Kitabı oku: «Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns)», sayfa 10
In a Box
I saw them last night in a box at the play —
Old age and young youth side by side —
You might know by the glasses that pointed that way
That they were – a groom and a bride;
And you might have known, too, by the face of the groom,
And the tilt of his head, and the grim
Little smile of his lip, he was proud to presume
That we men were all envying him.
Well, she was superb – an Elaine in the face,
A Godiva in figure and mien,
With the arm and the wrist of a Parian "Grace,"
And the high-lifted brow of a queen;
But I thought, in the splendor of wealth and of pride,
And in all her young beauty might prize,
I should hardly be glad if she sat by my side
With that far-away look in her eyes.
Seeking to Set the Public Right
I would like to make an explanation at this time which concerns me, of course, more than any one else, and yet it ought to be made in the interests of general justice, also. I refer to a recent article published in a Western paper and handsomely illustrated, in which, among others, I find the foregoing picture of my residence:
The description which accompanies the cut, among other things, goes on to state as follows: "The structure is elaborate, massive and beautiful. It consists of three stories, basement and attic, and covers a large area on the ground. It contains an elevator, electric bells, steam-heating arrangements, baths, hot and cold, in every room, electric lights, laundry, fire-escapes, etc. The grounds consist of at least five acres, overlooking the river for several miles up and down, with fine boating and a private fish-pond of two acres in extent, containing every known variety of game fish. The grounds are finely laid out in handsome drives and walks, and when finished the establishment will be one of the most complete and beautiful in the Northwest."
No one realizes more fully than I the great power of the press for good or evil. Rightly used the newspaper can make or unmake men, and wrongly used it can be even more sinister. I might say, knowing this as I do, I want to be placed right before the people. The above is not a correct illustration or description of my house, for several reasons. In the first place, it is larger and more robust in appearance, and in the second place it has not the same tout ensemble as my residence. My house is less obtrusive and less arrogant in its demeanor than the foregoing, and it has no elevator in it.
My house is not the kind that seems to crave an elevator. An elevator in my house would lose money. There is no popular clamor for one, and if I were to put one in I would have to abolish the dining-room. It would also interfere with the parlor.
I have learned recently that the correspondent who came here to write up this matter visited the town while I was in the South, and as he could not find me he was at the mercy of strangers. A young man who lives here and who is just in the heyday of life, gleefully consented to show the correspondent my new residence not yet completed. So they went over and examined the new Oliver Wendell Holmes Hospital, which will be completed in June and which is, of course, a handsome structure, but quite different from my house in many particulars.
For instance, my residence is of a different school of architecture, being rather on the Scandinavian order, while the foregoing has a tendency toward the Ironic. The hospital belongs to a very recent school, as I may say, while my residence, in its architectural methods and conception, goes back to the time of the mound builders, a time when a Gothic hole in the ground was considered the magnum bonum and the scrumptuous thing in art. If the reader will go around behind the above building and notice it carefully on the east side, he will not discover a dried coonskin nailed to the rear breadths of the wood-shed. That alone ought to convince an observing man that the house is not mine. The coonskin regardant will always be found emblazoned on my arms, together with a blue Goddess of Liberty and my name in green India ink.
Above I give a rough sketch of my house. Of course I have idealized it somewhat, but only in order to catch the eye of the keenly observant reader. The front part of the house runs back to the time of Polypus the First, while the L, which does not show in the drawing, runs back as far as the cistern.
In closing, let me say that I am not finding fault with any one because the above error has crept into the public prints, for it is really a pardonable error, after all. Neither do I wish to be considered as striving to eliminate my name from the columns of the press, for no one could be more tickled than I am over a friendly notice of my arrival in town or a timely reference to my courteous bearing and youthful appearance, but I want to see the Oliver Wendell Holmes Hospital succeed, and so I come out in this way over my own signature and admit that the building does not belong to me and that, so far as I am concerned, the man who files a lien on it will simply fritter away his time.
A Dose't of Blues
I' got no patience with blues at all!
And I ust to kindo' talk
Aginst 'em, and claim, 'tel along last fall,
They was none in the fambly stock;
But a nephew of mine, from Eelinoy,
That visited us last year,
He kindo' convinct me different
While he was a-stayin' here.
Frum ever'-which-way that blues is frum,
They'd tackle him ever' ways;
They'd come to him in the night, and come
On Sundys, and rainy days;
They'd tackle him in corn-plantin' time,
And in harvest, an airly fall,
But a dose't of blues in the wintertime
He 'lowed was the worst of all!
Said all diseases that ever he had —
The mumps, er the rheumatiz —
Er ever-other-day aigger's bad
Purt' nigh as anything is! —
Er a cyarbuncle, say, on the back of his neck,
Er a fellon on his thumb, —
But you keep the blues away frum him,
And all o' the rest could come!
And he'd moan, "they's narry a leaf below!
Ner a spear o' grass in sight!
And the whole wood-pile's clean under snow!
And the days is dark as night!
And you can't go out – ner you can't stay in —
Lay down – stand up – ner set!"
And a case o' reguller tyfoid blues
Would double him jest clean shet!
I writ his parents a postal-kyard
He could stay 'tel spring-time come;
And Aprile first, as I rickollect,
Was the day we shipped him home.
Most o' his relatives, sence then,
Has either give up, er quit,
Er jest died off, but I understand
He's the same old color yit!
Wanted, a Fox
Slippery Elmhurst,}Staten Island, July 18, 1888.}
To the Editor:
Dear Sir: Could you inform a constant reader of your valuable paper where he would be most likely to obtain a good, durable, wild fox which could be used for hunting purposes on my premises? I desire a fox that is a good roadster, and yet not too bloodthirsty. If I could secure one that would not bite, it would tickle me most to death.
You know, perhaps, that I am of English origin. Some of the best and bluest blood of the oldest and most decrepit families in England flows in my veins. There is no better blood extant. We love the exhilarating sports of our ancestors, and nothing thrills us through and through like the free chase 'cross country behind the fleeing fox. Joyously we gallop over the sward behind the yelping pack, as we clearly scent high, low, jack and the game.
My ancestors are haughty English people from Piscataquis county, Maine. For centuries, our rich, warm, red blood has been mellowed by the elderberry wine and huckleberry juice of Moosehead lake; but now and then it will assert itself and mantle in the broad and indestructible cheek of our race. Ever and anon in our family you will notice the slender triangular chest, the broad and haughty sweep of abdomen, and the high, intellectual expanse of pelvic bone, which denotes the true Englishman; proud, high-spirited, soaked full of calm disdain, wearing checked pantaloons, and a soft, flabby tourist's hat that has a bow at both ends, so that a man cannot get too drunk to put it on his head wrong.
I know that here is democratic America, where every man has to earn his living or marry rich, people will scorn my high-born love of the fox-chase, and speak in a slighting manner of my wild, wild yearn for the rush and scamper of the hunt. By Jove, but it is joy indeed to gallop over the sward and the cover, and the open land, the meet and the cucumber vines of the Plebian farmer, to run over the wife of the peasant and tramp her low, coarse children into the rich mould, to "sick" the hounds upon the rude rustic as he paris greens his potatoes, to pry open the jaws of the pack and return to the open-eyed peasant the quivering seat of his pantaloons, returning it to him not because it is lacking in its merit, but because it is not available.
Ah, how the pulses thrill as we bound over the lea, out across the wold, anon skimming the outskirts of the moor and going home with a stellated fracture of the dura mater through which the gas is gently escaping.
Let others rave over the dreamy waltz and the false joys of the skating rink, but give me the maddening yelp of the pack in full cry as it chases the speckled two-year-old of the low-born rustic across the open and into the pond.
Let others sing of the zephyrs that fan the white sails of their swift-flying yacht, but give me a wild gallop at the tail of my high-priced hounds and six weeks at the hospital with a fractured rib and I am proud and happy. All our family are that way. We do not care for industry for itself alone. We are too proud ever to become slaves to habits of industry. We can labor or we can let it alone.
This shows our superiority as a race. We have been that way for hundreds of years. We could work in order to be sociable, but we would not allow it to sap the foundations of our whole being.
I write, therefore, to learn, if possible, where I can get a good red or gray fox that will come home nights. I had a fox last season for hunting purposes, but he did not give satisfaction. He was constantly getting into the pound. I do not want an animal of that kind. I want one that I shall always know where I can put my hand upon him when I want to hunt.
Nothing can be more annoying than to be compelled to go to the pound and redeem a fox, when a party is mounted and waiting to hunt him.
I do not care so much for the gait of a fox, whether he lopes, trots or paces, so that his feet are sound and his wind good. I bought a light-red fox two years ago that had given perfect satisfaction the previous year, but when we got ready to hunt him he went lame in the off hind foot and crawled under a hen house back of my estate, where he remained till the hunt was over.
What I want is a young, flealess fox of the dark red or iron-gray variety, that I can depend upon as a good roadster; one that will come and eat out of my hand and yearn to be loved.
I would like also a tall, red horse with a sawed-off tail; one that can jump a barbed wire fence without mussing it up with fragments of his rider. Any one who may have such a horse or pipless fox will do well to communicate with me in person or by letter, enclosing references. I may be found during the summer months on my estate, spread out under a tree, engaged in thought.
E. Fitzwilliam Nye.
Slipperyelmhurst, Staten Island, N. Y.
SUTTERS CLAIM
IMITATED
Say! you feller! You—
With that spade and the pick! —
What do you 'pose to do
On this side o' the crick?
Goin' to tackle this claim? Well, I reckon
You'll let up agin purty quick!
No bluff, understand, —
But the same has been tried,
And the claim never panned —
Or the fellers has lied, —
For they tell of a dozen that tried it,
And quit it most onsatisfied.
The luck's dead agin it! —
The first man I see
That stuck a pick in it
Proved that thing to me, —
For he sorto took down, and got homesick,
And went back whar he'd orto be!
Then others they worked it
Some – more or less,
But finally shirked it,
In grades of distress, —
With an eye out – a jaw or skull busted,
Or some sort o' seriousness.
The last one was plucky —
He wasn't afeerd,
And bragged he was "lucky,"
And said that "he'd heerd
A heep of bluff-talk," and swore awkard
He'd work any claim that he keered!
Don't you strike nary lick
With that pick till I'm through;
This-here feller talked slick
And as peart-like as you!
And he says: "I'll abide here
As long as I please!"
But he didn't… He died here —
And I'm his disease!
Seeking to Be Identified
Chicago, Feb. 20, 1888.
Financial circles here have been a good deal interested in the discovery of a cipher which was recently adopted by a depositor and which began to attract the attention at first of a gentleman employed in the Clearing-House. He was telling me about it and showing me the vouchers or duplicates of them.
It was several months ago that he first noticed on the back of a check passing through the Clearing-House the following cipher, written in a symmetrical, Gothic hand:
Dear Sir: – Herewith find payment for last month's butter. It was hardly up to the average. Why do you blonde your butter? Your butter last month tried to assume an effeminate air, which certainly was not consistent with its great vigor. Is it not possible that this butter is the brother to what we had the month previous, and that it was exchanged for its sister by mistake? We have generally liked your butter very much, but we will have to deal elsewhere if you are going to encourage it in wearing a full beard.
Yours truly,W.
Moneyed men all over Chicago and financial cryptogrammers came to read the curious thing and to try and work out its bearing on trade. Everybody took a look at it and went away defeated. Even the men who were engaged in trying to figure out the identity of the Snell murderer, took a day off and tried their Waterbury thinkers on this problem. In the midst of it all another check passed through the Clearing-House with this cipher, in the same hand:
Sir: – Your bill for the past month is too much. You forget the eggs returned at the end of second week, for which you were to give me credit. The cook broke one of them by mistake, and then threw up the portfolio of pie-founder in our once joyous home. I will not dock you for loss of cook, but I cannot allow you for the eggs. How you succeed in dodging quarantine with eggs like that is a mystery to yours truly,
W.
Great excitement followed the discovery of this indorsement on a check for $32.87. Everybody who knew anything about ciphering was called in to consider it. A young man from a high school near here, who made a specialty of mathematics and pimples, and who could readily tell how long a shadow a nine-pound ground-hog would cast at 2 o'clock and 37 minutes p. m., on ground-hog day, if sunny, at the town of Fungus, Dak., provided latitude and longitude and an irregular mass of red chalk be given to him, was secured to jerk a few logarithms in the interests of trade. He came and tried it for a few days, covered the interior of the Exposition Building with figures and then went away.
The Pinkerton detectives laid aside their literary work on the great train book, entitled "The Jerkwater Bank Robbery and other Choice Crimes," by the author of "How I Traced a Lame Man through Michigan and other Felonies." They grappled with the cipher, and several of them leaned up against something and thought for a long time, but they could make neither head nor tail to it. Ignatius Donnelly took a powerful dose of kumiss, and under its maddening influence sought to solve the great problem which threatened to engulf the national surplus. All was in vain. Cowed and defeated, the able conservators of coin, who require a man to be identified before he can draw on his overshoes at sight, had to acknowledge if this thing continued it threatened the destruction of the entire national fabric.
About this time I was calling at the First National Bank of Chicago, the greatest bank, if I am not mistaken, in America. I saw the bonds securing its issue of national currency the other day in Washington, and I am quite sure the custodian told me it was the greatest of any bank in the Union. Anyway, it was sufficient, so that I felt like doing my banking business there whenever it became handy to do so.
I asked for a certificate of deposit for $2,000, and had the money to pay for it, but I had to be identified. "Why," I said to the receiving teller, "surely you don't require a man to be identified when he deposits money, do you?"
"Yes, that's the idea."
"Well, isn't that a new twist on the crippled industries of this country?"
"No; that's our rule. Hurry up, please, and don't keep men waiting who have money and know how to do business."
"Well, I don't want to obstruct business, of course, but suppose, for instance, I get myself identified by a man I know and a man you know, and a man who can leave his business and come here for the delirious joy of identifying me, and you admit that I am the man I claim to be, corresponding as to description, age, sex, etc., with the man I advertise myself to be, how would it be about your ability to identify yourself as the man you claim to be? I go all over Chicago, visiting all the large pork-packing houses in search of a man I know, and who is intimate with literary people like me, and finally we will say I find one who knows me and who knows you, and whom you know, and who can leave his leaf lard long enough to come here and identify me all right. Can you identify yourself in such a way that when I put in my $2,000 you will not loan it upon insufficient security as they did in Cincinnati the other day, as soon as I go out of town?"
"Oh, we don't care especially whether you trade here or not, so that you hurry up and let other people have a chance. Where you make a mistake is in trying to rehearse a piece here instead of going out to Lincoln Park or somewhere in a quiet part of the city. Our rules are that a man who makes a deposit here must be identified."
"All right. Do you know Queen Victoria?"
"No, sir; I do not."
"Well, then, there is no use in disturbing her. Do you know any of the other crowned heads?"
"No, sir."
"Well, then, do you know President Cleveland, or any of the Cabinet, or the Senate or members of the House?"
"No."
"That's it, you see. I move in one set and you in another. What respectable people do you know?"
"I'll have to ask you to stand aside, I guess, and give that string of people a chance. You have no right to take up my time in this way. The rules of the bank are inflexible. We must know who you are, even before we accept your deposit."
I then drew from my pocket a copy of the Sunday World, which contained a voluptuous picture of myself. Removing my hat and making a court salaam by letting out four additional joints in my lithe and versatile limbs, I asked if any further identification would be necessary.
Hastily closing the door to the vault and jerking the combination, he said that would be satisfactory. I was then permitted to deposit in the bank.
I do not know why I should always be regarded with suspicion wherever I go. I do not present the appearance of a man who is steeped in crime, and yet when I put my trivial little two-gallon valise on the seat of a depot-waiting-room a big man with a red moustache comes to me and hisses through his clinched teeth: "Take yer baggage off the seat!!" It is so everywhere. I apologize for disturbing a ticket agent long enough to sell me a ticket, and he tries to jump through a little brass wicket and throttle me. Other men come in and say: "Give me a ticket for Bandoline, O., and be dam sudden about it, too," and they get their ticket and go aboard the car and get the best seat, while I am begging for the opportunity to buy a seat at full rates and then ride in the wood-box. I believe that common courtesy and decency in America need protection. Go into an hotel or a hotel, whichever suits the eyether and nyether readers of these lines, and the commercial man who travels for a big sausage-casing house in New York has the bridal chamber, while the meek and lowly minister of the Gospel gets a wall-pocket room with a cot, a slippery-elm towel, a cake of cast-iron soap, a disconnected bell, a view of the laundry, a tin roof and $4 a day.
But I digress. I was speaking of the bank check cipher. At the First National Bank I was shown another of these remarkable indorsements. It read as follows:
Dear Sir: – This will be your pay for chickens and other fowls received up to the first of the present month. Time is working wondrous changes in your chickens. They are not such chickens as we used to get of you before the war. They may be the same chickens, but oh! how changed by the lapse of time! How much more indestructible! How they have learned since then to defy the encroaching tooth of remorseless ages, or any other man! Why do you not have them tender like your squashes? I found a blue poker chip in your butter this week. What shall I credit myself for it? If you would try to work your butter more and your customers less it would be highly appreciated, especially by, yours truly,
W.
Looking at the signature on the check itself, I found it to be that of Mrs. James Wexford, of this city. Knowing Mr. Wexford, a wealthy and influential publisher here, I asked him to-day if he knew anything about this matter. He said that all he knew about it was that his wife had a separate bank account, and had asked him several months ago what was the use of all the blank space on the back of a check, and why it couldn't be used for correspondence with the remittee. Mr. Wexford said he'd bet $500 that his wife had been using her checks that way, for he said he never knew of a woman who could possibly pay postage on a note, remittance or anything else unless every particle of the surface had been written over in a wild, delirious, three-story hand. Later on I found that he was right about it. His wife had been sassing the grocer and the butter-man on the back of her checks. Thus ended the great bank mystery.
I will close this letter with a little incident, the story of which may not be so startling, but it is true. It is a story of child faith. Johnny Quinlan, of Evanston, has the most wonderful confidence in the efficacy of prayer, but he thinks that prayer does not succeed unless it is accompanied with considerable physical strength. He believes that adult prayer is a good thing, but doubts the efficacy of juvenile prayer.
He has wanted a Jersey cow for a good while and tried prayer, but it didn't seem to get to the central office. Last week he went to a neighbor who is a Christian and believer in the efficacy of prayer, also the owner of a Jersey cow.
"Do you believe that prayer will bring me a yaller Jersey cow?" said Johnny.
"Why, yes, of course. Prayer will remove mountains. It will do anything."
"Well, then, suppose you give me the cow you've got and pray for another one."
