The people of Millburg feel a very intense interest in politics, and during a campaign there is always a good deal of excitement. The bitterest struggle that the town has had for a long while was that which preceded the election of a couple of years ago, when I was not a resident of the place. One incident particularly attracted a good deal of attention. Mr. Potts related the facts to me in the following language:
"You know we nominated Bill Slocum for burgess. He was the most popular man in the place; everybody liked him. And a few days after the convention adjourned Bill was standing talking to Joe Snowden about the election, and Bill happened to remark, 'I've got to win.' Mrs. Martin was going by at the time; and as Bill was speaking very rapidly, he pronounced it like this: 'I've got t'win;' and Mrs. Martin thought he was telling Snowden that he'd gottwins. And Mrs. Martin, just like all women about such matters, at once went through the village spreading the report that Mrs. Slocum had twins.
"So, of course, there was a fuss right off; and the boys said that as Bill was a candidate, and a mighty good fellow anyhow you took him, it'd be nothing more than fair to congratulate him on his good luck by getting up some kind of a public demonstration from his fellow-citizens. Well, sir, you never saw such enthusiasm. The way that idea took was wonderful, and all hands agreed that we ought to have a parade. So they ran up the flags on the hotels and the town-hall, and on the two schooners down at the wharf, and Judge Twiddler adjourned the court over till the next day, and the supervisors gave the public schools a holiday and got up a turkey dinner for the convicts in the jail.
"And some of the folks drummed up the brass band, and it led off, with Major Slott following, carrying an American flag hung with roses. Then came the clergy in carriages, followed by the Masons and Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias. And the Young Men's Christian Association turned out with the Sons of Temperance, about forty strong, in full regalia. And General Trumps pranced along on a white horse ahead of the Millburg Guards. After them came the judges on foot, followed by the City Council and the employés of the gas-works, and the members of the Bible Society and Patriotic Sons of America. Then came citizens walking two and two, afoot, while a big crowd of men and boys brought up the rear.
"The band, mind you, all this time playing the most gorgeous music—'Star-Spangled Banner,' 'Life on the Ocean Wave,' 'Beautiful Dreamer,' 'Home Again,' and all those things, with cymbals and Jenkins' colored man spreading himself on the big drum. And Bill never knew anything about it. It was a perfect surprise to him. And when the procession stopped in front of his house, they gave him three cheers, and he came rushing out on the porch to see what all the noise was about. As soon as he appeared the band struck up 'See, the Conquering Hero Comes,' and Major Slott lowered the flag, and General Trumps waved his hat, and the guard fired a salute, and everybody cheered.
"Bill bowed and made a little speech, and said how honored he was by such a demonstration, and he said he felt certain of victory, and when he was in office he would do his best to serve his fellow-citizens faithfully. Bill thought it was a political serenade; and when he got through, General Trumps cried,
"'Bring out the twins.'
"Bill looked puzzled for a minute, and then he says,
"'I don't think I understand you. What d'you say?'
"'Bring out the twins,' said Judge Twiddler. 'Less look at 'em.'
"'Twins!' says Bill. 'Twins! Why, what d'ye mean, judge?'
"'Why, the twins. Rush 'em out. Hold 'em in the window, so's we can see 'em,' said Major Slott.
"'Gentlemen,' said Bill, 'there must be some little, some slight mistake respecting the—that is, you must have been misinformed about the—the—er—er—Why, there are no twins about this house.'
"Then they thought he was joking, and the band broke in with 'Listen to the Mocking-bird,' and Bill came down to find out the drift of Judge Twiddler's remarks. And when he really convinced them that there wasn't a twin anywhere about the place, you never saw a worse disgusted crowd in your life. Mad as fury. They said they had no idea Bill Slocum would descend to such trickery as that.
"So they broke up. The judge went back to the court-room so indignant he sentenced a prisoner for twenty years, when the law only allowed him to give ten. The supervisors, they took their spite out by docking the school-teachers half a day and cutting off the cranberry sauce from the turkey dinner at the jail. General Trumps got drunk as an owl. The City Councils held an adjourned meeting and raised the water rent on Slocum, and Jenkins' nigger burst in the head of the big drum with a brick. Mad's no word for it. They were wild with rage.
"And that killed Bill. They beat him by two hundred majority at theelection, just on account of old Mrs. Martin misunderstanding him.Rough, wasn't it? But it don't seem to me like the fair thing onBill."
Mr. Slocum was defeated, despite the fact that he wished to succeed. Mr. Walsh, it appears, was disappointed, in the same contest, in a wholly different manner. Mr. Walsh was the predecessor of our present coroner, Mr. Maginn. How Mr. Walsh was elected he informed me in these words:
"You know," said Mr. Walsh, "that I didn't want that position. When they talked of nominating me, I told them, says I, 'It's no use; you needn't elect me; I'm not going to serve. D'you s'pose I'm going to give up a respectable business to become a kind of State undertaker? I'm opposed to thispost-mortemfoolery, any way. When a man's blown up with gunpowder, it don't interest me to know what killed him; so you needn't make me coroner, for I won't serve.'
"Well, do you believe that they persisted in nominating me on the Republican ticket—actually put me up as a candidate? So I published a letter declining the nomination; but they absolutely had the impudence to keep me on the ticket and to hold mass-meetings, at which they made speeches in my favor. I was pretty mad about it, because it showed such a disregard of my feelings; and so I chummed in with the Democrats, and for about two months I went around to the Democratic mass-meetings and spoke against myself and in favor of the opposition candidate. I thought I had them for sure, because I knew more about my own failings than those other fellows did, and I enlarged upon them until I made myself out—Well, I heaped up the iniquity until I used to go home feeling that I was a good deal wickeder sinner than I ever thought I was before. It did me good, too: I reformed. I've been a better man ever since.
"Now, you'd a thought people would a considered me pretty fair authority about my own unfitness for the office, but hang me if the citizens of this county positively didn't go to the polls and elect me by about eight hundred majority. I was the worst disappointed of any man you ever saw. I had repeaters around at the polls, too, voting for the Democratic candidate, and I paid four of the judges to falsify the returns, so as to elect him. But it was no use; the majority was too big. And on election night the Republican executive committee came round to serenade me, and as soon as the band struck up I opened on them with a shot-gun and wounded the bass drummer in the leg. But they kept on playing; and after a while, when they stopped, they poked some congratulatory resolutions under the front door, and gave me three cheers and went home. I was never so annoyed in my life.
"Then they sent me round my certificate of election, but I refused to receive it; and those fellows seized me and held me while Harry Hammer pushed the certificate into my coat-pocket, and then they all quit. The next day a man was run over on the railroad, and they wanted me to tend to him. But I was angry, and I wouldn't. So what does the sheriff do but come here with a gang of police and carry me out there by force? And he hunted up a jury, which brought in a verdict. Then they wanted me to take the fees, but I wouldn't touch them. I said I wasn't going to give my sanction to the proceedings. But of course it was no use. I thought I was living in a free country, but I wasn't. The sheriff drew the money and got a mandamus from the court, and he came here one day while I was at dinner. When I said I wouldn't touch a dollar of it, he drew a pistol and said if I didn't take the money he'd blow my brains out. So what was a man to do? I resigned fifteen times, but somehow those resignations were suppressed. I never heard from them. Well, sir, at last I yielded, and for three years I kept skirmishing around, perfectly disgusted, meditating over folks that had died suddenly.
[Illustration: FORCED TO DO DUTY]
"And do you know that on toward the end of my term they had the face to try to nominate me again? It's a positive fact. Those politicians wanted me to run again; said I was the most popular coroner the county ever had; said that everybody liked my way of handling a dead person, it was so full of feeling and sympathy, and a lot more like that. But what did I do? I wasn't going to run any such risk again. So I went up to the city, and the day before the convention met I sent word down that I was dead. Circulated a report that I'd been killed by falling off a ferry-boat. Then they hung the convention-hall in black and passed resolutions of respect, and then they nominated Barney Maginn.
"On the day after election I turned up, and you never saw men look so miserable, so cut to the heart, as those politicians. They said it was an infamous shame to deceive them in that way, and they declared that they'd run me for sheriff at the next election to make up for it. If they do, I'm going to move for good. I'm going to sail for Colorado, or some other decent place where they'll let a man alone. I'll die in my tracks before I'll ever take another office in this county. I will, now mind me!"
Horatio remarks to Hamlet, "The morning cock crew loud;" and I have no doubt he did; he always does, especially if he is confined during the performance of his vocal exercises to a narrow city yard surrounded by brick walls which act as sounding-boards to carry the vibrations to the ears of a sleeper who is already restless with the summer heat and with the buzzing of early and pertinacious flies. To such a man, aroused and indignant, there comes a profound conviction that the urban rooster is far more vociferous than his rural brethren; that he can sing louder, hold on longer and begin again more quickly than the bucolic cock who has communed only with nature and known no envious longings to outshriek the morning milkman or the purveyor of catfish. And he who is thus afflicted perhaps may be justified if he regards "the cock, that trumpet of the morn," as an insufferable nuisance, whose only excuse for existence is that he is pleasant to the eye and the palate when, bursting with stuffing, he lies, brown and crisp, among the gravy, ready for the carving-knife.
But the man who is fortunate enough to dwell in the country during the ardent summer days takes a different and more kindly view of chanticleer. If he is waked early in the morning by the clarion voice of some neighboring cock, he will not repine, provided he went to bed at a reasonably early hour, for he will hear some music that is not wholly to be despised. The rooster in the neighboring barn-yard gives out the theme. His voice is a deep, but broken, bass. It is suggestive of his having roosted during the night in a draft, which has inflamed his vocal chords so that his tones have lost their sweetness. It is as if a coffee-mill had essayed to crow. The theme is taken up by a thin-voiced rooster a quarter of a mile away, and scarcely has he reached the concluding note before a baritone cock, a little more remote, repeats the cadence, only to have his song broken in upon by a nearer bird who understands exactly the part he is to play in the fugue. And so it passes on from the one to the other, growing fainter and fainter in the distance as Shanghai sings to Bantam and Chittagong to Brahmapootra, until, at last, there is silence; and then, "O hark! O hear! How thin and clear!" far, far away some rooster sends out a delicate falsetto note that might have come from a microscopic cock who is practicing ventriloquism in the cellar. Instantly the catarrhal chicken in the next yard begins the refrain again with his hoarse voice; and then again and again the fugue goes round, never tiring the listener, but always growing more musical, until the sun is fairly up, the hens awake and the scratching of the day is ready to begin.
The note of the cock has been misrepresented. Shakespeare, following usage, perhaps, has given it as "cock-a-doodle-doo," and that is the accepted interpretation of it. But this does not convey the proper impression. We should say that if human syllables can tell the story they would assume some such form as:
Ooauk-auk-auk-au-au-au-auk!
It is a song that ought to be studied and glorified in print. Think what a history it has! That identical combination of sounds which wakes and maddens the sleeping citizen of to-day was heard by Noah and his family with precisely the same cadence and accent in the ark. It was that very crow that Peter heard when he had denied his Master. It is a crow that has come down to us from Eden almost without a moment's intermission. It is a crow which has passed round the world century after century, and now passes, as the herald of the coming of the sun. It may yet be made the theme of a majestic musical composition, now that Wagner has come to teach men how to build a lyric drama upon a phrase. Perhaps the coming American national song may have this familiar crow for its inspiration and its burden. We might do worse, perhaps, than to take the rooster for our national bird, even if we reject his song as the basis of our national anthem. We took our eagle from Rome, as France did hers; would it not have been wiser if we had taken the cock instead, as France did after the Revolution? The Romans and Greeks regarded the cock as a sacred bird. The principal thing that the average school-boy remembers about Socrates is that he killed himself immediately after ordering that a cock should be sacrificed to Aesculapius; and some have held that the reason of his suicide was the vociferousness of the cock, which he wanted to kill in revenge for the misery it had caused him while he was trying to sleep or to think.
[Illustration: THE EARLY COCK]
The cock is a braver bird than the eagle. He has ever been a bold and ready warrior, and has worn a warrior's spurs from the beginning. He has one high soldierly quality: he knows when he is whipped; for who has not seen him, when defeated in a gallant contest, sneak away to a distant-corner to stand, with ruffled feathers, upon a single leg, the very picture of humiliation and despair? And he is vigilant, for has he not for ages revolved upon church-steeples as the emblem of watchfulness? He has the homelier virtues. He is a kind father and a fond as well as a multitudinous husband. He knows how to protect his family from errant and disreputable roosters, and he is always willing to stand aside with unsatisfied appetite and permit them to devour a dainty he has found. He is useful and admirable in his relation to this world, and he is not without value to the next, for popular belief has credited him with the office of warning revisiting spirits to retire from the earth; and when he crows all through the night, the Katie Kings and other ghostly persons who come from space to rap upon tables and evoke discordant twangs from guitars are deaf to the seductive entreaties of the mediums. When
"This bird of dawning singeth all night long, … then they say no spirit dares stir abroad."
Perhaps the true method of expelling Satan from the land and of reforming the corruption which afflicts the country is to place the cock upon our standards and to offer him inducements to crow perpetually. There should be something to that effect in the political platforms. A goose saved Rome; why should not a rooster rescue America? Let the patriot who curses the noisy bird which crows him from his drowsy couch at an unseemly hour think of these things and allay his wrath with reflections upon the well-deserved glories of the matutinal rooster.
I have one neighbor who does not regard the crowing cock with proper enthusiasm—who is indeed inclined to look upon it with disgust; but as he has been a victim of the bird's vociferousness, perhaps his sentiments of dislike for the proud bird may be excused.
The agricultural society of our county held a poultry show last fall, and Mr. Butterwick, who is a member of the society, was invited to deliver the address at the commencement of the fair. Mr. Butterwick prepared what he considered a very learned paper upon the culture of domestic fowls; and when the time arrived, he was on the platform ready to enlighten the audience. The birds were arranged around the hall in cages; and when the exhibition had been formally opened by the chairman, the orator came forward with his manuscript in his hand. Just as he began to read it a black Poland rooster close to the stage uttered a loud and defiant crow. There were about two hundred roosters in the hall, and every one of them instantly began to crow in the most vehement manner, and the noise excited the hens so much that they all cackled as loudly they could.
Of course the speaker's voice could not be heard, and he came to a dead halt, while the audience laughed. After waiting for ten minutes silence was again obtained, and Butterwick began a second time.
As soon as he had uttered the words "Ladies and gentlemen," the Poland rooster, which seemed to have a grudge against the speaker, emitted another preposterous crow, and all the other fowls in the room joined in the deafening chorus. The audience roared, and Butterwick grew red in the face with passion. But when the noise subsided, he went at it again, and got as far as "Ladies and gentlemen, the domestic barn-yard fowl affords a subject of the highest interest to the—" when the Poland rooster became engaged in a contest with an overgrown Shanghai chicken, and this set the hens of the combatants to cackling, and in a moment the entire collection was in another uproar. This was too much. Mr. Butterwick was beside himself with rage. He flung down his manuscript, rushed to the cage, and shaking his fist at the Poland chicken exclaimed,
"You diabolical fiend, I've half a mind to murder you!"
Then he kicked the cage to pieces with his foot, and seizing the rooster twisted its neck and flung it on the floor. Then he fled from the hall, followed by peals of laughter from the audience and more terrific clatter from the fowls. The exhibition was opened without further ceremony, and the dissertation on the domestic barn-yard fowl was ordered to be printed in the annual report of the proceedings of the society.
One day while I was talking with Mr. Keyser upon the subject of the cock he pointed to a chicken that was roosting upon an adjoining fence, and told me a story about the fowl that I must refuse to believe.
"Perhaps you never noticed that rooster," said Keyser—"very likely you wouldn't have observed him; but I don't care in what light you look at him, the more you study him, the more talented he appears. You talk about your American iggles and birds of freedom, but that insignificant-looking chicken yonder can give any of them twenty points and pocket them at the first shot. That rooster has traits of character that'd adorn almost any walk of life.
[Illustration: THE AFFAIR AT THE POULTRY-SHOW]
"Most chickens are kinder stupid; but what I like about him is that he is sympathetic, he has feeling. I know last fall that my Shanghai hen was taken sick while she was trying to hatch out some eggs, and that rooster was so compassionate that he used to go in and set on that nest for hours, trying to help her out, so that she could go off recreating after exercise. And when she died, he turned right in and took charge of things—seemed to feel that he ought to be a father to those unborn little orphans; and he straddled around over those eggs for ever so long. He never got much satisfaction out of it, though. Most of them were duck eggs, and it seemed to kinder cut him up when he looked at those birds after they hatched out. He took it to heart, and appeared to feel low-spirited and afflicted. He would go off and stand by himself—stand on one leg in a corner of the fence and let his mind brood over his troubles until you'd pity him. It disgusted him to think how the job turned out.
"Now, you wouldn't think such a chicken as that would have much courage, but he'd just as leave fight a wagon-load of tigers as not. He got a notion in his head that that rooster over there on the Baptist church-steeple was alive, and he couldn't bear to think that it was up there sailing around and putting on airs over him, and a good many times I've seen him try to fly up at it, so's to arrange a fight. When he found he couldn't make it, he'd crow at the Baptist rooster and dare it to come down, and at last, when all his efforts were useless, would you believe that rooster one day attacked the sexton as the weathercock's next friend, and drove his spurs so far into the sexton's shanks that he walked on crutches for more'n a week? I never saw a mere chicken have such fine instincts and such pluck.
"He is a splendid fighter, anyway, just as he stands. Why, he had a little fuss with Murphy's Poland rooster here some time back, and instead of going at him and taking the chances of getting whipped, that chicken actually put himself into training, ate nothing but corn, took regular exercise, went to roost early, took a cold bath every morning and got a pullet to rub him down with a corn-cob. It was wonderful; and in a week or so he was all bone and muscle, and he flickered over the fence after Murphy's rooster and sent him whizzing into the next world on the fourth round.
"I never knew such a rooster. Now, do you know I believe that chicken actually takes an interest in politics? Oh, you may laugh, but last fall during the campaign he was so excited about something that he couldn't eat, and the night they had the Republican mass-meeting here he roosted on the chandelier in the hall, and every time General Trumps made a good point that chicken would cackle and flap his wings, as much as to say, 'Them's my sentiments!' And on the day of the parade he turned out and followed the last wagon, keeping step with the music and never dropping out of line but once, when he stopped to fight a Democratic rooster belonging to old Byerly, who was on the Democratic ticket. And in the morning, after the Republicans won, he just got on the fence out here and crowed so vociferously you could've heard him across the river, particularly when I ran up the American flag and read the latest returns.
"Yes, sir. Now, I know you'll think it's ridiculous when I tell you, but it's an actual fact, that that very day my daughter was playing the 'Star-spangled Banner' on the piano, and that rooster, when he heard it, came scudding into the parlor, and after flipping up on the piano he struck out and crowed that tune just as natural as if he was an educated musician. Positive truth; and he beat time with his tail. He don't crow like any other rooster. Every morning he works off selections from Beethoven and Mozart and those people, and on Sundays he frequently lets himself out on hymn-tunes. I've known him to set on that fence for more'n an hour at a time practicing the scales, and he nearly kicked another rooster to death one day because that rooster crowed flat. I saw him do it myself. And now I really must be going. Good-morning."
I think I shall send out and kill that rooster at the first opportunity. I want Keyser to have one thing less to fib about. He has too much variety at present.
During one of the cold spells of last winter the gas-meter in my cellar was frozen. I attempted to thaw it out by pouring hot water over it, but after spending an hour upon the effort I emerged from the contest with the meter with my feet and trousers wet, my hair full of dust and cobwebs and my temper at fever heat. After studying how I should get rid of the ice in the meter, I concluded to use force for the purpose, and so, seizing a hot poker, I jammed it through a vent-hole and stirred it around inside of the meter with a considerable amount of vigor. I felt the ice give way, and I heard the wheels buzz around with rather more vehemence than usual. Then I went up stairs.
I noticed for three or four days that the internal machinery of the meter seemed to be rattling around in a remarkable manner; it could be heard all over the house. But I was pleased to find that it was working again in spite of the cold weather, and I retained my serenity.
About two weeks afterward my gas bill came. It accused me of burning during the quarter about one million five hundred thousand feet of gas, and it called on me to settle to the extent of nearly three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I put on my hat and went down to the gas-office. I addressed one of the clerks:
"How much gas did you make at the Blank works last quarter?"
"I dunno; about a million feet, I reckon."
"Well, you have charged me in my bill for burning half a million more than you made; I want you to correct it."
"Less see the bill. Hm—m—m! this is all right. It's taken off of the meter. That's what the meter says."
"S'pose'n it does; Icouldn'thave burned more'n you made."
"Can't help that; the meter can't lie."
"Well, but how d'you account for the difference?"
"Dunno; 'tain't our business to go nosing and poking around after scientific truth. We depend on the meter. If that says you burned six million feet, why, youmusthave burned it, even if we never made a foot of gas out at the works."
"To tell you the honest truth," said I, "the meter was frozen, and I stirred it up with a poker and set it whizzing around."
"Price just the same," said the clerk. "We charge for pokers just as we do for gas."
"You are not actually going to have the audacity to ask me to pay three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on account of that poker?"
"If it was seven hundred thousand dollars, I'd take it with a calmness that would surprise you. Pay up, or we'll turn off your gas."
"Turn it off and be hanged," I exclaimed as I emerged from the office, tearing the bill to fragments. Then I went home; and grasping that too lavish poker, I approached the meter. It had registered another million feet since the bill was made out; it was running up a score of a hundred feet a minute; in a month I would have owed the gas company more than the United States Government owes its creditors. So I beat the meter into a shapeless mass, tossed it into the street and turned off the gas inside the cellar.
Then I went down to thePatriotoffice to persuade Major Slott to denounce the fraud practiced by the company. While I was in the editorial room two or three visitors came in. The first one behaved in a violent and somewhat mysterious manner. He saluted the major by throwing a chair at him. Then he seized the editor by the hair, bumped his head against the table three or four times and kicked him. When this exhilarating exercise was over, the visitor shook his fist very close to the major's nose and said, "You idiot and outcast, if you don't put that notice in to-morrow, I'll come round here and murder you! Do you hear me?" Then he cuffed the major's ears a couple of times, kicked him some more, emptied the ink-stand over his head, poured the sand from the sand-box in the same place, knocked over the table and went out. During all this time the major sat still with a sickly kind of a smile upon his face and never uttered a word. When the man left, the major picked up the table, wiped the ink and sand from his face, and turning to me said,
"Harry will have his little fun, you see."
[Illustration: THE SHERIFF IS MAD]
"He is a somewhat exuberant humorist," I replied. "What was the object of the joke?"
"Well, he's going to sell his furniture at auction, and I promised to notice the fact in to-day'sPatriot, but I forgot it, and he called to remind me of it."
"Do all of your friends refresh your memory in that vivid manner? IfI'd been in your place, I'd have knocked him down."
"No, you wouldn't," said Slott—"no, you wouldn't. Harry is the sheriff, and he controls two thousand dollars' worth of official advertising. I'd sooner he'd kick me from here to Borneo and back again than to take that advertising away from thePatriot. What are a few bumps and a sore shin or two compared with all that fatness? No, sir; he can have all the fun he wants out of me."
The next visitor was less demonstrative. He was tall and slender and clad in the habiliments of woe. He entered the office and took a chair. Removing his hat, he wiped the moisture from his eyes, rubbed his nose thoughtfully for a moment, put his handkerchief in his hat, his hat upon the floor, and said,
"You didn't know Mrs. Smith?"
"I hadn't that pleasure. Who was she?"
"She was my wife. She's been sick some time. But day before yesterday she was took worse, and she kep' on sinking until evening, when she gave a kinder sudden jump a couple of times, and then her spirit flickered. Dead, you know. Passed away into another world."
"I'm very sorry."
"So am I. And I called around to see if I couldn't get some of you literary people to get out some kind of a poem describing her peculiarities, so that I can advertise her in the paper."
"I dunno; maybe we might."
[Illustration: MR. SMITH'S GRIEF]
"Oh, you didn't know her, you say? Well, she was a sing'lar kinder woman. Had strong characteristics. Her nose was the crookedest in the State—all bent around sideways. Old Captain Binder used to say that it looked like the jibsail of an oyster-sloop on the windward tack. Only his fun, you know. But Helen never minded it. She said herself that it aimed so much around the corner that whenever she sneezed she blew down her back hair. There were rich depths of humor in that woman. Now, I don't mind if you work into the poem some picturesque allusion to the condition of her nose, so her friends will recognize her. And you might also spend a verse or two on her defective eye."
"What was the matter with her eye?"
"Gone, sir—gone! Knocked out with a chip while she was splitting kin'ling-wood when she was a child. She fixed it up somehow with a glass one, and it gave her the oddest expression you ever saw. The false one would stand perfectly still while the other one was rolling around, so that 'bout half the time you couldn't tell whether she was studying astronomy or watching the hired girl pare potatoes. And she lay there at night with the indisposed eye wide open glaring at me, while the other was tight shut, so that sometimes I'd get the horrors and kick her and shake her to make her get up and fix it. Once I got some mucilage and glued the lid down myself, but she didn't like it when she woke in the morning. Had to soak her eye in warm water, you know, to get it open.
"Now, I reckon you could run in some language about her eccentricities of vision, couldn't you? Don't care what it is, so that I have the main facts."
"Was she peculiar in other respects?"
"Well, yes. One leg was gone—run over by a wagon when she was little. But she wore a patent leg that did her pretty well. Bothered her sometimes, but most generally gave her a good deal of comfort. She was fond of machinery. She was very grateful for her privileges. Although sometimes it worried her, too. The springs'd work wrong now and then, and maybe in church her leg'd give a spurt and begin to kick and hammer away at the board in front of the pew until it sounded like a boiler-factory. Then I'd carry her out, and most likely it'd kick at me all the way down the aisle and end up by dancing her around the vestibule, until the sexton would rebuke her for waltzing in church. Seems to me there's material for poetry in that, isn't there? She was a self-willed woman. Often, when she wanted to go to a sewing-bee or to gad about somewhere, maybe, I'd stuff that leg up the chimney or hide it in the wood-pile. And when I wouldn't tell her where it was, do you know what she'd do?"
"What?"
"Why, she'd lash an umbrella to her stump and drift off down the street 'sif that umbrella was born there. You couldn't get ahead of her. She was ingenious.
"So I thought I'd mention a few facts to you, and you can just throw them together and make them rhyme, and I'll call 'round and pay you for them. What day? Tuesday? Very well; I'll run in on Tuesday and see how you've fixed her up."
Then Mr. Smith smoothed up his hat with his handkerchief, wiped the accumulated sorrow from his eyes, placed his hat upon his head, and sailed serenely out and down the stairs toward his desolated hearthstone.
The last caller was an artist. He took a chair and said,
"My name is Brewer; I am the painter of the allegorical picture of 'The Triumph of Truth' on exhibition down at Yelverton's. I called, major, to make some complaint about the criticism of the work which appeared in your paper. Your critic seems to have misunderstood somewhat the drift of the picture. For instance, he says—Let me quote the paragraph:
"'In the background to the left stands St. Augustine with one foot on a wooden Indian which is lying upon the ground. Why the artist decorated St. Augustine with a high hat and put his trousers inside his boots, and why he filled the saint's belt with navy revolvers and tomahawks, has not been revealed. It strikes us as being ridiculous to the very last degree.'
"Now, this seems to me to be a little too harsh. That figure doesnotrepresent St. Augustine. It is meant for an allegorical picture of Brute Force, and it has its foot upon Intellect—Intellect, mind you! andnota cigar-store Indian. It is a likeness of Captain Kidd, and I set it back to represent the fact that Brute Force belonged to the Dark Ages. How on earth that man of yours ever got an idea that it was St. Augustine beats me."
"It is singular," said the major.
"And now let me direct your attention to another paragraph. He says,
"'We were astonished to notice that while Noah's ark goes sailing in the remote distance, there is close to it a cotton-factory, the chimney of which is pouring out white smoke that covers the whole of the sky in the picture, while the ark seems to be trying to sail down that chimney. Now, they didn't have cotton-factories in those days; the thing don't hang. The artist must have been drunk.'
"Now, this insinuation pains me. How would you like it if you painted a picture of the tower of Babel, and somebody should come along and insist that it was the chimney of a cotton-factory, and that the clouds with which the sky is covered were smoke? Cotton-factory! Your man certainly cannot be familiar with the Scriptures; and when he talks about the ark sailing down that chimney, he forgets that the reason why it is standing on one end is that the water is so rough as to make it pitch. You know the Bible says that arks did pitch 'without and within.' Now, don't it?"
"I think maybe it does," said the major.
"But that's not the worst. I can stand that; but what do you think of a man that goes to criticising a work of art, and says—Now just listen to this:
"'On the right is a boy who has his clothes off and has apparently been in swimming, and has been rescued by a big yellow dog just as he was about to drown. What this has to do with the Triumph of Truth we don't know, but we do know that the dog is twice as large as the boy, and that he has the boy's head in his mouth, while the boy's hands are tied behind his back. Now, for a boy to go in swimming with his hands tied, and for a dog to swallow his head so as to drag him out, appears to us the awfulest foolishness on earth.'
"You will probably be surprised to learn that your critic is here referring to a very beautiful study of a Christian martyr who has been thrown among the wild beasts of the arena, and who is engaged in being eaten by a lion. The animal is not a yellow dog; that human being has not been in swimming; and the reason that he is smaller than the lion is that I had to make him so in order to get his head into the lion's mouth. Would you have me represent the lion as large as an elephant? Would you have me paste a label on the Christian martyr to inform the public that 'This is not a boy who has been treading water with his hands tied'? Now, look at the matter calmly. Is thePatriotencouraging art when it goes on in this manner? Blame me if I think it is."
"It certainly doesn't seem so."
"Well, then, what do you say to this? What do you think of a critic who remarks,
"'But the most extraordinary thing in the picture is the group in the foreground. An old lady with an iron coal-scuttle on her head is handing some black pills to a ballet-dancer dressed in pink tights, while another woman in a badly-fitting chemise stands by them brushing off the flies with the branch of a tree, with a canary-bird resting upon her shoulder and trying to sing at some small boys who are seen in the other corner of the field. What this means we haven't the remotest idea; but we do know that the ballet-dancers' legs have the knee-pans at the back of the joint, and that the canary-bird looks more as if he wanted to eat the coal-scuttle than as if he desired to sing.'
"This is too bad. Do you know what that beautiful group really represents? That old lady, as your idiot calls her, is Minerva, the goddess of War, handing cannon balls to the goddess of Love as a token there shall be no more war. And the figure in what he considers the chemise is the genius of Liberty holding out an olive branch with one hand, while upon her shoulder rests an American eagle screaming defiance at the enemies of his country, who are seen fleeing in the distance. Canary bird! small boys! ballet-girl! The man is crazy, sir; stark, staring mad. And now I want you to write up an explanation for me. This kind of thing exposes me to derision. I can't stand it, and, by George! I won't! I'll sue you for libel."
Then the major promised to make amends, and Mr. Brewer withdrew in a calmer mood.
An itinerant theatrical company gave two or three performances in Millburg last winter, and in a very creditable fashion, too. One of the plays produced was Shakespere's "King John," with the "eminent tragedian Mr. Hammer" in the character of theKing. It is likely that but for an unfortunate misunderstanding the entertainment would have been wholly delightful. There is a good deal of flourishing of trumpets in the drama, and the manager, not having a trumpeter of his own, engaged a German musician named Schenck to supply the music. Schenck doesn't understand the English language very well, and the manager put him behind the scenes on the left of the stage, while the manager stood in the wing at the right of the stage. Then Schenck was instructed to toot his trumpet when the manager signaled with his hand. Everything went along smoothly enough untilKing John(Mr. Hammer) came to the passage, "Ah, me! this tyrant fever burns me up!" Just asKing Johnwas about to utter this the manager brushed a fly off of his nose, and Schenck, mistaking the movement for the appointed signal, blew out a frightful blare upon his bugle. TheKingwas furious and the manager made wild gestures for Schenck to stop, but that estimable German musician imagined that the manager wanted him to play louder, and every time a fresh motion was made Schenck emitted a more terrific blast The result was something like the following:
King John. "Ah, me! this tyrant—"
Schenck(with his cheeks distended and his eyes beaming through his spectacles). "Ta-tarty; ta-ta-tarty, rat-tat tarty-tarty-tarty, ta-ta-ta, tanarty-arty, te-tarty."
King John. "Fever burns—"
Schenck. "Rat-tat-tarty, poopen-arty, oopen-arty, ta-tarty-arty-oopen-arty; ta-ta; ta-ta-ta-tarty poopen-arty, poopen a-a-a-arty-arty."
King John. "Ah, me! this—"
Schenck(ejecting a hurricane from his lungs). "Hoopen-oopen-oopen-arty, ta-tarty; tat-tat-ta-tarty-ti-ta-tarty; poopen-ta-poopen-ta-poopen-ta-a-a-a-tarty-whoop ta-ta."
King John(quickly). "Tyrant fever burns me up."
Schenck(with perspiration standing out on his forehead). "To-ta ta-ta. Ta-ta ta-ta tatten-atten-atten arty te-tarty poopen oopen-oo-oo-oo-oo-oopen te-tarty ta-ta-ar-ar-ar-te tarty-to-ta-a-a-a-a-A-+A+-+A!+"
King John(to the audience). "Ladies and gentlemen—"
Schenck. "Ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, poopen-oopen, poopen-oopen, te-ta, tarty oo-hoo oo-hoo-te tarty arty, appen-arty."
King John. "There is a German idiot behind the scenes here who is—"
Schenck. "Whoopen-arty te-tarty-arty-arty-ta-ta-a-a-a tat-tarty."
King John. "Blowing infamously upon a horn, and—"
Schenck. "Poopen-arty."
King John. "If you will excuse me—"
Schenck. "Pen-arty-arty."
King John. "I will go behind the scenes and check him in his wild career."
Schenck. "Poopen-arty ta-tarty-arty poopen-a-a-a-arty tat-tat-ta-tarty."
ThenKing Johndisappeared and a scuffle was heard, with some violent expressions in the German language. Ten minutes later a gentleman from the Fatherland might have been seen standing on the pavement in front of the theatre with a bugle under his arm and a handkerchief to his bleeding nose, wondering what on earth was the matter. In the mean time theKinghad returned to the stage, and the performance concluded without any music. After this the manager will employ home talent when he wants airs on the bugle.
* * * * *
I have been studying the horn to some extent myself. Nothing is more delightful than to have sweet music at home in the evenings. It lightens the burdens of care, it soothes the ruffled feelings, it exercises a refining influence upon the children, it calms the passions and elevates the soul. A few months ago I thought that it might please my family if I learned to play upon the French horn. It is a beautiful instrument, and after hearing a man perform on it at a concert I resolved to have one. I bought a splendid one in the city, and concluded not to mention the fact to any one until I had learned to play a tune. Then I thought I would serenade Mrs. A. some evening and surprise her. Accordingly, I determined to practice in the garret. When I first tried the horn I expected to blow only a few gentle notes until I learned how to handle it; but when I put the mouth-piece to my lips, no sound was evoked. Then I blew harder. Still the horn remained silent. Then I drew a full breath and sent a whirlwind tearing through the horn; but no music came. I blew at it for half an hour, and then I ran a wire through the instrument to ascertain if anything blocked it up. It was clear. Then I blew softly and fiercely, quickly and slowly. I opened all the stops. I puffed and strained and worked until I feared an attack of apoplexy. Then I gave it up and went down stairs; and Mrs. A. asked me what made me look so red in the face. For four days I labored with that horn, and got my lips so puckered up and swollen that I went about looking as if I was perpetually trying to whistle. Finally, I took the instrument back to the store and told the man that the horn was defective. What I wanted was a horn with insides to it; this one had no more music to it than a terra-cotta drainpipe. The man took it in his hand, put it to his lips and played "Sweet Spirit, Hear my Prayer," as easily as if he were singing. He said that what I needed was to fix my mouth properly, and he showed me how.
After working for three more afternoons in the garret the horn at last made a sound. But it was not a cheering noise; it reminded me forcibly of the groans uttered by Butterwick's horse when it was dying last November. The harder I blew, the more mournful became the noise, and that was the only note I could get. When I went down to supper, Mrs. A. asked me if I heard that awful groaning. She said she guessed it came from Twiddler's cow, for she heard Mrs. Twiddler say yesterday that the cow was sick.
For four weeks I could get nothing out of that horn but blood-curdling groans; and, meantime, the people over the way moved to another house because our neighborhood was haunted, and three of our hired girls resigned successively for the same reason.
Finally, a man whom I consulted told me that "No One to Love" was an easy tune for beginners; and I made an effort to learn it.
After three weeks of arduous practice, during which Mrs. A. several times suggested that it was brutal that Twiddler didn't kill that suffering cow and put it out of its misery, I conquered the first three notes; but there I stuck. I could play "No One to—" and that was all. I performed "No One to—" over eight thousand times; and as it seemed unlikely that I would ever learn the whole tune, I determined to try the effect of part of it on Mrs. A. About ten o'clock one night I crept out to the front of the house and struck up. First, "No One to—" about fifteen or twenty times, then a few of those groans, then more of the tune, and so forth. Then Butterwick set his dog on me, and I suddenly went into the house. Mrs. A. had the children in the back room, and she was standing behind the door with my revolver in her hand. When I entered, she exclaimed,
"Oh, I'm so glad you've come home! Somebody's been murdering a man in our yard. He uttered the most awful shrieks and cries I ever heard. I was dreadfully afraid the murderers would come into the house. It's perfectly fearful, isn't it?"
[Illustration: A SCARED FAMILY]
Then I took the revolver away from her—it was not loaded, and she had no idea that it would have to be cocked—and went to bed without mentioning the horn. I thought perhaps it would be better not to. I sold it the next day; and now if I want music I shall buy a good hand-organ. I know I can play on that.
* * * * *
As music and sculpture are the first of the arts, I may properly refer in this chapter to some facts relative to the condition of the latter in the community in which I live. Some time ago there was an auction out at the place of Mr. Jackson, and a very handsome marble statue of William Penn was knocked down to Mr. Whitaker. He had the statue carted over to the marble-yard, where he sought an interview with Mr. Mix, the owner. He told Mix that he wanted that statue "fixed up somehow so that 'twould represent one of the heathen gods." He had an idea that Mix might chip the clothes off of Penn and put a lyre in his hand, "so that he might pass muster as Apollo or Hercules."
But Mix said he thought the difficulty would be in wrestling with William's hat. It was a marble hat, with a rim almost big enough for a race-course; and Mix said that although he didn't profess to know much about heathen mythology as a general thing, still it struck him that Hercules in a broad-brimmed hat would attract attention by his singularity, and might be open to criticism.
Mr. Whitaker said that what he really wanted with that statue, when he bought it, was to turn it into Venus, and he thought perhaps the hat might be chiseled up into some kind of a halo around her head.
But Mix said that he didn't exactly see how he could do that when the rim was so curly at the sides. A halo that was curly was just no halo at all. But, anyway, how was he going to manage about Penn's waistcoat? It reached almost to his knees, and to attempt to get out a bare-legged Venus with a halo on her head and four cubic feet of waistcoat around her middle would ruin his business. It would make the whole human race smile.
Then Whitaker said Neptune was a god he always liked, and perhaps Mix could fix the tails of Penn's coat somehow so that it would look as if the figure was riding on a dolphin; then the hat might be made to represent seaweed, and a fish-spear could be put in the statue's hand.
Mix, however, urged that a white marble hat of those dimensions, when cut into seaweed, would be more apt to look as if Neptune was coming home with a load of hay upon his head; and he said that although art had made gigantic strides during the past century, and evidently had a brilliant future before it, it had not yet discovered a method by which a swallow-tail coat with flaps to the pockets could be turned into anything that would look like a dolphin.
Then Mr. Whitaker wanted to know if Pan wasn't the god that had horns and split hoofs, with a shaggy look to his legs; for if he was, he would be willing to have the statue made into Pan, if it could be done without too much expense.
And Mr. Mix said that while nothing would please him more than to produce such a figure of Pan, and while William Penn's square-toed shoes, probably, might be made into cloven hoofs without a very strenuous effort, still he hardly felt as if he could fix up those knee-breeches to resemble shaggy legs; and as for trying to turn that hat into a pair of horns, Mr. Whitaker might as well talk of emptying the Atlantic Ocean through a stomach-pump.
Thereupon, Mr. Whitaker remarked that he had concluded, on the whole, that it would be better to split the patriarch up the middle and take the two halves to make a couple of little Cupids, which he could hang in his parlor with a string, so that they would appear to be sporting in air. Perhaps the flap of that hat might be sliced up into wings and glued on the shoulders of the Cupids.
But Mr. Mix said that while nobody would put himself out more to oblige a friend than he would, still he must say, if his honest opinion was asked, that to attempt to make a Cupid out of one leg and half the body of William Penn would be childish, because, if they used the half one way, there would be a very small Cupid with one very long leg; and if they used it the other way, he would have to cut Cupid's head out of the calf of William's leg, and there wasn't room enough, let alone the fact that the knee-joint would give the god of Love the appearance of having a broken back. And as for wings, if the man had been born who could chisel wings out of the flap of a hat, all he wanted was to meet that man, so that he could gaze on him and study him. Finally Whitaker suggested that Mix should make the statue into an angel and sell it for an ornament to a tombstone.
But Mix said that if he should insult the dead by putting up in the cemetery an angel with a stubby nose and a double-chin, that would let him out as a manufacturer of sepulchres.
And so Whitaker sold him the statue for ten dollars, and Mix sawed it up into slabs for marble-top tables. High art doesn't seem to flourish to any large extent in this place.
Mr. Potts has suffered a good deal from the toothache, and one day he went around to the office of Dr. Slugg, the dentist, to have the offending tooth pulled. The doctor has a very large practice; and in order to economize his strength, he invented a machine for pulling teeth. He constructed a series of cranks and levers fixed to a movable stand and operating a pair of forceps by means of a leather belt, which was connected with the shafting of a machine-shop in the street back of the house. The doctor experimented with it several times on nails firmly inserted in a board, and it worked splendidly. The first patient he tried it on was Mr. Potts. When the forceps had been clasped upon Potts' tooth, Dr. Slugg geared the machine and opened the valve. It was never known with any degree of exactness whether the doctor pulled the valve too far open or whether the engine was working at that moment under extraordinary pressure. But in the twinkling of an eye Mr. Potts was twisted out of the chair and the movable stand began to execute the most surprising manoeuvres around the room. It would jerk Mr. Potts high into the air and souse him down in an appalling manner, with one leg among Slugg's gouges and other instruments of torture, and with the other in the spittoon. Then it would rear him up against the chandelier three or four times, and shy across and drive Potts' head through the oil portrait of Slugg's father over the mantel-piece. After bumping him against Slugg's ancestor it would swirl Potts around among the crockery on the wash-stand and dance him up and down in an exciting manner over the stove, until finally the molar "gave," and as Potts landed with his foot through the pier-glass and his elbow on a pink poodle worked in a green rug, the machine dashed violently against Dr. Slugg and tried to seize his leg with the forceps. When they carried Potts home, he discovered that Slugg had pulled the wrong tooth; and Dr. Slugg never sent to collect his bill. He canceled his contract with the man who owned the planing-mill, and began to pull teeth in the old way, by hand. I have an impression that Slugg's patent can be bought at a sacrifice.
[Illustration: DR. SLUGG'S INVENTION]
Mr. Potts, a day or two later, resolved to take the aching tooth out himself. He had heard that a tooth could be removed suddenly and without much pain by tying a string around it, fixing the string to a bullet and firing the bullet from a gun. So he got some string and fastened it to the tooth and to a ball, rammed the latter into his gun, and aimed the gun out of the window. Then he began to feel nervous about it, and he cocked and uncocked the gun about twenty times, as his mind changed in regard to the operation. The last time the gun was cocked he resolvednotto take the tooth out in that way, and he began to let the hammer down preparatory to cutting the string. Just then the hammer slipped, and the next minute Mr. Potts' tooth was flying through the air at the rate of fifty miles a minute, and he was rolling over on the floor howling and spitting blood. After Mrs. Potts had picked him up and given him water with which to wash out his mouth he went down to the front window. While he was sitting there thinking that maybe it was all for the best, he saw some men coming by carrying a body on a shutter. He asked what was the matter, and they told him that Bill Dingus had been murdered by somebody.
Mr. Potts thought he would put on his hat and go down to the coroner's office and see what the tragedy was. When he got there, Mr. Dingus had revived somewhat, and he told his story to the coroner. He was trimming a tree in Butterwick's garden, when he suddenly heard the explosion of a gun, and the next minute a bullet struck him in the thigh and he fell to the ground. He said he couldn't imagine who did it. Then the doctor examined the wound and found a string hanging from it, and a large bullet suspended upon the string. When he pulled the string it would not move any, and he said it must be tied to some other missile still in the flesh. He said it was the most extraordinary case on record. The medical books reported nothing of the kind.
Then the doctor gave Mr. Dingus chloroform and proceeded to cut into him with a knife to find the other end of the string, and while he was at work Mr. Potts began to feel sick at his stomach and to experience a desire to go home. At last the doctor cut deep enough; and giving the string a jerk, out came a molar tooth that looked as if it might have been aching. Then the doctor said the case was 'more extraordinary than he had thought it was. He said that tooth couldn't have been fired from a gun, because it would have been broken to pieces; it couldn't have been swallowed by Dingus and then broken through and buried itself in his thigh, for then how could the string and ball be accounted for?
"The occurrence is totally unaccountable upon any reasonable theory," said the doctor, "and I do not know what to believe, unless we are to conceive that the tooth and the ball were really meteoric stones that have assumed these remarkable shapes and been shot down upon the earth with such force as to penetrate Mr. Dingus' leg, and this is so very improbable that we can hardly accept it unless it is impossible to find any other. Hallo! What's the matter with you, Potts? Your mouth and shirt are all stained with blood!"
"Oh, nothing," said Potts, forgetting himself. "I just lost a tooth, and—"
"You lost a—Who pulled it?" asked the doctor.
"Gentlemen," said Potts, "the fact is I shot it out with my gun."
Then they put Potts under bail for attempted assassination, and Dingus said that as soon as he got well he would bang Mr. Potts with a club. When the crowd had gone, the coroner said to Potts,
"You're a mean sort of a man, now, ain't you?"
"Well, Mr. Maginn," replied Potts, "I really didn't know Mr. Dingus was there; and the gun went off accidentally, any way."
"Oh, it isn't that," said the coroner—"it isn't that. I don't mind your shooting him, but why in the thunder didn't you kill him while you were at it, and give me a chance? You want to see me starve, don't you? I wish you'd a buried the tooth in his lung and the ball in his liver, and then I'd a had my regular fees. But as it is, I have all the bother and get nothing. I'd starve to death if all men were like you."
And Potts went away with a dim impression that he had injured Maginn rather more than Mr. Dingus.
* * * * *
Coroner Maginn's condition, however, is one of chronic discontent.Upon the occasion of a recent encounter with him I said to him,
"Business seems to be dull to-day, Mr. Maginn."
"Dull! Well, that's just no name for it. This is the deadest town I ever—Well, exceptin' Jim Busby's tumblin' off the market-house last month, there hasn't been a decent accident in this place since last summer. How'm I goin' to live, I want to know? In other countries people keep things movin'. There are murders and coal-oil explosions and roofs fallin' in—'most always somethin' lively to afford a coroner a chance. But here! Why, I don't get 'nough fees in a year to keep a poll-parrot in water-crackers. I don't—now, that's the honest truth."
"That does seem discouraging."
"And then the worst of it is a man's friends won't stand by him. There's Doolan, the coroner in the next county. He found a drowned man up in the river just beyond the county line. I ought to have had the first shy at the body by rights, for I know well enough he fell in from this county and then skeeted up with the tide. But no; Doolan would hold the inquest; and do you believe that man actually wouldn't float the remains down the river so's I could sit on 'em after he'd got through? Actually took 'em out and buried 'em, although I offered to go halves with him on my fees if he would pass the body down this way. That's a positive fact. He refused. Now, what do you think of a man like that? He hasn't got enough soul in him to be worth preachin' to. That's my opinion."
"It wasn't generous."
"No, sir. Why, there's Stanton come home from Peru with six mummies that he dug out of some sepulchre in that country. They look exackly like dried beef. Now, my view is that I ought to sit on those things. They're human beings; nobody 'round here knows what they died of. The law has a right to know. Stanton hasn't got a doctor's certificate about 'em, and I'm sworn to look after all dead people that can't account for bein' dead, or that are suspicioned of dyin' by foul play. I could have made fifty dollars out of those deceased Peruvians, and I ought to've done it. But no! Just as I was about to begin, the supervisors, they shut down on it; they said the county didn't care nothin' about people that had been dead for six hundred years, and they wouldn't pay me a cent. Just as ifsix thousandyears was anything in the eye of the law, when maybe a man's been stabbed, or something, and when I'm under oath to tend to him! But it's just my luck. Everything appears to be agin me, 'specially if there's money in it."
"You do seem rather unfortunate."
"Now, there's some countries where they frequently have earthquakes which rattle down the houses and mash people, and volcanoes which burst out and set hundreds of 'em afire, and hurricanes which blow 'em into Hereafter. A coroner can have some comfort in such a place as that. He can live honest and respectable. Just think of settin' on four or five hundred bodies killed with an earthquake! It makes my mouth water. But nothin' of that sort ever happens in this jackass kind of a land. Things go along just 'sif they were asleep. We've got six saw-mills 'round this town, but nobody ever gets tangled in the machinery and sawed in half. We've got a gunpowder-factory out beyond the turnpike, but will that ever go up? It wouldn't if you was to toss a red-hot stove in among the powder—leastways, not while I'm coroner. There's a river down there, but nobody ever drowns in it where I can have a hitch at him; and if there's a freshet, everybody at once gets out of reach. If there's a fire, all the inmates get away safe, and no fireman ever falls off a ladder or stands where a wall might flatten him out. No, sir; I don't have a fair show. There was that riot out at the foundry. In any other place three or four men would have been killed, and there'd a been fatness for the coroner; but of course, bein' in my county, nothin' occurred exceptin' Sam Dixon got kicked in the ribs and had part of his ear bitten off. A man can't make an honest livin' under sech circumstances as them; he can't, really."
"It does appear difficult."
"I did think maybe I might get the supervisors to let me go out to the cemetery and set on the folks that are buried there, so's I could overhaul 'em and kinder revise the verdicts that've been rendered on 'em. I'd a done it for half price; but those fellows have got such queer ideas of economy that they wouldn't listen to it; said the town couldn't go to any fresh expense while it was buildin' water-works. And I wanted to put the new school-house out yer by the railroad or down by the river, so's some of the children'd now and then get run over or fall in; but the parents were 'posed to it for selfish reasons, and so I got shoved out of that chance. Yes, sir, it's rough on me; and I tell you that if there are not more sudden deaths in this county the law's got to give me a salary, or I'm goin' to perish by starvation. Not that I'd mind that much for myself, but it cuts me up to think that as soon as I stepped out the next coroner'd begin right off to earn a livin' out of me."
Then I said "Good-morning" and left, while Mr. Maginn selected a fresh stick to whittle. Mr. Maginn, however, had one good chance recently to collect fees.
The country around the town of Millburg is of limestone formation. The town stands, as has already been mentioned, on a high hill, at the foot of which there is a wonderful spring, and the belief has always been that the hill is full of great caves and fissures, through which the water makes its way to feed the spring. A year or two ago they organized a cemetery company at Millburg, and they located the graveyard upon the hill a short distance back of the town. After they had deposited several bodies in the ground, one day somebody discovered a coffin floating in the river. It was hauled out, and it turned out to be the remains of Mr. Piggott, who was buried in the cemetery the day before. The coroner held an inquest, and they reinterred the corpse.
On the following morning, however, Mr. Piggott was discovered bumping up against the wharf at the gas-works in the river. People began to be scared, and there was some talk to the effect that he had been murdered and couldn't rest quietly in his grave. But the coroner was not scared. He empaneled a jury, held another inquest, collected his fees and buried the body. Two days afterward some boys, while in swimming, found a burial-casket floating under the bushes down by the saw-mill. They called for help, and upon examining the interior of the casket they discovered the irrepressible Mr. Piggott again. This was too much. Even the ministers began to believe in ghosts, and hardly a man in town dared to go out of the house that night alone. But the coroner controlled his emotions sufficiently to sit on the body, make the usual charges and bury Mr. Piggott in a fresh place in his lot.
The next morning, while Peter Lamb was drinking out of the big spring, he saw something push slowly out of the mud at the bottom of the pool. He turned as white as a sheet as he watched it; and in a few minutes he saw that it was a coffin. It floated out, down the creek into the river, and then Peter ran to tell the coroner. That official had a jury waiting, and he proceeded to the coffin. It was old Mr. Piggott, as usual; and they went through the customary routine with him, and were about to bury him, when his family came forward and said they would prefer to inter him in another place, being convinced now there must be a subterranean channel leading from the cemetery to the spring. The coroner couldn't object; but after the Piggotts were gone he said to the jury that people who would take the bread out of the mouth of a poor man in that way would be certain to come to want themselves some day. He said he could easily have paid off the mortgage on his house and let his little girl take lessons on the melodeon besides, if they'd just allowed Piggott to wobble around the way he wanted to.
There was no more trouble up at the cemetery after that until they buried old Joe Middles, who used to have the fish-house over the river at Deacon's. They entombed the old man on Thursday night. On Friday morning one of the Keysers was walking down on the river-bank, and he saw a man who looked very much like Mr. Middles sitting up in a canoe out in the stream fishing. He watched the man as he caught two or three fish, and was just about to conclude that it was some unknown brother of Mr. Middles, when the fisherman looked up and said,
"Hello, Harry."
[Illustration: JOE MIDDLES]
"Who are you?" asked Keyser.
"Who am I? Why, Joe Middles, of course. Who'd you think I was?" remarked the fisherman.
"You ain't Joe Middles, for he's dead. I went to his funeral yesterday."
"Funeral!" exclaimed the fisherman as he stepped ashore. "Well, now, by George! maybe that explains the thing. I've been bothering myself the worst kind to understand something. You know that I remember being at home in bed, and then I went to sleep somehow; and when I woke up, it was dark as pitch. I gave a kick to stretch myself, and knocked the lid off of this thing here—a canoe I thought it was; and then I set up and found myself out here in the river. I took the lid to split into paddles, and I saw on it a plate with the words 'Joseph Middles, aged sixty-four;' and I couldn't imagine how in thunder that ever got on that lid. Howsomdever, I pulled over to the shanty and got some lines and bait and floated out again, thinking while I was here I might as well get a mess of fish before I got home. And so it's a coffin, after all, and they buried me yesterday. Well, that beats the very old Harry, now, don't it? I'm going to row right over to the house. How it'll skeer the old woman to see me coming in safe and sound!"
Then the resurrected Mr. Middles paddled off. The cemetery company failed the following month, from inability to sell the lots.