The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII

Well, that never happened. And the reason it never happened was, that poor George Schaff, with the last fatal order for this man whose name I forget (the same who was afterward killed the day before High Bridge), undertook to save time by cutting across behind my house, from Franklin to Green Streets. You know how much time he saved,—they waited all day for that order. George told me afterward that the last thing he remembered was kissing his hand to Julia, who sat at her bedroom window. He said he thought she might be the last woman he ever saw this side of heaven. Just after that, it must have been, his horse—that white Messenger colt old Williams bred—went over like a log, and poor George was pitched fifteen feet head-foremost against a stake there was in that lot. Julia saw the whole. She rushed out with all the women, and had just brought him in when I got home. And that was the reason that the great promised combination of December, 1864, never came off at all.

I walked out in the lot, after McGregor turned me out of the chamber, to see what they had done with the horse. There he lay, as dead as old Messenger himself. His neck was broken. And do you think I looked to see what had tripped him? I supposed it was one of the boys' bandy holes. It was no such thing. The poor wretch had tangled his hind legs in one of those infernal hoop-wires that Chloe had thrown out in the piece when I gave her her new ones. Though I did not know it then, those fatal scraps of rusty steel had broken the neck that day of Robert Lee's army.

That time I made a row about it. I felt too badly to go into a passion. But before the women went to bed,—they were all in the sitting-room together,—I talked to them like a father. I did not swear. I had got over that for a while, in that six weeks on my back. But I did say the old wires were infernal things, and that the house and premises must be made rid of them. The aunts laughed,—though I was so serious,—and tipped a wink to the girls. The girls wanted to laugh, but were afraid to. And then it came out that the aunts had sold their old hoops, tied as tight as they could tie them, in a great mass of rags. They had made a fortune by the sale,—I am sorry to say it was in other rags, but the rags they got were new instead of old,—it was a real Aladdin bargain. The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was fair with a peddler,—and I own I was glad the things were well out of Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them do with the old things. Did I expect them to walk down to the bridge themselves with great parcels to throw into the river, as I had done by Julia's? Of course it ended, as such things always do, by my taking the work on my own shoulders. I told them to tie up all they had in as small a parcel as they could, and bring them to me.

Accordingly, the next day, I found a handsome brown paper parcel, not so very large, considering, and strangely square, considering, which the minxes had put together and left on my office table. They had a great frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one evening with young Norton of our gallant little navy, and a very curious thing he told us.

We were talking about the disappointment of the combined land attack. I did not tell what upset poor Schaff's horse; indeed, I do not think those navy men knew the details of the disappointment. O'Brien had told me, in confidence, what I have written down probably for the first time now. But we were speaking, in a general way, of the disappointment. Norton finished his cigar rather thoughtfully, and then said: "Well, fellows, it is not worth while to put in the newspapers, but what do you suppose upset our grand naval attack, the day the Yankee gunboats skittled down the river so handsomely?"

"Why," said Allen, who is Norton's best-beloved friend, "they say that you ran away from them as fast as they did from you."

"Do they?" said Norton, grimly. "If you say that, I'll break your head for you. Seriously, men," continued he, "that was a most extraordinary thing. You know I was on the Ram. But why she stopped when she stopped I knew as little as this wineglass does; and Callender himself knew no more than I. We had not been hit. We were all right as a trivet for all we knew, when, skree! she began blowing off steam, and we stopped dead, and began to drift down under those batteries. Callender had to telegraph to the little Mosquito, or whatever Walter called his boat, and the spunky little thing ran down and got us out of the scrape. Walter did it right well; if he had had a monitor under him he could not have done better. Of course we all rushed to the engine-room. What in thunder were they at there? All they knew was they could get no water into her boiler.

"Now, fellows, this is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have such a chance again!"

Some of the men thought Norton lied. But I never was with him when he did not tell the truth. I did not mention, however, what I had thrown into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester. And I changed my mind about Sarah's "secret-service" parcel. It remained on my table.

That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe. The spring came on, and the plot thickened. We did our work in the office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other people—but no matter for that! The third of April came, and the fire, and the right wing of Grant's army. I remember I was glad then that I had moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way there. Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the powers that be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for some days. I improved those days as well as I could,—burning carefully what was to be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden. One thing that happened then belongs to this story. As I was at work on the private bureau,—it was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made Aunt Eunice give up when I broke my leg,—I came, to my horror, on a neat parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They were not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but they were like them. Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday of the flight I had sent Lafarge for these, that the President might use them, if necessary, in his escape. When I found them, I hopped out and called for Julia, and asked her if she did not remember his coming for them. "Certainly," she said, "it was the first I knew of the danger. Lafarge came, asked for the key of the office, told me all was up, walked in, and in a moment was gone."

And here, on the file of April 3d, was Fafarge's line to me:

"I got the secret-service parcel myself, and have put it in the President's own hands. I marked it, 'Gulf coast,' as you bade me."

What could Lafarge have given to the President? Not the soundings of Hatteras Bar. Not the working-drawings of the first monitor. I had all these under my hand. Could it be,—"Julia, what did we do with that stuff of Sarah's that she marked secret service?"

As I live, we had sent the girls' old hoops to the President in his flight.

And when the next day we read how he used them, and how Pritchard arrested him, we thought if he had only had the right parcel he would have found the way to Florida.

That is really the end of this memoir. But I should not have written it, but for something that happened just now on the piazza. You must know, some of us wrecks are up here at the Berkeley baths. My uncle has a place near here. Here came to-day John Sisson, whom I have not seen since Memminger ran and took the clerks with him. Here we had before, both the Richards brothers, the great paper men, you know, who started the Edgerly Works in Prince George's County, just after the war began. After dinner, Sisson and they met on the piazza. Queerly enough, they had never seen each other before, though they had used reams of Richards' paper in correspondence with each other, and the treasury had used tons of it in the printing of bonds and bank-bills. Of course we all fell to talking of old times,—old they seem now, though it is not a year ago. "Richards," said Sisson at last, "what became of that last order of ours for water-lined, pure linen government calendered paper of sureté? We never got it, and I never knew why."

"Did you think Kilpatrick got it?" said Richards, rather gruffly.

"None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue of ten per cent., convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new they were, made by some Frenchman we got, who had worked for the Bank of France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in March."

Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours, both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.

"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I tried it myself every way; back current, I tried; forward current; high feed; low feed; I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr. Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my brother, there, worked all night with the machinists, taking down the frame and the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little bit of wire,"—and he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful steel, which poor I knew so well by this time,—"that little bit of wire had passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the screens, through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife—for you see it was a knife by that time—had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson, because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."

On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I got no salary on the 1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by writing down the story.

That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hourglass parcels, was the ruin of the Confederate navy, army, ordinance, and treasury; and it led to the capture of the poor President, too.

But, Heaven be praised, no one shall say that my office did not do its duty!

THE LOST INVENTOR 4

BY WALLACE IRWINPatriotic fellow-citizens, and did you ever noteHow we honor Mr. Fulton, who devised the choo-choo boat?How we glorify our Edison, who made the world to goBy the bizzy-whizzy magic of the little dynamo?Yet no spirit-thrilling tribute has been ever heard or seenFor the fellow who invented our Political Machine.Sure a fine, inventive genius, who has labored long and hard,Till success has crowned his research, should receive a just reward.The Machine's a great invention, that's continually clear,Out of nothing but corruption making millions every year—Out of muck and filth of cities making dollars neat and clean—Where's the fellow who invented the Political Machine?Hail the complex mechanism, full of cranks and wires and wheels,Fed by graft and loot and patronage, as noiselessly it reels.Press the button, pull the lever, clickety-click, and set the vogueFor the latest thing in statesmen or the newest kind of rogue.Who's the man behind the throttle? Who's the Engineer unseen?"Ask me nothin'! Ask me nothin'!" clicks that wizard, the Machine.

OMAR IN THE KLONDYKE

BY HOWARD V. SUTHERLAND"This Omar seems a decent chap," said Flapjack Dick one night,When he had read my copy through and then blown out the light."I ain't much stuck on poetry, because I runs to news,But I appreciates a man that loves his glass of booze."And Omar here likes a good red wine, although he's pretty mum;On liquors, which is better yet, like whisky, gin, or rum;Perhaps his missus won't allow him things like that to touch,And he doesn't like to own it. Well, I don't blame Omar much."Then I likes a man what's partial to the ladies, young or old,And Omar seems to seek 'em much as me and you seek gold;I only hope for his sake that his wife don't learn his gameOr she'll put a chain on Omar, and that would be a shame."His language is some florid, but I guess it is the styleOf them writer chaps that studies and burns the midnight ile;He tells us he's no chicken; so I guess he knows what's best,And can hold his own with Shakespeare, Waukeen Miller, and the rest."But I hope he ain't a thinkin' of a trip to this yere camp,For our dancin' girls is ancient, and our liquor's somewhat dampBy doctorin' with water, and we ain't got wine at all,Though I had a drop of porter—but that was back last fall."And he mightn't like our manners, and he mightn't like the smellWhich is half the charm of Dawson; and he mightn't live to tellOf the acres of wild roses that grows on every street;And he mightn't like the winter, or he mightn't like the heat."So I guess it's best for Omar for to stay right where he is,And gallivant with Tottie, or with Flossie, or with Liz;And fill himself with claret, and, although it ain't like beer,I wish he'd send a bottle—just one bottle—to us here."

THE HAPPY LAND 5

BY FRANK ROE BATCHELDERIn the Land of Steady Incomes,        Where they get their ten per cent.,There is never need to worry        As to how to pay the rent;There they never dodge the grocer,        And in winter never freeze,In the Land of Steady Incomes,        Where the dollars grow on trees.In the Land of Steady Incomes,        Where the cash is ready-made,No one ever thinks of going        To the almoner for aid,For the coal-bin's never empty,        And the Gray Wolf dare not lurkIn the Land of Steady Incomes,        Where the check-books do the work.In the Land of Steady Incomes,        Where the watches all have fobs,You will see no haggard fathers        Pleading, in despair, for jobs;You will hear no hungry children        Crying, while their mothers pray,In the Land of Steady Incomes,        Where there's dinner every day.In the Land of Steady Incomes,        It is easy to forgetAll about that far-off country        Where are hunger, cold, and debt;And the woes of other people        It is easy to dismissIn the Land of Steady Incomes,        Where inheritance is bliss.

ASSAULT AND BATTERY

BY JOSEPH G. BALDWIN

A trial came off, not precisely in our bailiwick, but in the neighborhood, of great comic interest. It was really a case of a good deal of aggravation, and the defendants, fearing the result, employed four of the ablest lawyers practicing at the M. bar to defend them. The offense charged was only assault and battery; but the evidence showed a conspiracy to inflict great violence on the person of the prosecutor, who had done nothing to provoke it, and that the attempt to effect it was followed by severe injury to him. The prosecutor was an original. He had been an old-field school-master, and was as conceited and pedantic a fellow as could be found in a summer's day, even in that profession. It was thought the policy of the defense to make as light of the case as possible, and to cast as much ridicule on the affair as they could. J.E. and W.M. led the defense, and, although the talents of the former were rather adapted to grave discussion than pleasantry, he agreed to doff his heavy armor for the lighter weapons of wit and ridicule. M. was in his element. He was at all times and on all occasions at home when fun was to be raised: the difficulty with him was rather to restrain than to create mirth and laughter. The case was called and put to the jury. The witness, one Burwell Shines, was called for the prosecution. A broad grin was upon the faces of the counsel for the defense as he came forward. It was increased when the clerk said, "Burrell Shines, come to the book;" and the witness, with deliberate emphasis, remarked, "My Christian name is not Burrell, but Burwell, though I am vulgarly denominated by the former epithet." "Well," said the clerk, "Bur-well Shines, come to the book, and be sworn." He was sworn, and directed to take the stand. He was a picture!

He was dressed with care. His toilet was elaborate and befitting the magnitude and dignity of the occasion, the part he was to fill, and the high presence into which he had come. He was evidently favorably impressed with his own personal pulchritude; yet with an air of modest deprecation, as if he said by his manner, "After all, what is beauty, that man should be proud of it; and what are fine clothes, that the wearers should put themselves above the unfortunate mortals who have them not?"

He advanced with deliberate gravity to the stand. There he stood, his large bell-crowned hat, with nankeen-colored nap an inch long, in his hand; which hat he carefully handed over the bar to the clerk to hold until he should get through his testimony. He wore a blue single-breasted coat with new brass buttons, a vest of bluish calico, nankeen pants that struggled to make both ends meet, but failed, by a few inches, in the legs, yet made up for it by fitting a little better than the skin everywhere else. His head stood upon a shirt collar that held it up by the ears, and a cravat, something smaller than a table-cloth, bandaged his throat; his face was narrow, long, and grave, with an indescribable air of ponderous wisdom, which, as Fox said of Thurlow, "proved him necessarily a hypocrite; as it was impossible for any man to be as wise as he looked." Gravity and decorum marked every lineament of his countenance and every line of his body. All the wit of Hudibras could not have moved a muscle of his face. His conscience would have smitten him for a laugh almost as soon as for an oath. His hair was roached up, and stood as erect and upright as his body; and his voice was slow, deep, in "linked sweetness long drawn out," and modulated according to the camp-meeting standard of elocution. Three such men at a country frolic would have turned an old Virginia reel into a dead march. He was one of Carlyle's earnest men. Cromwell would have made him ensign of the Ironsides, and ex-officio chaplain at first sight. He took out his pocket-handkerchief, slowly unfolded it from the shape in which it came from the washerwoman's, and awaited the interrogation. As he waited, he spat on the floor, and nicely wiped it out with his foot. The solicitor told him to tell about the difficulty in hand. He gazed around on the court, then on the bar, then on the jury, then on the crowd, addressing each respectively as he turned: "May it please your honor, gentlemen of the bar, gentlemen of the jury, audience: Before proceeding to give my testimonial observations, I must premise that I am a member of the Methodist Episcopal, otherwise called Wesleyan, persuasion of Christian individuals. One bright Sabbath morning in May, the 15th day of the month, the past year, while the birds were singing their matutinal songs from the trees, I sallied forth from the dormitory of my seminary to enjoy the reflections so well suited to that auspicious occasion. I had not proceeded far before my ears were accosted with certain Bacchanalian sounds of revelry, which proceeded from one of those haunts of vicious depravity located at the cross-roads, near the place of my boyhood, and fashionably denominated a doggery. No sooner had I passed beyond the precincts of this diabolical rendezvous of rioting debauchees, than I heard behind me the sounds of approaching footsteps, as if in pursuit. Having heard previously sundry menaces, which had been made by these preposterous and incarnadine individuals of hell, now on trial in prospect of condign punishment, fulminated against the longer continuance of my corporeal salubrity, for no better reason than that I reprobated their criminal orgies, and not wishing my reflections to be disturbed, I hurried my steps with a gradual accelerated motion. Hearing, however, their continued advance, and the repeated shoutings, articulating the murderous accents, 'Kill him! Kill Shadbelly, with his praying clothes on!' (which was a profane designation of myself and my religious profession), and casting my head over my left shoulder in a manner somehow reluctantly, thus, (throwing his head to one side), and perceiving their near approximation, I augmented my speed into what might be denominated a gentle slope, and subsequently augmented the same into a species of dog-trot. But all would not do. Gentlemen, the destroyer came. As I reached the fence, and was about propelling my body over the same, felicitating myself on my prospect of escape from my remorseless pursuers, they arrived, and James William Jones, called by nickname, Buck Jones, that red-headed character now at the bar of this honorable court, seized a fence rail, grasped it in both hands, and, standing on tip-toe, hurled the same, with mighty emphasis, against my cerebellum, which blow felled me to the earth. Straightway, like ignoble curs upon a disabled lion, these bandit ruffians and incarnadine assassins leaped upon me, some pelting, some bruising, some gouging,—'everything by turns, and nothing long,' as the poet hath it; and one of them,—which one unknown to me, having no eyes behind,—inflicted with his teeth a grievous wound upon my person; where, I need not specify. At length, when thus prostrate on the ground, one of those bright ideas, common to minds of men of genius, struck me. I forthwith sprang to my feet, drew forth my cutto, circulated the same with much vivacity among their several and respective corporeal systems, and every time I circulated the same I felt their iron grasp relax. As cowardly recreants, even to their own guilty friendships, two of these miscreants, though but slightly perforated by my cutto, fled, leaving the other two, whom I had disabled by the vigor and energy of my incisions, prostrate and in my power. These lustily called for quarter, shouting out 'Enough!' or, in their barbarous dialect, being as corrupt in language as in morals, 'Nuff!' which quarter I magnanimously extended them, as unworthy of my farther vengeance, and fit only as subject of penal infliction at the hands of the offended laws of their country, to which laws I do now consign them, hoping such mercy for them as their crimes will permit; which, in my judgment (having read the code) is not much. This is my statement on oath, fully and truly, nothing extenuating and naught setting down in malice; and if I have omitted anything, in form or substance, I stand ready to supply the omission; and if I have stated anything amiss, I will cheerfully correct the same, limiting the averment, with appropriate modifications, provisions, and restrictions. The learned counsel may now proceed more particularly to interrogate me of and respecting the premises."