Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

For instance, we will say a five-dollar-per-day house can afford to feed a man for a dollar a meal. The guest orders two dollars' worth, sticks his mustache into just enough of it to spoil it for stew or giblet purposes, and then goes to his room. Here he puts up the fire-escape rope for a clothes-line, does a week's washing, and hanging it out upon the improvised clothesline, he lights a strong pipe, puts his feet on the pillow-shams, and reads "As in a Looking Glass" while his wash is drying. When that man goes away he leaves a record at the hotel which confronts him at every hotel wherever he goes. As soon as he writes his name, the clerk, who has read it wrong side up just a little before he got it down, tells him that he is very sorry, but that the house is full, and people are sleeping on cots in the hall, and the proprietor himself has to sleep on the sideboard. The large white Suffolk hog, who has been in the habit of inaugurating a rain of terror and gravy in the dining-room and stealing the soap from the wash-room, just simply because he could out trump the clerk on diamonds, will thus have to go to the pound, where he belongs, and quiet, every day people, who rely on their integrity more than they do on their squeal, will get a chance.

A great many droll characters and bright, shrewd men are met with among hotel proprietors wherever you go. "The Fat Contributor" was lecturing once in the State of Kentucky, and had occasion to take dinner at a six-bit hotel. After the meal Mr. Griswold stepped up to the counter, took out a bale of bank notes, which he had received for his lecture the evening before, and asked what might be the damage.

"Three dollars," said the blue grass gentleman, who had buttoned his collar with a tenpenny nail, while he looked at "Gris" with a pained expression.

"Yes, but a man ought to be able to board here a week for three dollars. The whole house didn't cost more than forty or forty-five dollars. What's your idea in charging me three dollars for a wad of hominy and a piece of parched pork?"

"Well, sir," said the urbane landlord, as he put out the fire at a. distance of twenty feet by emptying his salivary surplus on it, "I need the money?"

The frankness and open, candid manner of the man won Mr. Griswold, and he asked him if he thought three dollars would be enough. The landlord said he could get along with that. Then Griswold opened his valise and took out a large brunette bottle of liniment marked "for external use." He passed it over to the landlord, and told him that he would find this stuff worked as well on the inside as it did on the outside. In a few moments the liniment of the "Fat Contributor" and the lineaments of the landlord had merged into each other, and a friendly feeling sprang up between the two men which time has never effaced. I have often thought of this, and wondered why it is that hotel men are not more open and cordial with their guests. Many a time I have paid a large bill grudgingly when I would have done it cheerfully if the landlord had told me he was in need.

I had intended to speak at some length on the new rope law, by which every man is made his own vigilance committee; but I feel that I am already encroaching on the advertising space, and so will have to omit it. In conclusion, I will say that the American hotels are far preferable to those we have in Paris in many ways, and not only outstrip those of England and the Continent, even as a _corps de ballet_ outstrips a toboggan club, but they seem to excel and everlastingly knock the ancient hotels of Carthage, Rome and Tie Siding silly.

PITY FOR SAD-EYED HUSBANDS.

|If women would spend their evenings at home with their husbands, they would see a marked change in the brightness of their homes. Too many sad-eyed men are wearing away their lives at home alone. Would that I had a pen of fire to write in letters of living light the ignominy and contumely and--some more things like that, the names of which have escaped my memory--that are to-day being visited upon my sex.

MARRIAGE.

|Marriage is, to a man, at once the happiest and saddest event of his life. He quits all the companions and associations of his youth, and becomes the chief attraction of a new home. Every former tie is loosened, the spring of every hope and action is to be changed, and yet he flees with joy to the untrodden paths before him. Then woe to the woman who can blight such joyful anticipations, and wreck the bright hopes of the trusting, faithful, fragrant, masculine blossom, and bang his head against the sink, and throw him under the cooking range, and kick him into a three-cornered mass, and then sit down on him.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XI--WILLIAM NYE VISITS ROYALTY FROM THE HOME OF THE HAM SANDWICH.

_Queen Kapiolani Receives the Distinguished Littérateur in State--A Robust, Healthful Queen--Sandwich Business and Court Matters--The Swallow-tail Coat in the Sandwich Islands._

|The sun was just slipping out the back door of the West and hunting for the timber of New Jersey as Queen Kapiolani, at her rooms in the Victoria Hotel, received a plain, rectangular card, printed in two kinds of ink at the owner's steam job office, containing the following brief but logical statement:

Wilhelm Von Nyj,

Littérateur and Danseuse.

On the back of the card the Von Nyj arms had been emblazoned with a rubber stamp. Down-stairs, near the dais of the night clerk, stood a gayly caparisoned yet cultivated cuss, pouring over a late volume of the city directory. He was the author of these lines.

Scarcely an hour had elapsed when a tinted octavo page who waits on the Queen, slid down the stair-rail and told me that her royal Highness would receive me in state as soon as she could change her dress.

Later on I was ushered into the presence of Queen Kapiolani, who was at the time accompanied by her suite and another gentleman whose name I did not learn.

THAI X DID MOT DU'

She is a distinguished-looking woman of middle age, but in apparent good health, and with a constitution which I think would easily endure the fatigue of reigning over a much larger country than her own.

As I entered the room and made a low, groveling obeisance, an act that is wholly foreign to my nature, the Queen made a rapid movement towards the bell, but I held her back and assured her that I did not drink.

We then chatted gayly for some time in relation to the Sandwich business and court matters, including the Sharp trial.

For a long time the Queen seemed constrained, and evidently could not think of anything to say; but she soon saw that I was not haughty or reserved, and when at last she reluctantly showed me out and locked the door, I felt amply repaid for the annoyance that one naturally feels on visiting a perfect stranger.

From what she said regarding her dynasty I gather that it consists of a covey of half-grown islands in the Pacific, inhabited by people who were once benighted and carnivorous, but happy. Now they are well-informed and bilious, while they revel in suspenders and rum, with all the blessings of late hours, civilization and suicide.

The better classes of the Sandwich Islands have the same customs which prevail here, and the swallow-tail coat is quite prevalent there. The low-neck and short-sleeve costume is even carried to a greater excess, perhaps, and all opera tickets read:

Admit the Bearer and Barer.

In answer to a question of my own, the Queen said that crops in the Sandwich Islands were looking well, and that garden truck was far in advance of what she saw here.

She said that they had pie-plant in her garden big enough to eat before she came away, and new potatoes were as big as walnuts. Still, she is enjoying herself here first-rate, and says she sees many pleasing features about New York which will ever decorate the tablets of her memory.

I thanked her for this neat little compliment, and told her I should always regard her in the same manner.

I then wrote a little Impromptu stanza in her autograph album, wrung Her Majesty's hand, and retired with another suppliant and crouching bow, which indicated a contrite spirit, but was calculated to deceive.

I took the liberty of extending to Her Majesty the freedom of the city, and asked her to visit our pressrooms and see us squat our burning thoughts into a quarter of a million copies of the paper, and all for two cents.

I also asked her to come up any time and read our Hawaii exchanges, for I know how lonely anybody can be in a great city sometimes, and how one yearns for a glimpse of his country paper.

The Queen is well paid while she reigns; and even while away as she is now, with her scepter standing idly in the umbrella rack at home, and a large pink mosquito net thrown over the throne, her pay is still going on night and dav.

The above is substantially all that I said during the interview, though the Queen said something as I came out of the room, escorted by the janitor, which I did not quite catch.

I did say, however, just before leaving the room, that I regretted sincerely the unfortunate time of the year at which Her Majesty had decided to visit us, it being rather between hay and grass, as it were, for as there was no r in the month it was a little too late for missionaries and a little too early for watermelons.

It was-only an instant later that I joined the janitor at the foot of the stairs.

This evening the Queen will visit the Casino and see Mr. Wilson try for the three hundred and eighty-second time to restrain the flowing leg of his green plush pantaloons.

A WORD OF EXPLANATION.

|For the benefit of my readers, many of whom are not what might be called practical newspaper men and women, I will say that if your time is very precious, and life is too short for you to fool away your evenings reading local advertisements, and you are at times in grave doubt as to what is advertisement and what is news, just cast your eye to the bottom of the article, and if there is a foot-note which lays "tylfritu3dp" or something of that stripe, you may safely say that no matter how much confidence you may have had in the editor up to that date, the article with a foot-note of that kind is published from a purely mercenary motive, and the editor may or may not indorse the sentiments therein enunciated.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b>--THE HUMORIST INTERVIEWS HIS GRACE THE DUKE IN THE IMPROVED STYLE.

_Marlborough's Seeming Lack of Appreciation of a Joke--Likewise his Lack of Loquacity--A Cordial Invitation to the Duke to Visit the Metropolis--Nye's Naive and Graceful Conservation on Society Gossip._

Newport, Sept. 8.

|I have just terminated a pleasant call upon the Duke of Marbro at his lodgings. I write his name Marbro because that is the way we pronounce it here at Newport. In the language of my ostensibly colored friend, Mr. Rankin, the amateur pronouncer would call it Marl-bor-ough, with three grunts, while in fact Marbro, the correct pronunciation of the name, is executed with but one grunt.

I found the Duke seated on a low ottoman, clad in a loosely fitting costume of pajamas. It was so loose and negligé that it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if his mother made it for him out of his father's old pajamas; but I suddenly remembered that I was in Newport, and not in Tombstone, Arizona, and I restrained myself.

The Duke is suffering from a slight cold, which he contracted for during the early part of the week. It resulted from his ignorance of our changeable and freckle-minded climate. On Tuesday he took a long stroll, and while several miles from his lodgings and wearing his light summer cane, he was overtaken by a severe and sudden change in the temperature. The Marbros are not a strong race, and I am told that one of the Duke's second cousins died of pneumonia from exposing himself to the severity of a Christmas-day frolic clad in an autumn cane.

The Duke rose languidly as I entered, and, taking a reef in his pajamas clothes, looked at me in an inquiring way which betokened that, though of lineage high, he was not entirely at his ease in my presence.

"Duke," said I, standing my umbrella up in the corner to show my childlike confidence in him, "how's your conduct?"

In five minutes afterwards I would have given worlds if I could have recalled my rash words. I did not mean anything more than to utter a piece of pleasantry, for I am passionately fond of pleasantry even in society; but Marbro seemed to take it to heart and to feel distressed. He made a low, guttural sound, but his reply seemed to die away in the mansard roof of his mouth. He stammered out something which sounded like the wail of a damned soul. At least it struck me to be like that, although my lot has not been cast among that class of souls since I got out of politics, and I may have forgotten their style of wail.

To hide his embarrassment, Marbro "rosined" his eye and put a large glass paper weight in it. He then regarded me with some amazement through this piece of brick-a-brac, while I poured out a grown person's dose of Rectified Ruin which stood on the escritoire and drank it with a keen relish, which showed that I trusted him implicitly. Everything I did was done to make Marbro forget himself and feel at his ease.

I told him I had known the Marbros in Maine ever since I was a boy; that we didn't feel above them then, and it would be a poor time to begin now at my time of life to look down on people just because I now wrote pieces for the paper, many of which were afterwards printed. We always thought that the Marbros, or Marlboroughs, of Maine, got their name from burrowing in the marl along the Piscataquis, I said.

Thus I chatted on with him for an hour or two without seeming to chirk him up at all. "Duke," said I at last, "I know what the matter must be with you--you are socially ostracized. I knew it as soon as I came into the room. You cannot disguise it from me. You are suffering from social ostracism, and it is breaking you down. The social demands made by America upon an imported social wreck do not give said wreck time to eat his meals and obtain a necessary amount of rest. I suppose there is nowhere in the world a climate that is so trying on a person suffering from social ostracism as that of my native land. In other climes they give a social outcast rest, but here he gets absolutely no rest whatever."

I then drifted into society chat in a graceful and naïve way which, with others, has never failed to melt the stoniest heart. I told him that I had understood, since I came to Newport, that the demands of society here were so unrelenting that they had kept Mr. and Mrs. Mayonnaise dressing all the time.

A long pause ensued here, during which I could hear Marbro's reason tottering on its throne. After waiting three-quarters of an hour, by my watch, and failing to see that my remark had shed even a ray of sunshine, where erstwhile all was gloom and chaos, I gave him my address and told him that if, in the future, he ever derived any beneficial effects from the above joke, I would be glad to have him communicate with me. And even if I were to die before he could truly say that he had been benefited by this joke and grapple with its keen, incisive nub, my grandchildren would be tickled almost to death to know that he had taken it to pieces and put it together again and found out how it was built and laugh at its ingenious mechanism.

I conversed with the Duke some time about the way his visit to Newport had depressed the price of real estate, and offered him the freedom of New York, hoping that he could depress the price of real estate there so that I could buy some.

"But," said I, assuming an air of perfect repose, as I flung myself on a low couch in such a way as to give a faint view of my new red socks, "you will find it different in New York. Social ostracism there will not materially affect the price of real estate in the neighborhood of the postoffice. In fact, Marbro," said I, regarding him earnestly for a moment through the bottom of a cut-glass tumbler, "there is not enough English social ostracism in New York to supply the demand. Come to our young and thriving town, a town that is rich in resources and liabilities; a town that threatens to rival Omaha as a railroad center; a town where a B. and O. deal has been a common occurrence every day for over a year; a town where you can ride on the elevated trains and get yourself pinched in the iron gate by the guard or go down to Wall street and get pinched by the directors; a town where a man like Henry S. Ives can buy about seven million dollars' worth of stuff that he can't pay for, while a poor man who goes into a general store to buy a pair of ear muffs is followed up by a private detective for fear he may run his finger into the molasses barrel and then lick it syruptitiously. Come on, Duke," said I, growing more talkative as the fumes of his fifty-two dollar liquor rose to my surprised and delighted brains; "come on to New York and mix up with us, and get on to our ways."

"See Fulton market by midnight, bite off a piece of atmosphere from Castle Garden, and come with me to see Guiteau's head in the museum. Guiteau was the last of a long line of assassins. He prophesied that everyone connected with his trial would come to a bad end. Quite a number of those connected with this celebrated trial are already dead, and more especially Mr. Guiteau himself, whose skeleton is in the Smithsonian Institution, his viscera in the Potomac, and his head in a jar of alcohol. If you will come to New York, Marbro, you will have a good time, and the rose geraniums will come back to your pallid and durable cheek.

"If you will give us a whirl, Duke," said I, selecting an umbrella from the decorated crock in the hall and coming back to where he still sat, "you will be pleased and gratified with us; and if you can spare time to come over and see me personally I would try to be as cordial and chatty as you have been with me. No man ever entertained me as you have, or sat and examined me through the bottom of an old microscope for two hours, to be forgotten again by me. Marbro, if you will come to New York, we will go and visit anybody's tomb that you may designate."

I then let myself out of the house with an adjustable pass-key and hastened away. Shortly after I got back to my own lodgings, sometimes called a room, a lackey from the Duke, wearing a livery-colored lively, handed me a note from Marbro, in which he said he hoped that in case I used this interview for publication I would be careful to give his exact language.

In my poor, weak way, I think I have done so.

THE CHINESE COMPOSITOR.

|The Chinese compositor cannot sit at his case as our printers do, but must walk from one case to another constantly, as the characters needed cover such a large number, that they cannot be put into anything like the space used in the English newspaper office. In setting up an ordinary piece of manuscript, the Chinese printer will waltz up and down the room for a few moments, and then go down stairs for a line of lower case. Then he takes the elevator and goes up into the third story after some caps, and then goes out into the woodshed for a handful of astonishers. The successful Chinese compositor doesn't need to be so very intelligent, but he must be a good pedestrian.

THE TRUE AMERICAN.

|The true American would rather work himself into luxury or the lunatic asylum than to hang like a great wart upon the face of nature.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b>--XII "THE OLD MAN ELOQUENT."

_Sitting Bull before the Council of the Sioux Nation--An Impressive Speech--Civilization and the Paleface Doing their Deadly Work--The Moccasins of a Mighty Nation._

|The following speech of Sitting Bull has been specially translated and reported by our Indian editor, who is also wholesale and retail dealer in deceased languages, and general agent for home-made Sioux rhetoric and smoke-tanned Indian eloquence. New laid Indian laments with bead trimmings. Compiler of novel and desirable styles of war dances. Indian eloquence furnished to debating clubs and publishers of school readers:

"Warriors and war-scarred veterans of the frontier; Once more the warpath is overgrown with bunch grass, and the tomahawk slumbers in the wigwam of the red man. Grim-visaged war has given place to the piping times of peace. The cold and cruel winter is upon lus. It has been upon us for some time.

"The wail of departed spirits is on the night wind, and the wail of the man with the chilblain answers back from the warrior's wigwam.

"Children of the forest, we are few. Where once the shrill war-whoop of the chieftain collected our tribe like the leaves of the forest, I might now yell till the cows come home without bringing out a quorum.

"We are fading away before the march of the paleface, and sinking into oblivion like the snowflake on the bosom of the Stinking Water.

"Warriors, I am the last of a mighty race. We were a race of chieftains. Alas! we will soon begone. The Bull family will soon pass from the face of the earth. Ole is gone, and John is failing, and I don't feel very well myself. We are the victims of the paleface, and our lands are taken away.

"A few more suns, and the civilization, and valley tan, and hand made sour mash, and horse liniment of the paleface will have done their deadly work.

"Our squaws and pappooses are scattered to the four winds of heaven; and we are left desolate.

"Where is The-Daughter-of-the-Tempest? Where is The-Wall-Eyed-Maiden-With-the-Peeled-Nose?

"Where is Victoria Regina Dei Gracia Sitting Bull? Where is Knock-Kneed Chemiloon? Where are Sway-Back Sue and Meek-Eyed Government Socks?

"They have sunk beneath the fire-waters of the goggle-eyed Caucasian. They have succumbed to the delirum triangles, and when I call them they come not. They do not hear my voice. Their moans are heard upon the still night air, and they cry for revenge. Look at the sad remnant of the family of Sitting Bull, your chief. One sore-eyed squaw is left alone. Her face is furrowed o'er with the famine of many winters, and her nose is only the ruin of its former greatness. Her moccasins are worn out, and the soldier pants she wears are too long for her. She is drunk also. She is not as drunk as she can get, but she is hopeful and persevering. She has also learned to lie like the white man. She is now an easy, extemporaneous liar. When we gather around the campfire and enact our untutored lies in the gloaming, Lucretia Borgia Skowhegan Sitting Bull, with the inspiration of six fingers of agency coffin varnish, proceeds to tell the prize prevarication, and then the house adjourns, and nothing can be heard but the muffled tread of the agency corn beef, going out to get some fresh air. Lucretia Borgia is also becoming slovenly. It is evening, and yet she has not donned her evening dress. Her back hair is unkempt, and her front hair is unbung. Pretty soon I will take a tomahawk and bang it for her. She seems despondent and hopeless. As she leans against the trunk of a mighty oak and scratches her back, you can see that her thoughts are far away. Her other suspender is gone, but she don't care a cold, smooth clam. She is thinking of her childhood days by the banks of Minnehaha.

"Warriors, we stand in the moccasins of a mighty nation. We represent the starving remnant of the once powerful Sioux. Our pirogue stands idly on the shore. I don't know what a pirogue is, but it stands idly on the shore.

"When the spring flowers bloom again, and the grass is green upon the plains, we will once more go upon the warpath. We will avenge the wrongs of our nation. I have not fully glutted my vengeance. I have seven or eight more gluts on hand, and we will shout our war-cry once more, and mutilate some more Anglo-Saxons. We will silence the avenging cries of our people. We will spatter the green grass and gray greasewood with the gore of the paleface, and feed the white-livered emigrant to the coyote. We will spread death and desolation everywhere, and fill the air with gum overshoes and remains. Let us yield up our lives clearly while we mash the paleface beyond recognition, and shoot his hired man so full of holes that he will look like a suspension bridge.

"Warriors, there is our hunting ground. The buffalo, the antelope, the sage hen and the jackass rabbit are ours. Ours to enjoy, ours to perpetuate, ours to transmit. The Great Spirit created these animals for the red man, and not for the bilious tourists, between whose legs the chestnut sunlight penetrates clear up to his collar bone."

*****

"Then we will ride down on the regular army, when he is thinking of something else, and we will scare him into convulsions, and our medicine men will attend to the convulsions while we sample the supplies.

"Then we will take some cold sliced Indian agent and some bay rum, and go on a picnic.

"Warriors, farewell. Be virtuous and you will be happy; but you will be lonesome, sometimes. Think of what I have said to you about the council fire, and govern yourselves accordingly, We will not murmur at the celluloid cracker and cast iron codfish ball, but in the spring we will have veal cutlets for breakfast, and peace commissioner on toast for dinner. The squaw of Sitting Bull shall have a new plug hat, and if the weather is severe, she shall have two of them.

"Warriors, farewell. I am done. I have spoken. I have nothing more to say. Sic semper domino. Plumbago erysipelas, in hock eureka, sciataca, usufruct, lim-burger, gobraugh."

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XIV--THE AMENDE HONORABLE.

_Lingering Traditions--The Molder of Public Opinion--No Mirth in making the Amende Honorable--Four Minutes to Decide._

|It is rather interesting to watch the manner which old customs have been slightly changed and handed down from age to age. Peculiarities of old traditions still linger among us, and are forked over to posterity like a wappy-jawed teapot or a long-time mortgage. No one can explain it, but the fact still remains patent that some of the oddities of our ancestors continue to appear, from time to time, clothed in the changing costumes of the prevailing fashion.

Along with these choice antiquities, and carrying the nut-brown flavor of the dead and relentless years, comes the amende honorable. From the original amende in which the offender appeared in public clothed only in a cotton-flannel shirt, and with a rope about his neck as an evidence of a formal recantation, down to this day when (sometimes) the pale editor, in a stickful of type, admits that "his informant was in error," the amende honorable has marched along with the easy tread of time. The blue-eyed molder of public opinion, with one suspender hanging down at his side, and writing on a sheet of news-copy paper, has a more extensive costume, perhaps, than the old-time offender who bowed in the dust in the midst of the great populace, and with a halter under his ear admitted his offense, but he does not feel any more cheerful over it.

I have been called upon several times to make the amende honorable, and I admit that it is not an occasion of mirth and merriment. People who come into the editorial office to invest in a retraction are generally very healthy, and have a stiff, reserved manner that no cheerfulness of hospitality can soften.

I remember of an accident of this kind which occurred last summer in my office, while I was writing something scathing. A large man with an air of profound perspiration about him, and plaid flannel shirt, stepped into the middle of the room, and breathed in the air that I was not using. He said he would give me four minutes in which to retract, and pulled out a watch by which to ascertain the exact time. I asked him if he would not allow me a moment or two to go over to the telegraph office and to wire my parents of my awful death. He said I could walk out of that door when I walked over his dead body. Then I waited a long time, until he told me my time was up, and asked what I was waiting for. I told him I was waiting for him to die, so that I could walk over his dead body. How could I walk over a corpse until life was extinct?

He stood and looked at me first in astonishment, afterward in pity. Finally tears welled up in his eyes, and plowed their way down his brown and grimy face. Then he said that I need not fear him. "You are safe," said he. "A youth who is so patient and so cheerful as you are--who would wait for a healthy man to die so that you could meander over his pulseless remnants, ought not to die a violent death. A soft-eyed seraph like you, who is no more conversant with the ways of this world than that, ought to be put in a glass vial of alcohol and preserved. I came up here to kill you and throw you in the rainwater barrel, but now that I know what a patient disposition you have, I shudder to think of the crime I was about to commit."

SWEET INFLUENCES OF CHANGING SEASONS.

|It is strange that the human heart is so easily influenced by the change of seasons; and although spring succeeds winter, and summer follows upon the heels of spring, just as it did centuries ago, yet the transition from one to the other is ever new and pleasing, and the bosom is gladdened with the cheering assurance of spring, or the promise of the coming summer time, with its wealth of golden days, its cucumbers and vinegar, its green corn, its string beans, its base-ball, its mammoth circus, its fragrant flowers, and its soda water flavored with syrup from a long-necked, wicker-covered bottle, just as it was in the days of Pharoah, and Hannibal, and Andrew Jackson.

THE MARCH OF CIVILIZATION.

|Spokane Ike," the Indian who killed a doctor last summer for failing to cure his child, has been hanged. This shows the onward march of civilization, and vouchsafes to us the time when a doctor's life will be in less danger than that of his patient.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b>. XV--A BIG CORNER ON PORK.

_Independent Order of Forty Liars--Brother Jedediah Holcomb--The Muffled Tread of Many Feet--Leader of the Trusty Phalanx--The most noble Prevaricator._

|At a regular round-up of the Rocky Mountain division of the Independent Order of Forty Liars, on Saturday evening, the most noble prevaricator having directed the breath-tester to examine all present to see that they were in possession of the annual password, explanations and signals, and to report to the most noble promoter of twenty-seven karat falsehoods whether all were so qualified to remain, and the report having been satisfactory, the most noble prevaricator announced that after the report of the custodian of campaign lies for the past year and the annual statements of the division bartender and most noble beer-yanker had been handed in and passed upon, the next business to come before the division would be the nominations and the election of most noble prevaricator to serve during the year 1887.

"Under the rules of our order," said the M. P., "ten minutes will be given each aspirant for the office named in which to address the meeting. It is understood that the time shall be devoted to short anecdotes, personal reminiscences, etc., and the brethren will be given ample scope to enlarge upon any details which the subject may suggest. Our usual custom is to devote at least one hour to this highly entertaining exercise, and I call to mind now some of the most enjoyable moments of my life spent in listening to others or in constructing for the amusement of others a few of the most entertaining and instructive falsehoods that the history of our most noble order has known.

"We have several prominent visiting members here from other parts of the country, among whom I am gratified to name Brother Eli Perkins, Brother O'Keefe, of Pike's Peak, and Brothers Morey and Barnum, from the East, who will address the meeting, perhaps, for a few moments after other business has been disposed of."

After singing the opening ode, accompanied by the lyre, the usual order of business having been attended to, the addresses of aspirants for the office of M. N. P. of the Rocky Mountain division were called for.

The last speaker was Brother Jedediah Holcomb, who thus addressed the assemblage:

"Most noble prevaricator of the Rocky Mountain division of Forty Liars, and brethren of the order: Many years ago, when I was a mere stripling, as it were, and just upon the verge of manhood, so to speak, I was sitting on the green grass south of Chicago, near where Drexel boulevard comes into South Park, thinking of my hard luck and wishing that my future might be more prosperous than my past.

"That locality was then a howling wilderness compared with what it is now, and where to-day the beautiful drives and walks are so inviting there was nothing then but prairie and swamp, with here and there a scrub oak tree.

"Chicago was a stirring western city then, but she was young and small. She had not then accumulated the fabulous wealth of new and peculiar metropolitan odors which she now enjoys, and in place of the rich, fructifying fragrance of the stock yards, there was nothing but the wild honeysuckle and the dead horse.

"Out where some of the most beautiful residences now stand there was nothing then but the dank thistle nodding in the wind, or the timid picnic bumble bee, hanging on the autumn bough and yearning to be gathered in by the small boy.

"As I sat there long ago, ana, shrouded in the September haze, was dreaming of a fortunate future for myself, I heard the muilled tread of innumerable feet drawing nearer and nearer. The sound was like the footfall of a regiment of infantry approaching, and I arose to see what it was.

"I had not long to wait, for soon there hove in sight a very singular spectacle. First came a large Illinois hog at the head of a long column of Illinois hogs, all marching in Indian fashion, and grunting with that placid, gentle grunt which the hog carries with him. On closer examination into this singular phenomenon, I saw that all the hogs, except the leader, were blind, each animal having his predecessor's tail in his mouth throughout the long line, consisting of 13,521 unfortunate, sightless hogs, cheerfully following their leader toward water.

"I was never so struck with the wonderful instinct of the brute creation in my life, and my eyes filled with tears when I saw the child-like faith and confidence of each blind animal following with implicit trust the more fortunate guide.

"Soon, however, a great dazzling three-cornered idea worked its way into my intellect. Dashing away my idle tears, I drew my revolver and shot off the leader's tail, leaving the long line of disconcerted and aimless hogs in the middle of a broad prairie, with no guide but the dephlogisticated tail of a hog who was then three-quarters of a mile away.

"Then I stole up, and taking the gory tail in my hand, I led the trusting phalanx down to the stock yards and sold the outfit at eight cents, live weight.

"This was the start of my dazzling career as a capitalist, a career to which I now point with pride. Thus from a poor boy with one suspender and a sore toe, I have risen to be one of our loading business men, known and respected by all, and by industry and economy, and borrowing my chewing tobacco, I have come to be one of our solid men."

When Brother Holcomb ceased to speak, there was a painful silence of perhaps five moments, and then Brother Woodtick Williams moved that the rules be suspended, and Brother Holcomb declared the unanimous choice of the order for the most noble prevaricator, to serve _sine die_.

Passed.

Then the quartette sang the closing ode, and each member, after hanging up his regalia in the ante room, walked thoughtfully home in the crisp winter starlight.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XVI-PATRICK OLESON.

_The Banks of the Pulgarlic River--Patrick Fireman on 259--The Goal Was Reached--The Story only Partially True._

|Many years ago, on the banks of the Pulgarlic river, lived a poor boy named Patrick Oleson. When Patrick was only a year old, his father and mother got into a little difficulty, in which the mother was killed. The father, as soon as he regained his composure, saw that he had gone too far, and when the sheriff came and marched him off to jail, he frankly confessed that he had been perhaps too hasty.

Still, public opinion seemed turned against him; and in the following spring Patrick's father was unanimously chosen by a convention of six property-holders of the county to jump from a new pine platform into the sweet subsequently.

The affair was a success, and Patrick was left an orphan at the tender age of one and one-half years to wrestle for himself. His first impulse was to write humorous letters to the press, and thus become affluent; but the papers that were solvent returned his letters, and the papers that accepted them busted the subsequent autumn. So Patrick decided that as soon as he could complete a college course that would fit him for the position, he would either enter the ministry or become a railroad man.

While at college he read the story of an engineer who had saved the life of a little child by grabbing it from the cow-catcher while the train was going at lightning speed, and, as a result, was promoted to general passenger agent of the road.

So Patrick decided to be a railroad man and save some children from being squashed by the train, so that he could be promoted and get a big salary. He therefore studied to fit himself for the position to which he aspired, and after five years' hard study he graduated with high honors and a torpid liver.

He then sought out a good paying road that he thought he would eventually like to be president of, and applied for a position on it.

By waiting till the following spring he got a job braking extra, averaging $13 per month, till one day he screwed up a brake too tight and wore out a wheel on the caboose. After that he was called into the office of the superintendent, as Patrick supposed, to take the superintendent's place, perhaps; but the superintendent swore at him, and called him Flatwheel Oleson, and told him he had better hoe corn and smash potato-bugs for a livelihood.

Patrick felt hurt and grieved, and, more in sorrow than in anger, he got the oriental grand bounce, and had to rustle for another job. This time he tried to secure the position of master mechanic; but when the road to which he applied found out that he didn't know the difference between the cow-catcher and the automatic air brake, Patrick was appointed as assistant polisher and wiper extraordinary at the roundhouse.

All this time he never drank a drop or uttered a profane word. No matter how much he was imposed upon, he never got mad or quarreled with the other men. He sometimes felt sorely tried, but he saw that other railroad men did not swear, so he did not.

After nine years of mental strain in the round-house, he was put on the road as a fireman on 259; he was now, after sixteen years' hard study and perseverance, on the road to promotion.

Just as soon as he could find a child on the track, some day, and snatch the innocent little thing from the jaws of death, he felt that he would be solid. Sometimes he would allow his mind to dwell on this subject so long that his fire would go out and the engineer would report him, and the old man would lay him off to give him a chance to think it over.

Three years Patrick fired on 259, and there wasn't a child that got within 1,300 feet of the track when his engine came by. They seemed to know that Patrick was perishing to save a child from being flattened out by the train.

He began to get discouraged. He said he would try it another year, and if he failed he would have to give up railroading and go to Congress.

One day he had just fired up the 259 in good shape and looked out of the window ahead, when he saw a little child toddling along toward them and only a few yards away, while the engine shrieked like a demon, and the little chubby baby came on toward the rushing monster, whose hot breath, with short, sharp hisses, rushed through the June morning.

Patrick felt that the joy or sorrow of a whole lifetime was in store for him. It was not only life or death to the joyous parents, but it was the culmination of the hopes and fears, the agony, the self-denial and disappointments of his whole life, and the opening up of a new future to him, or it was another lost opportunity and the continuation of along, dreary, uneventful journey to the grave.

He was out on the pilot in an instant. He did not breathe. The rushing engine trembled beneath him, and like a flash the still laughing child was in his strong-arms.

He had triumphed. The goal was reached. The great struggle was over, and in a few days he would be president of the road. He got home, and a man came toward him with a document of some kind. His breath came short and hard. It was probably his credentials as president of the road. He took it and read it over in a sort of dream. It was only a notice that his board bill had been garnisheed, and the superintendent told him that he must pay it or the company would have to squeeze along without his services.

In the morning the papers had a short account of Patrick's bravery, but it was spoken of simply as "an almost fatal accident," and Patrick's name appeared as Ole Fitzpatrick. He began to feel that he wasn't getting a fair shake. His promotion to the presidency of the road seemed to lag. There was a hitch in the senate probably about his confirmation or something of that kind. The acting president of the corporation selfishly retained his position, and looked so healthy, and seemed so pleased with himself that Patrick lost all patience.

One day a man with a wart on his nose met Patrick on the street and asked him if he was the gallant fireman of 259 who saved a little child a week or two ago.

Patrick said he was.

The man grasped his hand and said:

"That was my child. It was almost the only child I had. I only had nine others, and would have been almost childless if little James Abraham Garfield had been busted. You have done a brave, noble act, and the Lord will reward you. I am a poor man, as you would readily guess by my clothing and the fact that we have ten children. I cannot reward you with wealth or position, but I don't want to seem ungrateful or close or contiguous. Come with me my benefactor, and I will shake you for the drinks."

Then Patrick Oleson went away where he could be alone with his surging thoughts. He is now running a hurdy-gurdy in the San Juan country.

This story is only partially true. The main fact, however, viz.; that a child wasn't run over by a train, is true. It is different from most stories about saving children; but the spring style of story is a little different from that of former seasons, anyway.

In the spring style of prevarication, the engineer will either fail to grab the child in time and there will be nothing left on the track but a gingham apron and a grease spot, or, if he succeeds in saving the child, he will not get the position of sergeant-at-arms and a gold-headed cane, as was formerly the style.

PLEASURES OF SPRING.

|Spring is the most joyful season of the year. The little brooklets are released from their icy fetters, and go laughing and rippling along their winding way. The birds begin to sing in the budding branches, and the soft south wind calls forth the green grass. The husbandman then goes forth to dig the horseradish for his frugal meal. He also jabs his finger into the rosebud mouth of the wild-eyed calf, and proceeds to wean him from the gentle cow. The cow-boy goes forth humming a jocund lay. So does the hen. Boys should not go near the hen while she is occupied with her tuneful lay. She might seize them by the off ear, and bear them away to her den, and feed them to her young. The hen rises early in the morning so as to catch the swift-footed angleworm as he flits from flower to flower. The angleworm cannot bite.

AN UNCLOUDED WELCOME.

|H. P. Willis once said: "The sweetest thing in life is the unclouded welcome of a wife." This is true, indeed, but when her welcome is clouded with an atmosphere of angry words and coal scuttles, there is something about it that makes a man want to go out in the woodshed and sleep on the ice-chest.

TOO MUCH GOD AND NO FLOUR.

|Old Chief Pocotello, now at the Fort Hall agency, in answer to an inquiry relative to the true Christian character of a former Indian agent at that place, gave in very terse language the most accurate description of a hypocrite that was ever given to the public. "Ugh! Too much God and no flour."

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b>. XVII--LONGING FOR HOME.

_Tom Fagan's Wild Horse--His Peculiar Taste in Lunches--Not an Arabian Steed, but of Wyoming Descent--He Yearns for his old Home._

|Tom Fagan, of this city, has a wild horse that don't seem to take to the rush and hurry and turmoil of a metropolis. He has been so accustomed to the glad, free air of the plains and mountains that the hampered and false life of a throbbing city, with its myriad industries, makes him nervous and unhappy. He sighs for the boundless prairie and the pure breath of the lifegiving mountain atmosphere. So taciturn is he in fact, and so cursed by homesickness and weariness of an artificial and unnatural horse society here in Laramie, that he refuses to eat anything and is gradually pining away. Sometimes he takes a light lunch out of Mr. Fagan's arm, but for days and days he utterly loathes food. He also loathes those who try to go into the stable and fondle him. He isn't apparently very much on the fondle. He don't yearn for human society, but seems to want to be by himself and think it over.

The wild horse in stories soon learns to love his master and stay by him and carry him through flood or fire, and generally knows more than the _Cyclopedia Brittanica_; but this horse is not the historical horse that they put into wild Arabian falsehoods. He is just a plain, unassuming wild horse of Wyoming descent, whose pedigree is slightly clouded, and who is sensitive on the question of his ancestry. All he wants is just to be let alone, and most everybody has decided that he is right. They came to that conclusion after they had soaked their persons in arnica and glued themselves together with poultices.

Perhaps, after a while, he will conclude to eat hay and grow up with the country, but now he sighs for his native bunch-grass and the buffalo wallow wherein he has heretofore made his lair. We don't wonder much, though, that a horse who has lived in the country should be a little rattled here when he finds the electric light, and bicycles, and lawn mowers, and Uncle Tom's Cabin troupes, and baled hay at $20 per ton. It makes him as wild and skittish as it does an eighteen-year-old girl the first time she comes into town, and for the first time is met by the blare of trumpets, and the oriental wealth of the circus with its deformed camels and uniformed tramps driving its miles of cages with no animals in them. The great natural world and the giddy maelstrom of seething, perspiring humanity, peculiar to the city world, are two separate and distinct existences.

DIGNITY.

|Dignity does not draw. It answers in place of intellectual tone for twenty minutes, but after awhile it fails to get there. Dignity works all right in a wooden Indian or a drum major, but the man who desires to draw a salary through life and to be sure of a visible means of support, will do well to make some other provision than a haughty look and the air of patronage.

<b>CHESTNUT-BURR</b> XVIII--THE TRUE HISTORY OF DAMON AND PYTHIAS.

_Dionysius the Elder--Paris Green in the Pie--Damon and Pythias--Pythias about to Be Sacrificed--The Solitary Horseman Puts in an Appearance._