Curious Republic of Gondour



by Mark Twain









THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR AND OTHER WHIMSICAL SKETCHES





NOTE:



Most of the sketches in this volume were taken from a series the author

wrote for The Galaxy from May, 1870, to April, 1871.  The rest appeared

in The Buffalo Express.









TABLE OF CONTENTS



THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR

A MEMORY

INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA".

ABOUT SMELT

A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES

DAN MURPHY

THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870

CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE

A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS

A ROYAL COMPLIMENT

THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC

THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE

OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC

THE EUROPEAN WAR

THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED

LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN









THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR



As soon as I had learned to speak the language a little, I became greatly

interested in the people and the system of government.



I found that the nation had at first tried universal suffrage pure and

simple, but had thrown that form aside because the result was not

satisfactory.  It had seemed to deliver all power into the hands of the

ignorant and non-tax-paying classes; and of a necessity the responsible

offices were filled from these classes also.



A remedy was sought.  The people believed they had found it; not in the

destruction of universal suffrage, but in the enlargement of it.  It was

an odd idea, and ingenious.  You must understand, the constitution gave

every man a vote; therefore that vote was a vested right, and could not

be taken away.  But the constitution did not say that certain individuals

might not be given two votes, or ten!  So an amendatory clause was

inserted in a quiet way; a clause which authorised the enlargement of the

suffrage in certain cases to be specified by statute.  To offer to

"limit" the suffrage might have made instant trouble; the offer to

"enlarge" it had a pleasant aspect.  But of course the newspapers soon

began to suspect; and then out they came!  It was found, however, that

for once--and for the first time in the history of the republic--

property, character, and intellect were able to wield a political

influence; for once, money, virtue, and intelligence took a vital and a

united interest in a political question; for once these powers went to

the "primaries" in strong force; for once the best men in the nation were

put forward as candidates for that parliament whose business it should be

to enlarge the suffrage.  The weightiest half of the press quickly joined

forces with the new movement, and left the other half to rail about the

proposed "destruction of the liberties" of the bottom layer of society,

the hitherto governing class of the community.



The victory was complete.  The new law was framed and passed.  Under it

every citizen, howsoever poor or ignorant, possessed one vote,

so universal suffrage still reigned; but if a man possessed a good

common-school education and no money, he had two votes; a high-school

education gave him four; if he had property like wise, to the value of

three thousand 'sacos,' he wielded one more vote; for every fifty

thousand 'sacos' a man added to his property, he was entitled to another

vote; a university education entitled a man to nine votes, even though he

owned no property.  Therefore, learning being more prevalent and more

easily acquired than riches, educated men became a wholesome check upon

wealthy men, since they could outvote them.  Learning goes usually with

uprightness, broad views, and humanity; so the learned voters, possessing

the balance of power, became the vigilant and efficient protectors of the

great lower rank of society.



And now a curious thing developed itself--a sort of emulation, whose

object was voting power!  Whereas formerly a man was honored only

according to the amount of money he possessed, his grandeur was measured

now by the number of votes he wielded.  A man with only one vote was

conspicuously respectful to his neighbor who possessed three.  And if he

was a man above the common-place, he was as conspicuously energetic in

his determination to acquire three for himself.  This spirit of emulation

invaded all ranks.  Votes based upon capital were commonly called

"mortal" votes, because they could be lost; those based upon learning

were called "immortal," because they were permanent, and because of their

customarily imperishable character they were naturally more valued than

the other sort.  I say "customarily" for the reason that these votes were

not absolutely imperishable, since insanity could suspend them.



Under this system, gambling and speculation almost ceased in the

republic.  A man honoured as the possessor of great voting power could

not afford to risk the loss of it upon a doubtful chance.



It was curious to observe the manners and customs which the enlargement

plan produced.  Walking the street with a friend one day he delivered a

careless bow to a passer-by, and then remarked that that person possessed

only one vote and would probably never earn another; he was more

respectful to the next acquaintance he met; he explained that this salute

was a four-vote bow.  I tried to "average" the importance of the people

he accosted after that, by the-nature of his bows, but my success was

only partial, because of the somewhat greater homage paid to the

immortals than to the mortals.  My friend explained.  He said there was

no law to regulate this thing, except that most powerful of all laws,

custom.  Custom had created these varying bows, and in time they had

become easy and natural.  At this moment he delivered himself of a very

profound salute, and then said, "Now there's a man who began life as a

shoemaker's apprentice, and without education; now he swings twenty-two

mortal votes and two immortal ones; he expects to pass a high-school

examination this year and climb a couple of votes higher among the

immortals; mighty valuable citizen."



By and by my friend met a venerable personage, and not only made him a

most elaborate bow, but also took off his hat.  I took off mine, too,

with a mysterious awe.  I was beginning to be infected.



"What grandee is that?"



"That is our most illustrious astronomer.  He hasn't any money, but is

fearfully learned.  Nine immortals is his political weight!  He would

swing a hundred and fifty votes if our system were perfect."



"Is there any altitude of mere moneyed: grandeur that you take off your

hat to?"



"No.  Nine immortal votes is the only power we uncover for that is, in

civil life.  Very great officials receive that mark of homage, of

course."



It was common to hear people admiringly mention men who had begun life on

the lower levels and in time achieved great voting-power.  It was also

common to hear youths planning a future of ever so many votes for

themselves.  I heard shrewd mammas speak of certain young men as good

"catches" because they possessed such-and-such a number of votes.  I knew

of more than one case where an heiress was married to a youngster who had

but one vote; the argument being that he was gifted with such excellent

parts that in time he would acquire a good voting strength, and perhaps

in the long run be able to outvote his wife, if he had luck.



Competitive examinations were the rule and in all official grades.  I

remarked that the questions asked the candidates were wild, intricate,

and often required a sort of knowledge not needed in the office sought.



"Can a fool or an ignoramus answer them?" asked the person I was talking

with.



"Certainly not."



"Well, you will not find any fools or ignoramuses among our officials."



I felt rather cornered, but made shift to say:



"But these questions cover a good deal more ground than is necessary."



"No matter; if candidates can answer these it is tolerably fair evidence

that they can answer nearly any other question you choose to ask them."



There were some things in Gondour which one could not shut his eyes to.

One was, that ignorance and incompetence had no place in the government.

Brains and property managed the state.  A candidate for office must have

marked ability, education, and high character, or he stood no sort of

chance of election.  If a hod-carrier possessed these, he could succeed;

but the mere fact that he was a hod-carrier could not elect him, as in

previous times.



It was now a very great honour to be in the parliament or in office;

under the old system such distinction had only brought suspicion upon a

man and made him a helpless mark for newspaper contempt and scurrility.

Officials did not need to steal now, their salaries being vast in

comparison with the pittances paid in the days when parliaments were

created by hod-carriers, who viewed official salaries from a hod-carrying

point of view and compelled that view to be respected by their obsequious

servants.  Justice was wisely and rigidly administered; for a judge,

after once reaching his place through the specified line of promotions,

was a permanency during good behaviour.  He was not obliged to modify his

judgments according to the effect they might have upon the temper of a

reigning political party.



The country was mainly governed by a ministry which went out with the

administration that created it.  This was also the case with the chiefs

of the great departments.  Minor officials ascended to their several

positions through well-earned promotions, and not by a jump from gin-

mills or the needy families and friends of members of parliament.  Good

behaviour measured their terms of office.



The head of the governments the Grand Caliph, was elected for a term of

twenty years.  I questioned the wisdom of this.  I was answered that he

could do no harm, since the ministry and the parliament governed the

land, and he was liable to impeachment for misconduct.  This great office

had twice been ably filled by women, women as aptly fitted for it as some

of the sceptred queens of history.  Members of the cabinet, under many

administrations, had been women.



I found that the pardoning power was lodged in a court of pardons,

consisting of several great judges.  Under the old regime, this important

power was vested in a single official, and he usually took care to have a

general jail delivery in time for the next election.



I inquired about public schools.  There were plenty of them, and of free

colleges too.  I inquired about compulsory education.  This was received

with a smile, and the remark:



"When a man's child is able to make himself powerful and honoured

according to the amount of education he acquires, don't you suppose that

that parent will apply the compulsion himself?  Our free schools and free

colleges require no law to fill them."



There was a loving pride of country about this person's way of speaking

which annoyed me.  I had long been unused to the sound of it in my own.

The Gondour national airs were forever dinning in my ears; therefore I

was glad to leave that country and come back to my dear native land,

where one never hears that sort of music.













A MEMORY,



When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamoured of but one

poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons who knew him

will easily believe me; when I say that I have never composed but one

poem in all the long third of a century that I have lived, persons who

know me will be sincerely grateful; and finally, when I say that the poem

which I composed was not the one which my father was enamoured of,

persons who may have known us both will not need to have this truth shot

into them with a mountain howitzer before they can receive it.  My father

and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy--a sort of

armed neutrality so to speak.  At irregular intervals this neutrality was

broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the

breaking and the suffering were always divided up with, strict

impartiality between us--which is to say, my father did the breaking, and

I did the suffering.  As a general thing I was a backward, cautious,

unadventurous boy; but I once jumped off a two-story table; another time

I gave an elephant a "plug" of tobacco and retired without waiting for an

answer; and still another time I pretended to be talking in my sleep, and

got off a portion of a very wretched original conundrum in the hearing of

my father.  Let us not pry into the result; it was of no consequence to

any one but me.



But the poem I have referred to as attracting my father's attention and

achieving his favour was "Hiawatha."  Some man who courted a sudden and

awful death presented him an early copy, and I never lost faith in my own

senses until I saw him sit down and go to reading it in cold blood--saw

him open the book, and heard him read these following lines, with the

same inflectionless judicial frigidity with which he always read his

charge to the jury, or administered an oath to a witness:



                    Take your bow,

                    O Hiawatha,

                    Take your arrows, jasper-headed,

                    Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,

                    And your mittens, Minjekahwan,

                    And your birch canoe for sailing,

                    And the oil of Mishe-Nama."



Presently my father took out of his breast pocket an imposing "Warranty

Deed," and fixed his eyes upon it and dropped into meditation.  I knew

what it was.  A Texan lady and gentleman had given my half-brother, Orrin

Johnson, a handsome property in a town in the North, in gratitude to him

for having saved their lives by an act of brilliant heroism.



By and by my father looked towards me and sighed.  Then he said:



"If I had such a son as this poet, here were a subject worthier than the

traditions of these Indians."



"If you please, sir, where?"



"In this deed."



"Yes--in this very deed," said my father, throwing it on the table.

"There is more poetry, more romance, more sublimity, more splendid

imagery hidden away in that homely document than could be found in all

the traditions of all the savages that live."



"Indeed, sir?  Could I--could I get it out, sir?  Could I compose the

poem, sir, do you think?"



"You?"



I wilted.



Presently my father's face softened somewhat, and he said:



"Go and try.  But mind, curb folly.  No poetry at the expense of truth.

Keep strictly to the facts."



I said I would, and bowed myself out, and went upstairs.



"Hiawatha" kept droning in my head--and so did my father's remarks about

the sublimity and romance hidden in my subject, and also his injunction

to beware of wasteful and exuberant fancy.  I noticed, just here, that I

had heedlessly brought the deed away with me; now at this moment came to

me one of those rare moods of daring recklessness, such as I referred to

a while ago.  Without another thought, and in plain defiance of the fact

that I knew my father meant me to write the romantic story of my half-

brother's adventure and subsequent good fortune, I ventured to heed

merely the letter of his remarks and ignore their spirit.  I took the

stupid "Warranty Deed" itself and chopped it up into Hiawathian blank

verse without altering or leaving out three words, and without

transposing six.  It required loads of courage to go downstairs and face

my father with my performance.  I started three or four times before I

finally got my pluck to where it would stick.  But at last I said I would

go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it.

I stood up to begin, and he told me to come closer.  I edged up a little,

but still left as much neutral ground between us as I thought he would

stand.  Then I began.  It would be useless for me to try to tell what

conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how they

grew more and more intense, as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness

descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his

hands began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with the

strength ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling under me:



                    THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED



                    THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth

                    Day of November, in the year

                    Of our Lord one thousand eight

                    Hundred six-and-fifty,



                    Between Joanna S. E. Gray

                    And Philip Gray, her husband,

                    Of Salem City in the State

                    Of Texas, of the first part,



                    And O. B. Johnson, of the town

                    Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH:

                    That said party of first part,

                    For and in consideration



                    Of the sum of Twenty Thousand

                    Dollars, lawful money of

                    The U. S.  of Americay,

                    To them in hand now paid by said



                    Party of the second part,

                    The due receipt whereof is here-

                    By confessed and acknowledg-ed

                    Having Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised,



                    Released and Aliened and Conveyed,

                    Confirmed, and by these presents do

                    Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise,

                    Alien, Release, Convey, and Con-



                    Firm unto the said aforesaid

                    Party of the second part,

                    And to his heirs and assigns

                    Forever and ever ALL



                    That certain lot or parcel of

                    LAND situate in city of

                    Dunkirk, County of Chautauqua,

                    And likewise furthermore in York State



                    Bounded and described, to-wit,

                    As follows, herein, namely

                    BEGINNING at the distance of

                    A hundred two-and-forty feet,



                    North-half-east, north-east-by north,

                    East-north-east and northerly

                    Of the northerly line of Mulligan street

                    On the westerly line of Brannigan street,



                    And running thence due northerly

                    On Brannigan street 200 feet,

                    Thence at right angles westerly,

                    North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west,



                    West-and-by-north, north-west-by-west,

                    About--



I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the looking-glass.  I could

have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to,

but I took no interest in such things.













INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA"



In taking upon myself the burden of editing a department in THE GALAXY

magazine, I have been actuated by a conviction that I was needed, almost

imperatively, in this particular field of literature.  I have long felt

that while the magazine literature of the day had much to recommend it,

it yet lacked stability, solidity, weight.  It seemed plain to me that

too much space was given to poetry and romance, and not enough to

statistics and agriculture.  This defect it shall be my earnest endeavour

to remedy.  If I succeed, the simple consciousness that I have done a

good deed will be a sufficient reward.** --[**Together with salary.]



In this department of mine the public may always rely upon finding

exhaustive statistical tables concerning the finances of the country,

the ratio of births and deaths; the percentage of increase of population,

etc., etc.--in a word, everything in the realm of statistics that can

make existence bright and beautiful.



Also, in my department will always be found elaborate condensations of

the Patent Office Reports, wherein a faithful endeavour will at all times

be made to strip the nutritious facts bare of that effulgence of

imagination and sublimity of diction which too often mar the excellence

of those great works.** --[** N. B.--No other magazine in the country

makes a specialty of the Patent Office Reports.]



In my department will always be found ample excerpts from those able

dissertations upon Political Economy which I have for a long time been

contributing to a great metropolitan journal, and which, for reasons

utterly incomprehensible to me, another party has chosen to usurp the

credit of composing.



And, finally, I call attention with pride to the fact that in my

department of the magazine the farmer will always find full market

reports, and also complete instructions about farming, even from the

grafting of the seed to the harrowing of the matured crop.  I shall throw

a pathos into the subject of Agriculture that will surprise and delight

the world.



Such is my programme; and I am persuaded that by adhering to it with

fidelity I shall succeed in materially changing the character of this

magazine.  Therefore I am emboldened to ask the assistance and

encouragement of all whose sympathies are with Progress and Reform.



In the other departments of the magazine will be found poetry, tales, and

other frothy trifles, and to these the reader can turn for relaxation

from time to time, and thus guard against overstraining the powers of his

mind.

                                                  M. T.



P. S.--1.  I have not sold out of the "Buffalo Express," and shall not;

neither shall I stop writing for it.  This remark seems necessary in a

business point of view.



2.  These MEMORANDA are not a "humorous" department.  I would not conduct

an exclusively and professedly humorous department for any one.  I would

always prefer to have the privilege of printing a serious and sensible

remark, in case one occurred to me, without the reader's feeling obliged

to consider himself outraged.  We cannot keep the same mood day after

day.  I am liable, some day, to want to print my opinion on

jurisprudence, or Homeric poetry, or international law, and I shall do

it.  It will be of small consequence to me whether the reader survive or

not.  I shall never go straining after jokes when in a cheerless mood, so

long as the unhackneyed subject of international law is open to me.

I will leave all that straining to people who edit professedly and

inexorably "humorous" departments and publications.



3.  I have chosen the general title of MEMORANDA for this department

because it is plain and simple, and makes no fraudulent promises.  I can

print under it statistics, hotel arrivals, or anything that comes handy,

without violating faith with the reader.



4.  Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department.  Inoffensive

ignorance, benignant stupidity, and unostentatious imbecility will always

be welcomed and cheerfully accorded a corner, and even the feeblest

humour will be admitted, when we can do no better; but no circumstances,

however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the

admission of that last--and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the

Pun.













ABOUT SMELLS



In a recent issue of the "Independent," the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of

Brooklyn, has the following utterance on the subject of "Smells":



     I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in

     church, and a working man should enter the door at the other end,

     would smell him instantly.  My friend is not to blame for the

     sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer

     for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog.  The fact is,

     if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing up of the

     common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of

     Christendom sick at their stomach.  If you are going to kill the

     church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do with this

     work of evangelization.



We have reason to believe that there will be labouring men in heaven; and

also a number of negroes, and Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and

Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly even some Spaniards and

Portuguese.  All things are possible with God.  We shall have all these

sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in getting them we shall lose the

society of Dr. Talmage.  Which is to say, we shall lose the company of

one who could give more real "tone" to celestial society than any other

contribution Brooklyn could furnish.  And what would eternal happiness be

without the Doctor?  Blissful, unquestionably--we know that well enough

but would it be 'distingue,' would it be 'recherche' without him?  St.

Matthew without stockings or sandals; St. Jerome bare headed, and with a

coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with

scarcely any raiment at all--these we should see, and should enjoy seeing

them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away

regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough,

but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn."  I fear me that in the better

world we shall not even have Dr. Talmage's "good Christian friend."



For if he were sitting under the glory of the Throne, and the keeper of

the keys admitted a Benjamin Franklin or other labouring man, that

"friend," with his fine natural powers infinitely augmented by

emancipation from hampering flesh, would detect him with a single sniff,

and immediately take his hat and ask to be excused.



To all outward seeming, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is of the same

material as that used in the construction of his early predecessors in

the ministry; and yet one feels that there must be a difference somewhere

between him and the Saviour's first disciples.  It may be because here,

in the nineteenth century, Dr. T.  has had advantages which Paul and

Peter and the others could not and did not have.  There was a lack of

polish about them, and a looseness of etiquette, and a want of

exclusiveness, which one cannot help noticing.  They healed the very

beggars, and held intercourse with people of a villainous odour every

day.  If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original

Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with the rest, because he

could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came

from around the Sea of Galilee.  He would have resigned his commission

with some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master,

if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad smells, I will have

nothing to do with this work of evangelization."  He is a disciple, and

makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is, that he makes it

in the nineteenth instead of the first century.



Is there a choir in Mr. T.'s church?  And does it ever occur that they

have no better manners than to sing that hymn which is so suggestive of

labourers and mechanics:



          "Son of the Carpenter! receive

          This humble work of mine?"



Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian

character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the

stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers

and wilts under an unsavoury smell?  We are not prepared to believe so,

the reverend Doctor and his friend to the contrary notwithstanding.













A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES



When I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an

Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to

deceive anybody.  I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's

confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who

will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless

inventions that go by that name.  I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly

and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not

mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal

barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree

whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches

should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc.  I

thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader.  But to

make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously

mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my

postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture.  But alas!

right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that remark seems to

have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else.  It

lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers

feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of

agricultural editors who "know it all."  In fact, one of my

correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with

letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and

maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever

grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way

of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful,

and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).



Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in

fooling so many people?  It is because some of them only read a little of

the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and

the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at

second-hand.  Those cases I could not guard against, of course.  To write

a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in

perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to

do.  It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never

tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one

to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only

person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque.  In other

instances the "nub" or moral of the burlesque--if its object be to

enforce a truth--escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the

body of the burlesque itself.  And very often this "moral" is tagged on

at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the

whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly

turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread.  One can deliver a satire

with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is

careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the

travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked

and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his

knowledge or his wisdom.  I have had a deal of experience in burlesques

and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I

tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly

palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak

the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in

America!













DAN MURPHY



One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the

banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war.  Dan Murphy

enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely.  The boys all liked him,

and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was

too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a

sutler.  He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for

him.  She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to

keep money when she got it.  She didn't waste a penny.  On the contrary,

she began to get miserly as her bank account grew.  She grieved to part

with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had

known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a

dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again.

Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and

respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs.  Murphy to know if she would like to

have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to

dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his

friends what had become of him.  Mrs.  Murphy jumped to the conclusion

that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband,

and so she telegraphed "Yes."  It was at the "wake" that the bill for

embalming arrived and was presented to the widow.  She uttered a wild,

sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for

stoofhn' Dan, blister their sowls!  Did thim divils suppose I was goin'

to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!"



The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.













THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A. D. 1870



Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the

customary universal round of the press:



     A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional

     site of the Garden of Eden.



As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:



     Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages.



It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest

achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating away

about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart and

home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of that

happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our

ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel

trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high noon of the

nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake city

and an advanced civilisation.



A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension of

the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such a

spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his powers.  Brooklyn is part and

parcel of the city of New York, and there is hardly romance enough in the

entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight" with "chivalry," in

case he happened to run out of it.  Let the reader calmly and

dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds,

pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling of

the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks,

ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable

patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as "steeds,"

"destriers," and "chargers," and divested of their friendly, humble names

these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed "Mohammed,"

"Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with

swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste board hauberks,

morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir"

Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight,"

the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight of the Blue Ridge," the "Knight

of Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and at

the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a

post, and prodding at it in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and

by skewering it and cavorting back to the judges' stand covered with

glory this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and

promptly announced by an applauding toot from the herald's horn, and "the

band playing three bars of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad

daylight.  And let the reader remember, and also add to his picture, as

follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the party who had shed the

most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at

least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient

privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which

naming had in reality been done for, him by the "cut-and-dried" process,

and long in advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in

person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the

county hospital on a shutter to have his wounds dressed--these curious

things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two

yesterdays.  It seems impossible, and yet it is true.



This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here among

the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last.  It will

be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia,

where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured, maiden-

rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is

accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while

they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby history

exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond; and an

ignoramus.



All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the heroes of Ashby

de la Zouch be likely to take, in this practical age, if those worthies

were to rise up and come here and perform again the chivalrous deeds of

that famous passage of arms?  Nothing but a New York jury and the

insanity plea could save them from hanging, from the amiable Bois-

Guilbert and the pleasant Front-de-Boeuf clear down to the nameless

ruffians that entered the riot with unpictured shields and did their

first murder and acquired their first claim to respect that day.  The

doings of the so-called "chivalry" of the Middle Ages were absurd enough,

even when they were brutally and bloodily in earnest, and when their

surroundings of castles and donjons, savage landscapes and half-savage

peoples, were in keeping; but those doings gravely reproduced with tinsel

decorations and mock pageantry, by bucolic gentlemen with broomstick

lances, and with muffin-rings to represent the foe, and all in the midst

of the refinement and dignity of a carefully-developed modern

civilisation, is absurdity gone crazy.



Now, for next exhibition, let us have a fine representation of one of

those chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women and

children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in

their European homes, just before starting to the Holy Land, to seize and

take to their protection the Sepulchre and defend it from "pollution."













CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE



     "For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows

     and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe,

     procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have

     once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor.  Parties

     desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing,

     can do so by calling upon Daniel S.. 119 and 121 William street, New

     York"



As per advertisement in the "Herald."  A curious old relic indeed, as I

had a good personal right to know.  In a single instant of time, a long

drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my

memory--town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each

other and disappearing, leaping me with a little of the surprised and

dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long

express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car

by car, around the corner and out of sight.  In that prolific instant I

saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to

Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of

Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean.  Leaving out unimportant stretches of

country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following-

described matters and things.  Immediately three years fell away from my

age, and a vanished time was restored to me September, 1867.  It was a

flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and

brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and

our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which

still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the

rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose

himself for his usual noon nap.  My! only fifteen minutes before how the

black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted,

besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling,

wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had

swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the

earth, and blocked our horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the

animals' path, clung to their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking,

beseeching, demanding "bucksheesh!  bucksheesh!  BUCKSHEESH!"  We had

rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats

and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as they

stopped to scramble for the largess.  I was fervently thankful when we

had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left

them jawing and gesticulating in the rear.  What a tempest had seemingly

gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my

ears!



I was in the rear, as I was saying.  Our pack-mules and Arabs were far

ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names

will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close after

them.  As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me,

and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me

--a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch--a

galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with

ophthalmia and leprous scars--an airy creature with an invisible shirt-

front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other clothing to

speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a venerable

gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came within

shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress.



I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human heart in it is going

to shoot me."  I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to

touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown

off for his pains.  But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy

language, "Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and fetch

me with the butt-end of it?"  There was wisdom in that view of it, and I

stopped to parley.  I found he was only a friendly villain who wanted a

trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way,

was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had for more.  I believe

he would have parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had

one.  He was smoking the "humbliest" pipe I ever saw--a dingy, funnel-

shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of

tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty

per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition.  And

rank?  I never smelt anything like it.  It withered a cactus that stood

lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail.  It even woke up my

horse.  I said I would take that.  It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek,

a brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won

upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most

unspeakably villainous tobacco to me as a free gift.  What a pipe it was,

to be sure!  It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse

iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to

loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with.  The stem looked like the

half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on.



I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as soon

as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it.  Moreover, I asked the

Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic

that it was.  I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking.  And presently

I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could make a

man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected

whiff from this pipe would do it."  I smoked along till I found I was

beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one

pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off

my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and shortly came tearing

through our caravan like a hurricane.



From that time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan,

Bethany, Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and

enjoyed my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villany.  But at the

end of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over

the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that

Samson knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at

night, and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon.  It was

perfectly jolly for three hours, and we whites crowded along together,

close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the pack-animals and the other

Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued

hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul

speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven.  But by and by

the night air, and the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the

saddle, began to tell, and conversation flagged and finally died out

utterly.  The squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very distinct;

occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up;

now and then a horse sneezed.  These things only emphasised the solemnity

and the stillness.  Everybody got so listless that for once I and my

dreamer found ourselves in the lead.  It was a glad, new sensation, and

I longed to keep the place forevermore.  Every little stir in the dingy

cavalcade behind made me nervous.  Davis and I were riding side by side,

right after the Arab.  About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and

the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah

yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster.  I gave it up then,

and my heart sank within me, because of course they would come up to

scold the Arab.  I knew I had to take the rear again.  In my sorrow I

unconsciously took to my pipe, my only comfort.  As I touched the match

to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump

and flanks.  A whiff of smoke drifted back over my shoulder, and--



"The suffering Moses!"



"Whew!"



"By George, who opened that graveyard?"



"Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!"



Right away there was a gap behind us.  Whiff after whiff sailed airily

back, and each one widened the breach.  Within fifteen seconds the

barking, and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their

angry abuse of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I

were alone with the leader.  Davis did not know what the matter was, and

don't to this day.  Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and

fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying

in that way.  Our boys kept on dropping back further and further, till at

last they were only in hearing, not in sight.  And every time they

started gingerly forward to reconnoitre or shoot the Arab, as they

proposed to do--I let them get within good fair range of my relic (she

would carry seventy yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted a

whiff among them that sent them gasping and strangling to the rear again.

I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice within the hour I decoyed

the boys right up to my horse's tail, and then with one malarious blast

emptied the saddles, almost.  I never heard an Arab abused so in my life.

He really owed his preservation to me, because for one entire hour I

stood between him and certain death.  The boys would have killed him if

they could have got by me.



By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe--

I was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown

with good diligent work--and spurred my animated trance up alongside the

Arab and stopped him and asked for water.  He unslung his little gourd-

shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took a long,

glorious, satisfying draught.  I was going to scour the mouth of the jug

a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together once more

by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too-and would have

been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of water.

So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis.  He took a mouthful, and never

said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in the road.

I felt sorry for Davis.  It was too late now, though, and Dan was

drinking.  Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place.  I thought I

heard Dan say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or else

take him out and bury him somewhere."  All the boys took a drink and

climbed down.  It is not well to go into further particulars.  Let us

draw the curtain upon this act.



               ..............................



Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from

that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for the

benefit of a benevolent object.  Dan is not treating that present right.

I gave that pipe to him for a keepsake.  However, he probably finds that

it keeps away custom and interferes with business.  It is the most

convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps.  Dan

and I were roommates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and whenever

I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that

pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his

clothes, either.  In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a

minute, be would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and

cursing.  I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?













A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS



Now that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of the

deceased approvingly was a brick-every way you took him he was a brick.

He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last

moments.  Friends wanted metallic burial case--nothing else would do.

I couldn't get it.  There warn't going to be time anybody could see that.

Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch

out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it.

Said he went more on room than style, any way, in the last final

container.  Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying

who he was and wher, he was from.  Now you know a fellow couldn't roust

out such a gaily thing as that in a little country town like this.  What

did corpse say?  Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address

and general destination onto it with a blacking brush and a stencil

plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for

the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him skip along.  He warn't

distressed any more than you be--on the contrary just as carm and

collected as a hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to,

a body would find it considerable better to attract attention by a

picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with a swell

doorplate on it.  Splendid man, he was.  I'd druther do for a corpse like

that 'n any I've tackled in seven year.  There's some satisfaction in

buryin' a man like that.  You feel that what you're doing is appreciated.

Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly

satisfied; said his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them

preparations was bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't

wish to be kept layin' round.  You never see such a clear head as what he

had--and so carm and so cool.  Just a hunk of brains that is what he was.

Perfectly awful.  It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's

head to t'other.  Often and over again he's had brain fever a-raging in

one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't

affect it any more than an Injun insurrection in Arizona affects the

Atlantic States.  Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but

corpse said he was down on flummery--didn't want any procession--fill the

hearse full of mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind.

He was the most down on style of any remains I ever struck.  A beautiful,

simple-minded creature--it was what he was, you can depend on that.  He

was just set on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid

comfort in laying his little plans.  He had me measure him and take a

whole raft of directions; then he had a minister stand up behind a long

box with a tablecloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying

'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him scratch out every

bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then he made them trot

out the choir so's he could help them pick out the tunes for the

occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' because he'd

always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn music made him

sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all

loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid there as

happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he

enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited; and tried to join

in, for mind you he was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing

line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just going to spread

himself, his breath took a walk.  I never see a man snuffed out so

sudden.  Ah, it was a great loss--it was a powerful loss to this poor

little one-horse town.  Well, well, well, I hain't got time to be

palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and mosey along with' him;

and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him into the hearse and

meander along.  Relations bound to have it so--don't pay no attention to

dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but if I had my way, if I

didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the hearse, I'll be

cuss'd.  I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for his comfort is

a little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to deceive him or

take advantage of him--and whatever a corpse trusts me to do I'm a-going

to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him yaller and keep

him for a keepsake--you hear me!"



He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a

hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a

healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any

occupation.  The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many

months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that

impressed it.













A ROYAL COMPLIMENT



     The latest report about the Spanish crown is, that it will now be

     offered to Prince Alfonso, the second son of the King of Portugal,

     who is but five years of age.  The Spaniards have hunted through all

     the nations of Europe for a King.  They tried to get a Portuguese in

     the person of Dom-Luis, who is an old ex-monarch; they tried to get

     an Italian, in the person of Victor Emanuel's young son, the Duke of

     Genoa; they tried to get a Spaniard, in the person of Espartero, who

     is an octogenarian.  Some of them desired a French Bourbon,

     Montpensier; some of them a Spanish Bourbon, the Prince of Asturias;

     some of them an English prince, one of the sons of Queen Victoria.

     They have just tried to get the German Prince Leopold; but they have

     thought it better to give him up than take a war along with him.

     It is a long time since we first suggested to them to try an

     American ruler.  We can offer them a large number of able and

     experienced sovereigns to pick from-men skilled in statesmanship,

     versed in the science of government, and adepts in all the arts of

     administration--men who could wear the crown with dignity and rule

     the kingdom at a reasonable expense.



     There is not the least danger of Napoleon threatening them if they

     take an American sovereign; in fact, we have no doubt he would be

     pleased to support such a candidature.  We are unwilling to mention

     names--though we have a man in our eye whom we wish they had in

     theirs.--New York Tribune.



It would be but an ostentation of modesty to permit such a pointed

reference to myself to pass unnoticed.  This is the second time that 'The

Tribune' (no doubt sincerely looking to the best interests of Spain and

the world at large) has done me the great and unusual honour to propose

me as a fit person to fill the Spanish throne.  Why 'The Tribune' should

single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans of higher

political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve.  Beyond a

somewhat intimate knowledge of Spanish history and a profound veneration

for its great names and illustrious deeds, I feel that I possess no merit

that should peculiarly recommend me to this royal distinction.  I cannot

deny that Spanish history has always been mother's milk to me.  I am

proud of every Spanish achievement, from Hernando Cortes's victory at

Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovery of the Atlantic

ocean; and of every splendid Spanish name, from Don Quixote and the Duke

of Wellington down to Don Caesar de Bazan.  However, these little graces

of erudition are of small consequence, being more showy than serviceable.



In case the Spanish sceptre is pressed upon me--and the indications

unquestionably are that it will be--I shall feel it necessary to have

certain things set down and distinctly understood beforehand.  For

instance:  My salary must be paid quarterly in advance.  In these

unsettled times it will not do to trust.  If Isabella had adopted this

plan, she would be roosting on her ancestral throne to-day, for the

simple reason that her subjects never could have raised three months of a

royal salary in advance, and of course they could not have discharged her

until they had squared up with her.  My salary must be paid in gold; when

greenbacks are fresh in a country, they are too fluctuating.  My salary

has got to be put at the ruling market rate; I am not going to cut under

on the trade, and they are not going to trail me a long way from home and

then practise on my ignorance and play me for a royal North Adams

Chinaman, by any means.  As I understand it, imported kings generally get

five millions a year and house-rent free.  Young George of Greece gets

that.  As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to take the

national note for considerable; but even with things in that sort of

shape he is better fixed than he was in Denmark, where he had to

eternally stand up because he had no throne to sit on, and had to give

bail for his board, because a royal apprentice gets no salary there while

he is learning his trade.  England is the place for that.  Fifty thousand

dollars a year Great Britain pays on each royal child that is born, and

this is increased from year to year as the child becomes more and more

indispensable to his country.  Look at Prince Arthur.  At first he only

got the usual birth-bounty; but now that he has got so that he can dance,

there is simply no telling what wages he gets.



I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more and

endeavour to get along with less quarantine.  Do you know, Spain keeps

her ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year,

because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next about the

plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the

rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more

than a great and enlightened civilisation minds freckles.  Soap would

soon remove her anxious distress about foreign distempers.  The reason

arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the people squander so much

of it on their persons, and then when they die it is improvidently buried

with them.



I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to the

rank of constable, or even roundsman.  He is no longer fit to be City

Marshal.  A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble,

is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they are

armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and

demonstrative kind.



I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen

Isabella out of France.  Her presence there can work no advantage to

Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she

has been chaste enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman.



I should also require that--



I am at this moment authoritatively informed that "The Tribune" did not

mean me, after all.  Very well, I do not care two cents.













THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC



One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has not

awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it.  We refer to the

fact that the nation is to be lectured to death and read to death all

next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, with poor lamented Dickens for a

pretext.  All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with

"readings" from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who

have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by

his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the sacred

reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter.  The

lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates.  Already the

signs of it are perceptible.  Behold how the unclean creatures are

wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast:



"Reminiscences of Dickens."  A lecture.  By John Smith, who heard him

read eight times.



"Remembrances of Charles Dickens."  A lecture.  By John Jones, who saw

him once in a street car and twice in a barber shop.



"Recollections of Mr. Dickens."  A lecture.  By John Brown, who gained a

wide fame by writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies

upon the great author's public readings; and who shook hands with the

great author upon various occasions, and held converse with him several

times.



"Readings from Dickens."  By John White, who has the great delineator's

style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this

country and made these things a study, always practising each reading

before retiring, and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips.

Upon this occasion Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he

saw Mr. Dickens smoke.  This Relic is kept in a solid silver box made

purposely for it.



"Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist."  A popular lecture.  By John

Gray, who ,waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel,

New York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the

audience a fragment of the Last Piece of Bread which the lamented author

tasted in this country.



"Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed Monarch."

A lecture.  By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden, who still wears,

and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by the clasp of

Dickens.  Only Death shall remove it.



"Readings from Dickens."  By Mrs. J. O'Hooligan Murphy, who washed for

him.



"Familiar Talks with the Great Author."  A narrative lecture.  By John

Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America.



And so forth, and so on.  This isn't half the list.  The man who has a

"Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens" will have to have a hearing; and

the man who "once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens;" and the lady

to whom Charles Dickens "granted the hospitalities of his umbrella during

a storm;" and the person who "possesses a hole which once belonged in a

handkerchief owned by Charles Dickens."  Be patient and long-suffering,

good people, for even this does not fill up the measure of what you must

endure next winter.  There is no creature in all this land who has had

any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens, however slight or

trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and inflict his

testimony upon his helpless countrymen.  To some people it is fatal to be

noticed by greatness.















THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE



I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able to

make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable Tone-

Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do but

sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper, Horace

Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on obscure

lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would otherwise clack

eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences into respectful

hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas and isms.  That

is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my gray hairs.  Let

me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old Red Sandstone

Period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment twice a week, and

be so reported, and my happiness will be complete.  Those men have been

my envy for long, long time.  And no memories of my life are so pleasant

as my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the Tone-

imparting service.  I can recollect that first time I ever saw them on

the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of yesterday.

Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and Thomas

Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between

them.  This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion of the

state' funeral of George Washington in New York.  It was a great day,

that--a great day, and a very, very sad one.  I remember that Broadway

was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to where the

City Hall now stands.  The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was

at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the

sick and wounded soldiers and sailors.  Horace Greeley occupied one side

of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the

other.  There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs,

but I have forgotten their names now.  Horace Greeley, gray-haired and

beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the

breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty

sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black

little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two

gallant long ribbons.  Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on

benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr.  Greeley, and made

him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the

honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously

representing.  I shall never forget him.  Mr. Cooper was dressed as a

general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike.  I

neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors

in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from Boston--this

was during the war of 1812.  At the grand national reception of

Lafayette, in 1824, Horace  Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to

the left.  The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep of

the just now.  I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper,

and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of

French liberty, in 1848.  Then I never saw them any more until here

lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down

every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and

several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;"

and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic

report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other

distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself,

"Thank God, I was present."  Thus I have been enabled to see these

substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone to

lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures on

stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on miscegenation,

on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on, veterinary matters, on all

kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and have seen them give

tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese Twins, the Great

Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs.  Whenever somebody

is to lecture on a subject not of general interest, I know that my

venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone Period will be on the

platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom nobody has heard of

before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the real

benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they

will be on the platform (and in the bills) as an advertisement; and

whenever any new and obnoxious deviltry in philosophy, morals, or

politics is to be sprung upon the people, I know perfectly well that

these intrepid old heroes will be on the platform too, in the interest

of full and free discussion, and to crush down all narrower and less

generous souls with the solid dead weight of their awful respectability.

And let us all remember that while these inveterate and imperishable

presiders (if you please) appear on the platform every night in the year

as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's or Chickering's,

and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable merit and

obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this

inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of

great progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or

countenance.













OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC



[From the Buffalo Express, Saturday, May 14, 1870.]



                                             New YORK, May 10.



The Richardson-McFarland jury had been out one hour and fifty minutes.

A breathless silence brooded over court and auditory--a silence and a

stillness so absolute, notwithstanding the vast multitude of human beings

packed together there, that when some one far away among the throng under

the northeast balcony cleared his throat with a smothered little cough it

startled everybody uncomfortably, so distinctly did it grate upon the

pulseless air.  At that imposing moment the bang of a door was heard,

then the shuffle of approaching feet, and then a sort of surging and

swaying disorder among the heads at the entrance from the jury-room told

them that the Twelve were coming.  Presently all was silent again, and

the foreman of the jury rose and said:



"Your  Honor and Gentleman:  We, the jury charged with the duty of

determining whether the prisoner at the bar, Daniel McFarland, has been

guilty of murder, in taking by surprise an unarmed man and shooting him

to death, or whether the prisoner is afflicted with a sad but

irresponsible insanity which at times can be cheered only by violent

entertainment with firearms, do find as follows, namely:



That the prisoner, Daniel McFarland, is insane as above described.

Because:



1.  His great grandfather's stepfather was tainted with insanity, and

frequently killed people who were distasteful to him.  Hence, insanity is

hereditary in the family.



2.  For nine years the prisoner at the bar did not adequately support his

family.  Strong circumstantial evidence of insanity.



3.  For nine years he made of his home, as a general thing, a poor-house;

sometimes (but very rarely) a cheery, happy habitation; frequently the

den of a beery, drivelling, stupefied animal; but never, as far as

ascertained, the abiding place of a gentleman.  These be evidences of

insanity.



4.  He once took his young unmarried sister-in-law to the museum; while

there his hereditary insanity came upon him to such a degree that he

hiccupped and staggered; and afterward, on the way home, even made love

to the young girl he was protecting.  These are the acts of a person not

in his right mind.



5.  For a good while his sufferings were so great that he had to submit

to the inconvenience of having his wife give public readings for the

family support; and at times, when he handed these shameful earnings to

the barkeeper, his haughty soul was so torn with anguish that he could

hardly stand without leaning against something.  At such times he has

been known to shed tears into his sustenance till it diluted to utter

inefficiency.  Inattention of this nature is not the act of a Democrat

unafflicted in mind.



6.  He never spared expense in making his wife comfortable during her

occasional confinements.  Her father is able to testify to this.  There

was always an element of unsoundness about the prisoner's generosities

that is very suggestive at this time and before this court.



7.  Two years ago the prisoner came fearlessly up behind Richardson in

the dark, and shot him in the leg.  The prisoner's brave and protracted

defiance of an adversity that for years had left him little to depend

upon for support but a wife who sometimes earned scarcely anything for

weeks at a time, is evidence that he would have appeared in front of

Richardson and shot him in the stomach if he had not been insane at the

time of the shooting.



8.  Fourteen months ago the prisoner told Archibald Smith that he was

going to kill Richardson.  This is insanity.



9.  Twelve months ago he told Marshall P. Jones that he was going to kill

Richardson.  Insanity.



10.  Nine months ago he was lurking about Richardson's home in New

Jersey, and said he was going to kill Richardson.  Insanity.



11.  Seven months ago he showed a pistol to Seth Brown and said that that

was for Richardson.  He said Brown testified that at that time it seemed

plain that something was the matter with McFarland, for he crossed the

street diagonally nine times in fifty yards, apparently without any

settled reason for doing so, and finally fell in the gutter and went to

sleep.  He remarked at the time that McFarland acted strange--believed he

was insane.  Upon hearing Brown's evidence, John W. Galen, M.D., affirmed

at once that McFarland was insane.



12.  Five months ago, McFarland showed his customary pistol, in his

customary way, to his bed-fellow, Charles A. Dana, and told him he was

going to kill Richardson the first time an opportunity offered.  Evidence

of insanity.



13.  Five months and two weeks ago McFarland asked John Morgan the time

of day, and turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for an answer.

Almost indubitable evidence of insanity.  And--



14.  It is remarkable that exactly one week after this circumstance, the

prisoner, Daniel McFarland, confronted Albert D. Richardson suddenly and

without warning, and shot him dead.  This is manifest insanity.

Everything we know of the prisoner goes to show that if he had been sane

at the time, he would have shot his victim from behind.



15.  There is an absolutely overwhelming mass of testimony to show that

an hour before the shooting, McFarland was ANXIOUS AND UNEASY, and that

five minutes after it he was EXCITED.  Thus the accumulating conjectures

and evidences of insanity culminate in this sublime and unimpeachable

proof of it.  Therefore--



Your Honor and Gentlemen--We the jury pronounce the said Daniel McFarland

INNOCENT OF MURDER, BUT CALAMITOUSLY INSANE.



The scene that ensued almost defies description.  Hats, handkerchiefs and

bonnets were frantically waved above the massed heads in the courtroom,

and three tremendous cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the

court and people were.  Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss

the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a

congratulatory shake--but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a

maniac's own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his

friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing

rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered

bodies, till nearly a hundred citizens were reduced to mere quivering

heaps of fleshy odds and ends and crimson rags, was like nothing in this

world but the exultant frenzy of a plunging, tearing, roaring devil of a

steam machine when it snatches a human being and spins him and whirls him

till he shreds away to nothingness like a "Four o'clock" before the

breath of a child.



The destruction was awful.  It is said that within the space of eight

minutes McFarland killed and crippled some six score persons and tore

down a large portion of the City Hall building, carrying away and casting

into Broadway six or seven marble columns fifty-four feet long and

weighing nearly two tons each.  But he was finally captured and sent in

chains to the lunatic asylum for life.



(By late telegrams it appears that this is a mistake.--Editor Express.)



But the really curious part of this whole matter is yet to be told.  And

that is, that McFarland's most intimate friends believe that the very

next time that it ever occurred to him that the insanity plea was not a

mere politic pretense, was when the verdict came in.  They think that the

startling thought burst upon him then, that if twelve good and true men,

able to comprehend all the baseness of perjury, proclaimed under oath

that he was a lunatic, there was no gainsaying such evidence and that he

UNQUESTIONABLY WAS INSANE!



Possibly that was really the way of it.  It is dreadful to think that

maybe the most awful calamity that can befall a man, namely, loss of

reason, was precipitated upon this poor prisoner's head by a jury that

could have hanged him instead, and so done him a mercy and his country a

service.



                             POSTSCRIPT-LATER



May 11--I do not expect anybody to believe so astounding a thing, and yet

it is the solemn truth that instead of instantly sending the dangerous

lunatic to the insane asylum (which I naturally supposed they would do,

and so I prematurely said they had) the court has actually SET HIM AT

LIBERTY.  Comment is unnecessary.       M.  T.













THE EUROPEAN WARS --[From the Buffalo Express, July 25, 1870.]



                               First Day

                          THE EUROPEAN WAR!!!



                            NO BATTLE YET!!!

                        HOSTILITIES IMMINENT!!!

                         TREMENDOUS EXCITEMENT.

                            AUSTRIA ARMING!

                                                  BERLIN, Tuesday.



No battle has been fought yet.  But hostilities may burst forth any week.



There is tremendous excitement here over news from the front that two

companies of French soldiers are assembling there.



It is rumoured that Austria is arming--what with, is not known.



                         .......................



                               Second Day

                            THE EUROPEAN WAR



                             NO BATTLE YET!

                           FIGHTING IMMINENT.

                           AWFUL EXCITEMENT.

                       RUSSIA SIDES WITH PRUSSIA!

                           ENGLAND NEUTRAL!!

                          AUSTRIA NOT ARMING.

                                                  BERLIN, Wednesday.



No battle has been fought yet.  However, all thoughtful men feel that the

land may be drenched with blood before the Summer is over.



There is an awful excitement here over the rumour that two companies of

Prussian troops have concentrated on the border.  German confidence

remains unshaken!!



There is news to the effect that Russia espouses the cause of Prussia and

will bring 4,000,000 men to the field.



England proclaims strict neutrality.



The report that Austria is arming needs confirmation.



                         .........................



                               Third Day

                            THE EUROPEAN WAR



                             NO BATTLE YET!

                          BLOODSHED IMMINENT!!

                         ENORMOUS EXCITEMENT!!

                         INVASION OF PRUSSIA!!

                          INVASION OF FRANCE!!

                       RUSSIA SIDES WITH FRANCE.

                         ENGLAND STILL NEUTRAL!

                             FIRING HEARD!

                      THE EMPEROR TO TAKE COMMAND.

                                                  PARIS, Thursday.



No battle has been fought yet.  But Field Marshal McMahon telegraphs thus

to the Emperor:



"If the Frinch army survoives until Christmas there'll be throuble.

Forninst this fact it would be sagacious if the divil wint the rounds of

his establishment to prepare for the occasion, and tuk the precaution to

warrum up the Prussian depairtment a bit agin the day.

                                                  MIKE."



There is an enormous state of excitement here over news from the front to

the effect that yesterday France and Prussia were simultaneously invaded

by the two bodies of troops which lately assembled on the border.  Both

armies conducted their invasions secretly and are now hunting around for

each other on opposite sides of the border.



Russia espouses the cause of France.  She will bring 200,000 men to the

field.



England continues to remain neutral.



Firing was heard yesterday in the direction of Blucherberg, and for a

while the excitement was intense.  However the people reflected that the

country in that direction is uninhabitable, and impassable by anything

but birds, they became quiet again.



The Emperor sends his troops to the field with immense enthusiasm.  He

will lead them in person, when they return.



                         .....................



                               Fourth Day

                           THE EUROPEAN WAR!



                            NO BATTLE YET!!

                        THE TROOPS GROWING OLD!

                      BUT BITTER STRIFE IMMINENT!

                         PRODIGIOUS EXCITEMENT!

                THE INVASIONS SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED

                         AND THE INVADERS SAFE!

                      RUSSIA SIDES WITH BOTH SIDES

                        ENGLAND WILL FIGHT BOTH!

                                                  LONDON, Friday.



No battle has been fought thus far, but a million impetuous soldiers are

gritting their teeth at each other across the border, and the most

serious fears entertained that if they do not die of old age first, there

will be bloodshed in this war yet.



The prodigious patriotic excitement goes on.  In Prussia, per Prussian

telegrams, though contradicted from France.  In France, per French

telegrams, though contradicted from Prussia.



The Prussian invasion of France was a magnificent success.  The military

failed to find the French, but made good their return to Prussia without

the loss of a single man.  The French invasion of Prussia is also

demonstrated to have been a brilliant and successful achievement.  The

army failed to find the Prussians, but made good their return to the

Vaterland without bloodshed, after having invaded as much as they wanted

to.



There is glorious news from Russia to the effect that she will side with

both sides.



Also from England--she will fight both sides.



                         ....................



LONDON, Thursday evening.



I rushed over too soon.  I shall return home on Tuesday's steamer and

wait until the war begins.         M. T.













THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED

[From the Buffalo Express, September 18, 1869.]



There has been so much talk about the mysterious "wild man" out there in

the West for some time, that I finally felt it was my duty to go out and

interview him.  There was something peculiarly and touchingly romantic

about the creature and his strange actions, according to the newspaper

reports.  He was represented as being hairy, long-armed, and of great

strength and stature; ugly and cumbrous; avoiding men, but appearing

suddenly and unexpectedly to women and children; going armed with a club,

but never molesting any creature, except sheep, or other prey; fond of

eating and drinking, and not particular about the quality, quantity, or

character of the beverages and edibles; living in the woods like a wild

beast, but never angry; moaning, and sometimes howling, but never

uttering articulate sounds.



Such was "Old Shep" as the papers painted him.  I felt that the story of

his life must be a sad one--a story of suffering, disappointment, and

exile--a story of man's inhumanity to man in some shape or other--and I

longed to persuade the secret from him.



                         .....................



"Since you say you are a member of the press," said the wild man, "I am

willing to tell you all you wish to know.  Bye and bye you will

comprehend why it is that I wish to unbosom myself to a newspaper man

when I have so studiously avoided conversation with other people.  I will

now unfold my strange story.  I was born with the world we live upon,

almost.  I am the son of Cain."



"What?"



"I was present when the flood was announced."



"Which?"



"I am the father of the Wandering Jew."



"Sir?"



I moved out of range of his club, and went on taking notes, but keeping a

wary eye on him all the while.  He smiled a melancholy smile and resumed:



"When I glance back over the dreary waste of ages, I see many a

glimmering and mark that is familiar to my memory.  And oh, the leagues

I have travelled! the things I have seen! the events I have helped to

emphasise!  I was at the assassination of Caesar.  I marched upon Mecca

with Mahomet.  I was in the Crusades, and stood with Godfrey when he

planted the banner of the cross on the battlements of Jerusalem.  I--"



"One moment, please.  Have you given these items to any other journal?

Can I--"



"Silence.  I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst

upon his vision. I saw Charles I beheaded.  I was in London when the

Gunpowder Plot was discovered.  I was present at the trial of Warren

Hastings.  I was on American soil when the battle of Lexington was fought

when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered--

When Washington died.  I entered Paris with Napoleon after Elba.  I was

present when you mounted your guns and manned your fleets for the war of

1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond fell--when the

President's life was taken.  In all the ages I have helped to celebrate

the triumphs of genius, the achievements of arms, the havoc of storm,

fire, pestilence, famine."



"Your career has been a stirring one.  Might I ask how you came to locate

in these dull Kansas woods, when you have been so accustomed to

excitement during what I might term so protracted a period, not to put

too fine a point on it?"



"Listen.  Once I was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious"

(here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but

in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and

newspapers.  I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down,

sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with

cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character

at the behest of some driving journal.  I attended to that Ocean Bank

robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the

pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad; immediately I was

spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of the New York

papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire; next to

raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had begun

to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this

howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull

down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play

'Wild Man' generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy

newspaper scribblers?  From one end of the continent to the other, I am

described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me--and all to

gratify this quill-driving scum of the earth!"



"Poor old carpet bagger!"



"I have been served infamously, often, in modern and semi-modern times.

I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent history, and to

perpetrate all sorts of humbugs.  I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I

moped in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron

Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians,

a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the

gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played

sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums;

I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of

miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World,

and thundered Political Economy through the Tribune.  I have done all the

extravagant things that the wildest invention could contrive, and done

them well, and this is my reward--playing Wild Man in Kansas without a

shirt!"



"Mysterious being, a light dawns vaguely upon me--it grows apace--what

--what is your name."



"SENSATION!"



"Hence, horrible shape!"



It spoke again:



"Oh pitiless fate, my destiny hounds me once more.  I am called.  I go.

Alas, is there no rest for me?"



In a moment the Wild Man's features seemed to soften and refine, and his

form to assume a more human grace and symmetry.  His club changed to a

spade, and he shouldered it and started away sighing profoundly and

shedding tears.



"Whither, poor shade?"



"TO DIG UP THE BYRON FAMILY!"



Such was the response that floated back upon the wind as the sad spirit

shook its ringlets to the breeze, flourished its shovel aloft, and

disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.



All of which is in strict accordance with the facts.



                                                            M. T.









LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN --[From the Buffalo Express, September 11, 1889.]



     Marshal Neil's last words were: "L'armee fran-caise!" (The French

     army.)--Exchange.



What a sad thing it is to see a man close a grand career with a

plagiarism in his mouth.  Napoleon's last words were: "Tete d'armee."

(Head of the army.)  Neither of those remarks amounts to anything as

"last words," and reflect little credit upon the utterers.



A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is

about his last breath.  He should write them out on a slip of paper and

take the judgment of his friends on them.  He should never leave such a

thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit

at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest

gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur.  No--a man is apt to be too

much fagged and exhausted, both in body and mind, at such a time, to be

reliable; and maybe the very thing he wants to say, he cannot think of to

save him; and besides there are his weeping friends bothering around;

and worse than all as likely as not he may have to deliver his last gasp

before he is expecting to.  A man cannot always expect to think of a

natty thing to say under such circumstances, and so it is pure egotistic

ostentation to put it off.  There is hardly a case on record where a man

came to his last moment unprepared and said a good thing hardly a case

where a man trusted to that last moment and did not make a solemn botch

of it and go out of the world feeling absurd.



Now there was Daniel Webster.  Nobody could tell him anything.  He was

not afraid.  He could do something neat when the time came.  And how did

it turn out?  Why, his will had to be fixed over; and then all the

relations came; and first one thing and then another interfered, till at

last he only had a chance to say, "I still live," and up he went.



Of course he didn't still live, because he died--and so he might as well

have kept his last words to himself as to have gone and made such a

failure of it as that.  A week before that fifteen minutes of calm

reflection would have enabled that man to contrive some last words that

would have been a credit to himself and a comfort to his family for

generations to come.



And there was John Quincy Adams.  Relying on his splendid abilities and

his coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment

to carry him through, and what was the result?  Death smote him in the

House of Representatives, and he observed, casually, "This is the last of

earth."  The last of earth!  Why "the last of earth" when there was so

much more left?  If he had said it was the last rose of summer or the

last run of shad, it would have had as much point in it.  What he meant

to say was, "Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth," but he

put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning

observation on his lips.



And there we have Napoleon's "Tete d'armee."  That don't mean anything.

Taken by itself, "Head of the army," is no more important than "Head of

the police."  And yet that was a man who could have said a good thing if

he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while.  Marshal Neil,

with half a century at his disposal, could not dash off anything better

in his last moments than a poor plagiarism of another man's words, which

were not worth plagiarizing in the first place.  "The French army."

Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly flat utterly pointless.  But if he had

closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it

lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into

his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction

all the rest of his life.  I do wish our great men would quit saying

these flat things just at the moment they die.  Let us have their next-

to-the-last words for a while, and see if we cannot patch up from them

something that will be more satisfactory.



The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the time.



But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties who took the

trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we immediately

notice a happy difference in the result.



There was Chesterfield.  Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life to

build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of

speech and manners the world has ever seen.  And could you suppose he

failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic "last words," in

the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail of such a reputation

and clinching on the other side for ever?  Not he.  He prepared himself.

He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his pulse.  He awaited his

chance.  And at last, when he knew his time was come, he pretended to

think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his throat

emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin around,

John, and get the gentleman a chair."  And so he died, amid thunders of

applause.



Next we have Benjamin Franklin.  Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's

quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up

at nights reducing the rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and

snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in their

regimentals; who said, "Virtue is its own reward;" who said,

"Procrastination is the thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide wait for

no man" and "Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old Franklin,

the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to say, the

latter transcends him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short

of him in correctness of orthography.  What sort of tactics did Franklin

pursue?  He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and

then when the time came, he said, "None but the brave deserve the fair,"

and died happy.  He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived

till he was an idiot.



Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of anything to say,

at the last moment but, "Augusta--sister--Lady Byron--tell Harriet

Beecher Stowe"--etc., etc.,--but Shakespeare was ready and said, "England

expects every man to do his duty!" and went off with splendid eclat.



And there are other instances of sagacious preparation for a felicitous

closing remark.  For instance:



Joan of Arc said, "Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching."



Alexander the Great said, "Another of those Santa Cruz punches, if you

please."



The Empress Josephine said, "Not for Jo-" and could get no further.



Cleopatra said, "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders."



Sir Walter Raleigh said, "Executioner, can I take your whetstone a

moment, please?" though what for is not clear.



John Smith said, "Alas, I am the last of my race."



Queen Elizabeth said, "Oh, I would give my kingdom for one moment more--

I have forgotten my last words."



And Red Jacket, the noblest Indian brave that ever wielded a tomahawk in

defence of a friendless and persecuted race, expired with these touching

words upon his lips, "Wawkawampanoosucwinnebayowallazvsagamoresa-

skatchewan."  There was not a dry eye in the wigwam.



Let not this lesson be lost upon our public men.  Let them take a healthy

moment for preparation, and contrive some last words that shall be neat

and to the point.  Let Louis Napoleon say,



"I am content to follow my uncle--still, I do not wish to improve upon

his last word.  Put me down for 'Tete d'armee.'"



And Garret Davis, "Let me recite the unabridged dictionary."



And H. G., "I desire, now, to say a few words on political economy."



And Mr. Bergh, "Only take part of me at a time, if the load will be

fatiguing to the hearse horses."



And Andrew Johnson, "I have been an alderman, Member of Congress,

Governor, Senator, Pres--adieu, you know the rest."



And Seward., "Alas!-ka."



And Grant, "O."



All of which is respectfully submitted, with the most honorable

intentions.

                                                       M. T.



P. S.--I am obliged to leave out the illustrations.  The artist finds it

impossible to make a picture of people's last words.