Chapter 11

I could not help thinking of him afterward. I tried to imagine him on his way to Europe over a stormy sea; the surprise of his stomach when it found itself frustrated and beaten at its own game, and all that. Then I thought of him as the honored guest of some great corporation or club, and at the banquet, when the president, in a few well-chosen words, apparently born of the moment but really wearing trousers, says, "Gentlemen, we have with us this evening," etc., etc.; and then rising, all the members join in a toast to the guest. Touching his glass to theirs, and then gracefully unreeling his garden hose, he takes from his pocket the small funnel, and, gently sipping the generous wine through his tin pharynx, he begins his well-digested response.

Nature did not do much for this poor lad, but science has stepped in and made him a man of mark. He went to bed unknown. He awoke to find himself noted. He went to sleep with ordinary tastes. He arose with no taste at all. Thus, through the medical treatment of a typhoid idiot, for a disease which was in no way malignant, or, as I might say, therapeutic, he became a man of parts and stands next to the nobility of Europe, not having to work.

Afterward, in Paris, I saw on the street a man who played the trombone by means of a bullet-hole in his trachea, but I do not think it elevated me and spurred me on to nobler endeavor and made a better man of me, as did this simple-hearted young gentleman who made a living by eating publicly through a tin horn, and who actually earned his bread by eating it. I hope that the medical fraternity will make his case a study and try to do better next time. That is the only moral I can think of in connection with this story.

ADVICE TO A SON

XXVII

MY DEAR SON: I just came here to New York on business, and thought I would write to you a few lines, as I have a little time that is not taken up. I came here on a train from Chicago the other day. Before I started, I got a lower berth in a sleeping car, but when I went to put my sachel in it, before I left Chicago, there were two women and a little girl there, and so I told the porter I would wait until they moved before I put my baggage in the section, for of course I thought they were just sitting there for a minute to rest.

Hours rolled by and they did not move. I kept on sitting in the smoking-room, but they stayed. By and by the porter came and asked me if I had "lower four." I said yes--I paid for it, but I couldn't really say I had it in my possession. He then said that two ladies and a little girl had "upper four," and asked if I would mind swapping with them. I said that I would do so, for I didn't see how a whole family circle could climb up into the upper berth and remain there, and I would rather give them the lower one than spend the night picking up different members of the family and replacing them in the home nest after they had fallen out.

I had a bad cold, and though I knew that sleeping in the upper berth would add to it, I did not murmur. But little did I realize that they would hold the whole thing all of two days, and fill it full of broken crackers and banana peels, and leave me to ride backward in the smoking-room from Chicago to New York, after I had paid five dollars for a seat and lower berth.

Woman is a poor, frail vessel, Henry, but she manages to arrive at her destination all right. She buys an upper berth and then swaps it with an old man for his lower berth, giving to boot a half-smothered sob and two scalding tears. Then she says "Thank you," if she feels like it at the end of the road, though these women did not. I have pneuemonia in its early stages, but I have done a kind act, which I shall probably have to do over again when I return.

If you ever become the parent of a daughter, Henry, and you like her pretty well, I hope you will teach her to acknowledge a courtesy, instead of looking upon the earth and the fullness thereof as a partnership property, owned jointly by herself and the Lord.

A woman who has traveled a good deal is generally polite, and knows how to treat her fellow passengers and the porter, but people who are making their first or second trip, I notice, most generally betray the fact by tramping all over the other passengers.

Another mistake, Henry, which I hope you will not make, is that of taking very small children to travel. Children should remain at home until they are at least two or three days old, otherwise they are troublesome to their parents and also bother the other passengers. There ought to be a law, too, that would prevent parents from taking larger children who should be in the reform school. Some parents seem to think that what their children do is funny, when, instead of humor, it is really felony. It does not entirely set matters right, for instance, when a child has torn off a gentleman's ear, merely to make the child return it to the owner, for you can never put an ear back in its place after it has been torn off and stepped on, in such a way as to make it look the same as it did at first.

I heard a mother say on the train that her little boy never was quite himself while traveling, because he wasn't well. She feared it was the change in the water that made him sick. He had then drank a whole ice-water tank empty, and was waiting impatiently till we got to Pittsburg, so that he could drink out of the hydrant.

Queer people also ride on the elevated trains here in New York. It is a singular experience to a stranger to ride on these cars. It made me ill at first, but after awhile I got so mad that I forgot about it. For instance, at places like Fourteenth street, and Twenty-third street, and Park Place, there are generally several people who want to get aboard a little before the passengers get off. Two or three times I was carried by because the guards wouldn't enforce the rule, and I had a good deal of trouble, till I took an old pair of Mexican spurs out of my trunk and strapped them on my elbows. After that I could stroll along Broadway, or get off a train when I got ready, and have some comfort.

The gates on the elevated trains get shet rather sudden sometimes, and once they shet in a part of a man, I was told, and left the rest of him on the outside, so that after a while he fell off over the trestle, because there was more of him on the outside than on the inside, and he didn't seem to balance somehow. It was rare sport for the guards to watch the man scraping along the side of the road and sweeping off the right of way.

One day, when I was on board, there was a crowd at one of the stations, and an old man and a little girl tried to get on. She was looking out for the old man, and seemed to kind of steer him on the platform. Just as he stepped on the train, the guard shut the gate and left the little girl outside. She looked so scart and pitiful, as the train left her, that I'll never forget it to my dying day, and as we left the platform I saw her wring her poor little hands, and I heard her cry, "Oh, mister, let me go with him. My poor grandpa is blind."

Sure enough, the old man groped around almost crazy on that swaying train, without knowing where he was, and feeling through the empty air for the gentle hand of the little girl who had been left behind. Two or three of us took care of the old man and got him off at the next station, where we waited till she came; but it was the most touching thing I ever saw outside of a book.

Another day the cars were full till you couldn't seem to get even an umbrella into the aisle, I thought, but yet the guards told people to step along lively, and encouraged them by prodding and pinching till most everybody was fighting mad.

Then a pale girl, with a bundle of sewing in her hand, and a hollow cough that made everybody look that way, got into the aisle. She could just barely get hold of the strap, and that was all. She wore a poor, black cotton jersey, and when she reached up so high, the jersey part would not stay where it belonged, and at the waist seemed to throw off all responsibility. She realized it, and bit her lips, and two red spots came on her pale face, and the tears came into her eyes, but she couldn't let go of her bundle, and she couldn't let go of the strap, for already the train threw her against a soiled man on one side and a tough on the other. It was pitiful enough, so that men who had their seats began to read advertisements and other things with their papers wrong side up, in order to seem thoroughly engrossed in their business.

But two pretty young men, with real good clothes, and white, soft hands, had a great deal of fun over it, and every time the train would lurch and throw the poor girl's jersey a little more out of plumb, they would jab each other in the ribs, and laugh very hearty. I felt sorry that I wasn't young again, so that I could go over there and kick both of them. Henry, if I thought you would do a thing like that, or allow it done on the same block where you happened to be, I would give my estate to a charitable object, and refuse to recognize you in Paradise.

Just then an oldish man of a chunky build, and with an eye as black as the driven tomcat, reached through the crowded aisle with his umbrella and touched the girl. She looked around, and he told her to come and take his seat. As she squeezed through, and he rose to seat her, a large man with black whiskers gently dropped into the vacant seat with a sigh of relief, and began to read a two-year-old paper with much earnestness, just as if he hadn't noticed the whole performance. The stout man was thunderstruck. He said:

"Excuse me, sir; I didn't leave my seat."

"Yes, you did," says the black-whiskered pachyderm. "You can't expect to keep a seat here and leave it too."

"Well, but I rose to put this young lady in it, and I must ask you to be kind enough to let her have it."

"Excuse me," said the microbe, with a little chuckle of cussedness, "you will have to take your chances, and wait for a vacant seat, same as I did."

That was all the conversation there was, but just then the short fat man ran his thumb down inside the shirt collar of the yellow fever germ, and jerked him so high that I could see the nails on the bottoms of his boots. Then, with the other hand, he socked the young lady into his seat, and took hold of a strap, where he hung on white and mad, but victorious.

After that there was a loud hurrah, and general enthusiasm and hand clapping, and cries of "Good!" "Good!" and in the midst of it the sporadic hog and the two refined young men got off the train.

As the black and white Poland swine went out the door I noticed that there was blood on the back of his neck, and later on I saw the short, stout old gentleman remove a large mole or birthmark, which he really had no use for, from under his thumb nail.

On a Harlem train, as they call it, I saw a drunken young man in one of the seats yesterday. He wasn't noisy, but he felt pretty fair. Next to him was a real good young man, who seemed to feel his superiority a great deal. Very soon the car got jammed full, and an old lady, poorly dressed, but a mighty good, motherly old woman, I'll bet a hundred dollars, got in. Her husband asked the good young man if he would kindly give his wife a seat. He did not apparently hear at all, but got all wrapped up in his paper, just as every man in a car does when he is ashamed of himself. But the inebriated young man heard, and so he said:

"Here, mister, take my seat for the old lady; any seat is good enough for me." Whereupon he sat down in the lap of the good young man, and so remained till he got to his station.

This is a good town to study human nature in, Henry, and you would do well to come here before your vacation is over, just to see what kind of people the Lord allows to encumber the earth. It will show you how many human brutes there are loose in the world who don't try any longer to appear decent when they think their identity is swallowed up in the multitude of a great city. There are just as selfish folks in the smaller towns, but they are afraid to give themselves up to it, because somebody in the crowd would be sure to recognize them. Here a man has the advantage of a perpetual _nom de plume_, and he is tempted to see how pusillanimous he can be even when he is just here on a visit. I'm going home next week, before I completely wreck my immortal soul.

I left your mother pretty comfortable at home, but I haven't heard from her since I left.

Your father,

BILL NYE.

THE AUTOMATIC BELL BOY

XXVIII

Little did B. Franklin wot when he baited his pin hook with a good conductor and tapped the low browed and bellowing storm nimbus with his buoyant kite, thus crudely acquiring a pickle jar of electricity, that the little start he then made would be the egg from which inventors and scientists would hatch out the system which now not only encircles the globe with messages swifter than the flight of Phoebus, but that anon the light of day would be filtered through a cloud of cables loaded with destruction sufficient for a whole army, and the air be filled with death-dealing, dangling wires.

Little did he know that he was bottling an agent which has since pulled out the stopper with its teeth and grown till it overspreads the sky, planting its bare, bleak telegraph poles along every highway, carrying day messages by night and night messages when it gets ready, filling the air with its rusty wings--provided, of course, that such agents wear wings--and with the harsh, metallic, ghoulish laughter of the signal-key, all the while resting one foot on the neck of the sender and one on the neck of the recipient, defying aggregated humanity to do its worst, and commanding all civilization, in terse, well-chosen terms, to either fish, cut bait or go ashore.

Could Benjamin have known all this at the time, possibly he might have considered it wisdom to go in when it rained.

I am not an old fogy, though I may have that appearance, and I rejoice to see the world move on. One by one I have laid aside my own encumbering prejudices in order to keep up with the procession. Have I not gradually adopted everything that would in any way enhance my opportunities for advancement, even through tedious evolution, from the paper collar up to the finger bowl, eyether, and nyether?

This should convince the reader that I am not seeking to clog the wheels of progress. I simply look with apprehension upon any great centralization of wealth or power in the hands of any one man who not only does as he pleases with said wealth and power, but who, as I am informed, does not read my timely suggestions as to how he shall use them.

To return, however, to the subject of electricity. I have recently sought to fathom the style and _motif_ of a new system which is to be introduced into private residences, hotels, and police headquarters. In private houses it will be used as a burglar's welcome. In hotels it will take the mental strain off the bell-boy, relieving him also of a portion of his burdensome salary at the same time. In the police department it will do almost everything but eat peanuts from the corner stands.

I saw this system on exhibition in a large room, with the signals or boxes on one side and the annunciator or central station on the other. By walking from one to the other, a distance in all of thirty or forty miles, I was enabled to get a slight idea of the principle.

It is certainly a very intelligent system. I never felt my own inferiority any more than I did in the presence of this wonderful invention. It is able to do nearly anything, it seems to me, and the main drawback appears to be its great versatility, on account of which it is so complex that in order to become at all intimate with it a policeman ought to put in two years at Yale and at least a year at Leipsic. An extended course of study would perfect him in this line, but he would not then be content to act as a policeman. He would aspire to be a scientist, with dandruff on his coat collar and a far-away look in his eye.

Then, again, take the hotel scheme, for instance. We go to a dial which is marked Room 32. There we find that by treating it in a certain way it will announce to the clerk that Room 32 wants a fire, ice-water, pens, ink, paper, lemons, towels, fire-escape, Milwaukee Sec, pillow-shams, a copy of this book, menu, croton frappé, carriage, laundry, physician, sleeping-car ticket, berth-mark for same, Halford sauce, hot flat-iron for ironing trousers, baggage, blotter, tidy for chair, or any of those things. In fact, I have not given half the list on this barometer because I could not remember them, though I may have added others which are not there. The message arrives at the office, but the clerk is engaged in conversation with a lady. He does not jump when the alarm sounds, but continues the dialogue. Another guest wires the office that he would like a copy of the _Congressional Record_. The message is filed away automatically, and the thrilling conversation goes on. Then No. 7-5/8 asks to have his mail sent up. No. 25 wants to know what time the 'bus leaves the house for the train going East, and whether that train will connect at Alliance, Ohio, with a tide-water train for Cleveland in time to catch the Lake Shore train which will bring him into New York at 7:30, and whether all those trains are reported on time or not, and if not will the office kindly state why? Other guests also manifest morbid curiosity through their transmitters, but the clerk does not get excited, for he knows that all these remarks are filed away in the large black walnut box at the back of the office. When he gets ready, provided he has been through a course of study in this brand of business, he takes one room at a time, and addressing a pale young "Banister Polisher" by the name of "Front," he begins to scatter to their destinations, baggage, towels, morning papers, time-tables, etc., all over the house.

It is also supposed to be a great time-saver. For instance, No. 8 wants to know the correct time. He moves an indicator around like the combination on a safe, reads a few pages of instructions, and then pushes a button, perhaps. Instead of ringing for a boy and having to wait some time for him, then asking him to obtain the correct time at the office and come back with the information, conversing with various people on his way and expecting compensation for it, the guest can ask the office and receive the answer without getting out of bed. You leave a call for a certain hour, and at that time your own private gong will make it so disagreeable for you that you will be glad to rise. Again, if you wish to know the amount of your bill, you go through certain exercises with the large barometer in your room; and, supposing you have been at the house two days and have had a fire in your room three times, and your bill is therefore $132.18, the answer will come back and be announced on your gong as follows: _One_, pause, _three_, pause, _two_, pause, _one_, pause, _eight_. When there is a cipher in the amount I do not know what the method is, but by using due care in making up the bill this need not occur.

For police and fire purposes the system shows a wonderful degree of intelligence, not only as a speedy means of conveying calls for the fire department, health department, department of street cleaning, department of interior and good of the order, but it furnishes also a method of transmitting emergency calls, so that no citizen--no matter how poor or unknown--need go without an emergency. The citizen has only to turn the crank of the little iron marten-house till the gong ceases to ring, then push on the "Citizens' button," and he can have fun with most any emergency he likes. Should he decide, however, to shrink from the emergency before it arrives, he can go away from there, or secrete himself and watch the surprise of the ambulance driver or the fire department when no mangled remains or forked fire fiend is found in that region.

This system is also supposed to keep its eye peeled for policemen and inform the central station where each patrolman is all the time; also as to his temperature, pulse, perspiration and breath. It keeps a record of this at the main office on a ticker of its own, and the information may be published in the society columns of the papers in the morning. It enables a citizen to use his own discretion about sounding an alarm. He has only to be a citizen. He need not be a tax-payer or a vox populi. Should he be a citizen, or declare his intention to become such, or even though he be a voter only, without any notion of ever being a citizen, he can help himself to the fire department or anything else by ringing up the central station.

Electricity and spiritualism have arrived at that stage of perfection where a coil of copper wire and a can of credulity will accomplish a great deal. The time is coming when even more surprising wonders will be worked, and with electric wires, the rapid transit trains, and the English sparrows all under the ground, the dawn of a better and brighter day will be ushered in. The car-driver and the truck-man will then lie down together, Boston will not rise up against London, he that heretofore slag shall go forth no more for to slug, and the czar will put aside his tailor-made boiler-iron underwear and fearlessly canvass the nihilist wards in the interest of George Kennan and reform, nit.

THE END.

* * * * *

AN ARTICLE ON THE WRITINGS OF

James Whitcomb Riley

BY "CHELIFER"

THE AMBROSIA OF JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.

"Chelifer" in "The Bookery."--Godey's Magazine.

There are writers that take Pegasus on giddier flights of fancy, and writers that sit him more grandly, and writers that put him through daintier paces, and writers that burden him with anguish nearer that of the dread Rider of the White Horse, and there are writers that make him a very bucking broncho of wit, but there is no one that turns Pegasus into just such an ambling nag of lazy peace and pastoral content as James--I had almost said Joshua Whitcomb--Riley. If you want a panacea for the bitterness and the fret and the snobbishness and pretension and unsympathy and the commercial ambition and worry and the other cankers that gnaw and gnaw the soul, just throw a leg over the back of Riley's Pegasus, "perfectly safe for family driving," let the reins hang loose as you sag limply in your saddle, and gaze through drowsy eyes while the amiable old beast jogs down lanes blissful with rural quietude, through farmyards full of picturesque rustics and through the streets of quaint villages. Then utter rest and a peace akin to bliss will possess your soul.

To make readers content with life and glad to live is one of the most dazzlingly magnificent deeds in the power of an artist. This is too little appreciated in the melodramatic theatricism of our life. This genius for soothing the reader with a pathos that is not anguish and a humor that is not cynicism, this genius belongs to Mr. Riley in a degree I have found in no other writer in all literature.

Of course, Mr. Riley is essentially a lyric poet. But his spirit is that of Walt Whitman; he speaks the universal democracy, the equality of man, the hatred of assumption and snobbery, that our republic stands for, if it stands for anything. Now downright didacticism in a poet is an abomination. But if a poet has no right to ponder the meanings of things, the feelings of man for man and the higher "criticism of life," then no one has. If to Pope's "The proper study of mankind is man," you add "nature" and "nature's God," you will fairly well outline the poet's field.