Part 13

They didn’t. It was strange, but Norah had made a precisely similar remark. In fact, that capillary addition to his proboscis was one of the principal barriers between Frederick and his fondest hopes. He agreed with his evil genius.

“You should use our Depilatory. Bound to make a clothes brush as bare as a smoothing iron. Costs a mere trifle. Only two shillings.”

Alas! He took the Depilatory.

“You’re not a painter?” queried the inquisitive fiend of the curling-tongs.

No, he wasn’t.

“Ah, my mistake. Seemed to me you’d been eating yellow ochre to-day. Natural color of your teeth, I suppose?”

Fred looked disgusted. These personal reflections were becoming monotonous. However, he admitted that the speculator who bought his teeth to retail as imitation pearl studs would scarcely realize a fortune by the investment.

“You really ought to take a bottle of our Fluid Dentifrice. Brush your teeth every night with a few drops, and in a short time ivory would look gloomy beside them. Never knew it to fail. Dirt cheap. Sevenpence-halfpenny, bottle included.”

Frederick purchased, and then, happy in the possession of the magic talismans which were to transform him into an Adonis, he left the hair dresser’s and made his way to a convenient liquor saloon, where he had arranged to meet some of his civil-service associates, ejaculating every now and then _en route_, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” much to the bewilderment of the passers-by who overheard him. He met his friends. He was so elated with visions of conquest that he “set ’em up” twice. Then another fellow set ’em up. In fact, they set ’em up more or less for about two hours. It must have been more, for, on the occasion of the last reviver, in response to a query about the population of Shanghai, he replied, inanely, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” When shaking hands for the seventh time with his friends on leaving them, he volunteered the mystifying information that little Norah wouldn’t know him in the morning. He even propounded the problem about Norah’s astonishment to the cabman who drove him home, and that unromantic personage, thinking that it referred to the feelings of the lady of the house when his Bacchanalian passenger should be deposited on the domestic doorstep, replied emphatically, “I should rather think so!” upon which Fred shook hands with the Jehu most effusively.

When he reached the abode of his virtuous but far-seeing landlady, that Roman matron, knowing Fred’s weakness for reading in bed, but doubting his capacity for remaining awake much longer, took the precaution of supplying him with a brevity of a candle some ninety per cent. below Griffith’s valuation. When, in the solitude of his two-pair back, Fred gazed upon the diminutive specimen of the chandler’s art, he felt that there was not a second to lose. He ranged his beautifying treasures on the table, read the directions, secured the tooth-brush, divested himself of his outer clothing, and prepared for action.

At that momentous instant, with a splutter and a gasp, like the warning sob of fate, the candle went out!

For a moment Fred deliberated. Should he kick up a row for more composite? No. The Gorgon of the house might suspect something. Besides, he knew where each wonderful phial lay. To work! to work! Won’t little Norah be surprised? Won’t he whelm those conceited Irish rivals of his with envy and chagrin?

He grabbed the Depilatory, and gave his nose five minutes’ determined friction. He seized the tooth-brush, and, saturating that toilet requisite with Fluid Dentifrice, he applied it to his teeth till his jaws ached. He groped around till his fingers closed upon the Balsam of Peru, and he drenched his fiery locks with it until his head felt like a sponge. And then with loving hand he sought the Formula. He found it. He tenderly moistened his upper lip. Should he have an imperial? Why not? He traced the imperial artistically out. And now, his task of decoration complete, he stumbled into bed, and murmuring softly, “Won’t little Norah be surprised?” sank peacefully to slumber--to dream he had Hyperion curls and pearly teeth, the mustachios of D’Artagnan the Musketeer, and the nose of an Adonis.

* * * * *

Bold chanticleer had been proclaiming the dawn for an hour or two when Frederick awoke. The top of his head felt queer--that last toddy, no doubt. He was rather stiff about the mouth. Oh, joy! joy! the mustache. Not even waiting to encase his lower limbs in the nameless appendages of civilization he rushed to the looking-glass. And then there rang out upon the morning air a dismal, prolonged, forty-horse-power howl that made the matutinal milkman drop his cans in the gutter and settled the last lingering doubts of a stray cur in the street, which was meditating madness, for the electrified canine wanderer went for that indefatigable officer Q3½, and helped himself to a Christmas breakfast, composed of a square foot of blue cloth and a few ounces of metropolitan police manhood. The astounded constable started for the nearest druggist’s, and, charging impetuously into the store, knocked over an old lady with a parcel of chamomile and poppy-heads, and so alarmed the salesman that he could only express his feelings by vociferating “Fire!” at the top of his lungs, which appalling cry had such an effect upon the other assistant, who was swilling the snow-slushy footway in front, that he promptly turned the nozzle of the hose in through the door, and belched forth such a flood that he swept lady, policeman, poppy-heads, chamomile, half a dozen bottles, three or four gross of pills, and a varied assortment of drugs into the back premises, where he bombarded them for ten minutes with aqueous artillery, and left them deluged in wild and dripping confusion.

That unearthly cry also brought scrambling up into Frederick’s room an excited crowd of boarders and servants, headed by the landlady, and there, in the middle of the floor, arrayed only in a picturesque night-shirt, was a strange figure with bald head, black teeth, walnut lips and chin, with a beard a foot long drooping from his nose--cavorting round in a Sioux war-dance, to the strains of a weird melody, the refrain of which was “Won’t little Norah be surprised?”

It was Frederick. He had mixed things in the dark. He had brushed his teeth with the hair-dye, Balsam of Peru, and they had gone into mourning over the outrage. He had tried to tone down the fiery aspect of his curls with the Depilatory, and he had toned them off his head altogether. He had sought to remove the superfluous hirsute attraction of his nose with the Formula, and he had added twelve inches to its growth. To improve the undecided tendencies of his mustache he had invoked the aid of the renowned Furniture Renovator, and he had so renovated the surroundings of his mouth that it resembled the drawer of a walnut escritoire.

Sad, sad fate. Little Norah was surprised even more than Fred had anticipated, but so little did she appreciate his sacrifice that she is now another’s.

CONSTABLE X.

Whose walk is so stately and grand round the beat? What tread sounds so martial upon the flagged street? What countenance, calm as the face of the Sphinx, Repels so the notion of frivolous winks? Adored by the housemaid, beloved by the cook, Whose souls he can harrow or thrill with a look; The terror of urchins, whose ardor he checks, Oh, who should it be but bold Constable X?

How the heart of the guilty against his ribs knocks, As, rubbing his collar, he enters the box, And kisses the book with a resonant smack, Like the click of a latch or a rifle’s sharp crack. Swear a hole through a pot? why he’d think it no feat To swear holes through the whole of an ironclad fleet, And no counsel the Four Courts can boast could perplex Or puzzle that paragon, Constable X.

Yet he is not immortal; the greatest have hours When the mind can descend from the stars to the flowers, And he, even he, that great creature, has known Some moments when grandeur deserted its throne. And the pride of the Force at such times would have felt Belittled, indeed, were it not for his belt. For Cupid, the rogue, who ne’er comes but to vex, Has got inside the tunic of Constable X.

Let the thoughtless world smile or condemn, if it please, But, alas! ’tis the truth, he’s been seen on his knees, He has even unbended to laughter and sport, And his kiss has resounded outside of the court, Oh, weep for his downfall, oh, mourn for his fate! Redemption is hopeless and rescue too late; Love’s handcuffs are on him, and one of the sex Who ne’er release prisoners, has Constable X.

LUCIFER’S LABORATORY.

Surrounded by bottles and flagons and bowls, To the music of shrieks from perishing souls, Holding a lurid and snake-wreathed flask, The Devil pursued his terrible task. Hatred and lust, and all the horde Of hell’s worst vices into it he poured, And when it was brimming with fever and sin, He took the bottle and labelled it GIN.

Another flask in his hand he raised And the flame of his breath round the crystal blazed, As he filled it with murder, suicide, theft, Orphans fatherless, wives bereft, Doses of poverty, doses of crime, For every region, for every clime, And the noisiest imps round his throne were dumb As he took the bottle and labelled it RUM.

And then a barrel he seized to fill With grief and affliction, pain and ill; Stupor, the brain of mankind to dim; Coma, to palsy the heart and limb; Draughts, the senses to cloud and clog Till God’s image became but a senseless log, And the devil’s lips were twined in a leer As he took that barrel and labelled it BEER.

The fiends laughed loud in rapturous mirth As he scattered his mixtures around the earth. And whiteskin, and blackskin, and redskin quaffed, North, South, East, West, the poisonous draught. And the demon yell as each toper fell, Voiced the chorus, “Another recruit for hell! Hurrah for the triumph of Satan and sin, Brought about by the conquest of whiskey and gin!”

THE MONOPOLIST’S MOAN.

Am I waking or sleeping, in Congress or bed? Do I stand on my feet? am I poised on my head? Has the world gone to smash? is it chaos that reigns? Or have I somehow lost a grip of my brains? There’s something gone wrong which I cannot make out, The people don’t know what on earth they’re about; There is woe in our camp and dismay in our tents, For no longer we rule with our dollars and cents.

Has the crispy bank-note lost its wonderful powers? Are the lives and the souls of the people not ours? Fame’s ladder saw us on the top, and you know That muscle and brain were contented below; Leastways, if they murmured, a handful of gold Could buy up the weak or could crush out the bold, For a very small gift from our riches contents The outcast who hasn’t got dollars and cents.

But now there’s a muttering startling and strange From the lowermost depths, a demand for a change, A really absurd and ridiculous plan To ostracize gold and to dignify man; The base common herd won’t submit any more To a rule that their fathers found proper before, And the veriest scum of the gutters invents Ideas obnoxious to dollars and cents.

WITH THE GRAND ARMY VETERANS.

AT GRANT’S FUNERAL, AUGUST 8, 1885.

Once again, in silence solemn, forms the remnant of the column That had borne with Grant the fever and the load of darksome days; Some are worn and old and stooping, like the colors furled or drooping ’Neath the crape that hides the tatters and the rents of battle’s blaze.

Through the voiceless, mourning city, draped in sombre garb of pity, Keeping step in rhythmic cadence marches past the old brigade; And the watching crowds that border mark the old-time soldier order-- The symmetrical alignment of the veteran parade.

At the measured tread resounding warrior fancies pierce surrounding Mists and clouds of two long decades--picture visions far away, Where Potomac rolls its billow over many a hero’s pillow, Or the Rappahannock murmurs dirges still to Blue and Gray.

Hark! the muffled drums are beating calls for charging or retreating, And their old Commander leads again the legions of the free; In the funeral anthems tolling they can hear war’s thunder rolling; They are marching on to Richmond, or Atlanta to the sea.

See, their dimming eyes grow brighter and their painful footsteps lighter; The dead-marches seem to echo like familiar camping strains, And the “boys” again together tramp through swamp or over heather, Joyous only in their triumphs and forgetful of their pains.

Their Commander is not sleeping. Why, his eagle glance is sweeping With mingled pride and pleasure o’er the tried and faithful line; Cheers again the skies are rending, and their serried ranks ascending The slippery slopes of Vicksburg, o’er abandoned scarp and mine.

Still more vivid grows the seeming: still more real is the dreaming, While a milder radiance mingles with the conflict’s passioned glow, For in Victory’s fevered hour, Mercy holds the hands of power, Like their leader, they know only former brothers in the foe.

* * * * *

Halt! The soldier’s dream is over, and gray scattered locks uncover; Not the laurel but the cypress with their banners must entwine; For the last salute is pealing, as his faithful comrades, kneeling, Weep farewell, farewell forever, to the Leader of the line.

Yet, no; Fate cannot sever ties so firmly linked forever, And, when Time shall close the record of all nations’ peace and war, The Angel’s trump shall waken ranks unbroken and unshaken, And their old Commander lead them through the Golden Gates Ajar.

THE IRISH SOLDIER AT GRANT’S GRAVE.

Great chieftain, o’er thy silent clay Unite in tears the Blue and Gray, Grief knows no frontier line to-day.

Among the gifts the nation showers Upon thy tomb blooms verdant ours-- A shamrock wreath among the flowers.

A type its emerald leaflets three Of thy best attributes will be-- Faith, Courage, and Humanity.

Faith in the right, whate’er oppose, Courage that with disaster rose, Mercy to brave but beaten foes.

When danger threatened Freedom’s shrine In her defence with thee and thine Our exiled race were found in line.

With thee we bore the storm and stress, Hard-fought retreat and onward press Of Vicksburg and the Wilderness.

Thy eagle glances oft might scan Our Celtic features in the van When battle surged round Sheridan.

And never poured the crimson flood, To mark where desperate valor stood, But with the tide ebbed Irish blood.

So as your life-stream then we fed, Where’er your own brave nation bled, Our tears to-day with hers are shed.

Our steel shone ’mid your bayonets, Our grief now sobs with your regrets, Our shamrocks fringe your violets.

MAINE AND MAYO.

Six months in front of Richmond’s walls we fretted and we fumed, As vainly as our peevish growls our surly cannon boomed; We traced no path of glory through the slimy, oozy swamp, But misery and discontent were monarchs of our camp. There was snarling and complaining all along the Union line, And our brigade was loudest in the universal whine, While the surliest, the churliest, the sourest in our train Was a cross and crusty, rude and rusty, lanky crank from Maine.

Death lurked in half a dozen shapes among the vapors foul, The grumbling choir each morning lacked some long-familiar howl; And to fill the vacant places new arrivals were impressed, Whose tempers in a week or so grew viler than the rest. One day with such a batch there came a boy with sunny hair, And a laugh that took the breath away of every veteran there, Who said to us, in accents like a streamlet’s rippling flow, “I’m very glad to meet ye--I’m a stranger from Mayo.”

Lord! how that youngster danced and sang and laughed his cheerful way To hearts sealed up by selfishness for many a gloomy day; He gave Time golden pinions with a thousand merry wiles, And routed regiments of blues with fusilades of smiles. Our crank of cranks fought sullenly, with dismal brow, at first, Frowned like a Northern thunder-cloud, the while he inly cursed; But his wintry soul grew warmer in the genial Irish glow, Till the frost from Maine was melted by the sunshine from Mayo.

And when on quiet evenings from out our camp arose Strange sounds of mirth and merriment that puzzled lurking foes, When “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” shook the leafless Southern pines, Or “The Rocky Road to Dublin” seemed a-winding through our lines, A pair of feet went treading through the dance’s tangled maze With a firm, determined step acquired in lumber-hauling days-- “Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight?” was sometimes the refrain, And one sonorous voice objected to such cowardice in Maine.

* * * * *

Our corps is but a corporal’s guard; beneath Virginian clay, Its heroes wait the bugle-blast of God’s reviewing day, But the “twins,” as once we called them, Celt and Yankee, still remain, Though one’s at home in Connaught, and the other back in Maine. Outside the Mayo cabin green and starry flags proclaim That Ireland’s in the Union now in everything but name; While in Aroostook County a grim veteran wants to know How soon will freedom need recruits to battle for Mayo.

A SANDY ROW SKIRMISH.

Sandy Row, as everybody knows, is the Mecca and Medina of Orangeism in Belfast, the sacred shrine of its votaries, the land of promise of its true-blue tramps, the camp of its generals, the temple of its apostles, the sanctuary and haven of its political refugees, when fleeing from prospective fines of forty shillings and costs for holy war-cries of “To h--with the Pope.” If a Papist foot should dare pollute its consecrated--whiskey consecrated--shore, that Papist foot would be carrying a head that was in danger of having what little brains it contained undergo a process of amalgamation with the oleaginous slush of the desecrated pavement.

In that home of Hobah has resided for many years and seasons one Green--Billy Green, so called after the hero of glorious, pious, and immortal memory, in whose saintly footsteps he has endeavored to tread as far as his post of grand master of L. O. L. 1111, “Spartan Schomberg,” would permit. But, alas! brave Billy has been wounded in more numerous and more tender portions of his constantly constitutional anatomy than was ever his regal namesake in the course of all his campaigns; and, worst of all, his fate excites no charitable commiseration or solacing sympathy in his lodge or among his neighbors, but only provokes tantalizing titters and lacerating laughter. He has suffered, he still suffers, he is likely to continue suffering for half a century or so, but not, oh, not for the cause.

In his ardent devotion to his principles and his lodge, and also in consideration of a certain weekly honorarium, Billy fitted up in his back yard an outhouse in which he allowed to be stored their sashes, banners, and regalia for processions, and their bludgeons, blunderbusses, and pokers intended for political arguments with National League invaders.

For three months in this shanty L. O. L. 1111 guarded its sacred banners and kept its powder dry. However, during the past few weeks, an assemblage of peace disturbers, who paid no rent, subscribed to no loyal principles, marched in no patriotic processions, and joined in no salubrious Tory scrimmages, have had illegal possession of that cabin.

During that time its roof has borne the erring feet of all the cats of Sandy Row. There has been a convocation, a conference, a mass meeting, a howling congregation of cats there from midnight to dawn, who have given musical entertainments of excruciating variety and such persistent continuity that they have never indulged in even ten minutes’ interval for refreshments. About ten minutes to twelve a tortoise-shell tenor gives the signal for devotions by a prolonged squeal in G sharp. Then a short-tailed Persian soprano joins in, and there is a five minutes’ duet, to which a Highland bagpipes, a Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, or Red Shirt’s war-whoop is the music of the spheres. When they have reached the most horrifying part of this performance a black demon with the influenza throws in a basso-profundo remonstrance, and a gray tabby with the catarrh serenades the moon in an agonizing solo, with scales and variations. Then the midnight feline wanderers lift up their voices in scores (numerically and vocally), and a competitive chorus begins, into which each cat seems to throw its very vitals, and the air trembles with heart-rending screeches, and yells, and spits, and growls, and hisses, and whistles, and cries for help, and moans, and groans, and raspings; and the twins in Jones’s, next door, waken up and join in the medley, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones try to soothe them to slumber with soul-sickening lullabies; and the lodgers put their heads out of the window, and swear at the cats in baritone and a North of Ireland accent; and all the dogs in the street join in with diversified barks and carefully assorted yelps, from the shrill treble of the parson’s Skye terrier to the thundering tones of the grocer’s mastiff, while the milkman’s jackass kicks the panel out of his stable door, and, putting his head through, ejaculates a hoarse demand for thistles in such a diabolical bray that you think chaos has come again, and Pandemonium reigns supreme.

From beginning to end, from the initial bar to the final cadenza, there isn’t a pianissimo movement in the whole operatic celebration, or symphony, or overture, or musical festival, or whatever you like to call it. It’s all fortissimo, awfully fortissimo, say about four-hundred-and-forty-four tissimo.

The good men and true of Sandy Row determined that they would submit to this invasion of their rights, this outrage upon their dignity, this systematic suppression of their slumbers, no longer. The amount of old boots, stray bottles, broken candlesticks, and used-up culinary utensils with which those cats had been bombarded would have established a flourishing marine store business, but these munitions of war had been exhausted without disabling a single cat. It was evident that desperate measures were necessary to restore law and order in Green’s back yard. They were adopted.

Unfortunately for Green, his neighbors acted in skirmishing order--each man on his own account; no general plan of organization; no commander--a kind of guerilla warfare, in fact, was to be waged on the melodiously maddening marauders!

Jones got a blunderbuss and loaded it to the muzzle with broken glass, rusty nails, buckshot, and darning needles.

Tomlinson, the tailor, carted in a load of half-bricks and paving stones, and piled them up in his bedroom for action.

The grocer laid a three-inch hose on to the pipe in his scullery, and completed scientific arrangements for a powerful pressure.

Poor Green himself, whose repeated failures from the back window as a marksman had disgusted him with that method of attack, got a long cavalry sword, and determined to tackle the enemy with cold steel.

Alas! there was no preliminary consultation. Why, oh, why, was not Lord Rossmore there to direct the strategy of these noble defenders of homes and altars, civil and religious liberty, and uninterrupted snores?