Chapter XIV: Act II: The Same, August, 1907 (2)

• • • • •

The purposeless old party with a boiled shirt who has for some days been loafing about the town peddling hymn-books at a merely nominal price (a clear proof that he stole them) has been disposed of in a cheap and satisfactory manner. His lode petered out about six o’clock yesterday afternoon, our evening edition being delayed until that time by request. The cause of his death, as nearly as could be ascertained by a single physician—Dr. Duffer being too drunk to attend—was Whisky Sam, who, it will be remembered, delivered a lecture some weeks ago, entitled “Dan’l in the Lions’ Den; and How They’d a-Et Him If He’d Ever Been Thar”—in which he overthrew revealed religion.

His course yesterday proves that he can act, as well as talk.—_Devil Gully “Expositor.”_

• • • • •

There was considerable excitement in the street yesterday, owing to the arrival of Bust-Head Dave, formerly of this place, who came over from Pudding Springs. He was met at the hotel by Sheriff Knogg, who leaves a large family. Dave walked down to the bridge, and it reminded one of old times to see the people go away as he heaved in view, for he had made a threat (first published in this paper) to clean out the town. Before leaving the place Dave called at our office to settle for a year’s subscription (invariably in advance) and was informed through a chink in the logs, that he might leave his dust in the tin cup at the well. Dave is looking much larger than at his last visit, just previous to the funeral of Judge Dawson. He left for Injun Hill at five o’clock amidst a good deal of shooting at rather long range. There will be an election for Sheriff as soon as a stranger can be found who will accept the honor.—_Yankee Flat “Advertiser.”_

• • • • •

It is to be hoped the people will turn out to-morrow, according to advertisement in another column. The men deserve hanging, no end, but at the same time they are human and entitled to some respect; and we shall print the name of every adult male who does not grace the occasion with his presence. We make this announcement simply because there have been some indications of apathy; and any man who will stay away when Bob Bolton and Sam Buxter are to be hanged is probably either an accomplice or a relation. Old Blanket-Mouth Dick was not the only blood relation these fellows had in this vicinity; and the fate that befell him when they could not be found ought to be a warning to the rest.

The bar is just in rear of the gibbet and will be run by a brother of ours. Gentlemen who shrink from publicity will patronize that bar.—_San Louis Jones “Gazette.”_

• • • • •

A painful accident occurred in Frog Gulch yesterday which has cast a good deal of gloom over a hitherto joyous community. Dan Spigger—or, as he was familiarly called, Murderer Dan—got drunk at his usual hour and, as is his custom, took down his gun and started after the fellow who went home with Dan’s girl the night before. He found him at breakfast with his wife and children. After dispersing them he started out to return, but, being weary, stumbled and broke his leg. Dr. Bill Croft found him in that condition and, having no wagon at hand to convey him to town, shot him to put him out of his misery. His loss is a Democratic gain. He seldom disagreed with any but Democrats and would have materially reduced the vote of that party had he not been so untimely cut off.—_Jackass Gap “Bulletin.”_

• • • • •

The dance-house at the corner of Moll Duncan street and Fish-Trap avenue has been broken up. Our friend the editor of _The Jamboree_ succeeded in getting his cock-eyed sister in there as a beer-slinger and the hurdy-gurdy girls all swore they would not stand her society. They got up and got. The light fantastic toe is not tripped there any more, except when the _Jamboree_ man sneaks in and dances a jig for his morning pizen.—_Murderburg “Herald.”_

• • • • •

The superintendent of the Mag Davis mine requests us to state that the custom of pitching Chinamen and Injins down the shaft will have to be stopped, as he has resumed work in the mine. The old well back of Jo Bowman’s is just as good, and more centrally located.—_New Jerusalem “Courier.”_

• • • • •

There is a fellow in town who claims to be the man that killed Sheriff White some months ago. We consider him an impostor seeking admission into society above his level, and hope people will stop inviting him to their houses.—_Nigger Hill “Patriot.”_

• • • • •

A stranger wearing a stovepipe hat arrived in town yesterday, putting up at the Nugget House. The boys are having a good time with that hat this morning. The funeral will take place at two o’clock.—_Spanish Camp “Flag.”_

• • • • •

The scoundrel who upset our office last month will be hung to-morrow and no paper will be issued the next day.—“_Sierra Firecracker._”

• • • • •

The old gray-headed party who lost his life last Friday at the jeweled hands of our wife deserves more than a passing notice at ours. He came to this city last summer and started a weekly Methodist prayer-meeting, but being warned by the police, who was formerly a Presbyterian, gave up the swindle. He afterward undertook to introduce Bibles and, it is said, on one occasion attempted to preach. This was a little too much and at our suggestion he was tarred and feathered.

For a time this treatment seemed to work a reform, but the heart of a Methodist is above all things deceitful and desperately wicked: he was soon after caught in the very act of presenting a hymnbook to old Ben Spoffer’s youngest daughter, Ragged Moll. The vigilance committee _pro tem._ waited on him, when he was decently shot and left for dead, as was recorded in this paper, with an obituary notice for which we have never received a cent. Last Friday, however, he was discovered sneaking into the potato patch connected with this paper and our wife, God bless her! got an axe and finished him then and there.

His name was John Bucknor and it is reported (we do not know with how much truth) that at one time there was an improper intimacy between him and the lady who despatched him. If so, we pity Sal.—_Coyote “Trapper.”_

• • • • •

Our readers may have noticed in yesterday’s issue an editorial article in which we charged Judge Black with having murdered his father, beaten his wife and stolen seven mules from Jo Gorman. The facts are substantially as stated, but somewhat different. The killing was done by a Dutchman named Moriarty and the bruises that we happened to see on the face of the Judge’s wife were caused by a fall, she being, doubtless, drunk at the time. The mules had only strayed into the mountains and have returned all right.

We consider the Judge’s anger at so trifling an error very ridiculous and insulting and if he comes to town he will not come again. An independent press is not to be muzzled by any absurd old duffer with a crooked nose and a sister who is considerably more mother than wife. Not so long as we have our usual success in thinning out the judiciary.—_Lone Tree “Sockdologer.”_

• • • • •

Yesterday as Job Wheeler was returning from a clean-up at the Buttermilk Flume he stopped at Hell Tunnel to have a chat with the boys. John Tooley took a fancy to Job’s watch and asked for it. Being refused, he slipped away, and going to Job’s shanty, killed his three half-breed children and a valuable pig. This is the third time John has played some scurvy trick, and it is about time the superintendent discharged him. There is entirely too much of this practical joking amongst the boys. It will lead to trouble yet.—_Nugget Hill “Pickaxe of Freedom.”_

• • • • •

The stranger from Frisco, with the clawhammer coat, who put up at the Gage House last Thursday, and was looking for a chance to invest, was robbed of three hundred ounces of clean dust. We know who did it, but don’t be frightened, John Lowry; we’ll never tell, though we are awful hard up, owing to our subscribers going back on us.—_Choketown “Rocker.”_

• • • • •

The railroad from this city northwest will be commenced as soon as the citizens get tired of admonishing the Chinamen brought up to do the work, which will probably be within three or four weeks. The carcasses are accumulating about town and begin to be unpleasant.—_Gravel Hill “Thunderbolt.”_

• • • • •

The man who was shot last week at the Gulch will be buried next Thursday. He is not dead yet, but his physician wishes to visit a mother-in-law at Lard Springs and is therefore very anxious to get the case off his hands. The undertaker describes the patient as the longest cuss in that section.—_Santa Peggy “Times.”_

• • • • •

There is some dispute about land titles at Little Bilk Bar. About half a dozen cases were temporarily decided on Wednesday, but it is supposed the widows will renew the litigation. The only proper way to prevent these vexatious lawsuits is to hang the judge of the county court.—_Cow-County “Outcropper.”_

[*] Under another title, these paragraphs may be found in a foolish
book called _The Fiend’s Delight_, published in London in 1872
by John Camden Hotten. They had appeared in the San Francisco
_Newsletter_ two or three years before—an illuminating contribution
to a current medical discussion of an uncommonly high death-rate
in certain mining towns. Their pedigree is given here by way of
assisting that original humorist, Mr. Charles B. Lewis, in any
further explanations that he may make as to how and when he was
inspired by Heaven to write his famous _Arizona Kicker_.

THE A. L. C. B.

A society of which I am the proud and happy founder is the American League for the Circumvention of Bores. With a view to enlisting the reader’s interest and favor and obtaining his initiation fee, I beg leave to expound the ends and methods of the order.

The League purposes to work within the law: Bores can be circumvented by killing; which may be called the circumvention direct; but for every Bore that is killed arises a swarm of Bores (reporters, lawyers, jurors, etc.) whom one is unable to kill. The League plan is humane, simple, ingenious and effective. It leaves the Bore alive, to suffer the lasting torments of his own esteem.

The American League for the Circumvention of Bores has the customary machinery of grips, pass-words, signs, a goat, solemn ceremonials and mystic hoodooing; but for practical use it employs only the Signal of Eminent Distress, to preservation of the secret whereof members are bound by the most horrible oath known to the annals of juration. It is a law that any member duly convicted in the secret tribunals of the League of failing promptly to respond to the Signal of Eminent Distress shall suffer evisceration through the nose.

The plan works this way: I am, say, on a ferry-boat. Carelessly glancing about, I see—yes, it must have been—ah! again: the Signal of Eminent Distress! A Brother of the League is _in articulo mortis_—the demon hath him—the beak of the Bore is crimson in his heart! I go to the rescue, choosing, according to my judgment and tact, one of the Ten Thousand Forms of Benign Relief which I have memorized from the Ritual.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” I perhaps say to the victim, whom I may never have seen before, “I have been looking all over the boat for you. I must have a word with you on a most important matter if your friend”—looking at the baffled Bore who has been talking into him—“will have the goodness to excuse you.”

Possibly, though, I say to the signaling victim: “Sir, pardon me, but is not your name—?”

“Jonesmith,” he replies, coldly; “may I ask—?”

“Ah, yes; I hope you will not think me intrusive, but a gentleman on the lower deck, who says he is your uncle, has fallen and broken his neck.”

As Mr. Jonesmith with a grateful look moves off, the Bore, full of solicitude, starts to follow for assistance and condolence. I lay my hand on his arm. “Pardon, sir; the physician prescribes absolute quiet: the splendor, charm and vivacity of your conversation would unduly excite the patient.”

Before the wretch can round-up his faculties the Brother in Distress has escaped and I am walking away with the 368th Aspect of Superb Unconcern, as laid down in the Ritual.

The League has been in existence in New York city for about six months. There is a younger branch at Hohokus, and another is forming at Podunk. I am the Supreme Imperial Inimitable, though every member has high rank and office. Applications for membership must be made personally to the Grand Dictatorial Caboodle, which will judge whether the applicant is himself a Bore.

TWO CONVERSATIONS

I

CANDID PUBLISHER.—Sir, I am proud to meet you. Your book is admirable; it is exquisitely touching and beautiful.

REASONABLE AUTHOR.—Your commendation is most pleasing to me. I was at no time in doubt of your favorable action in the matter.

C. P.—You did not hear me out. Publication of a book entails a considerable expense.

R. A.—Naturally.

C. P.—The money does not always come back.

R. A.—I have been so informed. Publishers sometimes accept work that is very bad literature.

C. P.—Yes, we try to.

R. A.—Try to? You cannot mean that you prefer such work.

C. P.—We must publish what will sell. Do you read the most popular books of the year—the “best-selling” novels?—nearly all “best sellers” are novels.

R. A.—God forbid! I sometimes look at them.

C. P.—Do you ever find _one_ that has any literary merit?

R. A.—Certainly not. I did not expect my book to be popular, but hoped that it might have a steady and perhaps increasing sale and eventually become famous. You sometimes publish new editions of the great works in our language—“the English classics.” Do you lose money by them?

C. P.—Not usually. They have had the advantage of generations of advertising by scholars and by critics whose words had weight in their time and have in ours. If your excellent book finds a publisher pretty soon and is kept going until the year 2100, we shall be glad to put it on our list. You see it is very simple: you have only to conform to the conditions of success.

R. A.—I see. But are these the only conditions? Some great work succeeds in its author’s time—that of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle, and so forth, in England; and in America that of—m, er, huh.

C. P.—Is it surely great work? The ink is hardly dry. The literary fashions determining its form and substance are still with us. Posterity will have to pass judgment upon it, which posterity will indubitably do without reference to our view of the matter. Then, if you and I happen to be in communication with this vale of tears we shall know if these noted authors were mining the great mother-lode of human interest, or, occasionally touching some of its dips, spurs and angles, taking out barren rock. It looks to us like a rich enough ore, but it is a long journey to where there is an assaying-plant capable of dealing with that particular product. When it is “heard from” we shall not be here. Those who mined it are gone already.

R. A.—Then there can be no valuable contemporary criticism?

C. P.—None that any one can know to be valuable.

R. A.—And no man can live long enough to know if he is a good writer?

C. P.—The trade of writing has that disadvantage.

R. A.—We are getting a long way from business. Am I to understand that you reject my book because, as you say, “it is exquisitely touching and beautiful”?

C. P.—You outline the painful situation with accuracy.

R. A.—Well, I’ll be damned!

C. P.—Sure!—if you find a sentimentalist who will publish your book. He will do the damning.

II

EDITOR.—Glad to see you, sir. Take a chair.

VISITOR.—I am the proprietor of _The Prosperous Monthly_.

ED.—Take two chairs.

VIS.—I called to congratulate you on the extraordinary success of _The Waste Basket_. I should not have thought it possible for you to break into our field and play this game as well as we. And with so fantastic a title!

ED.—For my success I am greatly indebted to yourself.

VIS.—Not if I know it: we have fought you, tooth and nail.

ED.—Oh, that is all right; if it had been expedient we should have fought back. Our prosperity depended on yours.

VIS.—Heaven has withheld from me the intelligence to understand.

ED.—Have any of the contents of this magazine ever seemed familiar to you?

VIS.—I am not much of a reader; my editor has fancied that some of your articles lacked originality, but has confessed that he could not quite identify their authors.

ED.—Just so; I accept nothing for my magazine that has not been first submitted to yours. If it has not been when offered, I require that to be done.

VIS.—That is monstrous nice of you. Such knightly courtesy to a senior competitor is most unusual. I thank you—come and dine with me to-morrow at seven (_handing card_).

ED.—With pleasure. Good day.

VIS.—Good day. (_Exit Visitor._)

ED. (_solus_).—If he thinks it out, I shall miss a dinner.

A STORY AT THE CLUB

“Do you believe that?” said Dr. Dutton, passing a newspaper across the table to Will Brady and taking needless pains to point out “that” with his thumb. Brady read the discredited paragraph. It was as follows:

Mr. John Doane, of Peequeegan, Maine, has received seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars from the estate of an old man whom he
protected from the abuse of a rowdy fifteen years ago, and whom
he never afterward saw nor heard from. In the will the old man
apologized for the smallness of the bequest, explaining that it was
all that he had.

“Believe it?” said Brady; “I know it to be true. I was myself the—”

He paused to think.

“Now, how the devil,” said Dutton, “can you ring yourself into _that_ story? You are not John Doane, and you certainly are not the late old man.”

“I was about to say,” resumed Brady, composedly, “that I was myself the legatee in a somewhat similar case. In the year—”

“Waiter,” said Dutton, “bring me twelve cigars, three bottles of champagne and, at daylight, a cup of powerful coffee. When the fellows come in from the theater ask them not to come into this room—say there’s a man in here who is engaged in being murdered.”

“In the year 1892,” Mr. Brady went on to say, “I was living in Peoria, Illinois. One night while walking along the railroad track just outside of town I saw a man making the most violent exertions to release himself from the ‘frog’ of a switch, into which he had incautiously wedged the heel of his shoe. He was steaming with perspiration and the look of agony on his face was worth a long walk to see. You have probably seen such a look on the countenance of many a patient undergoing the operation of receiving your bill. The express train was due in two minutes, and we had not so much as a match to signal it with—the night was tar-dark.”

“The look of agony, I suppose, shone by its own inherent light.”

“The man was facing away from the approaching train—the thunder of which was now audible between his groans and cries. Just in the nick of time I stepped up to him and introducing myself begged pardon for the intrusion and suggested that he unlace his shoe and remove his foot from it, which he did. When the train had passed he thanked me and handed me his card. I have carried it with me ever since—here it is.”

Taking out a bit of pasteboard he handed it across the table without looking at it. It read:

DEARIE,—I could not come: I was watched. To-morrow—same time, at
the _other_ place. OOPSIE.

The Doctor read the card and quietly handed it back. The story proceeded:

“A moment later the man had disappeared, but in a week or two I received a letter from him, dated at Chicago. He said he owed his life to me and should devote it to my service. Being childless, friendless and heretofore without an aim or ambition, he should pass the rest of his days in acquiring wealth, in order to testify his gratitude. It would be a labor of love to trace me wherever I might wander—I need not apprise him of my address, nor in any way bother myself about him. If I survived him I would be a very rich man.

“Well, sir, you may believe it or not, but if there is any name which deserves to be held by me in high honor for truth and simple good faith it is the name of—”

“Oopsie.”

Mr. Brady was visibly affected. For a moment he was fitly comparable to nothing warmer and livelier than a snow bank under the bleak stars of a polar midnight. The Doctor toyed absently with the ash-holder. It was a supreme crisis. It passed.

“That man died in 1901 and left me, by will, an estate valued at more than nine hundred thousand dollars. The will was properly probated and never contested.”

“But, my dear fellow,” said Dutton, taking at last a genuine interest in the narrative, “you never told us—nobody has ever heard of this, and you certainly do not pass for a very rich man. Did you really get the property?”

“Alas, no,” said Brady, with a solemn shake of the head, as he rose from the table and glanced at his watch. “It is true, just as I have told you—on my honor: the man left me that property and all was square, regular and legal, but I did not get a cent. The fact is, I died first.”

THE WIZARD OF BUMBASSA

Mr. George Westinghouse, the air-brake man, did a cruel and needless thing in going out of his way to try to destroy humanity’s hope of being shot along the ground at a speed of one hundred miles an hour. There is no trouble, it appears, in building locomotives able to snatch a small village of us through space at the required speed; the difficulty lies in making, with sufficient promptness, those unschedulary stops necessitated by open switches, missing bridges, and various obstacles that industrial discontent is wont to grace the track withal. Even on a straight line—what the civil engineers find a pleasure in calling a tangent—the prosperous industrian at the throttle-valve cannot reasonably be expected to discern these hindrances at a greater distance than one thousand feet; and Mr. Westinghouse sadly confessed that in that distance his most effective appliance could not do more than reduce the rate from one hundred miles an hour to fifty—an obviously inadequate reduction. He held out no hope of being able to evolve from his inner consciousness either a brake of superior effectiveness or a pair of spectacles that would enable the engine driver to discover a more distant danger on a tangent, or to see round a curve.

All this begets an intelligent dejection. If we must renounce our golden dream of cannonading ourselves from place to place with a celerity suitable to our rank in the world’s _fauna_—comprising the shark, the hummingbird, the hornet and the jackass rabbit—civilization is indeed a failure. But it is forbidden to the wicked pessimist to rejoice, for there is a greater than Mr. Westinghouse and he has demonstrated his ability to bring to a dead stop within its own length any railway train, however short and whatever its rate of speed. It were unwise though, to indulge too high a hope in this matter, even if the gloomy vaticinations of the Westinghouse person are fallacious. Approaching an evidence of social unrest at a speed of one and two-thirds mile a minute on a down grade, even in a train equipped by a greater than Mr. Westinghouse, may not be an altogether pleasing performance.

This possibility can be best illustrated by recalling to the reader’s memory the history of the Ghargaroo and Gallywest Railway in Bumbassa. As is well known, the trains on that road attained a speed that had not theretofore been dreamed of except by the illustrious projector of the road. But the King of Bumbassa was not content: with an indifference to the laws of dynamics which in the retrospect seems almost imperial, he insisted upon instantaneous stoppage. To the royal demand the clever and prudent gentleman who had devised and carried out the enterprise responded with an invention which he assured his Majesty would accomplish the desired end. A trial was made in the sovereign’s presence, the coaches being loaded with his chief officers of state and other courtiers, and it was eminently successful. The train, going at a speed of ninety miles an hour, was brought to a dead stop within the length of the rhinoceros-catcher and directly in front of the blue cotton umbrella beneath which his Majesty sat to observe the result of the test. The passengers, unfortunately, did not stop so promptly, and were afterward scraped off the woodwork at the forward ends of the cars and decently interred. The train-hands had all escaped by the ingenious plan of absenting themselves from the proceedings, with the exception of the engineer, who had thoughtfully been selected for the occasion from among the relatives of the projector’s wife, and instructed how to shut off the steam and apply the brake. When hosed off the several parts of the engine he was found to have incurred a serious dispersal of the viscera.

The King’s delight at the success of the experiment was somewhat mitigated by the reflection that if the train had been freighted with _bona fide_ travelers instead of dignitaries whom he could replace by appointment the military resources of the state would have suffered a considerable loss; so he commanded the projector to invent a method of stopping the passengers and the trains simultaneously. This, after much experiment, was done by fixing the passengers to the seats by clamps extending across the abdomen and chest; but no provision being made for the head, a general decapitation ensued at each stop; and people who valued their heads preferred thereafter to travel afoot or ostrichback, as before. It was found, moreover, that, as arrested motion is converted into heat, the royal requirement frequently resulted in igniting and consuming the trains—which was expensive.

These various hard conditions of railroading in Bumbassa eventually subdued the spirits of the stockholders, drove the projector to drink and led at last to withdrawal of the concession—whereby one of the most promising projects for civilizing the Dark Continent was, in the words of the Ghargaroo _Palladium_ “knocked perfectly cold.”

I have thought it well to recall this melancholy incident here for its general usefulness in pointing a moral, and for its particular application to the fascinating enterprise of a one-hundred-miles-an-hour electric road from New York to Chicago—a road whose trains, intending passengers are assured, will be under absolute control of the engineers and “can be stopped at a moment’s notice.” If I have said anything to discourage the enterprise I am sorry, but really it is not easy to understand why anybody should wish to go from New York to Chicago.

THE FUTURE HISTORIAN

I—THE DISPERSAL

So sombre a phenomenon as the effacement of an ancient and brilliant civilization within the lifetime of a single generation is, fortunately, known to have occurred only once in the history of the world. The catastrophe is not only unique in history, but all the more notable for having befallen, not a single state overrun by powerful barbarians, but a half of the world; and for having been effected by a seemingly trivial agency that sprang from the civilization itself. Indeed, it was the work of one man.

Hiram Perry (or Percy) Maximus was born in the latter part of the nineteenth century of “the Christian Era,” in Podunk, the capital of America. Little is known of his ancestry, although Dumbleshaw affirms on evidence not cited by him that he came of a family of pirates that infested the waters of Lake Erie (now the desert of Gobol) as early as “1813”—whenever that may have been.

The precise nature of Hiram Perry’s invention, with its successive improvements, is not known—probably could not now be understood. It was called “the silent firearm”—so much we learn from fragmentary chronicles of the period; also that it was of so small size that it could be put into the “pocket.” (In his _Dictionary of Antiquities_ the learned Pantin-Gwocx defines “pocket” as, first, “the main temple of the American deity;” second, “a small receptacle worn on the person.” The latter definition is the one, doubtless, that concerns us if the two things are not the same.) Regarding the work of “the silent firearm” we have light in abundance. Indeed, the entire history of the brief but bloody period between its invention and the extinction of the Christian civilization is an unbroken record of its fateful employment.

Of course the immense armies of the time were at once supplied with the new weapon, with results that none had foreseen. Soldiers were thenceforth as formidable to their officers as to their enemies. It was no longer possible to maintain discipline, for no officer dared offend, by punishment or reprimand, one who could fatally retaliate as secretly and securely, in the repose of camp as in the tumult of battle. In civic affairs the deadly device was malignly active. Statesmen in disfavor (and all were hateful to men of contrary politics) fell dead in the forum by means invisible and inaudible. Anarchy, discarding her noisy and imperfectly effective methods, gladly embraced the new and safe one.

In other walks of life matters were no better. Armed with the sinister power of life and death, any evil-minded person (and most of the ancient Caucasians appear to have been evil-minded) could gratify a private revenge or wanton malevolence by slaying whom he would, and nothing cried aloud the lamentable deed.

So horrible was the mortality, so futile all preventive legislation, that society was stricken with a universal panic. Cities were plundered and abandoned; villages without villagers fell to decay; homes were given up to bats and owls, and farms became jungles infested with wild beasts. The people fled to the mountains, the forests, the marshes, concealing themselves from one another in caves and thickets, and dying from privation and exposure and diseases more dreadful than the perils from which they had fled. When every human being distrusted and feared every other human being solitude was esteemed the only good; and solitude spells death. In one generation Americans and Europeans had slunk back into the night of barbarism.

II—RISE AND FALL OF THE AEROPLANE

The craze for flying appears to have culminated in the year 369 Before Smith. In that year the aëroplane (a word of unknown derivation) was almost the sole means of travel. These flying-machines were so simple and cheap that one who had not a spare half-hour in which to make one could afford to purchase. The price for a one-man machine was about two dollars—one-tenth of a gooble. Double-seated ones were of course a little more costly. No other kinds were allowed by law, for, as was quaintly explained by a chronicle of the period, “a man has a right to break his own neck, and that of his wife, but not those of his children and friends.” It had been learned by experiment that for transportation of goods and for use in war the aëroplane was without utility. (Of balloons, dirigible and indirigible, we hear nothing after 348 B. S; the price of gas, controlled by a single corporation, made them impossible.)

From extant fragments of Jobblecopper’s _History of Invention_ it appears that in America alone there were at one time no fewer than ten million aëroplanes in use. In and about the great cities the air was so crowded with them and collisions resulting in falls were so frequent that prudent persons neither ventured to use them nor dared to go out of cover. As a poet of the time expressed it:

With falling fools so thick the sky is filled
That wise men walk abroad but to be killed.
Small comfort that the fool, too, dies in falling,
For he’d have starved betimes in any calling.
The earth is spattered red with their remains:
Blood, flesh, bone, gristle—everything but brains.

The reaction from this disagreeable state of affairs seems to have been brought about by a combination of causes.

First, the fierce animosities engendered by the perils to pedestrians and “motorists”—a word of disputed meaning. So savage did this hostility become that firing at aëroplanes in flight, with the newly invented silent rifle, grew to the character of a national custom. Dimshouck has found authority for the statement that in a single day thirty-one aëronauts fell from the heavens into the streets of Nebraska, the capital of Chocago, victims of popular disfavor; and a writer of that time relates, not altogether lucidly, the finding in a park in Ohio of the bodies of “the Wright brothers, each pierced with bullets from hip to shoulder, the ears cut off, and without other marks of identification.”

Second in importance of these adverse conditions was the natural disposition of the ancients to tire of whatever had engaged their enthusiasm—the fickleness that had led to abandonment of the bicycle, of republican government, of baseball, and of respect for women. In the instance of the aëroplane this reaction was probably somewhat hastened by the rifle practice mentioned.

Third, invention of the electric leg. As a means of going from place to place the ancients had from the earliest ages of history relied largely on the wheel. Just how they applied it, not in stationary machinery, as we do ourselves, but as an aid to locomotion, we cannot now hope to know, for all the literature of the subject has perished; but it was evidently a crude and clumsy device, giving a speed of less than two hundred miles (four and a half sikliks) an hour, even on roadways specially provided with rails for its rapid revolution. We know, too, that wheels produced an intolerable jolting of the body, whereby many died of a disease known as “therapeutics.” Indeed, a certain class of persons who probably traveled faster than others came to be called “rough riders,” and for their sufferings were compensated by appointment to the most lucrative offices in the gift of the sovereign. Small wonder that the men of that day hailed the aëroplane with intemperate enthusiasm and used it with insupportable immoderation!

But when the younger Eddy invented that supreme space-conquering device, the electric leg, and within six months perfected it to virtually what it is to-day, the necessity for flight no longer existed. The aëroplane, ending its brief and bloody reign a discredited and discarded toy, was “sent to the scrap-heap,” as one of our brightest and most original modern wits has expressed it. The wheel followed it into oblivion, whither the horse had preceded it, and Civilization lifted her virgin fires as a dawn in Eden, and like Cytherea leading her moonrise troop of nymphs and graces, literally legged it o’er the land!

III—AN ANCIENT HUNTER

In the nineteenth century of what, in honor of Christopher Columbum, a mythical hero, the ancients called the “Christian era,” Africa was an unknown land of deserts, jungles, fierce wild beasts, and degraded savages. It is believed that no white man had ever penetrated it to a distance of one league from the coast. All the literature of that time relating to African exploration, conquest, and settlement is now known to be purely imaginative—what the ancients admired as “fiction” and we punish as felony.

Authentic African history begins in the early years of the twentieth century of the “era” mentioned, and its most stupendous events are the first recorded, the record being made, chiefly, by the hand that wrought the work—that of Tudor Rosenfelt, the most illustrious figure of antiquity. Of this astonishing man’s parentage and early life nothing is certainly known: legend is loquacious, but history is silent. There are traditions affirming his connection with a disastrous explosion at Bronco, a city of the Chinese province of Wyo Ming, his subjugation of the usurper Tammano in the American city of N’yorx (now known to have had no existence outside the imagination of the poets) and his conquest of the island of Cubebs; but from all this bushel of fable we get no grain of authenticated fact. The tales appear to be merely hero-myths, such as belong to the legendary age of every people of the ancient world except the Greeks and Romans. Further than that he was an American Indian nothing can be positively affirmed of Tudor Rosenfelt before the year “1909” of the “Christian [Columbian] era.” In that year we glimpse him disembarking from two ships on the African coast near Bumbassa, and, with one foot in the sea and the other on dry land, swearing through clenched teeth that other forms of life than Man shall be no more. He then strides, unarmed and unattended, into the jungle, and is lost to view for ten years!

Legend and myth now reassert their ancient reign. In that memorable decade, as we know from the ancient author of “Who’s Whoest in Africa,” the most incredible tales were told and believed by those who, knowing the man and his mission, suffered insupportable alternations of hope and despair. It was said that the Dark Continent into which he had vanished was frequently shaken from coast to coast as by the trampling and wrestling of titanic energies in combat and the fall of colossal bulks on the yielding crust of the earth; that mariners in adjacent waters heard recurrent growls and roars of rage and shouts of triumph—an enormous uproar that smote their ships like a gale from the land and swept them affrighted out to sea; that so loud were these terrible sounds as to be simultaneously audible in the Indian and Atlantic oceans, as was proved by comparing the logs of vessels arriving from both seas at the port of Berlin. As is quaintly related in one of these marine diaries, “The noise was so strenuous that our ears was nigh to busting with the wolume of the sound.” Through all this monstrous opulence of the primitive rhetorical figure known as the Lie we easily discern a nucleus of truth: something uncommon was going on in Africa.

At the close of the memorable decade (_circa_ “1919”) authentic history again appears in the fragmentary work of Antrolius: Rosenfelt walks out of the jungle at Mbongwa on the side of the continent opposite Bumbassa. He is now attended by a caravan of twenty thousand camels and ten thousand native porters, all bearing trophies of the chase. A complete list of these would require more pages than Homer Wheeler Wilcox’s catalogue of ships, but among them were heads of elephants with antlers attached; pelts of the checkered lion and the spiny hippopotentot, respectively the most ferocious and the most venomous of their species; a skeleton of the missing lynx (_Pithecanthropos erectus compilatus_); entire bodies of pterodactyls and broncosauruses; a slithy tove mounted on a fine specimen of the weeping wanderoo; the downy electrical whacknasty (_Ananias flabbergastor_); the carnivorous mastodon; ten specimens of the skinless tiger (_Felis decorticata_); a saber-toothed python, whose bite produced the weeping sickness; three ribnosed gazzadoodles; a pair of blood-sweating bandicoots; a night-blooming jeewhillikins; three and a half varieties of the crested skynoceros; a purring crocodile, or buzz-saurian; two Stymphalian linnets; a skeleton of the three footed swammigolsis—afterwards catalogued at the Podunk Museum of Defective Types as _Talpa unopede noninvento_; a hydra from Lerna; the ring-tail mollycoddle and the fawning polecat (_Civis nondesiderabilis_).

These terrible monsters, which from the dawning of time had ravaged all Africa, baffling every attempt at exploration and settlement, the Exterminator, as he came to be called, had strangled or captured with his bare hands; and the few remaining were so cowed that they gave milk. Indeed, such was their terror of his red right arm that all forsook their evil ways, offered themselves as beasts of burden to the whites that came afterward, and in domestication and servitude sought the security that he denied to their ferocity and power. Within a single generation prosperous colonies of Caucasians sprang up all along the coasts, and the silk hat and pink shirt, immemorial pioneers and promoters of civilization, penetrated the remotest fastnesses, spreading peace and plenty o’er a smiling land!

The later history of this remarkable man is clouded in obscurity. Much of his own account of his exploits, curiously intertangled with those of an earlier hero named Hercules, is extant, but it closes with his re-embarkation for America. Some hold that on returning to his native land he was assailed with opprobrium, loaded with chains, and cast into Chicago; others contend that he was enriched by gifts from the sovereigns of the world, received with acclamation by his grateful countrymen, and even mentioned for the presidency to succeed Samuel Gompers—an honor that he modestly declined on the ground of inexperience and unfitness. Whatever may be the truth of these matters, he doubtless did not long suffer affliction nor enjoy prosperity, for in the great catastrophe of the year 254 B. S. the entire continent of North America and the contiguous island of Omaha were swallowed up by the sea. Fortunately his narrative is preserved in the Royal Library of Timbuktu, in which capital of civilization stands his colossal statue of ivory and gold. In the shadow of that renowned memorial I write this imperfect tribute to his worth.

OBJECTIVE IDEAS

We all remember that the sound of a trumpet has been described as scarlet. The fact that we do remember it is evidence that the incident of a physical sensation masquerading in a garment appropriate to the guest of another sense than the one entertaining it is a general, not an individual, experience. Not, of course, that a trumpet-call impresses us all with a sense of color, but the odd description would long ago have been forgotten had not each mind recognized it as the statement of a fact belonging to a class of facts of which itself has had knowledge. For myself, I never hear good music without wishing to paint it—which I should certainly do with divine success if I understood music and could paint. The hackneyed and tiresome fashion of calling certain pictures “symphonies” in this or that color has a basis of reason—which will somewhat discredit it in the esteem of those whom it has enslaved. I never hear a man talking of “symphonies” in gray, green, pepper-and-salt, crushed banana, ashes-of-heretic or toper’s-nose without thinking with satisfaction of the time when he will himself be a symphony in flame-color, lighting up the landscape of the underworld like a flamingo in the dun expanse of a marsh in the gloaming.

I have in mind a notable instance of a sensation taking on three dimensions—one for which I am not indebted, probably, to the courtesy of some forgotten experience producing an association of ideas. It will be conceded that it is at least unlikely that one should ever enjoy simultaneously the double gratification of eating a pine-apple and seeing a man hanged; such felicity is reserved, I fancy, for creatures more meritorious than poor sinful human beings. Nevertheless, I never taste pine-apple without a lively sense of a man with his head in a black bag, depending from his beam. It is not that I am at the same time conscious of the fruit and of that solemn spectacle; it simply seems to me that a man hanging is the taste of that fruit. It is needless to add that when thinking of those unworthy persons, my enemies, I derive a holy delight from consuming generous slices of pine-apple.

There is a class of mental phenomena which, so far as my knowledge goes, has never been “spread upon the record.” Possibly they are peculiar to my own imperfect understanding, and a saner consciousness is innocent of them. If so it will gratify my pride of monopoly to admit the public to a view of my intellectual chattels. The mental process of enumeration is with me a gliding upward in various directions from 1 to 100; not along a column of successive figures, like a cat scampering up a staircase, but along a smooth, pale-bluish, angular streak, with the hither-and-yon motion of a soaring snipe. From 1 to 10 the line runs upward, and to the right at an angle with the horizon of about sixty degrees. There it turns sharply back to the left and the grade to 20 is nearly flat. Thence to 30 the ascent is vertical. From 30 to 50 there is an ascent of 10 degrees to the right and slightly away from me. The course to 60 is to the left again, the angle, say 10 degrees. From 60 to 90 there is no break, the course, too, is almost level and directly away; thence to 100 nearly vertical. It will be observed that the angles are all at 10 and its multiples, but there is no angle at 40, none at 70, nor at 80. I may explain that the interval between 10 and 20 is greatly longer than it ought to be, and I venture to protest against the exceptional and unwarrantable brevity of that between 90 and 100.

Every time I count I am compelled to ascend some part of this reasonless and ridiculous Jacob’s-ladder, with a “hitchety, hatchety, up I go” movement, like Jack mounting his bean-stalk; and it is ludicrously true that I feel a sense of relief on arriving at the more nearly level stages, and on them am conscious of an augmented speed. I can count from 60 to 70 twice as quickly as I can from 90 to 100. Investigation and comparison of such conceptions as these can but result in unspeakable advancement of knowledge. If any gentleman has similar ones and a little leisure for their discussion I hope he will consent to meet me in Heaven.

MY CREDENTIALS

My death occurred on the 17th day of June, 1879—I shall never forget it. The day had been uncommonly hot, and the doctor kept telling me that unless it grew cooler he would hardly be able to pull me through. He said he was willing to do his best and prolong my life to the latest possible moment if I wished him to, but in any case I should have to die in a few days. I directed him to keep on prolonging, but the heat grew greater and finally overcame him, and I died. That is to say, while he was absent at an adjacent saloon after a sherry cobbler one of my “bad spells” came on and I fell a victim to inattention. Things turned out exactly as medical science had foretold.

The funeral was largely attended and a society reporter was good enough to describe it as an “enjoyable occasion.” I had been a prominent member of one hundred and fifty societies, including the Sovereigns of Glory, the Confederated Idiots, Knights and Ladies of Indigence, Gorgeous Obsequies Guarantee Fraternity, Protective League of Adult Orphans, Ancient and Honorable Order of Divorced Men, Society for Converting Lawyers to Christianity, Murderers’ Mutual Resentment Association, League of Persons Having Moles on Their Necks, Brotherhood of Grand Flashing Inaccessibles, Mutual Pall Bearers, and Floral Tribute Consolation Guard. All these societies, and many more, were represented at my funeral, some in “regalia.” I was buried under more auspices than you could count. Soon after, I was ushered into the Other World.

It is not like what you have been told, but I am forbidden to say what it is like. Suffice it that its inhabitants know all that goes on in the world we have left. Imagine, then, the delight with which I read in all the daily papers the various “resolutions of respect” adopted by the societies of which I had been a member. The Sovereigns of Glory said:

_Whereas_, Providence has found a pleasure in removing from among
us His Majesty, Peter Wodel Mocump, our Order’s Serene Reigner over
the Records; and

_Whereas_, Our royal hearts are deeply touched by this exercise of
the divine prerogative;

_Resolved_, That in all the relations of life he was truly majestic
and imperial.

_Resolved_, That we tender our royal sympathy to his surviving
Queen and the Princess and Princesses of his dynasty.

_Resolved_, That in testimony to his worth these resolutions be
engrossed on parchment and publicly displayed for thirty days in
the windows of a dry-goods shop.

The Protective League of Adult Orphans held a meeting before I was cold, and passed the resolutions following:

_Whereas_, The flower that bloomed under the name of Peter Wodel
Mocump has been ruthlessly cut down by the Reaper whose name is
Death; and

_Whereas_, He was a pansy; be it, therefore,

_Resolved_, That in his removal this League has lost a sturdy
champion of the rights of orphans; and be it further

_Resolved_, That a general boycott be, and hereby is, declared
against all orphans outside this Protective League.

The Ancient and Honorable Order of Divorced Men eulogized me in the strongest language as one who had possessed in a high and conspicuous degree every qualification for membership in their Order. By the Murderers’ Mutual Resentment Association I was described as one whose time, talent and fortune were ever at the service of those injured in the world’s esteem by the judicial practice of alluding to the past. The League of Persons Having Moles on Their Necks said that, apart from the unusual size of my mole, I had ever shown a strong zeal for the public welfare and the advancement of civilization.

I gathered up these various evidences of worth. I got together all the obituary notices from the newspapers, which showed with a singular unanimity that I was greatly addicted to secret almsgiving (how did they know it?) and that I was without a fault of character or disposition. I copied the inscription on my headstone and the verses in the death-column of the _Morning Buglehorn_—some of its death editor’s happiest and most striking lines. Altogether, this literature made a pretty large volume of eulogy. I had it printed and bound (in the Other World sense) and copiously indexed. It was the best reading I ever saw.

The time arrived for me to appear at the gate of Heaven and make a personal demand for admission. I was notified of the hour when I would be heard, and was on hand. St. Peter received me with a smile and said:

“We are full of business to-day; be brief and speak to the point. What do you know of yourself that entitles you to a seat in the blest abodes?”

I smiled rather loftily but without _hauteur_, and silently handed him the volume, bearing in golden letters on the cover the title: “My Record.” St. Peter turned over the leaves deliberately, read a passage here and there and handed it back, saying:

“My friend, you have run into a streak of hard luck. The persons who have given you so good a character—the societies, newspapers, etc.—are unknown to me, and I don’t wish to say anything against them. But they have been backing a good many applicants lately, and I have let in a few on their judgment. Well, this very morning I got this note. I don’t mind letting you read it if you won’t say I showed it. You will see I can’t do anything for you.”

He handed me a letter with about half the envelope torn off by careless opening. It read as follows:

DEAR PETER,—There has been quite a number of disturbances in here
lately, and three or four cases of scandalous misconduct on the
part of the saints, one of whom, in fact, eloped with an angel.
Another was arrested for pocketing some of the golden pavement, and
some have been trying to become famous by cutting their initials in
the bark of the Tree of Life. Inquiry shows that in every instance
the offender is a recent arrival, always a prominent citizen and a
member of a number of “societies.” I won’t overrule your action,
but really the character of this place is changing. I must ask you
to stick to the old tests—a godly life and a humble acceptance of
the Christian religion.

When I saw the Name that was signed to that note I could not utter a word. I turned away and came Here.

THE FOOL