"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.



CHAPTER XIX.

AN UNRULY METER.—SCENES IN A SANCTUM.

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; I couldn't have 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, you must have 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 the Patriot office 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."



"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's Patriot, but I forgot it, and he called to remind me of it."

"Do all of your friends refresh your memory in that vivid manner? If I'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 the Patriot. 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."



"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 does not represent St. Augustine. It is meant for an allegorical picture of Brute Force, and it has its foot upon Intellect—Intellect, mind you! and not a 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 the Patriot encouraging 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.



CHAPTER XX.

HIGH ART.

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 the King. 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 until King John (Mr. Hammer) came to the passage, "Ah, me! this tyrant fever burns me up!" Just as King John was 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. The King was 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."

Then King John disappeared 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 the King had 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?"



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.



CHAPTER XXI.

CERTAIN DENTAL EXPERIENCES.—AN UNFORTUNATE OFFICIAL.

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.



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 resolved not to 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 if six thousand years 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."



"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.



CHAPTER XXII.

JUSTICE, AND A LITTLE INJUSTICE.

The administration of justice in this county is chiefly in the hands of Judge Twiddler; and while his methods generally are excellent, he sometimes makes unpleasant mistakes. Mr. Mix was the victim of one such blunder upon a recent occasion. Mr. Mix is bald; and in order to induce his hair to grow again, he is using a very excellent article of "hair vigor" upon his scalp. Some time ago he was summoned as a juryman upon a case in the court, and upon the day of the trial, just before the hour at which the court met, he remembered that he had not applied the vigor to his head that morning. He had only a few minutes to spare, but he flew up stairs and into the dark closet where he kept the bottle; and pouring some fluid upon a sponge, he rubbed his head energetically. By some mishap Mr. Mix got hold of the wrong bottle, and the substance with which he inundated his scalp was not vigor, but the black varnish with which Mrs. Mix decorated her shoes. However, Mix didn't perceive the mistake, but darted down stairs, put on his hat and walked off to the courtroom. It was a very cold morning, and by the time Mix reached his destination the varnish was as stiff as a stone. He felt a little uncomfortable about the head, and he endeavored to remove his hat to discover the cause of the difficulty, but to his dismay it was immovable. It was glued fast to the skin, and his efforts to take it off gave him frightful pain.

Just then he heard his name called by the crier, and he had to go into court to answer. He was wild with apprehension of coming trouble; but he took his seat in the jury-box and determined to explain the situation to the court at the earliest possible moment. As he sat there with a guilty feeling in his soul it seemed to him that his hat kept getting bigger and bigger, until it appeared to him to be as large as a shot-tower. Then he was conscious that the lawyers were staring at him. Then the clerk looked hard at him and screamed, "Hats off in court!" and Mix grew crimson. "Hats off!" yelled the clerk again, and Mix was about to reply when the judge came in, and as his eye rested on Mix he said,

"Persons in the court-room must remove their hats."

"May it please Your Honor, I kept my hat on because—"

"Well, sir, you must take it off now."

"But I say I keep it on because I——"

"We don't want any arguments upon the subject, sir. Take your hat off instantly!" said the judge.

"But you don't let me—"

"Remove that hat this moment, sir! Are you going to bandy words with me, sir? Uncover your head at once!"

"Judge, if you will only give me a chance to—"

"This is intolerable! Do you mean to insult the court, sir? Do you mean to profane this sacred temple of justice with untimely levity? Take your hat off, sir, or I will fine you for contempt. Do you hear me?"

"Well, it's very hard that I can't say a word by way of ex—"

"This is too much," said the judge, warmly—"this is just a little too much. Perhaps you'd like to come up on the bench here and run the court and sentence a few convicts? Mr. Clerk, fine that man fifty dollars. Now, sir, remove your hat."

"Judge, this is rough on me. I——"

"Won't do it yet?" said the judge, furiously. "Why, you impudent scoundrel, I've a notion to—Mr. Clerk, fine him one hundred dollars more, and, Mr. Jones, you go and take that hat off by force."

Then the tipstaff approached Mix, who was by this time half crazy with wrath, and hit the hat with his stick. It did not move. Then he struck it again and caved in the crown, but it still remained on Mix's head. Then he picked up a volume of Brown On Evidence, and mashed the crown in flat. Then Mix sprang at him; and shaking his fist under the nose of Jones, he shrieked,

"You miserable scullion, I've half a notion to kill you! If that jackass on the bench had any sense, he could see that the hat is glued fast. I can't take it off if I wanted to, and I wouldn't take it off now if I could."



Then the judge removed the fines and excused him, and Mix went home. He slept in his hat for a week; and even when it came off, the top of his head looked as black as if mortification had set in.

But if the judge is too particular, our sheriff is hardly careful enough. The manner in which he permits our jail to be conducted always seemed to me interesting and original.

One day I wanted to hire a man to wheel half a dozen loads of rubbish out of my garden, and after looking around a while I found a seedy chap sitting on the end of a wharf fishing. When I asked him if he would attend to the job, he replied thus:

"I really can't. I'm sorry; but the fact is I'm in jail for six months for larceny—sentenced last December. I don't mind it much, only they don't act honest with me up at the jail. The first week I was there Mrs. Murphy—she's the keeper's wife—wanted to clean up, and so she turned me out, and I had to hang round homeless for more'n a week. Then, just as I was getting settled agin comfortably, the provisions ran short, and Murphy tried to borrow money of me to feed the convicts; and as I had none to lend, out I had to go agin. In about two weeks I started in fresh and got everything snug and cheerful, when Murphy's aunt stepped out. Then what does that ass do but put me out agin and lock up the jail and put crape on the door, while he went off to the funeral.

"So, of course, I had to browse around, huntin' up meals where I could get them, sometimes nibblin' somethin' at the tavern and other times takin' tea with a friend. Well, sir, hardly was that old woman buried, and me once more in the cell with the home-like feelin' beginnin' to creep over me, but Murphy, he says he and his wife's got to go up to the city to get a hired girl; and when I refused to quit, Murphy grabbed me by the collar and pushed me into the street, and said he'd sick his dog on me if I came around there makin' a fuss.

"I hung about a few days; and when I went to the jail, the boy said Murphy hadn't got back and I'd have to call agin. Next time I applied the boy hollered from the window that he was 'engaged' and couldn't see me. Murphy was still rummagin' for that hired girl. I went there eight times, and there was always some jackass of an excuse for crowdin' me out, and I don't know if I'll ever get in agin. Night afore last I busted a window with a brick and tried to crawl in through the hole, but the boy fired a gun at me, and said if I'd just wait till Mr. Murphy came back he'd have me arrested for burglary.

"Now, I think I've been treated mighty bad. I've got a right in that jail, and it's pretty mean in a man like Murphy to shove me off in weather like this; and I'm bound to live six months in the prison some time or other, whether he likes it or not. I don't mind puttin' myself to some trouble to oblige a friend, but I hate like thunder to be imposed on.

"'Pears to me it's no way to run a penal institution any way. There's Botts; he's in jail for perjury for nine years, and Murphy's actually turned that convict out so often and made him run 'round after his meals that Botts has lost heart, and has gone to canvassin' for a life insurance company—gone to perambulatin' all over the country tryin' to do a little somethin' to keep clothes on his back, when he ought to be layin' serenely in that jail. But I ain't goin' to do that. If the law keeps me in custody, it's got to support me; and that's what Simpson says, too. Ketch him workin' for his livin'. He's in for four years for assault and battery; and when they turn him out of the jail, he puts up at a hotel and has the bills sent in to Murphy.

"Murphy don't have consideration for the prisoners, any way. You know he raises fowls in the jail-yard; and just after Christmas he had a big lot of turkeys left on his hands, and do you believe that man actually kept feedin' us on those turkeys for more than a month? Positively refused to allow us anything else until they was gone. I had half a notion to quit for good. I was disgusted. And Simpson said if that is the way they were goin' to treat convicts, why, civilization is a failure. All through Lent, too, wouldn't allow us an oyster; kept stuffin' us with beef and such trash, although Botts said he'd never been used to such wickedness, for his parents were very particular. Wouldn't even give us fish-balls twice a week. But what does Murphy care? He's perfectly enthusiastic when he can tread on a man's feelin's and stamp all the moral sensibility out of him.

"And Mrs. Murphy, she's not much better. All the warm days she's home she hustles that baby of hers onto me. Makes me take the little sucklin' out in his carriage for an airin', and then gets mad if he falls out while I'm conversin' for a few minutes with a friend. I'd a slid him into the river long ago, only I know well enough they'd sentence me for life, and then I'd maybe have to stand Murphy's persecution for about forty years; and that'd kill me. It would indeed. He's so inconsiderate.

"He used to give me the key of the jail to keep while he'd go over to Barnes' to fight roosters or to play poker, and one day I lost it. He raised an awful fuss, and even Botts was down on me because they couldn't keep the boys out, and they used to come in and tickle Botts with straws while he was sleepin' in his cell. I believe they expect Murphy back day after to-morrow, but I know mighty well I'm not goin' to have much satisfaction when he does come. He'll find some excuse for shufflin' me out 'bout as soon as I get stowed away in my old quarters. If he does, I've got a notion to lock him out some night and run the jail myself for a while, so's I kin have some peace. There's such a thing as carryin' abuses a little too far. Excuse me for a minute. I think I have a bite."

Then I left to hunt for another man. I feel that the Society for the Alleviation of the Sufferings of Prisoners has a great work to perform in our town.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TRAMP WITH GENIUS AND WITHOUT IT.

The tramp is as familiar a figure in the village and the surrounding country as he is in other populous rural neighborhoods. The ruffian tramp, of course, is the most constant of the class, but now and then appears one of the fraternity who displays something like genius in his attempts to impose himself upon people as a being of a higher order than an idle, worthless vagabond. A fellow of this description came into the editorial room of the Patriot one day while I was sitting there, and announced in a loud voice that he was a professor of pisciculture and an aspirant for a position upon the State Fish Commission. As the statement did not attract the attention of anybody, he seated himself in a chair, placed his feet upon the table, and aiming with surprising accuracy at a spittoon, said his name was Powell. Still nobody paid any attention to him, but the fact did not seem to depress his spirits, for he talked straight ahead fluently and with some vehemence:

"What are they doing for the fishery interest, any way, these commissioners? What do they know about fishing? More'n likely when they go out they hold the hook in their hands and let the pole float in the water. Why, one of 'em was talking with me the other day, and says he, 'Powell, I want the Legislature to make an appropriation for the cultivation of canned lobsters in the Susquehanna.' 'How are you going to do it?' says I. 'Why,' says he, 'my plan is to cross the original lobster with some good variety of tin can, breed 'em in and in, and then feed the animal on solder and green labels.'

"Perfect ass, of course; but I let him run along, and pretty soon he says, 'I've just bought half a barrel of salt mackerel, which I'm going to put in the Schuylkill. My idea,' says he, 'is to breed a mackerel that'll be all ready soaked when you catch him. The ocean mackerel always tastes too much of the salt. What the people want is a fish that is fresher.' And so, you know, that immortal idiot is actually going to dump those mackerel overboard in the hope that they'll swim about and make themselves at home. Well, if the governor will appoint such chuckle-head commissioners, what else can you expect?

"However, I said nothing. I wasn't going to set him up in business with my brains and experience, and so, directly, he says to me, 'Powell, I'm now engaged in transplanting some desiccated codfish into the Schuylkill; but it scatters too much when it gets into the water. Now, how would it do to breed the ordinary codfish with a sausage-chopper or a mince-meat machine? Do you think a desiccated codfish would rise to a fly, or wouldn't you have to fish for him with a colander?' And so he kept reeling out a jackassery like that until directly he said, 'I'll tell you, professor, what this country needs is a fresh-water oyster. Now, it has occurred to me that maybe the best variety to plant would be the ordinary fried oyster. It seems to be popular, and it has the advantage of growing without a shell. One of the other commissioners,' so this terrific blockhead said, 'insisted on trying the experiment with the oyster that produces tripe, so's to enable the people to catch tripe and oysters when they go a-fishing. But for my part,' says he, 'I want either the fried oyster or the kind that grow in pie crust, like they have 'em at the restaurants.' Actually said that.

"Well, he driveled along for a while, talking the awfulest bosh; and pretty soon he asked me if I was fond of mock-turtle soup. Said that the commission had discovered the feasibility of adding the mock-turtle to the food-animals of our rivers. He allowed that he had understood that they could be cultivated best by spawning calves' heads on forcemeat balls, and that they were in season for the table during the same months of the year that gravy is. And he said that a strenuous effort ought to be made to have our rivers swarming with this delicious fish.

"And then he talked a whole lot of delirious slush of that kind, and about improving the tadpole crop, and so on, until I—Wh-wh-what d'you say? Want me to take my legs off that table and quit? You don't want to hear any more news about the fisheries? Oh, all right; there's plenty of other papers that'll be glad to get the intelligence. Next time you want my views about pisciculture you'll have to send for me."

Then the professor aimed again at the spittoon, missed it, rubbed the ragged crown of his forlorn hat with his shining elbow, buttoned up his coat over a shirt-bosom which last saw the washerwoman during the presidency of General Harrison, and sauntered out and down stairs. The impression that he left was that he would be more available to the Fish Commission as bait than in any other capacity.

Upon another occasion a more forlorn and dismal vagabond, a cripple, too, sauntered into Brown's grocery-store, where a crowd was sitting around the stove discussing politics. Taking position upon a nail-keg, he remarked,

"Mr. Brown, you don't want to buy a first-rate wooden leg, do you? I've got one that I've been wearing for two or three years, and I want to sell it. I'm hard up for money; and although I'm attached to that leg, I'm willing to part with it so's I kin get the necessaries of life. Legs are all well enough; they are handy to have around the house, and all that; but a man must attend to his stomach if he has to walk about on the small of his back. Now, I'm going to make you an offer. That leg is Fairchild's patent; steel springs, India-rubber joints, elastic toes and everything, and it's in better order now than it was when I bought it. It'd be a comfort to any man. It's the most luxurious leg I ever came across. If bliss ever kin be reached by a man this side of the tomb, it belongs to the person that gets that leg on and feels the consciousness creeping over his soul that it is his. Consequently, I say that when I offer it to you I'm doing a personal favor; and I think I see you jump at the chance and want to clinch the bargain before I mention—you'll hardly believe it, I know—that I'll actually knock that leg down to you at four hundred dollars. Four hundred, did I say? I meant six hundred; but let it stand. I never back out when I make an offer; but it's just throwing that leg away—it is, indeed."

"But I don't want an artificial leg," said Brown.

"The beautiful thing about the limb," said the stranger, pulling up his trousers and displaying the article, "is that it is reliable. You kin depend on it. It's always there. Some legs that I've seen were treacherous—most always some of the springs bursting out, or the joints working backward, or the toes turning down and ketching in things. Regular frauds. But it's almost pathetic the way this leg goes on year in and year out like an old faithful friend, never knowing an ache or a pain, no rheumatism, nor any such foolishness as that, but always good-natured and ready to go out of its way to oblige you. A man feels like a man when he gets such a thing under him. Talk about your kings and emperors and millionaires, and all that sort of nonsense! Which of 'em's got a leg like that? Which of 'em kin unscrew his knee-pan and look at the gum thingamajigs in his calf? Which of 'em kin leave his leg down stairs in the entry on the hat-rack and go to bed with only one cold foot? Why, it's enough to make one of them monarchs sick to think of such a convenience. But they can't help it. There's only one man kin buy that leg, and that's you. I want you to have it so bad that I'll deed it to you for fifty dollars down. Awful, isn't it? Just throwing it away; but take it, take it, if it does make my heart bleed to see it go out of the family."

"Really, I have no use for such a thing," said Mr. Brown.

"You can't think," urged the stranger, "what a benediction a leg like that is in a family. When you don't want to walk with it, it comes into play for the children to ride horsey on; or you kin take it off and stir the fire with it in a way that would depress the spirits of a man with a real leg. It makes the most efficient potato-masher you ever saw. Work it from the second joint and let the knee swing loose; you kin tack carpets perfectly splendid with the heel; and when a cat sees it coming at him from the winder, he just adjourns sine die and goes down off the fence screaming. Now, you're probably afeard of dogs. When you see one approaching, you always change your base. I don't blame you; I used to be that way before I lost my home-made leg. But you fix yourself with this artificial extremity, and then what do you care for dogs? If a million of 'em come at you, what's the odds? You merely stand still and smile, and throw out your spare leg, and let 'em chaw, let 'em fool with that as much as they're a mind to, and howl and carry on, for you don't care. An' that's the reason why I say that when I reflect on how imposing you'd be as the owner of such a leg I feel like saying that if you insist on offering only a dollar and a half for it, why, take it; it's yours. I'm not the kinder man to stand on trifles. I'll take it off and wrap it up in paper for you; shall I?"

"I'm sorry," said Brown, "but the fact is I have no use for it. I've got two good legs already. If I ever lose one, why, maybe then I'll—"

"I don't think you exactly catch my idea on the subject," said the stranger. "Now, any man kin have a meat-and-muscle leg; they're as common as dirt. It's disgusting how monotonous people are about such things. But I take you for a man who wants to be original. You have style about you. You go it alone, as it were. Now, if I had your peculiarities, do you know what I'd do? I'd get a leg snatched off some way, so's I could walk around on this one. Or if you hate to go to the expense of amputation, why not get your pantaloons altered and mount this beautiful work of art just as you stand? A centipede, a mere ridicklous insect, has half a bushel of legs, and why can't a man, the grandest creature on earth, own three? You go around this community on three legs, and your fortune's made. People will go wild over you as the three-legged grocer; the nation will glory in you; Europe will hear of you; you will be heard of from pole to pole. It'll build up your business. People'll flock from everywheres to see you, and you'll make your sugar and cheese and things fairly hum. Look at it as an advertisement! Look at it any way you please, and there's money in it—there's glory, there's immortality. I think I see you now moving around over this floor with your old legs working as usual, and this one going clickety-click along with 'em, making music for you all the time and attracting attention in a way to fill a man's heart with rapture. Now, look at it that way; and if it strikes you, I tell you what I'll do: I'll actually swap that imperishable leg off to you for two pounds of water-crackers and a tin cup full of Jamaica rum. Is it ago?"

Then Brown weighed out the crackers, gave him an awful drink of rum, and told him if he would take them as a present and quit he would confer a favor. And he did. After emptying the crackers in his pockets and smacking his lips over the rum, he went to the door, and as he opened it he said,

"Good-bye. But if you ever really do want a leg, Old Reliable is ready for you; it's yours. I consider that you've got a mortgage on it, and you kin foreclose at any time. I dedicate this leg to you. My will shall mention it; and if you don't need it when I die, I'm going to have it put in the savings' bank to draw interest until you check it out. I'll bid you good-evening."

The tramp that has a dog to sell is a little more common than such children of genius as the professor and the owner of the patent leg. But I had with one of them a queer experience which may be worth relating.

One day recently a rough-looking vagabond called at my house, accompanied by a forlorn mongrel dog. I came out upon the porch to see him, and he said,

"I say, pardner, I understood that you wanted to buy a watch-dog, and I brought one around for you You never seen such a dog for watching as this one You tell that dog to watch a thing, and bet your life he'll sit down and watch it until he goes stone blind. Now, I'll tell you what I'll let you have—"

I cut his remarks short at this point with the information that I didn't want a dog, and that if I had wanted a dog nothing on earth could induce me to accept that particular dog. So he left and went down the street. He must have made a mistake and come in again through the back gate, thinking it was another place, for in a few minutes the cook said there was a man in the kitchen who wanted to see me; and when I went down, there was the same man with the same dog. He didn't recognize me, and as soon as I entered he remarked,

"I say, old pard, somebody was saying that you wanted to buy a watch-dog. Now, here's a watch-dog that'd rather watch than eat any time. Give that dog something to fasten his eye on—don't care what it is: anything from a plug hat to a skating-rink—and there his eye stays like it was chained with a trace-chain. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do with—"

I suddenly informed him in a peremptory tone that nothing would induce me to purchase a dog at that moment, and then I pushed him out and shut the door. When he was gone, I went across the street to see Butterwick about top-dressing my grassplot. He was out, and I sat down on the porch chair to wait for him. A second later the proprietor of the dog came shuffling through the gate with the dog at his heels. When he reached the porch, he said, not recognizing me,

"I say, pardner, the man across the street there told me you wanted a good watch-dog, and I came right over with this splendid animal. Look at him! Never saw such an eye as that in a dog, now, did you? Well, now, when this dog fixes that eye on anything, it remains. There it stays. Earthquakes, or fires, or torchlight processions, or bones, or nothing, can induce him to move. Therefore, what I say is that I offer you that dog for—"



Then I got up in silence and walked deliberately out into the street, and left the man standing there. As I reached the sidewalk I saw Butterwick going into Col. Coffin's office. I went over after him, while the man with the dog went in the opposite direction. Butterwick was in the back office; and as the front room was empty, I sat down in a chair until he got through with Coffin and came out. In a few minutes there was a rap at the door. I said,

"Come in!"

The door slowly opened, and a dog crept in. Then the man appeared. He didn't seem to know me. He said,

"I say, old pardy—I dunno your right name—I'm trying to sell a watch-dog; that one there; and I thought maybe you might be hungry to get a valuable animal who can watch the head off of any other dog in this yer county, so I concluded to call and throw him away for the ridic'lous sum of—"

"I wouldn't have him at any price."

"What! don't want him? Don't want a dog with an eye like a two-inch auger, that'll sit and watch a thing for forty years if you'll tell him to? Don't want a dog like that?"

"Certainly I don't".

"Well, this is singular. There don't appear to be a demand for watch-dogs in this place, now, does there? You're the fourth man I've tackled about him. You really don't want him?"

"Of course not."

"Don't want any kind of a dog—not even a litter of good pups or a poodle?"

"No, sir."

"Well, maybe you could lend me five dollars on that dog. I'll pay you back to-morrow."

"Can't do it."

"Will you take him as a gift, and give me a chaw of terbacker?"

"I don't chew."

"Very strange," he muttered, thoughtfully. "There's no encouragement for a man in this world. Sure you won't take him?"

"Yes, certain."

"Then, you miserable whelp, git out of here, or I'll kick the breath out of you. Come, now, git!" And he gave the dog a kick that sent him into the middle of the street, and then withdrew himself.

The trade in dogs certainly is not active in Millburg.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE DOG OF MR. BUTTERWICK'S, AND OTHER DOGS.

One day I met Mr. Butterwick in the street leading his dog with a chain. He said that it was a very valuable dog and he was anxious to get it safely home, but he had to catch a train, and I would confer a personal favor upon him if I would take the dog to my house and keep it until he returned from the city. The undertaking was not a pleasant one, but I disliked to disoblige Butterwick, and so I consented. Butterwick gave me his end of the chain and left in a hurried manner. I got the dog home with the greatest difficulty, and turned it into the cellar. About an hour later I received a telegram from Butterwick saying that he had been compelled to go down to the lower part of Jersey, and that he wouldn't be home for a week or two. That was on the 12th of June, and after that time only two persons entered the cellar. The hired girl went down once after the cold beef, and came up disheveled and bleeding, with a number of appalling dog-bites in her legs, and I descended immediately afterward for the purpose of pacifying the infuriated animal. He did not feel disposed to become calm, however, and I deem it probable that if I had not suddenly clambered into the coal-bin, where I remained until he fell asleep in a distant corner about four hours later, I should certainly have been torn to pieces. We thought we would have to try to get along with out using the cellar until Butterwick could come up and take away his dog. But Butterwick wrote to say that he couldn't come, and the dog, after eating everything in the cellar and barking all through every night, finally bolted up stairs into the kitchen on the 2d of July, and established himself in the back yard. After that we used the front door exclusively while we were waiting for Butterwick to come up. The dog had fits regularly, and he always got on the geranium-bed when he felt them coming on; and consequently, we did not enjoy our flowers as much as we hoped to. The cherries were ripe during the reign of Butterwick's dog, but they rotted on the trees, all but a few, which were picked by Smith's boy, who subsequently went over the fence in a sensational manner without stopping to ascertain what Butterwick's dog was going to do with the mouthful of drawers and corduroy trousers that he had removed from Smith's boy's leg. As Butterwick did not come up, the dog enjoyed himself roaming about the yard a while; but one day, finding the back window in the parlor open, he jumped in and assumed control of that apartment and the hall. I tried to dislodge him with a clothes-prop, but I only succeeded in knocking two costly vases off of the mantel-piece, and the dog became so excited and threatening that I shut the door hurriedly and went up stairs four steps at a time.



There was nothing to interest him especially in the parlor, and I cannot imagine why he wanted to stay there. But he did; and as Butterwick didn't come up, we couldn't dislodge him. On Thursday he smashed the mirror during an attempt to get up a fight with another dog that he thought he saw in there, and he clawed the sofa to rags. On Saturday he had a fit in the hall, and spoiled about eight square yards of Brussels carpet utterly. When he recovered, he went back into the parlor. At last I borrowed Coffin's dog and sent him in to fight Butterwick's dog out. It was an exhilarating contest. They fought on the chairs and sofas; they upset a table and smashed all the ornaments on it; they scattered blood and hair in blotches all over the carpet; they got entangled in one of the lace curtains and dragged it and the frame down with a crash; they scratched and bit and tore and frothed and yelled; and at last Coffin's dog gave in, put his tail between his legs and retreated, while Butterwick's dog got on a sixty-dollar Turkish rug, so that he could bleed comfortably.

It didn't seem to occur to him to go home, and still Butterwick didn't come up. The next day I loaded a shot-gun and determined to kill him at any sacrifice. I aimed carefully at him, but at the critical moment he dodged, and two handfuls of bird-shot went into the piano and tore it up badly. Then I tossed some poisoned meat' at him, but he ate all around the poison, and seemed to feel better after the meal than he had done for years. Finally, Butterwick came home, and he called to get his dog. He entered the parlor bravely and attempted to seize the animal, when it bit him. I was never so glad in my life. Then Butterwick got mad; and seizing the dog by the tail, he smashed him through my French glass window into the street. Then I was not so very glad. Then the dog went mad and a policeman killed him. The next time I am asked to take a strange dog home I will kill him to begin with.

When I explained to Colonel Coffin the unpleasant nature of my experience with Mr. Butterwick's dog, the colonel said that he had had a good deal to do lately, in a legal way, with dogs; and he gave me the facts respecting two interesting cases. The first was Tompkins' case.

A man called at the colonel's law-office one day and said,

"Colonel, my name is Tompkins. I called to see you about a dog difficulty that bewilders me, and I thought maybe you might throw some light on it—might give me the law points, so's I'd know whether it was worth while suing or not.

"Well, colonel, you see me and Potts went into partnership on a dog; we bought him. He was a setter; and me and Potts went shares on him, so's to take him out a-hunting. It was never exactly settled which half of him I owned and which half belonged to Potts; but I formed an idea in my own mind that the hind end was Tompkins' and the front end Potts'. Consequence was that when the dog barked I always said, 'There goes Potts half exercising himself;' and when the dog's tail wagged, I always considered that my end was being agitated. And, of course, when one of my hind legs scratched one of Potts' ears or one of his shoulders, I was perfectly satisfied—first, because that sort of thing was good for the whole dog; and, second, because the thing would get about even when Potts' head would reach around and bite a flea off my hind legs or snap at a fly.

"Well, things went along smooth enough for a while, until one day that dog began to get into the habit of running around after his tail. He was the foolishest dog about that I ever saw. Used to chase his tail round and round until he'd get so giddy he couldn't bark. And you know I was scared lest it might hurt the dog's health; and as Potts didn't seem to be willing to keep his end from circulating in pursuit of my end, I made up my mind to chop the dog's tail off, so's to make him reform and behave. So last Saturday I caused the dog to back up agin a log, and then I suddenly dropped the axe on his tail pretty close up, and the next minute he was running around that yard howling like a boat-load of wild-cats. Just then Potts came up, and he let on to be mad because I'd cut off that tail. One word brought on another; and pretty soon Potts set that dog on me—my own half too, mind you—and the dog bit me in the leg. See that! look at that leg! About half a pound gone; et up by that dog.

"Now, what I want to see you about is this: Can't I recover damages for assault and battery from Potts? What I chopped off belonged to me, recollect. I owned an undivided half of that setter pup, from the tip of his tail clear up to his third rib, and I had a right to cut away as much of it as I'd a mind to; while Potts, being sole owner of the dog's head, is responsible when he bites anybody, or when he barks at nights."

"I don't know," replied the colonel, musingly. "There haven't been any decisions on cases exactly like this. But what does Mr. Potts say upon the subject?"

"Why, Potts' view is that I divided the dog the wrong way. When he wants to map out his half he draws a line from the middle of the nose right along the spine and clear to the end of the tail. That gives me one hind leg and one fore leg and makes him joint proprietor in the tail. And he says that if I wanted to cut off my half of the tail I might have done it, and he wouldn't've cared, but what made him mad was that I wasted his property without consulting him. But that theory seems to me a little strained; and if it's legal, why, I'm going to close out my half of the dog at a sacrifice sooner than hold any interest in him on those principles. Now, what do you think about it?"