Part 7

Yesterday he was attending a primary election, at which he expected to be brought before the public as a candidate for a fat local office. An influential friend had been intrusted with the highly important and vital mission of bringing his name before the delegates, for which service he was to receive some petty office if the election was effected. McSweegan stood back in a recess of the hall, hat in hand, impatiently waiting to hear the familiar name pronounced. In fancy, he already listened to the shout of applause that would follow his nomination. But he stood with a quiet smile and an attentive ear in vain. Candidate after candidate was announced, but the ancient and honorable name of McSweegan thrilled not his auricular nerves. The ticket was at last declared full, and he was not one of the happy number. His friend had played him false—to use a common expression, “had gone back on him,” and he was justly indignant.

On his way home he took Lethean draughts in which to drown his trouble and keen disappointment, and by the time he reached his clap-board front was in capital condition for seeing double. The hour was late as he entered his house, but he found his industrious better half sitting at a table sewing by the flicker of a tallow candle. His red and multiplying optics were riveted by the wannish flame, which to him had the semblance of two well-defined and separate lights. This was an extravagance that he could not countenance. To have found his wife up at such a late hour would have been severe enough strain upon his already ruffled temper, for he had no wish to discuss the result of the “Primary.” But to find her needlessly consuming _two_ candles showed a wastefulness on her part, evincing an utter disregard for the low condition of his exchequer. He was exceedingly provoked, and with a view of curtailing home expenses, attempted to puff out one of the flames.

After several ineffectual attempts, in which he scorched his whiskers and eyebrows, he succeeded, but found himself enveloped in Egyptian darkness. His rage increased. He at once accused his wife of blowing out the “other candle” through spite. Her contradictions only fanned his fury, and the performance ended by putting her out of the house and keeping her out all night—for which unhusbandly treatment she had him arrested, and he now languishes in the lock-up.

THE THIEF.

Richard Roe was a thief, whose temptation to steal Always grew more resistless when wanting a meal; Once he entered a store, when no person was by, Took a box of sardines, and attempted to fly; But, although he could slope when occasion required, Like a stag to a stream when the forest is fired, The scoundrel was spotted and nabbed at the door, By officers Murphy, McMannus and Moore; And away to the jail, midst a crowd you should see, Went the thief, the sardines, and the officers three.

The next day came his hearing, and people were there From all stations in life, on the prisoner to stare: There were gamblers, street-pavers, stevedores, undertakers, Ship-chandlers, brick-masons, and umbrella makers, Corn-doctors, reporters, clerks, tailors, and teachers, Fruit-peddlers, horse-trainers, clairvoyants, and preachers; A few women also jammed in with the rest, With their bonnets awry, and their clothing sore pressed, And their uplifted faces, perspiring and red, Full ear-deep in the back of some person ahead; And like peas in a kettle, or bees in a hive— Ever shifting position—so they were alive; All impatiently wedging around in a stew, In the hope they could better their chance for a view; This one grumbling because some one crowded so near That he shot his hot breath in the depths of his ear; That one cursing because some one’s elbow so rude On his ribs was inclined to encroach and intrude; And another one howling and looking forlorn, Just because some one trod on his favorite corn; Over all the hoarse voice of the bailiff did wheeze: “Order! order in the court, gentlemen, if you please!”

Six feet two, if an inch, and proportioned in size, Stood the thief in the dock, when the clerk bid him rise; And amongst all that crowd not a man could be found With his shoulders so square and a physique so sound.

First, around on the lawyers and officers there He defiantly gazed with a bold, brazen air; And then, turning around, stared the Judge in the face, As though _he_ was the thief and the rogue in the case. The stern Judge ran his eyes the unmoved villain o’er, From the crown of his head to his feet on the floor— While the rogue seemed to study with critical care The time-honored “Court,” with his thin crop of hair.

For five minutes or more, it’s my candid belief That the thief eyed the Judge, and the Judge eyed the thief; As two rivals, long parted, in some foreign land By mischance blown together, each other they scanned; While there rose from the concourse no perceptible sound, Not a whisper or yawn, even, circled around. But a charnel-house calm o’er the room seemed to fall, Till the flies could be heard on the plastering crawl— Till beneath the rogue’s stare the Court’s visage grew red. But down-choking his rising resentment, he said:— “Richard Roe”—and he spoke quite emphatic and slow, As though weighing each word before letting it go— And inclined his head downward, as men often do When they look over spectacles rather than through— “Richard Roe, you have come to the surface once more, Like the ghost to the feast of the monarch of yore; I have lectured, imprisoned and fined you in vain— You will still depredate, and confront me again. From the door of the jail to the till of a store There is simply one pace unto you, and no more;

As the dog to his vomit, the sow to her mire, You will glide, the born slave of your fiendish desire; By my oath, it’s a sin, a disgrace, and a shame; With your shoulders so broad, and so robust your frame, With your arms like a Hercules, muscled and strong, With your wind like a stag-hound’s, so perfect and long, To earn a support you’re possessed of all means— And yet you’ve been stealing a box of sardines.

“I have worked my way onward, year out and year in, Among characters blackened and blistered with sin; Amongst men I’d have quaked to have met in a lane, As I would the arch demon, relieved of his chain; But I’m frank to confess, and I’d state it as free On a Bible as large as a bed, if need be, In my thirty years’ practice, on Bench or at Bar, A thief more consummate and bold than you are I have never encountered, in county or town, Among whites, copper-colored, or greasers done brown; You’re as prone to purloin as an eagle to fly, Or a salmon to swim, or a lover to sigh; Not an esculent known, or utensil of use, From a cantaloupe down to the quill of a goose, From a tripe in the stall to a fowl in the coop, But at some time or other in your life you did scoop.”

And as if in assent, Richard Roe bowed his head, While the Judge wiped his face, and continuing, said: “Here so often, of late, you have taken the stand, To give answer for larcenies, petty or grand, That your face has become as familiar to all The practitioners here as the clock on the wall;” Here he pointed it out, and a glance at it threw; And bold Richard turned round and regarded it too, While full back to his ears a grim smile slowly broke, For, despite his position, he relished the joke. “I regret that our law draws the limiting line, For it seems but a farce to impose a small fine, Or to send you below for a week or ten days, To recline on a mat and hatch future forays.

“But since neither the gloom of the prison, nor fine, Seems to work a reform in that bosom of thine, I will try a new method—throw justice one side, And appeal to your manhood, your honor, and pride; It is said kindness conquers where knuckles will fail, And a pardon may faster reform than the jail;

Since the stock-raiser advocates crossing the breed, And the farmer finds profit by changing the seed, Who can tell but a change may regenerate you— So we offer you mercy where none is your due.

“Mr. Sheriff! release that purloiner! as free As the wind that awakes the dull ocean, is he. But, sir, hark! Richard Roe, ere you mix with the throng, Take this friendly advice from one knowing you long: And in future, whenever your stomach does feel Like digesting a fish, take a rod, and a reel, A few hooks, a fine line, and of gentles a few, And go catch your own fry, as all good people do; For you’ll find it more wholesome to follow a creek, And there angle for trout seven days of the week, Than to strive to obtain by unwarranted means E’en a box of diminutive, oily sardines.”

Subdued was bold Richard, he gazed in surprise, And trembled, while tears welled fast from his eyes, As he vowed that henceforth the right course he’d pursue; And Roe is now honest, trustworthy, and true.

A STARTLING CAT-ASTROPHE.

“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more.’” —_Shakespeare._

Last night, soon after retiring, I was made aware of the exceedingly annoying fact that a pair of cats had selected the yard under my window for their trysting-place, and were behaving in a most demonstrative manner.

I have no objection to cats having their courtships as well as men; but I see no reason in their having such a hoodooing time over it, making night hideous with rascally yowls. There is, perhaps, nothing more aggravating in life than to have a little saucy spit-fire of a puss keep a whole community awake for hours together, because an admirer of hers happens to take a moonlight stroll on a neighboring fence.

The night wore on. Their inharmonious chants increased in volume and spirit. Considering the matter, I came to the conclusion that I would rather pay the fine imposed for shooting in the city limits than lose so many hours from needed rest.

I hastened to procure my shot-gun, determined to make a scattering amongst them, if nothing more. As I reached the casement, a bright flash from the window of an adjoining house, and a simultaneous patter of shot in the yard, informed me that some co-sufferer had taken the initiative in the good work of demolition; for though wrought to the highest pitch of ferocity, his nerves were steady and his aim was sure.

He evidently hit them where their nine lives were centered, and they dropped as they stood when the fatal tube was leveled. In short—

They died as erring cats should die— Without a kick, without a cry; The faintest rustle in the chips, A slight contraction of the lips, Which brought the pointed teeth in sight, And they had passed to endless night.

Even as I write (ten o’clock A. M.) they are lying in the yard as they fell, a terrible illustration of sudden transition from noisy debate to silent repose. There they lie, to compare small things with great, like a pair of shipwrecked lovers, who have clung to each other through fire and water, and at last have reached the wreck-strewed beach in body, but not in spirit.

The gentleman who owns the yard has just been out looking at them. After silently surveying the dead for a long time in silence, he walked away without disturbing them, pathetically murmuring the Latin motto, “_Requies-cat in pace._”

A TRIP TO THE MOUNTAINS.

I have been taking a flying trip over the Sierras about which the poet so mellifluously sings. There were many beautiful scenes presented during that trip, but abler pens than mine have described them fully, and have done them justice, so I will not attempt to set forth their various charms. It is not my _forte_, anyway, and I am free to confess the fact. Enough for me to describe the excellent lunch which I had the good fortune to have along with me, and to speak plainly, I enjoyed it the most of anything I saw during my trip. It was no ordinary lunch, however. The back-bone of it was a nicely-roasted chicken, which reflected great credit upon both the poulterer and the kind-hearted young lady who volunteered to see it through the oven. Ah, that brisk little lady can prepare a dish fit to set before the gods. If that is not doing her justice, tell me what more can be said, and I will pile it higher. She is worthy of it.

The virtues of that fowl live in my memory yet. It was good. If you could meet an old lady that was a passenger in that car—not the one with the bunion on her left foot and the crockery teeth, who mistook me for a minister, but the mild old lady with glasses that sat opposite me—she would tell you the same. _She_ knows. Bless her gentle heart! If she doesn’t, I would like to know who does. She partook of the fowl. I saw her looking wistfully upon it as I dismembered it, and, though I say it myself, I am not greedy, by any means, so I offered her the juicy neck. Did she take it? Ask, rather, if a cat that had fasted a week would take a mouse if she got between him and his hole? As old Shylock said, “Are you answered?” She was no novice at picking the neck of a fowl, either. She manipulated it in a manner that proved to me clearly she had a perfect knowledge of its construction. It was not long—perhaps ten seconds—before she had it picked as bare as a corkscrew. She did it with such ease, too; and that’s what got me. She kept it revolving as rapidly as a squirrel does the cylinder in his cage. She had but one front tooth left in her upper jaw. The intelligent mind will no doubt immediately picture forth a _long_ tooth; and the intelligent mind, in so doing, portrays the incisor correctly. It was, indeed, a long tooth, but it was just the thing she needed for the business before her. It seemed to be specially made for it, as it fitted into every depression or notch in the neck as nicely as a key into a lock. It ran around between the vertebræ like a turner’s chisel, throwing the small particles of nutriment far back against the roof of her mouth. It did me good to see her play around that fowl’s neck. I grew young again while beholding the busy scene, and actually regretted that a chicken did not have two necks, as well as two legs, that I might repeat the generous donation, and see the pleasing scene enacted again. As it was, I won golden opinions from the old lady.

A stout German woman who sat near by also seemed to be looking upon the chicken as though she would like to help me make away with it. With that magnanimity which was ever my peculiar characteristic, I severed the pope’s nose from the trunk and proffered her the delicious morsel, when, to my utter astonishment and confusion, she whipped out of her pocket a big bologna sausage the size of a stuffed club, and shook it triumphantly in my face, so close that it might have greased the end of my nose. She actually scouted the idea. Independent, proud and self-sustaining, these Germans, and no mistake. She evidently felt insulted, and delivered herself of a long essay in the German tongue. She was undoubtedly giving me to understand that she was able to furnish grists for her own mill. Of course that is what she meant. I could tell that by the way she flourished the bologna, and pointed to her mouth and stomach. I expected she was about to whack me over the jaw with the singular looking weapon, and prepared to dodge on the shortest possible notice. But she didn’t. As if to madden me, she commenced eating the sausage in a hasty, excited manner, taking about two inches at a bite. What could I do? What did I do? Why, let her eat it, of course; it was none of my business. I had no objection, so long as she didn’t choke, and render it necessary for me to pat her upon the back, which I certainly thought I would have to do before she finished her meal.

You may be sure I offered no more chicken to any person after that, but picked the bones as bare as pen-holders. If she liked bologna better than a choice piece of fowl, it was her fault, not mine. I washed my hands of the whole affair.

I stopped a few hours at a mill in the mountains, and while there witnessed an amusing incident. There was a small pipe leading from the engine, and projecting through the side of the building close to the ground. Through this pipe the waste water was conveyed from the engine, and at the end of it quite a puddle or drain had been formed, about a foot in width and eight or ten feet in length. The constant dripping from the pipe kept the water warm, and from it a steam was continually rising. There were several Indian camps in the vicinity of the mill, and as wood was rather scarce, the squaws belonging to the camps were in the habit of congregating around this warm drain when the cold weather numbed their poorly protected limbs. It was not an unusual thing to see half a dozen coming down the hill to squat beside the drain, and there sit for hours discussing the current topics of the day, enjoying at the same time the luxury of a cheap steam bath.

There were a couple sitting at the drain in this innocent manner while I was at the mill. I called the engineer’s attention to the capital opportunity that lay before him to give them a surprise that would be fun to behold. This he could do by simply turning a gauge cock and allowing the steam to go out with a rush upon the squatting pair. The engineer was a sober sort of man, not at all given to humor, and not inclined to take advantage of the opportunity. But when I informed him that I represented an illustrated paper and wanted to make a stirring sketch of the scene, he consented for my benefit. As he went to comply with my suggestion, I moved to the window to see how the squaws would enjoy it. I had hardly reached my position when the steam shot along the surface of the water like smoke from the muzzle of a rifle. At the same instant the gentle savages shot at least four feet into the air, in the most extravagant positions imaginable. Until that moment I would not have believed the human form could assume such strange attitudes on such short notice. If I had not been intently gazing upon the pair as they sat chatting sociably over the drain, and had my eyes riveted upon them as they shot aloft, I could hardly have thought the two dark figures performing such grotesque evolutions in mid air were indeed human beings.

The steam was harmless, as it had to go quite a distance before escaping, but the squaws didn’t understand anything about that, you know. No person had enlightened their untutored minds upon that point, and they didn’t sit there very long in order to ascertain; for the sake of the squaws, however, let us hope that it was. One thing they evidently _did_ feel certain about, and that was that something had broken loose, and that, too, at a very inopportune moment. The thought that followed close upon the heels of the other was to change their position in the shortest possible time. If they both had been shot into the air out of one mortar they could hardly have shown greater concert of action. If there was any difference in their sensitiveness or agility, the one farthest from the pipe seemed to claim the superiority, for, as near as I could judge, she was first to spring aloft. The back of one was towards me, and the face of the other. Though quite a distance from them, I could distinguish the white eyes of the latter standing out as prominently as a pair of silver-headed nails in the end of a mahogany coffin.

It may be argued that this was a mean trick. It may even be said that it was a sinful act. I admit all this; nay, more, it may be that I will have to answer for it hereafter, when you, and they, and all of us, have ceased to be interested in things pertaining to the flesh; but in the face of this supposition, I must still adhere to the original assertion that it was indeed an amusing incident, and will go further and say that as yet I have not been brought down to that perfect state of repentance where I could sincerely say that I regretted having been the instigator of the deed.

I never learned whether the squaws returned to the drain again, but, judging from the way they hustled over the hill in the direction of their camp, I am inclined to think not.

While coming down the river there was quite an excitement on board, on account of the steamer grounding suddenly upon the “Hog’s Back.” She was running pretty fast at the time, and the sudden stop threw several passengers off their feet, and for a few moments all was confusion. I was partly disrobed at the time, and the first thought that entered my mind was that we had collided with some schooner on its way up the river. Before leaving, a gentleman placed a lady and two small children in my charge, and my first act was to run to the state-room in which they were. I found the lady preparing for rest, but the children were already in bed. Without much ceremony, I seized a child in each hand, and bidding the lady to follow, started to deposit them near the davits, that they might be handy to throw into the boats in case we were compelled to take to them.

While hastening through the cabin I was confronted by a terrified woman in her nightclothes, who jumped out of her state-room as I was passing the door. In her hands she grasped the nozzle of a large life preserver, which she had buckled around her, and which only needed to be inflated with wind to make her comparatively safe. No sooner did she see me than she commenced dancing frantically around me in the most insane manner, at the same time shouting with all the strength of her voice: “Blow me up! blow me up! for the love of heaven, Mister, blow me up!” But I had enough to do at that moment without stopping to “blow her up.” Besides, I didn’t know but I might have to swim to the shore, and would, consequently, need what little wind I could muster to bear me through the task. Before proceeding far, however, I met the mate, who told me to put the children back in bed and go soak my head, or do anything that would keep me from making an unmitigated fool of myself, with which kindly suggestion I meekly complied.

AN IMPATIENT UNDERTAKER.

Now and then we come across a scoundrel, an inhuman wretch, of such magnitude that we are inclined, like Bassanio, to waver in our faith, and hold opinion with Pythagoras, that being the only hypothesis by which we are enabled to account for their being possessed of such brutish natures. For example: An undertaker was pointed out to me to-day who follows so close in the wake of death that he quite often appears in advance of the grim leveler, and secures, if possible, the job of burying the body while yet the person is alive, much as he would bespeak a quarter of beef of his neighbor before the animal was butchered. This individual heard that a man was about to die in the County Hospital, and learning that the only friend of the sick man was about to leave the city, he hunted him up and solicited the job of performing the last sad rites for his friend when death should have gathered him in.

The request was unthinkingly granted, and sufficient money to cover the expenses of the burial was placed in the hands of a third party, who was to pay it to the undertaker when the obsequies were performed. The man of coffins departed, smiling over his success. The only thing that remained now between him and a fat profit was the man’s life; but this was only a slim barrier and likely to fall at every breath of air. He paid semi-daily visits to the hospital to learn how the disease was developing.