Part 16

“You needn’t mind a chop or a pair,” retorted Guffin. “I want my hat. And now, Mrs. G., let me tell you one thing. I’ve had enough of your French capers. You’re turning my house into a gibberishing Bedlam. You’ve upset me so much with your d----d rubbishy parley-vooing and moping round that I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to stick a pig with a cheerful heart again. I won’t have it. It’ll drive me mad. Hang it, if you don’t drop this cursed nonsense, I’ll let all the neighbors know what I am. I’ll hang my signboard out of the drawing-room window, I’ll put on a blue apron and my skewer and knife, and I’ll stand on the front door-step all day. D----n me, if I won’t buy all the pigs at the next Smithfield market and anchor them out in the front garden, and I’ll begin killing them the same night, and if their squealing don’t let folks know what I am, I’ll send circulars and samples of bacon to every house for two miles around.”

There was a pause for a few brief moments, and then forgetting their French and their consumption and their æsthetic delicacy, mother and child flung themselves upon the luckless pork purveyor, and they helped themselves to his hair and tore his clothes, and tried to gouge his eyes out, and bit his ears, and finally flung him on the carpet, where the elephantine maternal Guffin sat on him for five minutes. How he survived this crushing operation is a miracle; but he lives still, though he is so flat that he can slide under a door, and only he took the precaution of changing his brown suit, his shop-boy would frequently put him up for a shutter.

CALCRAFT AND PRICE.[M]

A LYRIC FOR LOYALISTS.

Oh! England’s the gem of the waters, The pride of the foam-crested sea! And her brave sons and fair smiling daughters Are always contented and free! Unknown are all want and starvation; Her subjects are strangers to vice; And the bulwarks of this model nation Are Calcraft and Governor Price!

Wherever this proud nation’s standard Unfurls its red folds to the light, Its bearers you’ll find are the vanguard Of freedom, and progress, and right. Barbarian tribes, by their teaching, Her soldiers reclaim in a trice; Oh, there’s nothing can equal the preaching Of Calcraft and Governor Price!

From the Ind to the banks of the Shannon, Wherever their footsteps have trod, With the aid of the bayonet and cannon They’ve planted the altar of God! And the teachers of heretic notions Have been silent and quiet as mice, For fear they should pay their devotions At the shrine of grim Calcraft and Price!

Oh, lives there a slave who dare utter A word ’gainst the laws of the realm? Or breathes there a serf who would mutter A thought ’gainst the “men at the helm”? If he’s English, his faults they’ll pass over With a sound word or two of advice; But if Irish, he soon will discover The logic of Calcraft and Price!

Then kneel, comrades, kneel, and thank heaven You’re subjects of Britain’s great throne, When, horror! you might have been given A Republican birthright to own! Thank God, that your blood is untainted, You’re subjects of England--how nice!-- You’ve a chance of yet being acquainted With Calcraft or Governor Price!

ENTITLED TO A RAISE.

SUGGESTED BY A ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY PETITION.

This is a brave Sub-Constable, a credit to the force, To the landlord sleek and servile, to the peasant rude and coarse; When Lord Knows Who was there, he could present his arms to him, And then club Paddy Murphy with the true official vim. And once when his contingent, in war’s circumstance and pride, Turned out to spill his mother on the dreary mountain side, His blood was cool--(discipline’s rule)--he made no moan, so he Says no one should begrudge to him his rise of salaree.

This is a wise Head Constable, with little frills or lace, But with a soul that’s panting for a much superior place, He feels his head throb proudly with a bursting intellect, And looks for that promotion which a genius should expect. He has faced the jibes of Healy and such giants of the bar, He has peeped through many a key-hole, when the door was not ajar; He has shadowed many a priest and checked seditious childhood’s glee, So is he not entitled to a rise of salaree?

And this, a Sub-Inspector, is a lady’s man, you know; With braid, and rings, and eye-glass, he can make a gallant show; Of justice he knows nothing, and of law he never dreamt, But he can stop a meeting or he’ll fall in the attempt. He can really waltz divinely; he can powder, he can puff, And he’d quite an ear for music till ’twas spoiled by “Harvey Duff”; He is silly, he is loyal,--he is all a Sub should be, With a due appreciation of a rise of salaree.

THE POSTMAN’S WOOING.

THE POSTMAN’S PLIGHT.

John Thompson was a postman who Was bound in Cupid’s fetters, And though not deeply read, ’tis true, Was still a Man of Letters.

He paid attention to one Kate Maria Julia Jervis, But she did not appreciate John Thompson’s Civil Service.

Quoth he, “Oh scorn me not, sweet Kate, Nor let my love-suit fail, Oh tell me not my pleading’s late, And don’t Despatch this Mail.”

But she replied, in accents grave, “I love you not--decamp!” And when he spoke again--she gave Her foot an Extra Stamp.

And cried, “My anger you awake, Your speech on insult borders, I’m poor, but I would scorn to take Your vile Post-office Orders.”

Then Thompson felt in mournful mood, And moaned in accents shivery, “Miss Jervis, if my speech be rude, Pray pardon its Delivery.”

He left the room with footsteps slow, A bitter lesson taught, And then to counteract the blow, A pillar-box he sought.

He felt how foolish was the tact In courtship he had boasted, And recognized the solemn fact That he was badly Posted.

SONNETS TO A SHOEMAKER.

The cobbler’s always cheerful, though His path of life be crost, He does not tear his hair in woe, Whene’er his all is lost.

He welts a lot, but not the wife With whom his lot is cast; She’ll find him, whatsoe’er their strife, Still faithful to the last.

Onward his motto, aye, he strives To grasp some other feat, And in the dullest times contrives Somehow to make ends meet.

The world may smite him without cause, He never shuns its whacks, And seldom grumbles at the laws That regulate his tax.

We know but little of the good His many acts reveal-- Were he ’midst madmen, why, he would Their understandings heal.

And a much higher motive yet His generous heart controls, You would not see that saint forget Their perishable souls.

A COMMERCIAL CRISIS.

The financial flare-up is going round. It has penetrated the modest shanty of Jones, in our street.

“It was late when you came home last night, my dear,” said Mrs. J. at breakfast yesterday morning. When that lady addresses her husband with the affix of “my dear,” Jones recognizes a disturbed condition of the domestic atmosphere. He has had solemn experiences of the way Mrs. Jones works up a tea-table tornado. Therefore, Jones said nothing. He couldn’t say less; he was afraid to say more.

“I repeat, my dear, it was late when you returned home last night.”

Jones admitted there was nothing particularly premature about the hour in question.

“Perhaps, my dear, you wouldn’t find your feelings much hurt if I wished to know where you spent your evening.”

“Well, you see, love,” began the marital martyr, “there’s a sort of a kind of a description of--you don’t understand these things, Maria, but we’re plunged into the throes of a commercial crisis, and I thought--that is, we thought--a few of us thought, you know--a whole lot of us thought that we’d have a consultation, you understand--to--to avert anything in the shape of a pecuniary panic about these diggings.”

“Oh, you consulted, then?”

“Yes; we deliberated. We put our heads together, as it were, and we decided on a whole lot of things.”

“What time did you decide on breaking up?”

“Well, we had very important matters to discuss. You know the Jewish financiers--Baron Rothschild, and--and the rest of the Rothschilds, and the chief rabbis--and--and--and--all of them synagogue fellows, they’ve been working the oracle--and they’ve had a slap at the Barings.” Here Jones gasped for breath. He felt that somehow he wasn’t explaining matters as lucidly as was necessary.

“I think,” interposed Mrs. Jones, “that you’ll have a slap at the almshouse before you die, at the rate--the poor rate--you’re going on. What else?”

“Well,” desperately; “Maria, I must say that women can’t grasp the monetary situation. Don’t you understand that there’s been a withdrawal of gold from the Bank of England, and they’ve raised their rate to six per cent., and there’s been a heap of failures, and, in fact, things have gone so far that, that--”

“That you were so far gone when you came back last night that you took your boots off at the door-step, and tried to go to sleep on the scraper. And when you landed up-stairs in your bedroom you told me that you were at a meeting to pull the Czar of Russia over the coals about the atrocities on the Jews. You showed me the minutes of the proceedings. They were in your inside pocket, in a pint bottle labelled ‘Duffy’s Malt.’ Then you said there was a European war just hatching in the Herzegovina. You wanted to demonstrate the position of the Austrians and the Russians out there. You tried to do it with the wash-hand basin, the coal scuttle, and the fire-irons. You sat down in the coal scuttle, and you stood on your head in the wash basin, and I’m sure you swallowed some of the irons, for I can’t find the tongs anywhere. Then you tried to make a speech to the milkman out of the bedroom window this morning; and now it’s all a commercial crisis. Do you know what I got in your coat this morning, Mr. Jones? A hairpin, you wretch! A woman’s hairpin, you antiquated sinner! And there were two or three hairs round it, red hairs, you crooked-eyed deceiver! I have stood treachery, Mr. Jones, I have put up with your tantrums and your goings out and comings in for five years, Mr. Jones, but I can’t, I won’t, I shan’t be bamboozled any longer with your pint bottles of Russian atrocities and your red-headed commercial crisis, the hussy.” At this stage Mr. Jones effected a remarkably rapid retreat, but he has been heard to observe since that it is really astonishing what an effect a bank-break in London can have in a quiet kitchen in South Boston.

AT THE COLLEGE SPORTS.

Heigho for the morning, murky and dark, When, heedless of threatening cloud, I ventured to visit the green College park, And mingled along with the crowd. I am almost now on insanity’s brink, And this I attribute to Either a fairy attired in pink Or an angel whose robe was blue.

The world considered my heart was flint, And futile were womanly wiles-- Sigh and ogle, whisper and hint, Glances and glittering smiles. I meant, uncontrolled by the marital link, My journey of life to go through, But in those days I hadn’t met beauty in pink, To say nothing of beauty in blue.

I’ve had thirty odd years of a bachelor’s life, Bachelor’s buttons and fare; And escaped all the bankruptcy, troubles, and strife That Benedicts weepingly share. But to-night I believe that I scarcely would shrink To join the Hymeneal crew, If the ship were controlled by a captain in pink Or a lovely commander in blue.

I didn’t go, like the mob, to the place For frivolous chatter and talk; I was interested in every race, Jump and hurdle and walk; Yet when all was over I’m hanged but I think-- Of course it can hardly be true-- That the quarter was won by a sprinter in pink, And the mile by a stayer in blue.

It’s over now, and I feel quite wise, For I mean in futurity’s days When I go to races to cover my eyes With glasses to temper my gaze, Lest my heart intoxicant draughts should drink Of Cupid’s ambrosial dew, Supplied by a nymph in bewildering pink Or equally dangerous blue.

A MUSICAL REVENGE.

I’m sick of music. I’m surfeited with music. I’m engulphed in an ocean of music. I’m buried beneath a mountain of music. The air I breathe is oxygenized with music. The food I eat is flavored with music. I go to sleep to the tootle of the flute next door; my slumbers are oppressed with the nightmare of a solo on the trombone by a demon across the way, and I wake to the crash of a grand piano that some fallen angel with forty-horse-power wrists tortures in the semi-detached gentlemanly residence at the back. In short, I live in a locality that is so utterly utter in the matter of harmonic proclivities that I feel wild enough to undermine and blow it to splinters. The sound of the explosion would be a welcome change.

But I have had revenge. Ha! ha! It was temporary, but bliss is brief. For six weeks the pianist behind my bedroom has been ringing the withers of my soul matutinally with selections from Wagner. For two months the trombonist over the way has been tearing my vitals asunder by his frantic efforts to extort unhallowed tones from his instrument. For a fortnight the flutist next door has congealed my blood with variations on the “Carnival of Venice.” They have had _one_ night from me. They won’t want another this side the Day of Judgment.

I gave a musical party. I summoned to my aid my brother who plays the melodeon. I called to my assistance my friend who lets the tempest of his heart loose into the cornet. I obtained the powerful alliance of my cousin who exercises his muscles on the double-bass. I invoked the tremendous services of an Aberdeen acquaintance, who has been practising for ten years on the Scotch bagpipes, and still survives. I appealed successfully to patriotic passions and pecuniary prejudices, and secured the presence of a fife and drum--principally drum--band from a Grand Army post.

The first part of the concert lasted two hours. By the end of that time all the boarders in the street had given their landladies notice to quit, and I had received three deputations from the outraged inhabitants of the disturbed district.

But my scheme of vengeance was only budding. I had generously plied the perspiring performers with copious draughts of Pilsener and Canada malt, till they felt fit for anything in the way of a musical monstrosity or instrumental indignity I could ask them to perpetrate on the suffering locality. Then I marshalled them out in the backyard, and implored them, as a last personal favor, to make themselves at home, and let each artist give vent to his feelings in his favorite tune. They vented. The bagpipes squealed out the “Reel of Tullochgorum,” till it seemed as if all the pigs in the States had joined in shrill lament over Armour’s interference with their happiness. The cornet pealed forth “Killarney” with energy enough to drown the roar of Niagara. The double-bass growled like a thunder-storm in its last agonies an operatic overture that I had never heard before, and I hope never, never to listen to again. The melodeon struggled manfully with “Nancy Lee,” and the fife and drum band wrestled desperately with “Patrick’s Day,” except half a dozen or so of its members, who got up a fight in one corner, and added a choice assortment of yells, shouts, and profane expressions to the glories of the occasion.

It was gorgeous. In ten minutes we had three fireengines and a division of police in the street; in half an hour there were several attempts at suicide of leading residents of the locality; and before our “grand finale” was finally done with there wasn’t a juvenile or adult within half a mile that didn’t feel he or she had had music enough to last a lifetime.

If I am disturbed any more by the operators round me, I shall give them another dose of my orchestra. I will. I have sworn it.

A LIAR LAID OUT.

We have an amiable tallow-chandler and soap-boiler in our street, who certainly should have been a novelist. I firmly believe he could give weight to Baron Munchausen, Jules Verne, M. de Chaillu, or the London _Times_ in the matter of exaggeration, and romp in an easy winner. The whoppers that spreader of lies and light can tell would raise the hair on the head of an Egyptian mummy.

But he met his match last week.

I happened to be in our club-room with Dipps, when there entered an acquaintance of mine, a gentleman who aspires to legislative honors. Of course Congressional candidates must acquire the art of so embellishing and embroidering the naked truth as to make it attractive. Well, my friend has been studying this science, and he has advanced so far that he can dispense with facts altogether now. His enemies aver that the truth isn’t in him. I wouldn’t say that myself. I think it is in him--very much in him--it’s impossible to get it out of him.

I didn’t think of this, or I wouldn’t have introduced him to Dipps. I regretted it on the spot. Dipps was smoking a peculiar pipe. The future member noticed it. He made some slight remark about it. Dipps was all there. He replied on the instant that that was the identical pipe that Napoleon III. was smoking when he surrendered at Sedan. He had procured it from a wandering Teutonic troubadour, who had picked it up when the Emperor dropped it to hand his sword to his German conqueror.

The statesman expressed no surprise. He merely observed that by a strange coincidence he possessed the stump of the cigar which had fallen from Marshal MacMahon’s lips when his eleventh horse was shot under him at Worth. He had purchased the souvenir from a Zouave with two wooden legs and a glass eye, who had secured the half-finished weed and was smoking it out when a fragment of a shell drove it and a couple of teeth into the back of his head, from which they were extracted by the regimental surgeon. He had one of the teeth, too, fitted into his own gums. He showed it to Dipps.

I could see Dipps was rather staggered. He changed the subject. He exhibited his walking-stick. Remarkable stick, that. It was manufactured out of one of the railway carriages blown into the river on the night of the terrible Tay bridge disaster, in Scotland. At the risk of his life, a diver had brought up a panel out of that carriage for the express purpose of making that stick.

The embryo representative had another coincidence on hand. He had another walking-stick at home--made out of the thigh bone of the engine-driver of that ill-fated train. It was too ghastly a memento to carry about with him; but he could show it to Dipps at any time, and would point out the half-cooked appearance of a portion of it, arising from the fact that the driver was in the habit of sitting on the boiler in cold weather to warm himself.

Dipps was silent after this for a few minutes. But he wasn’t going to be put down without a desperate effort. He drew out his large scarf-pin. He called our attention to what appeared to be a drop of water in the centre of the colorless stone. No, the stone was not real. It was not a diamond. It was far more precious. That small dewy globule inside was worth a hundred diamonds of its size. It had been borne from the mystic shores of Lake Nyanza by a mighty traveller. It had passed into Dipps’s hands by a miracle. It was the tear Livingstone had shed when he first met Stanley. And Dipps smiled a lofty smile at the coming Daniel Webster, which said, as plainly as a candle-contriver’s grin could say anything, “Trot out your curiosities, now, old man, and match that if you’re able.”

Hang me if that expectant recruit to the ranks of the legislators didn’t squelch Dipps with a third coincidence. It was extraordinary--it was almost fabulous, he said, but he had another breastpin which contained a companion tear to Dipps’s. The knight of the soap-pan flatly denied the assertion. Livingstone had only shed one tear; that tear hadn’t been divided into suitable lots; it remained intact, complete, unmutilated, and he (Dipps) was its proud possessor.

“I didn’t say,” gently interposed the coming victim of some future Tom Reed, “I didn’t say that I had the tear Livingstone shed when the advent of the New York _Herald_ Central African tourist pumped that saline particle up. No, sir; but I have a lachrymose relic equally enthralling in the interest which it must inspire.”

“Pooh!” snorted Dipps contemptuously, “what have you, what can you have, that approaches within a hemisphere of my historic, geographic treasure?”

“My friend,” replied the next man to be counted in his absence by the Speaker, “I do not grudge you the tear that Livingston shed when he embraced Stanley, for know that I have the identical tear that Stanley _didn’t_ shed on that occasion, nor since, that I’m aware of.”

MULROONEY.--A TROOPER’S TALE.

We were stanch and brave a company as ever saddled steeds; When proclamations filled the land, our signatures were deeds; When Mosby’s horse we fell across, the heads that met our blades Lost count of stolen cattle, and could plan no future raids. We blazed with glory, but a cloud around its radiance hung; Unto the bays that decked our brows a slimy creeper clung-- For word passed round from camp to camp: The man for whom we’d die, The darling of our devil-dares, Mulrooney, was a spy!

Mulrooney was our squadron’s pride; its star, its guiding lance; The last to leave a losing fight, the foremost to advance; His laughter chased the poison from the fever-breeding swamp; His merry heart and blithesome ways made sunshine in the camp. So when the provost-marshal came and marched Mulrooney out, Each trooper’s face with wrath aflame bespoke rebellious doubt; Till our captain came and “soothered” us, and said, “We’ll have to try To clear our troop’s bad record that it ever held a spy.”

Oh, our captain was a jewel, with his oily locks of jet, His shiny spurs of silver, and his gold-fringed epaulette; The daintiest of kidskin gloves controlled his charger’s reins, The bluest flood of Norman blood coursed proudly through his veins; His voice had quite a lordly lisp, in warning or command-- A pearl in iron setting was this leader of our band; But gem and metal never fused, and that’s the reason why Our boys despised the perfumed dude and loved the roughspun “spy.”

The morn Mulrooney went away, our “pretty” captain led Our troop to where a squadron of the Johnnies slept, he said; But as we trod a darksome gorge, a flash of flame ahead, A roar of musketry behind, an ambush told, instead! Entrapped like rats, like rats we fought, in desperate despair-- One sabre ’gainst ten rifles, and no outlet front or rear, Our captain faded from our sight, while rose a frenzied cry: “By God! the cur has sold us out! Mulrooney was no spy!”

But while our hearts were quaking and our ranks were melting fast, There rang athrough the rustling pines a clear, familiar blast; The bugle-call of Northern foot thrilled on our ears anew, As swiftly on our hidden foes swept down a line of blue! One skulking figure sought escape behind the sheltering trees, A keen-eyed marksman’s bullet brought the coward to his knees, And as the captor fiercely dragged the wounded captive by, A shout went up from every throat, “Mulrooney’s got the spy!”