognized outside of his family.
In this respect there seems a surprising compensation in human life. But this
remark I make only in passing. Mrs. Fluker, admitting in her heart that
farming was not her husband’s forte, hoped, like a true wife, that it might be
found in the new field to which he aspired. Besides, she did not forget that
her brother Sam had said to her several times privately that if his brer Pink
wouldn’t have so many notions and would let him alone in his management,
they would all do better. She reflected for a day or two, and then said:
“Maybe it’s best, Mr. Fluker. I’m willin’ to try it for a year, anyhow. We
can’t lose much by that. As for Matt Pike, I hain’t the confidence in him
you has. Still, he bein’ a boarder and deputy sheriff, he might accidentally
do us some good. I’ll try it for a year providin’ you’ll fetch me the money as
it’s paid in, for you know I know how to manage that better’n you do, and
you know I’ll try to manage it and all the rest of the business for the best.”
To this provision Mr. Fluker gave consent, qualified by the claim that he
was to retain a small margin for indispensable personal exigencies. For he
contended, perhaps with justice, that no man in the responsible position he
was about to take ought to be expected to go about, or sit about, or even
lounge about, without even a continental red in his pocket.
The new house—I say new because tongue could not tell the amount of
scouring, scalding, and whitewashing that that excellent housekeeper had
done before a single stick of her furniture went into it—the new house, I
repeat, opened with six eating boarders at ten dollars a month apiece, and
two eating and sleeping at eleven, besides Mr. Pike, who made a special
contract. Transient custom was hoped to hold its own, and that of the county
people under the deputy’s patronage and influence to be considerably
enlarged.
In words and other encouragement Mr. Pike was pronounced. He could
commend honestly, and he did so cordially.

“The thing to do, Pink, is to have your prices reg’lar, and make people
pay up reg’lar. Ten dollars for eatin’, jes’ so; eleb’n for eatin’ an’ sleepin’;
half a dollar for dinner, jes’ so; quarter apiece for breakfast, supper, and bed,
is what I call reason’ble bo’d. As for me, I sca’cely know how to rig’late,
because, you know, I’m a’ officer now, an’ in course I natchel has to be
away sometimes an’ on expenses at ’tother places, an’ it seem like some
’lowance ought by good rights to be made for that; don’t you think so?”
“Why, matter o’ course, Matt; what you think? I ain’t so powerful good at
figgers. Nervy is. S’posen you speak to her ’bout it.”
“Oh, that’s perfec’ unuseless, Pink. I’m a’ officer o’ the law, Pink, an’ the
law consider women—well, I may say the law, she deal ’ith men, not
women, an’ she expect her officers to understan’ figgers, an’ if I hadn’t o’
understood figgers Mr. Sanks wouldn’t or darsnt’ to ’p’int me his dep’ty.
Me ’n’ you can fix them terms. Now see here, reg’lar bo’d—eatin’ bo’d, I
mean—is ten dollars, an’ sleepin’ and singuil meals is ’cordin’ to the figgers
you’ve sot for ’em. Ain’t that so? Jes’ so. Now, Pink, you an’ me’ll keep a
runnin’ account, you a-chargin’ for reg’lar bo’d, an’ I a’lowin’ to myself
credics for my absentees, accordin’ to transion customers an’ singuil
mealers an’ sleepers. Is that fa’r, er is it not fa’r?”
Mr. Fluker turned his head, and after making or thinking he had made a
calculation, answered:
“That’s—that seem fa’r, Matt.”
“Cert’nly ’tis, Pink; I knowed you’d say so, an’ you know I’d never wish
to be nothin’ but fa’r ’ith people I like, like I do you an’ your wife. Let that
be the understandin’, then, betwix’ us. An’ Pink, let the understandin’ be
jes’ betwix’ us, for I’ve saw enough o’ this world to find out that a man
never makes nothin’ by makin’ a blowin’ horn o’ his business. You make the
t’others pay up spuntial, monthly. You ’n’ me can settle whensomever it’s
convenant, say three months from to-day. In course I shall talk up for the
house whensomever and wharsomever I go or stay. You know that. An’ as
for my bed,” said Mr. Pike finally, “whensomever I ain’t here by bed-time,
you welcome to put any transion person in it, an’ also an’ likewise, when
transion custom is pressin’, and you cramped for beddin’, I’m willin’ to
give it up for the time bein’; an’ rather’n you should be cramped too bad,

I’ll take my chances somewhars else, even if I has to take a pallet at the
head o’ the sta’r-steps.”
“Nervy,” said Mr. Fluker to his wife afterwards, “Matt Pike’s a sensibler
an’ a friendlier an’ a ’commodatiner feller’n I thought.”
Then, without giving details of the contract, he mentioned merely the
willingness of their boarder to resign his bed on occasions of pressing
emergency.
“He’s talked mighty fine to me and Marann,” answered Mrs. Fluker.
“We’ll see how he holds out. One thing I do not like of his doin’, an’ that’s
the talkin’ ’bout Sim Marchman to Marann, an’ makin’ game o’ his country
ways, as he call ’em. Sech as that ain’t right.”
It may be as well to explain just here that Simeon Marchman, the person
just named by Mrs. Fluker, a stout, industrious young farmer, residing with
his parents in the country near by where the Flukers had dwelt before
removing to town, had been eying Marann for a year or two, and waiting
upon her fast-ripening womanhood with intentions that, he believed to be
hidden in his own breast, though he had taken less pains to conceal them
from Marann than from the rest of his acquaintance. Not that he had ever
told her of them in so many words, but—Oh, I need not stop here in the
midst of this narration to explain how such intentions become known, or at
least strongly suspected by girls, even those less bright than Marann Fluker.
Simeon had not cordially indorsed the movement into town, though, of
course, knowing it was none of his business, he had never so much as
hinted opposition. I would not be surprised, also, if he reflected that there
might be some selfishness in his hostility, or at least that it was heightened
by apprehensions personal to himself.
Considering the want of experience in the new tenants, matters went on
remarkably well. Mrs. Fluker, accustomed to rise from her couch long
before the lark, managed to the satisfaction of all,—regular boarders,
single-meal takers, and transient people. Marann went to the village school,
her mother dressing her, though with prudent economy, as neatly and almost
as tastefully as any of her schoolmates; while, as to study, deportment, and
general progress, there was not a girl in the whole school to beat her, I don’t
care who she was.

II

During a not inconsiderable period Mr. Fluker indulged the honorable
conviction that at last he had found the vein in which his best talents lay,
and he was happy in foresight of the prosperity and felicity which that
discovery promised to himself and his family. His native activity found
many more objects for its exertion than before. He rode out to the farm, not
often, but sometimes, as a matter of duty, and was forced to acknowledge
that Sam was managing better than could have been expected in the absence
of his own continuous guidance. In town he walked about the hotel,
entertained the guests, carved at the meals, hovered about the stores, the
doctors’ offices, the wagon and blacksmith shops, discussed mercantile,
medical, mechanical questions with specialists in all these departments,
throwing into them all more and more of politics as the intimacy between
him and his patron and chief boarder increased.
Now as to that patron and chief boarder. The need of extending his
acquaintance seemed to press upon Mr. Pike with ever-increasing weight.
He was here and there, all over the county; at the county-seat, at the county
villages, at justices’ courts, at executors’ and administrators’ sales, at
quarterly and protracted religious meetings, at barbecues of every
dimension, on hunting excursions and fishing frolics, at social parties in all
neighborhoods. It got to be said of Mr. Pike that a freer acceptor of
hospitable invitations, or a better appreciator of hospitable intentions, was
not and needed not to be found possibly in the whole state. Nor was this
admirable deportment confined to the county in which he held so high
official position. He attended, among other occasions less public, the spring
sessions of the supreme and county courts in the four adjoining counties:
the guest of acquaintance old and new over there. When starting upon such
travels, he would sometimes breakfast with his traveling companion in the
village, and, if somewhat belated in the return, sup with him also.
Yet, when at Flukers’, no man could have been a more cheerful and
otherwise satisfactory boarder than Mr. Matt Pike. He praised every dish set
before him, bragged to their very faces of his host and hostess, and in spite
of his absences was the oftenest to sit and chat with Marann when her
mother would let her go into the parlor. Here and everywhere about the
house, in the dining-room, in the passage, at the foot of the stairs, he would

joke with Marann about her country beau, as he styled poor Sim Marchman,
and he would talk as though he was rather ashamed of Sim, and wanted
Marann to string her bow for higher game.
Brer Sam did manage well, not only the fields, but the yard. Every
Saturday of the world he sent in something or other to his sister. I don’t
know whether I ought to tell it or not, but for the sake of what is due to pure
veracity I will. On as many as three different occasions Sim Marchman, as
if he had lost all self-respect, or had not a particle of tact, brought in
himself, instead of sending by a negro, a bucket of butter and a coop of
spring chickens as a free gift to Mrs. Fluker. I do think, on my soul, that Mr.
Matt Pike was much amused by such degradation—however, he must say
that they were all first-rate. As for Marann, she was very sorry for Sim, and
wished he had not brought these good things at all.
Nobody knew how it came about; but when the Flukers had been in town
somewhere between two and three months, Sim Marchman, who (to use his
own words) had never bothered her a great deal with his visits, began to
suspect that what few he made were received by Marann lately with less
cordiality than before; and so one day, knowing no better, in his awkward,
straightforward country manners, he wanted to know the reason why. Then
Marann grew distant, and asked Sim the following question:
“You know where Mr. Pike’s gone, Mr. Marchman?”
Now the fact was, and she knew it, that Marann Fluker had never before,
not since she was born, addressed that boy as Mister.
The visitor’s face reddened and reddened.
“No,” he faltered in answer; “no—no—ma’am, I should say. I—I don’t
know where Mr. Pike’s gone.”
Then he looked around for his hat, discovered it in time, took it into his
hands, turned it around two or three times, then, bidding good-bye without
shaking hands, took himself off.
Mrs. Fluker liked all the Marchmans, and she was troubled somewhat
when she heard of the quickness and manner of Sim’s departure; for he had
been fully expected by her to stay to dinner.

“Say he didn’t even shake hands, Marann? What for? What you do to
him?”
“Not one blessed thing, ma; only he wanted to know why I wasn’t
gladder to see him.” Then Marann looked indignant.
“Say them words, Marann?”
“No, but he hinted ’em.”
“What did you say then?”
“I just asked, a-meaning nothing in the wide world, ma—I asked him if
he knew where Mr. Pike had gone.”
“And that were answer enough to hurt his feelin’s. What you want to
know where Matt Pike’s gone for, Marann?”
“I didn’t care about knowing, ma, but I didn’t like the way Sim talked.”
“Look here, Marann. Look straight at me. You’ll be mighty fur off your
feet if you let Matt Pike put things in your head that hain’t no business a-
bein’ there, and special if you find yourself a-wantin’ to know where he’s a-
perambulatin’ in his everlastin’ meanderin’s. Not a cent has he paid for his
board, and which your pa say he have a’ understandin’ with him about
allowin’ for his absentees, which is all right enough, but which it’s now
goin’ on to three mont’s, and what is comin’ to us I need and I want. He
ought, your pa ought to let me bargain with Matt Pike, because he know he
don’t understan’ figgers like Matt Pike. He don’t know exactly what the
bargain were; for I’ve asked him, and he always begins with a multiplyin’
of words and never answers me.”
On his next return from his travels Mr. Pike noticed a coldness in Mrs.
Fluker’s manner, and this enhanced his praise of the house. The last week of
the third month came. Mr. Pike was often noticed, before and after meals,
standing at the desk in the hotel office (called in those times the bar-room)
engaged in making calculations. The day before the contract expired Mrs.
Fluker, who had not indulged herself with a single holiday since they had
been in town, left Marann in charge of the house, and rode forth, spending
part of the day with Mrs. Marchman, Sim’s mother. All were glad to see her,
of course, and she returned smartly, freshened by the visit. That night she
had a talk with Marann, and oh, how Marann did cry!

The very last day came. Like insurance policies, the contract was to
expire at a certain hour. Sim Marchman came just before dinner, to which
he was sent for by Mrs. Fluker, who had seen him as he rode into town.
“Hello, Sim,” said Mr. Pike as he took his seat opposite him. “You here?
What’s the news in the country? How’s your health? How’s crops?”
“Jest mod’rate, Mr. Pike. Got little business with you after dinner, ef you
can spare time.”
“All right. Got a little matter with Pink here first. ’Twon’t take long. See
you arfter amejiant, Sim.”
Never had the deputy been more gracious and witty. He talked and
talked, outtalking even Mr. Fluker; he was the only man in town who could
do that. He winked at Marann as he put questions to Sim, some of the words
employed in which Sim had never heard before. Yet Sim held up as well as
he could, and after dinner followed Marann with some little dignity into the
parlor. They had not been there more than ten minutes when Mrs. Fluker
was heard to walk rapidly along the passage leading from the dining-room,
to enter her own chamber for only a moment, then to come out and rush to
the parlor door with the gig-whip in her hand. Such uncommon conduct in a
woman like Mrs. Pink Fluker of course needs explanation.
When all the other boarders had left the house, the deputy and Mr. Fluker
having repaired to the bar-room, the former said:
“Now, Pink, for our settlement, as you say your wife think we better have
one. I’d ’a’ been willin’ to let accounts keep on a-runnin’, knowin’ what a
straightforrards sort o’ man you was. Your count, ef I ain’t mistakened, is
jes’ thirty-three dollars, even money. Is that so, or is it not?”
“That’s it, to a dollar, Matt. Three times eleben make thirty-three, don’t
it?”
“It do, Pink, or eleben times three, jes’ which you please. Now here’s my
count, on which you’ll see, Pink, that not nary cent have I charged for
infloonce. I has infloonced a consider’ble custom to this house, as you
know, bo’din’ and transion. But I done that out o’ my respects of you an’
Missis Fluker, an’ your keepin’ of a fa’r—I’ll say, as I’ve said freckwent, a
very fa’r house. I let them infloonces go to friendship, ef you’ll take it so.
Will you, Pink Fluker?”

“Cert’nly, Matt, an’ I’m a thousand times obleeged to you, an’—”
“Say no more, Pink, on that p’int o’ view. Ef I like a man, I know how to
treat him. Now as to the p’ints o’ absentees, my business as dep’ty sheriff
has took me away from this inconsider’ble town freckwent, hain’t it?”
“It have, Matt, er somethin’ else, more’n I were a expectin’, an’—”
“Jes’ so. But a public officer, Pink, when jooty call on him to go, he got
to go; in fack he got to goth, as the Scripture say, ain’t that so?”
“I s’pose so, Matt, by good rights, a—a official speakin’.”
Mr. Fluker felt that he was becoming a little confused.
“Jes’ so. Now, Pink, I were to have credics for my absentees ’cordin’ to
transion an’ single-meal bo’ders an’ sleepers; ain’t that so?”
“I—I—somethin’ o’ that sort, Matt,” he answered vaguely.
“Jes’ so. Now look here,” drawing from his pocket a paper. “Itom one.
Twenty-eight dinners at half a dollar makes fourteen dollars, don’t it? Jes’
so. Twenty-five breakfasts at a quarter makes six an’ a quarter, which make
dinners an’ breakfasts twenty an’ a quarter. Foller me up, as I go up, Pink.
Twenty-five suppers at a quarter makes six an’ a quarter, an’ which them
added to the twenty an’ a quarter makes them twenty-six an’ a half. Foller,
Pink, an’ if you ketch me in any mistakes in the kyarin’ an’ addin’, p’int it
out. Twenty-two an’ a half beds—an’ I say half, Pink, because you ’member
one night when them A’gusty lawyers got here ’bout midnight on their way
to co’t, rather’n have you too bad cramped, I ris to make way for two of
’em; yit as I had one good nap, I didn’t think I ought to put that down but
for half. Them makes five dollars half an’ seb’n pence, an’ which kyar’d on
to the t’other twenty-six an’ a half, fetches the whole cabool to jes’ thirty-
two dollars an’ seb’n pence. But I made up my mind I’d fling out that seb’n
pence, an’ jes’ call it a dollar even money, an’ which here’s the solid silver.”
In spite of the rapidity with which this enumeration of counter-charges
was made, Mr. Fluker commenced perspiring at the first item, and when the
balance was announced his face was covered with huge drops.
It was at this juncture that Mrs. Fluker, who, well knowing her husband’s
unfamiliarity with complicated accounts, had felt her duty to be listening

near the bar-room door, left, and quickly afterwards appeared before
Marann and Sim as I have represented.
“You think Matt Pike ain’t tryin’ to settle with your pa with a dollar? I’m
goin’ to make him keep his dollar, an’ I’m goin’ to give him somethin’ to go
’long with it.”
“The good Lord have mercy upon us!” exclaimed Marann, springing up
and catching hold of her mother’s skirts, as she began her advance towards
the bar-room. “Oh, ma! for the Lord’s sake!—Sim, Sim, Sim, if you care
anything for me in this wide world, don’t let ma go into that room!”
“Missis Fluker,” said Sim, rising instantly, “wait jest two minutes till I
see Mr. Pike on some pressin’ business; I won’t keep you over two minutes
a-waitin’.”
He took her, set her down in a chair trembling, looked at her a moment as
she began to weep, then, going out and closing the door, strode rapidly to
the bar-room.
“Let me help you settle your board-bill, Mr. Pike, by payin’ you a little
one I owe you.”
Doubling his fist, he struck out with a blow that felled the deputy to the
floor. Then catching him by his heels, he dragged him out of the house into
the street. Lifting his foot above his face, he said:
“You stir till I tell you, an’ I’ll stomp your nose down even with the
balance of your mean face. ’Tain’t exactly my business how you cheated
Mr. Fluker, though, ’pon my soul, I never knowed a trifliner, lowdowner
trick. But I owed you myself for your talkin’ ’bout and your lyin’ ’bout me,
and now I’ve paid you; an’ ef you only knowed it, I’ve saved you from a
gig-whippin’. Now you may git up.”
“Here’s his dollar, Sim,” said Mr. Fluker, throwing it out of the window.
“Nervy say make him take it.”
The vanquished, not daring to refuse, pocketed the coin, and slunk away
amid the jeers of a score of villagers who had been drawn to the scene.
In all human probability the late omission of the shaking of Sim’s and
Marann’s hands was compensated at their parting that afternoon. I am more
confident on this point because at the end of the year those hands were

joined inseparably by the preacher. But this was when they had all gone
back to their old home; for if Mr. Fluker did not become fully convinced
that his mathematical education was not advanced quite enough for all the
exigencies of hotel-keeping, his wife declared that she had had enough of it,
and that she and Marann were going home. Mr. Fluker may be said,
therefore, to have followed, rather than led, his family on the return.
As for the deputy, finding that if he did not leave it voluntarily he would
be drummed out of the village, he departed, whither I do not remember if
anybody ever knew.

FOOTNOTES:
[20] From The Century Magazine, June, 1886;
copyright, 1886, by The Century Co.;
republished in the volume, Mr. Absalom
Billingslea, and Other Georgia Folk (1888), by
Richard Malcolm Johnston (Harper &
Brothers).

THE NICE PEOPLE[21]
By Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896)
“They certainly are nice people,” I assented to my wife’s observation,
using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was anything but
“nice” English, “and I’ll bet that their three children are better brought up
than most of——”
“Two children,” corrected my wife.
“Three, he told me.”
“My dear, she said there were two.”
“He said three.”
“You’ve simply forgotten. I’m sure she told me they had only two—a
boy and a girl.”
“Well, I didn’t enter into particulars.”
“No, dear, and you couldn’t have understood him. Two children.”
“All right,” I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a nearsighted
man learns by enforced observation to recognize persons at a distance when
the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the man with a bad memory
learns, almost unconsciously, to listen carefully and report accurately. My
memory is bad; but I had not had time to forget that Mr. Brewster Brede had
told me that afternoon that he had three children, at present left in the care
of his mother-in-law, while he and Mrs. Brede took their summer vacation.
“Two children,” repeated my wife; “and they are staying with his aunt
Jenny.”

“He told me with his mother-in-law,” I put in. My wife looked at me with
a serious expression. Men may not remember much of what they are told
about children; but any man knows the difference between an aunt and a
mother-in-law.
“But don’t you think they’re nice people?” asked my wife.
“Oh, certainly,” I replied. “Only they seem to be a little mixed up about
their children.”
“That isn’t a nice thing to say,” returned my wife. I could not deny it.

And yet, the next morning, when the Bredes came down and seated
themselves opposite us at table, beaming and smiling in their natural,
pleasant, well-bred fashion, I knew, to a social certainty, that they were
“nice” people. He was a fine-looking fellow in his neat tennis-flannels,
slim, graceful, twenty-eight or thirty years old, with a Frenchy pointed
beard. She was “nice” in all her pretty clothes, and she herself was pretty
with that type of prettiness which outwears most other types—the prettiness
that lies in a rounded figure, a dusky skin, plump, rosy cheeks, white teeth
and black eyes. She might have been twenty-five; you guessed that she was
prettier than she was at twenty, and that she would be prettier still at forty.
And nice people were all we wanted to make us happy in Mr. Jacobus’s
summer boarding-house on top of Orange Mountain. For a week we had
come down to breakfast each morning, wondering why we wasted the
precious days of idleness with the company gathered around the Jacobus
board. What joy of human companionship was to be had out of Mrs. Tabb
and Miss Hoogencamp, the two middle-aged gossips from Scranton, Pa.—
out of Mr. and Mrs. Biggle, an indurated head-bookkeeper and his prim and
censorious wife—out of old Major Halkit, a retired business man, who,
having once sold a few shares on commission, wrote for circulars of every
stock company that was started, and tried to induce every one to invest who
would listen to him? We looked around at those dull faces, the truthful
indices of mean and barren minds, and decided that we would leave that
morning. Then we ate Mrs. Jacobus’s biscuit, light as Aurora’s cloudlets,
drank her honest coffee, inhaled the perfume of the late azaleas with which

she decked her table, and decided to postpone our departure one more day.
And then we wandered out to take our morning glance at what we called
“our view”; and it seemed to us as if Tabb and Hoogencamp and Halkit and
the Biggleses could not drive us away in a year.
I was not surprised when, after breakfast, my wife invited the Bredes to
walk with us to “our view.” The Hoogencamp-Biggle-Tabb-Halkit
contingent never stirred off Jacobus’s veranda; but we both felt that the
Bredes would not profane that sacred scene. We strolled slowly across the
fields, passed through the little belt of woods and, as I heard Mrs. Brede’s
little cry of startled rapture, I motioned to Brede to look up.
“By Jove!” he cried, “heavenly!”
We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of
billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue lay a dim
purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages lay before
us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and lowlands, woods
and plains, all massed and mingled in that great silent sea of sunlit green.
For silent it was to us, standing in the silence of a high place—silent with a
Sunday stillness that made us listen, without taking thought, for the sound
of bells coming up from the spires that rose above the tree-tops—the tree-
tops that lay as far beneath us as the light clouds were above us that
dropped great shadows upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the
broad sweep of land at the mountain’s foot.
“And so that is your view?” asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; “you are
very generous to make it ours, too.”
Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk, in a gentle
voice, as if he felt the influence of the place. He had paddled a canoe, in his
earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek in that vast stretch
of landscape. He found his landmarks, and pointed out to us where the
Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to us, hidden behind great
ridges that in our sight were but combings of the green waves upon which
we looked down. And yet, on the further side of those broad ridges and rises
were scores of villages—a little world of country life, lying unseen under
our eyes.

“A good deal like looking at humanity,” he said; “there is such a thing as
getting so far above our fellow men that we see only one side of them.”
Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip of
the Tabb and the Hoogencamp—than the Major’s dissertations upon his
everlasting circulars! My wife and I exchanged glances.
“Now, when I went up the Matterhorn” Mr. Brede began.
“Why, dear,” interrupted his wife, “I didn’t know you ever went up the
Matterhorn.”
“It—it was five years ago,” said Mr. Brede, hurriedly. “I—I didn’t tell
you—when I was on the other side, you know—it was rather dangerous—
well, as I was saying—it looked—oh, it didn’t look at all like this.”
A cloud floated overhead, throwing its great shadow over the field where
we lay. The shadow passed over the mountain’s brow and reappeared far
below, a rapidly decreasing blot, flying eastward over the golden green. My
wife and I exchanged glances once more.
Somehow, the shadow lingered over us all. As we went home, the Bredes
went side by side along the narrow path, and my wife and I walked
together.
“Should you think,” she asked me, “that a man would climb the
Matterhorn the very first year he was married?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” I answered, evasively; “this isn’t the first year I
have been married, not by a good many, and I wouldn’t climb it—for a
farm.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
I did.

When we reached the boarding-house, Mr. Jacobus took me aside.
“You know,” he began his discourse, “my wife she uset to live in N’
York!”

I didn’t know, but I said “Yes.”
“She says the numbers on the streets runs criss-cross-like. Thirty-four’s
on one side o’ the street an’ thirty-five on t’other. How’s that?”
“That is the invariable rule, I believe.”
“Then—I say—these here new folk that you ’n’ your wife seem so
mighty taken up with—d’ye know anything about ’em?”
“I know nothing about the character of your boarders, Mr. Jacobus,” I
replied, conscious of some irritability. “If I choose to associate with any of
them——”
“Jess so—jess so!” broke in Jacobus. “I hain’t nothin’ to say ag’inst yer
sosherbil’ty. But do ye know them?”
“Why, certainly not,” I replied.
“Well—that was all I wuz askin’ ye. Ye see, when he come here to take
the rooms—you wasn’t here then—he told my wife that he lived at number
thirty-four in his street. An’ yistiddy she told her that they lived at number
thirty-five. He said he lived in an apartment-house. Now there can’t be no
apartment-house on two sides of the same street, kin they?”
“What street was it?” I inquired, wearily.
“Hundred ’n’ twenty-first street.”
“May be,” I replied, still more wearily. “That’s Harlem. Nobody knows
what people will do in Harlem.”
I went up to my wife’s room.
“Don’t you think it’s queer?” she asked me.
“I think I’ll have a talk with that young man to-night,” I said, “and see if
he can give some account of himself.”
“But, my dear,” my wife said, gravely, “she doesn’t know whether
they’ve had the measles or not.”
“Why, Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “they must have had them when they
were children.”
“Please don’t be stupid,” said my wife. “I meant their children.”

After dinner that night—or rather, after supper, for we had dinner in the
middle of the day at Jacobus’s—I walked down the long verandah to ask
Brede, who was placidly smoking at the other end, to accompany me on a
twilight stroll. Half way down I met Major Halkit.
“That friend of yours,” he said, indicating the unconscious figure at the
further end of the house, “seems to be a queer sort of a Dick. He told me
that he was out of business, and just looking round for a chance to invest his
capital. And I’ve been telling him what an everlasting big show he had to
take stock in the Capitoline Trust Company—starts next month—four
million capital—I told you all about it. ‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘let’s wait and
think about it.’ ‘Wait!’ says I, ‘the Capitoline Trust Company won’t wait for
you, my boy. This is letting you in on the ground floor,’ says I, ‘and it’s now
or never.’ ‘Oh, let it wait,’ says he. I don’t know what’s in-to the man.”
“I don’t know how well he knows his own business, Major,” I said as I
started again for Brede’s end of the veranda. But I was troubled none the
less. The Major could not have influenced the sale of one share of stock in
the Capitoline Company. But that stock was a great investment; a rare
chance for a purchaser with a few thousand dollars. Perhaps it was no more
remarkable that Brede should not invest than that I should not—and yet, it
seemed to add one circumstance more to the other suspicious
circumstances.

When I went upstairs that evening, I found my wife putting her hair to
bed—I don’t know how I can better describe an operation familiar to every
married man. I waited until the last tress was coiled up, and then I spoke:
“I’ve talked with Brede,” I said, “and I didn’t have to catechize him. He
seemed to feel that some sort of explanation was looked for, and he was
very outspoken. You were right about the children—that is, I must have
misunderstood him. There are only two. But the Matterhorn episode was
simple enough. He didn’t realize how dangerous it was until he had got so
far into it that he couldn’t back out; and he didn’t tell her, because he’d left
her here, you see, and under the circumstances——”

“Left her here!” cried my wife. “I’ve been sitting with her the whole
afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at Geneva, and came
back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born there—now I’m sure,
dear, because I asked her.”
“Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side of
the water,” I suggested, with bitter, biting irony.
“You poor dear, did I abuse you?” said my wife. “But, do you know, Mrs.
Tabb said that she didn’t know how many lumps of sugar he took in his
coffee. Now that seems queer, doesn’t it?”
It did. It was a small thing. But it looked queer, Very queer.

The next morning, it was clear that war was declared against the Bredes.
They came down to breakfast somewhat late, and, as soon as they arrived,
the Biggleses swooped up the last fragments that remained on their plates,
and made a stately march out of the dining-room, Then Miss Hoogencamp
arose and departed, leaving a whole fish-ball on her plate. Even as Atalanta
might have dropped an apple behind her to tempt her pursuer to check his
speed, so Miss Hoogencamp left that fish-ball behind her, and between her
maiden self and contamination.
We had finished our breakfast, my wife and I, before the Bredes
appeared. We talked it over, and agreed that we were glad that we had not
been obliged to take sides upon such insufficient testimony.
After breakfast, it was the custom of the male half of the Jacobus
household to go around the corner of the building and smoke their pipes and
cigars where they would not annoy the ladies. We sat under a trellis covered
with a grapevine that had borne no grapes in the memory of man. This vine,
however, bore leaves, and these, on that pleasant summer morning, shielded
from us two persons who were in earnest conversation in the straggling,
half-dead flower-garden at the side of the house.
“I don’t want,” we heard Mr. Jacobus say, “to enter in no man’s pry-vacy;
but I do want to know who it may be, like, that I hev in my house. Now

what I ask of you, and I don’t want you to take it as in no ways personal, is
—hev you your merridge-license with you?”
“No,” we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. “Have you yours?”
I think it was a chance shot; but it told all the same. The Major (he was a
widower) and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and Mr. Jacobus, on
the other side of the grape-trellis, looked at—I don’t know what—and was
as silent as we were.
Where is your marriage-license, married reader? Do you know? Four
men, not including Mr. Brede, stood or sat on one side or the other of that
grape-trellis, and not one of them knew where his marriage-license was.
Each of us had had one—the Major had had three. But where were they?
Where is yours? Tucked in your best-man’s pocket; deposited in his desk—
or washed to a pulp in his white waistcoat (if white waistcoats be the
fashion of the hour), washed out of existence—can you tell where it is? Can
you—unless you are one of those people who frame that interesting
document and hang it upon their drawing-room walls?
Mr. Brede’s voice arose, after an awful stillness of what seemed like five
minutes, and was, probably, thirty seconds:
“Mr. Jacobus, will you make out your bill at once, and let me pay it? I
shall leave by the six o’clock train. And will you also send the wagon for
my trunks?”
“I hain’t said I wanted to hev ye leave——” began Mr. Jacobus; but
Brede cut him short.
“Bring me your bill.”
“But,” remonstrated Jacobus, “ef ye ain’t——”
“Bring me your bill!” said Mr. Brede.

My wife and I went out for our morning’s walk. But it seemed to us,
when we looked at “our view,” as if we could only see those invisible
villages of which Brede had told us—that other side of the ridges and rises

of which we catch no glimpse from lofty hills or from the heights of human
self-esteem. We meant to stay out until the Bredes had taken their departure;
but we returned just in time to see Pete, the Jacobus darkey, the blacker of
boots, the brasher of coats, the general handy-man of the house, loading the
Brede trunks on the Jacobus wagon.
And, as we stepped upon the verandah, down came Mrs. Brede, leaning
on Mr. Brede’s arm, as though she were ill; and it was clear that she had
been crying. There were heavy rings about her pretty black eyes.
My wife took a step toward her.
“Look at that dress, dear,” she whispered; “she never thought anything
like this was going to happen when she put that on.”
It was a pretty, delicate, dainty dress, a graceful, narrow-striped affair.
Her hat was trimmed with a narrow-striped silk of the same colors—
maroon and white—and in her hand she held a parasol that matched her
dress.
“She’s had a new dress on twice a day,” said my wife, “but that’s the
prettiest yet. Oh, somehow—I’m awfully sorry they’re going!”
But going they were. They moved toward the steps. Mrs. Brede looked
toward my wife, and my wife moved toward Mrs. Brede. But the ostracized
woman, as though she felt the deep humiliation of her position, turned
sharply away, and opened her parasol to shield her eyes from the sun. A
shower of rice—a half-pound shower of rice—fell down over her pretty hat
and her pretty dress, and fell in a spattering circle on the floor, outlining her
skirts—and there it lay in a broad, uneven band, bright in the morning sun.
Mrs. Brede was in my wife’s arms, sobbing as if her young heart would
break.
“Oh, you poor, dear, silly children!” my wife cried, as Mrs. Brede sobbed
on her shoulder, “why didn’t you tell us?”
“W-W-W-We didn’t want to be t-t-taken for a b-b-b-b-bridal couple,”
sobbed Mrs. Brede; “and we d-d-didn’t dream what awful lies we’d have to
tell, and all the aw-awful mixed-up-ness of it. Oh, dear, dear, dear!”

“Pete!” commanded Mr. Jacobus, “put back them trunks. These folks
stays here’s long’s they wants ter. Mr. Brede”—he held out a large, hard
hand—“I’d orter’ve known better,” he said. And my last doubt of Mr. Brede
vanished as he shook that grimy hand in manly fashion.
The two women were walking off toward “our view,” each with an arm
about the other’s waist—touched by a sudden sisterhood of sympathy.
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Brede, addressing Jacobus, Biggle, the Major and
me, “there is a hostelry down the street where they sell honest New Jersey
beer. I recognize the obligations of the situation.”
We five men filed down the street. The two women went toward the
pleasant slope where the sunlight gilded the forehead of the great hill. On
Mr. Jacobus’s veranda lay a spattered circle of shining grains of rice. Two
of Mr. Jacobus’s pigeons flew down and picked up the shining grains,
making grateful noises far down in their throats.

FOOTNOTES:
[21] From Puck, July 30, 1890. Republished in
the volume, Short Sixes: Stories to Be Read
While the Candle Burns (1891), by Henry
Cuyler Bunner; copyright, 1890, by Alice
Larned Bunner; reprinted by permission of the
publishers, Charles Scribner’a Sons.

THE BULLER-PODINGTON COMPACT[22]
By Frank Richard Stockton (1834–1902)
“I tell you, William,” said Thomas Buller to his friend Mr. Podington, “I
am truly sorry about it, but I cannot arrange for it this year. Now, as to my
invitation—that is very different.”
“Of course it is different,” was the reply, “but I am obliged to say, as I
said before, that I really cannot accept it.”
Remarks similar to these had been made by Thomas Buller and William
Podington at least once a year for some five years. They were old friends;
they had been schoolboys together and had been associated in business
since they were young men. They had now reached a vigorous middle age;
they were each married, and each had a house in the country in which he
resided for a part of the year. They were warmly attached to each other, and
each was the best friend which the other had in this world. But during all
these years neither of them had visited the other in his country home.
The reason for this avoidance of each other at their respective rural
residences may be briefly stated. Mr. Buller’s country house was situated by
the sea, and he was very fond of the water. He had a good cat-boat, which
he sailed himself with much judgment and skill, and it was his greatest
pleasure to take his friends and visitors upon little excursions on the bay.
But Mr. Podington was desperately afraid of the water, and he was
particularly afraid of any craft sailed by an amateur. If his friend Buller
would have employed a professional mariner, of years and experience, to
steer and manage his boat, Podington might have been willing to take an
occasional sail; but as Buller always insisted upon sailing his own boat, and
took it ill if any of his visitors doubted his ability to do so properly,
Podington did not wish to wound the self-love of his friend, and he did not

wish to be drowned. Consequently he could not bring himself to consent to
go to Buller’s house by the sea.
To receive his good friend Buller at his own house in the beautiful upland
region in which he lived would have been a great joy to Mr. Podington; but
Buller could not be induced to visit him. Podington was very fond of horses
and always drove himself, while Buller was more afraid of horses than he
was of elephants or lions. To one or more horses driven by a coachman of
years and experience he did not always object, but to a horse driven by
Podington, who had much experience and knowledge regarding mercantile
affairs, but was merely an amateur horseman, he most decidedly and
strongly objected. He did not wish to hurt his friend’s feelings by refusing
to go out to drive with him, but he would not rack his own nervous system
by accompanying him. Therefore it was that he had not yet visited the
beautiful upland country residence of Mr. Podington.
At last this state of things grew awkward. Mrs. Buller and Mrs.
Podington, often with their families, visited each other at their country
houses, but the fact that on these occasions they were never accompanied
by their husbands caused more and more gossip among their neighbors both
in the upland country and by the sea.
One day in spring as the two sat in their city office, where Mr. Podington
had just repeated his annual invitation, his friend replied to him thus:
“William, if I come to see you this summer, will you visit me? The thing
is beginning to look a little ridiculous, and people are talking about it.”
Mr. Podington put his hand to his brow and for a few moments closed his
eyes. In his mind he saw a cat-boat upon its side, the sails spread out over
the water, and two men, almost entirely immersed in the waves, making
efforts to reach the side of the boat. One of these was getting on very well—
that was Buller. The other seemed about to sink, his arms were uselessly
waving in the air—that was himself. But he opened his eyes and looked
bravely out of the window; it was time to conquer all this; it was indeed
growing ridiculous. Buller had been sailing many years and had never been
upset.
“Yes,” said he; “I will do it; I am ready any time you name.”
Mr. Buller rose and stretched out his hand.

“Good!” said he; “it is a compact!”
Buller was the first to make the promised country visit. He had not
mentioned the subject of horses to his friend, but he knew through Mrs.
Buller that Podington still continued to be his own driver. She had informed
him, however, that at present he was accustomed to drive a big black horse
which, in her opinion, was as gentle and reliable as these animals ever
became, and she could not imagine how anybody could be afraid of him. So
when, the next morning after his arrival, Mr. Buller was asked by his host if
he would like to take a drive, he suppressed a certain rising emotion and
said that it would please him very much.
When the good black horse had jogged along a pleasant road for half an
hour Mr. Buller began to feel that, perhaps, for all these years he had been
laboring under a misconception. It seemed to be possible that there were
some horses to which surrounding circumstances in the shape of sights and
sounds were so irrelevant that they were to a certain degree entirely safe,
even when guided and controlled by an amateur hand. As they passed some
meadow-land, somebody behind a hedge fired a gun; Mr. Buller was
frightened, but the horse was not.
“William,” said Buller, looking cheerfully around him,
“I had no idea that you lived in such a pretty country. In fact, I might
almost call it beautiful. You have not any wide stretch of water, such as I
like so much, but here is a pretty river, those rolling hills are very charming,
and, beyond, you have the blue of the mountains.”
“It is lovely,” said his friend; “I never get tired of driving through this
country. Of course the seaside is very fine, but here we have such a variety
of scenery.”
Mr. Buller could not help thinking that sometimes the seaside was a little
monotonous, and that he had lost a great deal of pleasure by not varying his
summers by going up to spend a week or two with Podington.
“William,” said he, “how long have you had this horse?”
“About two years,” said Mr. Podington; “before I got him, I used to drive
a pair.”

“Heavens!” thought Buller, “how lucky I was not to come two years
ago!” And his regrets for not sooner visiting his friend greatly decreased.
Now they came to a place where the stream, by which the road ran, had
been dammed for a mill and had widened into a beautiful pond.
“There now!” cried Mr. Buller. “That’s what I like. William, you seem to
have everything! This is really a very pretty sheet of water, and the
reflections of the trees over there make a charming picture; you can’t get
that at the seaside, you know.”
Mr. Podington was delighted; his face glowed; he was rejoiced at the
pleasure of his friend. “I tell you, Thomas,” said he, “that——”
“William!” exclaimed Buller, with a sudden squirm in his seat, “what is
that I hear? Is that a train?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Podington, “that is the ten-forty, up.”
“Does it come near here?” asked Mr. Buller, nervously. “Does it go over
that bridge?”
“Yes,” said Podington, “but it can’t hurt us, for our road goes under the
bridge; we are perfectly safe; there is no risk of accident.”
“But your horse! Your horse!” exclaimed Buller, as the train came nearer
and nearer. “What will he do?”
“Do?” said Podington; “he’ll do what he is doing now; he doesn’t mind
trains.”
“But look here, William,” exclaimed Buller, “it will get there just as we
do; no horse could stand a roaring up in the air like that!”
Podington laughed. “He would not mind it in the least,” said he.
“Come, come now,” cried Buller. “Really, I can’t stand this! Just stop a
minute, William, and let me get out. It sets all my nerves quivering.”
Mr. Podington smiled with a superior smile. “Oh, you needn’t get out,”
said he; “there’s not the least danger in the world. But I don’t want to make
you nervous, and I will turn around and drive the other way.”
“But you can’t!” screamed Buller. “This road is not wide enough, and
that train is nearly here. Please stop!”

The imputation that the road was not wide enough for him to turn was
too much for Mr. Podington to bear. He was very proud of his ability to turn
a vehicle in a narrow place.
“Turn!” said he; “that’s the easiest thing in the world. See; a little to the
right, then a back, then a sweep to the left and we will be going the other
way.” And instantly he began the maneuver in which he was such an adept.
“Oh, Thomas!” cried Buller, half rising in his seat, “that train is almost
here!”
“And we are almost——” Mr. Podington was about to say “turned
around,” but he stopped. Mr. Buller’s exclamations had made him a little
nervous, and, in his anxiety to turn quickly, he had pulled upon his horse’s
bit with more energy than was actually necessary, and his nervousness
being communicated to the horse, that animal backed with such
extraordinary vigor that the hind wheels of the wagon went over a bit of
grass by the road and into the water. The sudden jolt gave a new impetus to
Mr. Buller’s fears.
“You’ll upset!” he cried, and not thinking of what he was about, he laid
hold of his friend’s arm. The horse, startled by this sudden jerk upon his bit,
which, combined with the thundering of the train, which was now on the
bridge, made him think that something extraordinary was about to happen,
gave a sudden and forcible start backward, so that not only the hind wheels
of the light wagon, but the fore wheels and his own hind legs went into the
water. As the bank at this spot sloped steeply, the wagon continued to go
backward, despite the efforts of the agitated horse to find a footing on the
crumbling edge of the bank.
“Whoa!” cried Mr. Buller.
“Get up!” exclaimed Mr. Podington, applying his whip upon the plunging
beast.
But exclamations and castigations had no effect upon the horse. The
original bed of the stream ran close to the road, and the bank was so steep
and the earth so soft that it was impossible for the horse to advance or even
maintain his footing. Back, back he went, until the whole equipage was in
the water and the wagon was afloat.

This vehicle was a road wagon, without a top, and the joints of its box-
body were tight enough to prevent the water from immediately entering it;
so, somewhat deeply sunken, it rested upon the water. There was a current
in this part of the pond and it turned the wagon downstream. The horse was
now entirely immersed in the water, with the exception of his head and the
upper part of his neck, and, unable to reach the bottom with his feet, he
made vigorous efforts to swim.
Mr. Podington, the reins and whip in his hands, sat horrified and pale; the
accident was so sudden, he was so startled and so frightened that, for a
moment, he could not speak a word. Mr. Buller, on the other hand, was now
lively and alert. The wagon had no sooner floated away from the shore than
he felt himself at home. He was upon his favorite element; water had no
fears for him. He saw that his friend was nearly frightened out of his wits,
and that, figuratively speaking, he must step to the helm and take charge of
the vessel. He stood up and gazed about him.
“Put her across stream!” he shouted; “she can’t make headway against
this current. Head her to that clump of trees on the other side; the bank is
lower there, and we can beach her. Move a little the other way, we must
trim boat. Now then, pull on your starboard rein.”
Podington obeyed, and the horse slightly changed his direction.
“You see,” said Buller, “it won’t do to sail straight across, because the
current would carry us down and land us below that spot.”
Mr. Podington said not a word; he expected every moment to see the
horse sink into a watery grave.
“It isn’t so bad after all, is it, Podington? If we had a rudder and a bit of a
sail it would be a great help to the horse. This wagon is not a bad boat.”
The despairing Podington looked at his feet. “It’s coming in,” he said in a
husky voice. “Thomas, the water is over my shoes!”
“That is so,” said Buller. “I am so used to water I didn’t notice it. She
leaks. Do you carry anything to bail her out with?”
“Bail!” cried Podington, now finding his voice. “Oh, Thomas, we are
sinking!”
“That’s so,” said Buller; “she leaks like a sieve.”

The weight of the running-gear and of the two men was entirely too
much for the buoyancy of the wagon body. The water rapidly rose toward
the top of its sides.
“We are going to drown!” cried Podington, suddenly rising.
“Lick him! Lick him!” exclaimed Buller. “Make him swim faster!”
“There’s nothing to lick,” cried Podington, vainly lashing at the water, for
he could not reach the horse’s head. The poor man was dreadfully
frightened; he had never even imagined it possible that he should be
drowned in his own wagon.
“Whoop!” cried Buller, as the water rose over the sides. “Steady yourself,
old boy, or you’ll go overboard!” And the next moment the wagon body
sunk out of sight.
But it did not go down very far. The deepest part of the channel of the
stream had been passed, and with a bump the wheels struck the bottom.
“Heavens!” exclaimed Buller, “we are aground.”
“Aground!” exclaimed Podington, “Heaven be praised!”
As the two men stood up in the submerged wagon the water was above
their knees, and when Podington looked out over the surface of the pond,
now so near his face, it seemed like a sheet of water he had never seen
before. It was something horrible, threatening to rise and envelop him. He
trembled so that he could scarcely keep his footing.
“William,” said his companion, “you must sit down; if you don’t, you’ll
tumble overboard and be drowned. There is nothing for you to hold to.”
“Sit down,” said Podington, gazing blankly at the water around him, “I
can’t do that!”
At this moment the horse made a slight movement. Having touched
bottom after his efforts in swimming across the main bed of the stream,
with a floating wagon in tow, he had stood for a few moments, his head and
neck well above water, and his back barely visible beneath the surface.
Having recovered his breath, he now thought it was time to move on.
At the first step of the horse Mr. Podington began to totter. Instinctively
he clutched Buller.

“Sit down!” cried the latter, “or you’ll have us both overboard.” There
was no help for it; down sat Mr. Podington; and, as with a great splash he
came heavily upon the seat, the water rose to his waist.
“Ough!” said he. “Thomas, shout for help.”
“No use doing that,” replied Buller, still standing on his nautical legs; “I
don’t see anybody, and I don’t see any boat. We’ll get out all right. Just you
stick tight to the thwart.”
“The what?” feebly asked the other.
“Oh, the seat, I mean. We can get to the shore all right if you steer the
horse straight. Head him more across the pond.”
“I can’t head him,” cried Podington. “I have dropped the reins!”
“Good gracious!” cried Mr. Buller, “that’s bad. Can’t you steer him by
shouting ‘Gee’ and ‘Haw’?”
“No,” said Podington, “he isn’t an ox; but perhaps I can stop him.” And
with as much voice as he could summon, he called out: “Whoa!” and the
horse stopped.
“If you can’t steer him any other way,” said Buller, “we must get the
reins. Lend me your whip.”
“I have dropped that too,” said Podington; “there it floats.”
“Oh, dear,” said Buller, “I guess I’ll have to dive for them; if he were to
run away, we should be in an awful fix.”
“Don’t get out! Don’t get out!” exclaimed Podington. “You can reach
over the dashboard.”
“As that’s under water,” said Buller, “it will be the same thing as diving;
but it’s got to be done, and I’ll try it. Don’t you move now; I am more used
to water than you are.”
Mr. Buller took off his hat and asked his friend to hold it. He thought of
his watch and other contents of his pockets, but there was no place to put
them, so he gave them no more consideration. Then bravely getting on his
knees in the water, he leaned over the dashboard, almost disappearing from

sight. With his disengaged hand Mr. Podington grasped the submerged coat-
tails of his friend.
In a few seconds the upper part of Mr. Buller rose from the water. He was
dripping and puffing, and Mr. Podington could not but think what a
difference it made in the appearance of his friend to have his hair plastered
close to his head.
“I got hold of one of them,” said the sputtering Buller, “but it was fast to
something and I couldn’t get it loose.”
“Was it thick and wide?” asked Podington.
“Yes,” was the answer; “it did seem so.”
“Oh, that was a trace,” said Podington; “I don’t want that; the reins are
thinner and lighter.”
“Now I remember they are,” said Buller. “I’ll go down again.”
Again Mr. Buller leaned over the dashboard, and this time he remained
down longer, and when he came up he puffed and sputtered more than
before.
“Is this it?” said he, holding up a strip of wet leather.
“Yes,” said Podington, “you’ve got the reins.”
“Well, take them, and steer. I would have found them sooner if his tail
had not got into my eyes. That long tail’s floating down there and spreading
itself out like a fan; it tangled itself all around my head. It would have been
much easier if he had been a bob-tailed horse.”
“Now then,” said Podington, “take your hat, Thomas, and I’ll try to
drive.”
Mr. Buller put on his hat, which was the only dry thing about him, and
the nervous Podington started the horse so suddenly that even the sea-legs
of Buller were surprised, and he came very near going backward into the
water; but recovering himself, he sat down.
“I don’t wonder you did not like to do this, William,” said he. “Wet as I
am, it’s ghastly!”

Encouraged by his master’s voice, and by the feeling of the familiar hand
upon his bit, the horse moved bravely on.
But the bottom was very rough and uneven. Sometimes the wheels struck
a large stone, terrifying Mr. Buller, who thought they were going to upset;
and sometimes they sank into soft mud, horrifying Mr. Podington, who
thought they were going to drown.
Thus proceeding, they presented a strange sight. At first Mr. Podington
held his hands above the water as he drove, but he soon found this
awkward, and dropped them to their usual position, so that nothing was
visible above the water but the head and neck of a horse and the heads and
shoulders of two men.
Now the submarine equipage came to a low place in the bottom, and
even Mr. Buller shuddered as the water rose to his chin. Podington gave a
howl of horror, and the horse, with high, uplifted head, was obliged to
swim. At this moment a boy with a gun came strolling along the road, and
hearing Mr. Podington’s cry, he cast his eyes over the water. Instinctively he
raised his weapon to his shoulder, and then, in an instant, perceiving that the
objects he beheld were not aquatic birds, he dropped his gun and ran yelling
down the road toward the mill.
But the hollow in the bottom was a narrow one, and when it was passed
the depth of the water gradually decreased. The back of the horse came into
view, the dashboard became visible, and the bodies and the spirits of the
two men rapidly rose. Now there was vigorous splashing and tugging, and
then a jet black horse, shining as if he had been newly varnished, pulled a
dripping wagon containing two well-soaked men upon a shelving shore.
“Oh, I am chilled to the bones!” said Podington.
“I should think so,” replied his friend; “if you have got to be wet, it is a
great deal pleasanter under the water.”
There was a field-road on this side of the pond which Podington well
knew, and proceeding along this they came to the bridge and got into the
main road.
“Now we must get home as fast as we can,” cried Podington, “or we shall
both take cold. I wish I hadn’t lost my whip. Hi now! Get along!”

Podington was now full of life and energy, his wheels were on the hard
road, and he was himself again.
When he found his head was turned toward his home, the horse set off at
a great rate.
“Hi there!” cried Podington. “I am so sorry I lost my whip.”
“Whip!” said Buller, holding fast to the side of the seat; “surely you don’t
want him to go any faster than this. And look here, William,” he added, “it
seems to me we are much more likely to take cold in our wet clothes if we
rush through the air in this way. Really, it seems to me that horse is running
away.”
“Not a bit of it,” cried Podington. “He wants to get home, and he wants
his dinner. Isn’t he a fine horse? Look how he steps out!”
“Steps out!” said Buller, “I think I’d like to step out myself. Don’t you
think it would be wiser for me to walk home, William? That will warm me
up.”
“It will take you an hour,” said his friend. “Stay where you are, and I’ll
have you in a dry suit of clothes in less than fifteen minutes.”
“I tell you, William,” said Mr. Buller, as the two sat smoking after dinner,
“what you ought to do; you should never go out driving without a life-
preserver and a pair of oars; I always take them. It would make you feel
safer.”
Mr. Buller went home the next day, because Mr. Podington’s clothes did
not fit him, and his own outdoor suit was so shrunken as to be
uncomfortable. Besides, there was another reason, connected with the
desire of horses to reach their homes, which prompted his return. But he
had not forgotten his compact with his friend, and in the course of a week
he wrote to Podington, inviting him to spend some days with him. Mr.
Podington was a man of honor, and in spite of his recent unfortunate water
experience he would not break his word. He went to Mr. Buller’s seaside
home at the time appointed.
Early on the morning after his arrival, before the family were up, Mr.
Podington went out and strolled down to the edge of the bay. He went to
look at Buller’s boat. He was well aware that he would be asked to take a

sail, and as Buller had driven with him, it would be impossible for him to
decline sailing with Buller; but he must see the boat. There was a train for
his home at a quarter past seven; if he were not on the premises he could
not be asked to sail. If Buller’s boat were a little, flimsy thing, he would
take that train—but he would wait and see.
There was only one small boat anchored near the beach, and a man—
apparently a fisherman—informed Mr. Podington that it belonged to Mr.
Buller. Podington looked at it eagerly; it was not very small and not flimsy.
“Do you consider that a safe boat?” he asked the fisherman.
“Safe?” replied the man. “You could not upset her if you tried. Look at
her breadth of beam! You could go anywhere in that boat! Are you thinking
of buying her?”
The idea that he would think of buying a boat made Mr. Podington laugh.
The information that it would be impossible to upset the little vessel had
greatly cheered him, and he could laugh.
Shortly after breakfast Mr. Buller, like a nurse with a dose of medicine,
came to Mr. Podington with the expected invitation to take a sail.
“Now, William,” said his host, “I understand perfectly your feeling about
boats, and what I wish to prove to you is that it is a feeling without any
foundation. I don’t want to shock you or make you nervous, so I am not
going to take you out to-day on the bay in my boat. You are as safe on the
bay as you would be on land—a little safer, perhaps, under certain
circumstances, to which we will not allude—but still it is sometimes a little
rough, and this, at first, might cause you some uneasiness, and so I am
going to let you begin your education in the sailing line on perfectly smooth
water. About three miles back of us there is a very pretty lake several miles
long. It is part of the canal system which connects the town with the
railroad. I have sent my boat to the town, and we can walk up there and go
by the canal to the lake; it is only about three miles.”
If he had to sail at all, this kind of sailing suited Mr. Podington. A canal, a
quiet lake, and a boat which could not be upset. When they reached the
town the boat was in the canal, ready for them.
“Now,” said Mr. Buller, “you get in and make yourself comfortable. My
idea is to hitch on to a canal-boat and be towed to the lake. The boats

generally start about this time in the morning, and I will go and see about
it.”
Mr. Podington, under the direction of his friend, took a seat in the stern of
the sailboat, and then he remarked:
“Thomas, have you a life-preserver on board? You know I am not used to
any kind of vessel, and I am clumsy. Nothing might happen to the boat, but
I might trip and fall overboard, and I can’t swim.”
“All right,” said Buller; “here’s a life-preserver, and you can put it on. I
want you to feel perfectly safe. Now I will go and see about the tow.”
But Mr. Buller found that the canal-boats would not start at their usual
time; the loading of one of them was not finished, and he was informed that
he might have to wait for an hour or more. This did not suit Mr. Buller at
all, and he did not hesitate to show his annoyance.
“I tell you, sir, what you can do,” said one of the men in charge of the
boats; “if you don’t want to wait till we are ready to start, we’ll let you have
a boy and a horse to tow you up to the lake. That won’t cost you much, and
they’ll be back before we want ’em.”
The bargain was made, and Mr. Buller joyfully returned to his boat with
the intelligence that they were not to wait for the canal-boats. A long rope,
with a horse attached to the other end of it, was speedily made fast to the
boat, and with a boy at the head of the horse, they started up the canal.
“Now this is the kind of sailing I like,” said Mr. Podington. “If I lived
near a canal I believe I would buy a boat and train my horse to tow. I could
have a long pair of rope-lines and drive him myself; then when the roads
were rough and bad the canal would always be smooth.”
“This is all very nice,” replied Mr. Buller, who sat by the tiller to keep the
boat away from the bank, “and I am glad to see you in a boat under any
circumstances. Do you know, William, that although I did not plan it, there
could not have been a better way to begin your sailing education. Here we
glide along, slowly and gently, with no possible thought of danger, for if the
boat should suddenly spring a leak, as if it were the body of a wagon, all we
would have to do would be to step on shore, and by the time you get to the
end of the canal you will like this gentle motion so much that you will be
perfectly ready to begin the second stage of your nautical education.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Podington. “How long did you say this canal is?”
“About three miles,” answered his friend. “Then we will go into the lock
and in a few minutes we shall be on the lake.”
“So far as I am concerned,” said Mr. Podington, “I wish the canal were
twelve miles long. I cannot imagine anything pleasanter than this. If I lived
anywhere near a canal—a long canal, I mean, this one is too short—I’d—”
“Come, come now,” interrupted Buller. “Don’t be content to stay in the
primary school just because it is easy. When we get on the lake I will show
you that in a boat, with a gentle breeze, such as we are likely to have to-day,
you will find the motion quite as pleasing, and ever so much more
inspiriting. I should not be a bit surprised, William, if after you have been
two or three times on the lake you will ask me—yes, positively ask me—to
take you out on the bay!”
Mr. Podington smiled, and leaning backward, he looked up at the
beautiful blue sky.
“You can’t give me anything better than this, Thomas,” said he; “but you
needn’t think I am weakening; you drove with me, and I will sail with you.”
The thought came into Buller’s mind that he had done both of these
things with Podington, but he did not wish to call up unpleasant memories,
and said nothing.
About half a mile from the town there stood a small cottage where house-
cleaning was going on, and on a fence, not far from the canal, there hung a
carpet gaily adorned with stripes and spots of red and yellow.
When the drowsy tow-horse came abreast of the house, and the carpet
caught his eye, he suddenly stopped and gave a start toward the canal. Then,
impressed with a horror of the glaring apparition, he gathered himself up,
and with a bound dashed along the tow-path. The astounded boy gave a
shout, but was speedily left behind. The boat of Mr. Buller shot forward as
if she had been struck by a squall.
The terrified horse sped on as if a red and yellow demon were after him.
The boat bounded, and plunged, and frequently struck the grassy bank of
the canal, as if it would break itself to pieces. Mr. Podington clutched the

boom to keep himself from being thrown out, while Mr. Buller, both hands
upon the tiller, frantically endeavored to keep the boat from the bank.
“William!” he screamed, “he is running away with us; we shall be dashed
to pieces! Can’t you get forward and cast off that line?”
“What do you mean?” cried Podington, as the boom gave a great jerk as
if it would break its fastenings and drag him overboard.
“I mean untie the tow-line. We’ll be smashed if you don’t! I can’t leave
this tiller. Don’t try to stand up; hold on to the boom and creep forward.
Steady now, or you’ll be overboard!”
Mr. Podington stumbled to the bow of the boat, his efforts greatly
impeded by the big cork life-preserver tied under his arms, and the motion
of the boat was so violent and erratic that he was obliged to hold on to the
mast with one arm and to try to loosen the knot with the other; but there
was a great strain on the rope, and he could do nothing with one hand.
“Cut it! Cut it!” cried Mr. Buller.
“I haven’t a knife,” replied Podington.
Mr. Buller was terribly frightened; his boat was cutting through the water
as never vessel of her class had sped since sail-boats were invented, and
bumping against the bank as if she were a billiard-ball rebounding from the
edge of a table. He forgot he was in a boat; he only knew that for the first
time in his life he was in a runaway. He let go the tiller. It was of no use to
him.
“William,” he cried, “let us jump out the next time we are near enough to
shore!”
“Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” replied Podington. “Don’t jump out in a
runaway; that is the way to get hurt. Stick to your seat, my boy; he can’t
keep this up much longer. He’ll lose his wind!”
Mr. Podington was greatly excited, but he was not frightened, as Buller
was. He had been in a runaway before, and he could not help thinking how
much better a wagon was than a boat in such a case.
“If he were hitched up shorter and I had a snaffle-bit and a stout pair of
reins,” thought he, “I could soon bring him up.”

But Mr. Buller was rapidly losing his wits. The horse seemed to be going
faster than ever. The boat bumped harder against the bank, and at one time
Buller thought they could turn over.
Suddenly a thought struck him.
“William,” he shouted, “tip that anchor over the side! Throw it in, any
way!”
Mr. Podington looked about him, and, almost under his feet, saw the
anchor. He did not instantly comprehend why Buller wanted it thrown
overboard, but this was not a time to ask questions. The difficulties imposed
by the life-preserver, and the necessity of holding on with one hand,
interfered very much with his getting at the anchor and throwing it over the
side, but at last he succeeded, and just as the boat threw up her bow as if she
were about to jump on shore, the anchor went out and its line shot after it.
There was an irregular trembling of the boat as the anchor struggled along
the bottom of the canal; then there was a great shock; the boat ran into the
bank and stopped; the tow-line was tightened like a guitar-string, and the
horse, jerked back with great violence, came tumbling in a heap upon the
ground.
Instantly Mr. Podington was on the shore and running at the top of his
speed toward the horse. The astounded animal had scarcely begun to
struggle to his feet when Podington rushed upon him, pressed his head back
to the ground, and sat upon it.
“Hurrah!” he cried, waving his hat above his head. “Get out, Buller; he is
all right now!”
Presently Mr. Buller approached, very much shaken up.
“All right?” he said. “I don’t call a horse flat in a road with a man on his
head all right; but hold him down till we get him loose from my boat. That
is the thing to do. William, cast him loose from the boat before you let him
up! What will he do when he gets up?”
“Oh. he’ll be quiet enough when he gets up,” said Podington. “But if
you’ve got a knife you can cut his traces—-I mean that rope—but no, you
needn’t. Here comes the boy. We’ll settle this business in very short order
now.”

When the horse was on his feet, and all connection between the animal
and the boat had been severed, Mr. Podington looked at his friend.
“Thomas,” said he, “you seem to have had a hard time of it. You have
lost your hat and you look as if you had been in a wrestling-match.”
“I have,” replied the other; “I wrestled with that tiller and I wonder it
didn’t throw me out.”
Now approached the boy. “Shall I hitch him on again, sir?” said he. “He’s
quiet enough now.”
“No,” cried Mr. Buller; “I want no more sailing after a horse, and,
besides, we can’t go on the lake with that boat; she has been battered about
so much that she must have opened a dozen seams. The best thing we can
do is to walk home.”
Mr. Podington agreed with his friend that walking home was the best
thing they could do. The boat was examined and found to be leaking, but
not very badly, and when her mast had been unshipped and everything had
been made tight and right on board, she was pulled out of the way of tow-
lines and boats, and made fast until she could be sent for from the town.
Mr. Buller and Mr. Podington walked back toward the town. They had
not gone very far when they met a party of boys, who, upon seeing them,
burst into unseemly laughter.
“Mister,” cried one of them, “you needn’t be afraid of tumbling into the
canal. Why don’t you take off your life-preserver and let that other man put
it on his head?”
The two friends looked at each other and could not help joining in the
laughter of the boys.
“By George! I forgot all about this,” said Podington, as he unfastened the
cork jacket. “It does look a little super-timid to wear a life-preserver just
because one happens to be walking by the side of a canal.”
Mr. Buller tied a handkerchief on his head, and Mr. Podington rolled up
his life-preserver and carried it under his arm. Thus they reached the town,
where Buller bought a hat, Podington dispensed with his bundle, and
arrangements were made to bring back the boat.

“Runaway in a sailboat!” exclaimed one of the canal boatmen when he
had heard about the accident. “Upon my word! That beats anything that
could happen to a man!”
“No, it doesn’t,” replied Mr. Buller, quietly. “I have gone to the bottom in
a foundered road-wagon.”
The man looked at him fixedly.
“Was you ever struck in the mud in a balloon?” he asked.
“Not yet,” replied Mr. Buller.
It required ten days to put Mr. Buller’s sailboat into proper condition, and
for ten days Mr. Podington stayed with his friend, and enjoyed his visit very
much. They strolled on the beach, they took long walks in the back country,
they fished from the end of a pier, they smoked, they talked, and were
happy and content.
“Thomas,” said Mr. Podington, on the last evening of his stay, “I have
enjoyed myself very much since I have been down here, and now, Thomas,
if I were to come down again next summer, would you mind—would you
mind, not——”
“I would not mind it a bit,” replied Buller, promptly. “I’ll never so much
as mention it; so you can come along without a thought of it. And since you
have alluded to the subject, William,” he continued, “I’d like very much to
come and see you again; you know my visit was a very short one this year.
That is a beautiful country you live in. Such a variety of scenery, such an
opportunity for walks and rambles! But, William, if you could only make
up your mind not to——”
“Oh, that is all right!” exclaimed Podington. “I do not need to make up
my mind. You come to my house and you will never so much as hear of it.
Here’s my hand upon it!”
“And here’s mine!” said Mr. Buller.
And they shook hands over a new compact.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] From Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1897.
Republished in Afield and Afloat, by Frank
Richard Stockton; copyright, 1900, by Charles
Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers.

COLONEL STARBOTTLE FOR THE
PLAINTIFF[23]
By Bret Harte (1839–1902)
It had been a day of triumph for Colonel Starbottle. First, for his
personality, as it would have been difficult to separate the Colonel’s
achievements from his individuality; second, for his oratorical abilities as a
sympathetic pleader; and third, for his functions as the leading counsel for
the Eureka Ditch Company versus the State of California. On his strictly
legal performances in this issue I prefer not to speak; there were those who
denied them, although the jury had accepted them in the face of the ruling
of the half-amused, half-cynical Judge himself. For an hour they had
laughed with the Colonel, wept with him, been stirred to personal
indignation or patriotic exaltation by his passionate and lofty periods—what
else could they do than give him their verdict? If it was alleged by some
that the American eagle, Thomas Jefferson, and the Resolutions of ’98 had
nothing whatever to do with the contest of a ditch company over a
doubtfully worded legislative document; that wholesale abuse of the State
Attorney and his political motives had not the slightest connection with the
legal question raised—it was, nevertheless, generally accepted that the
losing party would have been only too glad to have the Colonel on their
side. And Colonel Starbottle knew this, as, perspiring, florid, and panting,
he rebuttoned the lower buttons of his blue frock-coat, which had become
loosed in an oratorical spasm, and readjusted his old-fashioned, spotless
shirt frill above it as he strutted from the courtroom amidst the hand-
shakings and acclamations of his friends.
And here an unprecedented thing occurred. The Colonel absolutely
declined spirituous refreshment at the neighboring Palmetto Saloon, and
declared his intention of proceeding directly to his office in the adjoining

square. Nevertheless the Colonel quitted the building alone, and apparently
unarmed except for his faithful gold-headed stick, which hung as usual
from his forearm. The crowd gazed after him with undisguised admiration
of this new evidence of his pluck. It was remembered also that a mysterious
note had been handed to him at the conclusion of his speech—evidently a
challenge from the State Attorney. It was quite plain that the Colonel—a
practised duellist—was hastening home to answer it.
But herein they were wrong. The note was in a female hand, and simply
requested the Colonel to accord an interview with the writer at the
Colonel’s office as soon as he left the court. But it was an engagement that
the Colonel—as devoted to the fair sex as he was to the “code”—was no
less prompt in accepting. He flicked away the dust from his spotless white
trousers and varnished boots with his handkerchief, and settled his black
cravat under his Byron collar as he neared his office. He was surprised,
however, on opening the door of his private office to find his visitor already
there; he was still more startled to find her somewhat past middle age and
plainly attired. But the Colonel was brought up in a school of Southern
politeness, already antique in the republic, and his bow of courtesy
belonged to the epoch of his shirt frill and strapped trousers. No one could
have detected his disappointment in his manner, albeit his sentences were
short and incomplete. But the Colonel’s colloquial speech was apt to be
fragmentary incoherencies of his larger oratorical utterances.
“A thousand pardons—for—er—having kept a lady waiting—er! But—er
—congratulations of friends—and—er—courtesy due to them—er—
interfered with—though perhaps only heightened—by procrastination—
pleasure of—ha!” And the Colonel completed his sentence with a gallant
wave of his fat but white and well-kept hand.
“Yes! I came to see you along o’ that speech of yours. I was in court.
When I heard you gettin’ it off on that jury, I says to myself that’s the kind
o’ lawyer I want. A man that’s flowery and convincin’! Just the man to take
up our case.”
“Ah! It’s a matter of business, I see,” said the Colonel, inwardly relieved,
but externally careless. “And—er—may I ask the nature of the case?”
“Well! it’s a breach-o’-promise suit,” said the visitor, calmly.

If the Colonel had been surprised before, he was now really startled, and
with an added horror that required all his politeness to conceal. Breach-of-
promise cases were his peculiar aversion. He had always held them to be a
kind of litigation which could have been obviated by the prompt killing of
the masculine offender—in which case he would have gladly defended the
killer. But a suit for damages!—damages!—with the reading of love-letters
before a hilarious jury and court, was against all his instincts. His chivalry
was outraged; his sense of humor was small—and in the course of his
career he had lost one or two important cases through an unexpected
development of this quality in a jury.
The woman had evidently noticed his hesitation, but mistook its cause.
“It ain’t me—but my darter.”
The Colonel recovered his politeness. “Ah! I am relieved, my dear
madam! I could hardly conceive a man ignorant enough to—er—er—throw
away such evident good fortune—or base enough to deceive the trustfulness
of womanhood—matured and experienced only in the chivalry of our sex,
ha!”
The woman smiled grimly. “Yes!—it’s my darter, Zaidee Hooker—so ye
might spare some of them pretty speeches for her—before the jury.”
The Colonel winced slightly before this doubtful prospect, but smiled.
“Ha! Yes!—certainly—the jury. But—er—my dear lady, need we go as far
as that? Cannot this affair be settled—er—out of court? Could not this—er
—individual—be admonished—told that he must give satisfaction—
personal satisfaction—for his dastardly conduct—to —er—near relative—
or even valued personal friend? The—er—arrangements necessary for that
purpose I myself would undertake.”
He was quite sincere; indeed, his small black eyes shone with that fire
which a pretty woman or an “affair of honor” could alone kindle. The
visitor stared vacantly at him, and said, slowly:
“And what good is that goin’ to do us?”
“Compel him to—er—perform his promise,” said the Colonel, leaning
back in his chair.
“Ketch him doin’ it!” said the woman, scornfully. “No—that ain’t wot
we’re after. We must make him pay! Damages—and nothin’ short o’ that.”

The Colonel bit his lip. “I suppose,” he said, gloomily, “you have
documentary evidence—written promises and protestations—er—er—
love-letters, in fact?”
“No—nary a letter! Ye see, that’s jest it—and that’s where you come in.
You’ve got to convince that jury yourself. You’ve got to show what it is—
tell the whole story your own way. Lord! to a man like you that’s nothin’.”
Startling as this admission might have been to any other lawyer,
Starbottle was absolutely relieved by it. The absence of any mirth-
provoking correspondence, and the appeal solely to his own powers of
persuasion, actually struck his fancy. He lightly put aside the compliment
with a wave of his white hand.
“Of course,” said the Colonel, confidently, “there is strongly presumptive
and corroborative evidence? Perhaps you can give me—er—a brief outline
of the affair?”
“Zaidee kin do that straight enough, I reckon,” said the woman; “what I
want to know first is, kin you take the case?”
The Colonel did not hesitate; his curiosity was piqued. “I certainly can. I
have no doubt your daughter will put me in possession of sufficient facts
and details—to constitute what we call—er—a brief.”
“She kin be brief enough—or long enough—for the matter of that,” said
the woman, rising. The Colonel accepted this implied witticism with a
smile.
“And when may I have the pleasure of seeing her?” he asked, politely.
“Well, I reckon as soon as I can trot out and call her. She’s just outside,
meanderin’ in the road—kinder shy, ye know, at first.”
She walked to the door. The astounded Colonel nevertheless gallantly
accompanied her as she stepped out into the street and called, shrilly, “You
Zaidee!”
A young girl here apparently detached herself from a tree and the
ostentatious perusal of an old election poster, and sauntered down towards
the office door. Like her mother, she was plainly dressed; unlike her, she
had a pale, rather refined face, with a demure mouth and downcast eyes.
This was all the Colonel saw as he bowed profoundly and led the way into

his office, for she accepted his salutations without lifting her head. He
helped her gallantly to a chair, on which she seated herself sideways,
somewhat ceremoniously, with her eyes following the point of her parasol
as she traced a pattern on the carpet. A second chair offered to the mother
that lady, however, declined. “I reckon to leave you and Zaidee together to
talk it out,” she said; turning to her daughter, she added, “Jest you tell him
all, Zaidee,” and before the Colonel could rise again, disappeared from the
room. In spite of his professional experience, Starbottle was for a moment
embarrassed. The young girl, however, broke the silence without looking
up.
“Adoniram K. Hotchkiss,” she began, in a monotonous voice, as if it
were a recitation addressed to the public, “first began to take notice of me a
year ago. Arter that—off and on——”
“One moment,” interrupted the astounded Colonel; “do you mean
Hotchkiss the President of the Ditch Company?” He had recognized the
name of a prominent citizen—a rigid ascetic, taciturn, middle-aged man—a
deacon—and more than that, the head of the company he had just defended.
It seemed inconceivable.
“That’s him,” she continued, with eyes still fixed on the parasol and
without changing her monotonous tone—“off and on ever since. Most of
the time at the Free-Will Baptist church—at morning service, prayer-
meetings, and such. And at home—outside—er—in the road.”
“Is it this gentleman—Mr. Adoniram K. Hotchkiss—who—er—promised
marriage?” stammered the Colonel.
“Yes.”
The Colonel shifted uneasily in his chair. “Most extraordinary! for—you
see—my dear young lady—this becomes—a—er—most delicate affair.”
“That’s what maw said,” returned the young woman, simply, yet with the
faintest smile playing around her demure lips and downcast cheek.
“I mean,” said the Colonel, with a pained yet courteous smile, “that this
—er—gentleman—is in fact—er—one of my clients.”
“That’s what maw said, too, and of course your knowing him will make it
all the easier for you,” said the young woman.

A slight flush crossed the Colonel’s cheek as he returned quickly and a
little stiffly, “On the contrary—er—it may make it impossible for me to—er
—act in this matter.”
The girl lifted her eyes. The Colonel held his breath as the long lashes
were raised to his level. Even to an ordinary observer that sudden revelation
of her eyes seemed to transform her face with subtle witchery. They were
large, brown, and soft, yet filled with an extraordinary penetration and
prescience. They were the eyes of an experienced woman of thirty fixed in
the face of a child. What else the Colonel saw there Heaven only knows! He
felt his inmost secrets plucked from him—his whole soul laid bare—his
vanity, belligerency, gallantry—even his medieval chivalry, penetrated, and
yet illuminated, in that single glance. And when the eyelids fell again, he
felt that a greater part of himself had been swallowed up in them.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, hurriedly. “I mean—this matter may be
arranged—er—amicably. My interest with—and as you wisely say—my—
er—knowledge of my client—er—Mr. Hotchkiss—may affect—a
compromise.”
“And damages,” said the young girl, readdressing her parasol, as if she
had never looked up.
The Colonel winced. “And—er—undoubtedly compensation—if you do
not press a fulfilment of the promise. Unless,” he said, with an attempted
return to his former easy gallantry, which, however, the recollection of her
eyes made difficult, “it is a question of—er—the affections?”
“Which?” said his fair client, softly.
“If you still love him?” explained the Colonel, actually blushing.
Zaidee again looked up; again taking the Colonel’s breath away with eyes
that expressed not only the fullest perception of what he had said, but of
what he thought and had not said, and with an added subtle suggestion of
what he might have thought. “That’s tellin’,” she said, dropping her long
lashes again. The Colonel laughed vacantly. Then feeling himself growing
imbecile, he forced an equally weak gravity. “Pardon me—I understand
there are no letters; may I know the way in which he formulated his
declaration and promises?”
“Hymn-books,” said the girl, briefly.

“I beg your pardon,” said the mystified lawyer.
“Hymn-books—marked words in them with pencil—and passed ’em on
to me,” repeated Zaidee. “Like ‘love,’ ‘dear,’ ‘precious,’ ‘sweet,’ and
‘blessed,’” she added, accenting each word with a push of her parasol on
the carpet. “Sometimes a whole line outer Tate and Brady—and Solomon’s
Song, you know, and sich.”
“I believe,” said the Colonel, loftily, “that the—er—phrases of sacred
psalmody lend themselves to the language of the affections. But in regard to
the distinct promise of marriage—was there—er—no other expression?”
“Marriage Service in the prayer-book—lines and words outer that—all
marked,” said Zaidee. The Colonel nodded naturally and approvingly. “Very
good. Were others cognizant of this? Were there any witnesses?”
“Of course not,” said the girl. “Only me and him. It was generally at
church-time—or prayer-meeting. Once, in passing the plate, he slipped one
o’ them peppermint lozenges with the letters stamped on it ‘I love you’ for
me to take.”
The Colonel coughed slightly. “And you have the lozenge?”
“I ate it,” said the girl, simply.
“Ah,” said the Colonel. After a pause he added, delicately: “But were
these attentions—er—confined to—er—-sacred precincts? Did he meet you
elsewhere?”
“Useter pass our house on the road,” returned the girl, dropping into her
monotonous recital, “and useter signal.”
“Ah, signal?” repeated the Colonel, approvingly.
“Yes! He’d say ‘Kerrow,’ and I’d say ‘Kerree.’ Suthing like a bird, you
know.”
Indeed, as she lifted her voice in imitation of the call the Colonel thought
it certainly very sweet and birdlike. At least as she gave it. With his
remembrance of the grim deacon he had doubts as to the melodiousness of
his utterance. He gravely made her repeat it.
“And after that signal?” he added, suggestively.

“He’d pass on,” said the girl.
The Colonel coughed slightly, and tapped his desk with his pen-holder.
“Were there any endearments—er—caresses—er—such as taking your
hand—er—clasping your waist?” he suggested, with a gallant yet respectful
sweep of his white hand and bowing of his head;—“er— slight pressure of
your fingers in the changes of a dance—I mean,” he corrected himself, with
an apologetic cough—“in the passing of the plate?”
“No;—he was not what you’d call ’fond,’” returned the girl.
“Ah! Adoniram K. Hotchkiss was not ’fond’ in the ordinary acceptance
of the word,” said the Colonel, with professional gravity.
She lifted her disturbing eyes, and again absorbed his in her own. She
also said “Yes,” although her eyes in their mysterious prescience of all he
was thinking disclaimed the necessity of any answer at all. He smiled
vacantly. There was a long pause. On which she slowly disengaged her
parasol from the carpet pattern and stood up.
“I reckon that’s about all,” she said.
“Er—yes—but one moment,” said the Colonel, vaguely. He would have
liked to keep her longer, but with her strange premonition of him he felt
powerless to detain her, or explain his reason for doing so. He instinctively
knew she had told him all; his professional judgment told him that a more
hopeless case had never come to his knowledge. Yet he was not daunted,
only embarrassed. “No matter,” he said, vaguely. “Of course I shall have to
consult with you again.” Her eyes again answered that she expected he
would, but she added, simply, “When?”
“In the course of a day or two,” said the Colonel, quickly. “I will send
you word.” She turned to go. In his eagerness to open the door for her he
upset his chair, and with some confusion, that was actually youthful, he
almost impeded her movements in the hall, and knocked his broad-brimmed
Panama hat from his bowing hand in a final gallant sweep. Yet as her small,
trim, youthful figure, with its simple Leghorn straw hat confined by a blue
bow under her round chin, passed away before him, she looked more like a
child than ever.

The Colonel spent that afternoon in making diplomatic inquiries. He
found his youthful client was the daughter of a widow who had a small
ranch on the cross-roads, near the new Free-Will Baptist church—the
evident theatre of this pastoral. They led a secluded life; the girl being little
known in the town, and her beauty and fascination apparently not yet being
a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a pleasurable relief at this, and a general
satisfaction he could not account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr.
Hotchkiss only confirmed his own impressions of the alleged lover—a
serious-minded, practically abstracted man—abstentive of youthful society,
and the last man apparently capable of levity of the affections or serious
flirtation. The Colonel was mystified—but determined of purpose—
whatever that purpose might have been.
The next day he was at his office at the same hour. He was alone—as
usual—the Colonel’s office really being his private lodgings, disposed in
connecting rooms, a single apartment reserved for consultation. He had no
clerk; his papers and briefs being taken by his faithful body-servant and ex-
slave “Jim” to another firm who did his office-work since the death of
Major Stryker—the Colonel’s only law partner, who fell in a duel some
years previous. With a fine constancy the Colonel still retained his partner’s
name on his door-plate—and, it was alleged by the superstitious, kept a
certain invincibility also through the manes of that lamented and somewhat
feared man.
The Colonel consulted his watch, whose heavy gold case still showed the
marks of a providential interference with a bullet destined for its owner, and
replaced it with some difficulty and shortness of breath in his fob. At the
same moment he heard a step in the passage, and the door opened to
Adoniram K. Hotchkiss. The Colonel was impressed; he had a duellist’s
respect for punctuality.
The man entered with a nod and the expectant, inquiring look of a busy
man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all
courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his half-
reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of
whiskey and two glasses.
“A—er—slight refreshment, Mr. Hotchkiss,” he suggested, politely. “I
never drink,” replied Hotchkiss, with the severe attitude of a total abstainer.

“Ah—er—not the finest bourbon whiskey, selected by a Kentucky friend?
No? Pardon me! A cigar, then—the mildest Havana.”
“I do not use tobacco nor alcohol in any form,” repeated Hotchkiss,
ascetically. “I have no foolish weaknesses.”
The Colonel’s moist, beady eyes swept silently over his client’s sallow
face. He leaned back comfortably in his chair, and half closing his eyes as
in dreamy reminiscence, said, slowly: “Your reply, Mr. Hotchkiss, reminds
me of—er—sing’lar circumstances that —er—occurred, in point of fact—at
the St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans. Pinkey Hornblower—personal friend—
invited Senator Doolittle to join him in social glass. Received, sing’larly
enough, reply similar to yours. ‘Don’t drink nor smoke?’ said Pinkey. ‘Gad,
sir, you must be mighty sweet on the ladies.’ Ha!” The Colonel paused long
enough to allow the faint flush to pass from Hotchkiss’s cheek, and went
on, half closing his eyes: “‘I allow no man, sir, to discuss my personal
habits,’ said Doolittle, over his shirt collar. ‘Then I reckon shootin’ must be
one of those habits,’ said Pinkey, coolly. Both men drove out on the Shell
Road back of cemetery next morning. Pinkey put bullet at twelve paces
through Doolittle’s temple. Poor Doo never spoke again. Left three wives
and seven children, they say —two of ’em black.”
“I got a note from you this morning,” said Hotchkiss, with badly
concealed impatience. “I suppose in reference to our case. You have taken
judgment, I believe.” The Colonel, without replying, slowly filled a glass of
whiskey and water. For a moment he held it dreamily before him, as if still
engaged in gentle reminiscences called up by the act. Then tossing it off, he
wiped his lips with a large white handkerchief, and leaning back
comfortably in his chair, said, with a wave of his hand, “The interview I
requested, Mr. Hotchkiss, concerns a subject—which I may say is—er—er
—at present not of a public or business nature—although later it might
become—er—er—both. It is an affair of some—er—delicacy.”
The Colonel paused, and Mr. Hotchkiss regarded him with increased
impatience. The Colonel, however, continued, with unchanged deliberation:
“It concerns—er—a young lady—a beautiful, high-souled creature, sir,
who, apart from her personal loveliness— er—er—I may say is of one of
the first families of Missouri, and— er—not—remotely connected by
marriage with one of—er—er—my boyhood’s dearest friends. The latter, I

grieve to say, was a pure invention of the Colonel’s—an oratorical addition
to the scanty information he had obtained the previous day. The young
lady,” he continued, blandly, “enjoys the further distinction of being the
object of such attention from you as would make this interview— really—a
confidential matter—er—er—among friends and—er—er— relations in
present and future. I need not say that the lady I refer to is Miss Zaidee Juno
Hooker, only daughter of Almira Ann Hooker, relict of Jefferson Brown
Hooker, formerly of Boone County, Kentucky, and latterly of—er—Pike
County, Missouri.”
The sallow, ascetic hue of Mr. Hotchkiss’s face had passed through a
livid and then a greenish shade, and finally settled into a sullen red. “What’s
all this about?” he demanded, roughly. The least touch of belligerent fire
came into Starbottle’s eye, but his bland courtesy did not change. “I
believe,” he said, politely, “I have made myself clear as between—er—
gentlemen, though perhaps not as clear as I should to—er—er—jury.”
Mr. Hotchkiss was apparently struck with some significance in the
lawyer’s reply. “I don’t know,” he said, in a lower and more cautious voice,
“what you mean by what you call ‘my attentions’ to—any one—or how it
concerns you. I have not exhausted half a dozen words with—the person
you name—have never written her a line—nor even called at her house.”
He rose with an assumption of ease, pulled down his waistcoat, buttoned his
coat, and took up his hat. The Colonel did not move. “I believe I have
already indicated my meaning in what I have called ‘your attentions,’” said
the Colonel, blandly, “and given you my ‘concern’ for speaking as—er—er
mutual friend. As to your statement of your relations with Miss Hooker, I
may state that it is fully corroborated by the statement of the young lady
herself in this very office yesterday.”
“Then what does this impertinent nonsense mean? Why am I summoned
here?” said Hotchkiss, furiously.
“Because,” said the Colonel, deliberately, “that statement is infamously
—yes, damnably to your discredit, sir!”
Mr. Hotchkiss was here seized by one of those important and inconsistent
rages which occasionally betray the habitually cautious and timid man. He
caught up the Colonel’s stick, which was lying on the table. At the same
moment the Colonel, without any apparent effort, grasped it by the handle.

To Mr. Hotchkiss’s astonishment, the stick separated in two pieces, leaving
the handle and about two feet of narrow glittering steel in the Colonel’s
hand. The man recoiled, dropping the useless fragment. The Colonel picked
it up, fitting the shining blade in it, clicked the spring, and then rising, with
a face of courtesy yet of unmistakably genuine pain, and with even a slight
tremor in his voice, said, gravely:
“Mr. Hotchkiss, I owe you a thousand apologies, sir, that—er— a
weapon should be drawn by me—even through your own inadvertence—
under the sacred protection of my roof, and upon an unarmed man. I beg
your pardon, sir, and I even withdraw the expressions which provoked that
inadvertence. Nor does this apology prevent you from holding me
responsible—personally responsible—elsewhere for an indiscretion
committed in behalf of a lady—my—er—client.”
“Your client? Do you mean you have taken her case? You, the counsel for
the Ditch Company?” said Mr. Hotchkiss, in trembling indignation.
“Having won your case, sir,” said the Colonel, coolly, “the—er—usages
of advocacy do not prevent me from espousing the cause of the weak and
unprotected.”
“We shall see, sir,” said Hotchkiss, grasping the handle of the door and
backing into the passage. “There are other lawyers who—”
“Permit me to see you out,” interrupted the Colonel, rising politely.
“—will be ready to resist the attacks of blackmail,” continued Hotchkiss,
retreating along the passage.
“And then you will be able to repeat your remarks to me in the street,”
continued the Colonel, bowing, as he persisted in following his visitor to
the door.
But here Mr. Hotchkiss quickly slammed it behind him, and hurried
away. The Colonel returned to his office, and sitting down, took a sheet of
letter paper bearing the inscription “Starbottle and Stryker, Attorneys and
Counsellors,” and wrote the following lines:

Hooker versus Hotchkiss.

Dear Madam,—Having had a visit from the defendant in
above, we should be pleased to have an interview with you at 2
p.m. to-morrow. Your obedient servants,

Starbottle and Stryker.

This he sealed and despatched by his trusted servant Jim, and then
devoted a few moments to reflection. It was the custom of the Colonel to
act first, and justify the action by reason afterwards.
He knew that Hotchkiss would at once lay the matter before rival
counsel. He knew that they would advise him that Miss Hooker had “no
case”—that she would be nonsuited on her own evidence, and he ought not
to compromise, but be ready to stand trial. He believed, however, that
Hotchkiss feared that exposure, and although his own instincts had been at
first against that remedy, he was now instinctively in favor of it. He
remembered his own power with a jury; his vanity and his chivalry alike
approved of this heroic method; he was bound by the prosaic facts—he had
his own theory of the case, which no mere evidence could gainsay. In fact,
Mrs. Hooker’s own words that “he was to tell the story in his own way”
actually appeared to him an inspiration and a prophecy.
Perhaps there was something else, due possibly to the lady’s wonderful
eyes, of which he had thought much. Yet it was not her simplicity that
affected him solely; on the contrary, it was her apparent intelligent reading
of the character of her recreant lover—and of his own! Of all the Colonel’s
previous “light” or “serious” loves none had ever before flattered him in
that way. And it was this, combined with the respect which he had held for
their professional relations, that precluded his having a more familiar
knowledge of his client, through serious questioning, or playful gallantry. I
am not sure it was not part of the charm to have a rustic femme incomprise
as a client.
Nothing could exceed the respect with which he greeted her as she
entered his office the next day. He even affected not to notice that she had
put on her best clothes, and he made no doubt appeared as when she had
first attracted the mature yet faithless attentions of Deacon Hotchkiss at
church. A white virginal muslin was belted around her slim figure by a blue
ribbon, and her Leghorn hat was drawn around her oval cheek by a bow of

the same color. She had a Southern girl’s narrow feet, encased in white
stockings and kid slippers, which were crossed primly before her as she sat
in a chair, supporting her arm by her faithful parasol planted firmly on the
floor. A faint odor of southernwood exhaled from her, and, oddly enough,
stirred the Colonel with a far-off recollection of a pine-shaded Sunday
school on a Georgia hillside and of his first love, aged ten, in a short,
starched frock. Possibly it was the same recollection that revived something
of the awkwardness he had felt then.
He, however, smiled vaguely and, sitting down, coughed slightly, and
placed his fingertips together. “I have had an—er—interview with Mr.
Hotchkiss, but—I—er—regret to say there seems to be no prospect of—er
—compromise.” He paused, and to his surprise her listless “company” face
lit up with an adorable smile. “Of course!—ketch him!” she said. “Was he
mad when you told him?” She put her knees comfortably together and
leaned forward for a reply.
For all that, wild horses could not have torn from the Colonel a word
about Hotchkiss’s anger. “He expressed his intention of employing counsel
—and defending a suit,” returned the Colonel, affably basking in her smile.
She dragged her chair nearer his desk. “Then you’ll fight him tooth and
nail?” she said eagerly; “you’ll show him up? You’ll tell the whole story
your own way? You’ll give him fits?—and you’ll make him pay? Sure?”
she went on, breathlessly.
“I—er—will,” said the Colonel, almost as breathlessly.
She caught his fat white hand, which was lying on the table, between her
own and lifted it to her lips. He felt her soft young fingers even through the
lisle-thread gloves that encased them and the warm moisture of her lips
upon his skin. He felt himself flushing—but was unable to break the silence
or change his position. The next moment she had scuttled back with her
chair to her old position.
“I—er—certainly shall do my best,” stammered the Colonel, in an
attempt to recover his dignity and composure.
“That’s enough! You’ll do it,” said the girl, enthusiastically. “Lordy! Just
you talk for me as ye did for his old Ditch Company, and you’ll fetch it—
every time! Why, when you made that jury sit up the other day—when you

got that off about the Merrikan flag waving equally over the rights of honest
citizens banded together in peaceful commercial pursuits, as well as over
the fortress of official proflig—”
“Oligarchy,” murmured the Colonel, courteously.
“Oligarchy,” repeated the girl, quickly, “my breath was just took away. I
said to maw, ‘Ain’t he too sweet for anything!’ I did, honest Injin! And
when you rolled it all off at the end—never missing a word—(you didn’t
need to mark ’em in a lesson-book, but had ’em all ready on your tongue),
and walked out—Well! I didn’t know you nor the Ditch Company from
Adam, but I could have just run over and kissed you there before the whole
court!”
She laughed, with her face glowing, although her strange eyes were cast
down. Alack! the Colonel’s face was equally flushed, and his own beady
eyes were on his desk. To any other woman he would have voiced the banal
gallantry that he should now, himself, look forward to that reward, but the
words never reached his lips. He laughed, coughed slightly, and when he
looked up again she had fallen into the same attitude as on her first visit,
with her parasol point on the floor.
“I must ask you to—er—direct your memory—to—er—another point;
the breaking off of the—er—er—er—engagement. Did he—er—give any
reason for it? Or show any cause?”
“No; he never said anything,” returned the girl.
“Not in his usual way?—er—no reproaches out of the hymn-book?—or
the sacred writings?”
“No; he just quit.”
“Er—ceased his attentions,” said the Colonel, gravely. “And naturally
you—er—were not conscious of any cause for his doing so.” The girl raised
her wonderful eyes so suddenly and so penetratingly without reply in any
other way that the Colonel could only hurriedly say: “I see! None, of
course!”
At which she rose, the Colonel rising also. “We—shall begin proceedings
at once. I must, however, caution you to answer no questions nor say
anything about this case to any one until you are in court.”

She answered his request with another intelligent look and a nod. He
accompanied her to the door. As he took her proffered hand he raised the
lisle-thread fingers to his lips with old-fashioned gallantry. As if that act had
condoned for his first omissions and awkwardness, he became his old-
fashioned self again, buttoned his coat, pulled out his shirt frill, and strutted
back to his desk.
A day or two later it was known throughout the town that Zaidee Hooker
had sued Adoniram Hotchkiss for breach of promise, and that the damages
were laid at five thousand dollars. As in those bucolic days the Western
press was under the secure censorship of a revolver, a cautious tone of
criticism prevailed, and any gossip was confined to personal expression,
and even then at the risk of the gossiper. Nevertheless, the situation
provoked the intensest curiosity. The Colonel was approached—until his
statement that he should consider any attempt to overcome his professional
secrecy a personal reflection withheld further advances. The community
were left to the more ostentatious information of the defendant’s counsel,
Messrs. Kitcham and Bilser, that the case was “ridiculous” and “rotten,”
that the plaintiff would be nonsuited, and the fire-eating Starbottle would be
taught a lesson that he could not “bully” the law—and there were some dark
hints of a conspiracy. It was even hinted that the “case” was the revengeful
and preposterous outcome of the refusal of Hotchkiss to pay Starbottle an
extravagant fee for his late services to the Ditch Company. It is unnecessary
to say that these words were not reported to the Colonel. It was, however,
an unfortunate circumstance for the calmer, ethical consideration of the
subject that the church sided with Hotchkiss, as this provoked an equal
adherence to the plaintiff and Starbottle on the part of the larger body of
non-church-goers, who were delighted at a possible exposure of the
weakness of religious rectitude. “I’ve allus had my suspicions o’ them early
candle-light meetings down at that gospel shop,” said one critic, “and I
reckon Deacon Hotchkiss didn’t rope in the gals to attend jest for psalm-
singing.” “Then for him to get up and leave the board afore the game’s
finished and try to sneak out of it,” said another. “I suppose that’s what they
call religious.”
It was therefore not remarkable that the courthouse three weeks later was
crowded with an excited multitude of the curious and sympathizing. The
fair plaintiff, with her mother, was early in attendance, and under the

Colonel’s advice appeared in the same modest garb in which she had first
visited his office. This and her downcast modest demeanor were perhaps at
first disappointing to the crowd, who had evidently expected a paragon of
loveliness—as the Circe of the grim ascetic defendant, who sat beside his
counsel. But presently all eyes were fixed on the Colonel, who certainly
made up in his appearance any deficiency of his fair client. His portly figure
was clothed in a blue dress-coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat which
permitted his frilled shirt front to become erectile above it, a black satin
stock which confined a boyish turned-down collar around his full neck, and
immaculate drill trousers, strapped over varnished boots. A murmur ran
round the court. “Old ‘Personally Responsible’ had got his war-paint on,”
“The Old War-Horse is smelling powder,” were whispered comments. Yet
for all that the most irreverent among them recognized vaguely, in this
bizarre figure, something of an honored past in their country’s history, and
possibly felt the spell of old deeds and old names that had once thrilled their
boyish pulses. The new District Judge returned Colonel Starbottle’s
profoundly punctilious bow. The Colonel was followed by his negro
servant, carrying a parcel of hymn-books and Bibles, who, with a courtesy
evidently imitated from his master, placed one before the opposite counsel.
This, after a first curious glance, the lawyer somewhat superciliously tossed
aside. But when Jim, proceeding to the jury-box, placed with equal
politeness the remaining copies before the jury, the opposite counsel sprang
to his feet.
“I want to direct the attention of the Court to this unprecedented
tampering with the jury, by this gratuitous exhibition of matter impertinent
and irrelevant to the issue.”
The Judge cast an inquiring look at Colonel Starbottle.
“May it please the Court,” returned Colonel Starbottle with dignity,
ignoring the counsel, “the defendant’s counsel will observe that he is
already furnished with the matter—which I regret to say he has treated—in
the presence of the Court—and of his client, a deacon of the church—with
—er—-great superciliousness. When I state to your Honor that the books in
question are hymn-books and copies of the Holy Scriptures, and that they
are for the instruction of the jury, to whom I shall have to refer them in the
course of my opening, I believe I am within my rights.”

“The act is certainly unprecedented,” said the Judge, dryly, “but unless
the counsel for the plaintiff expects the jury to sing from these hymn-books,
their introduction is not improper, and I cannot admit the objection. As
defendant’s counsel are furnished with copies also, they cannot plead
‘surprise,’ as in the introduction of new matter, and as plaintiff’s counsel
relies evidently upon the jury’s attention to his opening, he would not be the
first person to distract it.” After a pause he added, addressing the Colonel,
who remained standing, “The Court is with you, sir; proceed.”
But the Colonel remained motionless and statuesque, with folded arms.
“I have overruled the objection,” repeated the Judge; “you may go on.”
“I am waiting, your Honor, for the—er—withdrawal by the defendant’s
counsel of the word ‘tampering,’ as refers to myself, and of ‘impertinent,’ as
refers to the sacred volumes.”
“The request is a proper one, and I have no doubt will be acceded to,”
returned the Judge, quietly. The defendant’s counsel rose and mumbled a
few words of apology, and the incident closed. There was, however, a
general feeling that the Colonel had in some way “scored,” and if his object
had been to excite the greatest curiosity about the books, he had made his
point.
But impassive of his victory, he inflated his chest, with his right hand in
the breast of his buttoned coat, and began. His usual high color had paled
slightly, but the small pupils of his prominent eyes glittered like steel. The
young girl leaned forward in her chair with an attention so breathless, a
sympathy so quick, and an admiration so artless and unconscious that in an
instant she divided with the speaker the attention of the whole assemblage.
It was very hot; the court was crowded to suffocation; even the open
windows revealed a crowd of faces outside the building, eagerly following
the Colonel’s words.
He would remind the jury that only a few weeks ago he stood there as the
advocate of a powerful company, then represented by the present defendant.
He spoke then as the champion of strict justice against legal oppression; no
less should he to-day champion the cause of the unprotected and the
comparatively defenseless—save for that paramount power which
surrounds beauty and innocence—even though the plaintiff of yesterday

was the defendant of to-day. As he approached the court a moment ago he
had raised his eyes and beheld the starry flag flying from its dome—and he
knew that glorious banner was a symbol of the perfect equality, under the
Constitution, of the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak—an equality
which made the simple citizen taken from the plough in the veld, the pick in
the gulch, or from behind the counter in the mining town, who served on
that jury, the equal arbiters of justice with that highest legal luminary whom
they were proud to welcome on the bench to-day. The Colonel paused, with
a stately bow to the impassive Judge. It was this, he continued, which lifted
his heart as he approached the building. And yet—he had entered it with an
uncertain—he might almost say—a timid step. And why? He knew,
gentlemen, he was about to confront a profound—aye! a sacred
responsibility! Those hymn-books and holy writings handed to the jury
were not, as his Honor surmised, for the purpose of enabling the jury to
indulge in—er—preliminary choral exercise! He might, indeed, say “alas
not!” They were the damning, incontrovertible proofs of the perfidy of the
defendant. And they would prove as terrible a warning to him as the fatal
characters upon Belshazzar’s wall. There was a strong sensation. Hotchkiss
turned a sallow green. His lawyers assumed a careless smile.
It was his duty to tell them that this was not one of those ordinary
“breach-of-promise” cases which were too often the occasion of ruthless
mirth and indecent levity in the courtroom. The jury would find nothing of
that here, There were no love-letters with the epithets of endearment, nor
those mystic crosses and ciphers which, he had been credibly informed,
chastely hid the exchange of those mutual caresses known as “kisses.”
There was no cruel tearing of the veil from those sacred privacies of the
human affection—there was no forensic shouting out of those fond
confidences meant only for one. But there was, he was shocked to say, a
new sacrilegious intrusion. The weak pipings of Cupid were mingled with
the chorus of the saints—the sanctity of the temple known as the “meeting-
house” was desecrated by proceedings more in keeping with the shrine of
Venus—and the inspired writings themselves were used as the medium of
amatory and wanton flirtation by the defendant in his sacred capacity as
Deacon.
The Colonel artistically paused after this thunderous denunciation. The
jury turned eagerly to the leaves of the hymn-books, but the larger gaze of

the audience remained fixed upon the speaker and the girl, who sat in rapt
admiration of his periods. After the hush, the Colonel continued in a lower
and sadder voice: “There are, perhaps, few of us here, gentlemen—with the
exception of the defendant—who can arrogate to themselves the title of
regular churchgoers, or to whom these humbler functions of the prayer-
meeting, the Sunday-school, and the Bible class are habitually familiar.
Yet”—more solemnly—“down in your hearts is the deep conviction of our
short-comings and failings, and a laudable desire that others at least should
profit by the teachings we neglect. Perhaps,” he continued, closing his eyes
dreamily, “there is not a man here who does not recall the happy days of his
boyhood, the rustic village spire, the lessons shared with some artless
village maiden, with whom he later sauntered, hand in hand, through the
woods, as the simple rhyme rose upon their lips,
Always make it a point to have it a rule
Never to be late at the Sabbath-school.

He would recall the strawberry feasts, the welcome annual picnic, redolent
with hunks of gingerbread and sarsaparilla. How would they feel to know
that these sacred recollections were now forever profaned in their memory
by the knowledge that the defendant was capable of using such occasions to
make love to the larger girls and teachers, whilst his artless companions
were innocently—the Court will pardon me for introducing what I am
credibly informed is the local expression ‘doing gooseberry’?” The
tremulous flicker of a smile passed over the faces of the listening crowd,
and the Colonel slightly winced. But he recovered himself instantly, and
continued:
“My client, the only daughter of a widowed mother—who has for years
stemmed the varying tides of adversity—in the western precincts of this
town—stands before you to-day invested only in her own innocence. She
wears no—er—rich gifts of her faithless admirer—is panoplied in no
jewels, rings, nor mementoes of affection such as lovers delight to hang
upon the shrine of their affections; hers is not the glory with which
Solomon decorated the Queen of Sheba, though the defendant, as I shall
show later, clothed her in the less expensive flowers of the king’s poetry.
No! gentlemen! The defendant exhibited in this affair a certain frugality of
—er—pecuniary investment, which I am willing to admit may be
commendable in his class. His only gift was characteristic alike of his

methods and his economy. There is, I understand, a certain not unimportant
feature of religious exercise known as ‘taking a collection.’ The defendant,
on this occasion, by the mute presentation of a tip plate covered with baize,
solicited the pecuniary contributions of the faithful. On approaching the
plaintiff, however, he himself slipped a love-token upon the plate and
pushed it towards her. That love-token was a lozenge—a small disk, I have
reason to believe, concocted of peppermint and sugar, bearing upon its
reverse surface the simple words, ‘I love you!’ I have since ascertained that
these disks may be bought for five cents a dozen—or at considerably less
than one half-cent for the single lozenge. Yes, gentlemen, the words ‘I love
you!‘—the oldest legend of all; the refrain, ‘when the morning stars sang
together’—were presented to the plaintiff by a medium so insignificant that
there is, happily, no coin in the republic low enough to represent its value.
“I shall prove to you, gentlemen of the jury,” said the Colonel, solemnly,
drawing a Bible from his coat-tail pocket, “that the defendant, for the last
twelve months, conducted an amatory correspondence with the plaintiff by
means of underlined words of sacred writ and church psalmody, such as
‘beloved,’ ‘precious,’ and ‘dearest,’ occasionally appropriating whole
passages which seemed apposite to his tender passion. I shall call your
attention to one of them. The defendant, while professing to be a total
abstainer—a man who, in my own knowledge, has refused spirituous
refreshment as an inordinate weakness of the flesh, with shameless
hypocrisy underscores with his pencil the following passage and presents it
to the plaintiff. The gentlemen of the jury will find it in the Song of
Solomon, page 548, chapter II, verse 5.” After a pause, in which the rapid
rustling of leaves was heard in the jury-box, Colonel Starbottle declaimed
in a pleading, stentorian voice, “‘Stay me with —er—flagons, comfort me
with—er—apples—for I am—er—sick of love.’ Yes, gentlemen!—yes, you
may well turn from those accusing pages and look at the double-faced
defendant. He desires—to—er—be —‘stayed with flagons’! I am not
aware, at present, what kind of liquor is habitually dispensed at these
meetings, and for which the defendant so urgently clamored; but it will be
my duty before this trial is over to discover it, if I have to summon every
barkeeper in this district. For the moment, I will simply call your attention
to the quantity. It is not a single drink that the defendant asks for—not a
glass of light and generous wine, to be shared with his inamorata—but a

number of flagons or vessels, each possibly holding a pint measure—for
himself!”
The smile of the audience had become a laugh. The Judge looked up
warningly, when his eye caught the fact that the Colonel had again winced
at this mirth. He regarded him seriously. Mr. Hotchkiss’s counsel had joined
in the laugh affectedly, but Hotchkiss himself was ashy pale. There was also
a commotion in the jury-box, a hurried turning over of leaves, and an
excited discussion.
“The gentlemen of the jury,” said the Judge, with official gravity, “will
please keep order and attend only to the speeches of counsel. Any
discussion here is irregular and premature—and must be reserved for the
jury-room—after they have retired.”
The foreman of the jury struggled to his feet. He was a powerful man,
with a good-humored face, and, in spite of his unfelicitous nickname of
“The Bone-Breaker,” had a kindly, simple, but somewhat emotional nature.
Nevertheless, it appeared as if he were laboring under some powerful
indignation.
“Can we ask a question, Judge?” he said, respectfully, although his voice
had the unmistakable Western-American ring in it, as of one who was
unconscious that he could be addressing any but his peers.
“Yes,” said the Judge, good-humoredly.
“We’re finding in this yere piece, out of which the Kernel hes just bin a-
quotin’, some language that me and my pardners allow hadn’t orter to be
read out afore a young lady in court—and we want to know of you—ez a
fair-minded and impartial man—ef this is the reg’lar kind o’ book given to
gals and babies down at the meetin’-house.”
“The jury will please follow the counsel’s speech, without comment,”
said the Judge, briefly, fully aware that the defendant’s counsel would
spring to his feet, as he did promptly. “The Court will allow us to explain to
the gentlemen that the language they seem to object to has been accepted by
the best theologians for the last thousand years as being purely mystic. As I
will explain later, those are merely symbols of the Church—”
“Of wot?” interrupted the foreman, in deep scorn.

“Of the Church!”
“We ain’t askin’ any questions o’ you—and we ain’t takin’ any answers,”
said the foreman, sitting down promptly.
“I must insist,” said the Judge, sternly, “that the plaintiff’s counsel be
allowed to continue his opening without interruption. You” (to defendant’s
counsel) “will have your opportunity to reply later.”
The counsel sank down in his seat with the bitter conviction that the jury
was manifestly against him, and the case as good as lost. But his face was
scarcely as disturbed as his client’s, who, in great agitation, had begun to
argue with him wildly, and was apparently pressing some point against the
lawyer’s vehement opposal. The Colonel’s murky eyes brightened as he still
stood erect with his hand thrust in his breast.
“It will be put to you, gentlemen, when the counsel on the other side
refrains from mere interruption and confines himself to reply, that my
unfortunate client has no action—no remedy at law—because there were no
spoken words of endearment. But, gentlemen, it will depend upon you to
say what are and what are not articulate expressions of love. We all know
that among the lower animals, with whom you may possibly be called upon
to classify the defendant, there are certain signals more or less harmonious,
as the case may be. The ass brays, the horse neighs, the sheep bleats—the
feathered denizens of the grove call to their mates in more musical
roundelays. These are recognized facts, gentlemen, which you yourselves,
as dwellers among nature in this beautiful land, are all cognizant of. They
are facts that no one would deny—and we should have a poor opinion of
the ass who, at—er—such a supreme moment, would attempt to suggest
that his call was unthinking and without significance. But, gentlemen, I
shall prove to you that such was the foolish, self-convicting custom of the
defendant. With the greatest reluctance, and the—er—greatest pain, I
succeeded in wresting from the maidenly modesty of my fair client the
innocent confession that the defendant had induced her to correspond with
him in these methods. Picture to yourself, gentlemen, the lonely moonlight
road beside the widow’s humble cottage. It is a beautiful night, sanctified to
the affections, and the innocent girl is leaning from her casement. Presently
there appears upon the road a slinking, stealthy figure—the defendant, on
his way to church. True to the instruction she has received from him, her

lips part in the musical utterance” (the Colonel lowered his voice in a faint
falsetto, presumably in fond imitation of his fair client),“‘Kerree!’ Instantly
the night became resonant with the impassioned reply” (the Colonel here
lifted his voice in stentorian tones), “‘Kerrow.’ Again, as he passes, rises the
soft ‘Kerree’; again, as his form is lost in the distance, comes back the deep
‘Kerrow.’”
A burst of laughter, long, loud, and irrepressible, struck the whole
courtroom, and before the Judge could lift his half-composed face and take
his handkerchief from his mouth, a faint “Kerree” from some unrecognized
obscurity of the courtroom was followed by a loud “Kerrow” from some
opposite locality. “The sheriff will clear the court,” said the Judge, sternly;
but alas, as the embarrassed and choking officials rushed hither and thither,
a soft “Kerree” from the spectators at the window, outside the courthouse,
was answered by a loud chorus of “Kerrows” from the opposite windows,
filled with onlookers. Again the laughter arose everywhere—even the fair
plaintiff herself sat convulsed behind her handkerchief.
The figure of Colonel Starbottle alone remained erect—white and rigid.
And then the Judge, looking up, saw what no one else in the court had seen
—that the Colonel was sincere and in earnest; that what he had conceived to
be the pleader’s most perfect acting, and most elaborate irony, were the
deep, serious, mirthless convictions of a man without the least sense of
humor. There was a touch of this respect in the Judge’s voice as he said to
him, gently, “You may proceed, Colonel Starbottle.”
“I thank your Honor,” said the Colonel, slowly, “for recognizing and
doing all in your power to prevent an interruption that, during my thirty
years’ experience at the bar, I have never yet been subjected to without the
privilege of holding the instigators thereof responsible—personally
responsible. It is possibly my fault that I have failed, oratorically, to convey
to the gentlemen of the jury the full force and significance of the
defendant’s signals. I am aware that my voice is singularly deficient in
producing either the dulcet tones of my fair client or the impassioned
vehemence of the defendant’s repose. I will,” continued the Colonel, with a
fatigued but blind fatuity that ignored the hurriedly knit brows and warning
eyes of the Judge, “try again. The note uttered by my client” (lowering his
voice to the faintest of falsettos) “was ‘Kerree’; the response was
‘Kerrow’”—and the Colonel’s voice fairly shook the dome above him.

Another uproar of laughter followed this apparently audacious repetition,
but was interrupted by an unlooked-for incident. The defendant rose
abruptly, and tearing himself away from the withholding hand and pleading
protestations of his counsel, absolutely fled from the courtroom, his
appearance outside being recognized by a prolonged “Kerrow” from the
bystanders, which again and again followed him in the distance. In the
momentary silence which followed, the Colonel’s voice was heard saying,
“We rest here, your Honor,” and he sat down. No less white, but more
agitated, was the face of the defendant’s counsel, who instantly rose.
“For some unexplained reason, your Honor, my client desires to suspend
further proceedings, with a view to effect a peaceable compromise with the
plaintiff. As he is a man of wealth and position, he is able and willing to pay
liberally for that privilege. While I, as his counsel, am still convinced of his
legal irresponsibility, as he has chosen, however, to publicly abandon his
rights here, I can only ask your Honor’s permission to suspend further
proceedings until I can confer with Colonel Starbottle.”
“As far as I can follow the pleadings,” said the Judge, gravely, “the case
seems to be hardly one for litigation, and I approve of the defendant’s
course, while I strongly urge the plaintiff to accept it.”
Colonel Starbottle bent over his fair client. Presently he rose, unchanged
in look or demeanor. “I yield, your Honor, to the wishes of my client, and—
er—lady. We accept.”
Before the court adjourned that day it was known throughout the town
that Adoniram K. Hotchkiss had compromised the suit for four thousand
dollars and costs.
Colonel Starbottle had so far recovered his equanimity as to strut jauntily
towards his office, where he was to meet his fair client. He was surprised,
however, to find her already there, and in company with a somewhat
sheepish-looking young man—a stranger. If the Colonel had any
disappointment in meeting a third party to the interview, his old-fashioned
courtesy did not permit him to show it. He bowed graciously, and politely
motioned them each to a seat.
“I reckoned I’d bring Hiram round with me,” said the young lady, lifting
her searching eyes, after a pause, to the Colonel’s, “though he was awful

shy, and allowed that you didn’t know him from Adam—or even suspected
his existence. But I said, ‘That’s just where you slip up, Hiram; a pow’ful
man like the Colonel knows everything—and I’ve seen it in his eye.’
Lordy!” she continued, with a laugh, leaning forward over her parasol, as
her eyes again sought the Colonel’s, “don’t you remember when you asked
me if I loved that old Hotchkiss, and I told you ‘That’s tellin’,’ and you
looked at me, Lordy! I knew then you suspected there was a Hiram
somewhere—as good as if I’d told you. Now, you, jest get up, Hiram, and
give the Colonel a good handshake. For if it wasn’t for him and his
searchin’ ways, and his awful power of language, I wouldn’t hev got that
four thousand dollars out o’ that flirty fool Hotchkiss—enough to buy a
farm, so as you and me could get married! That’s what you owe to him.
Don’t stand there like a stuck fool starin’ at him. He won’t eat you—though
he’s killed many a better man. Come, have I got to do all the kissin’!”
It is of record that the Colonel bowed so courteously and so profoundly
that he managed not merely to evade the proffered hand of the shy Hiram,
but to only lightly touch the franker and more impulsive fingertips of the
gentle Zaidee. “I—er—offer my sincerest congratulations—though I think
you—er—overestimate—my—er—powers of penetration. Unfortunately, a
pressing engagement, which may oblige me also to leave town to-night,
forbids my saying more. I have—er—left the—er—business settlement of
this—er—case in the hands of the lawyers who do my office-work, and
who will show you every attention. And now let me wish you a very good
afternoon.”
Nevertheless, the Colonel returned to his private room, and it was nearly
twilight when the faithful Jim entered, to find him sitting meditatively
before his desk. “‘Fo’ God! Kernel—I hope dey ain’t nuffin de matter, but
you’s lookin’ mightly solemn! I ain’t seen you look dat way, Kernel, since
de day pooh Marse Stryker was fetched home shot froo de head.”
“Hand me down the whiskey, Jim,” said the Colonel, rising slowly.
The negro flew to the closet joyfully, and brought out the bottle. The
Colonel poured out a glass of the spirit and drank it with his old
deliberation.
“You’re quite right, Jim,” he said, putting down his glass, “but I’m—er—
getting old—and—somehow—I am missing poor Stryker damnably!”

FOOTNOTES:
[23] From Harper’s Magazine, March, 1901.
Republished in the volume, Openings in the Old
Trail (1902), by Bret Harte; copyright, 1902, by
Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized
publishers of Bret Harte’s complete works;
reprinted by their permission.

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES[24]
By O. Henry (1862–1910)
When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss
Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding
place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues. It
was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white
pillars. The yard was shaded by stately locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree
in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass. Rows of high
box bushes lined the fence and walks. It was the Southern style and aspect
of the place that pleased the eyes of the Talbots.
In this pleasant private boarding house they engaged rooms, including a
study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his book,
Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and Bar.
Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little interest
or excellence in his eyes. His mind lived in that period before the Civil War
when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine cotton land and the
slaves to till them; when the family mansion was the scene of princely
hospitality, and drew its guests from the aristocracy of the South. Out of
that period he had brought all its old pride and scruples of honor, an
antiquated and punctilious politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe.
Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years. The Major was
tall, but whenever he made that wonderful, archaic genuflexion he called a
bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor. That garment was a
surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased to shy at the frocks
and broad-brimmed hats of Southern Congressmen. One of the boarders
christened it a “Father Hubbard,” and it certainly was high in the waist and
full in the skirt.

But the Major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of plaited,
raveling shirt bosom, and the little black string tie with the bow always
slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in Mrs. Vardeman’s
select boarding house. Some of the young department clerks would often
“string him,” as they called it, getting him started upon the subject dearest
to him—the traditions and history of his beloved Southland. During his
talks he would quote freely from the Anecdotes and Reminiscences. But
they were very careful not to let him see their designs, for in spite of his
sixty-eight years he could make the boldest of them uncomfortable under
the steady regard of his piercing gray eyes.
Miss Lydia was a plump, little old maid of thirty-five, with smoothly
drawn, tightly twisted hair that made her look still older. Old-fashioned, too,
she was; but antebellum glory did not radiate from her as it did from the
Major. She possessed a thrifty common sense, and it was she who handled
the finances of the family, and met all comers when there were bills to pay.
The Major regarded board bills and wash bills as contemptible nuisances.
They kept coming in so persistently and so often. Why, the Major wanted to
know, could they not be filed and paid in a lump sum at some convenient
period—say when the Anecdotes and Reminiscences had been published
and paid for? Miss Lydia would calmly go on with her sewing and say,
“We’ll pay as we go as long as the money lasts, and then perhaps they’ll
have to lump it.”
Most of Mrs. Vardeman’s boarders were away during the day, being
nearly all department clerks and business men; but there was one of them
who was about the house a great deal from morning to night. This was a
young man named Henry Hopkins Hargraves—every one in the house
addressed him by his full name—who was engaged at one of the popular
vaudeville theaters. Vaudeville has risen to such a respectable plane in the
last few years, and Mr. Hargraves was such a modest and well-mannered
person, that Mrs. Vardeman could find no objection to enrolling him upon
her list of boarders.
At the theater Hargraves was known as an all-round dialect comedian,
having a large repertoire of German, Irish, Swede, and black-face
specialties. But Mr. Hargraves was ambitious, and often spoke of his great
desire to succeed in legitimate comedy.

This young man appeared to conceive a strong fancy for Major Talbot.
Whenever that gentleman would begin his Southern reminiscences, or
repeat some of the liveliest of the anecdotes, Hargraves could always be
found, the most attentive among his listeners.
For a time the Major showed an inclination to discourage the advances of
the “play actor,” as he privately termed him; but soon the young man’s
agreeable manner and indubitable appreciation of the old gentleman’s
stories completely won him over.
It was not long before the two were like old chums. The Major set apart
each afternoon to read to him the manuscript of his book. During the
anecdotes Hargraves never failed to laugh at exactly the right point. The
Major was moved to declare to Miss Lydia one day that young Hargraves
possessed remarkable perception and a gratifying respect for the old régime.
And when it came to talking of those old days—if Major Talbot liked to
talk, Mr. Hargraves was entranced to listen.
Like almost all old people who talk of the past, the Major loved to linger
over details. In describing the splendid, almost royal, days of the old
planters, he would hesitate until he had recalled the name of the negro who
held his horse, or the exact date of certain minor happenings, or the number
of bales of cotton raised in such a year; but Hargraves never grew impatient
or lost interest. On the contrary, he would advance questions on a variety of
subjects connected with the life of that time, and he never failed to extract
ready replies.
The fox hunts, the ’possum suppers, the hoe-downs and jubilees in the
negro quarters, the banquets in the plantation-house hall, when invitations
went for fifty miles around; the occasional feuds with the neighboring
gentry; the Major’s duel with Rathbone Culbertson about Kitty Chalmers,
who afterward married a Thwaite of South Carolina; and private yacht races
for fabulous sums on Mobile Bay; the quaint beliefs, improvident habits,
and loyal virtues of the old slaves—all these were subjects that held both
the Major and Hargraves absorbed for hours at a time.
Sometimes, at night, when the young man would be coming upstairs to
his room after his turn at the theater was over, the Major would appear at
the door of his study and beckon archly to him. Going in, Hargraves would

find a little table set with a decanter, sugar bowl, fruit, and a big bunch of
fresh green mint.
“It occurred to me,” the Major would begin—he was always ceremonious
—“that perhaps you might have found your duties at the—at your place of
occupation—sufficiently arduous to enable you, Mr. Hargraves, to
appreciate what the poet might well have had in his mind when he wrote,
‘tired Nature’s sweet restorer’—one of our Southern juleps.”
It was a fascination to Hargraves to watch him make it. He took rank
among artists when he began, and he never varied the process. With what
delicacy he bruised the mint; with what exquisite nicety he estimated the
ingredients; with what solicitous care he capped the compound with the
scarlet fruit glowing against the dark green fringe! And then the hospitality
and grace with which he offered it, after the selected oat straws had been
plunged into its tinkling depths!
After about four months in Washington, Miss Lydia discovered one
morning that they were almost without money. The Anecdotes and
Reminiscences was completed, but publishers had not jumped at the
collected gems of Alabama sense and wit. The rental of a small house which
they still owned in Mobile was two months in arrears. Their board money
for the month would be due in three days. Miss Lydia called her father to a
consultation.
“No money?” said he with a surprised look. “It is quite annoying to be
called on so frequently for these petty sums, Really, I—”
The Major searched his pockets. He found only a two-dollar bill, which
he returned to his vest pocket.
“I must attend to this at once, Lydia,” he said. “Kindly get me my
umbrella and I will go downtown immediately. The congressman from our
district, General Fulghum, assured me some days ago that he would use his
influence to get my book published at an early date. I will go to his hotel at
once and see what arrangement has been made.”
With a sad little smile Miss Lydia watched him button his “Father
Hubbard” and depart, pausing at the door, as he always did, to bow
profoundly.

That evening, at dark, he returned. It seemed that Congressman Fulghum
had seen the publisher who had the Major’s manuscript for reading. That
person had said that if the anecdotes, etc., were carefully pruned down
about one-half, in order to eliminate the sectional and class prejudice with
which the book was dyed from end to end, he might consider its
publication.
The Major was in a white heat of anger, but regained his equanimity,
according to his code of manners, as soon as he was in Miss Lydia’s
presence.
“We must have money,” said Miss Lydia, with a little wrinkle above her
nose. “Give me the two dollars, and I will telegraph to Uncle Ralph for
some to-night.”
The Major drew a small envelope from his upper vest pocket and tossed
it on the table.
“Perhaps it was injudicious,” he said mildly, “but the sum was so merely
nominal that I bought tickets to the theater to-night. It’s a new war drama,
Lydia. I thought you would be pleased to witness its first production in
Washington. I am told that the South has very fair treatment in the play. I
confess I should like to see the performance myself.”
Miss Lydia threw up her hands in silent despair.
Still, as the tickets were bought, they might as well be used. So that
evening, as they sat in the theater listening to the lively overture, even Miss
Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour, to second place.
The Major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary coat showing only
where it was closely buttoned, and his white hair smoothly roached, looked
really fine and distinguished. The curtain went up on the first act of A
Magnolia Flower, revealing a typical Southern plantation scene. Major
Talbot betrayed some interest.
“Oh, see!” exclaimed Miss Lydia, nudging his arm, and pointing to her
program.
The Major put on his glasses and read the line in the cast of characters
that her fingers indicated.
Col. Webster Calhoun .... Mr. Hopkins Hargraves.

“It’s our Mr. Hargraves,” said Miss Lydia. “It must be his first
appearance in what he calls ‘the legitimate.’ I’m so glad for him.”
Not until the second act did Col. Webster Calhoun appear upon the stage.
When he made his entry Major Talbot gave an audible sniff, glared at him,
and seemed to freeze solid. Miss Lydia uttered a little, ambiguous squeak
and crumpled her program in her hand. For Colonel Calhoun was made up
as nearly resembling Major Talbot as one pea does another. The long, thin
white hair, curly at the ends, the aristocratic beak of a nose, the crumpled,
wide, raveling shirt front, the string tie, with the bow nearly under one ear,
were almost exactly duplicated. And then, to clinch the imitation, he wore
the twin to the Major’s supposed to be unparalleled coat. High-collared,
baggy, empire-waisted, ample-skirted, hanging a foot lower in front than
behind, the garment could have been designed from no other pattern. From
then on, the Major and Miss Lydia sat bewitched, and saw the counterfeit
presentment of a haughty Talbot “dragged,” as the Major afterward
expressed it, “through the slanderous mire of a corrupt stage.”
Mr. Hargraves had used his opportunities well. He had caught the
Major’s little idiosyncrasies of speech, accent, and intonation and his
pompous courtliness to perfection—exaggerating all to the purpose of the
stage. When he performed that marvelous bow that the Major fondly
imagined to be the pink of all salutations, the audience sent forth a sudden
round of hearty applause.
Miss Lydia sat immovable, not daring to glance toward her father.
Sometimes her hand next to him would be laid against her cheek, as if to
conceal the smile which, in spite of her disapproval, she could not entirely
suppress.
The culmination of Hargraves audacious imitation took place in the third
act. The scene is where Colonel Calhoun entertains a few of the
neighboring planters in his “den.”
Standing at a table in the center of the stage, with his friends grouped
about him, he delivers that inimitable, rambling character monologue so
famous in A Magnolia Flower, at the same time that he deftly makes juleps
for the party.

Major Talbot, sitting quietly, but white with indignation, heard his best
stories retold, his pet theories and hobbies advanced and expanded, and the
dream of the Anecdotes and Reminiscences served, exaggerated and
garbled. His favorite narrative—that of his duel with Rathbone Culbertson
—was not omitted, and it was delivered with more fire, egotism, and gusto
than the Major himself put into it.
The monologue concluded with a quaint, delicious, witty little lecture on
the art of concocting a julep, illustrated by the act. Here Major Talbot’s
delicate but showy science was reproduced to a hair’s breadth—from his
dainty handling of the fragrant weed—“the one-thousandth part of a grain
too much pressure, gentlemen, and you extract the bitterness, instead of the
aroma, of this heaven-bestowed plant”—to his solicitous selection of the
oaten straws.
At the close of the scene the audience raised a tumultuous roar of
appreciation. The portrayal of the type was so exact, so sure and thorough,
that the leading characters in the play were forgotten. After repeated calls,
Hargraves came before the curtain and bowed, his rather boyish face bright
and flushed with the knowledge of success.
At last Miss Lydia turned and looked at the Major. His thin nostrils were
working like the gills of a fish. He laid both shaking hands upon the arms of
his chair to rise.
“We will go, Lydia,” he said chokingly. “This is an abominable—
desecration.”
Before he could rise, she pulled him back into his seat.
“We will stay it out,” she declared. “Do you want to advertise the copy
by exhibiting the original coat?” So they remained to the end.
Hargraves’s success must have kept him up late that night, for neither at
the breakfast nor at the dinner table did he appear.
About three in the afternoon he tapped at the door of Major Talbot’s
study. The Major opened it, and Hargraves walked in with his hands full of
the morning papers—too full of his triumph to notice anything unusual in
the Major’s demeanor.

“I put it all over ’em last night, Major,” he began exultantly. “I had my
inning, and, I think, scored. Here’s what The Post says:
“‘His conception and portrayal of the old-time Southern colonel, with his
absurd grandiloquence, his eccentric garb, his quaint idioms and phrases,
his motheaten pride of family, and his really kind heart, fastidious sense of
honor, and lovable simplicity, is the best delineation of a character role on
the boards to-day. The coat worn by Colonel Calhoun is itself nothing less
than an evolution of genius. Mr. Hargraves has captured his public.’
“How does that sound, Major, for a first-nighter?”
“I had the honor”—the Major’s voice sounded ominously frigid—“of
witnessing your very remarkable performance, sir, last night.”
Hargraves looked disconcerted.
“You were there? I didn’t know you ever—I didn’t know you cared for
the theater. Oh, I say, Major Talbot,” he exclaimed frankly, “don’t you be
offended. I admit I did get a lot of pointers from you that helped out
wonderfully in the part. But it’s a type, you know—not individual. The way
the audience caught on shows that. Half the patrons of that theater are
Southerners. They recognized it.”
“Mr. Hargraves,” said the Major, who had remained standing, “you have
put upon me an unpardonable insult. You have burlesqued my person,
grossly betrayed my confidence, and misused my hospitality. If I thought
you possessed the faintest conception of what is the sign manual of a
gentleman, or what is due one, I would call you out, sir, old as I am. I will
ask you to leave the room, sir.”
The actor appeared to be slightly bewildered, and seemed hardly to take
in the full meaning of the old gentleman’s words.
“I am truly sorry you took offense,” he said regretfully. “Up here we
don’t look at things just as you people do. I know men who would buy out
half the house to have their personality put on the stage so the public would
recognize it.”
“They are not from Alabama, sir,” said the Major haughtily.
“Perhaps not. I have a pretty good memory, Major; let me quote a few
lines from your book. In response to a toast at a banquet given in—

Milledgeville, I believe—you uttered, and intend to have printed, these
words:
“‘The Northern man is utterly without sentiment or warmth except in so
far as the feelings may be turned to his own commercial profit. He will
suffer without resentment any imputation cast upon the honor of himself or
his loved ones that does not bear with it the consequence of pecuniary loss.
In his charity, he gives with a liberal hand; but it must be heralded with the
trumpet and chronicled in brass.’
“Do you think that picture is fairer than the one you saw of Colonel
Calhoun last night?”
“The description,” said the Major, frowning, “is—not without grounds.
Some exag—latitude must be allowed in public speaking.”
“And in public acting,” replied Hargraves.
“That is not the point,” persisted the Major, unrelenting. “It was a
personal caricature. I positively decline to overlook it, sir.”
“Major Talbot,” said Hargraves, with a winning smile, “I wish you would
understand me. I want you to know that I never dreamed of insulting you.
In my profession, all life belongs to me. I take what I want, and what I can,
and return it over the footlights. Now, if you will, let’s let it go at that. I
came in to see you about something else. We’ve been pretty good friends
for some months, and I’m going to take the risk of offending you again. I
know you are hard up for money—never mind how I found out, a boarding
house is no place to keep such matters secret—and I want you to let me
help you out of the pinch. I’ve been there often enough myself. I’ve been
getting a fair salary all the season, and I’ve saved some money. You’re
welcome to a couple hundred—or even more—until you get——”
“Stop!” commanded the Major, with his arm outstretched. “It seems that
my book didn’t lie, after all. You think your money salve will heal all the
hurts of honor. Under no circumstances would I accept a loan from a casual
acquaintance; and as to you, sir, I would starve before I would consider
your insulting offer of a financial adjustment of the circumstances we have
discussed. I beg to repeat my request relative to your quitting the
apartment.”

Hargraves took his departure without another word. He also left the
house the same day, moving, as Mrs. Vardeman explained at the supper
table, nearer the vicinity of the downtown theater, where A Magnolia
Flower was booked for a week’s run.
Critical was the situation with Major Talbot and Miss Lydia. There was
no one in Washington to whom the Major’s scruples allowed him to apply
for a loan. Miss Lydia wrote a letter to Uncle Ralph, but it was doubtful
whether that relative’s constricted affairs would permit him to furnish help.
The Major was forced to make an apologetic address to Mrs. Vardeman
regarding the delayed payment for board, referring to “delinquent rentals”
and “delayed remittances” in a rather confused strain.
Deliverance came from an entirely unexpected source.
Late one afternoon the door maid came up and announced an old colored
man who wanted to see Major Talbot. The Major asked that he be sent up to
his study. Soon an old darkey appeared in the doorway, with his hat in hand,
bowing, and scraping with one clumsy foot. He was quite decently dressed
in a baggy suit of black. His big, coarse shoes shone with a metallic luster
suggestive of stove polish. His bushy wool was gray—almost white. After
middle life, it is difficult to estimate the age of a negro. This one might have
seen as many years as had Major Talbot.
“I be bound you don’t know me, Mars’ Pendleton,” were his first words.
The Major rose and came forward at the old, familiar style of address. It
was one of the old plantation darkeys without a doubt; but they had been
widely scattered, and he could not recall the voice or face.
“I don’t believe I do,” he said kindly—“unless you will assist my
memory.”
“Don’t you ’member Cindy’s Mose, Mars’ Pendleton, what ’migrated
’mediately after de war?”
“Wait a moment,” said the Major, rubbing his forehead with the tips of
his fingers. He loved to recall everything connected with those beloved
days. “Cindy’s Mose,” he reflected. “You worked among the horses—
breaking the colts. Yes, I remember now. After the surrender, you took the
name of—don’t prompt me—Mitchell, and went to the West—to
Nebraska.”

“Yassir, yassir,”—the old man’s face stretched with a delighted grin
—“dat’s him, dat’s it. Newbraska. Dat’s me—Mose Mitchell. Old Uncle
Mose Mitchell, dey calls me now. Old mars’, your pa, gimme a pah of dem
mule colts when I lef’ fur to staht me goin’ with. You ’member dem colts,
Mars’ Pendleton?”
“I don’t seem to recall the colts,” said the Major. “You know. I was
married the first year of the war and living at the old Follinsbee place. But
sit down, sit down, Uncle Mose. I’m glad to see you. I hope you have
prospered.”
Uncle Mose took a chair and laid his hat carefully on the floor beside it.
“Yessir; of late I done mouty famous. When I first got to Newbraska, dey
folks come all roun’ me to see dem mule colts. Dey ain’t see no mules like
dem in Newbraska. I sold dem mules for three hundred dollars. Yessir—
three hundred.
“Den I open a blacksmith shop, suh, and made some money and bought
some lan’. Me and my old ’oman done raised up seb’m chillun, and all
doin’ well ’cept two of ’em what died. Fo’ year ago a railroad come along
and staht a town slam ag’inst my lan’, and, suh, Mars’ Pendleton, Uncle
Mose am worth leb’m thousand dollars in money, property, and lan’.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said the Major heartily. “Glad to hear it.”
“And dat little baby of yo’n, Mars’ Pendleton—one what you name Miss
Lyddy—I be bound dat little tad done growed up tell nobody wouldn’t
know her.”
The Major stepped to the door and called: “Lydie, dear, will you come?”
Miss Lydia, looking quite grown up and a little worried, came in from her
room.
“Dar, now! What’d I tell you? I knowed dat baby done be plum growed
up. You don’t ’member Uncle Mose, child?”
“This is Aunt Cindy’s Mose, Lydia,” explained the Major. “He left
Sunnymead for the West when you were two years old.”
“Well,” said Miss Lydia, “I can hardly be expected to remember you,
Uncle Mose, at that age. And, as you say, I’m ’plum growed up,’ and was a

blessed long time ago. But I’m glad to see you, even if I can’t remember
you.”
And she was. And so was the Major. Something alive and tangible had
come to link them with the happy past. The three sat and talked over the
olden times, the Major and Uncle Mose correcting or prompting each other
as they reviewed the plantation scenes and days.
The Major inquired what the old man was doing so far from his home.
“Uncle Mose am a delicate,” he explained, “to de grand Baptis’
convention in dis city. I never preached none, but bein’ a residin’ elder in de
church, and able fur to pay my own expenses, dey sent me along.”
“And how did you know we were in Washington?” inquired Miss Lydia.
“Dey’s a cullud man works in de hotel whar I stops, what comes from
Mobile. He told me he seen Mars’ Pendleton comin’ outen dish here house
one mawnin’.
“What I come fur,” continued Uncle Mose, reaching into his pocket
—“besides de sight of home folks—was to pay Mars’ Pendleton what I
owes him.
“Yessir—three hundred dollars.” He handed the Major a roll of bills.
“When I lef’ old mars’ says: ‘‘Take dem mule colts, Mose, and, if it be so
you gits able, pay fur ’em.’ Yessir—dem was his words. De war had done
lef’ old mars’ po’ hisself. Old mars’ bein’ long ago dead, de debt descends
to Mars’ Pendleton. Three hundred dollars. Uncle Mose is plenty able to
pay now. When dat railroad buy my lan’ I laid off to pay fur dem mules.
Count de money, Mars’ Pendleton. Dat’s what I sold dem mules fur. Yessir.”
Tears were in Major Talbot’s eyes. He took Uncle Mose’s hand and laid
his other upon his shoulder.
“Dear, faithful, old servitor,” he said in an unsteady voice, “I don’t mind
saying to you that ‘‘Mars’ Pendleton spent his last dollar in the world a
week ago. We will accept this money, Uncle Mose, since, in a way, it is a
sort of payment, as well as a token of the loyalty and devotion of the old
régime. Lydia, my dear, take the money. You are better fitted than I to
manage its expenditure.”

“Take it, honey,” said Uncle Mose. “Hit belongs to you. Hit’s Talbot
money.”
After Uncle Mose had gone, Miss Lydia had a good cry—-for joy; and
the Major turned his face to a corner, and smoked his clay pipe volcanically.
The succeeding days saw the Talbots restored to peace and ease. Miss
Lydia’s face lost its worried look. The major appeared in a new frock coat,
in which he looked like a wax figure personifying the memory of his golden
age. Another publisher who read the manuscript of the Anecdotes and
Reminiscences thought that, with a little retouching and toning down of the
high lights, he could make a really bright and salable volume of it.
Altogether, the situation was comfortable, and not without the touch of
hope that is often sweeter than arrived blessings.
One day, about a week after their piece of good luck, a maid brought a
letter for Miss Lydia to her room. The postmark showed that it was from
New York. Not knowing any one there, Miss Lydia, in a mild flutter of
wonder, sat down by her table and opened the letter with her scissors. This
was what she read:

Dear Miss Talbot:
I thought you might be glad to learn of my good fortune. I
have received and accepted an offer of two hundred dollars per
week by a New York stock company to play Colonel Calhoun in
A Magnolia Flower.
There is something else I wanted you to know. I guess you’d
better not tell Major Talbot. I was anxious to make him some
amends for the great help he was to me in studying the part, and
for the bad humor he was in about it. He refused to let me, so I
did it anyhow. I could easily spare the three hundred.
Sincerely yours,
H. Hopkins Hargraves.
P.S. How did I play Uncle Mose?

Major Talbot, passing through the hall, saw Miss Lydia’s door open and
stopped.
“Any mail for us this morning, Lydia, dear?” he asked.
Miss Lydia slid the letter beneath a fold of her dress.
“The Mobile Chronicle came,” she said promptly. “It’s on the table in
your study.”

FOOTNOTES:
[24] From The Junior Munsey, February, 1902.
Republished in the volume, Sixes and Sevens
(1911), by O. Henry; copyright, 1911, by
Doubleday, Page & Co.; reprinted by their
permission.

BARGAIN DAY AT TUTT HOUSE[25]
By George Randolph Chester (1869- )

I

Just as the stage rumbled over the rickety old bridge, creaking and
groaning, the sun came from behind the clouds that had frowned all the
way, and the passengers cheered up a bit. The two richly dressed matrons
who had been so utterly and unnecessarily oblivious to the presence of each
other now suspended hostilities for the moment by mutual and unspoken
consent, and viewed with relief the little, golden-tinted valley and the tree-
clad road just beyond. The respective husbands of these two ladies
exchanged a mere glance, no more, of comfort. They, too, were relieved,
though more by the momentary truce than by anything else. They regretted
very much to be compelled to hate each other, for each had reckoned up his
vis-à-vis as a rather proper sort of fellow, probably a man of some
achievement, used to good living and good company.
Extreme iciness was unavoidable between them, however. When one
stranger has a splendidly preserved blonde wife and the other a splendidly
preserved brunette wife, both of whom have won social prominence by
years of hard fighting and aloofness, there remains nothing for the two men
but to follow the lead, especially when directly under the eyes of the
leaders.
The son of the blonde matron smiled cheerfully as the welcome light
flooded the coach.
He was a nice-looking young man, of about twenty-two, one might
judge, and he did his smiling, though in a perfectly impersonal and correct
sort of manner, at the pretty daughter of the brunette matron. The pretty

daughter also smiled, but her smile was demurely directed at the trees
outside, clad as they were in all the flaming glory of their autumn tints,
glistening with the recent rain and dripping with gems that sparkled and
flashed in the noonday sun as they fell.
It is marvelous how much one can see out of the corner of the eye, while
seeming to view mere scenery.
The driver looked down, as he drove safely off the bridge, and shook his
head at the swirl of water that rushed and eddied, dark and muddy, close up
under the rotten planking; then he cracked his whip, and the horses sturdily
attacked the little hill.
Thick, overhanging trees on either side now dimmed the light again, and
the two plump matrons once more glared past the opposite shoulders,
profoundly unaware of each other. The husbands took on the politely surly
look required of them. The blonde son’s eyes still sought the brunette
daughter, but it was furtively done and quite unsuccessfully, for the
daughter was now doing a little glaring on her own account. The blonde
matron had just swept her eyes across the daughter’s skirt, estimating the fit
and material of it with contempt so artistically veiled that it could almost be
understood in the dark.

II

The big bays swung to the brow of the hill with ease, and dashed into a
small circular clearing, where a quaint little two-story building, with a
mossy watering-trough out in front, nestled under the shade of majestic old
trees that reared their brown and scarlet crowns proudly into the sky. A
long, low porch ran across the front of the structure, and a complaining sign
hung out announcing, in dim, weather-flecked letters on a cracked board,
that this was the “Tutt House.” A gray-headed man, in brown overalls and
faded blue jumper, stood on the porch and shook his fist at the stage as it
whirled by.
“What a delightfully old-fashioned inn!” exclaimed the pretty daughter.
“How I should like to stop there over night!”
“You would probably wish yourself away before morning, Evelyn,”
replied her mother indifferently. “No doubt it would be a mere siege of

discomfort.”
The blonde matron turned to her husband. The pretty daughter had been
looking at the picturesque “inn” between the heads of this lady and her son.
“Edward, please pull down the shade behind me,” she directed. “There is
quite a draught from that broken window.”
The pretty daughter bit her lip. The brunette matron continued to stare at
the shade in the exact spot upon which her gaze had been before directed,
and she never quivered an eyelash. The young man seemed very
uncomfortable, and he tried to look his apologies to the pretty daughter, but
she could not see him now, not even if her eyes had been all corners.
They were bowling along through another avenue of trees when the
driver suddenly shouted, “Whoa there!”
The horses were brought up with a jerk that was well nigh fatal to the
assortment of dignity inside the coach. A loud roaring could be heard, both
ahead and in the rear, a sharp splitting like a fusillade of pistol shots, then a
creaking and tearing of timbers. The driver bent suddenly forward.
“Gid ap!” he cried, and the horses sprang forward with a lurch. He swung
them around a sharp bend with a skillful hand and poised his weight above
the brake as they plunged at terrific speed down a steep grade. The roaring
was louder than ever now, and it became deafening as they suddenly
emerged from the thick underbrush at the bottom of the declivity.
“Caught, by gravy!” ejaculated the driver, and, for the second time, he
brought the coach to an abrupt stop.
“Do see what is the matter, Ralph,” said the blonde matron impatiently.
Thus commanded, the young man swung out and asked the driver about
it.
“Paintsville dam’s busted,” he was informed. “I been a-lookin’ fer it this
many a year, an’ this here freshet done it. You see the holler there? Well,
they’s ten foot o’ water in it, an’ it had ort to be stone dry. The bridge is tore
out behind us, an’ we’re stuck here till that water runs out. We can’t git
away till to-morry, anyways.”

He pointed out the peculiar topography of the place, and Ralph got back
in the coach.
“We’re practically on a flood-made island,” he exclaimed, with one eye
on the pretty daughter, “and we shall have to stop over night at that quaint,
old-fashioned inn we passed a few moments ago.”
The pretty daughter’s eyes twinkled, and he thought he caught a swift,
direct gleam from under the long lashes—but he was not sure.
“Dear me, how annoying,” said the blonde matron, but the brunette
matron still stared, without the slightest trace of interest in anything else, at
the infinitesimal spot she had selected on the affronting window-shade.
The two men gave sighs of resignation, and cast carefully concealed
glances at each other, speculating on the possibility of a cigar and a glass,
and maybe a good story or two, or possibly even a game of poker after the
evening meal. Who could tell what might or might not happen?

III

When the stage drew up in front of the little hotel, it found Uncle Billy
Tutt prepared for his revenge. In former days the stage had always stopped
at the Tutt House for the noonday meal. Since the new railway was built
through the adjoining county, however, the stage trip became a mere
twelve-mile, cross-country transfer from one railroad to another, and the
stage made a later trip, allowing the passengers plenty of time for “dinner”
before they started. Day after day, as the coach flashed by with its money-
laden passengers, Uncle Billy had hoped that it would break down. But this
was better, much better. The coach might be quickly mended, but not the
flood.
“I’m a-goin’ t’ charge ’em till they squeal,” he declared to the timidly
protesting Aunt Margaret, “an’ then I’m goin’ t’ charge ’em a least mite
more, drat ’em!”
He retreated behind the rough wooden counter that did duty as a desk,
slammed open the flimsy, paper-bound “cash book” that served as a
register, and planted his elbows uncompromisingly on either side of it.

“Let ’em bring in their own traps,” he commented, and Aunt Margaret
fled, ashamed and conscience-smitten, to the kitchen. It seemed awful.
The first one out of the coach was the husband of the brunette matron,
and, proceeding under instructions, he waited neither for luggage nor
women folk, but hurried straight into the Tutt House. The other man would
have been neck and neck with him in the race, if it had not been that he
paused to seize two suitcases and had the misfortune to drop one, which
burst open and scattered a choice assortment of lingerie from one end of the
dingy coach to the other.
In the confusion of rescuing the fluffery, the owner of the suitcase had to
sacrifice her hauteur and help her husband and son block up the aisle, while
the other matron had the ineffable satisfaction of being kept waiting, at last
being enabled to say, sweetly and with the most polite consideration:
“Will you kindly allow me to pass?”
The blonde matron raised up and swept her skirts back perfectly flat. She
was pale but collected. Her husband was pink but collected. Her son was
crimson and uncollected. The brunette daughter could not have found an
eye anywhere in his countenance as she rustled out after her mother.
“I do hope that Belmont has been able to secure choice quarters,” the
triumphing matron remarked as her daughter joined her on the ground.
“This place looked so very small that there can scarcely be more than one
comfortable suite in it.”
It was a vital thrust. Only a splendidly cultivated self-control prevented
the blonde matron from retaliating upon the unfortunate who had muddled
things. Even so, her eyes spoke whole shelves of volumes.
The man who first reached the register wrote, in a straight black scrawl,
“J. Belmont Van Kamp, wife, and daughter.” There being no space left for
his address, he put none down.
“I want three adjoining rooms, en suite if possible,” he demanded.
“Three!” exclaimed Uncle Billy, scratching his head. “Won’t two do ye? I
ain’t got but six bedrooms in th’ house. Me an’ Marg’t sleeps in one, an’
we’re a-gittin’ too old fer a shake-down on th’ floor. I’ll have t’ save one
room fer th’ driver, an’ that leaves four. You take two now—-”

Mr. Van Kamp cast a hasty glance out of the window, The other man was
getting out of the coach. His own wife was stepping on the porch.
“What do you ask for meals and lodging until this time to-morrow?” he
interrupted.
The decisive moment had arrived. Uncle Billy drew a deep breath.
“Two dollars a head!” he defiantly announced. There! It was out! He
wished Margaret had stayed to hear him say it.
The guest did not seem to be seriously shocked, and Uncle Billy was
beginning to be sorry he had not said three dollars, when Mr. Van Kamp
stopped the landlord’s own breath.
“I’ll give you fifteen dollars for the three best rooms in the house,” he
calmly said, and Landlord Tutt gasped as the money fluttered down under
his nose.
“Jis’ take yore folks right on up, Mr. Kamp,” said Uncle Billy, pouncing
on the money. “Th’ rooms is th’ three right along th’ hull front o’ th’ house.
I’ll be up and make on a fire in a minute. Jis’ take th’ Jonesville Banner an’
th’ Uticky Clarion along with ye.”
As the swish of skirts marked the passage of the Van Kamps up the wide
hall stairway, the other party swept into the room.
The man wrote, in a round flourish, “Edward Eastman Ellsworth, wife,
and son.”
“I’d like three choice rooms, en suite,” he said.
“Gosh!” said Uncle Billy, regretfully. “That’s what Mr. Kamp wanted,
fust off, an’ he got it. They hain’t but th’ little room over th’ kitchen left. I’ll
have to put you an’ your wife in that, an’ let your boy sleep with th’ driver.”
The consternation in the Ellsworth party was past calculating by any
known standards of measurement. The thing was an outrage! It was not to
be borne! They would not submit to it!
Uncle Billy, however, secure in his mastery of the situation, calmly
quartered them as he had said. “An’ let ’em splutter all they want to,” he
commented comfortably to himself.