Chapter V: Preface (5)

“Fifteen cents!” exclaimed the seller. “Gentlemen, knock me down and rob me of my clothes, strip me naked if you will, but don’t plunder a gasping, starving woman and five weak, helpless babes. Don’t rob the dying. Fifteen cents. Why, I’ve suffered more than three hundred dollars’ worth of privation and sorrow and misery, rather than sell this clock at all. Fifteen cents. Why, you set that clock where the sun shines on it, and it will indicate a rain storm three days in advance, and will tell where the lightning is going to strike. Why, you could make millions by buying this clock to bet on. It will tell, just three weeks before election, who is going to beat. It’s a credit to any household, and will run the whole family on tick. Fifteen cents! why, it won’t pay for the shelf you stand it on. Fifteen cents for a clock that used to be owned by an emperor! Fifteen cents. Oh, kill me dead. At fifteen cents, fifteen, fiftn, fiftn, fift, nfift, nfift, nfiftnfiftnfift, ta-a-a-t fifteen cents for a clock that can’t be duplicated this side of the Yang tse Kiang. At fifteen ce--thank you sir, twenty cents I have; twenty cents to feed a starving family of seven souls; twenty cents for a barefooted woman and five ragged children that haven’t tasted food since Monday morning; twenty cents, from a city of thirty thousand inhabitants, for a starving family; there’s Christian philanthropy for you. Twenty cents from the commercial capital of Iowa, for a clock that would be snapped up anywhere else in the world at hundreds, merely for its antiquity; there’s intelligent appreciation of the arts and culture for you. Gentlemen, I can’t stand this much longer; my heart is breaking. Twenty cents, twenty cents, twenty, twent, twen, twen, twentwentwen, and sold--a thousand-dollar clock, starving woman, dying children, heart-broken man, and all to the second-hand-store man for twenty cents.”

He took his money, a ragged shinplaster and two street car nickels, and walked away with a dejected, heart-broken air. He stopped in at a bakery with frosted windows and transient doors, to buy bread for his starving wife and babes, and his voice was husky with emotion as he said to the natty-looking baker, whose diamond pin glittered over the walnut counter,

“Gimme a plain sour.”

THE ROMANCE OF THE CARPET.

Basking in peace, in the warm Spring sun,
South Hill smiled upon Burlington.

The breath of May! and the day was fair,
And the bright motes danced in the balmy air,

And the sunlight gleamed where the restless breeze
Kissed the fragrant blooms on the apple trees.

His beardless cheek with a smile was spanned
As he stood with a carriage-whip in his hand.

And he laughed as he doffed his bob-tailed coat,
And the echoing folds of the carpet smote.

And she smiled as she leaned on her busy mop,
And said she would tell him when to stop.

So he pounded away till the dinner bell
Gave him a little breathing spell.

But he sighed when the kitchen clock struck one;
And she said the carpet wasn’t done.

But he lovingly put in his biggest licks,
And pounded like mad till the clock struck six.

And she said, in a dubious kind of way,
That she guessed he could finish it up next day.

Then all that day, and the next day too,
The fuzz from the dustless carpet flew.

And she’d give it a look at eventide,
And say, “Now beat on the other side.”

And the new days came as the old days went,
And the landlord came for his regular rent.

And the neighbors laughed at the tireless boom,
And his face was shadowed with clouds of gloom;

Till at last, one cheerless Winter day,
He kicked at the carpet and slid away,

Over the fence and down the street,
Speeding away with footsteps fleet;

And never again the morning sun
Smiled at him beating his carpet drum;

And South Hill often said, with a yawn,
“Where has the carpet martyr gone?”

* * * * *

Years twice twenty had come and passed,
And the carpet swayed in the autumn blast;

For never yet, since that bright spring time,
Had it ever been taken down from the line.

Over the fence a gray-haired man
Cautiously clim, clome, clem, clum, clam;

He found him a stick in the old wood-pile,
And he gathered it up with a sad, grim smile.

A flush passed over his face forlorn
As he gazed at the carpet, tattered and torn;

And he hit it a most resounding thwack,
Till the startled air gave its echoes back.

And out of the window a white face leaned,
And a palsied hand the sad eyes screened.

She knew his face--she gasped, she sighed:
“A little more on the under side.”

Right down on the ground his stick he throwed,
And he shivered and muttered, “Well, I am blowed!”

And he turned away, with a heart full sore,
And he never was seen, not none no more.

SODDING AS A FINE ART.

One day, early in the Spring, Mr. Blosberg, who lives out on Ninth Street, made up his mind that he would sod his front yard himself, and when he had formed this public-spirited resolution, he proceeded to put it into immediate execution. He cut his sod, in righteous and independent and liberty-loving disregard of the ridiculous city ordinance in relation thereto, from the patches of verdure that the cows had permitted to obtain a temporary growth along the side of the street, and proceeded to beautify his front yard therewith. Just as he had laid the first sod, Mr. Thwackery, his next door neighbor, passed by.

“Good land, Blosberg,” he shouted, “you’ll never be able to make any thing of such a sod as that. Why, its three inches too thick. That sod will cake up and dry like a brick. You want to shave at least two inches and a half off the bottom of it, so the roots of the grass will grow into the ground and unite the sod with the earth. That sod is thick enough for a corner stone.”

So Mr. Blosberg took the spade and shaved the sod down until it was thin and about as pliable as a buckwheat cake, and Mr. Thwackery pronounced it all right and sure to grow, and passed on. Just as Mr. Blosberg got it laid down the second time, old Mr. Templeton, who lived on the next block, came along and leaned on the fence, intently observing the sodder’s movements.

“Well now, Blosberg,” he said at length, “I did think you had better sense than that. Don’t you know a sod will never grow on that hard ground? You must spade it all up first, and break the dirt up fine and soft to the depth of at least four inches, or the grass can never take root in it. Don’t waste your time and sod by putting grass on top of such a baked brick-floor as that.”

And Mr. Blosberg laid aside the sod and took up the spade and labored under Mr. Templeton’s directions until the ground was all properly prepared for the sod, and then Mr. Templeton, telling him that sod couldn’t die on that ground now if he tried to kill it, went his way and Mr. Blosberg picked up that precious sod a third time, and prepared to put it in its place. Before he had fairly poised it over the spot, however, his hands were arrested by a terrific shout, and looking up he saw Major Bladgers shaking his cane at him over the fence.

“Blosberg, you insufferable donkey,” roared the Major, “don’t you know that you’ll lose every blade of grass you can carry if you put your sod on that dry ground? There you’ve gone and cut it so thin that all the roots of the grass are cut and bleeding, and you must soak that ground with water until it is a perfect pulp, so that the roots will sink right into it, and draw nutrition from the moist earth. Wet her down, Blosberg, if you want to see your labor result in any thing.”

So Mr. Blosberg put the sod aside again, and went and pumped water and carried it around in buckets until his back ached like a soft corn, and when he had finally transformed the front yard into a morass, the Major was satisfied, and assuring Mr. Blosberg that his sod would grow beautifully now, even if he laid it on upside down, marched away, and Mr. Blosberg made a fourth effort to put the first sod in its place. He got it down and was going back after another, when old Mrs. Tweedlebug checked him in his wild career.

“Lawk, Mr. Blosberg, ye musn’t go off an’ leave that sod lying that way. You must take the spade and beat it down hard, till it is all flat and level, and close to the ground everywhere. You must pound it hard, or the weeds will all start up under it and crowd out the grass.”

Mr. Blosberg went back, and stooping over the sod hit it a resounding thwack with his spade that shot great gouts and splotches of mud all over the parlor windows and half-way to the top of the house, and some of it came flying into his face and on his clothes, while a miscellaneous shower made it dangerous even for his adviser, who, with a feeble shriek of disapprobation, went hastily away, digging raw mud out of her ears. Mr. Blosberg didn’t know how long to keep on pounding, and he didn’t see Mrs. Tweedlebug go away, so he stood with his spade poised in the air and his eyes shut tight, waiting for instructions. And as he waited he was surprised to hear a new voice accost him. It was the voice of Mr. Thistlepod, the old agriculturist, of whom Mr. Blosberg bought his apples and butter.

“Hello, Mr. Blosberg!” he shouted, in tones which indicated that he either believed Mr. Blosberg to be stone deaf or two thousand miles away.

Mr. Blosberg winked violently to get the soil out of his eyes, and turned in the direction of the noise to say, “Good evening.”

“Soddin’, hey?” asked Mr. Thistlepod.

“Trying to, sir,” replied Mr. Blosberg, rather cautiously.

“’Spect it will grow, hey?”

Mr. Blosberg, having learned by very recent experience how liable his plans were to be overthrown, was still non-committal, and replied that “he hoped so.”

“Wal, if ye hope so, ye mustn’t go to poundin’ yer sod to pieces with that spade. Ye don’t want to ram it down so dad binged tight and hard there can’t no air git at the roots. Ye must shake that sod up a little, so as to loosen it, and then jest press it down with yer foot ontwil it jest teches the ground nicely all round. Sod’s too thin, anyhow.”

So Mr. Blosberg thrust his hands into the nasty mud under his darling, much abused sod, and spread his fingers wide apart to keep it from breaking to pieces as he raised it, and finally got it loosened up and pressed down to Mr. Thistlepod’s satisfaction, who then told him he didn’t believe he could make that sod grow any way, and drove away. Then Mr. Blosberg stepped back to look at that sod, feeling confident that he had got through with it, when young Mr. Simpson came along.

“Hello, Blos, old boy; watchu doin’?”

Mr. Blosberg timorously answered that he was sodding a little. Then Mr. Simpson pressed his lips very tightly together to repress a smile, and let his cheeks swell and bulge out to the size of toy balloons with suppressed merriment, and finally burst into a snort of derisive laughter that made the windows rattle in the houses on the other side of the street, and he went on, leaving Mr. Blosberg somewhat nettled and a little discouraged. He stood, with his fingers spread wide apart, holding his arms out like wings, and wondering whether he had better go get another sod or go wash his hands, when a policeman came by, and paused. “Soddin’?” he asked, sententiously.

“Yes, sir, a little,” replied Mr. Blosberg, respectfully.

“Where’d you get your sod?” inquired the representative of public order.

Mr. Blosberg dolefully indicated the little bare parallelogram in the scanty patch of verdure as his base of supplies.

“You’re the man I’ve been lookin’ for,” replied public order. “You come along with me.”

And Mr. Blosberg went along, and the Police Judge fined him $11.95, and when Mr. Blosberg got home he found that a cow had got into his yard during his absence and stepped on that precious sod five times, and put her foot clear through it every time, so that it looked like a patch of moss rolled up in a wad, more than a sod. And then Mr. Blosberg fell on his knees and raised his hands to heaven, and registered a vow that he would never plant another sod if this whole fertile world turned into a Sahara for want of his aid.

THE AMENITIES OF POLITICS.

“There is one thing,” said Mr. Leatherby, as he was walking down town one drizzling, disagreeable morning during the last presidential campaign, “that disgusts me with politics, and that is, the violent and abusive tone in which our daily papers conduct the discussion of every issue and question which they touch upon.”

“Indeed you may well be disgusted at it,” replied old Mr. Bartholomew, who had just joined him. “It is as much as a man can do to lift a newspaper off his door step with a pair of tongs. Time and again I throw the paper down half read, and I have seriously thought of stopping it altogether, for I consider its presence in my family a contamination.”

“It is, in truth,” replied Mr. Leatherby; “it is worse than a contamination. It is corrupting; it has a degrading, brutalizing influence, that is, I am convinced, undermining the foundations of our moral structure. The daily press of to-day is one great engine of abuse, defamation, bad grammar, worse language and worst morals.”

“I can not see, for my part,” said Mr. Bartholomew, “why men can not discuss politics as freely, as earnestly, and as entirely free from acrimonious expressions and feeling, as purely exempt from abusive language of any kind, from any heat and anger, in fact, as they could discuss the grade of a street or the style of a coat.”

“And so think I,” said Mr. Leatherby. “I can not, for my part, conceive of an intellect so warped and narrow, a mind so shallow, that it can not carry on a discussion upon any question in politics without falling into the asperities, vulgarity, abusive detraction, and shameful slander that is the reproach and disgrace of the newspaper press.”

“It is a form of idiocy, I believe,” replied old Mr. Bartholomew. “It is an indication of a feeble mind that looks upon abuse as an argument, and bullying as logic. I am and always have been a Republican, but I can express my disapproval of many Democratic measures in a gentlemanly manner; and if I had not mind enough to keep my temper, I would consider that I had no right to talk politics.”

“You are perfectly correct,” rejoined Mr. Leatherby, earnestly; “and while we disagree on some points in political controversy, I being a life-long Democrat, yet we can freely and with mutual pleasure, and, I trust, profit, meet and discuss our differences in a friendly way, without giving way to the insane and detestable exhibition of temper, ignorance, and prejudice which marks the tone of the morning paper.”

“I had not noticed it so much in the _Hawkeye_,” replied Mr. Bartholomew, with a show of awakening interest in the conversation; “but when that trashy Democratic sheet that pollutes the evening air is brought to me by my neighbor, an ignorant dolt who can neither read nor write, but takes the paper as a party duty, and asks me to read it for him, I am amazed that the gods of truth and decency do not annihilate the infamous, puerile sheet with their thunderbolts.”

“You must bear in mind, however,” rejoined Mr. Leatherby, speaking a trifle louder than was necessary in addressing a companion whose hand was resting on his arm, “the _Gazette_ has such a tide of corruption, such an avalanche of political bigotry and villainy to rebuke, that its voice must be raised in order to be heard: and it must speak boldly, defiantly, and in the thunder tones of righteous denunciation, to startle the people into a realizing sense of the peril which threatens the country from Republican misrule and tyranny.”

“By George!” shouted Mr. Bartholomew, “the Republican party is the last, the only bulwark between the republic and eternal ruin. I tell you, sir, once let the Democratic party obtain control of this government, once let that infamous organization of political thieves, knucks, outlaws, and castaways take charge of our political machinery, and we will find ourselves in the hands of a horde of the most abandoned profligates, the most utterly unprincipled, the most vicious, demoralized, unconscionable, diabolical set of scoundrels that ever cheated the gallows.”

“By the long-horned spoon!” roared Mr. Leatherby, jerking his arm away from Mr. Bartholomew’s hand; “if the satanic and infernal plans of the Republican party were carried out, with all their attendant knavery and debauchery, this government would be a rule of branded malefactors and convicts, a government of felons, a penal colony in which the most hopelessly irreclaimable, graceless villains would administer the law. The bad faith of the Republican party, its ignominious record, its vicious tendencies, has shocked the Christian world, and----”

“You’re a liar!” yelled Mr. Bartholomew, “and you are just like the rest of your besotted, low-lived, ignorant class--a low, mean, pitiful, beggarly, unscrupulous and treacherous set, whose impudence in asking for the votes of honorable men is only equaled by your rapacious and unbridled greed for office; your----”

“You are an old fool!” howled Mr. Leatherby; “a censorious, clamorous, scurrilous, foul-tongued old reprobate, and I disgrace my name when I talk to you on the street. You mistake vituperation and abuse for argument, and you reply to a simple plain statement of facts with malignant and defamatory slander and calumny, because you can’t answer.”

“Shut up!” shrieked Mr. Bartholomew. “Don’t you say another word to me, or I’ll slap your ugly mouth! By George, I’ll kick your head off!”

“You can’t do it!” roared Mr. Leatherby, pulling off his coat, and dancing around Mr. Bartholomew. “I can lick the whole Republican party, from the big whisky thief and ring master in the White House down to the sneak thief that picks pockets at mass meetings! I can----”

“You’re a fighting liar, and you daren’t take it up!” howled Mr. Bartholomew, pulling off his coat.

Then Mr. Leatherby ran up and kicked him twice while he was struggling in the arms of his coat, but the old gentleman got loose in a flash and hit Mr. Leatherby a resounding thwack on the nose with his cane, and when Mr. Leatherby stopped to hold a handkerchief over his bleeding proboscis, Mr. Bartholomew got in a couple more real good ones with his cane; then Mr. Leatherby went for the rocks in the macadamized street. He broke two windows in a grocery before he hit Mr. Bartholomew, when he caught the old gentleman on the side of the head and dropped him. Then Mr. Bartholomew took to the stone pile and hit a young lady on the other side of the street, and Mr. Leatherby hurled a tremendous big rock, which missed the old gentleman and blacked the eye of a policeman who was coming to separate them, but was so incensed that he arrested them, and they were each fined $10 and costs for fighting in the street. And they both firmly believe that the unbridled hatred and unreasonable recriminations and abuse of the daily papers are iniquitous in their influence, and should be suppressed for the good of society.

* * * * *

It was a sad scene when the authorities took a poor man from Happy Hollow, and sent him out to the poor house. The parting between the poor man and his eleven dogs, which he distributed among his sympathizing relatives, was affecting in the extreme. We believe the man had a few children, too, but not enough to make a fuss about.

* * * * *

A bashful young man, while out driving with the dearest girl in the world, had to get out and buckle the crupper, and hesitatingly exclaimed that “the animal’s bustle had come loose.”

A THRILLING ENCOUNTER.

It happens, once in a while, that even the ordinary routine of the editorial sanctum is broken by incidents and scenes that are fairly dramatic in their character. As we write, there comes back to us the reminiscence of a quiet, sleepy Summer afternoon, only a few short years ago. The very flies in the sanctum buzzed lazily about the room, oppressed by the heat and the quiet loneliness of the place, when the door opened with a quick, sudden snap, and we turned and saw a woman stepping into the room. She was not old, and her face, haggard with care and seamed with trouble, still bore traces of great beauty. She came into the office with a quick, nervous tread, and there was a hunted look in her eyes that betrayed the fugitive. She closed the door behind her, and turned the key in almost the same motion, with the quick instinctive manner of a person who had fallen into the habit of isolating herself from observation and pursuit at every opportunity. She refused to sit down, but said:

“I can tell you all you will want to know about me in very few words--I am a fugitive.”

We told her we had guessed as much, and we besought her to confide nothing to us. We could not help her, we said; our duty as a journalist would not permit us to extend any aid to a person flying from the law. She said:

“I do not want you to aid me in farther flight; I am tired to death. My own conscience, more pitiless than the minions of the law, has pursued me for years with a whip of scorpions. I can not escape its terrible lashings. I can not fly from my punishment if I would, and I am anxious it should be over. Death would be a welcome relief, if it would but come.”

Again we told the panting, weary creature to tell none of her story to us, and advised her to go to the police headquarters and give herself into the hands of the law, which would deal justly, and, we had no doubt, in view of her sufferings and remorse, mercifully with her.

“I can not!” she exclaimed, covering her face with her hands, and breaking into convulsive sobs; “I can not, I can not. You do not know there are other hearts would ache if I gave myself up and told all. I want to tell my story to some one who will pity me and advise me. There are those whose hands are as dark with ineffaceable stains as mine are, but who do not suffer the mental agony that oppresses me. Shall I, in order to escape the lashings of my own conscience, consign these, whose lives are happy and whose hearts know no remorse, to the same punishment for which I yearn?”

We asked her (for our curiosity conquered our caution) if it was possible that one so young and fair was the center of a wide-spreading circle of crime that held in its horrid entanglements so many others beside herself?

“Aye,” she said, bitterly. “If I went to the gallows through a court of justice, I would lead with me, held by the same terrible links of evidence, a guilty train of men hardened in crime, and their hands steeped in innocent blood!”

“Woman, woman!” we exclaimed, in horrified tones, “in the name of heaven, who and what are you?”

“Oh, heaven help me!” she shrieked, in a voice that chilled our marrow--“I am old man Bender!”

A weird, wild whoop rent the silence of the sanctum--and the woman was alone. There was a sound as of a rising journalist scrambling up through the narrow copy tube, and the next instant a bare head, with a quill over one ear, burst through the hatchway in the roof, and, followed by a complete set of editorial anatomy, emerged, and running briskly to the rear wall of the building, disappeared down the lightning-rod, and was seen no more until the next day at three P. M.

We never saw the woman again, and wis not where she is, but we smile in bitter derision whenever we read that the police have arrested an old man answering the description of old man Bender.

FIVE WOMEN.

One afternoon five women went out on South Hill in a street car. One of them was a fat woman in a black dress, with a cameo pin as large as a stucco ornament. She breathed at a high pressure, about 103 to the minute. A woman with a thin, long neck, and sad eyes, and a Paisley shawl, sitting on the other side of the car, said, in a feeble voice:

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Waughop.”

“Oh, (puff) Mrs. Dresseldorff, (puff, puff,) how do (puff) you do?” (Puff, puff.)

“Oh, I ain’t feeling well at all. I’ve had so much trouble with my lungs, and nothing seems to do them any good. I’ve tried onion gargle, and three kinds of expectorant, and Wine of Tar, and two of Doctor Bolus’s prescriptions, and one of Dr. Bleadem’s, and a new kind of ointment, but nothing seems to have any effect on them. How do you feel to-day?”

“Oh,” groaned Mrs. Waughop, “I’m not getting on at all. My asthma is worse every day (puff, puff), and I can’t sleep at night, and I’m afraid I’ll have to give up entirely (puff, puff). I could hardly get out to-day (puff, puff, puff). I went to Greenbaum and Schroder’s and around to Guest’s and down to Carpenter’s (puff, puff), and into Parsons’ and up to Mrs. Voorhees’ (puff, puff), and down to Wyman’s and up to Wesley Jones’ and into Gus Dodge’s and (puff, puff, puff) down to the express office, and then by the time I had made a couple of calls out on North Hill and went to the doctor’s, I was as tired as though I had walked a mile (puff, puff, puff). I don’t know what’s going to become of me, I’m sure. How are you, this afternoon, Mrs. Dinkleman?” she continued, turning to the next woman, a lonesome looking female with a wart on her chin, who smiled dismally on being addressed and paused in the midst of a search for a street car nickel in the bottom of a black reticule as big as a hair trunk.

“I’m about half down with the chills,” she said, with a prolonged sigh; “I have such a fever every night, I don’t get two hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, and I’m afraid I’ll be down sick before I get through with it. My eyesight is failing, too, and I have a constant headache that worries me nearly to death. I am glad, Mrs. Mulligan,” said Mrs. Dinkleman, turning to the fourth woman, “to see you able to be out.”

Mrs. Mulligan bowed feebly to the rest of the ladies. “Indeed I oughtn’t to be out,” she groaned, “I ought to be in bed this minute. I haven’t had this flannel off my throat for three weeks, and I’m afraid I’ll lose my voice entirely. I’ve had a misery across my back since I don’t know when, and I had to have three teeth pulled this blessed afternoon. I was that bad with the rheumatiz all last week I didn’t dare stir out of the house, and I’ve got a felon coming on my finger just as sure as I’m a living woman. What appears to be the matter with your face, Mrs. Gallagher?” she asked the last woman in the car.

“Neuralagy of the eyes,” the last woman, who wore black glasses and green goggles, remarked, in such lugubrious tones that they cast a gloom over the entire community, and the masculine occupants of the car wondered if there was a well woman in America.

THE GOBLIN GATE.

We once knew a most worthy man, whose irreproachable life was at one time threatened with mental and physical wreck, all on account of his front gate. He lived out on North Hill, with his charming wife and seven lovely daughters. He was a pale-faced, anxious-looking man, who moved about and looked and spoke as though he supped with sorrow seven times a week. He has, with all those seven lovely daughters, only one front gate, and that’s what made him pale. In one Summer he spent $217 repairing that front gate--putting in new ones, and experimenting with various kinds of hinges; and after all that, the gate swung all through the Winter on a leather strap and a piece of clothes-line--and there was peace in the household, and the man grew fat. But when the April days were nigh, it soon became apparent to the man that his troubles were at hand, and anxiety soon drove the roses from his damask cheeks and robbed his ribs of their substance. He used to climb over the back fence, to avoid calling attention to the disreputable looking old gate; but his self-denial was of no avail. One evening his eldest daughter, Sophronia, said:

“Pa, that horrid old gate is the most disgusting thing on Fifth Street. If you can’t afford to have it fixed, I’d take it away and put up a stile.”

And pa only groaned. But an evening or so later, his youngest daughter, Elfrida, came in and said, with considerable warmth:

“Pa! I wish you had that beastly old gate tied to your neck; that’s what I wish!”

And she dissolved in tears, and evaporated up stairs in a misty cloud, while her sisters followed slowly, casting reproachful glances at pa. And the next evening, his third daughter, Azalea, came bouncing into the room, about 9:30 P. M., with her gloves in a condition to indicate that she had been patting gravel, and said, with some energy, that if pa had no feeling, other people had; and she wished she was dead, she did; and she hoped that the next time pa went out of that hateful old gate, he’d fall clear from Fifth Street to the bridge, so she did. And she broke down, and disappeared with a staccato accompaniment of sobs and sniffles. And the next time pa went out of that gate, he found it prostrate between the two posts, and saw that the fragile strands of the clothes-line had parted, under some extraordinary pressure; and that was what ailed Azalea’s gloves. Pa saw there was nothing for it but a new gate, and he groaned aloud as he viewed the dreary prospect of furnishing gates to support the manly forms of the best young men of Burlington for another Summer. It soon became evident that he was getting up a gate he could match against time. He pondered, and pondered, and pondered. He became the confidant of carpenters; he was often seen guiltily showing certain plans and drawings to blacksmiths and cunning workers in iron and steel. And in due time he had a new gate up; a massive gate, with great posts, ornamental and substantial--and the seven sisters were pleased. They read the little brass plate, that informed them that a patent was applied for, and they saw the words, “For 130 pounds;” but they didn’t know what it meant until the gate had swung on the uneven tenor of its way about a week.

One evening, the weather, though sufficiently cool to be bracing; admitted a test of the new gate. A murmur of voices arose from the vicinity of that popular lovers’ retreat, as Sophronia swung idly to and fro on its heavy frame. Presently, a pale-faced, anxious-looking man, who was holding his hand upon his breast to still his beating heart, as he crouched in a dark corner of the porch, heard Rodolphus say:

“But believe me, Sophronia, my own heart’s idol, between the touches of the rude hand of time and the unkind----” As he began the word, he leaned forward and bent his weight upon the gate, and with a sharp click a little trap-door in the side of the post flew open, and a gaunt, many-jointed arm of steel, with an iron knob as big as a Virginia gourd on the end of it flew out, and, with the rapidity of lightning, hit Rodolphus two resounding pelts between the shoulders, that sounded like a bass drum explosion.

“Oh-h-h! gosh!” he roared, “I’m stabbed! I’m stabbed!” and, without waiting to pick up his hat, fled, shrieking for the doctor; while Sophronia rushed into the house, crying, “Pa! pa! pa! Rodolphus is shot!” and swooned. The pale-faced man said nothing, but shrank still further back into the shadow, and thrust his handkerchief into his mouth to stifle a smile. Pretty soon he knew the voice of his daughter Azalea at the gate, saying “Good night.” But a rich, manly voice detained her; and the measured swing of the gate was again heard in the distance. Soon he heard Lorenzo say, as he made ready to climb upon the gate:

“But whatever of sorrow may await our future, dear one, I would it might fall upon me----”

And just as he lifted his last foot from the ground, the trap opened, and the gaunt arm reached out and fell upon him, with that big knob, four times; and every time it reached him, Lorenzo shrieked:

“Bleeding heart! Oh, mercy, mercy, Mr. Man! Oh, murder!”

And as he ambled away in the starlight, wailing for arnica, Azalea fled wildly to her home, shrieking, “Oh pa, pa, pa! somebody is murdering Lorenzo!” And on the porch a pale-faced man thrust the rim of his felt hat into his mouth, to reinforce his handkerchief, and hugged himself in placid content. Pretty soon the man’s fifth daughter came home from a party, and she, too, perched on the gate; and, in a moment or two, Alphonso said:

“But, my own Miriam, would I could tell you what I feel for you----”

But he didn’t; for, just as he leaned upon the gate, the gaunt arm reached out and felt for him with about seventy-five pounds of iron, and knocked his breath so far out of him that he couldn’t shriek until he had run half a mile away from the house. And Miriam ran into the house, screaming that Alphonso had a fit.

And the pale-faced man rose up out of the shadow and emptied his mouth; and as he stood under the quiet starlight, looking at the gate whose powerful but delicate mechanism repelled every ounce of weight over 130 pounds, a look of ineffable peace stole over the pale face, and the smile that rested on the quiet features told that the struggle of a lifetime was ended in victory--and a gate had been discovered that could set at naught the oppressions of thoughtless young people.

THE AUTOMATIC CLOTHES-LINE REEL.

No one who lived in Burlington that year, can ever forget the first practical test that was made of the famous “Domestic Automatic” clothes-line reel. It was a curious and powerful bit of mechanism, and was the invention of a man who lived on Barnes Street. This man used to be grievously afflicted because the Scandinavian lady who superintended the weekly wash day ceremonies at his house always took great pains to leave a net work of clothes-line spread all around his back yard. And when he made complaint to her about it she addressed him in the musical accents of Christine Nilsson’s native language, and overwhelmed him with a torrent of eloquence that he could not understand. And when he remonstrated with his wife and daughter about it they laughed him to scorn, and his daughter, who was educated at Vassar, and can hustle her terrified parent out of the house with one hand, told him if he interfered any more in that department around that house he’d get drowned in the wash-tub. So this man suffered. One bitter cold Winter morning he ran out to the woodshed after some kindling, and the first line caught him under the chin and pulled his neck out till it was a foot long, and he ran into the house and frightened his wife into fits by his terrible appearance, and she threatened to apply for a divorce if he ever made faces at her that way again. It was nearly three hours before his neck shrunk back to its natural size. And a few nights after that, he was all dressed to go to a party with his family, and he went bounding down the back yard to see that the alley gate was fastened, and a slack line caught him amidships, let him run out the slack, and then when it hauled taut, just picked him up, tossed the breath out of him, turned him clear over, and chucked him down on his back, splitting his coat from the tail-buttons to the neck. And he couldn’t move, and he couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t even breathe, only about thirty cents on the dollar, so he couldn’t answer his wife and daughter when they screamed to him that they were ready, and they concluded that he had run away to avoid going with them, so they went off without him, and never came back till eleven o’clock, and the man lay out in the back yard all that time, trying to die. And one time after that, he was jogging across the back yard with his arms full of about three hundred pounds of hard wood, and he was laughing like a hyena at something he had read in _The Hawkeye_, when a clothes-prop slipped just as he passed under the line and dropped on his head, raising a lump as big as an egg, and as he fell forward, another line caught right in his mouth, and sawed it clear back to his ears, so that when he smiled the top of his head only hung on a hinge.

Well, these things naturally weighed on his mind and depressed him, but they set him to thinking, and he went to work and invented a patent clothes-line reel, which was inclosed in a heavy cast-iron box, and was worked by a powerful automatic arrangement. You only had to wind up the box and set it for a certain hour, just like an alarm clock, and at that hour the reel would go off, and pull on the line like a team of mules, the spring hook at the other end of the line would let go its hold, and that line would be rolled up at the rate of a thousand miles a minute. He said nothing about his invention, but put up the box and told some lie about it to his family, which is a way men have, and he set it for 7 o’clock P. M., and wound it up strong. Then he watched Miss Nilsson’s compatriot run out the line and adjust the hook, and he went away.

About 7 o’clock that evening, while he was toasting his feet at the fire and reading the almanac, the family were disturbed by unmistakable indications of a fight going on in the back yard between a hurricane and an earthquake, in which the earthquake appeared to be getting a little the best of it. The affrighted family rushed to the back door and looked out upon a scene of devastation and anarchy. The air was full of fragments of linen, and cotton, and red flannel, while shirt buttons, clothes pins, and little brass buckles, were flying like hail. The reel in the iron box was making about 60,000 revolutions a minute, and was whirling around like a thrashing machine, and the line was tearing around the posts like a streak of runaway lightning, and the clothes were trying to keep along with it, and around the posts they were ripping, tearing and snapping more than any cyclone that ever got loose, while where the line shot into the hawse-hole in the iron box, the striped stockings and white shirts and things, and flannels, and yarn socks, and undershirts and more things, and aprons, and handkerchiefs, and sheets and things, and pillow-slips, just foamed and bulged, and tossed wildly, and ripped, and tore, and scraped, until the yard and air were so full of lint that it looked worse than an arctic snow storm. Oh, it was dreadful. It was terrible. Everybody shrieked in dismay.

“Somebody’s at the clothes-line!” screamed the man’s daughter.

“Good heavens!” yelled the man, “hadn’t you taken the clothes in?”

“No!” chorused the women.

The man thought he would save what was left. He sprang at the clothes-line. He caught the flying hook at the end with both hands, and the next instant, before the terrified eyes of his shrieking wife and daughter, he was jerked through the hole in the iron box, a quivering mass of boneless flesh, while his glistening skeleton fell rattling upon the porch.

They gathered his frame work off the porch, and unlocked the box and drew out his covering. He was not dead, so deftly and quickly had he been removed from his framework. They sent for the doctors, but their skill could not avail to get the man together again, and now he sits, limp and boneless, in a high-backed easy chair, smiling sadly at his grinning skeleton, which sits in a chair on the opposite side of the fire-place, grinning sociably at its counterpart, and rattling horribly every time it crosses its bony legs, or scratches the top of its glistening head with its gaunt, fleshless fingers. And thus that poor man will have to drag out a dual existence until death comes to both of him. It is a painful, expensive life, for the skeleton eats just as much as the flesh, and the flesh has taken to smoking ten cent cigars, and the skeleton can’t sleep a wink unless it has a big hot whisky every night at bed time. And all this is the result of wicked, wicked carelessness. A terrible warning to women who leave the clothes-line up after dark.

INSPIRATIONS OF TRUTH.

Every year, so oft as the 22d of February comes, the day sacred to the memory of the father of his country is faithfully celebrated by two good boys of Burlington, who, if their lives are only spared, will yet be second editions of the immortal G. W. Last year, it was noticed by every one about the house, they were unusually good. They stayed home all the morning, and talked about Washington, and how he broke the mule and girdled the sassafras tree, and how good he was, and what a pity it was he had no middle name. Along in the afternoon their mother sent them to the church, where there was to be a festival, with a basket filled high with sweet home-made bread, and cold boiled ham, and roast chicken, and one thing and another. They took hold of the basket and plodded soberly and goodily toward the church. As they started down Division Street they saw a boy coming toward them whom they knew. He was the son of a neighbor, the blacksmith’s boy, with whom they had a feud of long standing; for on divers occasions he had caught these good brothers out, separately, and had rudely assaulted them, and fairly pounded the hair off their heads. He was a little too healthy for either of the boys alone, but the pair had sworn to make it lively for him if ever they lighted upon him together. So soon as they saw him they put down the basket and gave chase. He girded up his loins and fled, but the boys got themselves up and pursued after him and pressed him hard, and after a rattling chase of about two blocks, they encompassed him round about in a vacant lot, and fell upon him, and smote him insomuch that he begged for mercy and screamed for succor until he was black in the face. Then the victors, joyous returning from the fray, with light steps sought their long abandoned train. Imagine their dismay when, through the gathering twilight gloom, they saw somewhat less than one hundred and fifty thousand dogs, half buried in the basket, dividing and devouring the sutler stores contained therein. There was precious little left when the dogs were driven away, and the boys went home exceeding sorrowful, but hopeful. Their mother met them at the door, and took the empty basket from their hands.

“Who did you give the basket to?” she asked.

“Mrs. Featherstone, dear ma,” replied the elder George Washington.

“And what did she say?” asked their mother, for Mrs. Featherstone is an authority in church festivals.

“Oh,” chorused both George Washingtons, “she said it was the nicest basket that had come in all the afternoon.”

“And,” added the younger George, feeling that he wasn’t doing himself justice if he didn’t get in an independent statement, “Mrs. Lamphreys said she would give anything in the world if she could make such white bread as yours--she said it was wonderful how you done it.”

“Now, did she say that?” cried the delighted woman; for at the last sociable Mrs. Lamphreys said her bread was like bass-wood slabs.

“And Mr. Middlerib,” cried the elder G. W., fearful lest his younger brother should find favor and be exalted over him, “said there wasn’t such chickens anywhere in the State of Iowa outside of that basket.”

And then the younger held the age again, and the older chipped one, and the younger saw him and raised him, and then the older came in, and the younger stayed right by him, and they told all manner of things and compliments about and from all manner of people who were at the church, until the good woman, astonished and delighted at her sudden popularity, determined to go to the sociable, although she had not intended to do so. She went, and she looked in vain for her cake and ham and chicken. She returned home at an early hour, and roused her young George Washingtons from the sweet, innocent sleep of childhood. Then she took a skate strap, and after a brief but pointed cross-questioning on the evidence already brought forward, proceeded----. The rest is too awful.

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY.

It must have been nearly three years ago, as nearly as we can remember, just about the time Monfort and Hill got to photographing ghosts, that a tall, pale man, with piercing black eyes and long hair, came to Burlington and opened a photograph gallery. He was a spirit photographer, and when his sitters received their pictures, for which they were expected to pay very roundly, lo, the spirit faces of dear ones who had gone before clustered around the face of the party whose photograph had been taken from life. There were plenty of people in the learned city of Burlington who were as fond of believing in supernatural things as are the outside barbarians. So, credulous men and women thronged to the spirit artist’s studio, the spirits came up to be photographed around their mortal friends by squads and platoons, and worldly dross, in the shape of a fluctuating and irredeemable currency, poured into the artist’s coffers, and he was happy. Among others who went to his studio, was a sad-eyed young man who is a genius. He never used to get home till two o’clock in the morning, because he was down in his office, he told the folks, burning the midnight oil, and committing the yearnings of a restless and ambitious genius to paper. He was supposed to be writing a book of poems, and, consequently, the fair ones who were privileged to enter the circle of his dreamy acquaintance, doted on him. When he went to have his photograph taken, the dearest girl in the world, the one who tells him what nice hands he has, and who rubs his head when his long hours of lonely study make it ache all the next day, accompanied him. He told her on the way down that he expected when his counterfeit presented itself on the albumenized card, the spirit faces of Byron, and Hood, and Macaulay, and Shakespeare, and Tom Moore, and Shelley would rise and cluster around him. She gasped hysterically, and, looking proudly at him, said she believed they would too, and wouldn’t it be nice? But he only sighed gloomily, as genius always sighs, and they entered the studio.

While the young man was posing himself the Professor told him that those who were nearest and dearest to him in his lonely hours would gather around him and kiss the clustering curls on his marble brow, and that no earthly power could keep them out of the camera. The young lady reiterated her opinion in regard to the “niceness” of such an arrangement, the young man put on a look of genius and gazed into the camera with the air of a man who is wondering where he can borrow three dollars; the artist dived under the cloth and in due time he stepped to the front with the picture and exhibited it to the poet and the adoring girl.

Spirits?

One or two of them. Right in the center was the young poet, gazing dreamily out into vacancy. And the spirits who cheered him in his lonely hours of study, and assisted him in the conflagration of the midnight oil, gathered around him, and never stirred or faded, not even when the poet ejaculated, “Oh lying horrors!” nor yet when the young girl shrieked and fell fainting with her hair caught in that forked thing the artist stands behind the subject to hold his head steady. For on the right of the poet there stood a spirit with a long slim neck whose name appeared to be “Whisky Cocktail,” and on the left there was a short, squatty spirit who was announced as just plain “Gin,” and then, clustering all around the young poet’s head, like an aureola, were “Straights,” whatever they are, “Grasshopper Punch,” “Log Cabin Cocktail,” “Old Tamarack,” “Eye Openers,” “Appetizers,” “Night Caps,” “Can’t Quits,” “Corpse Revivers,” “Coffin Nails,” “Indian Cocktails,” “Mountain Dew,” “Benzine,” “The New Drink,” “Fly Poison,” “What Killed Dad,” “The Same,” “Fast Freight,” “Bran’an Wa’r,” “Sherri’neg,” “Sudden Death,” “Crusade Drops,” “Commissary No. 3,” “Old Crow,” “Tangleleg,” “Forty Rod,” “Grim Death,” “Jimson Juice,” “Chain Lightning,” “Twelfth Resolution,” “That’s on Me,” “Temperance Tract,” “Quinine,” and several other spirits who were too far in the back ground to show their cards very distinctly.

The young man didn’t take another sitting, and he has since spent more time trying to convince “her” that this spirit photography is the greatest humbug that ever deluded a credulous people, than he ever spent with the spirits who share his lonely hours of midnight toil.

WRITING FOR THE PRESS.

Prof. Matthews, in his delightful book, “Hours With Men and Books,” devotes a chapter, and a very instructive chapter too, to advising and directing people who are determined to write for the press what to write and how to say it. But even in that special chapter Prof. Matthews has overlooked quite a number of important points which we, in our experience with occasional newspaper contributors, have come to look upon as absolutely essential to good correspondence. We have had, even in the usually infallible _Hawkeye_, some complaint, once in a while, from occasional correspondents about mistakes which have appeared in their articles when they come out in print. We are aware that in many cases the fault was our own, but we are confident all such trouble could be remedied if correspondents would pay a little more attention to the preparation of their manuscript. Printers are not always infallible, and proof readers do sometimes make mistakes, but we have prepared a few practical hints and instructions, and if people who write occasionally for the papers will only observe the following simple and practical rules, which are much easier to observe than Prof. Matthews’, they may be assured that their articles will always command the highest market price, which is seldom less than two cents a pound:

Never write with pen or ink. It is altogether too plain, and doesn’t hold the mind of the editor and printers closely enough to their work.