Kitabı oku: «Remarks», sayfa 38
Street Cars and Curiosities
There is an institution in Boston which the Pilgrim Fathers did not originate. That is the street car. There is a street car parade all day on Washington street, and a red-light procession most of the night.
People told me that I could get into a car and go anywhere I wanted to. I tried it. There was a point in Boston, I learned, where there were some more relics that I hadn’t seen. Parties told me where I could find some more fragments of the Mayflower, and an old chair in which Josiah Quincy had sat down to think. There were also a few more low price flint-lock guns and tomahawks that no man who visited Boston could afford to miss. Besides, there was said to be the lock that used to be on the door of a room in which General Washington had a good notion to write his farewell address. All these things were in the collection which I started out to find, and there were others, also.
For instance, there was a specimen of the lightning that Franklin caught in his demijohn out of the sky, and still in a good state of preservation; also some more clothes in which he was baptized, more swords of Bunker Hill, and a little shirt which John Hancock put on as soon as he was born. Hancock was a perfect gentleman from his birth, and it is said that the first thing he did was to excuse himself for a moment and then put on this shirt. His manners were certainly very agreeable, and he was very much polished.
I heard, too, that there was an acorn from the tree in which Benedict Arnold had his nest while he was hatching treason. I did not believe it, but I had an idea I could readily discover the fraud if I could only see the acorn, for I am a great historian and researcher from away back. I was told that in this collection there was a suspender button shed by Patrick Henry during his memorable speech in which he raised up to his full height on his hind feet and permitted the war to come in italics, also in SMALL CAPS and in LARGE CAPS!!! with three astonishers on the end.
So I wanted to find this place, and as I had plenty of means I decided to ride in a street car. Therefore, I aimed my panic price cane at the driver of a cream-colored car with a blue stomach, and remarked, “Hi, there!” Before I go any further, and in order to avoid ambiguity, let me say that it was the car that had the blue stomach. He (the driver) twisted the brake and I went inside, clear to the further end, and sat down by the side of a young woman who filled the whole car with sunshine. I was so happy that I gave the conductor half a dollar and told him to keep the change. If by chance she sees this, I hope she still remembers me. Pretty soon a very fat woman came into the car and aimed for our quarter. She evidently intended to squat between this fair girl and myself. But ah, thought I to myself in a low tone of voice, I will fool thee. So I shoved my person along in the seat toward the sweet girl of the Bay State. The corpulent party, whose name I did not learn, had in the meantime backed up to where she had detected a slight vacancy, and where I had seen fit to place myself. At that moment she heaved a sigh of relief, and, assisted by the motion of the car, which just then turned a corner, she sat down in my lap and nestled in my bosom like a tired baby elephant.
Dear reader, if I were to tell you that the crystal of my watch was picked out from under my shoulder blades the next day, you would not believe it, would you? I will not strain your faith in me by making the statement, but that was the heaviest woman I ever held.
While all this was going on I lost track of my location. The car began to squirm around all over Boston, and finally the conductor came back and wanted more money. I said no, I would get off and try a dark red car with a green stomach for a while. So I did I rode on that till I had seen a great deal of new scenery, and then I asked the conductor if he passed Number Clankety Clank, Blank street. He said he did not, but if I would go down two blocks further and take a maroon car with a plaid stomach it would take me to the corner of “What-do-you-call-it and What’s-his-name streets,” where, if I took a seal brown car with squshed huckleberry trimmings it would take me to where I wanted to go. So I tried it. I do not know just where I missed my train, but when I found the seal brown car with scrunched huckleberry trimmings it was going the other way, and as it was late I went into a cafe and refreshed myself. When I came out I discovered that it was too late to see the collection, even if I could find it, for at 6 o’clock they take the relics in and put them into a refrigerator till morning.
I was now weary and somewhat disappointed, so I desired to get back to my headquarters, wherein I could rest and where I could lock myself up in my room, so no prize fat woman could enter. I hailed one of those sawed-off landaus, consisting of two wheels, one door behind, and a bill for two bits. I told the college graduate on the box where I wanted to go, gave him a quarter and got in. I sat down and heaved a chaste sigh. The sigh was only half hove when the herdic backed up to my destination, which was about 300 feet from where I got in, as the crow flies.
When I go to Boston again, I am going in charge of the police.
The street railway system of Boston is remarkably perfect. Fifty cars pass a given point on Washington street in an hour, and yet there are no blockades. You can take one of those cars, if you are a stranger, and you can get so mixed up that you will never get back, and all for five cents. I felt a good deal like the man who was full and who stepped on a man who was not full. The sober man was mad, and yelled out: “See here; condemn it, can’t you look where you’re walking?” “Betcher life,” says the inebriate, “but trouble is to walk where I’m lookin’.”
The Poor Blind Pig
I have just been over to the Falls of Minnehaha. In fact I have been quite a tourist and summer resorter this season, having saturated my system with nineteen different styles of mineral water in Wisconsin alone, and tried to win the attention of nineteen different styles of head waiters at these summer hotels. I may add in passing that the summer hotels of Wisconsin and Minnesota have been crowded full the past season and more room will have to be added before another season comes around.
The motto of the summer hotel seems to be, “Unless ye shall have feed the waiter, behold ye shall in no wise be fed.” Many waiters at these places, by a judicious system of blackmail and starvation, have reduced the guest to a sad state.
The mineral water of Wisconsin ranks high as a beverage. Many persons are using it during the entire summer in place of rum.
The water of Waukesha does not appear to taste of any mineral, although an analysis shows the presence of several kinds of groceries in solution. The water at Palmyra Springs also tastes like any other pure water, but at Kankanna, on the Fox River, they have a style of mineral water which is different. Almost as soon as you taste it you discover that it is extremely different. Colonel Watrous, of the Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph, took some of it. I saw him afterward. He looked depressed, and told me that he had been deceived. Several Kankanna people had told him that this was living water, He had discovered otherwise. He hated to place his confidence in people and then find it misplaced.
A favorite style of Kankanna revenge is to drink a quart of this water, and then, on meeting an enemy, to breathe on him and wither him. One breath produces syncope and blind staggers. Two breaths induce coma and metallic casket for one.
Minnehaha is not mineral water. It is just plain water, giving itself away day after day like a fresh young man in society. If you want pure water you get it at the spring near the foot of the fall, and if you want it flavored, with something that will leave a blazed road the whole length of your alimentary canal, you go to the “blind pig,” a few rods away from the falls.
The blind pig draws many people toward the falls through sympathy. To be blind must indeed be a sad plight. Let us pause and reflect on this proposition.
By good fortune I have had a chance to watch the rum problem in all its phases this summer. Beginning in Maine, where the most ingenious methods of whipping the devil around the stump are adopted, then going through northern Iowa and tasting her exhilarating pop, and at last paying ten cents to see the blind pig at Minnehaha, I feel like one who has wrestled with the temperance problem in a practical way, and I have about decided that a high license is about the only way to make the sale of whisky odious. Prohibition is too abrupt in its methods, and one generation can hardly wipe out the appetite for liquor that has been planted and fostered by fifty preceding generations.
For fear that a few of my lady readers do not know what the Minnehaha blind pig looks like, and that they may be curious about it, I will just say that it is a method of evading the law, and consists of a dumb waiter, wherein, if you pay ten cents, you get a glass of stimulants without the annoyance of conversation. Many ladies who visit the falls, and who have heard incidentally about the blind pig, express a desire to see the poor little thing, but their husbands generally persuade them to refrain.
Minnehaha is a beautiful waterfall. It is not so frightfully large and grand as Niagara, but it is very fine, and if the State of Minnesota would catch the man who nails his signs on the trees around there, and choke him to death near the falls on a pleasant day, a large audience wold attend with much pleasure, I believe that the fence-board advertiser is not only, as a rule, wicked, but he also lacks common sense. Who ever bought a liver pad or a corset because he read about it on a high board fence? No one. Who ever purchased a certain kind of pill or poultice because the name of that pill or poultice was nailed on a tree to disfigure a beautiful landscape? I do not believe that any sane human being ever did so. If everyone feels as I do about it, people would rather starve to death for pills and freeze to death in a perfect wilderness of liver pads than buy of the man who daubs the fair face of nature with names of his alleged goods.
I saw a squaw who seemed to belong in the picture of the poetic little waterfall. I did not learn her name. It was one of these long, corduroy Sioux names, that hang together with hyphens like a lot of sausage. The salaried humorist of the party said he never sausage a name before.
Translated into our tongue it meant The-swift-daughter-of-the-prairie-blizzard-that-gathers-the-huckleberry-on -the-run-and-don’t-you-forget-it.
Daniel Webster
I presume that Daniel Webster was as good an off-hand speaker as this country has ever produced. Massachusetts has been well represented in Congress since that time, but she has had few who could successfully compete with D. Webster, Esq., attorney and counsellor-at-law, Boston, Mass.
I have never met Mr. Webster, but I have seen a cane that he used to wear, and since that time I have felt a great interest in him. It was a heavy winter cane, and was presented to him as a token of respect.
This reminds me of the inscription on a grave stone in the 280-year-old churchyard at LaPointe, on Lake Superior, where I was last week. It shows what punctuation has done for a lost and undone race. I copy the inscription exactly as it appears:
LOUIS ROC DE DEAU
SHOT
—AS A MARK OF
ESTEEM BY HIS
BROTHER
Daniel Webster had one of the largest and most robust brains that ever flourished in our fair land. It was what we frequently call a teeming brain, one of those four-horse teeming brains, as it were. Mr. Webster wore the largest hat of any man then in Congress, and other senators and representatives used to frequently borrow it to wear on the 2nd of January, the 5th of July, and after other special occasions, when they had been in executive session most all night and endured great mental strain. This hat matter reminds me of an incident in the life of Benjamin F. Butler, a man well known in Massachusetts even at the present time.
One evening, at a kind of reception or some such dissipation as that, while Jim Nye was in the Senate, the latter left his silk hat on the lounge with the opening turned up, and while he was talking with someone else, Mr. Butler sat down in the hat with so much expression that it was a wreck. Everyone expected to see James W. Nye walk up and smite Benjamin F. Butler, but he did not do so. He looked at the chaotic hat for a minute, more in sorrow than in anger, and then he said:
“Benjamin, I could have told you that hat wouldn’t fit you before you tried it on.”
Daniel Webster’s brain was not only very large, but it was in good order all the time. Sometimes Nature bestows large brains on men who do not rise to great prominence. Large brains do not always indicate great intellectual power. These brains are large but of an inferior quality. A schoolmate of mine used to wear a hat that I could put my head and both feet into with perfect ease. I remember that he tied my shirt one day while I was laying my well-rounded limbs in the mill pond near my childhood’s home.
I was mad at the time, but I could not lick him, for he was too large. All I could do was to patiently untie my shirt while my teeth chattered, then fling a large, three-cornered taunt in his teeth and run. He kept on poking fun at me, I remember, till I got dressed, and alluded incidentally, to my small brain and abnormal feet. This stung my sensitive nature, and I told him that if I had such a wealth of brain as he had, and it was of no use to think with, I would take it to a restaurant and have it breaded. Then I went away.
But we were speaking of Webster. Many lawyers of our day would do well to read and study the illustrious example of Daniel Webster. He did not sit in court all day with his feet on the table and howl, “We object,” and then down his client for $50, just because he had made a noise. I employed a lawyer once to bring suit for me to recover quite a sum of money due me. After years of assessments and toilsome litigation, we got a judgment. He said to me that he was anxious to succeed with the case mainly because he knew I Wanted to vindicate myself. I said yes, that was the idea exactly. I wanted to be vindicated.
So he gave me the vindication and took the judgment as a slight testimonial of his own sterling worth. When I want to be vindicated again I will do it with one of those self-cocking vindicators that you can carry in a pocket.
Looking over this letter, I am amazed to see the amount of valuable information relative to the life of Mr. Webster that I have succeeded in using. There are, of course, some minor details of Mr. Webster’s life which I have omitted, but nothing of real importance. The true history of Mr. Webster is epitomized here, and told in a pleasing and graceful manner, a style that is at once accurate and just and still elegant, chaste and thoroughly refined, while at the same time there are little gobs of sly humor in it that are real cute.
Two Ways of Telling It
I remember one sunny day in summer, we were sitting in the Boomerang office, I and the city editor, and he was speaking enviously of my salary of $150 per month as compared with his of $80, and I had just given him the venerable minstrel witticism that of course my salary was much larger than his, but he ought not to forget that he got his.
Just then there was a revolver shot at the foot of our stairs, and then another. The printers rushed into the stairway from the composing room, and to save time I ran out on the balcony that hung over the sidewalk and which gave me a bird’s-eye view of the murder. The next issue of the paper contained an account about like this:
Cold-Blooded Murder.—Yesterday, between 12 and 1 o’clock, in front of this office on Second street, James McKeon, in a manner almost wholly unprovoked, shot James Smith, commonly known as Windy Smith. Smith died at 2 o’clock this morning of his wounds. Windy Smith was not a bad man, but, as his nickname would imply, he was a kind of noisy, harmless fellow, and McKeon, who is a gambler and professional bad man, can give no good reason for the killing. There is a determined effort on foot to lynch the murderer.
This account was brief, but it seemed to set forth the facts pretty clearly, I thought, and I felt considerably chagrined when I saw an account of the matter latter on, as written up by the prosecuting attorney. I may be inaccurate as to dates and some other points of detail, but, as nearly as I can remember, his version of the matter was like this:
In Justice’s Court, before E.W. Nye, Esq., Justice of the Peace.
The above named defendant, James McKeon, is accused of the crime of murder, for that he, the said defendant, James McKeon, at the town of Laramie City, in the County of Albany and Territory of Wyoming, and on the 13th day of July, Anno Domini 1880, then and there being, he, the said defendant, James McKeon, did wilfully, maliciously, feloniously, wickedly, unlawfully, criminally, illegally, unjustly, premeditatedly, coolly and murderously, by means of a certain deadly weapon commonly called a Smith & Wesson revolver, or revolving pistol, so constructed as to revolve upon itself and to be discharged by means of a spring and hammer, and with six chambers thereto, and known commonly as a self-cocker, the same loaded with gun-powder and leaden bullets, and in the hands of him, the said defendant, James McKeon, level at, to, upon, by, contiguous to and against the body of one James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, in the peace of the commonwealth then and there being, and that by means of said deadly weapon commonly called a Smith & Wesson revolver, or revolving pistol, so constructed as to revolve upon itself and to be discharged by means of a spring or hammer, and with six chambers thereto and known commonly as a self-cocker, the same loaded with gunpowder and leaden bullets and in the hands of him the said defendant, James McKeon, held at, to, upon, by, contiguous to and against the body of him, the said James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, he, the said James McKeon, did wilfully, maliciously, feloniously, wickedly, fraudulently, virulently, unlawfully, criminally, illegally, brutally, unjustly, premeditatedly, coolly and murderously, of his malice aforethought with the deadly weapon aforesaid held in the right hand of him, the said defendant, James McKeon, to, at, against, etc., the body of him, the said James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, he, the said defendant, James McKeon, at the said town of Laramie City, in the said County of Albany, and in the heretofore enumerated Territory of Wyoming, and on the hereinbefore mentioned 13th day of July, Anno Domini 1880, did inflict to, at, upon, by, contiguous to, adjacent to, adjoining, over and against the body of him, the said James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, one certain deadly, mortal, dangerous and painful wound, to-wit: Over, against, to, at, by, upon, contiguous to, near, adjacent to and bisecting the intestines of him, the said James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, by reason of which he, the said James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, did in great agony linger, and lingering did die, on the 14th day of July, Anno Domini 1880, at 2 o’clock in the forenoon of said day, contrary to the statutes in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the Territory of Wyoming.
I am now convinced that although the published account was correct, it was not as full as it might have been. Perhaps the tendency of modern journalism is to epitomize too much. In the hurry of daily newspaper work and the press of matter upon our pages, very likely we are fatally brief, and sacrifice rhetorical beauty to naked and goose-pimply facts.
