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l£XOU
^.
THE NEV.
PUBLIC l:
^TOK Li.
TILDE H rov.
H'/S£, WJTTY, ELOQUENT
Kings
OF THE
Platform and Pulpit
<^
BY .
MEUVILLE D. LANDON
Biographies, Reminiscences and Lectures of
ARTEMUS WARD SAM COX BILL ARP
MARK TWAIN ROBERT BURDETTE (;E0RGE W. PECK
NASBY MRS. PARTLVGTON DOESTICKS
lOSrf BILLINGS DANBURY NEWS MAN BRET HARTE
BILL NYE FAT CONTRIBUTOR GEO. W. CABLE
ELI PERKINS
and the Master Lectures of
T. DkWITT TALMAGR DWIGHT L. moody SAM JONES
CHAUNCEY M. DRPEW ROBERT G. INGKRSOLL JOHN B. CiOrOH
WENDELL PHILLIPS CHAS. H. SPUR(;K()\ BEN BUTLER
jOS CCK)K EU(;ENE field HORACE GREELEY
MAX O'RELL JOSEPH PARKER ROBT. COLLYER
AND
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES AND ANECDOTES OF
NOTED AMERICANS
profuselg miustrateO
CHICAGO
F. C. SMEDLEY & CO., Publishers.
1891
A
f
THE Jl'EW y^'i-M
PUBLIC Lt5RARY
896287A
ASTOR. LFNOX ANCi
TILDEW i-uUNDATlONS
H 1037 L
^
oopyrightel.
Bklford-Clakke C<).
1890.
^11 Rights Keserved.
•« • •••
• »
* to
• • •
>> t. w k k
* « » W
» *. V * i " *
ANNOUNCEMENT.
Many of the great lectures in ''Kings of the Platform and
Pulpit" are published from the manuscripts of the distinguished
authors.
The illustrations which appear, with the literary accompani-
ment of pen pictures, serve to make the personality of these noted
characters distinct and life-like.
" Kings of the Platform and Pulpit " contains the most com-
preheusive ViMuii uf the hnffibr, wisdom, philosophy and religion
of the century. The book also abounds in anecdotes, epigrams,
lectures and reminiscences — both personal and political^-of a vasi
number of famous Americans.
The following list of nams de plume of noted men of letters,
many of whom have contributed to these pages, will be of interest
to the reader.
DISTINGUISHED LECTURERS, HUMORISTS AND WRITERS.
N
X
-Josh Billings ''—Henry W. Shaw.
•* Andrew Jack Downing "— Seba K. Smith.
" Artemus Ward "—Charles Farrar Browne.
- BUI Arp "- Charles H. Smith.
-Gath"— George Alfred Townsend.
- Pkt Contributor "—A. Miner GriswoUl
-Hawkeye Man"— Robert J. Burdctte.
**HowadJli"-Georire William Curtis.
*-Ik Marvel "-Donald Grant Mitchell.
** James Yellowplush "— Wm. H. Thackeray.
••John Paul" -Charles H. Webb.
"John Phoenix "-Capt, George H. Derby.
•* Mark Twuin " Samuel L. Clemens.
-Max Adier "-Charles H. Clark,
"Eli Perkins "-Melville D. Landon.
-Petrcleum V. Nasby"— David Locke.
-Bill Nye"-Edirar W. Nye.
" Dttobury News Man "-Jos. M. Bailey.
it
Old Si "—Samuel W. Small.
Orpheus C. Kerr"- Robert H. Newell.
Peleg Wales"— Wm. A. Croffut.
Peter Plymley "—Sidney Smith.
Miles O'Keilly "-Charles G. Halpin.
Peter Parley "-H. C. Goodrich.
Ned Buntlinc "— Col. Judson
Brick Pomeroy "— M. M. Pomeroy.
Josiah Allen's Wife "-Marietta Holley.
Docsticks"- Mortimer M. Thompson.
Mrs. Partington "-BenJ. P. Shillaber.
Spoopendyke "-Stanley Huntley.
Uncle Remus "-Joel Chandler Harris.
Hosea Bigelow "-James Russell Lowell.
Fanny Fern "—Sam Payson Willis.
Grand Father Lickshingle" - Robert W.
Criswell.
M. Qua<l "-Charlis B. I^ewia.
\
u
CONTENTS.
''ELI PERKINS ''— Melville D. Landon.
Biography and Beminiscences^ . . •
Lecture: The Philosophy of Wit and Humor,
Eli Perkins* Stories of Children,
Eli Perkins' Lecture Ticket,
THE '' DANBURY NEWS MAN ''—J. M. Bailey.
Biography and Reminiscences,
On Putting Up a Stove, ....
JOHN B. GOU<JH.
Biography and Reminiscences, .
Gough's Great Lecture, ....
GEORGE W. PECK.
Biography and Reminiscences,
George W. Peck's Great Agricultural Lecture,
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
Biography and Reminiscences,
Lecture: England, Ireland and Scotland, .
" BILL NYE "—Edgar W. Nye.
Biography and Reminiscences,
Nye's Best Speeches and Lectures,
The Nye-Riley Lecture,
The Story of Little George Oswald,
Mr. Riley's Poem, **Jim," .
Riley's ** Me and Mary,"
Nye's Cyclone Stories,
Riley's '* Good-bye er Howdy-do,"
Nye Makes Rome Howl,
Bill Nye's Autobiography,
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
Biography and Reminiscences,
Lecture : Liberty — Love — Patriotism,
Ingersoll's Vision,
Ingersoll on Children,
/ Ingersoll on Woman, .
''MARK TWAIN"— Samuel L. Clemens.
Biography and Reminiscences,
Lectures and Dinner Speeches,
^ark Twain's Masterpiece, •
PAGE
188
194
282
236
239
261
263
266
275
277
285
291
306
312
314
318
319
321
324
325
326
329
332
338
340
342
344
348
351
356
,o^ - 3y^
^
»• •
CONTENTS. Ill
DWIGHT L. MOODY, The Great Revivalist. page
Biography and Reminiscences, 360
Moodjr'g Theology. Anecdotes, etc 362
T. DeWITT TALMAGE, The Great Preacher.
Biography and Reminiscences, 378
Talmage's Lectures, 381
Great Temperance Lecture, 387
Gems of Thought, 393 /
ROBERT COLLYER, The Blacksmith Preacher.
Biography and Reminiscences, 399
Lecture to Young Men: Two Emigrants, .... 403
A Psalm of Thanksgiving, 410
SAM JONES, Preacher, Reformer, Wit.
Biography and Reminiscences, 411
Great Sermon, 415
"MRS. PARTINGTON "—Benjamin P. Shillaber.
Biography and Reminiscences, 425
The Partington Lecture, 426
"THE FAT CONTRIBUTOR ''—A. Miner Griswold.
Biography and Reminiscences, 431
Philosophical Lecture on Injun Meal, .... 433
"BILL ARP"— Major Charles H. Smith.
Biography and Reminiscences, 437
Bill Arp's Lecture, 440
Bill Arp to Artemus Ward, 460
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Reminiscences, 464
Beecher*8 Estimate of Wendell Phillips, .... 465
ARCHDEACON FARRAR.
Archdeacon Farrar on Seneca, 468
PROFESSOR DAVID SWING.
Biog^phy, .......... 479
Professor Swing on «^ Classical Triiining, .... 479 '*-
C. H. SPUKGEON, The Eloquent, the Eiirncst, the Beloved.
Biography and Reminiscence? 491
llr. Spurgeon's Teaching, ....... 4^'^
IV
CONTENTS.
EEV. JOSEPH PARKER, The Great English Preadier.
Reminiscences^
PAGE
497
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN
Stories of Postmaster-General John Wananiakcr,
Loweirs Great Poem,
Thurlow Weed on Ingersoll,
Donn Piatt's Funny Speech,
Joseph Cook,
Dr. Pentecost on God's Approval,
Edmund Clarence Stedman: ''Kearny at Seven Pines/*
Anecdotes : Travers, Stewart, Clews and Jerome,
K. Q. Philander Doesticks,
Eugene Field's Lecture, ....
George W. Cable's Readings,
Max O'Reirs Lecture on the Scotchman,
Bret Harte: Why Bret Harte Murdered a Man,
xVnecdotes of Gould, Fisk and Drew, .
John J. Crittenden's Eloquence,
Roseoe Conkling and Charles O'Connor,
William M. Evarts and Chauncey M. Depew,
Jefferson on Franklin,
Lincoln's Illustration,
Edward Everett on Judge Story,
General Sherman on "Pap" Thomas,
Garfield's Wit, ....
McCosh's Impression,
Webster on Self-Evidence, .
David B. Hill on Grovcr Cleveland,
President Harrison on General Scott,
Fitz-Hugh Lee and General Kilpatrick
Seward Joked by Douglas,
Voorhees, Tanner and Secretary Nobl
**M. Quad "—Charles B. Lewis,
Thad Stevens and Aleck Stephens,
Zach Chandler on Democracy,
Blaine's Kil-Ma-roo St^ry, .
Dr. Hammond, Dr. Bliss and General
Chief Justice Fuller, .
Judge Olds, ....
Gen. Sickles pn Howard's Drummer,
Sheridan,
500
502
504
507
509
510
511
512
515
518
522
525
527
529
535
536
536
537
537
538
538
539
539
540
540
540
541
541
542
543
545
546
546
547
548
548
548
CONTENTS.
Greeley taken for a Clergyman, .
Sherman and President Taylor, .
Senator Evarts and Governor Hill,
Sherman and Joseph Jefferson, .
Robert Toombs and John B. Floyd, .
Joe Brown, Toombs and Alex. Stephens,
Foraker on Daniel Voorhees,
Blaine, Conkling, Hamlin,
Longfellow's Funny Poem,
Siring, Collyer, Jones and Fitz-Hugh Lee,
Moseby, Ellsworth, Kilpatrick and Fitz-Hugh Lee,
Thaddeus Stevens, ....
General Logan's Plain Talk,
Longstreet on Fast Marching,
General Ewell on the Irishman
Henry Wattcrson on Sumner and Greeley,
"Wade Hampton, Sumner and Ben Wade,
Sitting Bull and General Miles,
How Bishop Potter was Introduced to Mayoi
Phillip D. Armour,
Susan B. Anthony,
The Sharp Retort,
Belmont and Buffalo Bill,
Bayard Taylor's Joke,
Cox, Butler, Greeley,
Clara Morris's Joke on Mary
Lincoln and Stanton,
Jeff Davis Sees Humor,
President Arthur Hears an Eloquent Reply,
Henry Watterson on Oscar Wilde,
General Sheridan on General Scott,
General Bragg on General Price,
General Lee and Jefferson Davis,
Lincoln's Colored Visitor, .
Shermai) in Earnest, • ,
Anderson.
r Grant,
y
PAOS
549
650
550
551
551
552 .
553
553
554
555
556
556
556
557
557
558
559
560
560
561
561
561
562
562
562 —
566
566
567
567
568
568
560
560
o60
570
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PORTRAITS.
Adams^ John, President TJ. S. .
Adams, John Quincy, President XJ. S.
Anderson, Mary, ....
Armour, Phillip D
Arthur, Chester A., President U. S. .
Bailey, James Montgomery — •'Danbury News Man
Banks, N. P
Bayard, T. H. ....
Beecher, Henry Ward,
Beecher, Henry Ward, ^Etat 50,
Belmont, August, ....
Bennett, James G
Blaine, James G. ....
Browne, Charles Farrar — ** Artemus Wjird,
Browne, Charles Farrar — '* Artemus Ward,
Browne, Mrs. Caroline E. .
Bryant, W. C
Buchanan, James, President U. S.
Butler, Benjamin F. . . . .
Burdette, Robert J
Clemens, Samuel L. — ''Mark Twain,"
Cleveland, G rover. President TJ. S.
Clewes, Henry,
Collyer, Dr. Robert, ....
Conkling, Roscoe, ....
Cooper, Peter, .....
Curtis, G. W. .
Cuyler, Thco. L. ...
Dana Charles A. ...
Davis, Jefferson, ....
9f
' while lee
turing.
PAGE
176
464
528
176
238
464
464
23-368
133
528
464
288
18
35
20
464
176
288
146
347
176
528
368
464
464
464
368
464
288
Vll
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Depew, Chauncey M.
Drew, Daniel^
Edison^ Thomas E.
Evarts, William M.
Field, Cyrus W.
Fillmore, Millard, President U. S.
Garfield, James A., PresideDt U. S.
Gongh, John B. . ...
Gould, Jay, ....
Grant, Ulysses S., President U. S.
Greeley, Horace,
Hampton, Wade,
Hancock, Winfield S.
Harrison, William H., President U. S
Harrison, Benjamin, President U. S.
Hawley, Joseph R. . . .
Hayes, Rutherford B., President TJ. S
Hill, David B. ...
Holmes, Oliver Wendell,
Ingersoll, Robert G. . . .
Jackson, Andrew, President U. S.
Jefferson, Thomas, President U. S.
Johnson, Andrew, President U. S..
Landon, Melville D.— ''Eli Perkins,
Lee, General Robt. E.
Lincoln, Abraham, President U. S.
Locke, D. R. — " Petroleum V. Nasby,
Logan, General John A.
Longfellow, Henry W.
Lowell, James Russell,
Madison, James, President TJ. S.
Monroe, James, President U. S.
Moody, D wight L. . . .
Morris, Clara, ....
Nye, Edgar W
Peck, George W. ...
Phillips, Wendell,
Pierce, Franklin, President XJ. S.
Polk, James K., President IT. S.
Porter, Admiral,
Potter, Bishop H. C. .
PAOE
288
528
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288
464
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176
265
528
183-288
464
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288
176
176
464
176
464
Frontispiece
331
176
176
176
187
288
176
97
288
464
Frontispiece
116
176
368
464
305
274
464
176
176
464
308
*
Vw
/..
iLLtTSTRATTOXS.
/
-vy./ ./^tC ce^
Bandall, Samuel,
Keid, Whitelaw,
Sankey, Ira D. .
Shaw, Henry W.—**Jo8l^ Billings
Sherman, Gen. W. T.
Stedman, Edmund C,
Sheridan, Gen. Phil. .
Sherman, John,
Shillaber, Benjamin P. — "Mrs. Partington,
Smith, Charles U.— "Bill Arp,"
Spurgeon, C. H.
Stowe, Mrs, Harriet Beecher,
Talmage, T. DeWitt,
Taylor, Zachary, President XJ. S.
Trayers, W. R. .
Tyler, John, President U. S.
Vanderbilt, C. . . .
Van Buren, Martin, President U
Villard, H.
Voorhees, Daniel W.
Washington, George, President U. S.
Watterson, Henry,
Whitney, W. C. .
iy
s. .
t'C
v.. -
y
Cl
vin
PAQK
4G4
464
368
75
288
528
288
464
Frontispiece
436
FAC SIMILES OF HANDWRITING.
" Artemus Ward *' — Charles F. Browne,
" Josh Billings ''—Henry W. Shaw, .
•* Petroleum V. Nasby ''— D. R. Locke,
The '*Hawkeye Man''— Robert J. Burdette,
The '^Danbury News Man" — J. M. Bailey,
George W. Peck,
** Bill Nye"— Edgar W. Nye, .
** Mark Twain" — Samuel L. Clemens,
368
464
368
1'76
528
176
528
176
528
464
176
464
464
25
77
99
146
242
277
308
348
ILLUSTRATIONS OF ARTEMUS WARD'S PANORAxMIC
LECTURE.
Steamer Ariel, 39
Great Thoroughfare of the Imperial City of the Pacific Coast, . 40
Virginia City, Nevada, 41
Plains between Virginia City and Salt Lake, .... 42
Bird's-eye View of Salt Lake City, 43
IX
iLLtSt RATIONS.
West Side of Main Street, Salt Lake City,
The Overland Mail Coach,
The Mormon Theatre,
East Side of Main Street, Salt Lake City,
Brigham Young's Harem, .
H. C. Eimhairs Harem,
Mormon Temple, ....
Foundations of the Temple,
The Temple as it is to be, .
Oreat Salt Lake, ....
The Endowment House,
Echo Canon,
A More Cheerful View of The Desert,
Our Encounter with the Indians,
The Rocky Mountains,
The Plains of Nebraska,
The Prairie on Fire, ....
Brigham Young at Home,
The Curtain Falls for the Last Time,
MISCELLANEOUS ILLUSTRATIONS.
Niggers Don't Know Enough to Vote,
Interior of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Interior of Mr. Beecher's Study,
Would You Take Anything, Bridget ?
Ben Butler Caricatured by Nast,
Can I Trust You to Do an Errand for Me ?
Putting up a Stove Pipe,
Young Men, Ahoy!
Won't the Parson Be Surprised ?
He's a Blooded Dog, ....
Do Not Speak of It, ....
See What I Have Brought You,
Why, Grandma, You Can't,
Say, Tom, Let me Whitewash a Little?
Hold the Fort!
I Never Did Like Codfish,
How Do You Know, Uncle Jack ?
She Made Home Happy,
What Is the Matter with You, My Friend ?
Flowers and Words of Encouragement,
Mr. Spurgeon, Would You Allow Me to Speak to You ?
He Cried and Fell to the Ground,
What Do You Mean, Sir ? ...
Pace
45
4G
47
48
49
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65
GG
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THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIPRARY
ASrOf... LENOX ANL
TILDSN /OUMWATIONS
"ARTEMUS WARD."
BIOGRAPHT AND REMINISCENCES.
Charles Farrar Browne, better known to the world as "Artemus Ward," was
6om at Waterford, Oxford county, Maine, on the 26th of April, 1834, and died of
consumption at Southampton, England, on Wednesday, the Gth of March. 1867.
Artemus Ward's grandfather (Thaddeus) raised five sons in Waterford — Daniel,
Malbory, Jabez, Levi and Thaddeus, His father was Levi Browne, who died in
1847, after being justice of the peace for many years. His mother, Caroline E.
Browne, died in 1878. She was a woman of strong character, and came from good
Puritanic stock.
I once asked Artemus about his Puritanic origin, when he replied:
'* I think we came from Jerusalem, for my father's name was
Levi, and we had a Moses and a Nathan in the family; but my poor
brother's name was Cyrus; so, perhaps, that makes us Persians."
The humorist was full of happy wit even when a boy. His
mother, from whom the writer received several letters, told me
that Artemus was out very late one night at a spelling bee, and
came home in a driving snow-storm.
*'We had all retired," said Mrs. Browne, ''and Artemus went
around the liouse and threw snow-balls at his brother Cvrus' win-
dow, shouting for him to come down quicldy. Cyrus appeared in
haste, and stood shivering in his night-clothes.
""Why don't you come in, Charles? The door is open.'
"'Oh,' replied Artemus, ' I could have gotten in all right, Cyrus;
but I called you down because I wanted to ask you if you really
thought it was wrong to keep slaves.'"
Charles received his education at the Waterford school, until
family circumstances induced his parents to apprentice him to learn
the rudiments of printing in the office of the Skowhegan Clarion^
publishe<l some miles to the north of his native village. Here he
passed through the dreadful ordeal to which a printer's 'MlevIT' is
19
it SINGS OF TEB PLATFORM AUli PULPIT.
generally subjected. He always kept his temper ; and his amusing
jokes are even now related by the residents of Skowhegan.
In the spring after his fifteenth birthday, Charles Browne bade
farewell to the Skowhegan Clarion; and we next hear of him in the
office of the CarjpeirBag, edited by B. P. Shillaber (" Mrs. Parting-
ton"), In these early years young ferowneused to "set up" articles
from the pens of Charles G. Halpine ("Miles O'Reilly") and John
G. Saxe, the poet. Here he wrote his first contribution in a dis-
guised hand, slyly pat it into the editorial box, and the next day
enjoyed the pleasure of setting it up himself. The article was
a description of a FourthK)f-July celebration in Skowhegan. The
spectacle of the day was a representation of the Battle of York-
town, with George Washington and Gen. Comwallia in character.
The article pleased Mr, Shillaber, and Mr. Browne, afterward
speaking of it, said : " I went to the theater that evening, bad a
good time of it, and thought I was the greatest man in Boston."
While engaged 5n the Carpet-Bag, the subject of onr sketch
closely studied the theater and courted the society of actors ajfd
actresses. It was in this way that he gained that correct and valuable
knowledge of tlie texts and characters of the drama which enabled
him in after years to burlesque them so successfully. The humoroas
writings of Seba Smith were his models, and the oddities of "John
Phoenix " were his_ especial admiration.
ARTEMTT8 WARD, 21
Being fond of roving, Charles Browne soon left Boston, and,
^ter traveling as a journeyman printer over much of New York and
Massachusetts, he turned up in the town of Tiffin, Seneca county,
Ohio, where he became reporter and compositor, at four dollars per
'Week. After making many friends among the good citizens of
Tiffin, by whom he is remembered as a pacron of side-shows and
traveling circuses, our hero suddenly set out for Toledo, Ohio,
where he immediately made a reputation as a writer of sarcastic
paragraphs in the columns of the Toledo Commercial. He waged
a vigorous newspaper war with the reporters of the Toledo
Bladcj but, while the Blade indulged in violent vituperation,
**Artemus " was good-natured and full of humor. His column soon
gained a local fame, and every body read it. His fame even traveled
as far as Cleveland, where, in 185S, when Mr. Browne was twenty-
four years of age, Mr. J. W. Gray, of the Cleveland Plaindealer^
secured him as local reporter, at a salary of twelve dollars per week.
Here his reputation first began to assume a national character, and
it was here that they called him a " fool " when he mentioned the
idea of taking the field as a lecturer. Speaking of this circumstance,
while traveling down the Mississippi with the writer, in 1865, Mr.
Browne musingly repeated this coUoqu}':
Wise M.vx — '* Ah! you poor, foolish little girl — here is a dollar for you."
Foolish Little Girl—'* Thank you, sir; but I have a sister at home as foolish
as I am; Ciin't you give mo a dollar for her? "
Charles Browne was not successful as a news reporter, lacking
enterprise and energy, but his success lay in writing up, in a bur-
lejquo manner, well-known public atfairs like prize-fights, races,
spiritual meetings, and political gathenn<^s. His department
became wonderfully humorous, and was always a favorite with
readers whether there was anv news in it or not. Sometimes he
would have a whole column of letters from young ladies in reply to
a fancied matrimonial advertisement, and then he would have a
column of answers to general correspondents like this :
Veritas — Many make the same error. Mr. Key, who wrote the " Star Spangled
Baxujer," is not the author of Hamlet, a tragedy. lie wrote the banner business, and
assisteil in **The Female Pirate," but did m^t write Hamlet. Hamlet was written bv
a talente<l but unscrupulous man named Macbeth, afterwards tried and executed for
** murdering sleep."
YorNci Clekoym AN — Two pints of nmi, two (juarts of hot water, tea-cup of
sugar, and a Icaiun; grate ij nutmeg, stir thoroughly and drink while hot.
22 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
It was during his engagement on the Plaindealer that lie wrote,
dating from Indiana, his first comraunication^-the first published
letter following this sketch, signed " Artemus Ward,'' a sobriquet
purely incidental, but borne with the "u" changed to an "a" by
an American revolutionary general. It was here that Mr, Browne
first became, in words, the possessor of a moral show, " consisting
of three moral bares, a kangaroo (a amoozing little rascal ; 'twould
make you larf yourself to death to see the little kuss jump and
squeal), wax figures of G. Washington, &c., &c." Hundreds of
newspapers copied this letter, and Charles Browne awoke one
morning to find himself famous.
In the Plaindealer oflice, his companion, Greorge Hoyt, writes:
" His desk was a rickety table which had been whittled and gashed
until it looked as if it had been the victim of lightning. His chair
was a fit companion thereto — a wabbling, unsteady affair, some-
times with four and sometimes with three legs. But Browne saw
neither the table, nor the chair, nor any person who might be near
— nothing, in fact, but the funny pictures which were tumbling out
of his brain. When writing, his gaunt form looked ridiculous
enough. One leg hung over the arm of his chair like a great hook,
while he would write away, sometimes laughing to himself, and
then slapping the table in the excess of his mirth."
While in the office of the Plamdeale?\ Mr. Browne first con-
ceived the idea of becoming a lecturer. In attending the various
minstrel shows and circuses which came to the citv, he would fre-
quently hear repeated some story of his own which the audience
would receive with hilarity. His best witticisms came back tp him
from the lips of another, who made a living by quoting a stolen
jest. Then the thought came to him to enter the lecture field him-
self, and become the utterer of his own witticisms, the mouthpiece
of his own jests.
On the lOtli of November, 1860, Charles Browne, whose fame,
traveling in his letters from Boston to San Francisco, had now
become national, grasi)ed the hands of his hundreds of Xew York
admirers. Cleveland had throned him the monarch of mirth, and
a thousand hearts paid him tributes of adulation as he closed his
connection with the Cleveland press.
Arriving in the Empire City, Mr. Browne soon opened an engage-
ment with Vanity Fair^ a humorous paper after the manner of
ARTEMUa WARD. 23
London Punchy and ere long he succeeded Mr. Charles G. Leland as
editor. Mr. Charles Dawson Shanly says: " After Arteraus Ward
became sole editor, a position which he held for a brief period, many
of his best contributions were given to the public ; and, whatever
there was of merit in the columns of Vanity Fair from the time he
assumed the editorial charge, emanated from his pen." Mr. Browne
himself wrot« to a friend : '' Comic copy is what they wanted for
Vajiity Fair. I wrote some and it killed it. The poor paper got
to be a conundrum, and so I gave it up."
The idea of entering the field as a lecturer now seized Mr. Browne
stronger than ever. Tired of the pen, he resolved on trying the
platform. His Bohemian friends agreed that his fame and fortune
would be made before intelligent audiences. lie resolved to try it.
What should be the subject of my lecture? How shall I treat the
subject? These questions caused Mr. Browne grave speculations.
Among other schemes, he thought of a string of jests combined with
a stream of satire, the whole being unconnected — a burlesque upon a
lecture. The subject— that was a hard question. First he thought
of calling it " My Seven Grandmothers," but he finally adopted the
name of " Babes in the Woods," and with this subject, Charles
Browne was introduced to a metropolitan audience, on the evening
of I>ecember 23, 18G1. The place was Clinton Hall, which stood on
the site of the old Astor Place Opera House, where, years ago,
<K'curred the Macreadv. riot, and where now is the Mercantile
Library. Previous to this introduction, Mr. Frank Wood accom-
jKinied him to the suburban town of Norwich, Connecticut, where
lie first delivered his lecture and watched the result. The audience
was delighted, and Mr. Browne leceived an ovation. Previous to
his Clmton Hall appearance, the city was flooded with funny
placards reading:
AT
I T >: M IT S
WILI,
AVARD
SPEAK A PIECE.
<)\vinij: to a <:rreat stonn, onlv a small audience bravcMl the ele-
]iv'ni.>., and the Clinton Hall lecture was not a iinancial success.
It ronsisteil of a wandering batch of comicalities, touching upon
every thing excei)t *' The Babes." Indeed it was better described by
24 KINGS OF THE PLATFORIi AND PULPIT.
the lecturer in London, when he paid, " One of the features of my
entertainment is, that it contains so many things that don't have
any thing to do with it."
In the middle of his lecture, the speaker would hesitate, stop, and
say : " Owing to a slight indisposition, we will now have an inter-
mission of fifteen minutes." The audience looked in utter dismay
at the idea of staring at vacancy for a quarter of an hour, when, rub-
bing his hands, the lecturer would continue : " But, ah— during the
intermission I will go on with my lecture I "
Mr. Browne's first volume, entitled " Artemus Ward ; His Book,"
was published in New York, May 17, 1862. The volume was every-
where hailed with enthusiasm, and over forty thousand copies were
sold. Great success also attended the sale of his three other volumes
published in '65, '67 and '69.
Mr. Browne's next lecture was entitled " Sixty Minutes in Africa,"
and was delivered in Musical Fund Hall, Philadelphia. Behind
him hung a large map of Africa, " which region," said Artemus,
"abounds in various natural productions, such as reptiles and flowers.
It produces the red rose, the white rose and the neg-roes. In the
middle of the continent is what is called a ' howling wilderness,'
but, for my part, I have never heard it howl, nor met with any one
who has."
After Mr. Browne had created immense enthusiasm for his lect-
ures and books in the Eastern States, which filled his pockets with
plenty of money, he started, October 3, 1863, for California.
Previous to starting, he received a telegram from Thomas Maguire,
of the San Francisco Opera House, inquiring " what he would take
for forty nights in California." Mr. Browne immediately tele-
graphed back :
Brandy and water,
A. Ward.
and, though Maguire was sorely puzzled at the contents of the dis-
patch, the press got hold of it, and it went through California as a
capital joke.
Mr. Browne first lectured in San Francisco on "The Babes in
the Wood," November 13, 1863, at Pratt's Hall. T. Starr King
took a deep interest in him, occupying the rostrum, and his general
reception in San Francisco was warm.
Mr. Browne returned overland from San Francisco, stopping at
Salt Lake City. He took a deep interest in Brigham Young and the
ARTEMXrS WARD, 25
Mormons. The Prophet attended his lecture. When the writer '
lectured in the Mormon theater twenty years afterward, Brigham
Toung was present. The next day my wife and I were entertained
at the Lion House, the home of the Prophet, when. he and Hiram
Clausen gave me many reminiscences of the humorist's visit.
Mr. Browne wrote many sketches for the newspaper about the
Mormons and the rude scenes he encountered on the overland stage,
which afterward appeared in his Mormon lecture. Delving through
a trunk full of Artemus Ward's papers and MSS. to-da}^ I found this
sketch. I give it in his own handwriting. Any journalist will see,
by bis correct punctuation, that he was a man of culture. This lith-
ographed sketch shows his character. It proves that he was once a
typesetter. It is the best index to the culture and technical knowl-
edge of the humorist that could be given :
THE MISSOtTRIAN IN UTAH.
U.y^*w^^^ t^ /^ /uct^
^ jlt^'i^r^^
^ A**-^;*-^ 1^,^^^ ^ //i.^
3
I «
26 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
<:^iMX /*^ /
ARTBMU8 WARD. 27
Returning overland, through Salt Lake to the States, in the fall
of 1864, Mr. Browne lectured tigain in New York, this time on the
" Mormons," to immense audiences, and in the spring of 1865 he ^
commenced his tour through the country, everywhere drawing
enthusiastic audiences both North and South.
It was while on this tour that the writer of this sketch again
spent some time with him. *We met at Memphis and traveled down
the Mississippi together. At Lake Providence the "Indiana"
rounded up to our landing, and Mr. Brow^ne accompanied the writer
to his plantation, where he spent several days, mingling in seemmg
infinite delight with the negroes. For them he showed great fond-
ness, and they used to stand around him in crowds, listening to his
seemingly serious Jidvice. We could not prevail upon him to hunt
or to join in any of th.^ equestrian amusements w^ith the neighbor-
ing planters, but a qu. t fascination drew him to the negroes.
Strolling through the "quarters," his grave words, too deep with
luimor for darky comprehension, gained their entire confidence.
One day he called up Uncle Jeff., an Uncle-Tom-like patriarch, and
commenced in his usual vein : '' Now, Uncle Jefferson," he said,
'Mvhy do you thus pursue the habits of industry ? This course of
life is wrong — all wrong — all a base habit, Uncle Jefferson. Now
trv and break it off. Look at me, — look at Mr. Landon, the chiv-
alric young Southern plantist from New York, he toils not, neither
does he spin ; he jmrsues a career of contented idleness. If you
only thought so, Jefferson, you could live for months without per-
fonninij: any kind of labor, and at the expiration of that time feel
fresh and vigorous enough to commence it again. Idleness refreshes
the physical organization — it is a sweet boon ! Strike at the roots
of the destroying habit to-day, Jefferson. It tires you out ; resolve
to be idle ; no one should labor; he should hire others to do it for
him ;" and then he would fix his mournful eves on Jeff, and hand
ft'
him ;i dollar, while the eyes of the wonder-struck darky would
g;iz»/ in mute admiration upon the good and wise originator of the
only theory which the darky mind could appreciate. As Jeff,
went :i\vay to tell the wonderful story to his companions, and backed
it with the dollar as material proof, Artemus would cover his eyes,
and ImmuI forward on his elbows in a chuckling laugh.
'•Among the ^lormons " was delivered through the States, every-
where drawing immense crowds, llis manner of delivering his dis-
28
KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
course was iG^otesque and comical beyond description. His quaint
and sad style contributed more than any thing else to render bis
entertainment exquisitely funny. The programme was exceedingly
droll, and the tickets of admission presented the most ludicrous of
ideas. The writer presents a fac-simile of an admission ticket which
was presented to him in Natchez by Mr. Browne:
Admit
THE
IJEARER
AND
ONE
WIFE.
(^^€y?.a C^'li^^^,
A. Ward.
In the spring of 186G, Charles Browne first timidly thought of
going to Europe. Turning to Mr. Kingston one day, he asked :
'' What sort of a man is Albert Smith ? Do you think the Mormons
would be as good a subject to the Londoners as Mont Blanc was?**
Then he said: "I should like to go to London and give my lecture
in the same place. Can't it be done?"
Mr. Browne sailed for England soon after, taking with him his
Panorama. The success that awaited him could scarcely have been
anticipated by his most intimate friends. Scholars, wits, poets and
novelists came to him with extended hands, and his stay in Lon*
don w^as one ovation to the genius of American wit. Charles Beade,
the novelist, wjis his warm friend and enthusiastic admirer; and
Mr. Andrew Ilalidav introduce^:^ liim to the " Literarv Club," where
he became a great favorite. IV. . ^ J emon came to him and asked
him to become a contributor to Punchy which he did. His Punch
letters were more remarked in literary circles than any other cur-
rent matter. There was hardly a club-meeting or a dinner at which
they were not discussed. "There was something so grotesque in
the idea," said a correspondent, " of this ruthless Yankee poking
among the revered antiquities of Britain, that the beef-eating British
themselves could not restrain their laughter." The story of his
ARTEMUS WARD 29
Cncle William who " followed commercial pursuits, glorious com-
merce— and sold soap!" and his letters on the Tower and
"Chowser," were palpable hits, and it was admitted that Punch
had contained nothing better since the days of " Yellowplush."
This opinion was shared by the Tiroes^ the literary reviews, and the
gayest leaders of society. The publishers of Punch posted up his
name in large letters over their shop in Fleet street, and Artemus
delighted to point it out to his friends. About this time Mr.
Browne wrote to his friend. Jack Eider, of Cleveland :
This is the proudest moment of my life. To have been as well appreciated here,
as at home, to have written for tlie oldest comic journal in the English language,
received mention t\ itli Hood, witl^ Jerrold and Hook, and to have my picture and my
j»eudanym as common in London as New Tork, is enough for
Yours truiy,
A. Ward.
England was now thoroughly aroused to the merits of Artemus
Ward, and he set out to deliver his first lecture in Egyptian Hall.
His subject was ** The Mormons." It was the great lecture of his
life, and was made up from all of his lectures. It has in it snatches
from " Babes in the Wood" and " Sixty Minutes in Africa." This
lecture appears in this book precisely as delivered, and prepared by
myself, after hearing him deliTer it many Limes. His first London
lecture occurred Tuesday evening, November 13, 1886. Within a
week immense crowds were turned away every night, and at every
lecture his fame increased, until sickness brought his brilliant sue-
cees to an end, and a nation mourned his retirement.
On the evening of Friday, the seventh week of his engagement
at Egyptian Hall, Artemus became seriously ill, an apology was
made to a disappointed audience, and from that time the light of
one of the greatest wits of the centuries commenced fading into dark-
ness. The press mourned his retirement, and a funeral pall fell
over London. The laughing, applauding crowds were soon to see
his consumptive form moving toward its narrow resting place in
the cemetery at Kensal Green.
By medical advice, Charles Browne went for a short time to the
Island of Jersey — but the breezes of Jersey were powerless. He
wrote to London to his nearest and dearest friends — tiie members of
a literary club of which he was a member — to complain that his
** loneliness weighed on him." He was brought back, but could not
sustain the journey farther than Southcmipton. There the members
30 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
of the club traveled from London to see him — two at a time — that
he might be less lonely.
His remains were followed to the grave from the rooms of his
friend, Arthur Sketchley, by a large number of friends and admir-
ers, the literati and press of London paying the last tribute of
respect to their dead brother. The funeral sei-yices were conducted
by the Rev. M. D. Conway, formerly of Cincinnati, and the coffin
\vas temporarily placed in a vault, from which it was removed by his
American friends, and his body now sleeps by the side of his father,
Levi Browne, in the quiet cemetery at Waterford, Maine. Upon
the coffin is the simple inscrii^tion :
"CHARLES F. BROWNE,
AGED Si TEAliS,
BETTER Known to the World as 'Artemus Ward/"
His English executors were T. W. Robertson, the playwright,
and his friend and companion, E. P. Kingston. His literary executors
were Horace Greeley and liichard H. Stoddard. The humorist
left a will wliich is now in the vault of the Oxford County Probate
Court at Paris Hill, Maine. The writer paid a special trip to Paris *
Hill to see this will. It is inscribed on two sheets of heavy parchment
about two feet square in the most elaborate style of the scrivener's
art. The will was made in England, and was sent over in a tin box,
about the shape of a cigar box, on which is stamped the British
coat of -arms and the letters, " V. R."
The will begins thus: "This is the will of me, Charles Farrar
Browne Ward, known as ' Artemus Ward.' " The testator directs
that his body shall be buried in Waterford Upper Village, but in a
codicil changes the place of his entombment to Waterford Lower
Village. He bequeaths his library to the best scholar in the schools
at Waterford Upper Village, and his manuscripts to R. H. Stoddard
and Charles Dawson Stanley. After making several bequests to
his mother and relatives, he gives the balance of his property to
found " an asylum for worn-out printers." Horace Greeley to be
the sole trustee, and his receipt to be the only security to be
demanded of him.
AETEMUS WARD. 31
An Oxforti county man, referring to the will, said:
** Eitljer Artemus intended that his wiU should be a post-mortem
joke or be was robbed ; for upon his death a very small property
was found — hardly enough to pay the minor bequests, let alone
founding a printers' hospital."
R. II. Stoddard and Charles Dawson Stanley never asked for the
humorist's manuscripts. George W. Carleton, his publisher, had
ihera, and finally turned them over to the writer, who has them now
in his possession. T. W. Robertson, the playwright, and his friend
and companion, E. P. Hingston, were his English executors. It
seems sad, that, after suoh careful provisions on the part of the
humorist, on the writer of this, memoir should devolve the loving
work of transmitting many of the humorists' best creations to
posterity.
Besides other bequests, Artemus gave a large sum of money to
his little valet, a bright little fellow ; though subsequent denouments
revealed the fact that he left only a six-thousand-dollar house in
Yonkers. There is still some mystery about his finances, which
may one day be revealed. It is known that he withdrew $10,000
from the Pacific Bank to deposit it with a friend before going to
England ; besides this, his London Punch letters paid a handsome
profit. Among his personal friends were George Hoyt, the late
Daniel Setchell, Charles W. Coe, and Mr. Mullen, the artist, all of
whom he used to style " my friends all the year round."
Personallv, Charles Farrar Browne was one of the kindest and
most affectionate of men, and history does not name a man who was
so universallv beloved bv all who knew him. It was remarked, and
truly, that the death of no literary character since Washington
Irving caused such general and widespread regret.
In stature he was tall and slender. His nose was prominent —
outlined like that of Sir Charles Napier, or Mr. Seward ; his eyes
brilliant, small, and close together; his mouth large, teeth white
and pearly; fingers long and slender; hair soft, straight and blonde ;
complexion florid ; mustache large, and his voice soft and clear. In
bearing, he moved like a natural born gentleman. In his lectures
he never smiled — not even while he was giving utterance to the
most delicious absurdities; but all the while the jokes fell from his
lips as if he were unconscious of their meaning. Wliih* writing his
lectures, he would laugh and chuckle to himself continually.
32 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM Aim PULPIT
There was one peculiarity about Charles Browne — he never made
an enemy. Other wits in other times have been famous, but a
satirical thrust now an^ then has killed a friend. Diogenes was the
wit of Greece, but when, after holding up an old dried fish to draw
away the eyes of Anaximcnes' audience, he exclaimed " See how an
old fish is more interesting than Anaximenes," he said a funny
thing, but ho stabbed a friend. When Charles Lamb, in answer to
the doting mother's question as to how he liked babies, replied,
" b-b-boiled, madam, boiled !" that mother loved him no more ; and
when John Randolph said " thank you ! " to his constituent who
kindly remarked that he had the pleasure of '' passing " his house,
it was wit at the expense of friendship. Tlie whole English school
of wits — with Douglas Jerrold, Hood, Sheridan, and Sidney Smith,
indulged in repartee. Tbey were parasitic wits. And so with the
Irish, except that an Irishman is generally so ridiculously absurd in
his replies as to excite only ridicule. " Artemus Ward " made you
laugh and love him too.
The wit of '* Artemus Ward " and '* Josh Billings " is distinc-
tively American. Lord Kames, in his " Elements of Criticism,"
makes no mention of this species of wit, a lack which the future
rhetorician should look to. Wo look in vain for it in the English
language of past ages, and in other languages of modern time. It
is the genus American. When Artemus says, in that serious man-
ner, looking admiringly at his atrocious pictures, " I love pictures —
and I liave many of them — beautiful photographs — of myself," you
smile, and when he continues, " These pictures were painted by the
old masters : they painted these pictures and then they — they
expired," you hardly know what it is that makes you laugh out-
right, and when Josh Billings says in his Proverbs, wiser than Sol-
omon's, " You'd better not know so much, than know so many
things that ain't so," the same vein is struck, but the text-books fail
to explain scientifically the cause of our mirth.
The wit of Charles Browne is of the most exalted kind. It is
only scholars and those thoroughly acquainted with the subtlety of
our language who fully appreciate it. His wit is generally about
historical personages like Cromwell, Garrick or Shakespeare, or a
burlesque on different styles of writing, like his French novel, when
^' hifalutin " phrases of tragedy come from the clodhopper who —
'* sells soap and thrice — refuses a ducal coronet."
ARTEMU8 WARD. 33
Mr. Browne mingled the eccentric evep» in bis business letters.
Once he wrote to his publisher, Mr. G. W. Carleton, who had made
some alterations in his MSS.: '' The next book I write I'm going to
get you to write." Again he wrote in 1863 :
Dear Carl: — You and I will get out a book next spring, which will knock spots
out of all comic books in ancient or modern history. And the fact that you are going
to take hold of it convinces me that you have one of tlie most massive intellects of
this or any other epoch. Yours, my pretty gazelle,
A. Ward. •
When Charles F. Browne died he did not belong to America,
for, as with Irving and Dickens, the English language claimed him.
Greece alone did not suffer when the current of Diogenes' wit flowed
on to death. Spain alone did not mourn when Cervantes, dying,
left Don Quixote the '* knight of la Mancha." When Charles Lamb
ceased to tune the great heart of humanity to joy and gladness, his
funeral was in everv Enorljsh and American household, and when
Charles Browne took up his silent resting ])lace in the somber
shades of Kensal Green, jesting ceased, and one great Anglo-Amer-
ican heart,
Like a muiBed drum went beating
Funeral marches to his irravc.
AKTEMI'S WARD'S PAXOEAMA.
(ILLrSTRATKD AS DELIVKUED AT E(;YPT1AN' HALL, J^OXDON.)
PREFATORY NOTE.
BY 31KLVILLE D. LA^•DO^' ('•ELI PERI^INS").
The fame of Artemus Ward culminated in liis last lectures at Egyptian Had,
Piccadilly, the liual one breaking off abruptly on tiie evening of the 23d of January,
l>:j67. That niglit the great humorist batle farewell to the public, and retired fror.i
the stage todiel Ilis^Iormon lectures were ininicnsLly successful in England. His
fame became the talk, of journalists, sav:uits and statesmen. Every one seemed to be
affected differently, l)ut every one felt and acknowledged his powcrl " The Honora-
ble Robert Lowe," sa3'S ^Ir. E. P. Ilingston, Artenms AVard's bosom friend, "attended
the Monnon lecture one evening, and laughed as hihiriously as any one in the room
Tlie next evening Mr. John Bright happened to be present. With the exception of
one or two o<*casional smiles, he listened with grave attenti(m."
Tlie L/mdon Standard, in describing his first lecture in London, aptly siiid.
".Vrtemus dropped his jokes faster than the meteors t)f last night succeeded eacli
other in the sky. And there wjis this resemblance betw« en the Hashes of his humor
and the flights of the meteors, that in each case one looked for jokes or meteors, but
34 KINO 8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
lliey always came just in the place that one least expected to find them. Half the
enjoyment of the evening Iji^^ to some of those present, in listening to the hearty
cachinnation of the people, who only found out the jokes some two or three minutes
after they were made, and who laughed apparently at some grave statements of fact.
Reduced to paper, the showman's jokes are certainly not brilliant; almost their whole
effect lies in their seeming impromptu character. They are carefully led up to, of
course; hut they are uttered as if they are mere afterthoughts of which the speaker is
liardly sure."
His humor was so entirely fresh and unconventional, that it took his hearers by
surprise, and charmed them, lli.s failing health compelled him to abandon the lect-
ure after about eight or ten'weeks. IndcHid, during that brief period, he was once or
twice compelled to dismiss his audience. Frequently he sank into a chair and nearly
fainted from the exertion of dressing. Fie exhibited the greatest anxiety to be at his
post at the ai)point(;d time, and scrupulously exerted himself to the utmost to entertain
his auditors. It was not because he was sick that the i)ublio was to be disappointed,
or that their enjoyment was to bo dimiuLshcd. During the la.st few weeks of his
lecture-giving, he steadily abstained from accepting any of the numermis invitations
he received. Had he lived through the following London fashionable season, there is
little doubt that the room at Egyptian Hall would have been thronged nightly. The
English aristocracy have a tine, delicate sense of humor, and the success, artistic
and pecuniary, of "Artenms Ward," would have rivaled that of the famous '*Lord
Dundreary." There were many stui>id people who did not understand the "fun"
of Artemus Ward's books. There were many stupid people wlio did not understand
the fun of Artemus Ward's lecture on the Mormons. Highly respectable ptiople — the
pride of their pari.sh — when they heard of a ledurc "upon the Mormons," expected to
see asolemn person, full of old siiwsand new statistics, who would denounce the sin of
polygamy — anil rave without limit against Mormons. These uncomfortable Chris-
tians do not like humor. They drr?ad it as a certain personage is Sixid to dread lioly
w^ater, and for the same reason that thieves fear policemen — it finds them out. When
these good idiots heard Artemus offer, if they did not like the lecture in Piccadilly, to
give them free? ticki^ for the Siune lecture in California, when he next visited that
country, they turned to each other indignantly, and said, "What use are tickets for
California to us? We are not going to California. Xo! we are too g<"Kj<l, too
respectable to go so far fmm home. The man is a fool!" One of these vest rjincn
complained to the doorke<'p<T, and denotuiced the lecturer as an imposter — "and,"
said the wealthy parishioner, *'a.s lor the panorama, it is the wors<' painted thing I
ever sfiw."
Duriftg the lectun;, Artennis was always as sohmin as the grave. Sometimes he
would seem to forget liis audience, and stand for sevend seconds ga/ing intently at
his panorama. Then he would start up and remark apologetically, " I am very fond
of looking at my pictures." His dress was always the same — evening toilet. Ilia
manners were polished and his voice gentle and hesitating. 3Iany who had read of
tlieman who spelled joke with a " g" looked for a smart old man with a shrewd
cock eye, dressed in vulgar velvet and gold, and they were hardfy prepared to 8<*e
the accomplished gentleman with slim physique and delicate white hands.
The letters of Artemus Ward in Puin-h, from the tomb of Shakespeare and the
London Tower, had made him famous in England, and in his audience were the
nobility of the realm. His first lecture ia I^)n(h)n was delivered at Egyptian Hall,
AUTRMtrs WARD.
3G
used was tiiat whicli liail been occupied by
in irliich Mr. Arliiur Smith fonnerly miidc
Tuesday, November IS, 1866. The r
Mr. Arthur Sketchley, adjoining the
his appearcnces.
Punctually at eiglit o'clock be would st«p, hesitatingly, before the audience, and,
nibbing bis bands basMully, commence the lecture.
THE LECTURE.
You are entirely wclcniiie, liiiliea imtl gentlemen, to my little picture-
slioji.
I ct'iiiiin't give you ii vei y clt'iir idea of the Mnrmons^ — auil T'tiili —
iiii'i Ihe jiliiina — ami t!ie Rocky Slountiilna — witlinut opeiiing a pic-
ture-shop and tiieri'fitre I open one,
I don't expect to do great things here — but I huve thought that if I
could make money enough to buy me a passage to Xew Zealand I should
feel that I had not lived in vain.
36 KINQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
I don't want to live in vain. IM rather live in Mar-
gate— or her^. But I wish when the Egyptians built this hall they
had given it a little more ventilation.
If you should be dissatisfied with any thing here to-night — I will
admit you all free in Xew Zealand — if you will come to me there for the
orders. Any respectable cannibal will tell you where I
live. This shows that I have a forgiving spirit.
I really don't care for money. I only travel round to see the world
and to exhibit my clothes. These clothes I have on were a
great success in America.
How often do large fortunes ruin young men I I should like to
be ruined, but I can get on very well as 1 am.
I am not an artist. I don't jiaint myself though perhaps if I were
a middle-aged single lady I should yet I have a passion for pictures.
I have had a great many pictures — photographs — taken of myself.
Some of them are very pretty — rather sweet to look at for a
short time — and as I said before, I like them. Pve alwavs loved
pictures.
I could draw on wood at a very tender age. When a mere child I
once drew a small cart-load of raw turnips over a
wooden bridge. The j)eople of the village noticed me. I d r e w
their attention. They said I had a future before me. Up to that
time I had an idea it was behind me.
Time passed on. It always does, by the way. You may possi-
bly have noticed that Time passes on. It is a kind of way
Time has.
I became a man. 1 haven't distinguished myself at all as an artist —
but I have always been more or less mixed up with art. I have an
uncle who takes photographs — and 1 have a servant w h o
takes any thing he can get his hands on.
AVhen I was in Ilome Rome in New York State I mean a
distinguished sculpist wanted to sculp me. But I said "No." I saw
through the designing man. My model once in his hands — he would
have flooded the market with my busts and I couldn't stand it to see
every body going round with a bust of me. Every body would want one
of course — and wherever I slu)uld go I should meet the educated classes
with my bust, taking it home to their families. This would he
more than m y m o d e s t y c o u 1 d s t a n d and I s h o u 1 d
have to return to A ni e r i <! a where my creditors are.
I like art. I admire dramatic art — although I failed as an actor.
It was in my schoolboy days that I failed as an actor. The play
was *• the Ruins of Pompeii." T j) 1 ayed the ru ins. It was not
ARTEMUS WARD. 37
a very successful performance — l;::l it was better than the ^'Burning
Mountain." lie was not good. He was a bad Vesuvius.
The remembrance often makes me ask — '^ Where are the boys of my
youth ?'* I assure you tliis is not a conundrum. Some are amongst you
here some in America some are in jail.
Hence arises a most touching question — '' Where are the girls of my
vouth ? " Some are married some would like to be.
Oh my Maria ! Alas ! she married another. They frequently do.
I hope she is haj)py — because I am.* Some people are not happy. I
have noticed that.
A gentleman friend of mine came to me one day with tears in his
eyes. I said, '* Why these weeps?" He said he had a mortgage on his
farm — and wanted to borrow £200. I lent him the money — and he went
away. Some time after he returned with more tears. He said he must
leave me forever. I ventured to remind him of the £200 he borrowed.
He was much cut up. I thought I would not be hard upon him — so told
him I would throw oif one hundred pounds. He brightened — shook my
hand — and said — *' Old friend — I won't allow you to outdo me in liber-
ality ril throw off the other hundred."
As a manager I was always rather more successful than as an actor.
Some years ago 1 engaged a celebrated Living American Skeleton for
a tour through Australia. He was the thinnest man I ever saw. He
was a splendid skeleton. He didn't weigh any thing scarcely and I
said to myself — the people of Australia will flock to see this tremendous
ruriositv. It is a loncj vova;]^e — as you know — from Xew York to Mel-
iKuirne — and to my utter surprise the skeleton had no sooner got out to
sea than he commenced eating in the most horrible manner. He had
never been on the ocean before — and he said it agreed with him 1
thought so! 1 never saw a man eat so much in my life. Beef —
mutton — iK)rk he swallowed them all like a shark and between
meals he was often discovered behind barrels eating hard-boiled eggs.
The result was that, when we reached Melbourne, this infamous skeleton
weighed 04 pounds more than I did!
I thought I was ruined but I wasn't. 1 took him on to Califor-
nia another very long sea voyage and when I got him to San
Fnm<:i>co I e x h i b i t e d li i in as a fat ni a n.
• " Dfcawse I am!"' -(Spoken with a sijrh.) It was a joke which always told. Arteraus
never failed to use it in his " Babe3 in the Wood " lecture, und the *' Sixty Minutes in Africa,*'
ma weU as in the Mormon story. «
38 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
This story hasn't any thing to do with my entertainment, I know
but one of the principal features of my entertainment is that it
contains so many things that don't have any thing to do with it.
My orchestra is small but I am sure it is very good — so far as it
goes. I give my pianist ten pounds a night — and his
washing.
I like music. I can't sing. As a singest I am not a success. I am
saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder
even than I am.
The other night some silver-voiced young men came under my window
and sang — ''Come where my love lios dreaming." I didn't go. I
didn't think it would be corrcM-t.
I found music very soothing when I lay ill with fever in Utah and
I was very ill 1 was fearfully wasted. My face was hewn down to
nothing — and my nose was so sharp I didn't dare to stick it into other
people's buKinesH — for fear it would stay there — and I should
never get it again. And on those dismal days a Mormon lady she
was married — tho' not so mu(;h so as her husband — he had fif-
teen other wives she usckI to sing a balhid commencing " Sweet bird
— do not fly away!" and I told her I wouldn't. She played the
accordion divinely — accordingly I j)raised her.
I met a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth — not a tooth in hishoad
yet that man could play on tho bass drum better
than any man I ever met. lie kept a hotel. They have queer
hotels in Oregon. I remember one where they gave me a bag of oats for
a ])illow 1 had night mares of course. In the morning the
hmdlonl said — IIow do you feel — old boss — hay? 1 told him I felt
my oats.
Permit me now to qnictly state that altho* I am here with mj cap and
bells, lam also here with some serious descriptions of the Mormons —
their manners — their customs and while the pictures I shall present
to your notice are by wo means works of art — they are painted from pho-
tographs actually taken on the spot — and I am sure I need not informany
)>eraon present who was ever in the Territory of Utah that they are as
faithful as they could jmssibly l)e.
I went to rjreat Salt Lake City by way of ('alifomia.
I -jyont to California on the steamer *' Ariel.'*
ARTEMUS WARD.
39
Oblige me by calmly gazing on the steamer '" Ariel " and
when yon go to California be sure and go on some
other steamer because the "Ariel" isn't a very good one.
When I reached tho "Ariel" — at pier No. 4 — New Vork — I found
the passengers in a state of great confasion about their things — wliiiOi
STEAMER ARIEL.
were being thrown around by the ship's porters in a. manner at once
dumaging and idiotic. So gm:it wjis the e.\citt;nR'nt — my fr;iyilc form
w;n Kmawlicl this way — and jammed tluit way — tilt iin;dly I was shoved
into a flat 0- roil n I which was oi-uiiiiiod by I wo niiddic-iigud fcniulcs — wlm
$aid, " Base man — leave um^ 0, k'livc us!" I left them 0 li
— I left them!
\\\- r.-arhed .\capul«.oii tliocoasl of }.\l-\\.:o in <!u<- lime. Nalliing -f
>j,.-.i;d iuuna .»rurred :.t .V;;ipidc<, .,iily snme of llir Mvxirui.
Udiusari; M-ry hvauiiful. Tht-y all havi; ljiilli;im bhiuk iiuir haii
40
KIXOS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
"black as starless niglif if I may quote from the "Fam-
ily Herald." It don't curl. A Mexican lady's hair never curls
it is straight as an Indian's. Some people's hair won't curl under
any circumstances. My hair won't curl under two Bhillinge.*
The Chinese form a, large element in the population of San Francisco
— and I went to the Chinese Theatre.
Mils
Bimsss^^:
. rr»>vtT«»>rr€t>:rf>>> >> ♦ > > > -J ,"
A Chinese i)ltty often lasts two montlis. Commencing at the hero's
birth, it is cheerfully conducted from week to week till he is either
killed or married.
•"TTnilcrTwoShminKa." Artcmuaiilivnj's worchla hair Btralfcht until attor
UlDPwIn Salt Lake City. So much of ItdroiipciloR Oiirlnghis r«cn very that heb
Batisfloil with tUe long lucairiT aiJiicurance his c<mnterniD<.'0 prcBPuted whi>n ho siir
the luoliinB-elnsB. AftcrhiBlrt^urCBtUicSalt LakeCily Theatre hedid not 1c?l-I
until wo had crossed Iho Kocliy Mountains and arrived ut Denver City, the capitt
rado. On the afternoon howastii ieuturetherc, Imet him coming out □( an iroi
store with a small parcel In h's liand. " I want you. old teUow," be said; " I hav
r<jund thci'ityfur tbuni. and I'l-e prt tliom nt last." ''Rot what?" tasked. "
cnrllnK-lonuN. I iim iruiiiK '<> have my hair cm-led ti> htutnroin to-nlicht. 1 nipi
the plainn inciirls. (■'■inc home with m<: and try tci eni-1 It for ne. I don't want tn
idiot or aliarbcrtiiHr laughed ui." 1 |iliiyi'd Iticpart iiC frltciir. i'ubst.iiiiciitly I
Ifia own " curlJst," as ho jihraiivi] It. Fium ttint dpy forth Arteniua was a curly -hail
il of Coio-
a monger's
e been all
ARTEMUS WARD.
41
The night I was there & Chinese comii; vocalist sang a Chinese comic
Bong. It took him six weeks to finish it — but as my time was limited I
tent away at the expiration of 215 versed. There were 11,000 verses to
ihis song ^ the chorus being "Tnral lural ilural, ri fol day" which
was repeated twire at the end of eiich verse making — as yon will
It once see — the appalling miinbcr of 52,000 " tnral Inral durat, ri fol
davfl " and the man still lives.
'.•J^JfJ^.*J>-J>A>J>-A.^^AMtMJi>JtAJ^J'J.-
iyrrf^immmmmm^immfifis
Virginia City — in tin
-V wonderful little uity
'>ilvLT regions the min
millions of solid silv
.il-mi the size of ordi
■ i-i'o with mules. Tl
Oiu' hundred and
i;.-^..^eI!iv«T silver mil
wi.rl.l.
The great Amciir.
frightfully gloomy ;<1
bright new State of Nevada.
— right in tlie heart of the famous Washoe
?s of wlii(di annuallyin-odnecover twenty-five .
nu-Hed
r. This silver is riu-Hed into solid bri
ary house-bricks — and carted off to Siin Fr
0 road.soCtcn swarm wiiii those silver wagons.
'cveiity-fivD miles to the east of this place are
I's— wliiuh an; sn]>poscd to be thu richest in
1 D.'serl i
mter-tiiiie
■lliede^
43
KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
save tlie miaerablo beings wlio live in wretched huts and have charge of
the horses and mules of the Overland Mail Company.
Plahis Beliveen Virginia City and Salt Lake. — This picture is a
great work of art. It is an oil painting — done in petroleum. It
is by the old masters. It was tlic last thing they did before dying.
They did this and then they expired.
The most wlob ruled iirtistsuf London are so delighted with this
liictiiro tluit Ihcycomc t > tlio hall ovory day to gaze at it. I wish y on
were nearer to il — m y<m could see it better. I wish I could take it to
•yoiti- residences lunl let you see it by daylight. Some of the greatest
artists in London conic lierc every n ion I'lnj; before daylight with lanterns
lo look :it it. Tliey say ihey never saw any thing like it
before ami lliey Jiojio tliey never shull again,
Wlion I lifst showed this picture in New York, the audiences were
so entbui^iiistic in tlieir admimtion of this picture that the y called
fiu' tile iiilist — —-and when im a]itx?arci] tliey threw brick-
bats at liim.
ARTEMUS WARD. 43
A bird's-eye view of Great Salt Lake City the Btrange city in
the desert about which so much lias been Iieai'd the city of the people
who call themselves Saints. .
I know there is much interest takeu in thoGC remarkable people —
ladies and gentlemen and I have thought it better to make the .
purely deecriptive part of my entertainment entirely eeriouB. 1
will not — then — for the next ten minutes — confine myself to my sub-
ject.
■i^j^j^j^MJti'MAi-j'mmsmsmi'j^.'d
Some scvonteuTi yoar.s ago a small liimci of Mnrinoiis — headed by
Brighani Y(>iin,;r — fOtnnn>iiccil in the present thrifty metropolis of
L'uli. Tlic poi)iil;iliori..f the Territory uf UlaJi isovcr 10(1,(100— cliiefly
Murnious and tliey are iriereasiiif;; iit tlie rate of from five to ten
thousand aiiniiidly. Tliu coiiveris to MormoTiium now are almost exclu-
yjv^ly .■..hfiiird {.. Kh^li.!! iind (li^nii^iiis. WmIi^s and Cornwall haveeoii-
r,ril,iLl.'.| hii-rlylnlli,. poi.iiladun .if I'dli dnHji- the U^i fi'W veur.-.
The |>oi.nlali«li of Creat Salt I,akc Cily U i-OJK.O. The sheet, are ei-lit
44 KTN68 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
rods wide and are neither flagged nor paved. A stream of pure mount-
ain spring water courses through eacli street and is conducted into the
gardens of tlie Mormons. The houses are mostly of adobe, or sun-dried
brick, and j)resent a neat and comfortable appearance. They are usually
a story and a half high. Now and then you see a fine modern house in
Salt Lake City, but no house that is dirty, shabby and dilapidated ;
because there are no absolutely poor people in Utah. Every Mormon
has a nice garden, and every Mormon has a tidy dooryard. Neatness is a
great characteristic of the Mormons.
The Mormons profess to believe that they are the chosen people of
God they call themselves Latter-day Saints and they call us
people of the outer world Gentiles. They say that Mr. Brigham Young
is a prophet — the legitimate successor of Joseph Smith — who founded
the Mormon religion. They also say they are authorized — by special
revelation from heaven — to marry as many wives as they can comfort-
ably support.
This wife-system they call plurality. The world calls it polygamy.
That at its best it is an accursed thing, I need not of course inform you
but you will bear in mind that lam here as a rather cheerful
reporter of what I saw in Utah and I fancy it isn't at all neces-
sary for me to grow virtuously indi<inant over something we all know is
hideously wrong.
You will be surprised to hear — I was amazed to see — that among the
Mormon women there are some few persons of education — of positive
cultivation. As a class, the Mormons are not an educated people, but they
are by no means the community of ignoramuses so many writers have
told us thev were.
The valley in which they live is splendidly favored. They raise
immense crops. They have mills of all kinds. They have coal, lead and
silver mines. All they eat, all they drink, all they wear they can pro-
duce themselves, and still have a great abundance to sell to the gold
regions of Idaho on the one hand and the silver regions of Nevada on
the other.
The president of this remarkable community the head of the
Mormon church is Brigham Young. lie is called President
Young — and Brother Brigliam. lie is about 54 years old, altho* he
doesn't look to be over 45. He has sandy hair and whiskers, is of
medium height, and is a little inclined to corpulency. lie Wiis born in
the State of Vermont. I lis power is niore absolute than that of any liv-
ing sovereign. Yet he uses it with such consummate discretion that his
people are almost madly devoted to him, and that they would cheerfully
die for him if they thought the sacrifice were demanded, I can not doubt,
ARTBMUS WARD.
45
Ho is a man of enormous wealth. One-tenth of every thing sold in
the Territorj- of Utah goes to the church and Mr. Brigh am Young
is the church. It is supposed that ho speculates with these funds
at all events, he is ono of the wealthiest men now hving worth sev-
eral millions, without doubt. He is a bold — bad man but that he is
also a man of extraordinary administrative ability, no one can doubt who
has watched his astounding career for the past ten years. It is only
fair for mc to add that he treated me with marked kindness during my
sojourn in Utah.
The H>*( iS'iVe of Main Street — Salt Lake City — including a view
■ ■f tbc Salt Ijike Hotel. It is a temperance hotel,* I prefer temperance
' they (;ell worse liquor than other kind of
lotels-
|"-mnre Hxtrl." At the dote i
vistt, there inia only one place In Salt T.aku
City «-hi-iv«in«ia'lflnk wnimllcHTPil iHljOBolil. Brlgham Timn^ himself owned tho prop-
• rty, iin>l voii'l<i1 the liiiiior I>y whDlciuile, not permitting uny »t It tii be drimk on the prem-
i-<-s. it wax ;k •-••arsp, infcHnr kiiiil of whisky, known In Salt Lake as "Valley Tan." ThmUKh-
"Utthei-lty IlK-mwasnodrinkins-lwr nor UlUard room.so farasl amnnarc. Butadiiak
uiitbe»ly c<iuhlniK^y!>lic huduton^of the hard-goods stores. In the buck office bcblnd the
pill' of niutuliiB>iccpaiii(,orntiinuor Ih" dry-goods stores, In the littlo parlor In the roAroF
ilf Imlwiot cailfi. At tho t'nscnt timr I lK'lle\'e that thcro ore two or three open liars In Salt
\a'-<: llrlirhai:! Voititt luvhix nw^cnix ' 1 Ih.' rlichtiit the "Saints" to " lliiuor up" ivciwiiin-
all). Il'it whateviT other fiiilliii,-^ tlii^:' mity huvr, liilemi'eranco can not tie lairt to their
' tiumi'. Am'ini the Miirtn<>ti.j there nr,.- uo ]>tiiiiH'n, mi gnmblers ntut no drimknnln
46 KINGB OF THE tLAlFORM AJfD PCLPIT.
hotels. But the Salt Lake Hotel sella none nor ia'thereahar
in all Salt Lake City but I found when I was thirsty — and I gen-
erally am — that I could get Bome very good brandy of one of tho ciders
— on tho sly — and I never on any account allow my businesa to inter-
fere with my drinking.
There is the Overland Mail Coach that ia, tho den on wheels in
whicli we liavo been crammed for the past ten days — and ten nights.
Those of you wlio have been in Newgate*
and stayed there any length of time
as visi to r s can realize how I felt.
The American Overland Mail Route oommeiices at Sacriuiionto, Cali-
fornia, and enda at Ateliison, Kanuiis, Tho distance Ik two tlumwaiid two
hundred miles but yon go part of the way by rail. The Pacific
Bailway is now completed from Sacramento, California, to Fulsom,
• •■ /(.rn fi, AVwvotf." The manner In «-hk'h ArU-
m« uttered thi,- J.
kp w.i» iHviiltorb-
HiontorihcwnWii
i'.l.usifwii.hhiKto
call back tliut wlii^ll he luul suld. Th<' n|.i>luu»! »a.« u
rail lag ly ii|iniarluu
ARTKMUS WAItD.
California, which only leaves two tliousand two hundred and eleven
miles to go by coach. This broakft the monotony itcamo
very near breaking my back.
The Mormon Theatre. — This edilice in the oxHiisive property of Brig-
ham Yoiinff. It will (■()nifi)rlably liolil 3, (MW persons — ami I beg yon will
b<'liovc mo when I inform you that ita interior is qnitc an l>rilliant as tliat
"f any theater in Ijonilini,
Tlie actors urn all Mormon amateurs, who charge nothing fur their
services,
Yoii miiBt know that very little money is taken at the doors of this
theater. The Mormons mostly pay in grain — and all Korts of articles.
The night I gave my little lecture theit', among my receipts were
com — flour — pork — cheese — chickens on foot and in the shell.
One family went in on a live pig and a man attempted to pass
a "yaller dog" at the box otlice — but my agent repulsed him. One
oiTered nie ii doll for admission another infant's clothing. I refused
t„ lake that as a gonoral rule I do refuse.
In ihe middle of the parquet — in a rocking chair — wiih liU liat on —
sits Brigliam Young. When the play drags — he cither goes out or fulls
into a tranquil eleop.
48 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND Pl'LI'IT.
A portion of the dress- circle is set apart for the wives of Brigham
Young. From ten to twenty of them aro usuallj' present. His c Ii i 1-
dren fill the entire galler y — and more too.
T}ie Eagt Side of Main Street — Stilt Lake Oily — with a view of the
Couftcil Buildinff. Tho Legislaiure of Utah nieeta ihere. It is like all
legislative bodies. *rhuy meet this winter to repeal tlie Jaws which tliey
mot and made last winter and they will meet next winter to repeal
the laws which they metand made this winter,
I dislike to speak about it but it was in Utah that I
made tho great speech of my life. I wisli yon could liavc heard it. I
have a fine education. You may have noticed it. I'speaksi^c
different languages London — Chatham — ■ and Dover Mar-
gate— Brighton — and Hastings. My parents sold a cow and sent me
to college when I was r[nito young. During the vacation I used to teaelt
a school of whales — and there's where I learned to spout. I don't
expect applause for a little thing like that. I wish you could have heard
that speech, however. If Cicero he's dead now ho has gone
from us but if old Cias* could have heunl thai, effort it would
'"OldClM." Hero agalD no description cmi oilLiiuntcly iiifurm thuroiulrr cif UiedroUerj-
wblch chuacterlzed the lecturer. His reference to Clccni \raa made in the miist lusubrioiu
manner, a* it ho really deplorad hia death and valunl him as ft scboulFcllow lovod and loM.
AETEVUS WARD. 49
have given him the rinderpest. I'll toll you how it was. There are sta-
tioueil ill Uiiih two regiments of U, S. troopa the 2Ist from Califor-
nia and the 37th from Nevada. Tiie 30-oDesters asked me to present a
stand of colors to the 37-Hters, and I did it in a speech so abounding in
eloquence of a bold and brilliant character and also some sweet talk
real pretty shop-keeping talk that I worked the enthn-
siusm of those soldiers up to such a pitch — that they came
very near shooting me on the spot.
Brigham Vtitiiifi's Ifarem. These are the houses of Brigham Young.
The lirstone on t hi- right is t.lio Lion IIoiisi; — so called bocanse acronch-
ing stone lion iidonis the central front window. Tiie adjoining small
Imilding is Brigliam Vcning's office — and where he receives his visitors.
Tile large hoiifc in tlio center of the pi(rture — ivliich displays a huge
ln'c-hive — U I'alled the lii'O lIoLise. The bee-liive is supposed to bo sym-
U.lii'id.,f lli.'iudu>lrv .if the Mormons. Mrs. Brigham Young the first
— niiw f[Liiic an uhl liidy — lives herewith her children. None of the
other wiwa of tin- Prophet live here. In the rear are the school-houses
where Itripbam V..iiiig'r; children arc cdiiciit.-d.
Krighani Young lias two hundred wives. Just think of that!
Oblige me liy thinking of tlnit. That is — he baa eighty actual wives
and ho i^: ijpiriinnny married to one hundred and twenty more. Those
50 KmOS OF THE PLATFORM AND PVLPTT.
spiritual marriages as the Mormons call tlicm are con-
tracted with aged widows — who think it a great honor to be sealed
the Mormons call it being sealed — — to the Prophet.
So we may say he has two hundred wives. He loves not wisely
-^but two hundred well. He is dreadfully married . He's the
most married man I ever saw in my life.
I saw his mother-in-law while I was there. lea n't exactly tell
you how many there is of her — but it's a good deal. It strikes
me that one mother-in-law is about enough to have in a family — unless
you're very fond of excitement.
A few days before my arrival in Utah, Brigham was married again to
a young and really pretty girl but he says he shall stop now. He
lold me confidentially that he shouldn't get married any more. He says
thjit all he wants now is to live in peace for the remainder of his days —
and have his dying pillow soothed by the loving hands of his family.
Well — that's all right that's all right — T suppose but if
all hi ^ family soothe his dying pillow — he'll have to
go out-doors to die.
By the way — Shakespeare indorses polygamy. He speaks of the
Merry Wives of Windsor. How many wives did Mr. Windsor
have? But we will let this pass.
Some of these Mormons have terrific families. I lectured one night
by invitation in the Mormon village of Provost but during the day
I rashly gave a leading Mormon an order admitting liimsclf and family.
I I w a s b e f o r e I knew t h a t h e was much in-a r r i e d
and they filled the room to overflowing. It was a great success
but I didn't get any money.
ARTBMUS WARD.
51
Heber 0. KimbalV^i Harem. — Mr. H, C, KimbaH is the first vice-preai-
dent of the Mormon church, and would, consequently, succeed to the full
presidency on Brigham Young's death.
Brother Kimball isa gay and festive cuaa, of Bome seventy summers
or some'ers thereabout. He has one thousand head of cattle
und a hundred head of wives. He saya they are awful eaters.
Mr. Kimball had a son a. lovely young man who was married
to ten interuating wives. But one day while he was nbsent from
liomf these ton wives went out walking with a^and-
sumo young man — which so enraged Mr. KinibaHs sou — w^iich
niui.li' .Mr. Kiinhall'iiflon so jealous — that he shot himself with a horso
pistol.
The doctor who attended him avcry sciontilic man informed
me that the bullet entered the iuuer parallelogram of his diai)hrugniatic
52 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT, ,
\
thorax, superinducing membraneous hemorrhage in the outer cuticle of
his basiliconthamaturgist. It killed him. I should have though^ it
would. (Soft music.)*
I hope his sad end will be a warning to all young wives who go out
walking with handsome young men. Mr. KimbalFs son is now no more,
lie sleeps beneath the cypress, the myrtle and the
willow. This music is a dirge by the eminent pianist for Mr. Kim-
ball's son. He died by request.
I regret to say that efforts were made to make a Mormon of me while
I was in Utah.
It was leap-year when I was there — and seventeen young widows
the wives of a deceased Mormon offered me their hearts and hands.
I called on them one day — and, taking their soft white hands in mine
which made eighteen hands altogether Ifoundthemin
tears.
And 1 said ^' Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thus-
ness?''
They hove a sigh seventeen sighs of different size. They said :
** Oh — soon thou wilt be gonested away ! ''
I told them that when I got ready to leave a place 1 wentested.
They said, ** Doth not like us? ''
I said, *a doth, I doth I"
I also said: ^' I hope your intentions are honorable — as I am a lone
child my parents being far — far away/'
They then said, *' Wilt not marry us?
I said, '^Oh — no it can not was J
Again they asked me to marry them — and again I declined. When
they cried:
** Oh — cruel man! This is too much oh! too much?'*
I told them that it was on account of the muchness
that I declined.
99
* **Soft Music/* Here Artcmus Ward's pianist (following instructions) sometimes played
the Dead March from ** Saul.''^ At other times, the Welsh air of •* Poor Mary Ann ;" or any
thinfir else replete with sadness which might chance tp strike his fancy. TheefFect was irre-
sistibly comic.
ABTSMU8 WARD. 63
This Mormon Temple is built of adobe, and will bold five thousand
perBonB quite comfortably. A full brass and string band often assists the
choir of this church and the choir, I may add, is a remarkably good
UORHON TIflUPLE.
Brigham Young seldom preaches now. The younger elders, unless
on some special occasion, conduct tJic aervices. I only heard Mr, Young
once. lie is not an educated man, but speaks with considerable force
and clearness. The day I was there there was nothing coarse in hie
remarks.
XlSaS OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
These are the Foundations of the Magnificent Temple the Mormpna
Are building. It is to be built of hewn stose — &nd will cover seTeral
FOUNDATIONS OP THE TEMPLE.
acres of ground. They saj it shall eclipse in splendor all other temples
in the world. Thoy ulso say it shall be paved with solid gold.
It is perhaps worthy of remark that the architect of this contem-
plated gorgeous affair repudiated Mormonism — and is now living in
Iiondoo.
'^ 7/1 ..:
/)/
ARTEMUB WARD.
ht
n
The TempJe as It It to Be. — This pretty little picture is from the
architect's design, and can not, therefore, I suppose, be called a fano;
sketch.
THE TEMPLE A8 IT IB TO BE.
Should the >formon8 continue unmolested, I tliiiik they will com
plete this rather rcmarlvHbIc edifice.
£6
KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Great Salt Lake. The great salt dead sea of the desert. ■
I know of no greater curiofiitj than this inland sea of thick brine.
It is eighty miles wide and one hundred and thirty miles long. Solid
masses of salt are daily washed ashore in immense heaps, and the Mor>
mon in want of salt has only to go to the shore of this lake and fill his
cart. Only — the salt for table use haa to be subjected to a boiling
process.
SALT LAKE.
These are facts — susceptible of the clearest possible proof . Theytell
one story about tliis lake, however, that I have my doubts about. They
say ii Mormon farmer drove forty head of cattle in there once, and they
canio out first-rate pickled beef,
ARTBMUS WARD.
67
I sincerely hope yon will excuse my abeence ■ I am a man short —
«nd have to work the moon myself.*
I shall be most happy to pay a good salary to any
respectable boy of good parentage and education
who is a good mooniat.
The Endowment Ihuxe. — In thin buildiug the Mormon is initiated
into the mysteries of the faith.
Strange stories are told of the proceedings which are held in this
building but I have no possible means of knowing how tnio thcv
may be.
»na painlcil for n iilKlil-accnc. Hnd Ihecffctl
lBlPtnU-.l til lio iiroduccd wiw (lint iifthe roimn rtalnif over the lako unrt rliiplinu <in thu waten<
It -was rirtrfuci-d In tbu usuni dluramk! way, li>- mnlilnir the track o( Un- iiuiini triuuittiviit, an<l
Ibniwlnstliu nimin on from tho bull's cro of H Untpm. When Aiii'iniiH wnit In-hiiid, tbc
EDiion would beuomu iicrrtitiH and lllukerlnK. ilain^init ii|>Hnd down 111 llic iiiiMt inurtlBtlcuiiil
uiiilcclijfil uianner. Thu result wmtbal, ftmidur wliritlii' Ici-liiriT's '"Mly ctiiirsM'd iifiotuKj.
88 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AST) PULPIT.
Salt Lake City is fifty -five miles behind ns — and this \&,Echo Oafion, va
reaching which we are sttppoeed to have crossed the eummit of the Wah-
eatch mountains. These ochre-colored bluffs ' formed of conglom-
erate sandstone, and full of fossils signal the entrance to the cafion.
At its base lies Weber Station.
Echo Cafion is about twenty-five miles long. It is really the sublim-
est thing between the Missouri and the Sierra Nevada. The red wall to
the left develops farther up the cafion into pyramids, buttresses and caa-
tles honeycombed and fretted in nature's own massive magnificence
of architecture.
Ill 1850 Echo Cafion was the place selected by Brigham Young for
the Mormon General Wells to fortify and make impregnable against the
advance of the American army, led by General Albert Sidney Johnston.
It was to have been the Thermopylae of Mormondom but it iviidn't.
General WelU was to have done Leonidas but he didn't.
' ARTEMUS WARD. S9
A More Cheerful Fiew of the I^ttert. — The wild Hoow-stormB Lave
left ng — and we have thrown our wolf-skin overcoats aside. Certain
tribes of far-wastem Indians bnry their distinguished dead b^ placing
them high in air and covering them with valuable furs that is a
TlIK IIE.SKBT.
very fair representation of these mid-air tombs. Those animals are
horses 1 know they are — because my artist eays so. I had the pict-
ure two years before I discovered the fact. The artist came to me
about six months ac;o, and said: "It is useless to dis;;uise it from you
any lunger^ ■ — t h e v are horse a,"
60 KlNOa or THE platform: AJfD PULPIT.
It was while crossing this desert that I was Barrouoded by a band of
Ute Indians. They were splendidly mounted. They were dressed in
beaver -skins, and they were armed with rifles, knives and pistols.
What could I do? What could a poor, old orphan do? I'm a
brave man. The day before the battle of Bull's Run I stood in the high-
way while the bullets those dreadful messengers of death wore
passing all around me thickly in wagons on their
way to the battlefield.* But there were too many of these Injuns.
There were forty of them — and only one of me and so I said:
" Great Chief, I surrender." His name was Wocky-bocky.
•"Their Way to thoBattleaeld." ThigWHathogrcatJokoofArteinus Ward's first leoturo,
" The Babes in tbc Wood." He never omitted it tn any of his lectures, Dor,dld It lose Its
power tocrratclaugh'cr by repetition. TheaudiencesMtbe Egyptian HaU,LoQdon, laug-hed
aa Immudi^ralely at It as did those of IrvlD){ Hall, New Yorl(, or oC the Tremont Templo, in
ARTBMU8 WARD, 61
He dismounted and approached me. I saw his tomahawk glisten in
tho morning sunlight. Fire was in his eye. Woeky-bocky came very
close to me and seized me by the hair of my head. He mingled his
swarthy fingers with my golden tresses, and he rubbed his dreadful
Thomashawk across my lily-white face. He said: ^
''Torsha arrah darrah mishky bookshean! "
I told him he wa« right.
Wocky-bocky again rubbed his tomahawk across iny face, and said:
•^Wink-ho — loo-boo!''
Says I: "Mr. Wocky-bocky," says I, "Wocky — I have thought
so for years — and so's all our family."
He told me I must go to tho tent of the Strong-Heart and eat raw
dog. t It don't agree with me. I prefer simple food. I prefer pork-
pie, because then I know what I'm eating. But as raw
dog was all they proposed to give to me, I had to eat it or starve. So at
the expiration of two days I seized a tin plate and went to the chief's
daughter, and I said to her in a silvery voice in a kind of German-
silvery voice 1 said:
" Sweet child of the forest, the pale-face wants his dog."
There was nothing but his paws! I had paused too long!
Which reminds me that time passes. A way which Time has.
I was told in my youth to seize opportunity. I once tried to seize
one. He was rich. He had diamonds on. As I seized him — he knocked
me down. Since then I have learned that he who seizes opportunity
sees the penitentiary.
+ " Ilaw DoK." While ftojourning for a day in a camp of Sioux Indians, wc were informed
that tho warriors of the tribe were accustomed to eat raw dog to give them courage previous
to going to battle. Arteraus was greatly amused with the information. When, in after years,
be became weak and languid, and was called upon to go to lecture, it was a favorite joke with
him to inquire, ** Hingston. have you got any raw dog ?"
68 KINOS OF TBS PLATFORM AJW PULPIT.
The Rocky Mountains. — I take it for granted jou have heard of these
popular mountaiae. In America they are regarded as a
great success, and we all love dearly to talk about them. It is a
kind of weakness with ns. I never knew but one American who hadn't
something — some time — to say about the Bocky Mountains, and he was
a deaf and dumb man who couldn't say any thing about nothing.
THE ROCKY IfOUNTAINB.
But these mountains, whose summits are snow-corercd and icy all the
year round, are too grand to make fun of. I crossed them in the winter
of '64 — in a rough sleigh drawn by four mules.
This sparkling waterfall is the Laughing- Water alluded to by Mr,
Longfellow in his Indian poem — "Higher-Water." The water is
higher up there.
ARTEMUa WARD. 63
TTie Plains of Nebraska. — These are the dreary plains over which we
rwUo for 80 many weary daye. An affecting incident occurred on these
plains some time since, and I am sure yoa will pudon me for men-
tioning it.
On a beautiful Juno morning — some sixteen years ago -
(Music, very loud till the scene is off.)
-and s!ie faiiitod on Hegiiiiild's hroist \'
""fill Ui'itinnlrrs Utmct." Atthls purtot thi' letture Artemua prctondi^ totclIaiWry
— thti piHno |ilHj-inif loudly ull tho time. Ho euntliiued hia narration in ei cited ilumb-ahow
-hlsUpamovltiit astbouKhhe wcrcspeaklDg. Fur some mloutei tbe Huditincu luiJulKed in
llDrvftnlDei] laugbler.
64 KINOB OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
The Prairie on Fire. — A prairie on fire is one of the wildest and
grandest sights that can be possihlj imagined.
These fires occur — of course — in the summer — when the grassis
dry as tinder and the fiames rush and roar over the prairie in a
manner frightful to behold. They nsnally bum better than mine is
burning to-night. I try tomako my prairie burn regularly
■ — andnot disappoint the public but it is not as high-
principled as I am.
AHTEMUa WARD. 66
Brigham Young at Home. — The last picture I have to show you repre-
senta Mr. Brigham Young in the bosom of Lib family. His family is
large — aod the olive bracches around his table are in a very tangled
conditioD. H e i 8 mo reafather tbanauymanl know. When
BBIQDAU VOimO AT BOME.
at home as you here see him- — -ho ought to be very happy
witli six ty wives to mi luster to his comforts — and twice
giity children t<t sou th(i hia distracted mind. Ah I my
friends what is home without a family?
66 KINGS OF TUB PLATFORM ASH PULPIT.
What will become of Mormonism? We all know and admit it to be
a hideous wrong— —a great immoral stain upon the 'scutcheon of the
United States. My belief is that its existence ia dependent upon the life
of Brigham Young. Hia administrative ability holds the system
together his power of will maintains it as the faith of a community.
When he dies, Mormoniam will die too. The men who are around him
have neither hia talent nor hia energy. By meana of Ids strength, it ia
held together. When he falls, Mormoiiism will also fall to pieces.
That lion — you perceive — has a tail.* It ia a long one already-
Like mine — it ia to be continued in our next.
• " The Lion liiu ii ThII." Tlie lion un a, jioilestnl oa paintcc] in ihi- punnrumu-its long tail
oulstrelt'hed until it uicccdcd the longth of the Hon was a pure pterc of frolii; un the part of
ArtemtiB. The Bee Hive and the Lion su^gratlOK strength and Industry arc llic emblt-ms
chosen br BriKbam Young to represeat the Mormons.
ARTBMU8 WARD. Vf
PROGRAMME USED AT
EGYPTIAN HAIvL,
PICCADILLY.
Every Night (except Saturday) at 8,
SATURDAY MORNINGS at 3.
ETEMUS WAED
AMONG THE MORMONS.
During the Vacation the Hall has been carefully Swept out, and a new Door-Knob
has been added to the Door,
Mr. Artemub Ward will call on the Citizens of London, at their residences, and
explain any jokes in his narrative which tliey may
not understand.
A person of long-established integrity will take excellent care of Bonnets, Cloaks, etc.,
during the Entertainment ; the Audience better leave their money, however, with Mr. Ward ;
he will return it to them in a day or two, or invest it for them in America as they may
think best.
Nobody must say that ho likes the Lecture unless ho wishes to be thought
eccentric ; and nobody must say that ho doesn't like it unless he really is eccentric. (This
requires thinking over, but it will amply repay perusal.)
The Panorama used to Illustrate Mr. Ward's Narrative is rather worse than
Panoramas usually are.
Mb. Ward will not b« responsible for any debts of his own contraoting.
68 KIXGS OP THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
WV^^:^WMMs
I.
APPEARANCE OF ARTEMUS WARD,
Who will be greeted with applause. |C^ The Stall-kecpor is particularly requested
to attend to this...^ When quiet has Immmi restored, the Lecturer will present a
rather frisky prologue, of about ten minutes in length, and of nearly the same width.
It perhaps isn't necessary to speak of the depth.
II.
THE PICTURES COMMENCE HERE, the first one being a view of the
California Steamship. Large crowd of citizens on the wharf, who appear to l)e
entirely willing that Artemcs Ward sliall go. * Bless you, Sir I" they say.
** Don't hurry about coming back. Stay away for years, if you want to!"
It was very touching. Disgraceful treatment of the passengers, who are obliged
to go forwanl to smoke pipes, while the steamer herself is allowed 2 Smoke Pipes
amidships. At Panama. A glance at Mexico.
III. (
THE LAND OF GOLD.
Montgomery Street, San Francisco. The Gold Bricks Street Scenes. "The
drphan Cabman, or the Mule Driver's Step Father." The Chinese Theatre. Sixteen
square yards of a Chinese Comic Song.
IV.
THE LAND OF SILVER.
Virginia City, the wild young metropolis of the new Silver State. Fortunes are
made there in a day. There are instances on reconl of young men going to this i)l:ue with-
out a shilling — poor and friendless — yet by energy, intelligence, and a ran*ful <H.sre-
gard to business, they have been enabled to leave there, owing hundreds of ix)unds.
V.
THE GREAT DESERT AT NIGHT.
A dreary waste of Sand. The Sand isn't worth saving, however. Indians
occupy yonder mountains. Little Injuns seen in the distance trundling their war-
hoops.
VI.
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF GREAT SALT LAKE CITY.
With some entirely descriptive talk.
VII.
MAIN STREET, EAST SIDE.
Tlie Salt Lake Hotel, which is conducted on Temperance principles. The land-
lonl sells nothing stronger than salt butter.
,• *
ARTEMUS WAIiD. 69
VIII.
THE MORMON THEATRE.
The Lady of Lyons was produced here a short time since, but failed to satisfy a
Mormon audience, on account of there being only one Pauline in it. The play was
nvised at once. It was presented the next night, with fifteen Paulines in the cast,
and was a perfect success, t^' All these statements may be regarded as strictly
true. Mr. Ward would not deceive an infant.
IX.
MAIN STREET, WEST SIDE.
This being a view of JUain Street, West side, it is naturally a view of the West
side of Main Street.
X.
BRIGHAM YOUNG'S HAREM.
Mr. Young is an indulgent father, and a numerous husband. For further par-
ticulars call on Mr. Ward, at Egyptian Hall, any Evening this Week. This
paragraph is intended to blend business with amusement.
XI.
HEBER C. KDIBALLS HAREM.
We have only to repeat here the pleasant remarks above in regard to Brigkam.
INTERMISSION OF FIVE MINUTES.
XII.
THE TABERNACLE.
XIll.
Tin: TEMPLE AS IT IS.
xrv.
TIIK TKMPLE AS IT IS TO BE.
XV.
THE GREAT SALT LAKE.
XVT.
THE ENDOWMENT HOUSE.
The Mormon is initiated into the mysteries of his faith here. The Mormon's
rt'Iii^iou is singular and his wives are plural.
XVII.
ECHO CASON.
70 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
XVIII.
THE DESERT, AGAIN.
A more cheerful view. The Plains of Colorado. The Colorado Hoimtains
** might have been seen" in the distance, if the Artist had painted 'em. But lie is
prejudiced against moimtains, because his uncle once got lost on one.
XIX.
BRIGHAM YOUNG AND HIS WIVES.
The pretty girls of I'tjili mostly marry Young.
XX.
THE ROOKY MOUNTAINS.
XXI.
THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA.
XXII.
THE PRAIRIE ON FIRE.
RECOMMENDATIONS.
TOTins. OcL 90Uu 1866.
Mr. ARTBMim Ward: My dear Sir— My wife was dangerously unwell for over slzteen
yoars. tihe was at) weak that she could not lift a teaspoon to her moutb. But In a fortunate
moment she commenced readinjT one of your lectures. She flrot better at once. She frained
^trcnKth so rapidly that she lifted the oottage piano quite a distaooe from the floor, and tbeu
tipiKid it over onto her mother-in-law, with whom she had had some little trouble. We like your
ieirtures very much. Please send me a barrel of them. If you should require any more
recommendations, you can gret any number of them In this place, at two shillings each, the
price I charge for tliis one, and I trust you may be ever happy.
I am. Sir.
Yours truly, and so is ray wife, R. Springers.
An American correspondent of a distinguislied journal in Yorkshire thus speaks
of Mr. Ward's power as an Orator:
It was a grand scene, Mr. Artemus Ward standing on the platform, talking: many of
the audience sleeping tranquilly in their seats; others leaving the room and not returning;
others crying like a child at some of the jokes— all, all formed a most impressive scene, and
showed the powers of this remarkable orator. And when he announced that he should never
Ifcturu iu that town again, the applause was absolutely deafening.
Doors open at Half-past Seven, commence at Eight.
Conclude at HaXf-pa^t Nine.
F.VERY EVENING EXCEPT SATURDAY.
SATURDAY AFTERNOONS at 3 r. m.
ARTEMUS WARD. 71
AKTEMUS WARD,
xs wta%x^mmz.
DODWORTH HALL. 806 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
OPEN EVERY EVENING.
1. — Introductory.
2.— The Steamer Ariel, en route,
8. — San Francisco.
4.— The Washoe Silver Region.
5.— The Plains.
6.— The City of Saints.
7.— A Mormon Hotel.
8. — Brigham Young's Theatre.
9. — The Council-House.
10. — The Home of Brigham Young.
ll.—Heber C. Kimball's Seraclio.
12. — The Mormon House of Worship.
18. — ^Foundations of the New Temple.
14. — Architect's View of the Tenaple when finished.
15. — The Great Dead Sea of the Desert.
16. — The House of Mystery.
17.— The Cafion.
18. — Mid-Air Sepulture.
19. — A Nice Family Party at Brigham Yoimg's.
It requires a large number of Artists to produce this Entertainment. The casual
observer can form no idea of the quantity of unfettered genius that is soaring, like
H healthy Eagle, round this Hall in connection with this Entertainment. In fact, the
following gifted persons compose the
^fSdal Bureau.
Secretary of the Exterior Mr. E. P. Hingston.
Secretary of the Treasury Herr ^lax Field,
(Pupil of Siffoor Tbomaso Jacksoni.)
Mechanical Director and Professor of C'arpentry Signer G. Wilsoni.
Crankist Mons. Aleck.
Assistant Cnmkist, Boy (orphan).
Artists Messrs. Hilliiird & Maeder.
Reserved Chairists Messrs. Persee & Jerome.
Moppist Signorina O'Flaherty.
Broomist Mile. Topsia de St. Moke.
Hired Man John.
Fighting Editor Chevalier McArone.
Dutchman . . IJy a Polish Refugee, named McFinnigin.
Doortendist Mons. Jacques Ridera.
ifusMan Art^^mus Ward.
This Entertainment will open with music. Tlui Soldiers* Chorus from " Faust."
First time iu this city. J^
72 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Next comes a jociind and discursive preamble, calculated to show what a good
education the Lecturer has.
« «
View the first is a sea-view. — Ariel navigation. — Normal school of whales in the
distance. — Isthmus of Panama. — Interesting interview with Old l^anama himself, who
makes all the hats. Old Pan is a likely sort of man.
San Francisco.— City with a vigilant government. — Miners allowed to vote.
Old inhabitants so rich that they have legs with golden calves to them.
Town in the Silver region. — Good quarters to be found there. — Playful popula-
tion, fond of high-low-jack and homicide. — Silver lying around loose. — Thefts of it
termed silver guilt.
The plains in Winter. — A wild Moor, like Othello. — ^Mountains in the distance
forty thousand miles above the level of the highest sea (Musiani's chest C included.)
— If you don't believe this you can go there and measure them for yourself.
Mormondom, sometimes called the City of the Plain, but wrongly ; tlie women
are quite pretty. — View of Old Poly Ganiy's house, etc.
The Salt Lake Hotel. — Stage just come in from its overland route and retreat
from the Indians. — Temperance house. — No bar nearer than Salt Lake sand-bars. —
Miners in shirts like Artemus Ward his Programme — they are read and will wash.
Mormon Theatre, where Arteums Ward lectured. — Mormons like theatricals,
and had rather go to tlie Play-house than to the Work-house, any time. — Private
boxes reserved for the ears of Brother Brigham's wives.
* »
IXTEKMISSIOX OF FIVE MINUTES.
ARTEMUS WARD, 73
Territorial State House. — Seat of the Legislature. — ^About as fair a collection as
that at Albany — and **we can't say no fairer than that."
Residence of Brigham Young and his wives. — Two hundred souls with but a
single thought. Two hundred hearts that beat as one.
Seraglio of Heber C. Kimball. — Ilome of the Queens of Ileber. — No relatives
of the Queen of Sheba. — They are a nice gang of darlings.
Mormon Tabernacle, where the men espouses Mormonisni and the women espouse
Brother Brigham and his Elders as spiritual Physicians, convicted of bad doct'rin.
Foundations of the Temple. — Beginning of ji healthy little job. — Temple to
enclose all out-doors, and be paved with gold at a premium.
The Temple when linishcd. — Mormon idea of a meeting-house. — N. B. It will
be bigger, probably, than DcKlworth Hall. — One of the tigurcs in the foreground is
intended for Heber C. Kimball. — You can see. by the expression of his back, that
he is thinking what a great man Jo.seph Smith was.
The Great Salt Lake — Water .utuallv thick willi .silt — I<m> saline to sail in. —
Marin<;rs njckc^l on the busom of this deep wiih rock salt. — The water isn't very
g(XKl to drink.
« «
House where Mormons are iniliated. — Verv secret and mysterious ceremonies. —
AnylMHly can easily tiud out all about them IhouL^h. by going out there and becoming
a Mormon.
* *
Eiho (anon. — A rou;;li i)lulT sort (»r alTair. — Great Kcho. — When Artemus Wanl
went through, he lu.'ard the eelu>es ol sonu' Ihings the Indians stii«l then* alK>ut four
years and a half ago.
74 KINOa OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Th^ Plains a^ain, with some noble savages, both in the live and dead state.-^The
4ead one on the high shelf was killed in a Fratricidal Straggle.— They are always
having Fratricidal Struggles out in that line of country. — It would be a good place
for an enterprisiiig Coroner to locate.
Brigham Toung surrounded, by his wives. — ^Theseiadies are simply too numerous
to mantion.
Those of the Audience who do not feel offended with Artemus Ward are
cordially invited to call upon him, often, at his fine ne>¥ house in Brooklyn. His
house is on the right hand side as you cross the Ferry, and may be easily distin-
guished from the other houses by its having a Cupola and a Mortgage on it.
« «
C^ Soldiers on the battle-field will be admitted to this Entertainment gratis.
The Indians on the Overland Route live on Route an Herbs. They are an
intemperate people. They drink with impunity, or any body who invites them.
Artemus Ward delivered Lectures before
ALL THE CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE
ever thought of delivering lectures.
TICKETS 50 CTS. RESERVED CHAIRS $1.
Doors open at 7.30 P. M. Entertainment to commence at 8.
^rm^^^^0m'^^
Honesty Imz a iboiCiieei and branes hiz no pedigree oL alL— J, B>
THE PROBABILITIES OF LIFE
Perhaps rain— Perbapg not.
'•JOSH BILLINGS."
BIOORAPHT AND REMINISCBNCBB.
Henry W. Shaw, the well-known wit and satirist, better known as "Josli Bil-
lings," was bom at Lanesborough, Mass., in 1818, of a family of politicians, his
father and grandfather having both been in Congress. He went early in life to llie
West, where for twenty -five years he was a farmer and auctioneer. He did not begin
to write for publication till he wjis forty-five years old. He has been one of tlie
most popular of popular lecturers. Mr. Shaw died at Monterey, Cal., October 14,
1885. He is the author of seyeral books which have been collected into one large
volume by Mr. Dillingham, successor to Geo. W. Carleton, and which is still having an
immense sale. Mr. Shaw left an accomplished wife and a beautiful daughter to
mourn his loss. He died wealthy, but his greatest legacy to liis family was his liter-
ary reputation. His fame spread through England as well as Americii.
The last time I saw Josh Billings was on a Madison avenue
street car in New York City. I think of him as I saw him then,
sitting in the corner of the car, with his spectacles on his nose, and
in a brown study. Ilis mind was always on his work, and his work
was to think out* dry epigrams so full of truth and human nature
that they set the whole world laughing. That morning, when thb
old man espied me, he was so busy with his thoughts that he did not
even say good morning. lie simply raised one hand, looked over
his glasses and said, quickly, as if he had made a great discovery :
"I've got it, Eli!"
" Got what ? "
" Got a good one — lem me read it,'- and then he read from a
crumpled envelope this epigram that he had just jotted down:
" When a man tries to make himself look heatdiful^ he steals — he
steals a woman! s patent right how's that ?"
" Splendid," I said. " How long have you been at work on it V
"Three hours," he said, ** to get it just right."
Mr. Shaw always worked long and patiently over these little
paragraphs, but every one contains a sermon. When he got five or
• JOSn BILLINGS, 77
3i2. written, he stuck them into his hat and went down and read them
to O. W. Carleton, his publisher and friend, who was an excellent
judge of wit, and he and Josh would laugh over them.
One day I told Josh that I would love him forever and go and
put flowers on his grave if he would give me some of his paragraphs
in his own handwriting. He did it, and when he died I hung a
wreath of immortellea on his tombstone at Poughkeepsie. These
are the sparks from his splendid brain just as he gave them to me:
Tv/i
&C^eU i4^ A<x/vauyrov tCtk /iaatsL
to MCk SU^mMndy ^ J^sk^U^^
78
KINOB OF TEB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
,N,
The next day after Josh gave me the above epigrams, he came
and dined with me, and together we smoked and laughed and fixed
the following interview :
" Mr. Billings, where were you educated ? "
" Pordunk,. Pennsylvania."'
" How old are vou ? "
" I was born 150 years old — and have been growing young ever
since."
" Are you married ? "
" Once."
" How many children have you ? "
" Doublets."
" What other vices have you ? "
'' None."
" Have you any virtues ? "
"Several."
" What are they ? "
" I left them up at Poughkeepsie."
" Do you gamble ? "
" When I feel good."
" What is your profession ? "
" Agriculture and alminaxing."
"How do you account for your deficient knowledge in spelling?"
" Bad spells during infancy, and poor memory."
" What things are you the most liable to forget?"
" Sermons and debts."
" What professions do you like best ? "
" Auctioneering, base-ball and theology."
" Do you smoke?''
" Tbank you, I'll take a Partaga first,"
JOSH BILLINGS.
79
" What is your worst habit ? "
" The coat I got last in Poughkeepsie."
" What are your favorite books ? "
"My alminack and Commodore Vanderbilt's pocketbook.'*
" What is your favorite piece of sculpture ? "
" The mile stone nearest home."
" What is your favorite animal ? "
" The mule."
"Why?"
" Because he never blunders wifh his heels."
"What was the best thing said by our old friend Artemus
Ward?"
" All the pretty girls in Utah marry Y(ywngy
" Do you believe in the final salvation of all men ? "
" I do— let me pick the men ! "
In the evening Josh and I reviewed the interview, and pro-
nounced it faithfully rendered. He wished to add only that Mr.
Carleton, who published his alminack, had the most immense intel-
Wt of this or any other age.
osTx ^illxngs^ %zctvivz.
WIT. PHILOSOPHY AND WISDOM.
This is Josh Billings' last Lecture Programme :
Synopsis or the Lectuhk by Jobii.
1— Komarkson liCcturing- Oeneral Overture.
2 -The Best Thlnjr on Milk.
3 -The Summer Resort.
4 -Josh on Marriage
5— Josh on the Mule.
6 -The Handsome Man, a Failure.
7 -The Dude a Failure.
8— What I know about Hotels.
9 -The Ihimble-tK?e.
10-The Hornet.
11— The Quire Slnjrer.
12- Josh on Flirting.
13-Courtln'.
80 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPTT.
Josh Billings' lecture was unique. It was an hour of short para-
graphs, every one worth its weight in gold. The great philosopher
always wore long hair (to cover a wart on the back of his neck), and
always sat down when he lectured. He delivered his quaint philosophy
with his bright eyes looking over his glasses. His lecture was too deep
to be popular. It was really the college professor or reflecting judge who
fully appreciated him. Think of such paragraphs as these tumbling
out once in a minute:
Ladies and Ge7itle7ncn: —
I hope you are all well. [Looking over his glasses.]
Thare is lots ov folks who eat well and drink well, and yet are sick
all the time. Theze are the folks who alwuz '* enjoy poor health."
Then I kno lots ov people whoze only reckomendashun iz, that they
/we helthy so iz an onion. [Laughter.]
The subject of my lecture is Milk — plain M-i-l-k.
The best thing I've ever seen on milk is cream. [Laughter.]
That's right [joining]. *' People of good sense'' are thozc whoze
opinyuns agree with ours. [Laughter].
People who agree with you never bore you. The shortest way to a
woman's harte iz to prazo her baby and her bonnet, and to a man's harte
to praze hiz watch, hiz horse and hiz lectur.
Eliar Perkins sez a man iz a bore when he talks so much about his-
self that you kant talk about yourself. [Laughter.]
Still 1 shall go on talking.
Comik lekturing iz an unkommon pesky thing to do.
7t iz more unsarting than the rat ketching bizzness az a means ov
grace, or az a means ov livelyhood.
Most enny boddy thinks they kan do it, and this iz jist what makes
it so bother sum tew do.
When it izdid jist enuff, it iz a terifick success, but when it iz over-
did, it iz like a burnt slapjax, very impertinent.
Thare aint but phew good judges ov humor, and they all differ
about it.
If a lekturer trys tew bo phunny, he iz like a boss trying to trot back-
wards, pretty apt tew trod on himself. [Laughter.]
Humor must fall out ov a man's mouth, like musik out ov a bobalink,
or like a yung bird out ov its nest, when it iz feathered enuff to fly.
Whenever a man haz made up hiz mind that he iz a wit, then he iz
mistaken without remedy, but whenever the publick haz made up their
mind that he haz got the disease, tlien he haz got it sure.
Individuals never git this thing right, the publik never git it wrong.
JOSH miLINOS. 81
Humor iz wit with a rooster's tail feathers stuck in its cap, and wit iz
wisdom in tight harness.
If a man is a genuine humorist, he iz superior to the bulk ov hiz
audience, and will often hev tew take hiz pay for hiz services in think-
ing so.
Altho fun iz designed for the millyun, and ethiks for the few, it iz az
true az molasses, that most all aujiences hav tlieir bell wethers, people
wlio show the others the crack whare the joke cums laffing in. (Where
are they to-night?) [Laughter.]
I hav known popular aujences deprived ov all piezzure during the
recital ov a comik lektur, just bekauze the right man, or the right
woman, want thare tew point out the mellow places.
The man who iz anxious tew git before an aujience, with what he
calls a comik lektur, ought tew be put immediately in the stocks, so
that ho kant do it, for he iz a dangerous person tew git loose, and will
do sum damage.
It iz a very pleazant bizzness tew make people laff, but thare iz much
odds whether they laff at yoUy or laff at what yn say.
When a man laffs at yu, he duz it because it makes him feel superior
to you, but when yu pleaze him with what yu have uttered, he admits
thatyu are superior tew him. [Applause.]
The only reazon whi a monkey alwus kreates a sonsashun whareever
he goes, is simply bekauze — he is a monkey.
Everyboddy foels az tho they had a right tew criticize a comik lectur,
and most ov tlicm do it jist az a mule criticizes things, by shutting up
both eyes and letting drive with hiz two behind leggs. [Laughter.]
One ov the meanest things in the comik lektring employment that a
man hiiz to do, iz tew try and make that large class ov hiz aujience laff
whom the Lord nevor intended should laff.
Thare iz sum who laff az eazy and az natral az the birds do, but most
ov mankind laff like a hand organ — if yu expect tew git a lively tune
out ov it yu hav got tew grind for it.
In delivering a comik lektur it iz a good general rule to stop sudden,
sometime before yu git through.
This brings me to Long branch.
Long branch iz a work ov natur, and iz a good job. It iz a summer
spot for men, wiinmin and children, espeshily the latter. Children are
az |)lcnty here, and az sweet az llowers, in an out door gardin. I 2)ut up
at the Oshun Hotel the last time i was thare, and I put up more than I
ou^ht to. ^li wife i)uts up a good deal with me at the same hotel, it iz
an old-fashioned way we have ov doing things. She alhvays goes with
82 KtNG8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
me, to fashionable resorts, whare young widows are eiiny ways plenty, to
put me on mi guard, for i am one ov the easyest creatures on reckord to
be impozed upon, espeshily bi yung widders. She is an ornament to her
sex, mi wife iz. I would like to see a young widdcr, or even an old one,
git the start ov me, when mi wife iz around. [Laughter. J If I just
step out sudden, to get a weak lemonade, to cool mi akeing brow, mi
wife goes to the end ov the verandy with me, and waits for me, and if i
go down onto the beach to astronomize just a little, all alone, bi moon-
lite, she stands on, the bluff, like a beakon lite, to warn me ov the
breakers.
The biggest thing they hav got at Long branch, for the present, iz
the pool ov water, in front ovthe hotels. This pool iz sedbi good judges
to be 3,000 miles in length, and in sum places 5 miles thick. Into this
pool, every day at ten o'klock, the folks all retire, males, females, and
widders, promiskuss. The scenery here iz grand, especially the pool,
and the air iz az bracing az a milk puntch. Drinks are reasonable here*
espeshily out ov the pool, and the last touch ov civilizashun haz reached
here also, sum enterprising mishionary haz just opened a klub house,
whare all kind ov gambling iz taught.
Long branch iz a healthy place.
Men and women here, if they ain't too lazy, liv sumtimestill they are
eighty, and destroy the time a good deal aa follows: The fust thirty years
they spend in throwing stuns at a mark, the seckond tliirty they spend in
examining the mark tew see whare the stuns hit, and the remainder is
divided in cussing the stun-throwin<^ bizziness, and nussing the rumatizz.
A man never gits to be a fust klass phool until he haz reached seventy
years, and falls in luv with a bar maid of 10, and marrys her, and then, —
* * * * * Here he took out his Waterburv watch, and remarked, as he
wound it up, '' You kant do two things to wonst." [Great laughter.]
I luv a Rooster for two thhigs. One iz the crow that iz in him, and
the other iz, the spurs that are on him, to bak up the crow with.
There was a little disturbance in the gallery now, and Uncle Josh
looked over his glasses and remarked :
" Yung man, please set down, and keep still, yu will hav plenty ov
chances yet to make a phool ov yureself before yu die." [Laughter.]
The man or mule who can't do any hurt in this world kan't do any
good. [Laughter.]
This brings me to the Mule — the pashunt mule. The mule is pashunt
because he is ashamed of hisself. [Laughter.] The mule is haf boss
and haf jackass, and then kums tu a full stop, natur diskovering her
mistake. Tha weigh more accordin tu their heft than enny other creeter^
JOSn BILLTNGfl. 88
except a crowbar. Tha kant heer enny quicker nor further than the
ho6s^ yet their ears are big en u if fur anowshoes. You kan trust them
with enny one whose life aint wortli more than the mule's. The only
way tu keep them into a paster is tu turn them into a medder jineing
and let them jump out. [Laughter.] Tha are reddy for use jest as
soon as tha will do tu abuse. Tha aint got enny friends^ and will live on
huckleberry bush^ with an akasional chance at Kanada thissels. Tha are
a modem invention. Tha sell fur more money than enny other domestic
animal. You kant tell their age by looking into thwr mouth enny more
than you could a Mexican cannon. Tha never have no disease that a
good club won't heal. If tha ever die tha must come right to life
agin, fur I never herd nobody say ''ded mule.'* I never owned one,
nor never mean to, unless there is a United States law passed requir-
ing it. I have seen educated mules in a sircuss. Tlia could kick and
bite tremenjis. *. . . Enny man who is willing to drive a mule ought
to be exempt by law from running for the legislatur. Tha are the
strongest creeters on arth, and heaviest according tu their size. 1 herd
of one who fell oph from the tow-path of the Eri canawl, and sunk as
soon as he touched bottom, but he kept on towing the boat tu the next
stashun, breathing through his ears, which was out of the water about
two feet six inches. I didn't see this did, but Bill Harding told me of
it, and I never knew Bill Harding tu lie unless he could make something
out of it. There is but one other animal that kan do more kicking than
a mule, and that is a Quire Singer. [Laughter.] A quire singer gig-
gles during the sermon and kicks the rest of the week. My advice to
quire singers is as follows:
Put your hair iu cirl pnpors every Friday nite soze to have it in good shape Sun-
day morning. If your daddy is rich you can buy some store hair. If he is very
rich buy some more and buihl it up high onto your head; then get a high-priced
buniiii that runs up very high at the high part of it, and get the milliner to plant
some high-grown artificials onto the highest part of it. This will help you sing high,
as soprano is the highest part.
When the tune is giv out, don't pay attention to it, and then giggle. Giggle a
good eel.
Whisper to the girl next you that Em Jones, which sets on the 2nd sect from the
front on the left-hand side, has her bunnit with the same color Qxnct slie had last year,
and t!:cn put youi;book to your face and giggle.
(Object to every tune unless there is a solow into it for the soprano. Coff and
hem a good eel before you begin to sing.
When you sing a solow shake the artificials off your bunfiit, and when you come
to a high tone brace yourself back a little, twist your head ti-. one side and open your
mouth the widest on that side, shet the eyes on the same side jest a triphle, and then
put in for dear life.
84 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
When the preacher gets under heel way with his preachin, write a note on the
blank leaf into the fourth part of your note book. That's what the blank leaf was
made for. Git sumbody to pass the note to sumbody else, and you watch them while
they read it, and then giggle. [Laughter.]
If anybody talks or laffs in the congregashun, and the preacher takes notis of it,
that's a good chants for you to giggle, and you ought to giggle a great eel. The
preticher darsent say any thing to you bekaus you are in the quire, and he can't run
the meetin* house at both ends without the quire. If you had a bow before you
went into the quire, give him the mitten — you ought to have somebody better now.
Don't forget to ^\gg\e.
The quire singer suggests the bumble-bee.
The bumble-bee iz more artistic than the mule and as busy as a quire
singer. The bumble-bee iz a kind ov big fly wlio goes muttering and
swearing around the lots during the summer looking after little boys to
sting them^ and stealing hunny out ov the dandylions and thissells.
Like the mule, he iz mad all the time about sumthing, and don't seem to
kare a kuss what people think ov him.
A skool boy will studdy harder enny time to find a bumble-bee's nest
than he will to get hiz lesson in arithmetik^ and when he haz found it,
and got the hunny out ov it, and got badly stung into the bargin, he
finds thare aint mutch margin in it. Next to poor molassis, bumble-
bee hunny iz the poorest kind ov sweetmeats in market. Bumble-bees
have allwuss been in fashion, and probably allwuss will be, but wharethe
fun or proffit lays in them, i never could cypher out. The proflSt donH
seem to be in the hunny, nor in the bumble-bee neither. They bild their
nest in the ground, or enny whare else they take a nosh un too, and ain't
afrade to fite a whole distrikt skool, if they meddle with them. I don't
blame the bumble-bee, nor enny other fellow, for defending hiz sugar: it
iz the fust, and last law of natur, and i hope the law won't never runout,
The smartest thing about the bumble-bee iz their stinger. [Laughter.]
Speaking of smart things brings me to the hornet:
The hornet is an inflaniibel buzzer, sudden in hiz impreshuns and
hasty in his conclusion, or end.
Hiz natral disposisheii iz a warm cross between red pepper in the pod
and fusil oil, and hiz moral bias iz, *' git out ov mi way."
They have a long, black boddy, divided in the middle by a waist spot,
but their phisikal importance lays at the terminus of tl^eir subburb, in
the shape ov a javelin.
This javelin iz ahvuz loaded, and stands reddy to unload at a minuit's
warning, and enters a man az still az thought, az spry az litening, and az
full ov melankolly az the toothake.
Hornets never argy a case ; tliey settle awl ov their differences ov
opinyon by letting their javelin tly, and are az certain to hit az a mule iz.
JOSH BILLINGS. 85
This testy kritter lives in congregations numbering about 100 souls,
but whether they are mail or female, or conservative^ or matched in bonds
ov wedlock, or whether they are Mormons, and a good many ov them
kling together and keep one husband to save expense, I don^t kno nor
don't kare.
I never have examined their habits much, I never konsidered it
healthy.
Hornets build their nests wherever they take a noshun to, and seldom
are disturbed, for what would it profit a man tew kill 99 hornets and hav
the 100th one hit him with hiz javelin ? [Laughter.]
They bild their nests ov paper, without enny windows to them or
hack doors. They have but one place ov admission, and the nest iz the
sliape ov an overgrown pineapple, and is cut up into just as many bed-
rooms as there iz hornets.
It iz very simple to make a hornets' nest if yu kan [Laughter] but
i will wager enny man 300 dollars he kant bild one that he could sell to
a hornet for half price.
Hornets are as bizzy as their second couzins, the bee, but what they
are about the Lord only knows; they don't lay up enny honey, nor enny
money; they seem to be bizzy only jist for the sake ov working all the
time; they are alwus in as mutch ov a hurry as tho they waz going for a
<lokter.
I suppose this uneasy world would grind around on its axle-tree oust
in 24 hours, even ef thare want enny hornets, but hornets must be good
for snmthing, but I kant think now what it iz.
Thare haint been a bug made yet in vain, nor one that want a good
job; there is ever lots of human men loafing around blacksmith shops,
and eider mills, all over the country, that don't seem to be necessary for
anything but to beg plug tobacco and swear, and steal water melons, but
vu let the cholera break out once, and then vu will see the wisdom of
having jist sich men laying around; they help count. [Laughter.]
Next tew the cockroach, who stands tew the head, the hornet haz got
the most waste stummuk, in reference tew the rest of hiz boddy, than
any of the insek populashun, and here iz another mystery; what on 'arth
duz a hornet want so much reserved corps for?
I hav jist thought — tew carry his javelin in; thus yu see, the more
we diskover about things the more we are apt to know.
It iz always a good purchase tew pay out our last surviving dollar for
wisdum, and wisdum iz like the misterious hen's Qgg\ it ain't laid in
yure hand, but iz laid away under the barn, and yu have got to sarch
for it.
86 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
The hornet iz an unsoshall kiiss, he iz more haughty than he is proud,
he is a thorough-bred bug, but his breeding and refinement has made
him like sum other folks I know ov, dissatisfied with himself and every
boddy else, too much good breeding ackts this way sometimes.
Hornets are long-lived — I kant state jist how long their lives are,
but I know from instinkt and observashen that enny krittur, be he bug
or be he devil, who iz mad all the time, and stings every good chance h^
kan git, generally outlives all his nabers.
The only good way tew git at the exact fiteing weight of the hornet
is tew tutch him, let him hit you once with his javelin, and you will be
willing to testify in court that somebody run a one-tined pitchfork into
yer; and as for grit, i will state for the informashun of thoze who haven't
had a chance tew lay in their vermin wisdum az freely az I hav, that one
single hornet, who feels well, will brake up a large camp-meeting.
[Laughter.]
What the hornets do for amuzement is another question i kant answer,
but sum ov the best read and lieavyest tliinkers among the naturalists
say they have target excursions, and heave their javelins at a mark ; but
I don't imbide this assershun raw, for i never knu enny body so bitter at
heart as the hornets are, to waste a blow.
Thare iz one thing that a hornet duz that i will give him credit for
on my books — he alwuz attends tew his own bizziness, and won't allow
any boddy else tew attend tew it, and what he duz iz alwuz a good job;
you never see them altering enny thing; if they make enny mistakes, it is
after dark, and aint seen.
If the hornets made half az menny blunders az the men do, even with
their javelins, every boddy would laff at them.
Hornets are clear in another way, they hav found out, by tricing it,
that all they can git in this world, and brag on, is their vittles and
clothes, and yu never see one standing on the corner ov a street, with a
twenty-six inch face on, bekause sum bank had run oph and took their
money with him.
In ending oph this essa, I will cum tew a stop by concluding, that if
hornets was a little more pensive, and not so darned peremptory with
their javelins, they might be guilty of less wisdum, but more charity.
This brings me to Elirts.
Flirts are like hornets, only men like to be stung by them.
Some old bachelors git after a flirt, and don't travel as fast as shedoz,
and then concludes awl the female group are hard to ketch, and good
for nothing when they are ketched.
JOSH BILLINGS, 8?
A flirt is a rough thing to overhaul unless the right dog gets after
her, and then they make the very best of wives.
When a flirt really is in love, she is as powerless as a mown daisy.
[Laughter.]
Her impudence then changes into modesty, her cunning into fears,
her spurs into a halter, and her pruning-hook into a cradle.
The best way to ketch a flirt is tew travel the other way from which
they are going, or sit down on the ground and whistle sdme lively tune till
the flirt comes round. [Laughter.]
Old bachelors make the flirts and then the flirts get more than even,
by making the old bacheloi*s.
A majority of flirts get married finally, for they hev a great quantity
of the most dainty tidbits of woman's nature, and alwus have shrewdness
to back up their sweetness.
Flirts don't deal in po'try and water grewel; they have got to hev
brains, or else somebody would trade them out of their capital at the
first sweep.
Disappointed luv must uv course be oil on one side ; this ain't any
more excuse fur being an old bachelor than it iz fur a man to quit all
kinds of manual labor, jist out uv spite, and jine a poor-house bekase he
kant lift a tun at one pop. .
An old bachelor will brag about his freedom to you, his relief from
anxiety, hiz indipendence. This iz a dead beat, past resurrection, for
€»verybody knows there ain't a more anxious dupe than he iz. All his
dreams are charcoal sketches of boarding-school misses; he dresses,
greases hiz hair, paints his grizzly mustache, cultivates bunyons and
corns, to please his captains, the wimmen, and only gets laffed at fur hiz
paiiiH.
I tried being an old bachelor till I wuz about twenty years old, and
came very near dicing a dozen times. I had more sharp pain in one
year than I hev had since, put it all in a heap. I was in a lively fever
all the time.
I have preached to you about flirts (phemale), and now I will tell you
about Dandies.
The first dandy was made by Dame Nature, out of the refuse matter
left from making Adam a::d Eve. He was concocted with a bouquet in
one hand and a looking-glass in the other, llis heart was dissected in
the thirteenth century, and found to be a pincushion full of butterflies
and sawdust. Tie never falls in love, for to love requires both brainsand
a soul, and the dandy has neither, lie is a long-lived bird ; he has no
courage, never marries, has no virtues, and is never guilty of first-class
vices.
88 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
What about Marriage?
They say love iz blind, but a good many fellows see more m their
sweethearts than I can.
Marriage is a fair transaction on the face ov it.
But thare iz quite too often put-up jobs in it.
It is an old institushun — older than the Pyramids, and az phuU ov
hyrogliphics that nobody can parse.
History holds Its tongue who the pair waz who fust put on the silken
harness, and promised to work kind in it, thru thick and thin, up hill
and down, and on the level, rain or shine, survive of perish, sink or
swim, drown or fiote.
But whoever they waz, they must hev made a good thing out of it,
or 80 menny ov their posterity would not hev harnessed up since and
drove out.
Thare iz a grate moral grip to marriage; it iz the mortar that holds
the sooshul bricks together.
But thare ain't but darn few pholks who put their money in matri-
mony who could set down and give a good written opinyun whi on airth
they come to did it.
This iz a grate proof that it iz one ov them natral kind ov acksidents
that must happen, jist az birdz fly out ov tlwj nest, when they hev feath-
erz enutf, without being able tew tell why.
Sum marry for buty, and never diskover their mistake: this is lucky.
Sum marry for money, and don't see it.
Sum marry for pedigree, and feel big for six months; and then very
sensibly cum tew the conclusion that pedigree ain't no better than skim-
milk.
Sum marry bekawze they hev been highsted sum whare else; this iz
a cross match, a bay and a sorrel: pride may make it endurable.
Sum marry for luv, without a cent in their pockets, nor a friend in
the world, nor a drop ov pedigree. This looks desperate, but it iz the
strength of the game.
If marrying for luv aint a success, then matrimony is a ded beet.
Sum marry because they think wimnien will be scarce next year, and
live tew wonder how the crop holdz out.
Sum marry tew get lid ov themselves, and discover that the game
waz one that two could play at, and neither win.
Sum marry the second time tew get even, and find it a gambling
game — the more they put down the loss they take up.
Sum marry, tew be liap])y, and, not linding it, wonder where all the
happiness goes to when it dies.
JOSH BILLINGS. 89
Sum marry, they can't tell why, and live they can't tell how.
Almost every boddy gets married, and it is a good joke.
Sum marry in haste, and then sit down and think it carefully over.
Sam think it over careful fust, and then set down and marry.
Both ways are right, if they hit the mark.
Sum marry rakes tow convert them. This iz a little risky, and takes
a smart missionary to do it.
Sum marry coquetts. This iz like buying a poor farm heavily mort-
gaged, and working the balance of your days to clear oph the mort-
gages.
Married life haz its chances, and this iz just what gives it its flavor.
Every boddy luvs tew phool witli the chances, bekawze every boddy
expekts tew win. But I am authorized tew state that every boddy don't
win.
But, after all, married life iz full az certain az the dry goods biz-
ness.
Kno man kan tell jist what calico haz made up its mind tew do next.
Calico don't kno even herself.
Dry goods ov all kinds izthe child ov circumstansis.
Sum never marry, but this iz jist ez risky; the diseaze iz the same,
with another name to.
The man who stands on the banks shivering, and dassent, iz more apt
tew ketch cold than him who pitches hiz head fust into the river.
Thare iz but few who never marry bekawze they wonH — they all
hanker, and most ov them starve with bread before them (spread on both
sides), jist for the lack ov grit.
Marry young! iz mi motto.
I hev tried it, and I know what I am talking about.
If enny boddy asks you whi you got married (if it needs be), tell
him *'yu dorCt recollckt'*
Marriage iz a safe way to gamble — if yu win, yu win a pile, and if
yu loze, yu don't loze enny thing, only the privilege of living dismally
alone and soaking your own feet.
I repeat it, in italics, marry youny!
Thare iz but one good excuse for a marriage late in life, and that is
— a neco n djn arriaye.
When you are married, don't swap with your mother-in-law, unless
yu kin afTprd to give her the big end of the trade. Say ** how are you "
to every boddy. Kultivatc modesty, but mind and keep a good stock of
impudence on hand. Be charitable — three-cent pieces were made on
purpose. It costs more to borry than it does to buy. Ef a man flatters
90 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
yu, yu can kalkerlate lie is a roge, or yu are a fule. Be more anxug
about the pedigree yur going to leave than yu are about the wun some-
body's going to leave you. Sin is like weeds — self-sone and sure to cum.
Two lovers, like two armies, generally get along quietly until they are
engaged.
I will now give young men my advice about getting married.
Find a girl that iz 19 years old last May, about the right hight, with
a blue eye, and dark-brown hair and white teeth.
Let the girl be good to look at, not too phond of musik, a firm dis-
beleaver in ghosts, and one ov six children in the same family.
Look well tew the kji-rakter pv her father ; see that he is not the
member ov enny klub, don't bet on elekshuns, and gits shaved at least
3 times a week.
Find out all about her mother, aee if she haz got a heap ov good com-
mon sense, studdy well her likes and dislikes, eat sum ov her hum-made
bread and apple dumplins, notiss whether she abuzes all ov her nabors, and
don't fail tew observe whether her dresses are last year's ones fixt over.
If you are satisfied that the mother would make the right kind ov a
mother-in-law, yu kan safely konklude that the dauter wouW make
the right kind of a wife. [Applause.]
What about courtin'?
Courting is a luxury, it is sallad, it is ise water, it is a beveridge, it is
the pla spell ov the soul.
The man who has never courted haz lived in vain; he haz bin a blind
man amung landskapes and waterskapes ; he has bin a deff man in the
land ov hand orgins, and by the side ov murmuring canals. [Laughter.]
Courting iz like 2 little springs ov soft water that steal out from under
a rock at thefut ov a mountain and run down the hill side by side sing-
ing and dansing and spatering each uther, eddying and frothing and kas-
kading, now hiding under bank, now full ov sun and now full of shadder,
till bime by tlia jine and then tha go slow. [Laughter.]
I am in favor ov long courting ; it gives the parties a chance to find
out each uther's trump kards; it iz good exercise, and is jist asinnersent
as 2 merino lambs.
Courting iz like strawberries and cream, wants tew be did slow, then
yu git the flavor.
Az a ginral thing i wouldn't brag on uther gals mutchVhen i waz
courting, it mite look az tho yu knu tew mutch.
If yu will court 3 years in this wa, awl the time on the square, if yu
don't sa it iz a leettle the slikest time in yure life, yu kan git me^rsured
for a hat at my expense, and pa for it,
JOSn BILLINGS. 91
Don^t court for munny, nor buty, nor relashuns, theze things are jist
about az onsartin as the kerosene lie refining bissness^ libel tew git out ov
repair and bust at enny minnit.
Court a gal for fun, for the luv yu bear her, for the vartue and biss-
ness thare Is in her; court her for a wife and for a mother; court her as
yu wud court a farm — for the strength ov the sile and the parf eckshun
ov the title; court her as tho* she want a fule, and 301 a nuther ; court her
in the kitchen, in the parlor, over the wash tub, and at the pianner;
court this wa, yung man, and if yu don't git a good wife and she don't
git a good hustband, the fait won't be in the courting.
Yung man, yu kan rely upon Josh Billings, and if yu kant make
these rules wurk, jist send for him, and he will sho yu how the thing is did,
and it shant kost you a cent.
I win now give the following Advice to Lecture Committees outside of
this town:
1. Don't hire enny man tew lectur for yu (never mind how moral he
iz) unless yu kan make munny on him.
2. Selekt 10 ov yure best lookin and most talking members tew meet
the lekturer at the depot. ^ ,
3. Don't fail tew tell the lekturer at least 14 times on yure way from
the depot tew the hotel that yu hav got the smartest town in kreashun,
and sevnil men in it that are wuth over a millyun.
4. When yu reach tlic hotel introduce the lekturer immejiately to at
least 25 ov yure fust-klass citizens, if you hav tew send out for them.
5. When the lekturer's room iz reddy go with him in masse to hiz
room and remind liini 4 or 5 more times that yu had over 3 thousand
people ill yure city at the last censuss, and are a talking about having an
opera house.
6. Don't leave tlie lekturer alone in his room over 15 minits at once;
he might take a drink out ov his flask on the sli if yu did.
7. When yu introjuce the lekturer tew the aujience don't fail tew make
a speech ten or twelve feet long, occupying a haff an hour, and if yu kan
ring in sumthing about the growth ov yure butiful sitty, so mutch the
better. [Laughter.]
8. Always seat 9 or 10 ov the kommitty on the stage, and then if it
iz a kommik lektur, and tlie kommitty don't laff a good deal, the aujience
Avill konkhulc that the lektur iz a failure; and if they do laff a good deal,
the aujience will konklude they are stool-pigeons. [Laughter.]
92 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
9. Jist az soon az the lectur is tliru bring 75 or 80 ov the richest ov
yure populashim up onto the stage and let them squeeze the hand and
exchange talk with the lekturer.
10. Go with the lekturer from the hall tew hiz room in a bunch, and
remind him once or twice more on the way that yure sitty iz a growing
very rapidly, and jisk him if he don't think so.
11. If the lekturer should inquire how the comik lekturers had suc-
ceeded who had preceded him, don't forget tew tell him that they were
all failures. This will enable him tew guess what they Will say about
him just az soon az he gits out ov town. [Laughter.]
12. If the lekturer's fee should be a hundred dollars or more, don't
Aesitate tew pay him next morning, about 5 minnits before the train
leaves, in old, lop-eared one-dollar bills, with a liberal sand witching ov
tobbSkkko-stained shinplasters.
13. I forgot tew say that the fust thing yu should tell a lekturer,
after yu had sufficiently informed him ov the immense growth ov yure
citty, iz that yure people are not edukated up tew lekturs yet, but are
grate on nigger-minstrels.
14. Never fail tew ask the lekturer whare he findsthe most appreshiated
aujiences, and he won't fail tew tell yu (if he iz an honest man) that
thare ain't no sfate in the Union that begins tew kompare with yures.
15. Let 15 or 20 ov yure kommitty go with the lekturer, next morn-
ing, tew the kars, and az each one shakes hands with him with a kind ov
deth grip, don't forget tew state that yure citty iz growing very mutch
in people.
16. If the night iz wet, and the inkum ov the house won't pay
expenses, don't hesitate tew make it pay by taking a chunk out ov the
lekturer's fee. The lekturers all like this, but they are too modest, as a
klass, tew say so.
17. I know ov several other good rules tew follow, but the abuv will
do tew begin with.
Your Schoolmaster will tell you the rest.
Thare iz one man in this world to whom i alwus take oph mi hat, and
remain uncovered untill he gits safely by, and that iz the distrikt skool-
master.
When I meet him, I look upon him az a martyr just returning from
the stake, or on hiz way thare tew be cooked.
He leads a more lonesum and single life than an old bachelor, and a
more anxious one than an old maid.
He iz remembered jist about az long and affektionately az a gide
board iz by a traveling pack pedlar.
JOSH BILLINGS. 93
If he undertakes tew make his skollars luv him, the chances are he
will neglekt their larning; and if he don't lick them now and then
pretty often, they will soon lick him. [Laughter.]
The distrikt skoolmaster hain't got a friend on the flat side ov earth.
The boys snow-ball him during recess; the girls put water in hiz hair
die; and the skool committee make him work for haflf the money a bar-
tender gits, and board him around the naberhood, whare they giv him
rhy coffee, sweetened with mollassis, tew drink, and kodfish bawls 3
times a day for vittles. [Laughter.]
And, with all this abuse, I never heard ov a distrikt skoolmaster
swareing enny thing louder than — Condem it.
Don't talk tew me about the pashunce ov anshunt Job.
Job had pretty plenty ov biles all over him, no doubt, but they were
all ov one breed.
Every yung one in a distrikt skool iz a bile ov a diffrent breed, and
each one needs a diffrent kind ov poultiss tew git a good head on them.
A distrikt skoolmaster, who duz a square job and takes hiz codfish
bawls reverently, iz a better man to-day tew hav lieing around loose than
Solomon would be arrayed in all ov hiz glory.
Soloman waz better at writing proverbs and manageing a large family,
than he would be tew navigate a distrikt skool hous.
Enny man who haz kept a distrikt skool for ten years, and boarded
around the naberhood, ought tew be made a mager gineral, and hav a
penshun for the rest ov his natral days, and a hoss and waggin tew do
hiz going around in.
Hut, az a genral consequence, a distrikt skoolmaster hain't got any
more warm friends than an old blind fox houn haz.
He iz jist about az welkum az a tax gatherer iz.
lie iz respekted a good deal az a man iz whom we owe a debt ov 50
dollars to uiul don't mean tew pay.
lie goes through life on a back road, az poor az a wood sled, and
finally iz missed — but what ever bekums ov hiz remains, i kant tell.
Fortunately he iz not often a sensitive man; if he waz, he couldn't
enny more keep a distrikt skool than he could file a kross kut saw.
[Laughter.]
Whi iz it that thoze men and wimmen, who pashuntly and with crazed
brain teach our remorseless brats the tejus meaning ov the alphabet, who
take the fust welding heat on their destinys, who lay the stepping stones
and enkurrage them tew mount upwards, who hav dun more hard and
mean work than enny klass on the futstool, who have prayed over the
ro]>robate, strengthened the timid, restrained the outrageous, and flat-
tered the imbecile, who hav lived on kodfish and vile coffee, and hain't
94 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
been heard to sware — whi iz it that they are treated like a vagrant fid-
dler, danced to for a night, paid oph in the morning, and eagerly for-
• gotten.
I had rather burn a coal pit, or keep the flys out ov a butcher's shop in
the month ov August, than meddle with the distrikt skool bizzness.
[Applause.]
I propose now to close by making Twelve Square Eemarks, to- wit:
1. A broken reputashun iz like a broken vase; it may be mended, but
all ways shows where the krak was.
2. If you kant trust a man for the full amount, let him skip. This
trying to git an average on honesty haz allways bin a failure.
3. Thare iz no treachery in silence; silence is a hard argument to
beat.
4. Don^t mistake habits for karacter. The menov the most karacter
hav the fewest habits.
5. Thare iz cheats in all things; even pizen is adulterated.
6. The man who iz thoroughly polite iz 2- thirds ov a Christian, enny
how.
7. Kindness iz an instinkt, politeness only an art.
8. Thare iz a great deal ov learning in this world, which iz nothing
more than trying to prove what we don't understand.
9. Mi dear boy, thare are but few who kan kommence at the middle
ov the ladder and reach the top; and probably you and I don't belong to
that number.
10. One ov the biggest mistakes made yet iz made by the man who
thinks he iz temperate, just becauze he puts more water in his whiskey
than his nabor does.
11. The best medicine I know ov for the rumatisni iz to thank the
Lord — that it aint the gout. [Laughter.]
12. Remember the poor. It costs nothing. [Laughter.]
JOan BlLLIUfOS. 98
JOSH BILLINGS' AULMINAX.
Mr. Shaw had a wonderful success with his burlesque almanac.
He sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and it was always repro-
duced in England. He generally dedicated the almanac to some
business house for $500 in cash, and got his money for it. Below
are Uncle Josh's weather predictions for March:
March begins on Saturday, and hangs out for 81 days.
Saturday, 1st. — Sum wind; look out for squalls, and pack peddlers; munny iz
tight, so are briks. Ben Jonson had his boots tapped 1574; eggs a dollar a piece,
hens on a strike; mercury 45 degrees above zero; snow, mixed with wind.
Sunday, £nd. — Horace Greeley preaches in Grace church; text, ** the gentleman
in black;" wind northwest, with simptoms of dust; hen strike continues; the ring-
leaders are finally arrested and sent to pot; eggs eazier.
Monday, 3rd. — Big wind; omnibus, with 17 passengers inside, blown over in
Broadway; sow lettuce, and sow on buttons; about these days look out for wind;
Augustus Ceazer sighns the tempranse pledge 1286; strong simptoms ov spring;
blue birds and organ grinders make their appearance; sun sets in wind.
Tuesday, 4th. — Augustus Ceazer breaks the pledge 1286; **put not you trust in
kin<rsand princes; " much wind with rain; a whole lot ov naughty children destroyed in
Mercer street by wind; several gusts ov wind; buckwheat slapjacks invented 1745;
Andy Johnson commits suicide; grate failure in Wall street; the Bulls fail tew inflate
Erie; windy.
Wenesday, 5th. — A good day tew set a hen; mutch wind; ** he that spareth the
(hild, hateth the rod; " wind raises awnings, and hoop skirts; William Seward resigns
in favor ov Femnndo Would; Thud Stevens jines the Mormons.
Tliurnday, fJth. — Wind generally, accompanied with wind from the east; the
Black Cr«)<)k still rages; more wind; whisky hots still in favor ov the seller; sow peas
and punkin i)ic's, for arly sjiss; balwjs in the woods born 1600; wind threatens.
Friday _ 7th. — Fred Douglass nominated for president by the demokrats; black
ilimds in the west; wind brewing; grate scare in Nassau street; a man runs over a
lion I'; D(X'ktors Pug and Bug in immediate attendance; horce not expektcd tew live.
Riin and snow and wind and mud, about equally mixt.
Saturday, 8th. — Horce more easier this morning; mint julips offered, but no
lakers. AlK)ut these days expect wind; wind from the northwest; a good day for
wind mills. Half- past 5 o'clock, P. M., the following notis appears on all the bulle-
tin boardb: " Doctor Pug thinks the horce, with the most skillful treatment at the
hands ov the attendant physicians, may possibly be rendered suitable for a clam
wa«rnn. and Doctor Bug corroborates Pug. provided, the oleaginous dipthong that
ronnects the parodial glysses with the nervaqular episode is not displaced; if so, the
most coDsumit skill ov the profcshion will be requisite to restore a secondary unity."
Later — "The horce has been turned out tew grass."
Sunday, 0th.— This is the Sabbath, a day that our fathers thoughta good deal ov.
Mutch wind (in some ov the churches); streets lively, bissiness good; prize fight on
the palisades; police reach the ground after the fight is aul over, and arrest the ropes
and the ring. Wind sutherly; a lager-beer spring discovered just out ov the limits
ov the city; millions are flocking out to see it.
/
96 KINGS OF THE PLATFORyf AND PVLPTT.
Monday, JOth. — A gale, mile stuns are torn up bi the rutes; fight for lOu Aollars
and the belt, at Red Bunk, Nu Jersey, between two well kiiow^n roosters; oysters fust
eaten on the half shell 1842, by Don BiviUvo, an Irish Duke; sun sets in the west.
2\iesday, 11th. — Roosters still fighting; indications ov wind; coup*^rfeit Tens in
circulashun on the Faro Bank; look out for them; milk only 15 ceD'^s a quart; thank
the Lord, "the good time" has finally come; Don Quixot fights ij'A first wind mill,
1510, at short range, and got whipped the second round; time, 7f minnits.
9:30 P. M. — Torch-lite procession at Red Bank, in honor ov the winning rooster.
Wednesday, 15th. — Sum wind, with wet showers; showers smell strong ov dandy-
lions and grass; gold, 182 17-16; exchange on Brooklin and Williamsburgh, one cent
(by the ferry boats).
Thursday, 13th. — Bad day for the aulminak bissincss; no nuze; no wind; no
cards; no nothing.
Friday, 14th. — Wendal Phillips tares up the constitushun ov the United States;
"alas! poor Yorick;" rain from abuv; strawberries, watermillions and ])caches git-
ting skase; rain continners, accompanied with thunder and slight moister; mercury
abuv zero.
Saturday, 15th. — Grate fraud diskovered in the custom house— 3 dollars missing;
fifty subordinates suspended; a wet min sets in; robbins cum, and immediately begin
tew enquire for sum cherrys.
Sunday, I6th. — Henry W. Beecher preaches in Brooklyn by partickular request;
dandylions in market, only 15 cents a head.
Monday, 17th. — Plant sum beans; plant them deep; if yu don't they will be sure
tew cum up. Robinson Crpso born 1515, all alone, on a destitute iland. Warm rain,
mixt with wind; woodchucks cum out ov their holes and begin tew chuck a little.
Tuesday, 18th. — Look out for rain and yu will be apt tew see it; wind sow by sow
west; ice discovered in our Rushion purchiss; miners rushing that way; geese are
seen marching in single phile, a sure indicashun ovthe cholera; musketose invented
by George Tucker, Esq., 1491; patent applied for, but refused, on the ground that
they might bight sumboddy.
Wenesday, lOth. — A mare's nest discovered in Ontary county; a warm and
slightly liquid rain; thousands ov people hav visited the nest; windy; the old mare
is dredful cross and kickful; hens average an egg a day, beside several cackels.
Tliursday, SOth. — Appearance ov rain; plant com for early whiskey; frogs hold
their fust concert — Ole Bullfrog musical direcktor— matinee every afternoon; snakes
are caught wriggling (an old trick ov theirs); a warm and muggy night; yu can hear
the bullheads bark; United States buys the iland ov Great Britain.
^'PETROLEUM V. NASBY/
BIOGRAPHr AND RBMINISCENCES.
David Ross Locke was born in Vestal, Broome county, N. Y., in 1883, and died
in New York City in 1888. He is sometimes called a hiiraorist, but he always pre
ferrcd to be called a satirist. He was the Cervantes of America. His mission was to
exaggerate error, and make it odious.
Mr. Nasby's political influence was so great that National Committees waited
upon him for advice, and Presidential candidates were glad to listen to his words of
counsel.
The satirist published several books, all of which had an immense sale. He died
leaving an estate in Toledo worth more than a million of dollars, besides his great
newspaper, Tlie Toledo Blade, now edited by his son. He left an accomplished wife
and a family of gifted children, who well do honor to the man whom President Lin-
coln envied.
One day, speaking of satire, the gifted man said to me :
"I can kill more error by exaggerating vice than by abusing it.
In all my writings I have not said one unkind word about any people
or party. I have simply exaggerated errors in politics, love and
religion, until the people saw these errors, and rose up against them.
The humorist would describe ^Deeken Pogram' and *JoeBigler,'
of the * Confedrlt X Roads,' just as they are. Thai; would have
caused laughter ; but I exaggerated these characters,, as Cervafntes
exaggerated Don Quixote, and made tham ridiculous.''
Charles Sumner, in his introduction to Kasby's great book, said :
" President Lincoln read every letter from Nasby's pen."
Mr. Nasby's satires have always been directed against such evils
as slavery, intemperance and partisan suffrage. He has always
maintained the true democracy, that one man is as good as another
if he is as clean and as well educated.
" One day," said Nasby, " a poor ignorant white man came to the
polls in Kentucky to vote.
^' * I wish you would oblige me by voting this ticket,' said a light-
colored mulatto, who was standing near the polls.
M
PETROLEUM F. NASBT. 99
" * What kind of ticket is it ? ' asked the poor white man.
" * Why,' said the mulatto ' you can see for yourself.'
"* But I can't read.'
" * What ! can't you read the ballot you have there in your hand,
which you are about to vote ? ' exclaimed the colored man.
" ' No,' said he ' I can't read at alL'
" * Well,' said the colored man, ' this ballot means that you are
in favor of the fifteenth amendment giving equal franchise to both
white and colored citizens.'
" ' It means to let the nigger vote, does it ? '
" ' Yes sir.'
" ' Then I don't want it. Niggers dotCt know enough to vote! ' "
Of late years Mr. Nasby did all of his writing* on a type- writer
which he took with him on the cars. While the train was going
forty miles an hour he would write those cross-road letters which
have made him famous. One day I wrote to him for his autograpti,
for Sam Cox, who wanted it to sell ^at a fair. Mr. Cox screamed
with laughter when the autograph came written by a type-writer !
Our engraver reproduces it infac simile.
XEbe ^lebo £Ia^
UAs landdn;—
■ROLfliCD fin ur AinDmu(p«u
I iril miRlED TO WRITE IT WITH RT MOHINE.
MHB THDUBAITDi OP YEAlCfl HEHOB IT m\\^^ HAVE A VALUE.
WIBHIHIYDO WCCE60t I AM
TKUL^t
D. K» U>CKB«
Mr. Locke meant this as a joke, for in a day or two came his
real autograph, the one attached to his picture, and this note :
Dear Eli: My father's rwm deplume I hardly think has any particular significance.
The word '* Nasby" was coined probably from a remembrance of the battle of Naseby.
About the time the Nasby letters were commenced in the Toledo Blade, the peir leum
excitement was raging in Pennsylvania, and Vesuvius was used for euphony. Father
never gave any other explanation of this pseudonym than the above.
RoDiNsoN Locke.
The best monument that Mr. Locke's sons can rear to their dis-
tinguished father is to foster the great newspaper which he estab-
lished, and they are doing it.
896287A
100 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
When asked about Lincoln's love for Nasby, the senator said :
" I once called on the President late in the evening of March 17,
1865. We had a long talk in his private office, at the White House,
which lasted till midnight. As I rose to go he said :
" ' Come to me when I open shop in the morning ; I will hare
the order written, and you shall see it.'
" ' When do you open shop ? ' I asked.
" 'At nine o'clock,' he replied.
^' At the hour named I was in the same room that I had so
recently left. Very soon the President entered, stepping quickly
with the promised order in his hands, which he at once read to me.
It was to disapprove and annul the judgment and sentence of a
court martial in a case that had excited much feeling. While I was
making an abstract of the order for communication by telegraph to
the anxious parties, he broke into quotation from Nasby. Finding
me less at home than himself with his favorite humorist, he said
pleasantly.
"'I must initiate you,' and then repeated with enthusiasm the
message he had sent to Mr. Nasby : ' For the genius to write these
things I would gladly give up my office.'
" A few weeksafter this, April 14th," said Mr. Sumner, *'the bul-
let from the pistol of J. Wilkes Booth took the great President's
life."
NASBY'S LECTURE
ON
The Woman Question.
Ladies and Gentlemen: — I adore woman. I recognize the importance
of the sex, and lay at its feet my humble tribute. But for woman, where
would we have been? Who in our infancy washed our faces, fed us
soothing syrup and taught us *^ How doth the little busy bee?'*
Woman !
To whom did we give red apples in our boyhood? For whom did we
part our liair behind, and wear No. 7 boots when No. lO's would have
been more comfortable? [Laughter.] And with whom did we sit up
nights, in the hair-oil period of our existence? And, finally, whom did
we marry? But for woman what would the novelists have done? What
would have become of Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. , if he had had no women to
make heroines of ? And without Sylvanus Cobb, Bonner could not have
made Tlie Ledger a success; Everett would be remembered not as the
PETROLEUM V. KA8BY, 101
man who wrote for Hie Ledger, but merely as an orator and statesman;
Beecher never would have written " Norwood/' and Dexter might to-day
have been chafing under tlie collar in a dray! But for woman George
Washington would not have been the father of his country; the Sunday-
school teachers would have been short the affecting story of the little
hatchet and the cherry tree, and half the babies in the country would
have been named after some one else. PossibJy they might have all been
Smiths. But for woman Andrew Johnson never would have been, and
future generations would liave lost the most awful example of depravity
the world has ever seen. I adore woman, but I want her to keep her
place. I don't want woman to be the coming man. [Laughter.]
In considering this woman question, I occupy the conservative stand-
point. I find that, from the most gray-headed times, one-half of the
human race have lived and moved by the grace and favor of the other
half. From tlie beginning woman has occupied a dependent position,
and has been only what man has made her. The Turks, Jogical fellows,
denied her a soul, and made of her an object of barter and sale; the Amer-
ican Indians made of her a beast of burden. In America, since wo y^
extended the area of civilization by butchering the Indians, we have
copied both. [Laughter.] In the higher walks of life she is a toy to be
played with, and is bought and sold; in the lower strata she bears the
burdens and does the drudgery of servants, without the ameliorating
conditions that make other servitude tolerable and possible to be borne.
But I am sure that her present condition is her proper condition, for it
always has been so.
Adam subjugated Eve at the beginning, and, following precedent,
Cain subjugated his wife. Mrs. Cain, not being an original thinker,
imitated her mother-in-law, who probably lived with thcni, and made it
warm for her, [Laughter] as is the custom of mothers-in-law, and the
precedent being established, it has been so ever since. I reject with scorn
the idea advanced by a schoolmistress, that Eve was an inferior woman,
and therefore submitted; and that Eve's being an inferior woman was no
reason for classing all her daughters with her.
'"Had I been Eve," she remarked, ** I would have made a different
precedent I" and I rather think she would.
The first record we have of man and woman is in the first chapter of
Genesis. *^So God created man in his own image. And he made man
of the dust of the earth." In the second chapter we have a record of the
making of woman by taking a rib from man. Man. it will be observed,
was created first, showing conclusively that he was intended to take pre- /^
ccdence of woman. This woman, to whom I referred a moment since.
^
f
102 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
denied the correctness of the conclusion. Man was made first, woman
afterward — isn't it reasonable to suppose that the last creation was the
best? ** If there is any thing in being first/' she continued, "man must
acknowledge the supremacy of the goose, for the fowl is first mentioned/'
[Laughter.] And she argued further: ** Man was made of the dust of
the earth, the lawest form of matter; woman was made of man, the high-
est and most perfect form. It is clear that woman must be the better,
for she was made of better material!" [Laughter.] But, of course, I
look upon this as mere sophistry.
I attempted to trace the relative condition of the sexes from the cre-
ation down to the fall of man, but the Bible is silent upon the subject,
and the fijesof the newspapers of the period were doubtless all destroyed
m the fiood. _ Jfcluuii^-utft'tawm ^<ibla- to-fiBd- -that any hovo been praaopvod
«Mi-the public librariea of th^ oountry^ But it is to be presumed that
they lived upon precisely the terms that they do now. I shall assume
that Eve was merely the domestic servant of Adam — that she rose in the
morning, cacef ul not to disturb his slumbers — that she cooked his break-
fast, called him affectionately when it was quite ready, waited upon him
at table, arranged his shaving implements ready to his hand, saw him
properly dressed — after which she washed the dishes, and amused her-
self darning his torn fig leaves till the time arrived to prepare dinner, and
so on till nightfall, after which time she improved her mind, and*, before
7 ,j^ Master Cain was born, slept. She did not even keep a kitchen girl; at
^ * '• ' ' ' least I find no record of any thing of the kind. Probably at that time
the emigration from Ireland was setting in other directions, and help
was hard to get. That she was a good wife, and a contented one, I do
not doubt. I find no record in the Scriptures of her throwing tea-pots,
or chairs, or brooms, or any thing of the sort at Adam's head, nor is it
put down that at any time she intimated a desire for a divorce, which
proves conclusively that the Garden of Eden was not located in the State
of Indiana. But I judge that Adam was a good, kind husband. He did
not go to Iiis club at night, for, as near as I can learn, he had no club.
His son Cain had one, however, [Laughter] as his other son, Abel, dis-
covered.
I am certain that he did not insist on smoking cigars in the back par-
lor, making the curtains smell. I do not know that these things are so;
but as mankind does to-day what mankind did centuries ago, it is reason-
able to assume, when we don't know any thing about it, that what is done
to-day was done centuries ago. The bulk of mankind have learned noth-
ing since Adam^s time. Eve's duties were not as trying as those piled
upon her daughters. As compared with the fashionable women of to-day.
PETROLEUM V. NASB7. 103
her lot was less perplexing. Society was not so exacting in her time.
She had no calls to make, or parties to give and attend. Her toilet wns
much simpler, and did not require the entire resources of her intellect.
If her situation is compared with that of the wives of poorer men, it will
be found to be better. They had no meat to dress, flour to knead, or
bread to bake. The trees bore fruit, which were to be had fortlie pick-
ing; and as they ,were strict vegetarians, it sufficed. I have wished that,
her taste in fruit had been more easily satisfied, for her unfortunate cra\ -
ing after one particular variety brought me into trouble. But I have for-
given her. I shall never reproach her for this. She is dead, alas! ami
let her one fault lie undisturbed in the grave with her. It is well thiit
Eve died when she did. It would have broken her heart had she lived
to see how the most of her family turned out. [Laughter.]
I insist, however, that what labor of a domestic nature was done, she
did. She picked the fruit, pared it and stewed it, like a dutiful wife.
She was no strong-minded female, and never got out of her legitimate
sphere. I have searched the book of Genesis faithfully, and I defy any
one to find it recorded therein that Eve ever made a public speech, or
expressed any desire to preach, practice law or medicine, or sit in the
legislature of her native State. What a crushing, withering, scathing,
blasting rebuke to the Dickinsons, Stantons, Black wells and Anthonys
of this degenerate day.
I find in the Bible many arguments against the equality of woman,
with man in point of intellectual power. The serpent tempted Eve, not »
Adam. Why did he select Eve ? Ah, why, indeed ! Whatever else j
may be said of Satan, no one will, I think, question his ability! I do not
stand here as his champion or even apologist ; in fact, I am willing to
admit that in many instances his behavior has been ungentlemanly, but
no one will deny that he is a most consummate judge of character, and
that he has never failed to select for his work the most fitting instru-
ments. When America was to be betrayed the first time, Satan selected
Arnold; and when the second betrayal of the Republic was determined
u})on, he knew where Jefferson Davis, Floyd and Buchanan lived.'
When there is a fearful* piece of jobbery to get through Congress or the
\ow York legislature, he never fails to select precisely the right persons
for the villainy. Possibly he is not entitled to credit for discrimination
in these last-mentioned bodies, for he could not very well go wrong. He
conld find instruments in either, with both hands tied and blindfolded.
But this is a digression. Why did Satan select Eve ? Because he knew
that Kve, the woman, was weaker than Adam the man, and therefore'^
best for his purpose. This reckless female insisted that Satan approached
<
-f
104 KINOa OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
Eve first, because he knew that woman was not afraid of the devil;
[Laughter] but I reject this exphmation as irrelevant. '
At this point, however, we must stop. Should we go on, we would
find that Eve, the weak woman, tempted Adam, the strong man, with
distinguished success, which would leave us in this predicament: Satan,
stronger than Eve, tempted her to indulge in fruit. Eve^s weakness
was demonstrated by her falling a victim to temptation. Eve tempted
Adam; Adam yielded to Eve; therefore, if Eve was weak in yielding to
Satan, how much weaker was Adam in yielding to Eve ? If Satan had
been'considerate of the feelings of the conservatives, his best friends, by the
way, in all ages, he would have tempted Adam first and caused Adam to
tempt Eve. This would have afforded us the edifying spectacle of the
^ strong man leading the weak woman, which would be in accordance
with our idea of the eternal fitness of things. But now that I look at it
again, this wouldn't do ; for it is necessary to our argument that the
woman should be tempted first, to prove that she was the weaker of the
two. I shall dismiss Adam and Eve with the remark, that, notwith-
standing the respect one ought always to feel for his ancestors, those
whose blood is the same as that running in his veins, I can not but say
that Adam's conduct in this transaction was weak. If Adam's spirit
is listening to me to-night, I can't help it. I presume he will
feel badly to hear me say it, but truth is truth. Instead of say-
ing boldly, *^I ate ! " he attempted to clear his skirts by skulking behind
those of his wife. *^ The woman thou gavest me tempted me and I did
eat," he said, which was paltry. Had Adam been stronger minded, he
would have refused the tempting bite, and then only woman would have
been amenable to the death penalty that followed. This would have
killed the legal profession in Chicago, for what man who was to live
forever would get a divorce from his wife who could live but eighty or
ninety years at best ?
As a conservative, I must say .that woman is the inferior of man.
This fact is recognized in all civilized countries and in most heathen
nations. The Hindoos, it is true, in one of their practices, acknowledge
a superiority of woman. In Hindostan, when a man dies, his widow is
^ immediately burned, that she may follow him — an acknowledgment
that woman is as necessary to him in the next world as in this. [Laugh-
ter.] As men are never burned when their wives die, it may be taken
as admitting that women are abundantly able to get along alone.
[Laughter.] Or, perchance, it may be because men in that country, as in
this, can get new wives easier than women can get new husbands. The
PETROLEUM V. NASBT. 106
exit from this world by fire was probably chosen, that the wife might in
some measure be fitted for the climate in which she might expedt to find
her husband.
The inferiority of the sex is easy of demonstration. It' has been said
that the mother forms the character of the man so long, that the propo-
sition has become axiomatic. If this be true, we can crush those who
prate of the equality of women, by holding up to the gaze of the world
the inferior men she has formed. Look at the Congress of the United
States. Look at Garret Davis. ' By their works ye shall know them.
It won't do to cite me to the mothers of the good and great men whoa^
names adorn American history. The number is too small. There's \
George Washington, Wendell Phillips, Abraham Lincoln, and one other J
whoso name all the tortures of the Inquisition could not make ni^/
reveal. Modesty forbids me. [Laughter.] A^^rHt'^^T*^^
Those wlio clamor for the extension of the sphere of woman, p6int lo
the names of women illustrious in history, sacred and profane. I find,
to my discomfiture, that some of the sex really excelled the sterner.
There was Mrs. Jezebel Ahab, for instance. Ahab wanted the vineyard
of Kaboth, which Naboth refused to*sell, owing to a prejudice he had
against disposing of real estate which he had inherited. Ahab, who
was not an ornament to his sex, went home sick and took to his bed like
a girl, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread. Mrs. Ahab
wai/'inade of sterner stuff.^
''Arise," said Mrs. A.; *'be merry. I will give thee the vineyard of
Naboth the Jezreelite."
And she did it. She trapped him as neatly as David did Uriah. She
suborned two sons of Belial (by the way Belial has had a large family,
and the stock has not run out yet) to boar false witness against him,
saying that he had blasphemed God and the king, and they took him
out and stoned him. Aliab got the vineyard. It is true this lady came
to a miserable end, but she acomplishcd what she desired.
^liss Pocahontas has been held up as a sample of female strength of
mind. I don't deny that she displayed some decision of character, but
it was fearfullv unwomanlv. When her father raised his club over the
head of the jistonishod Smith, instead of rushing in so recklessly, she
should have said, '* Please pa, don't.*' Her recklessness Avas immense.
Su})pose Pocahontas had been unable to stay the blow, Avhere would our
Miss have been then? — she never would have married Polfe; what would
the first families of Virginia have done for somebody to descend from?
When we remember that all the people of that proud State claim this
voman as their mother, Ave shudder, or ouglit to, when we contemplate
the possible consequences of her rashness.
/
106 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Delilah, whose other name is not recorded, overcame Samson, the
first and most successful conundrum maker of his age, and Jael, it will
be remembered, silenced Sisera forever. Joan of Arc conquered the
English after the French leaders failed, and Elizabeth of England was
the greatest of English rulers. I acknowledge all this, but then these
women had opportunities beyond those of women in general. They had
as many opportunities as the men of their respective periods had, and
consequently, if they were mentally as great as men — no, that isn't what I
mean to say^ — if tlie men of the period were no greater, mentally, than they
— no — if the circumstances which surrounded them gave them oppor-
tunities, which being mentally as great as men — I have this thing mixed
up somehow, and it don't result as it ought to — but this is true; Delilah,
Elizabeth, Joan of Arc— all and singular, unsexed themselves, and did
things unbecoming ladies of refinement and cultivation. Joan's place
was spinning flax in her father's hut, and not at the head of armies. Had
she followed the natural mode of feminine life, she would not have been
bunied at the stake, and tlie English would not have been interrupted in
their work of reducing France to the condition of an English province.
Had I lived in France, I should have said, '^Down with her! Let us
perish under a man rather than be saved by a woman!" Joan should
have been ashamed of herself — I blush for her. Had Elizabeth been
content to entrust her kingdom to the hands of her cabinet, she would
have left it in the happy condition of the United States at the close of
Buchanan's administration, but she would have been true to our idea of
the womanly life.
There is, in the feminine character, a decisive promptness which we
must admire. Eve ate the apple without a moment's hesitation, and the
characteristic is more beautifully illustrated in the touching and well
reported account of the courtship and marriage of Eebekah with Isaac.
Abraham^s servant was sent, it will be remembered, by such of you as
have read the Bible, and I presume there are those here who have
[Laughter], to negotiate for a wife for young Isaac among his kindred,
as he had as intense a prejudice against the GiCnaanites as have the
democracy of the present day. This servant, whom we will call Smith,
as his name, unfortunately, has not been preserved, and Laban, the
brother of Rebekah, had almost arranged the matter. The servant
desired to return with the young lady at once, but the mother and
brother desired her to remain some days, contrary to modern practice,
in that the parents now desire the young lady to get settled in her own
house and off their hands as soon as possible. The servant insisted.
PETROLEUM F. NA8BT, 107
whereupon the mother remarked, *fWe will call the damsel and inquire
at her mouth/' They called Rebekah and asked, '* Wilt thou go with
this man?''
It is related of a damsel in Pike county, Missouri, who was being
wedded to the man whose choice she was, when the minister officiating
asked the usual question, ** Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded
husband?" that, dropping her long eyelashes, she promptly answered,
" You bet !" • Even so with Eebekah. She neither fainted, simpered
nor blushed. She did not say that she hadn't a thing fit to put on — that
her clothes weren't home from the dressmaker's. No! Using the Hebrew
equivalent for *' you bet!" — for Eebekah was a smart girl, and young as
she was, had learned to speak Hebrew — when the question was put to
her, '* Wilt thou go with this man?" she answered, ^'I will, " — and she
went. I don't know that this proves any thing, unless it be that women
of that day took as great risks for husbands as they do now. Miss Ee-
bekah had scarcely been introduced to her future husband. It might be
interesting to trace the history of this woman, but I have hardly the
time. I will say, however, that she was a mistress of duplicity. To get
the blessing of her husband for her pet son Jacob, she put false hair |
upon him to deceive the old gentleman, and did it. From that day toj
this, women in every place but this, have deceived men, young as well]
as old, with false hair.
The feminine habit of thought is not such as to entitle them to privi-
leges beyond those they now enjoy. No woman was ever a drayman; no
woman ever carried a hod; no woman ever drove horses on the canals of
the country; and wliat is more to the point, no woman ever shoveled a
single wheel-barrow of earth on the public works. I triumphantly ask.
Did any woman assist in preparing the road bed of the Pacific Railway?
did any woman drive a spike in that magnificent structure? No woman
is employed in the forging department of any shop in which is made the
locomotives that climb the Sierra Nevada, whose head-lights beam on
the valleys of the Pacific coast — the suns of our commercial system.
Just as I had this arranged in my mind, this disturbing female, of
whom I have spoken once or twice, asked me whether carrying hods,
driving horses on canals, or shoveling dirt on railways, had been, in the
past, considered the best training lor intelligent participation in politic;;!
privileges? She remarked, that, judging from the character of most of
the legislation of which she had knowledge, these had been the scho 1
in which legislators had been trained, but she hardly believed that J
would acknowledge it. *' Make these the qualifications/' said she, '* aiid
wh-^re would yon 1 o, my friond, who have neither driven a spike, driven
a horse, or shoveled dirt? It would cut out all of my class (she was a
108 KlNOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
teacher) — indeed I know of but two women in America who would be
admitted. The two women I refer to fought a prize fight iu Connecti-
cut recently, observing all the rules of the English ring, and they dis-
' played as much gameness as was ever shown by that muscular lawmaker,
the Hon. John Morrissey. These women ought to vote, and if, in the
good time coming, women distribute honors as men have done, they
may go to Congress.^'
I answered, that these classes had always voted, and therefore it was
right that they should always vote.
"Certainly they have," returned she, "and, as I have heard them
addressed a score of times as the embodied virtue, honesty and intelli-
gence of the country, I have come to the conclusion that there must be
something in the labor they do which fits them peculiarly for the duties
of law-making."
My friend is learned. She has a tolerable knowledge of Greek, is an
excellent Latin scholar, and, as she has read the Constitution of the
United States, she excels in political lore the great majority of our repre-
sentatives in Congress. But, nevertheless, I i^rotest against her voting
for several reasons.
/ 1. She can not 6ing bass ! Her voice, as Dr. Bushnell justly observes
/ in his blessed book, is pitched higher than the male voice, which indi-
/ cates feminine weakness of mind.
f- I 2. Her form is graceful rather than strong.
I 3. She delights in millinery goods.
I 4. She can't grow whiskers.
\ In all of these points nature has made a distinction between the sexes
\ which can not be overlooked.
To all of these she pleaded guilty. She confessed that she had not the
strength necessary to the splitting of rails; she confessed that she could
neither grow a beard nor sing bass. She wished she could grow a beard,
as she knew so many men whose only title to intellect was their whiskers.
But she said she took courage when she observed that the same disparity
was noticeable in men. Within the range of her acquaintance she knew
men who had struggled with mustaches with a perseverance worthy of a
better cause, and whose existence had been blighted by the consciousness
that they could not. Life was to them, in consequence, a failure. Others
she knew who had no more strength than a girl, and others whose voices
were pitched in a childish treble. If beards, heavy voices and physical
strength Avere the qualifications for the ballot, she would at once betake
"+ herself to razors, hair invigorators, and gymnasiums. She went on thus:
"In many respects," she said, "the sexes are alike. Both are
encumbered with stomachs and heads, and both have bodies to clothe.
-/^
PETROLEUM V. NASBT. 109
So far as physical existence is concerned they are yery like. Both are
affected by laws made and enacted, and both are popularly supposed to
have minds capable of weighing the effect of laws. How, thrust into the
world as I am, with a stomach to fill and limbs to clothe, with both
hands tied, am I to live, to say nothing of fulfilling any other end? *'
** Woman," I replied, '*is man's angel."
" Stuff and nonsense," was her impolite reply. *^ I am no angel. I
am a woman. Angels, according to our idea of angels, have no use for
clothing. Either their wings are enough to cover their bodies, or they
arc po constituted as not to be affected by heat or cold. Neither clo they
require food. I can not imagine a feminine angel with hoop skirts,
Grecian bend, gaiters and bonnet; or a masculine angel in tight panta-
loons, with a cane and silk hat. Angels do not cook dinners, but women
do. Why do you say angels to us? It creates angel tastes, without the
possibility of their ever satisfying those tastes. The bird was made to
soar in the upper air, and Avas, therefore, provided with hollow bones,
wings, etc. Imagine an elephant or a rhinoceros possessed with a long-
ing to soar into the infinite ethereal. Could an elephant, with his
physical structure, be possessed with such a longing, the elephant would
be miserable, because he could not. He would be as miserable as Jay
Gould is, with an ungobbled railroad; as Bonner would be if Dexter were
the property of another man; and as James G,_Blaine is with the presi-
dcncy-bcforo him. It would ber^cll enough to make angels of us, if ydu
could keep us in a semi-angelic state; but the few thus kept only make
the misery of tliose not so fortunate the more intense. No; treat us
rather as human beings, with all the appetites, wants and necessities of
human beings, for we are forced to provide for those wants, necessities
and appetites."
I acknowledge the correctness of her position. They must live; not
that tliey are of very much account in and of themselves, but that the
nobler sex may be perpetuated to adorn and bless the earth. Without
woman it would take less than a century to wind up man, and then what
would the world do? This difficulty is obviated by marriage. All that
we have to do is to marry each man to one woman, and demand of each
man that he care for and cherish one woman, and the difficulty is got
along with. And got along with, too, leaving things as we desire them,
nanicly, with the woman dependent upon the man. We proceed upon
tlie proposition that tliere are just as many men as there are women in
the world; that all men will do their duty in this particular, and at the
ri^^ht time; that every Jack will get precisely the right Jill, and that
every Jill will be not only willing, but anxious, to t:i!;c the Jack the
Lord sends her, asking no questions.
110 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
If there be one woman more than there are men, it's bad for that
woman. I don't know what she can do, unless she makes shirts for the odd
man, at twelve and a half cents each, and lives gorgeously on the proceeds
of her toil. If one man concludes that he won't marry at all, it's bad
for another woman, unless some man's wife dies and he marries again.
That might equalize it, but for two reasons: It compels the woman to
wait for a husband until she possibly concludes it isn't worth while ; and
furthermore, husbands die as fast as wives, which brings a new element
into the field — widows; and pray what chance has an inexperienced man
against a widow determined upon a second husband? ( S^-t^xiXu* J y
I admit, that if there were as many men as women, and if tney should
all marry, and the matter be all properly fixed up at the start, that our
present system is still bad for some of them. She, whose husband gets
to inventing flying machines, or running for office, or any of those fool-
ish or discreditable emplojrments, would be in a bad situation. Or, when
the husband neglects his duty, and refuses to care for his wife at all; pr,
to state a case which no one ever witnessed, suppose one not only refuses
to care for his wife, but refuses to care for himself ! Or, suppose he con-
tracts the injudicious habit of returning to his home at night in a
state_of Jnebriation, and of breaking chairs and crockery and his wife's
headj^nd other triflea^n such a case I must admit that her position
would be, to say the least, unpleasant, particularly as she couldn't help
herself. She can't very well take care of herself; for to make woman
purely a domestic creature, to ornament our homes, we have never per-
mitted them to think for themselves, act for themselves, or do for them-
selves. We insist upon her being a tender ivy clinging to the rugged oak; if
tlie oak she clings to happens to be bass-wood, and rotten at that,*it'8
not our fault. In these cases it's her duty to keep on clinging, and to
finally go down with it in pious resignation. The fault is in the system,
and as those who made the system are dead, and as six thousand brief
summers have passed over their tombs, it would be sacrilege in us to dis-
turb it. Customs, like cheese, grow mitey as they grow old.
Let every woman miarry, and marry as soon as possible. Then she
is provided for. Then the ivy has her oak. Then if her husband is a
good man, a kind man, an honest man, a sober man, a truthful man, a
liberal man, an industrious man, a managing man, and if he has a good
business and drives it, and meets with no misfortunes, and never yields
to temptations, why, then the maid promoted to be his wife will be toler-
ably certain to, at least, have all that she can eat, and all that she can
wear, as long as ho continues so.
0
PETROLEUM F. ITASBY. Ill
This disturbing woman, of whom I have spoken once or twice,
remarked that she did not care for those who were married happily, but
she wanted something done for those who were not married at all, and those
who were married unfortunately. She liked the ivy and the oak-tree idea,
but she wanted the ivy — woman — to have a stiffening of intelligence and
opportunity, that she might stand alone in case the oak was not com-
petent to sustain it. She demanded, in short, employment at any things
she was capable of doing, and pay precisely the same that men receive
for the same labor, provided she does it as well.
This is a clear flying in the face of Providence. It is utterably im-
possible that any woman can do any work as well as men. Nature decreed
it otherwise. Nature did not give them the strength. Ask the clerks
at T^ashington, who^e muscular frames, whose hardened sinews, are em-
ployed at from twelve hundred to three thousand dollars per annum, in
the arduous and exhausting labor of writing in books, and counting
money, and cutting out extracts from newspapers, and endorsing papers
and filing them, what they think of that? Ask the brawny young men
whose manly forms are wasted away in the wearing occupation of meas-
uring tape and exhibiting silks, what they think of it? Are women,
frail as they are, to fill positions in the government offices? I ask her
sternly: *^ Are you willing to go to war? Did you shoulder a musket in
the late unpleasantness? '' '/
This did not settle her. She merely asked me if I carried a musket
in the late war. Certainly I did not. I had too much presence of mind
to volunteer. Nor did the majority of those holding official position.
Like Job's charger, they snuffed the battle afar off — some hundreds of-
fniTes — and slew the haughty Southron on the stump, or by substitute.
But there is this difference: we could have gone, while women could not.
And it is better that it is so. In the cAent of another bloody war, one
so (l(\«!pcrate as to require all the patriotism of the country to show itself,
I do not want my Avife to go to the tented field, even though she have the
requisite physical strength. No, indeed! I want her to stay at home
— with me! [Laughter.]
In the matter of wages, I do not see how it is to be helped. The
woman who teaches a school, receives, if slie has thoroughly mastered
the requirements of the position, say six hundred dollars per year, while
a man occupying the same position, filling it with equal ability, receives
twice that amount, and possibly three times. But what is this to me?
As a man of business, my duty to myself is to get my children educated
at the least possible expense. As there are but very few things women
are permitted to do, and as for every vacant place there are a hundred
f ',
\
112 KINGS OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
women eager for it, as a matter of course, their pay is brought down to a
very fine point. As I said some minutes ago, if the men born into the
world would marry at twenty-one, each a maiden of eighteen, and take
care of her properly, and never get drunk or sick, or any thing of that
inconvenient sort, and both would be taken at precisely the same time
with consumption, yellow fever, cholera, or any one of those cheerful
ailments, and employ the same physician, that they might go out of the
world at the same moment, and become angels with wings and long white
robes, it would be Avell enough. Tlie men would then take care of the
women, except those wlio marry milliners, in which case the women take
care of tlie men, which amounts to the same thing, as the one depend-
ent upon somebody else is taken care of. But it don't so happen. Men
do not marry as they ought at twenty-one; they put it off to twenty-five,
thirty or forty, and many of them are wicked enough not to marry at
all, and of those who do marry there will always be a certain per cent,
who will be dissipated or worthless. What then? I can't deny that
there will be women left out in the cold. There are those who don't
marry, and those who can not. Possibly the number thus situated would
be lessened if we permitted women to rush in and seize men, and marry
them, nolens volenSy but the superior animal will not brook that famil-
iarity. He must do the wooing — he must ask the woman in his lordly
way. Compelled to wait to be asked, and forced to marry that they may
have the wherewithal to eat and be clothed, very many of them take
fearful chances. They dare not, as a rule, refuse to marry. Man must,
as the superior being, have tlie choice of occupations, and it is a singular
fact that, superior as he is by virtue of his strength, he rushes invariably
to the occupations that least require strength, and which women might fill
to advantage. They monopolize all the occupations — the married man
has his family to take care of — the single man has his back hair to sup-
port; what is to become of these unfortunate single women — maids and
widows? Live they must. They have all the necessities of life to supply,
and nothing to supply them with. What shall they do? Why, work of
course. But they say, ^'We are willing to work, but we must have
wages." Granted. But how shall we get at the wages? What shall be
the standard? I must get my work done as cheaply as possible. Now,
if throe women — a widow, we will say, with five children to support; a
girl who has to work or do worse, and a wife with an invalid husband to
feed, clothe and find medicine for — if these three come to my door,
clamoring for the love of God for something to do, what shall I, as a
prudent man, do in the matter? There are immutable laws governing
all these things — the law of supply and demand. Christ, whose mission
PRTUoLRryTs r. nasbt. ii3
was with the poor, made otlicr hiws, hut Christ is not allowed to have
any thing to do with husiness. Selfishness is older than Christ, and
we conservatives stick close to the oldest. What do I do? Why, as a
man of business, I naturally ascertain which of the three is burdened
with the most crushing responsibilities and necessities. I ascertain to a
mouthful the amount of food necessary to keep each, and then the one
who will do my work for the price nearest starvation rates gets it to do.
If the poor girl prefers the pittance I offer her to a life of shame, she
;;ets it. If the wife is willing to work her fingers nearer the bone than
the others, rather than abandon her husband, she gets it, and, speculat-
ing on the love the mother bears her children, I see how much of her
life the widow will give to save theirs, and decide accordingly. I know
very well that these poor creatures can not saw wood, wield the hammer,
or roll barrels on the docks. I know that custom bars them out of many
employments, and that the more manly vocations of handling ribbons,
manipulating telegraphic instruments, etc., are monopolized by men.
Confined as they are to a few vocations, and there being so many hun-
dreds of thousands of men who will not each provide for one, there are
necessarily ten applicants for every vacancy, and there being more virtue
in the sex than the world has ever given them credit for, of course they
accept, not what their labor is worth to me and the world, "but what I
and the world choose to give for it. It is bad, I grant, but it is the fault of
the system. It is a misfortune, we think, that there are so many women,
an<l wc» weep over it. 1 am willing to shed any amount of tears over
this mistake of nature.
\\\it women are themselves to blame for a great part of the distress
they experience. There is work for more of them, if tiiey would only do
it. The kitchens of the country are not half supplied with intelligent
labor, and therein is a refuge for all women in distress.
I assert that nothing but foolish pride keeps the daughters of insol-
vent wealth out of kitchens, where they may have happy underground
homes and three dollars per week, by merely doing six hours per day
more labor than hod-carriers average.
This is what they would do were it not for pride, which is sinful.
They should strip the jewels off their fingers, the laces off their shoul-
ders; they should make a holocaust of their music and drawings, and,
accepting the inevitable, sink with dignity to the washing of dishes, the
scrubbing of floors, and the wash-tub. This their brothers do, and why
haven't they their strength of mind? Young men delicately nurtured
and reared in the lap of luxury, never refuse the sacrifice when their
papas fail in business. They always throw to the winds their cigars;
114 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM' AND PULPIT.
they abjure canes and gloves, and mount drays, and shoulder saw-bucks
— ^^any thing for an honest living. I never saw one of these degenerate
into a sponge upon society rather than labor with his handsl Did you?
I never saw one of this class get to be a faro dealer, a billiard marker, a
borrower of small sums of money, a lunch-fiend, a confidence-man, or
any thing of the sort. Not they! Giving the go-by to every thing in
the shape of luxuries, they invariably descend to the lowest grades of
manual labor rather than degenerate into vicious and immoral courses.
Failing the kitchen, women may canvass for books, though that occu-
pation, like a few others equally profitable, and which also brings them
into continual contact witlrxhe lords of creationji)has a drawback in the
fact that some men leer into the face of every woman who strives to do
business for herself, as though she were a moral leper; and failing all
these, she may at least take to the needle. At this last occupation she
is certain of meeting no competition, save from her own sex. In all my
"^ experience, and it has been extensive, I never yet saw a man making
pantaloons at twelve and one-half cents per pair. But they will not all
submit. Refusing to acknowledge the position in life nature fixed for
them, they rebel, and unpleasantnesses take place. An incident which
fell under my observation recently, illustrates this beautifully. A young
lady, named Jane Evans, I believe, had sustained the loss of both her
parents. The elder Evanses had been convinced by typhoid fever that
this was a cold world, and, piloted by two doctors, had sailed out in
search of a better one. Jane had a brother, a manly lad of twenty, who,
rather than disgrace the ancient lineage of the Evanses by manual labor,
took u]1 the profession of bar-tender. Jane was less proud, and as her
brother did nothing for her, she purchased some needles, and renting a
room in the uppermost part of a building in a secluded part of the city
of New York, commenced a playful effort to live by making shirts at
eighteen cents each, for a gentleman named Isaacs. She was situated,
I need not say, pleasantly for one of her class. Her room was not large,
it is true, but as she had no cooking-stove or bedstead, what did she want
of a large room? She had a window which didn't open, but as there
was no glass in it, she had no occfision to open it. This building com-
manded a beautiful view of the back parts of other buildings similar in
appearance, and the sash kept out a portion of the smell. Had that sash
not been in that window- frame, I do not suppose that she could have
staid on account of the smell; at least I heard her say that she got just
as much of it as she could endure. And in this delightful retreat she
sat and sat, and sewed and sewed. Sometimes in her zeal she would sew
till late in the night, and she always was at her work very early in the
PETROLEUM V. KASBT. 115
morning. She paid rent promptly, for the genial old gentleman of
whom she leased her room had a sportive habit of kicking girls into tha
street who did not pay promptly, and she managed every now and then,
did this economical girl, to purchase a loaf of bread, which she ate.
One Saturday night she took her bundle of work to the delightful
Mr. Isaacs. Jane had labored sixteen hours per day on them, and she
had determined, as Sunday was close at hand, to have for her breakfast,
in addition to her bread, a small piece of mutton. Mutton! Luxuri-
ous living destroyed ancient Home! But Mr. Isaacs found fault with
the making of these shirts. "They were not properly sewed,'' he said,
and he could not, in consequence, pay her the eighteen cents each for
making, which was the regular price. Jane then injudiciously cried
about it. Now, Mr. Isaacs was, and is, possessed of a tender heart,
lie has a great regard for his feelings, and, as he could not bear to see a
woman crv, he forthwith kicked her out of his store into the snow.
What did this wicked girl do? Did she go back and ask pardon of
the good, kind, tender-hearted Mr. Isaacs? Not she! On the contrary,
she clenched her hands, and, passing by a baker's shop, stole a loaf of
bread, and, brazen thing that she was, in pure bravado, she ate it in
front of the shop. She said she was hungry, when it was subsequently
proven that she had eaten within forty hours. Justice was swift upon
the heels of the desperate wretch — it always is, by the way, close behind
the friendless. She was arrested by a policeman, who was opportunely
there, as there was a riot in progress in the next street at the time,
which was providential, for had there been no riot in the next street,
the policeman would have been in that street, and Jane Evans might
have got away with her plimder. She was conveyed to the city prison;
was herded in a cell in which were other women who had progressed
fartlier than she had; was afterward arraigned for petty larceny and
sent to prison for sixty days. Now, see how surely evildoers come to
bad ends. The wretched Jane — this fearfully depraved Jane — unable
after such a manifestation of de2)ravity to hold up her head, fell into
bad ways. Remorse for the stealing of that loaf of bread so preyed
upon her that she wandered about the streets of the city five days, ask-
ing for work, and finally threw herself off a wharf. Oh, how her
brother, the bartender, was shocked at this act! Had she continued
working cheerily for Mr. Isaacs, accepting the situation like a Chris-
tian, taking life as she found it, would she have thrown herself off a
dock? Never! So you see women who do not want to steal bread, and
be arrested, and go off wharves, must take Mr. Isaacs' pay as he offers
jr. and must work cheerily sixteen hours a day, whether they get any
/
/
no Kmas of the platform a\d pulpit.
thing to eat or not. Had this wretched girl gona back contentedly to
her room, and starved to death cheerfully, she would not have stolen
bread, she would not have lacerated the feelings of her brother, the bar-
tender, and would have saved the city of New York the expense and
trouble of fishing her out of the dock. Such women always make
trouble.
The women who fancy they are oppressed, demand, first, the ballot,
that they may have power to better themselves; and, second, the change
of custom and education, that they may have free access to whatever
employment they have the strength and capacity to fill, and to which
their inclination leads them.
Most emphatically I object to y^ giving d them the ballot. It
would overturn the whole social fabric. The social fabric has been
overturned a great many times, it is true — so many times, indeed, that
it seems rather to like it; but I doubt whether it would be strong enough
to endure this. I have too great, too high, too exalted an opinion of
woman. I insist that she shall not dabble in the dirty pool of politics;
that she shall keep herself sacred to her family, whether she has one or
not; and under no consideration shall she go beyond the domestic circle
of which she is the center and ornament. There are those who have an
insane yearning to do something beyond the drudgery necessary to sup-
ply the commonest wants of life, and others who have all of these, who
would like to round up their lives with something beyond dress and the
unsatisfactory trifles of fashionable life. There may be women turning
niglit_into^day over the needle, for bread that keeps them just this si9e*
of potters fiel(3, who are unreasonable enough to repine at the system
that compels them to this; and, they may, possibly, in secret wish that
they had the power in their hands that would make men court their
influence, as the hod-carrier*8 is courted, for the vote he casts. The
seamstress toiling for a pittance that would starve a dog, no doubt prays
for the power that would compel lawmakers to be as careful of her inter-
ests as they are of the interests of the well-paid mule laborers in tlie
dock-yards, who, finding ten hours a day too much for them, were per-
mitted by act of Congress to draw ten hours' pay for eight hours' work.
The starved colorer of lithographs, the pale, emaciated tailoress, bal-
ancing death and virtue; drawing stitches with the picture of the luxu-
rious brothel held up by the devil before her, where there is light, and
warmth, and food, and clothing, and where death is, at least, farther
off ; no doubt this girl wishes at times that she could have that potent
bit of paper between her fingers that would compel blatant demagogues
to talk of the rights of workiugwomen as well as of workingmen.
petholeum v. nasby, iJ7
But woman would lose her self-respect if she mixed with politicians.!
Most men do; and how could woman hope to escape. Think you that!
any pure woman could be a member of the New York, New Jersey on
Pennsylvania legislatures, and remain pure? For the sake of the gen
erations to come, I desire that one sex, at least, shall remain uncon
taminated. Imagine your wife or your sister accepting a bribe from i , ^
lobby member! Imagine your wife or your sister working a corrup;
measure through the legislature, and becoming gloriously elevated upoi
champagne in exultation over the result! No! I insist that thesfe
things shall be confined to man, and man alone.
The mixing of women in politics, as all tlie writers on the subject
have justly remarked, would lower the character of the woman without
elevating that of the man. Imagine, oh my hearers, a woman aspiring
for office, as men do! Imagine her button-holing voters, as men do!
Imagine her lying glibly and without scruple, as men do! Imagine her
drinking with the lower classes, as men do! of succeeding by the grossest /
fraud, as men do! of stealing public money when elected, as men do!
and finally of sinking into the lowest habits, the vilest practices, as Dr.
Hushnell, in several places in his blessed book on the subject, asserts
that men do! You see, to make the argument good that women would
immediately fall to a very deep depth of degradation the moment they
vote, we must show that the act of voting compels men to this evil; at
least that is what Dr. Bushnell proves, if he proves any thing. We
must show that the holding of an oflice by man is proof positive that he
luis committed crime enpugh to entitle him to a cell in a penitentiary,
and that he who votes is in a fair way thereto. Before reading the
doctor's book, I was weak enough to suppose that there were in the
United States some hundreds of thousands of very excellent men, whose
long service in church and state Wivs sufticient guarantee of their excel-
lence; whose characters were above suspicion, and who had lived, and
would die, honest, reputable citizens. But as all male citizens above the
age of twenty-one vote, and as voting necessarily produces these results,
why, then we are all drunkards, tricksters, thieves and plunderers.
This disturbing woman, to whom I read Dr. Bushneirs book, remarked
that if voting tended to so demoralize men, and as they had always
voted, it would be well enough for all the women to vote just once, that
they might all go to perdition together. I am compelled to the opinion
that the doctor is mistaken. I know of quite a number of men who go to
the polls unmolested, who vote their principles quietly, and go home
the better for having exercised the right. I believe that, before and
bince Johnson's administration, there have been honest men in oflice.
118 KINGS OF TUE PLATFORM AJSD PULPIT.
But no woman could do these things in this way. It would unsex lier,
just as it does when a woman labors for herself alone.
Again, I object to giving the ballot to woman, because we want
peace. We don't want divided opinion in our families. As it is, we
must have a most delightful unanimity. An individual can not possibly
quarrel with himself. As it is now arranged, man and wife are one, and
the man is the one. [Laughter.] In all matters outside the house the
wife has no voice, and consequently there can be no differences. Oh,
what a blessed thing it would be if the same rule could obtain among
men ! Had the radicals had no votes or voices, there would have been
no war, for the democracy, having it all their own way, there would
have been nothing to quarrel about. It was opposition that forced
Jefferson Davis to appeal to arms. True, the following of this idea
would dwarf the Republicans into pygmies, and exalt the democracy into
giants. My misguided friend, Wendell Phillips, would shrink into a
commonplace man, possibly he would lose all manhood, had he been
compelled to agree with Franklin Pierce or hold his tongue. It would be
bad for Wendell, but there would have been a calm as profound as stag-
nation itself. Our present system may be bad for women, but we, the
men, have our own way — and peace. Our wives and daughters are, I
know, driven, from sheer lack of something greater, to take refuge in
disjointed gabble of bonnets, cloaks and dresses, and things of that
nature, their souls are dwarfed as well as their bodies, their minds are
diluted — but we have peace.
Once more. It would unbalance society. Starting upon the assump-
tion that women have no minds of their own, and would always be con-
trolled by men, we can show wherein the privilege would work incal-
culable mischief. Imagine Brigham Young marching to the i)olls at
the head of a procession of wives one hundred and seventy-three in num-
ber, all of them with such ballots in their hands as he selects for them!
Put Brigham and his family in a close congressional district, and he
would swamp it. Then, again, if they should think for themselves, and
vote as they pleased, they would overthrow Brigham. In either case the
effect would be terrible.
What shall we do with the woman question ? It is upon us, and
must be met. I have tried for an hour to be a conservative, but it
won^t do. Like poor calico, it won't wash. There are in the United
States some millions of women who desire something better than the
lives they and their mothers have been living. There are millions of
women who have minds and souls, and who yearn for something to
develop their minds and souls. There are millions of women who desire
PETROLEUM V. NASBY. 119
to have sometliiug to think about^ to assume responsibilities, that they
may strengthen their moral natures, as the gymnast lifts weights to
strengthen his physical nature. There are hundreds of thousands of
women who have suffered, in silence, worse evils by far than the
slaves of the South, who, like the slaves of the South, have no
power to redress thdr wrongs, no voice so potent that the public must
hear. In the parlor, inanity and frivolity; in the cottage, hopeless serv-
itude, unceasing toil; a dark life, with a darker ending. This is the
condition of women in the world to-day. Thousands starving physically
for want of something to do, with a world calling for labor ; thousands
starving mentally, with an unexplored world before them. One-half of
humanity is a burden on the other half.
I know. Oh, ye daughters of luxury, that you do not desire a
change ! There is no need of it for you. Your silks could not be more
costly, your jewels could not flash more brightly, nor your surroundings
be more luxurious. Your life is pleasant enough. But I would com-
])el you to think, and thinking, act. I would put upon your shoulders
responsibilities that would make rational beings of you. 1 would make
you useful to humanity and to yourselves. I would give the daughters
of the poor, as I have helped to give the sons of the poor, the power in
their hands to right their own wrongs. [Applause.]
There is nothing unreasonable in this demand. The change is not
so great as those the world has endured time and again without damage. \
To give the ballot to the women of America to-day, would not be fo j
fearful a thing as it was ten years ago to give it to the negro, or as it was /
a hundred years ago to give it to the peo2)le. [Applause.] ^
1 would give it, and take the chances. [Applause.] The tlieory
of Republicanism is, that the governing power must rest in the hands of
the governed. There is no danger in truth. If the woman is governed,
she has a riglit to a voice in the making of laws. To withhold it is to
dwarf her, and to dwarf woman is to dwarf the race.
I would give the ballot to woman for her own sake, for I would
enlarge the borders of her mind. I would give it to her for the sake of
humanity. I would make her of more use to humanity by making her
more fit to mold humanity. I would strengthen her, and through her
rliorace. Tiic ballot of itself would be of direct use to but few, but
indirectly its effects would reach through all eternity. It would com-
]>el ii dilTorunt life. It would compel woman to an interest in life, would
tit her to strugpfle successfully apiinst its mischances, and prepare her
for a k«'ener. hii^her. i>ri.£rhtor appreciation of it.< Mp?singP. Humanity
is now one-fiided. There is strengt.h on theone side and weakness on the
120 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM ASD PULPIT.
other. I would have both sides strong. I would have the two sides
equal in strength^ equally symmetrical; differing only as nature made
tbem^ not as man and custom have distorted them. In this do we out-
rage custom? Why, we have been overturning customs six thousand
years, and there are yet enough hideous enormities encumbering the
earth to take six thousand years more to kill. In the beginning, when
force was tlie law, there were kings. The world tired of kings. There
were false religions. Jesus of Nazareth overturned them. Luther
wrecked a venerable system when he struck the church of Home with
his iron hand; your fathers and mine stabbed a hoary iniquity when they
overturned kingcraft on this continent, and Love joy. Garrison and
Pliilii2)3 struck an institution which ages had sanctioned when they
assaulted slavery. The old is not always the best.
I would have your daughters fitted to grapple with life alone, for no
matter how you may leave them, you know not what fate may have in
store for them. I would make them none the less women, but stronger
women, better women. Let us take this one step for the sake of human-
ity. Let us do this much toward making humanity what the Creator
intended it to be — like Himself. [Applause.]
NASBY'S BEST STORY.
One of IS'asby's best satires was his dcscrii)tion how the colored peo-
ple were kept out of the white school of the Confedrit Cross lloads.
Says the Satirist:
Our teacher was a young lady from New Hampshire. She had
abolition blood in her yankee veins. When the niggers came to her
school, what do you think she did? Send them away? No, she received
*em, gave 'em seats andput ^em into classes — think on that — with white
children! I tell you there wuz trouble incur town. I, as a leading
Democrat, wuz sent for to wunst, and gladly I come. I wuz never so
gratified in my life. Had smallpox broken out in that skool, there
woodent hev bin half the eggscitement in the township. It wuz the
subjick uv yooniversal talk everywhere, and the Democrisy wuz a biliu
like a pot. I met the trustees uv the town, and demanded ef they
intended tamely to submit to this outrage? I askt em whether they
intended to hev their children set side by side with the decendants uv
Ham, who wuz comdemned to a posishen uv inferiority forever? Kin
you, I asked, so degrade yourselves, and so blast the self-respeck uv
yoor children?
PETUOLEUM V. NASB7. 121
And bilin up with indigHashen, they answered ^^ never!'* and
jooiianimously requested me to accompany 'em to the skoolhonsey that
they mite peremptory expel these disgustin beins who hed obtrooded
themselves among tliose uv a sooperior race.
On the way to the skoolhouse, wich wuz perhaps a mile distant, 1
askt the Board ef they knowed those girls by site. No, they replied,
tliey hed never seed 'em. '* I hev bin told," sed I, " that they are nearly
white."
** They are," sed one uv 'em, '* quite white." " It matters not," sed
I, feelin that there wuz a good opportoonity forimprovin the occashen,
*'it matters not. 1'liere is fiuthiii in tlie nigger at wich theinstink uv
the white man absolootly rebels, and from wich it instinktively recoils.
So much ex2)crience liov I had with 'em, that 2)ut me in a dark room
witli one uv 'em, no matter iiow little nigger there is in 'em, and that
unerrin instink wood betray 'em to me, wich, by the way, goes to prove
that the dislike we hev to 'em is not the result uvprejudis, but is a part
uv our very nacher, and one uv its highest and holiest attriboots."
Thus communin, we entered the skoolhouse. Theskoolmarm wuz
there, cz brite and ez crisp ez a Janooary niornin; the skolers wuz ranged
on the sects a study in ez rapidly cz possible.
'* Miss," sed J, *' we are informed that three nigger wenches, daugh-
ters of one Lktt, :i nigger, is in this skool, a minglin with our daughters
ez a ekal. Is it so?"
•' The Misses Lktt are in tliis skool,'*sed siie, ruther mischeeviously,
** and 1 am hapi)y to state that Ihey are among my best pupils."
'* Miss,'* sed i sternly, **pint 'em out to us!"
*' Wherefore? " sed she.
*• That we may bundle 'em onll"sod I.
** r>h\ss nie!'' sed she, *' I reely coodent do that. Why expel 'em?"
*' Heco/.'sed i. 'Mio ni;r;^n'r shel contaminate the white children uv
this deestrick. No sech (iisi(ra(^e shel be put on to 'em."
** Well/* sed this atr^ravatin skoohnarm, wich wuz from Noo Ilam-
shire, **yoo put *eni out."
*' l>nt sliow me wich thev are."
" Can't you detiMt *eni, sir? Don't their color betray 'em? Ef they
are so neer white that you can't select 'cm at a glance, it strikes me that
it can't hurt vi-iy rnncli to \vX 'em stay."
I wiiz .-(uciv jMi/./hMl. There wuzn'l. a ;;irl in the room who looked
at all ni'^'rerv. I'»iit. niv reput:isliun wuz at slake. Noticin three girls
st'ttin to^^'ellnr who wuz sornrwhat dark complectid, and whose black
liair waved. I went for 'em and shaved out, the cussid skoolmarm almost
l>ustin with lafter.
122 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Here the tragedy okkerred. At the door I met a man who rode four
miles in his zeal to assist us. He hod alluz hed an itehin to pitch into
a nigger, and ez he cood do it now safely, he proposed not to lose the
chance. I wuz a puttin on 'em out, and hed jist dragged 'em to the
door, when I met him enterin it.
" Wat is this?'' sed he, with a surprised look.
" We're puttin out these cussid wenches, who is contaminatin yoor
children and mine," sed I. " Ketch hold uv that pekoolyerly disgustin
one yonder," sed I,
•'Wenches ! You d — d skoundrel, them girls are my girls."
And without waitin for an explanashen, the infooriated monster
sailed into me, the skoolmarm layin over on one uv the benches explodin
in peels uv lafter. The three girls, indignant at bein mistook for nig-
ger wenches, assisted their parent, and between 'em, in about four
minutes I wuz insensible. One uv the trustees, pityin my woes, took
me to the neerest railroad stashen, and somehow, how I know not, I got
home, where I am at present recooperatin.
I hev only to say that when I go on sich a trip again, I shel require
as condishen precedent that the Afrikins to be put out shel hev enuff
Afrikin into 'em to prevent sich mistakes. But, good Lord, wat hev'ent
I suffered in this cause ?
Petroleum V. Nasby, P. M.
(wich is Postmaster.)
HENRY WARD BEECHER
PREACHER, ORATOR, PATRIOT AND WIT.
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
This book abounds in sunshine from living men, but the great Beecher, dead,
still lives in the American heart. His simshine is in every household. He was the
purest type of the robust, free American.
Henry Ward Beecher was bom in Litchfield, Conn., in 1813, and died in Brook-
lyn in 1887. He was educated in New England, studied theology in Ohio, and at
the age of twenty- four commenced preaching in Lawrenceburg, Ind. He preached
in the West for ten years. It was in the wild West that he got his boundless experi-
ence in human nature and freedom in the expression of his thoughts. He inherited
muscle and an impulsive nature from his Litchfield ancestor. He was too great to
he a polished scholar. His intellect was too fertile for established creeds. Creeds
and dogmas stand still; Beecher was always growing. His fertility of intellect was
amazing. ** For full fifty years," says Edward Pierpont, " he talked to the public,
and no man ever said so much and repeated so little. His humor was immense, as
any one could see by looking into his great, broad, laughing face. His heart was
warm with love and his personal magnetism wonderful. He did not reflect; Ad feli,
and put his feelings into burning words. His imagination was large and his hope as
boundless as his love. Talmage and Moody are great, but they stood still, walled in
with creeds and dogmas, while Beecher, like Swing, traveled on and on, and the the-
ology of Calvin and Wesley and Jonathan Edwards grew mean and small. He
taught the church to think. He put his arms around the slave. He stood with Gar-
rison and Wendell Phillips, yes, led them on till victory was won. A constitution
with slavery in was naught to him. His conscience told him slavery was wrong, and
he fought it whole hearted to the end. He loved our young republic — loved free
speech, and, when division came, he stood for unity and law."
Oliver Wendell Holmes says: '* Beecher was a mighty power in the land, and
his work was a living work, and its results can never be known until the books of
heaven are balanced."
Mr. Beecher never cared to be called a humorist, but his wit and
humor were as keen as his logic. He never strayed away from his
train of thought to gather in a witty idea to illustrate his sermons.
Neither did he avoid wit. When a witty idea stood before him, he
124
BENRT WARD BBBCHER 126
grasped it and bent it to illustrate his thought. His conception of
wit was as quick as lightning. It came like a flash (often in a
parenthesis), and it often instantly changed the tears of his hearers
to laughter.
When Dr. Colly er asked the great preacher why the newspapers
were always referring to the Plymouth brethren, but never spoke
of the Plymouth sisters, he could not help saying:
" Why, of course, the brethren embrace the sisters ! "
Mr. William M. Evarts was once talking with General Grant
about the great Brooklyn divine, when suddenly the distinguished
lawyer musingly asked :
" Why is it. General, that a little fault in a clergyman attracts
more notice than a great fault in an ordinary man?"
"Perhaps," said the General, thoughtfully, "it is for the same
reason that a slight shadow passing over the pure snow is more
readily seen than a river of dirt on the black earth."
In all of his humor, Mr. Beecher never harmed a human soul.
His mirth was innocent, and his wit was for a 'grand purpose.
I was talking with Mr. Beecher one day about humor. He was
always ready to talk to any man who had a good idea or a g«»rKl
story, but he wanted the story to be as pure as sparable. He
wanted it to prove or illustrate some idea.
"Humor," said Beecher, "is everywhere. Humor is truth.
Even John Bunvan was a humorist. It was humor when Bunvan
made Christian meet one 'Atheist' trudging along with his back to
the Celestial City.
'** Where are you going?' asked the Atheist, laughing at
Christian.
'"To the Celestial City,' replied Christian, his face all aglow
with the heavenly light.
'*' You fool !' said Atheist, laughing, as he trudged on into the
darkness. ' I've been hunting for that place for twenty years and
have seen nothing of it yet. Plainly it does not exist.'
" Heaven was behind him," said Beecher, seriously.
There was one kind of men, however, that Beecher disliked to
talk to — cranks, and they were always calling on him.
**What did he do with them?" you ask.
Well, he always turned them over to Mrs. Beecher with the
remark, *' Mother, you take care of this interesting man."
126 RtNQS OP THE PLATFORM AND PVLPIT.
'Beecher liked to talk of his early poverty. He always treated
poverty in a humorous vein. " Once," he said, "I was the poorest
man in Lawrenceburg, Ind., where I supplied my first church, away
back in 1836. I was so poor that I couldn't buy firewood to keep
us warm, without going without bpoks. I remember one Sunday^
morning there came a big flood in the Ohio. I was preaching at
the time, and I looked out of the window and saw the flood-wood
go sailing by my house. It seemed wrong for me to see so much
good wood going by and I not able to catch it."
" What did you do ? " I asked.
"Why, I rushed that sermon through, hurried home, and that
afternoon, with the aid of Deacon Anderson, I got out enough
driftwood to keep Mrs. Beecher in firewood for three months, and
all the while," he said, looking up and smiling at his wife, " Mother
stood in the doorway and cheered us on." Then, looking quizzically^
at Mrs. Beecher, he said, " Didn't you, Mother ? "
"No, Henry, you never did any such thing," said Mrs. Beecher,
who never could see -through any of the great preacher's jokes.
"In 1838," said Mr. Beecher, "I was so poor that I rode clear
to Fort Wayne from Indianapolis on horseback, and delivered a
sermon dedicating the Fort Wayne Presbyterian church, and only
got $25 for it. Then I went to New York to attend the Congrega-
tional convention. While in New York I went to Dr Prime, of
the Ohset'ver^ and offered to write weekly letters from the West at
a dollar a piece."
" Did Prime take you up ? " I asked.
" Yes, and paid me $5 in advance."
" And you actually wrote letters for a dollar a column ?"
" No,'' said Mr. Beecher, laughing, " the next day Prime thought
it over, repented of his haste and profligacy, and wrote me that he
did not think my letters ^ould be worth it."
" But oh," he groaned, turning to Mrs. Beeclier, " it was a bitter
disappointment to us — wasn't it. Mother?"
One day, speaking of puns, Mr. Beecher said Mrs. Beeclier
received one on his name that was verj' complete. Then Mrs.
Beecher went and got an old scrap book and read :
Siiul a great Congregational preacher
To a hen: ** You're a beautiful creature: "
The hen, just for that, laid three eggs in his hat.
And thus did the Henrv Ward Beecher.
HENRY WARD BEECUER. 12?
"From r^iwrencebiirg,'' said Mr. Beecher, in a serious conversa-
tion one (lay, '' we went to Indianapolis. I was quite proud of the
change, but it was hard work — this missionary work in the new
West. 1 remember the first revival I had in my Indianapolis
church. I had been laboring at Terre Haute in a revival — the first
that I ever worked in — and I came home full of fire and zeal, pray-
ing all the way. There was a prayer that began in Terre Haute
and ended in Indianapolis, eighty miles apart. I recollect that,
when I got home and preached, I gave an account of what I had
seen in Terre Haute. The next night I began a series of protracted
meetings. The room w^as not more than two-thirds full, and the
}>eop!e were apparently dead to spiritual things. On the second
night, I called for persons who would like to talk with me to
remain. I made a strong appeal, but only one person — ^a poor Ger-
man servant-girl — stopped. All the children of my friends, the
young people that I knew very well, got up and went out ; all went
out except this one servant-girl, wiio answered to my sermon call.
I remember that there shot through me a spasm of rebellion. I
had a sort of feeling, ' For what was all this precious ointment
s])illed ? Such a sermon as I had preached, such an appeal as I had
made, with no result but this ! '
" In a second, however, almost quicker than a flash," continued
Mr. Beecher, *' there opened to me a profound sense of the value of
anv child of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was Christ's child, and I
was so impressed with the thought that any thing of his was
unspeakably precious beyond any conception which I could form,
that tears came into my eyes and ran down my cheeks, and I had
the feeling to the very marrow that I would be willing to work all
my days among God's people if I could do any good to the lowest
and the loast creature. My pride was all gone, my vanity was all
gone, and I was caught up into a blessed sense of the love of God
to men, and of my relation to Christ; and I thought it to be an
unspeakable privilege to unloose the shoe-latchets from the poorest
of Christ's disciples. And out of that spirit came the natural con-
s«»(|uences.''
** Durin^^ that revival/' continued Mr. Beecher, '' I remember
iiow I was called to see a sick girl who was perhaps seventeen or
eighteen years of ago. A gentleman informed me that she had
been sick for twelve months, and that she had become quite discon-
solate.
MENST WARD BEECHSB. 129
" ^ Go and see her,' said another, * f qr if any body ought to be
comforted, she ought to be. She has the sweetest disposition, and
she is the most patient creature imaginable ; and you ought to hear
her talk. One can hardly tell whether she talks or prays. It is
heaven to go into her room.'
" ^ I wanted a little more of the spirit of heaven, so I went to
see her.
" ^ I hear of what you are doing in your revival,' she said, * and
of what my companions are doing,* and I long to go out and labor
for Christ ; and it seems very strange to me that God keeps me here
on this sick-bed.'
" ' My dear child,' I said, ' don't you know that you are preach-
ing Christ to this whole household, and to every one that knows
you? Tour gentleness and patience and Christian example are
known and read by them all. You are laboring for Christ more
effectually than you could anywhere else.' Her face brightened,
she looked up without a word ana gave tlianks to God."
On one occasion, I asked Mr. J. B. Pond, who traveled with the
great divine for 100,000 miles, while he lectured 1,200 times and
took in $250,000, what kind of a companion Beecher was.
*' Ho was," said Mr. Pond, " an all-round, jovial, companionable
and good-natured man. He had no eccentricities. Wherever he
went, he was like an electric light, reflecting brightness and com-
manding respect. I have been with him when the mob hooted at
his heels and spat upon him; when crowds jeered and hurled all
sorts of epithets at him, and when it looked as if he were going to
be stoned and trampled to death. He never betrayed fear, never
grew angry, but, turning to me, he would say :
" ' I do not blame them, for they know not what they do.'
" When we arrived in a town, as a rule, a crowd was at the depot
to see Mr. Beecher. At Clinton, Iowa, the greatest insults were
offered to him. The train arrived late, and we managed to get to
the hotel "without being overrun by the usual mob at the depot.
After a hasty supper, we concluded to walk to the hall T\fhere the
lecture was to be delivered. Great throngs lined the streets, eager
to see Mr. Beecher. We walked side by side through a wall of
human beings, a large crowd following at our heels, hooting and
jeering. I happened to turn, and saw three or four men spitting
upon Mr. Beecher's back. He never said a word, but man full}
130 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
•
walked along. When we arrived at the hall, we found the members
of the committee who were to introduce the lecturer and sit upon
the platform grouped around laughing and guying each other about
appearing in public with Mr. Beecher. Even the chairman was dis-
posed to be reticent and surly toward us. Women in the audience
tittered, and it looked as if an outbreak of rudeness could not be
avoided. Every body seemed ready to cast the first stone.
''Before that audience, inimical and prepared to hiss, Mr. Beecher
won one of the greatest triumphs of his life. I shall never forget
the scene. He pulled off his overcoat, and, without even a look of
. anger, threw it aside. Throwing back his long, snow-white locks,
revealing a high forehead and a frank, determined face, he walked
upon the platform. The chairman coldly said : " Mr. Beecher, ladies
and gentlemen." The orator stepped to the front of the platform
and began his speech in a clear, ringing voice that instantly hushed the
suppressed murmur and jeers. From that time until he closed the
great audience was with him. Such flights of oratory, bursts of
eloquence and keen, irresistible humor I never heard from his lips
before. Tears, laughter and round after round of applause greeted
him, and when he ceased the audience remained, as if it could not
depart. The peroration that the great orator delivered brought the
people to their feet. He walked behind the scene and picked up his
overcoat. The audience would not go, but lingered to catch a
glimpse of him. Throwing down his overcoat, he stepped into the
auditorium. Women and men shook him by the hand ; some wanted
to touch his garments, if nothing else, and for an hour he talked to
them socially, and they reluctantly parted from him.
" We went to our hotel," continued Major Pond, '' and had a
lunch of crackers and cheese, which he was in the habit of taking
in the evening after a lecture. lie remarked :
'"Well, Pond, I never had greater reason to talk than to-night.
I feel that what I said will do some good and convince my hearers
of errors they labored under.'
" One day, after an experience with a mob, he happened to pick
up a Chicago paper and glance over it. Holding it in his hand,
pointing to headlines of slang and vituperation, he said :
" 'No wonder the people are so rough and vulgar when daily fed
upon such sensational nastiness.'
HENRT WARD BBBCHBR. 131
** At that time the Chicago papers were not refined, I must con-
fess. Now the Windy City has a Browning Club, and the citizens
have discussions about Sappho, all of which indicates progress.
"Going from Davenport, Iowa, to Muscatine, on the cars, a little
incident occurred that showed Mr. Beecher's politeness and genial
disposition. Two ladies, refined and well dressed, sat behind him
in the cars. He was leaning back, reading a novel and oblivious to
his surroundings. I sat opposite to him and could see the ladies.
They discovered on his overcoat a few gray hairs and began to qui-
etly pick them off to keep as souvenirs. He felt and knew evidently
what was going on, for he said :
" ' Conductor, are there are any flies in this car?'
Then turning, he saw what the ladies were doing. They begged
his pardon and said they saw a gray hair or two on his overcoat,
which they brushed away. With a twinkle in his eyes he replied
that his wife was never so careful about taking away his hair.
Mr. Beecher had a deep sympathy for every one in trouble, and
poor people in trouble were always coming to him.
" Personal sympathy," said the great preacher one day, " is what
we all want. I remember the first time any one ever sympathized
with me."
" When was it ? " I asked.
" Well, one evening, when on the farm up in Litchfield, my
father said to me (I was a little boy then) : ' Henry, take these
letters and go down to the postoflBce with them.'
" I was a brave boy, and yet I had imagination. And thou-
sands of people are not so cowardly as you think. Persons with
quick imaginations and quick sensibility people the heavens and the
earth, so that there are a thousand things in them that harder men
do not think of and understand. I saw behind every thicket some
shadowy form; and I heard trees say strange and weird things;
and in the dark concave above I could hear flitting spirits. All the
heaven was populous to me, and the earth was full of I know not
what strange sights. These things wrought my system to a won-
derful tension. When I went pit-a-pat along the road in the dark,
I was brave enough ; and if it had been anything that I could have
seen ; if it had been any thing that I could have fought, it would
have given me great relief , but it was not. It was only a vague,
outlying fear. I knew not what it was. When father said to me,
132 mN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
* Go,' I went, for I was obedient. I took my old felt hat and
stepped out of the door ; and Charles Smith (a great, thick-lipped
black man who worked on the farm, and who was always doing
kind things) said to me : ' Look here, I will go with you.' Oh,
sweeter music never came out of any instrument than that. The
heaven was just as full, and the earth was just as full, as before ;
but now I had somebody to go with me. It was not that I thought
he was going to fight for me. I did not think there was going to
be any need of fighting, but I had somebody to lean on ; somebody
to care for me ; somebody to help and succor me. Let any thing
be done by direction, let any thing be done by thought or rule, and
how different it is from its being done by personal inspiration ! "
"Speaking of the mystery of conversion," one day said Mr.
Beecher, "I can best illustrate conversion by a story. When I was
about four years old, my father married, and I had a second mother.
It was a great event, this second mother coming to us children. I
remember Charles and Harriet and I all slept in the same room.
We wore expecting that father would come home with our 'new
mother' that night. Just as we had all got into our trundle-beds
up-stairs, and were about falling asleep, we heard a racket down-
stairs, and every mother's son and daughter of us began to halloo,
'Mother! mother/ mother!' And presently we heard a rustling
on the stairs, and in the twilight we saw a dim shadow pass into
the room, and somebody leaned over the bed and kissed me, and
kissed Charles and said : ' Be good children, and I will see you
to-morrow.'
" I remember very well how happy I was. I felt that I had
a mother. I felt her kiss and I heard her voice. I could not
distinguish her features, but I knew that she was my mother. That
word mother had begun to contain a great deal in my estimation.
" It seems to me it is very much in that way that God comes to
human souls — as a shadow, so to speak; without any great definite-
ness, and yet with an attitude and a love-producing action ; without
any clear, distinct, reportable sensations, but producing some great
joy, conferring some great pleasures, as though some great blessing
had come to us. Was not my mother's presence real to us when, in
the twihght of the evening, she for a moment hovered over us and
kissed us 'How do you do? ' and ' Good-by ?' And is it not a real-
ity when the greater Mother and Father does the same to the souls
of men in their twilight? "
134 KINGS OF TEE PLATFORM AND, PULPIT.
" But is conversion in religion absolutely necessary ? " I asked.
" Yes, some time in life it becomes necessary. It is the balm of
Gilead. It will heal a broken heart. It will fill a void in life that
nothing else will fill. I knew a man who had no companion but
his little child. The child filled his whole heart. He and his wife
lived apart, and by-and-by she died, but she left the dear little babe.
The babe was his sun and heaven and God — everything to him.
She was tis morning star, for he waked to think of her before any
other one, and to frolic with her, and chat and prattle with her.
And his last thought, as he left the house, was of her. And now
and then she gleamed into his thoughts all day long in his business.
And when the evening came she was his bright evening star. And
when he went home at night, and she greeted him at the door, he
caught her in his arms and inwardly thanked God. She sickened;
and he said to God : ' Kill me, but spare the child.' And God
took the child. And he said : ' I have nothing left.' He lay
before God as the flax lies before the flail, and said : ' Strike !
strike ! I am dead. I am cut up from the roots. Strike ! ' He
would have died if he could, but he could not. Nobodj^ can die
that wants to. It is folks who want to live that die, apparently.
And finding that he could not die, by-and-by he got up and crept
into life again, and said : * What do I care whether I make or lose?'
He had no longer any motive for laying up property. And so he
said : ' If there is anything in religion, I am going to try to get
it. I shall die if I do not have something.' Then religion came to
him. It filled the great void and vacuum of his soul. Religion can
take the place of wife, mother and the dear baby, too. Nothing
else will do it."
" But is it not enough to be a moral man ? " I asked.
" No, Christianity goes beyond morality. A Christian is always
a moral man, but a moral man is not always a Christian. The
Christian and the moralist are alike in many things, but by-and-by
the Christian will be admitted to a sphere which the moralist can
not enter.
" A barren and a fruitful vine are growing side by side in the
garden, and the barren vine says to the fruitful one : ' Is not my
root as good as yours ? ' ^
" * Yes,' replies the vine, *as good as mine.'
HENR? WARD BEECHER. 135
*' ' And are not my bower-leaves as broad and spreading, and is
not my stem as large and my bark as shaggy ? '
" ' Yes,' says the vine.
" ' And are not my leaves as green, and am I not taller than
vou ? '
*' ' Yes,' meekly replies the vine, 'but I have blossoms.'
** ' Oh I blossoms are of no use.'
" ' But I bear fruit.'
" ' What I those clusters ? Those are only a trouble to a vine.'
" But what thinks the vintner ? He passes by the barren vine ;
but the other, filling the air with its odor in spring, and drooping
with purple clusters in autumn, is his pride and joy; and he lingers
near it and prunes it, that it may become yet more luxuriant and
fruitful. So the moralist and the Christian may grow together for
a while ; but by-and-by, when the moralist's life is barren, the
Christian's will come to flower and fruitage in the Garden of the
Lord. ' Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.' "
" What do you actually know about God and a hereafter, after
all these years of preaching and study?" I asked.
Mr. Beecher thought a moment, looked puzzled, and finally said:
*' I know no more than the wise Dr. Alexander did. I have been
a teacher of theology all my life, like the Doctor, and I only know
that I am a sinner and that Jesus Christ is my Savior."
Every foreigner wiio came to America always wanted to meet
Beecher. Canon Farrar once WTote : " I went over to Brooklyn
to hear Beeclier. It would have been impossible for any one to
hear him without being struck with his wonderful power."
Mr. Andrew Carnegie took Matthew Arnold over to Plymouth
Ciiurch. " After the service," said Mr. Carnegie, "Mr. I3eeclier
ciun(? direct to us, and as I introduced him, he extended both arms,
grasped the hands of the apostle of sweetness and light, and said,
' I am very glad to see you, Mr. Arnold. I have re.ad, I think,
evorv word vou Jiave ever written, and much of it more than once,
and always with profit/
Mr. Arnold returned Mr. Beecher's warmth — as who could ever
fail to respond to it? — and said, ' I fear, then, you found some
wonls about voursclf which should not have been written!'
*' 'Not at all, not at all I ' was the prompt response, and another
hearty shake of both hands, for he still grasped those of his critic.
' Those were the most i)rofitablo of all.' "
136 KINGS OF THB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
" Upon another occasion," said Mr. Carnegie, " I had gone with
a well-known English divine, the Rev. Joseph Parker, to Plym-
outh Church, and in the party was Miss Ingersoll, whom I intro-
duced to Mr. Beecher, saying : * This is the daughter of Colonel
Ingersoll ; she has just heard her first sermon, and been in a church
for the first time.'
"As with Mr. Arnold, Beecher's arms were outstretched at
once ; and grasping hers, he said, as he peered into her fair face,
' Well, you are the most beautiful heathen I ever saw. IIow is
your father ? He and I have spoken from the same platform for a
good cause, and wasn't it lucky for me I was on the same side
with him I Remember me to him.' "
Dr. Parker said of Beecher, afterward : *' Take him in theology,
botany, agriculture, medicine, physiology and modern philosophy,
and iti might be thought, from the range of his reading and the
accuracy of his information, that he had made a specialty of each."
There were two great epochs in Beecher's life — his fight against
human slavery from 1850 to 1860, and his fight for the Republic in
England in 1861. In the anti-slavery times, Mr. Beecher flung
himself, with all the ardor of his soul, and with all his splendid elo-
quence, into the task of rousing the moral sentiment of the Chris-
tian people of the North against slavery. Says Washington Glad-
den: "He was clear, positive and uncompromising. I remember
the day when from Beecher's lips flashed these words : ' I would die
myself, cheerfully and easily, before a man should be taken out of
my hands when I had the power to give him liberty and the hound
was after him for his blood. I would stand as an altar of expia-
tion between slavery and liberty, knowing that through my exam-
ple a million men would live. A heroic deed in which one yields
up his life for others is his Calvary. It was the hanging of Christ
on that hill-top that made it the highest mountain on the globe.
Let a man do a right thing with such earnestness that he counts
his life of little value, and his example becomes omnipotent. There-
fore it is said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
There is no such seed planted in this world as good blood 1 ' "
Mr. Beecher took immense delight in his Peekskill farm, though
it was an expensive luxury. He had a thousand flowers and a
thousand shrubs, and he knew every one of them. They were his
pets. Sometimes he would get up at four o'clock in the morning,
HENRY WARD BEECHER, 137
and when Mrs. Beecher asked him where he was going, he would
sav:
" I'm going to talk with my flowers, Mother."
If any one asked him about the revenue of his farm, he would
say : " O, I get that in health and ]oy and in texts for my books
and sermons! "
'* If you want to know how much I make off of my farm," he
said, " go to Mark Twain : he knows, and he's put it on paper."
The great preacher never tired reading Mark Twain's descrip-
tion of his Peekskill farm, and he would laughingly show his
friends an old newspaper with Twain's article marked with blue
l)encil.
This is the article:
Mr. Beecher's fami at Poughkeepsie consists of thirty-six acres, and is carried on
on strictly scientific i)rinciples. He never puts in any part of a crop without con-
sulting his book. He plows and reaps and digs and sows according to the best
authorities — and the authorities cost more tlian the otlier fanning implements do.
As soon as the library is complete, the farm will begin to be a profitable investment.
But book-farming has its drawbacks. Upon one occasion, when it seemed morally
rcrtain that the hay ought to be cut, the hay book could not Iki found, and before it
was found it was too late, and the hay was all spoiled. Mr. Beecher raises some of
the Ihicst crops of wheat in the country, but the unfavorable dilTereuce l>etween the
cost of i>nKlucing it and its market value after it is produced has interfered consider-
ably with its success as a comnuTcial enterprise. His special weakness is hogs, how-
ever. He considers hogs the best game a farm pnKhu'cs. He buys the, original pig
for a dollar and a half, and feeds him forty dollars' worth of corn, and then sells him
for ai)out nine dollars. This is the only crop he ever makes any money on. He loses
on the <'oni, but he makes seven dollai*s and a half on the hog. He dews not mind
this, because he never e.\i)eets to make any thing on corn any way. And any way it
turns out, he h:is the exeitenient of raising the hog any how, whether he gets the
worth of him or not. His strawberries would be a comfortable success if tlie robins
would eat turnips, but they won't, and hence the difliculty.
One of Mr. Beecher's most harassing difllculties in his farming operations comes
of the cl(».se rt'semblance of different sorts of seeds and plants to each other. Two
years ago his far-sightedness warned him that there was gf)ing to l>e a gn;at scarcity
of watermelon.s, and therefore he put in a crop of seven acres of that fruit. But
when they came up the}' turned out to be i)umpkins, and a dead loss was the conse-
(juence. Sometimes a i)orlioii of his crop goes into the ground the most pronu'sing
sweet i>otatoes, and comes up the most execrable carrots. "When he bought his farm
he found one egg in every hens nest on the place. He said that that was just the
reason that so many farmers failed — they scattered their forces too nnich — concentra-
tion was the idea. So he gathered those eggs together, and put them all imder one
e.\i)erienced hen. That hen roosted over the contract night and day for many weeks,
under Mr. Beecher's personal supervision, but she could not "phase" them eggs.
Why ? Because they were those ^{lamcf ul porcelaui things which ^re used by mod-
em fanners as ** nest-eggs."
138 KIN08 OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Mr. Bcecher's farm is not a triumph. It would be (easier if he -worked it on
shares with some one; but he can not find any body who is willing to stand half the
expense, and not many that are able. Still, persistence in any cause is bound to suc-
ceed. He was a very inferior farmer when he first began, but a prolonged and
unflinching assault upon his agricultural difficulties has had its effect at last, and he
is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.
Mr. Beecher was very f c ^A of his brother, Thomas K. Beecher,
of Elmira. " The people don . understand Tom," he said. " Why,
one of his Elmira deacons actually left the church because Tom
wrote that ' Brother Watkins — Ah.' They didn't know that it was
all innocent fun. This is tne article; read it, but you want to put
on the Methodist prayer-meeting tone, you know," and Mr. Beecher
handed me this copy of his brother's funny travesty (to be read
through the nose) :
My beloved brethren, before I take my text I must tell you about parting from
my old congregation. On the morning of the last Sabbath, I went into the meeting-
house to preach my farewell discourse. Just in front of me sot the old fathers and
mothers in Israel; the tears coursed down their furrowed cheeks, their tottering
forms and quivering lips breathed out a sad farewell, Brother "Watkins — ah! Just
back of them sot the middle-aged men, brethren; health and vigor beamed from every
countenance and stood in every eye, and as I looked down upon them they seemed
to say, farewell. Brother Watkins — all! On the next seat back of them sot the boys
and girls that I had baptized and gathered into the Sabbath school; many times had
they been rude and boisterous, but now their merry laugh was hushed, and in the
silence I could hear there, too, farewell, Brother Watkins — ahl Around on the back
seats and in the isles stood and sot the colored brethren, and as I looked down upon
them I could see there in their dreamy eyes, farewell, Brother Watkins — ahl
When I had finished my discourse and shaken hands with the brethren, I went
out to take a last look at the old church; the broken steps, the flopping blidds and
the moss-covered roof breathed a sad farewell, Brother AVatkins — ah! Then I
mounted ray old gray mare, with all my eiirthly possessions in my saddle-bags, and
as I rode down the streets the servant-girls stood in the doors, and waved with their
brooms a farewell, Brother Watkins — ahl And as I passed out of the village the low
wind blew softly through the trees, farewell, Brother Watkins — ahl And I came
down to the brook-ah, and the old mare stopped to drink-ah; the water rippled over
the pebbles, farewell. Brother Watkins — all! And even the little fishes seemed to say,
as they gathered around, farewell, Brother Watkins — ahl And I was slowly passing
up the hill, meditating upon the sad vicissitudes and mutations of life, when sud-
denly out bounded a \n^ hog from a fence corner, and it scared my old mare-ah, and
I came to the ground with my saddle-bags by my side-ah, and as I lay there in the
dust of the road, the old mare ran up the hill-ah, and iis she turned the top slie
waved her tail back at me, seemingly to say -ah, farewell. Brother Watkins — all!
Mr. Beecher had but one life-long enemy, and that was the
gifted Charles A. Dana, who pursued him, even beyond his grave.
(^ Jc /o
EENBT WARD BBECHER, 139
Still the great divine always had a kind word for Mr. Dana. He
admired his talents. One day, speaking of Dana, he said :
" Dana said a smart thing to-day." ^.
" What was it ? " I asked.
" When they were discussing at the editorial convention what
was proper to put in a newspaper, Dana said : * Well, gentlemen,
I don't know what you think, but I'm willing to permit a report of
any thing in my paper that the Lord permits to happen.' But in
my case,'^ said Beecher, laughing, " Dana goes away beyond Provi-
dence."
BEECHER'S LECTURE THOUGHTS.
Misfortune. — The steel that has suffered most is the best steel. It
has been in the furnace again and again; it has been on the anvil ; it has
been tight in the jaws of the vice ; it has felt the teeth of the rasp ; it
has been ground by emery; it has been heated and hammered and filed
until it does not know itself^ and it comes out a splendid knife. And if
men only knew it, what are called their ''misfortunes** are God's best
blessings, for they are the moulding influences which give them shape-
liness and edge, and durability and power.
Reformation. — When I was a boy, and I would go over to Aunt
Buirs, who had several ugly dogs about her premises, I used to go bare-
footed, and make as little noise as possible, and climb over fences, and
go a round-about way, so as, if possible, to get into the house before the
dogs knew that I was coming. If I had acted as many reformers do, I
should have gone with my pockets full of stones, and fired handful after
handful at the dogs, and in the universal barking and hullabaloo should
have said : '^Seo what a condition of things this is! What a reforma-
tion is needed here ! "
Agnosticism and Faith. — Whatever men may scientifically agree to
believe in, there is in men of noble nature something which science
can neither illumine nor darken. When Tyndall was walking among the
clouds during a sunset upon the Alps, hiscorapanion said to him, '^ Can you
behold such a sublime scene as this and not feel that there is a God ?'*
'' Oh," said he, '' I feel it. I feel it as much us any man can feel it;
and I rejoice in it, if you do not tell me I can prove it." The moment
you undertake to bring the evidence with which ho dealt with matter to
tlio ineffable and the hereafter, then, he says, '^ I am agnostic. I don't
know. It isn't true;'* but the moment you leave the mind under the
gracious infiuence of such a scene, it rises above the sphere of doubt or
proof, and he tays, '* I accept if
r
RENRT WARD BXBCHER. 141
The Litchfield Sabbath. — ThatSunday of my cliildhood, the mar-
velous stillness of that day overall Litchfield town hill; that wondrous
ringing of the bell; the strange interpretation that my young imagination
give to the crowing of the cock and to the singing of the birds; that
wondering look which I used to have into things; that strange lifting
half-way up into inspiration, as it were; that sense of the joyful influence
that sometimes brooded down like a stormy day, and sometimes opened
up like a gala day in summer on me, made Sunday a more effectually
marked day than any other of all my youthful life, and it stands out as
clear as crystal until this hour. It might have been made happier and
better if there had been a little more adaptation to my disposition and
my wants; but, with all its limitations, I would rather have the other six
days of the week weeded out of my memory than the Sabbath of my
childhood. And this is right. Every child ought to be so brought up
in the family, that when he thinks of home the first spot on which his
thought rests shall be Sunday, as the culminating joy of the household.
Lost Child. — In Indiana, on the verge of civilization, there was a
poor family — it was in pioneer life. There were two children-r-one too
small to get out of the house and the other five years old. The father
was gone. The oldest child ran to the woods; the mother went to find it;
spent and tired, she gave the alarm. Men were summoned* they started
about the middle of the day, went out with torches at night, and the next
day, and the night following. The third day one of the pioneers can)e
across the little fellow in a thicket, spent and weary. In triumph he
seized the child, and took a bee-line for home. He shouted; the mother
hoard the shout. I never knew what happened when the mother got her
child. lie stammered as he told it. The human heart is yet a human
heart. When you bring back God's child, lost in the world's wilderness,
there's joy in heaven.
CoMMUNiox WITH God. — When I walked one day on the top of
Mount Washington (glorious day of memory! such another day, I think,
I shall not exprricncc till I stand on the battlements of the New Jeru-
salem), how I was discharged of all imperfection! The wide, far-spread-
ing country wliich lay beneath me in beauteous light — how heavenly it
looked! And I communed with God. I had sweet tokens that He loved
me. My very being rose right up into His nature. I walked with Him.
And the cities far and near — New York, and all the cities and villages
that lay between it and me — with their thunder; the wrangling of
human pas^'niis Inflow mo, wore to me as if they were not. Standing,
as I did, liiL'h al)ovo tlioin, it sooniod to me as though they did not
exist. There were the attritions, mkI cruel grindings, and cries, and
142 KmOS OF THE PLATFORM AND PXTLPIT.
tearS; and shocks, of the human life below, but I was lifted up so high
that they were nothing to me. The sounds died out, and I was lost
with God. And the mountain-top was never so populous to me as when
I was absolutely alone. So it is with the soul that goes up into the
bosom of Christ. There is a reach where the arrows of envy cannot
strike you.
Kindness. — No man has any right to make that which he believes
to be the truth of God, any less exacting, less sharp or clear, because he
thinks his fellow-men will n0i^. accept it if ho states it in his blankest and
baldest form. I read an incident in a newspaper the other day, that seems
to me to illustrate this point. A tired and dusty traveler was leaning
against a lamp-post in the city of Bochester, and he turned and looked
on a boy in the crowd around him, and said:
^^ How far is it to Farmington?''
^' Eight miles,'' said the boy.
" Do you think it is so far as that?'' said the poor, tired traveler.
•^ Well, seeing that you are so tired, I will call it seven miles/'
The boy, with his heart overflowing with the milk of human kind-
ness, pitied the exhausted traveler and chose to call it seven miles. I
know that I have seen statements of the truth that have dictated the
same answer. Never make the road from Eochester to Parmington
seven miles when you know it is eight. Do not do a wrong to truth
out of regard for men.
Perfection. — The perfection of the schools is a kind of mandarin,
perfection. Suppose a Chinese mandarin, whose garden was filled with
dwarfed plants and trees, should show me an oak tree, two feet high,
growing in a pot of earth, and should say to me, ''A perfect tree must
be sound at the root — must it not? And it must have all its branches
complete and its leaves green. Look here. ... It is a perfect tree ; why
do you not admire it ?" Miserable two-foot oak ! I turn from it to
think of God's oak in the open pasture, a hundred feet high, wide-
boughed and braving the storm. Now when a man comes to me talking
of perfection, and says, "A perfect man must have such-and-such
qualities — must he not ? He must control his passions and appetites.
He must not sin in this thing or in that thing. Such am I. I do not
commit this fault, or fall into that error. I have trained and schooled
myself. Behold me ; I am perfect," I can but exclaim, '^ Miserable two-
foot Christian I " I have no patience with this low standard, these
earthly comparisons, this relative goodness. I must outgrow this pot of
earth. God's eternity is in my soul, and I shall need it all to grow up
to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
HENRY WARD BEBOHER. 143
Spirit. — Before any daisy or violet^ before any blossom is seen in
the ftsldy the sun lies with its bosom to the ground^ crying to the flower^
and saying, "Why tarriest thou so long?'* and day after day the sun
comes, and pours its maternal warmth upon the earth, and coaxes the
plant to grow and bloom. And when days aud weeks have passed, the
root obeys the call and sends out its germ, from which comes the flower.
Had it not been for the sun's warmth and light, the flower could nevet
have come to itself. So the Eternal Spirit of God rests on the
human soul, warming it, quickening it, calling it and saying, "0 my son !
where art thou ?" And at last it is this Divine sympathy and brooding
influence that brings men to God, and leads them to say, ''Am I not
sinful ?'* and to yearn for something higher and purer and holier. It
was God's work. He long ago was working in you, to will and to do of
Ilis own good pleasure. %
_ #
Riches. — I asked, in New Hampshire, how much it took to make a
fanner rich tliere, and I was told that if a man was worth five thousand
dollars he was considered rich. If a man had a good farm, and had ten
thousand dollars out at interest, oh! he was very rich — '* passing'' rich.
I dropped a little farther down, into Concord, where some magnates of
railroads live (they are the aristocrats just now), and I found that the
idea of riches was quite different there. A^man there was not considered
rich unless he had a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in
pretty clear stuff. I go to New York, and ask men how much it takes to
make one rich, and they say, ** There never was a greater mistake made
than tliat of supposing that five or six hundred thousand dollars make a
man rich. What does that sum amount to?" I go into the upper cir-
cles of New York, where millionaires, or men worth a million dollars or
over, used to be considered rich, and there, if a man is worth five or ten
millions it is thought that he is " coming on." It is said, " He will be
rich one of these days." When a man's wealth amounts to fifty or a
hundred millions he is very rich. Now if such is the idea of riches in
material things, what must riches be when you rise above the highest
men to angels, and above angels to God! What must be the circuit
which makes riches when it reaches Him? And when you apply this
term, increscent, to the Divine nature, as it respects the qualities of love
and mercy, what must riches be in God, the Infinite, whose experiences
are never less wide than infinity! What must be love and mercy, and
their stores, when it is said that God is rich in them.
Fruits, Mex Known* and Judged by. — At a horticultural show
there is a table running through a long hall for the exhibition of fruit ;
and this table is divided up into about twenty-five compartments, which
V 1
144 KING8 OF TEB PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
are assigned to as many exhibitors for the display of their productions.
I go along the table and discuss the merits of the various articles. Here
is a man who has pears and apples and peaches and cherries and
plums. They are not very good ; they are fair ; they are about as good
as the average of the fruit onjbhe table; but they do not beat any body
else's. I see fruit that is just as good all the way down the table. But
the man to whom it belongs says, *'Mine ought to take the premium.'*
^^Why?'' I say. ** Because it was raised on ground whose title
goes back to the flood. No man has a right to claim the premium
unless he can show that the title of his land goes clear down to the flood.
I can prove that my Mtle is clear, and I insist upon it that I ought to
have the premium. That other fruit may have some ground for pre-
tense, but it is uncovenanted.'' I go to the next compartment, and I say
to the man t^ere, ''Your fruit looks fair. It is about on an average
with the rest/' *' On an average with the rest I There is nothing like
it on the table." ''Why so?" "Because it was raised under glass.
Those other fellows raised theirs in the open air. This is church-fruit.
It was all raised in definite enclosures, accordiug to prescriptions which
have come down from generation to generation. In judging of my
fruit you must take into consideration that it was raised according to
the ordinances. It is pattern-fruit." He insists that his fruit is better
than any of the rest on account of the way in which he raised it. I go
to the next compartment. There I see some magnificent fruit, and I
say to the man:
" Where did you raise this fruit ? "
" It came from the highway near my house," he says.
'* From the highway ? "
" Yes. It grew on a wilding that I found growing there. I cleared
away the brush that was choking it, and trimmed it a little, and it pro-
duced this fruit."
" Well," I say, "I think that is the best fruit on the table."
From the whole length of the table, on both sides, there arises the
acclamation, " What 1 are you going to give that man the premium,
who has no title for his land, no greenhouse, and nothing but the high-
way to raise his fruit in ? What sort of encouragement is that to regu-
lar fruit-growers ? " The whole commotion is stopped by the man who
has the awarding of the premium saying—
"The order of this show is: 'By their fruits shall ye know
them.'"
Evolution and Immortality. — Then there is beyond that an ele-
ment in evolution which endears it to me and to every man ; I think
EBNR7 WARD BEECHER, 145
it throws bright gleams on the question of immortality. I see that the
unfolding series in this world are all the time from lower to higher,
that the ideal is not reached at any pointy that the leaf works toward
the bud^ and the bud toward the blossom^ and the blossom toward the
tree, and that in the whole experience of human nature, and in the
whole economy of the providence of God in regard to the physical
world, every thing is on the march upward and onward. And one
thing is very certain, that neither in the individual nor in the collective
mass has the intimation of Ood in the human consciousness verified and
fulfilled itself. The imperfection shows that we are not much further
than the bud; somewhere we have a right to a prescience of the blossom,
and the last we can see of men and of the horizon is when their faces
are turned as if they were bound for the New Jerusalem, upward and
onward. I think there is no other point of doctrine that is so vital to
the he&Tt of mankind as this — we shall live again; we shall live a better
and a higher and a nobler life. Paul says : '' If in this life only we
have hope, we are, of all men, most miserable; " and ten thousand weary
spirits in every community are saying: "Oh, this life has been a
stormy one to me; full of disappointments, full of pains and sorrows
and shames and poverty and suffering, and now comes this vagabond
philosophy, and dashes out of my hand the consolation of believing
that I am to live again." And it is the cry of the soul: '*Lord let
me live again.*' The accumulated experience of this life ought to have
a sphere in which it can develop itself and prove itself. Now, I have
this feeling — I thank God that the belief in a future and in an immor-
tal state is in the world; I thank God that it is the interest of every man
to keep it in the world; I thank God that there is no power of proof in
science that we shall not live. Science may say: "You can not dem-
onstrate it;" but I believe it; then it is my joy. Can you go to the body
of the companion of your love, the lamp of your life, and bid it fare-
well lit the grave? One of the most extraordinary passages in the Gos-
pelri is that where the disciples John and Peter ran to the grave of Jesus
and saw the angels sitting, and they said to them: "I know whom
ye seek ; lie is not here ; He is risen." But what a woe if one bore
mother or father, wife or child, to the open grave, and there was no
angel in it; if you said farewell forever as the body was let down to its
kindred earth. It is the hope of a joyful meeting by-and-by that sus-
tains grief and bereavement in these bitter losses in life. Science can
not destroy belief such as this of immortality after resurrection; it can
not take it away; it can not destroy it, and it is the most precious boon
we have in life — the faith that, through Jesus Christ, we shall live again,
and live forever.
C^inftUJ (SunvCOfK,
THE "HAWKEYE MAN."
BIOGRAPHV AND KKMINISCENCER.
/, /f M
This sweetest and loveliest character of American literature, Robert J. Burdette,
resides, at present, in a beautiful home in Bryn Mawr, Pa. Mark Twain, iii his
" Library of Wit and Humor," says:
liobert J. Burdette was bom at Greensburgh, Pa., July 30, 1844. His family
removed to Illinois when liobert was a boy. He was eilucated in the Peoria public
schools. He enlisted in the army in 1862. On his return from the war, he engaged
in railroad work, and afterward became associate editor of the Burlington Ilawkeye,
in the columns of which he did the first literary work which made him famous. Mr.
Burdette, besides publishing a volume of sketches, has been a contributor to numer-
ous magazines and periodicals. He isat^ present a licentiate^ and often preaches from
the pulpits of the Methodist Church.^ "*
Previous to going on the Hawkeye, Mr. Burdette established a
newspaper in Peoria. One day I met the humorist, and asked him
how his Peoria paper succeeded.
*' Did 3^ou make much money ? ''
'* Money?" repeated Burdette. ''Mo-ne-y! Did you ever
start a paper ? "
" No, I believe not," I said.
** Well, you ought to try it. I started one once. Yes, I starteil
one. We called it the Peoria Jiedno, and it was started ' to fill a
long-felt want.'"
•' Did you have any partners ? " I asked.
*' Yes, Jerry Cochrane was my partner. There were several very
comforting things on that paper. For instance, Jerry and I always
knew on Monday that we would not have money enough to pay the
hands off on Saturday, and we never had. The hands knew it, too,
so their nerves were never shocked by a disappointment. We ran
that way for a while, getting more deeply in debt all the time. At
last, one morning, I entered the oflBce and found Jerry looking
rather solemn.
147
1^'
148 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPTT,
" ^ Jerry, ' said I, ' you want another partner. '
" ' Tes, we need a new one, ' he rejoined.
"'A business man,' said I.
*'*One with executive ability,' said he.
" * A financier, ' I observed.
" * A man who can take hold of things and turn them into money,'
he concluded.
" * Then I have got the man you want, ' said I, and I introduced
Frank Hitchcock, the sheriff. Jerry said Frank was the man he
S^ {• had been thinking of, so we installed him at once. "
w ^ « -\Y'as Hitchcock a good business man?" I asked.
" O, yes, everything he touched turned into money. He proved
to be all we anticipated, and he ran the paper with the greatest
success until he had turned that too into money. "
" What was the final result ? "
" Well, when we wound up the concern, there was nothing left
but two passes — one to Cincinnati and one to Burlington. We
divided them and went in different directions. "
Robert Burdette's wit generally borders on satire. That is, he
takes some foible of fashion, or some foolish domestic custom, and
exaggerates it. To illustrate, the humorist thus satirized the irri-
table wife:
Mrs. Jones was at a party the other night smiling sosercnely to every one, when
*, the handsome Captiiin Hamilton, who reads poetry oh, so divinely, and is oh, so nice,
«A stepped on her dress as she was hurrying across the room.
K-r-r-rt! R'p! R'p! how it tore and jerked, and how the captain looked as though
he would die as he said :
" My dear Mrs. Jones, I was so clumsy!"
y* "Odear, no, Captain," she sweetly said, smiling till she lo<)ke<i like a seraph
who had got down here by mistake, "it's of no consequence, I assure you, it doesn't
make a particle of difference, at all."
^_ Just twenty-five minutes later her husband, helping her into the street car,
mussed her niffle.
"Gkwxiness gnicious me!'* she snapped out, "go way and let me alone; you'll
tear me to pieces if you keep on."
Then she flopped down on the scat so hard that everythiog rattled, and the
frightened driver ejaculated, "There goes that bnike chain again," and crawled
under the car with his lantern to see how badly it had given way!
When I asked the humorist what was the best joke he ever saw,
he said:
" It occurred in our Peoria Bible class. Our dear, good old cler-
gyman, one hot summer afternoon, was telling us boj^s, how wo
should never get excited.
V
t
t
5 - A
TUB UAWKEYE MAN. 149
"^Boys, ' he 8aid, ^you should never lose your tempers — never
let your angry passions rise. You should never swear or get angry,
or excited. I never do. Now, to illustrate,' said the clergyman,
pointing toward his face, 'you all see that little fly on my nose. A
goo<l many wicked, worldly men would get angry at that fly, but 1
don't ! '
'\' What do I do ?
"'Why, my children, I simply say go away fly ^go away
and gosh Hast it! iCs a wasp ! ' "
Robert J^Burdette is beloved by every one. He never had an ^\
enemy. OneTIay when I made this remark to l^etroleum V. Nasby,
he said :
*' Yes, Burdette is a lovely character, but a woe was pronounced
against him in the Bible."
*' How was that ? " I asked.
'' Why the Bible says ' woe unto you when all men speak well
o«^
vou.' "
BUKDETTPrS KLSK AND FALL OF THE MUSTACHE.
LndicH and Gentlemen: — Adam niised Cain, but he did not raise a
mustache. He was born a man, a full grown man, and with a mustache
already raised. •
If Adam wore a nnistacho, he never raised it. It raised itself. It
evolved itseli out of its own inner consciousness, like a primordial
germ. It grew, like the weeds on his farm, in spite of him, and to
torment him. For Adam had hardly got his farm reduced to a kind of
turbulent, weed -producing, granger- lighting, regular order of things —
had scarcely settled down to the quiet, happy, care-free, independent
life of a jocund farmer, with nothing under the canopy to molest or
make him afraid, with every thing on the plantation going on smoothly
and lovely, with a little rust in the oats; army worm in the corn;
Colonodo Ix^etles swarming up and down the potato patch; cutworms
laying waste the cucumbers; curculio in the plums and borers in the
apple trees; a new kind of bug that li'.; didn't know the name of
de>olating the wheat fields; dry weather burning up the wheat; wet
M*eather blighting the corn; too cold for the melons, too dreadfully hot
for the strawberries; chickens dying with the pip; hogs being gathered
to their fathers with the cholera; slieep failing away with a complication
of things that no man could remember; horses getting along as well as
150 KINGS OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
"^coiild be expected, with a little spavin, ring-bone, wolf -teeth, distemper,
luaves, blind staggers, collar chafes, saddle galls, colic now and then,
founder occasionally, epizootic when there was nothing else; cattle
going wild with the horn ail; moth in the bee-hives; snakes in the milk
house; moles in the kitchen garden — Adam had just about got through
breaking wild land with a crooked stick, and settled down comfortably,
when the sound of the boy was heard in the land.
Did it ever occur to you that Adam was probably the most troubled
and worried man that ever lived?
We have always pictured Adam as a careworn looking man; a puz-
zled looking granger who woilld sigh fifty times a day, and sit down on
a log and run his irresolute fingers through his hair while he wondered
what under the canopy he was going to do with those boys, and what-
ever was going to become of them. We have thought, too, that as often
as our esteemed parent asked himself this conundrum, he gave it up.
They must have been a source of constant trouble and mystification to
him. For you see they were the first boys that humanity ever had any
experience with. And there was no one else in the neighborhood who
had any boy, with whom Adam, in his moments of perplexity, could
consult. There wasn^t a boy in the country with whom Adam^s boys
were on speaking terms, and with whom they could play and fight.
Adam, you see, labored under the most distressing disadvantages
that ever opposed a married man, and the father of a family. He had
never been a boy himself, and what could he know about boy nature or
boy troubles and pleasure? llis perplexity began at an early date.
Imagine, if you can, the (,'elerity with which he kicked off the leaves,
and paced up and down in the moonlight the first time little Cain made
the welkin ring when he had the colic. How did Adam know what
ailed him ? He couldn't tell Eve that she had been sticking the baby
full of pins. He didn't even know enough to turn the vociferous infant
over on his face and jolt him into serenity. If the fence comers on bis
farm had been overgrown with catnip, never an idea would Adam have
had what to do with it. It is probable that after he got down on his
knees and felt for thorns or snakes or rats in the bed, and thoroughly
examined young Cain for bites or scratches, he passed him over to Eve
with the usual remark:
** There, take him and hush him up, for heaven's sake," and then
went off and sat down under a distant tree with his fingers in his ears,
and perplexity in his brain.
And young Cain just split the night with the most hideous howls
(he little world had ever listened to. It must have stirred the animal^
THE HA WREYE MAX, 151
up to a degree that no menagerie has ever since attained. There was
no sleep in the vicinity of Eden that night for any body, baby, beasts or
Adam. And it is more than probable that the weeds got a long start of
Adam the next day^ while he lay around in shady places and slept in
troubled dozes, disturbed, perhaps, by awful visions of possible twins
aiid more colic. [Laughter.]
And when the other boy came along, and the boys got old enough to
sleep in a bed by themselves, they had no pillows to fight with, and it
18 a moral impossibility for two brothers to go to bed without a fracas.
And what comfort could two boys get out of pelting each other with
fragments of moss or bundles of brush ? What dismal views of future
humanity Adam must have received from the glimpses of original sin
which began to develop itself in his boys. How he must have wondered
what put into their heads the thousand and one questions with which
they plied their parents day after day. We wonder what he thought
when they first began to string buckeyes on the cat's tail. And when
night came, there was no hired girl to keep the boys quiet by telling
them ghost stories, and Adam didn't even know so much as an anec-
dote.
Cain, when he made his appearance, was the first and only boy in
the fair young world. And all his education depended on his inexperi-
enced parents, who had never in their lives seen a boy until they saw
Cain. And there wasn't an educational help in the market. There
wasn't an alphabet block in the county; not even a Centennial illus-
trated handkerchief. There were no other boys in the republic, to taacL
young Cain to lie, and swear, and smoke, and drink, fight and steal,
and {ImstfevcTop the boy's dormant statesmanship, ah^4)repare*liim for
tlie stenier~n6litical duties of his.maturer years7 There wasn't a pocket
Icnifo in the universe that he could borrow — and lose, ^nc^ when he
wanted to cut his^ finger, jis jail boys must do^ now and then, he had to
cut it with a clam shell. There were no country relations upon whom
little Cain could be inflicted for two or three weeks at a time, when his
wearied parents wanted a little rest. There was nothing for him to play
with. Adam couldn't show him how to make a kite. He had a much
better idea of anfi;ols' wings than ho had of a kite. And if little Cain
had «»ven asked for such a simple ])it of nie(;luini8m as a shinny club,
Adam would liave gone out into tin* depths of the primeval forest and
wept in sheer mortification and hel])less, confessed ignorance.
I don't wonder that Cain turned out bad. I always said he would.
For his entire education depended upon a most ignorant man, a man in
the very palmiest days of liis ignorance, who coi^Jdn't have known less if
1§2 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT
ho had tried all his life on a high salary and had a man to help him.
And the boy's education had to be conducted entirely upon the catechet-
ical system; only, in this instance, the boy pupil asked the questions,
and his parent teachers, heaven help them, tried to answer them. And
* they had to answer at them. For they could not take refuge from the
steady stream of questions that poured in upon them day after day, by
interpolating a fairy story, as you do when your boy asks you questions
about something of which you never heard. For how could Adam begin,
" Once upon a tinje,'' when with one quick, incisive question, Cain
could pin him right back against the dead wall of creation, and make
him either specify exactly what time, or acknowledge the frar.d? How
could Eve tell him about '* Jack and the beanstalk,^' when Cain, fairly
crazy for someone to play with, knew perfectly well there was not, and
never had been, another boy on the plantation? And as day by day
Cain brought home things in his hands about which to ask questions
that no mortal could answer, how grateful his bewildered parents must
have been that he had no pockets in which to transport his collections.
For many generations came into the fair young world, got into no end
of trouble, and died out of it, before a boy^s pocket solved the problem
.» how to make the thing contained seven times greater than the container.
A )y % The only thing that saved Adam and Eve from interrogational insan-
^ t '^ ^^y w^s ^^^® paucity of language. If little Cain had possessed the verbal
-,t^ . abundance of the language in which men are to-day talked to death, his
r >^r father's bald head would have gone down in shining flight to the ends
of the earth to escape him, leaving Eve to look after the stock, save the
crop, and raise her boy as best she could. Which would have been G,000
\/ years ago, as to-day, just like a man.
Because, it was no off-hand, absent-minded work answering questions
about things in those spacious old days, when there was crowds of room,
and every thing grew by the acre. When a placid but exceedingly
unanimous looking animal went rolling by, producing the general effect
of an ecli^ise, and Cain would shout,
'* Oh, lookee, lookoe Pa! what's that? '"
Then the patient Adam, trying to saw enough kitchen wood to last
over Sunday, with a piece of flint, would have to pause and gather up
words enough to say:
" That, my son? That is only a mastodon gigantcus; he has a bad
look, but a Christian temper."
And then presently:
* ' Oh, pal pa! What's that over yon ? "
TUE HA WKETE MAN. 153
'• Oh, bother/' Adam would reply; " it's only a paleotherium, inam-(x^
malia pachydermata/' [Laughter.]
" Oil, yes; theliocomeafterus. Oh! lookee, lookee at this 'un! *'
*' Where, Cainny? Oh, that in the mud? That's only an acephala
lamelli branchiata. It won't bite you, but you mustn't eat it. It's ^
poison as politics,',!
'* Wheel See therol see, see, see! What's him?"
'^ Oh, that? Looks like a plesiosaurus; keep out of his way; he has
a jaw like your mother."
** Oh, yes; a plenosserus. And what's that fellow, poppy?"
'' That's a silurus mulaptorns. Don't you go near him^np Via liMflio
(lUjyaitinn of i\ Oeorgia mule.'^
'* Oh, yes; a slapterus. And what's this little one?"
*'0h, it's nothing but an aristolochioid. Where did you get it?
There, now, quit throwing stones iit that acanthopterygian ; do you
want to bo kicked ? And keep away from the nothodenatrichomanoidee.
My stars. Eve! where did ho get that anonaceo-hydrocharidoo-nymph-
seoid? Do 3'ou never look after him at all? Here, you Cain, get right
away down from there, and chase that megalosaurius out of the melon
patch, or I'll set the monopleuro branchian on you." [Laughter.]
Just think of it. Christian man with a family to support, with last
year's stock on
to- inojjoaj
and a mother's sympathetic nature, with three nieiils a~day
ye5rto"£Tiirilc of , and the flies to chase out of the sitting-room; think, if
your chenib boy wjis the only boy in the wide, wide world, and all his
(piestions which now radiate in a thousaiul directions among other boys,
who tell him lies and help him to cut his eye-teeth, were focused upon
von! Adam had onlv one consolation that has been denied his more
remote descendantK. Ilis boy never belonged to a base ball club, never
smoked cigarettes, and never teased his father from the "first of Novem-
l>er till the last of March for a pair of roller skates.
Well, you have no time to pity Adam. You have your own boy to
look after. Or, your neighbor has a boy, whom you can look after much
more closely than his mother does, and much more to your own satis-
faction than to the boy\s comfort.
VourJ)oy is, as Adam's boy was, au. animal that iisks questions.^JjtL
there were any truth in the old theory of iLe trammiigration of souls,
when a boy died he would pass into au interrogation j)oint. And he'd
sfay"t1reTr. — He'd never get out of it; for he never gets through asking!
questions. The older he grows the more he asks, and the morel
154 Km08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
perplexing his questions are, and the more unreasonable he is about want-
ing them answered to suit himself. Why, the oldest boy I ever knew —
he was fifty-seven years old, and I went to school to him — coaldanddid
ask the longest, hanlest, crookedest questions [Laughter], that no fellow,
who used to trade off all his books for a pair of skates and a knife with
a corkscrew in it, could answer. And when his questions were not
answered to suit him, it was his custom — a custom more honored in
jjifl^ hrftf^ches^_wejised tg tb^"^» tl]^" J;^ the observance — to take up a
long, slender, but exceedingly tenacious rod, wHich lay ever near the
big dictionary, and smite with it the boy whose naturally derived Adamic
ignorance was made manifest.
Ah, me, if the boy could only do as he is done by, and ferule the man
or the woman who fails to reply to his inquiries, as he is himself cor-
rected for similar shortcomings, what a valley of tears, what a literally
howling wilderness he could and would make of this world. [F^aughter.]
Your boy, askingto-day pretty much the same questions, with heaven
knows how many additional ones, that Adam's boy did, ist old, every
time he asks one that you don't know any thing about, just as Adam
told Cain fifty times a day, that he will know all about it when he is a
man. And so from the days of Cain down to the present wickeder gen-
eration of boys, the boy ever looks forward to the time when he will be a
man and know every thing.
And now, not entirely ceasing to ask questions, your boy begins to
answer them, until you stand amazed at the breadth and depth of his
knowledge. lie asks questions and gets answers of teachers that you and
the school board know not of. Day by day, great unprinted books, upon
the broad pages of which the hand of nature has traced characters that
only a boy can read, are spread out before him. He knows now where
the first snow-drop lifts its tiny head, a pearl on the bosom of the barren
earth, in the spring; he knows where the last Indian pink lingers, a
flame in the brown and rustling woods, in the autumn days. His pockets
are cabinets, from which he drags curious fossils that he does not know
the names of; monstrous and hideous beetles and bugs and things that
you never saw before, and for which hehasappropriatenamesof hisown.
He knows where there are three oriole's nests, and so far back as you can
remember, you never saw an oriole's nest in your life. He can tell you
how to distinguish the good mushrooms from the poisonous ones, and
poison gra2)es from good ones, and how he ever found out, except by eat-
ing both kinds, is a mystery to his mother. Every root, bud, leaf, berry
or bark, that will make any bitter, horrible, semi -poisonous tea, reputed
to have marvelous medicinal virtues, he knows where to find, and in the
TUB UAWKEYE MAN, 155
season he docs find^ and brings home^ and all but sends the entire family
to the cemetery by making practical tests of his teas. '
And as his knowledge broadens, his human superstition develops y
itselK He has a formula, repeating which nine times a day,'while '
pointing his finger fixedly toward the sun, will cause warts to disappear
from the hand, or, to use his own expression, will "knock warts/^
[Laughter.] If the eight-day clock at home tells him it is two o'clock,
and the flying leaves of the dandelion declare it is half -past five, he will
stand or fall with the dandelion.
He has a formula, by which ^ny thing that has been lost, may be
found. He has, above all things, a natural, infallible instinct for the
woods, and can no more be lost in them than a squirrel. If the cow
does not coine home — and if she is a town cow, likQ. Alo^iijoian^ she
does not come home, tliree nights in the week — you lose half a day
ofYaluablo lime luo king' for hei". Then you pay a man three dollars to
look for her two days longer, or so long as the appropriation holds out.
Finally, a quarter sends a boy to the woods; he comes back at milking
time, whistling the tune that no man ever imitated, and the cow ambles
contentedly along before him.
He has one particular marble which he regards with about the same
superstitious reverence that a pagan does his idol, and his Sunday-school
teacher can't drive it out of him, either. Carnelian, crystal, bull's eye,
china, pottery, boly, blood alley, or commie, whatever he may call it,
there is "luck in it." When he loses this marble, he sees panic and
bankruptcy ahead of him, and retires from business prudently, before
the crash comes, failing, in true centennial style, with both pockets and
a cigar box full of winnings, and a creditors' meeting in the back room.
A boy's world is open to no one but a boy. You never really revisit I
the glim^^ses of your boyhood, much as you may dream of it. After yog \
get into a tail coaj^ and tight boots, you never again set foot in boy \
world, ypu lose this marvelous instinct for the woods, you can't tell a \
pig-nut tree from a pecan; you can't make friends with strange dogs; /
you can't make the terrific noises with your mouth, you can't invent the /
inimitable signals or the cluiracteristic catchwords of boyhood.
Hi! is getting on, is your hoy. He roaches the dime-novel age. He
wants to bo a missionary. Or a pirate. So far as he expresses any pref-
(•rencc, lu^ would rather be a [)irate, an occupation in which there are
more chances for making money, and fewer opportunities for being
devoured. lie develops a yearning love for school and study about this
time, also, and every time he dreams of being a pirate he dreams of
hanging his dear teacher at the yard arm in the presence of the
15() KIXGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
delighted scholars. ^^ ^^yntx /^/iirni/^pc^^ ^y^n more rapidly and thor-
oughly than his moralsT In the yard, on theTiouse top, down the'
street, around the corner; wherever there is a patch of ice hig enough
for him to break his neck on, or a pond of water deep enough to drown
in, the voice of your boy is heard. He whispers in a shout, and con-
verses, in ordinary, confidential moments, in a shriek. He exchanges
bits of back-fence gossip about his father's domestic matters, with the
boy living in the adjacent township, to which interesting revelations ol
home-life the intermediate neighborhood listens with intense satisfac-
tion, and the two home circles in helpless dismay. He has an uncon-
querable hatred for company, and an aversion for walking down stairs.
For a year or two his feet never touch the stairway in his descent, and
his habit of polishing the stair rail by using it as a passenger tramway,
soon breaks the other members of the family of the careless habit of set-
ting the hall lamp or the water pitcher on the baluster post. He wears
the same size boot as his father; and on the dryest, dustiest days in the
year, always maniiges to convey some mud on the carjiets. He carefully
steps over the door mat, and until he is about seventeen years old, he
actually never knew there was a scraper at the front porch.
About this time, bold but inartistic pencil sketches break out mys-
teriously on the alluring background of the wall paper. He asks, with
great regularity, alarming frequency and growing diffidence, for a new
hat. You might as well buy him anew disposition. Ho wears his hat
in the air and on the ground far more than he does on his head, and
he never hangs it up that he doesn't pull the hook through the crown;
unless the hook breaks off or the hat rack pulls over.
He is a perfect Robhison Crusoe in inventivejgemus,^ He can make
a kite that will fly higher and pull hartTer than a balloon. He can, and,
on occasion, will, take out a couple of the pantry shelves and make a
sled that is amazement itself. The mouse-trap he builds out of the
water pitcher and the family Bible is a marvel of mechanical ingenuity.
So is the excuse he gives for such a selection of raw material. When
suddenly, some Monday morning, the clothes line, without any just or
apparent cause or provocation, shrinks sixteen feet, philosophy cannot
make you believe that Professor Tice did it with his little barometer.
Because, far down the dusty street, you can see Tom in the dim distance,
driving a prancing team, RJx-in-hand, with the missing link.
You send your boy on an errand. There are three ladies in the parlor.
You have waited as long as you can, in all courtesy, for them to go.
They have developed alarming symptoms of staying to tea. And you
know there aren't half enough strawberries to go around. It is only a
TUB JIA WKETS MAN. 187
three minutes* walk to the grocery, however, and Tom sets off like a
rocket, and you are so pleased with his celerity and ready good nature
that you want to run after him and kiss him. He is gone a long time,
however. Ten minutes become fifteen, fifteen grow into twenty; the
twenty swell into the half hour, and your guests exchange very signifi-
cant glances as the half becomes three-quarters. Your boy returns at
last. Apprehension in his downcast eyes, humility in his laggard step,
penitence in the appealing slouch of his battered hat, and a pound and
a half of shingle nails in his hands.
''Mother,^' he says, ''what else was it you told me to get besides the
nails?'' [Laughter.] And while you are counting your scanty store of
berries to make them go round without a fraction, you hear Tom out in
the back yard whistling and hammering away, building a dog house
with the nails you never told him to get.
Vi\(\T Tftm^ lift InvPfl at this age quite as ardently as he makes mistakes
andmififilnef. And he is repulsed quite as ardently as he nTakes love.
Ifne hugs his sister, he musses her ruffle, and gets cuffed for it. Two
hours later, another boy, not more than twenty-two or twenty-three
ye^rs older than Tom, some neighbor's Tom, will come in, and will just {i*/ m
make the most hopeless, terrible, chaotic wreck of that ruffle that lace M/W^
or footing can be distorted into. And the only reproof he gets is the V^ c
reproachful murmur, ''Must he go so soon?" [Laughter] when ho i^
doesn't make a movement to go until he hears the alarm clock go off
upstairs and the old gentleman in the adjoining room banging around
building the morning fires, and loudly wondering if young Mr. Bostwick
is going to stiiy to breakfjist?
Tom is at this ago set in deadly enmity against company, which he
soon learns to regard as his mortal foe. IIo regards company as a mys-
terious and eminently respectable delegation that always stays to dinner,
invariably crowds him to tlie second table, never leaves him any of the
pie, and generally makes him late for school. Naturally, he learns to
love refined socictv, but in a conservative, non-committal sort of a wav,
dissembling his love so effectually that even his parents never dream of
itc existence until it is gone.
Poor Tom, his life is not all comedy at this period. Go up to your
boy's room sonic night, and his sleeping face will preach you a sermon
on the griefs and troubles that sometimes weigh his little heart down
almost to breakin*^^ more eloquently than the lips of a Spurgeon could
picture tliem. The curtain has fallen on one day's act in the drama of
his active little life. The restless feet that all day long have pattered
so far — ilowii dusty strectij, over scorching pavements, through long
158 KINOa OF THE PLATPORM AND PULPIT.
/stretches of quiet wooded lanes, along the winding cattle paths in the
\ deep, silent woods ; that hAve dabbled in the cool brook where it
/ wrangles and scolds over the shining pebbles, that have^ filled your
^^ house with noise and dust and racket, are still. The stained hand out-
. side the sheet is soiled and rough, and the cut finger with the rude
1* bandage of the boy's own surgery, pleads with a mute, effective pathos
of its own, for the mischievous hand that is never idle. On the brown
cheek the trace of a tear marks the piteous close of the day's troubles,
the closing scene in a troubled little drama; trouble at school with
books that were too many for him; trouble with temptations to
have unlawful fun that were too strong for him, as they are frequently
too strong for his father ; trouble in the street with boys that were
too big for him ; and at last, in liis home, in his castle, his refuge,
! trouble has pursued him, until, feeling utterly friendless and in every
bod3r's way, he has crawled off to the dismantled den, dignified usually
by the title of " the boy's room," and his overcharged heart has welled*
up into his eyes, and his last waking breath has broken into a sob, and
just as he begins to think that after all, life is only one broad sea of
troubles, whose restless billows, in never-ending succession, break and
beat and double and dash upon the short shore line of a boy's life,
he has drifted away into the wonderland of a boy's sleep, where fairy
fingers picture his dreams. [Applause.]
How soundly, deeply, peacefully he sleeps. No mother, who has
never dragged a sleepy boy off the lounge at 9 o'clock, and hauled him
off upstairs to bed, can know with what a ,^erciUean_jxijL-a--a(yiare
sleep takes hold oi.a.l)py's senses, nor how fearfully and wonderfully"*
Ump and nerveless it makes film; nor how, in direct antagonism to all
established laws of anatomy, it develops joints that work both ways, all
the way up and down that boy.
And what pen can portray the wonderful enchantments of a boy's
dreamland ! No marvelous visions wrought by the weird, strange power
of hasheesh, no dreams that come to the slee]) of jaded woman or tired
man, no ghastly specters that dance attendance upon cold mince pie,
but shrink into tiresome, stale, and trifling commonplaces compared
with the marvelous, the grotesque, the wonderful, the terrible, the
beautiful and the enchanting scenes and people of a boy's dreamland.
This maybe owing, in a great measure, to the fact that the boy never
relates his dream until all the other members of the family have related
theirs; and then he comes in, like a back county, with the necessary
majority; like the directory of a western city, following the census of a
I rival town.
/
THIS iJA wkeyp: man, I5d
Tom \a a iiiiniature Tshmaelito at this period of his career. His hand
is against every man, and about every man's hand, and nearly every]
woman^s hand, is against him, oiT and on. Often, and then the iron
enters his soul, the hand that is against him holds the slipper. He
wears his mother *s slipper on his jticket quite as often as she wears it on
her foot. And this is all wrong, unchristiaTi and impolitic. It spreads
the slipper and discourages the boy. When he reads in his Sunday- ,0.
poliooHesson that the_ wicked stand in slipf)ery place87 he takes it as a/ . J
dlrectjjfirsonal reference, and he is affronted, and "irtay he the seeds oiA^^^^^
atheism are implanted in hT8l)r'ea8{. 3r6reover, this repeated applica- -V
tion of the sirpper iiotoiiTy sours his temper, and gives a bias to his
moral ideas, but it sharpens his wits. How many a Christian mother,
her soft eyes swimming in tears of real pain that plashed up from the
depths of a loving heart, as she bent over her wayward boy until his
heart-rending wails and piteous shrieks drowned her own choking, sym-
pathetic sobs, has been wasting her strength, and wearing out a good
slipper, and pouring out all that ])riceless flood of mother love and duty
and pity and tender sympathy npon a concealed atlas back, or a Saginaw
shingle. [Laughter.]
U ]« ii liifitnrifiiil fiict that no boy is ever wliipped twice for precisely
the same offense. He varies and improves a little on every repetition cf
the prank, iiniil at last ho reiich(.»s a point where detection is almost
impossible. He is a big boy then, and glides almost imperceptibly fiom
the discipline of his father, under the surveillance of the police.
By easy stages ho passes inlo the uncomfortable period of boyhood.
His jacket develops into a tail-coat. The boy of to-day, who is slipped
into a hollow, abbreviated mockery of a tail-coat, when he is taken, out
of long dresses, has no idea — not the faintest conception of the grandeur,
the momentous imp(ni;ance of the epoch in a boy's life, that wiis marked
l)y the transition from the old-fashioned cadet roundabout to the tail-
coat. It is an experience that heaven, ever cjutry of its choicest
blessings, and mindful of the decadence of the race of boys, has not
vouchsafed to the untoward, forsaken boys of this wicked generation.
When the roundabout went out of fashion, the heroic race of boys passed
away from earth, and weeping nature sobbed and broke the moulds./^
The fashion that started a ])ny of six years on his pilgrimage of life in ^
miniature edition of his father's coat, marked a period of retrogression j
in the affairs of men, and stamped a decaying and degenerate race^'
There are no Imys now, or very few, at least, such as peo2)led the grand
old earth when the men of our age were boys. And that it is so, society
is to be congratulated. The step from the roundabout to the tail-coat
160 Kiysa OF THE PLATFonyr asd pulpit.
was a leap in life. It was tlic boy lulus^ doffing the prcBiexia and
flinging upon his shoulders the iofja virilis of Julius; Patroclus, donuing
/I ^ ^ I V the armor of Achilles^ in which to go forth and be Hectored to death.
Tom is slow to realize the grandeur of that tail-coat, however, on its
^ trial trip. How differently it feels from his good, snug-fitting, comfort-
able old jacket. It fits him too much in every direction, he knows.
Every now and then he stops with a gasp of terror, feeling positive, from
the awful sensation of nothingness about the neck, that the entire
collar has fallen off in the street. The tails are prairies, the pockets are
caverns, and the back is one vast, illimitable, stretching waste. How
Tom sidles along as close to the fence as he can scrape, and what a wary
eye he keeps in every direction for other boys. When he forgets the
school, he is half tempted to feel proud of his toga; but when he thinks
of the boys, and the reception that awaits him, his heart sinks, and he
is tempted to go back home, sneak up stairs, and rescue his worn, old
jacket from the rag-bag. He glances in terror at his distorted shadow
on the fence, and, confident that it is a faithful outline of his figure, he
knows that he has worn his father's coat off by mistake.
He tries various methods of bottoning his coat to make it conform
more harmoniously to his figure and his ideas of the eternal fitness of
things. He buttons just ilie lower button, and immediately it flies
alT abroad at the shoulders, and he beholds himself an exaggerated man-
nikin of " Cap'n Cuttle.^' Then he fastens just the upper button, and
the frantic tails flap and flutter like a clothes-line in a cyclone. Then
he buttons it all up, Tila inilltaire, and tries to look soldierly, but the
effect is so theological-studantly that it frightens him until his heart
stops beating. As he reaches the last friendly corner that shields him
from the pitiless gaze of the boys he can hear howling and shrieking
not fifty yards away, he pauses to give the final ajustment to the manly
and unmanageable raiment. It is bigger and looser, flappier and wrink-
jier than ever. New and startling folds, and unexi>ccted wrinkles, and
uncontemplated bulges develop themselves, like masked batteries, just
when and wliere the effect will be most demoralizing. And a new hor-
ror discloses itself at this trying and awful juncture. He wants to lie
down on the side walk and try to die. For the first time he notices the
color of his coat. Hideous ! He has been duped, swindled, betrayed —
made a monstrous idiot by that silver-tongued salesman, who has palmed
off upon him a coat 2,000 years old; a coat that the most sweetly enthu-
siastic and terribly misinformed women's missionary society would hesi-
tate to offer a wild Hottentot; and which the most benighted, old-
fashioned Hottentot that ever disdained clothes, would certainly blush
THB HAWKBTB MAN. 161
to wear in the dark, and woald probably decline with thanks. Oh, mad-
ness ! The color is no color. It is all colors. It is a brindle— a yerita-
ble, undeniable brindle. There must have been a fabulous amount of
brindle cloth made up into bojs^ first coats, sixteen or eighteen or nine-
teen years ago, because out of 894—1 like to be exact in the use of fig-
ures, because nothing else in the world lends such an air oi protound
truthfulness to a discourse— out of 894 boys I knew in the first tail-coat
peiiud, 89^ (UlU(i6 lo scnooi in brindle coats. And the other one— the
894th boy — made his wretched debut in a bottle-green toga, with dread-
ful, glaring brass buttons. He left school very suddenly, and we always
believed that the angels saw him in that coat, and ran away with him..
But Tom, shivering with apprehension, and faint with mortification over
the discovery of this new horror, gives one last despairing scroochof his
shoulders, to make the coat look shorter, and, with a final frantic tug at
the tails, to make it appear longer, steps out from the protecting aggis
of the comer. Js stunned with a vocal hurricane of —
*' Oh, what a coat!'' and his cup of misery is as full as a rag-bag in
three minutes.
Passing into the tail-coat period, Tom awakens to a knowledge of the
broad physical truth, that he has hands. He is not very positive in his
own mind how many. At times he is ready to swear to an even two,
one pair ; good hand. Again, when cruel fate and the non-appearance
of some one's else brother has compelled him to accompany his sister to
a church sociable, he can see eleven ; and as he sits bolt upright in the
grimmest of straight-back chairs, plastered right up against the wall, as
the '' sociable'' custom is, or used to be, trying to find enough unoccu-
pied pockets in which to sequester all his hands, he is dimly conscious
that hands should come in pairs, and vaguely wonders, if he has only
five pair of regularly ordained hands, where this odd hand came from.
And hitherto, Tom has been content to encase his feet in any thing that
would stay on them. Kow, however, he has an eye for a glove-fitting
boot, and learns to wreath his face in smiles, hollow, heartless, deceitful
smiles, while his boots are as full of agony as a broken heart, and his
tortured feet cry out for vengeance upon the shoemaker, and make Tom
feel that life is a hollow mockery, and there is nothing real but soft
corns and bunions.
And: His mother never cuts his hair again. Never. When Tom
assumes the manli gown, she has looked her last upon his head, with
trimming ideas. His hair will be trimmed and clipped, barberously it C-^ y, r (
may be, but she will not be accessory before the fact. She may some- J^ ^
times long to have her boy kneel down t)elore Her, while she gnaws '^"^*-*'»*
162 K1N08 OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
*
around liis terrified locks with a pair of scissors that were sharpened
wlicn they were made; and have since then cut acres of calico, and miles
and miles of paper, and great stretches of cloth, and snarls and coils of
string, and furlongs of lamp wick; and have snuffed candles; and dug
refractory corks out of the family ink bottle; and punched holes in
skate-straps; and trimmed the family nails; and have even done their
level best, at the annual struggle, to cut stove-pipe lengths in two; and
have successfully opened oyster and fruit cans; and pried up carpet
tacks; and have many a time and oft gone snarlingly and toilsomely
around Tom's head, and made him an object of terrdp to the children in
the street, and made him look so much like a yearling colt with the mn
of a bur pasture, that people have been afraid to approach him too sud-
denly, lest he should jump through his collar and run away. [Applause.]
Ho feels, too, the dawning consciousness of another grand tmth in
the human economy. It dawns upon his deepening intelligence with
the inherent strength and the unquestioned truth of a new revelation,
that man's upper lip was designed by nature for a mustache pasture.
How tenderly reserved he is when he is brooding over this momentous
discovery. With what exquisite caution and delicacy are his primal
investigations conducted. In his microscopical researches it appears to
him that the down on his upper lip is certainly more determined down,
more positive, more pronounced, more individual fuzz than that which
vegetates in neglected tenderness upon his cheeks. He makes cautious
explorations along the land of promise with the tip of his tenderest
finger, delicately backing up the grade the wrong way, going always
against the grain, that he may the more readily detect the slightest
symptom of an uprising by the first feeling of velvety resistance. And
day by day he is more and more firmly convinced that there is in his lip
the primordial germs, the protoplasm of a glory that will, in its full
development, eclipse even the majesty and grandeur of his first tail-coat.
And in the first dawning consciousness that the mustache is there, like
the vote, and only needs to be brought out, how often Tom walks down
to the barber shop, gazes longingly in at the window, and walks past.
And how often, when he musters up suflBcient courage to go in, and
climbs into the chair, and is just on the point of huskily whispering to
the barber that he would like a shave, the entrance of a man with a
beard like Frederick Barbarossa, frightens away his resolutioti, and he
has his hair cut again. The third time that week, and it is so short
that the barber has to hold it with his teeth while he files it offhand
parts it with a straight edge and a scratch awl. Naturally, driven
from the barber chair, Tom casts longing eyes upon the ancestral shav-
ing machinery at home. And who shall say by what means he at length
THE HAWKEYE MAN. 163
obtains possession of the paternal razor? No one. Nobody knows. No-
body ever did know. Even the searching investigation that always
follows the paternal demand for the immediate extradition of whoever
opened a fruit can with that razor, which always follows Tom's first
shave, is always, and ever will be, barren of results.
All that we know about it is, that Tom holds the razor in his hand
about a minute, wondering what to do with it, before the blade falls across
his fingers and cuts every one of them. First blood claimed and allowed,
for the razor. Then he straps the razor furiously. Or, rather, he razors the
strap. He slashes and cuts that passive instrument in as many directions as
he can make motions with the razor. He would cut it of tener if the strap
lasted longer. Then he nicks the razor against the side of the mug. Then
he drops it on the floor and steps on it and nicks it again. They are small
nicks, not so large by half as a saw tooth, and he flatters himself his
father will never see them. Tlien he soaks the razor in hot water, as
he has seen his father do. Then he takes it out, at a temperature any-
where under 980° Fahrenheit, and lays it against his cheek, and raises a
blister there the size of the razor, as he never saw his father do, but as
his father most assuredly did, many, many years before Tom met him.
Then he makes a variety of indescribable grimaces and labial contor-
tions in a frenzied effort to get his upper lip into approachable shape,
and, at last, the first offer he makes at his embryo mustache he slashes
his nose with a vicious upper cut. He gashes the corners of his mouth;
wherever those nicks touch his cheek tliey leave a scratch apiece, and he
learns what a good nick in a razor is for, and at last when he lays the
blood-stained weapon down, his gory lip looks as though it had just
come out of a long, stubborn, exciting contest with a straw-cutter.
But he learns to shave, after a while — just before he cuts his lip
clear off. Ho has to take quite a course of instruction, however, in that
great school of experience about which the old philosopher had a remark
to make. It is a grand old school; the only school at which men will
study and learn, each for himself. One man's experience never does
another man any good; never did and never will teach another man any
thing. If the philosopher had said that it was a hard school, but that
some men would learn at no other than this grand old school of experi-
ence, we miglit have inferred that all women, and most boys, and a few
men were exempt from its hard teachings. But he used the more com-
prehensive term, if you remember what that is, and took us all in. We
have all l3een there. There is no other school, in fact. Poor little Cain;
dear, lonesome, wicked little Cain — I know it isn't fashionable to pet
him; I know it is popular to speak harshly and savagely about our
164 KING 8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
eldest brother, when the fact is we resemble him more closely in dispo-
sition than any other member of the family — poor little Cain never knew
the difference between his father^s sunburned nose and a glowing coal,
until he had pulled the one and picked up the other. And Abel had to
find out the difference in the same way, although he was told five hun-
dred times, by his brother's experience, that the coal would bum him
and the nose wouldn't. And Cain's boy wouldn't believe that fire was any
hotter than an icicle, until he had made a digital experiment, and under-
stood why they called it fire. And so Enoch and ^lethusaleh, and Moses,
and Daniel, and Solomon, and Caesar, and Napoleon, and Washington,
and the President, and the governor, and the mayor, and you and I
have all of us, at one time or another, in one way or another, burned
our fingers at the same old fires that have scorched human fingers in the
same monotonous old ways, at the same reliable old stands, for the past
6,000 years, and all the verbal instruction between here and the silent
grave couldn't teach us so much, or teach it so thoroughly, as one well-
directed singe. And a million of years from now — if this weary old
world may endure so long — when human knowledge shall fall a little
short of the infinite, and all the lore and erudition of this wonderful age
will be but the primer of that day of light — the baby that is born into
that world of knowledge and wisdom and progress, rich with jiU the
years of human experience, will cry for the lamp, and, the very first time
that opportunity favors it, will try to pull the flame up by the roots, and
will know just as much as ignorant, untaught, stupid little Cain knew
on the same subject. Year after year, century after unfolding century,
how true it is that the lion on the fence is always bigger, fiercer and
more given to majestic attitudes and dramatic situations than the lion
in the tent. And yet it costs us, often as the circus comes around, fifty
cents to find that out.
But while we have been moralizing, Tom's mustache has taken a
start. It has attained the physical density, though not the color, by
any means, of the Egyptian darkness — it can be felt ; and it is felt ;
very soft felt. The world begins to take notice of the new-comer ;
and Tom, as generations of Toms before him have done, patiently
endures dark hints from other members of the family about his face
being dirty. Tie loftily ignores his experienced father's suggestions
that he should perform his tonsorial t(Jilet with a spoonful of cream
and the family cat. When his sisters, in meekly dissembled ignorance,
inquire, " Tom, what I/ai'e you on your lip ? " he is austere, iis becomes
a man annoyed by the frivolous small talk of women. And when his
younger brother takes advantage of the presence of a numerous compauy
THB BAWRBYE MAN ^^^
in the house, to shriek oyer the baluster up stairs, apparently to any boy
any where this side of China, '* Tom's a raisin' mustachersi '' Tom smiles,
a wan, neglected-orphan smile ; a smile that looks as though it had
come up on his face to weep over the barrenness of the land ; a perfect
ghost of a smile, as compared with the rugged, 7x9 smiles that play
like animated crescents over the countenances of the company. Bat
the mustache grows. It comes on apace; very short in the middle, very
no longer at the ends, and very blonde all round. AVlienever you see
such a mustache, do not laugh at it ; do not point at it the slow,
unmoying finger of scorn. Encourage it; speak kindly of. it; affect
admiration for it; coax it along. Pray for it — for it is a first. They
always come that way. And when, in the fullness of time, it has deyel-
oped so far that it can bo pulled, there is all the agony of making it
take color. It is worse, and more obstinate, and more deliberate than
a mecrshaum. The sun, that tans Tom's cheeks and blisters his nose,
only bleaches his mustache. Nothing eyer hastens its color ; nothing i
does it any permanent good ; nothing but patience, and faith, and per-
sistent pulling.
With all the comedy there is about it, howeyer, this is the grand
period of a boy's life. You look at them, with their careless, easy, nat-
ural manners and moyemcnts in the streets and on the base ball ground,
and their marvelous, systematic, indescribable, inimitable and complex
awkwardness in your parlors, and do you never dream, looking at these
young fellows, of the overshadow^ing destinies awaiting them, the mighty
struggles mapp d out in the earnest future of their lives, the thrilling
conquests in the world of arms, the grander triumphs in the realm of
pliilosophy, the fadeless laurels in the empire of letters, and the imper-
ishable crowns that lie who giveth them the victory binds about
their brows, that wait for the courage and ambition of these boys?
[Applause.] .
Why, the world is at a boy's feet; and power and conquest and lesLder- /
ship slumber in his rugged arms and care-free heart. A boy sets his/
ambition at whatever murk he will — lofty or groveling, as he may elect — i
and the boy who resolutely sets his heart on fame, on wealth, on power, /
on what he will; who consecrates himself to a life of noble endeavor, and ■
lofty t'flort; who consentrates every faculty of his mind and body on the
attainment of his one darling jioint; who brings to support his ambition,
c<)uni;^(Mind industry and patience, can trample on genius; for these are
letter and grander than <,^onius; and he will begin to rise above his fel-
lows as steadily and as surely as the sun climbs above the mountains.
(7
166 KINGa OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Hannibal; standing before the Punic altar fires and in the lisping
ncceiits of childhood swearing eternal hatred to Rome, was the Hannibal
^ ;i : twenty-four years commanding the army that swept down upon Italy
like a mountain torrent^ and shook the power of the mistress of the
world, bid her defiance at her own gates, while affrighted Home huddled
and cowered under the 2>rotecting shadows of her walls. [Applause. J
Napoleon, building snow forts at school and planning mimic battles
with his playfellows, was the lieutenant of artillery at sixteen years,
* general of artillery and the victor of Toulon at twenty-four, and at ]#8t
Emperor — not by the paltry accident of birth which might happen to
any man, however unworthy, but by the manhood and grace of his own
right arm, and his own brain, and his own courage and dauntless am-
bition— Emperor, with his foot on the throat of prostrate Eur9pe. [Ap-
plause.]
1 Alexander, daring more in his boyhood than his warlike father could
teach him, and entering upon his all conquering career at twenty-four,
was the boy whose vaulting ambition only paused in its dazzling flight
when the world lay at his feet.
And the fair-faced soldiers of the Empire, they who rode down upon
the bayonets of the English squares at Waterloo, when the earth rocked
beneath their feet, and the incense smoke from the altars of the battle
god shut out the sun and sky above their heads, who, with their young
lives streaming from their gaping wounds, opened their pallid lips to
cry, *^ Vive L'Empereur," as they died for honor and France, were boys
— schoolboys — the boy conscripts of France, torn from their homes and
their schools to stay the failing fortunes of the last grand army, and the
Empire that was tottering to its fall. You don't know how soon these
happy-go-lucky young fellows, making summer hideous with base ball
slang, or gliding around a skating rink on their back, may hold the
State and its destinies in their grasp; you don't know how soon these
boys may make and write the history of the hour; how soon, they alone,
may shape events and guide the current of public action; how soon one
of them may run away with your daughter or borrow money of you.
[Laughter.]
Certain it is, there is one thing Tom will do, just about this period of
his existence. He will fall in love with somebody before his mustache is
long enough to wax.
Perhaps one of the earliest indications of this event, for it does not
always break out in the same manner, is a sudden and alarming increase
in the number and variety of Tom's neckties. In his boxes and on his
dressing case, his mother is constantly startled by the changing and
THE HAWKETE MAN. 167
increasing assortment of the display. Monday ho encircles his tender
tnruat with a lilac knot, fearfully and wonderfully tied; a lavender tie
succeeds, the following day; Wednesday is graced with a sweet little
tangle of pale, pale blue, that fades at a breath; Thursday is ushered ii'i
with a scarf of delicate pea green, of wonderful convolutions and suf-
ficiently expansive, by the aid of a clean collar, to conceal any little
irregularity in Tom's wash day; Friday smiles on a sailor's knot of dark
blue, with a tangle of dainty forget-me-nots embroidered over it; Satur-
day tones itself down to a quiet, unobtrusive, neutral tint or shade, scarlet
or yellow, and Sunday is deeply, darkly, piously black. It is diflBcult to
tell whether Tom is trying to express the state of his distracted feelings
by his neckties, of trying to find a color that will harmonize with his
mustache, or match Laura's dress.
And during the variegated necktie period of man's existence how
tenderly that mustache is coaxed and petted and caressed. How it is
brushed to make it lie down and waxed to make it stand out, and how
he notes its slow growth, and weeps and mourns and prays and swears
over it day after weary day. And now, if ever, and generally now, he
buys things to make it take color. But he never repeats this oifense
against nature. He buys a wonderful dye, warranted to '^ produce a
beautiful, glossy black or brown at one application, without stain or
injury to the skin." Buys it at a little shabby, round the corner,
obscure drug store, because he is not known there. And ho tells the
assassin who sells it him, that he is buying it for a sick sister. And
the assassin knows that he lies. And in the guilty silence and soli-
tude of his own room, with the curtains drawn, and the door locked,
Tom tries the virtues of that magic dye. It gets on his fingers, and
turns them black to the elbow. It bums holes in his handkerchief
when he tries to rub the malignant poison off his ebony fingers. He
applies it to his silky mustache, real camel's hair, very cautiously and
very tenderly, and with some misgivings. It turns his lip so black it
makes the room dark. And out of all the clouds and the darkness and
the sable splotches that pall every thing else in Plutonian gloom, that
mustache smiles out, grinning like some ghastly hirsute specter, gleam-
ing like the moon through a rifted storm cloud, unstained, untainted,
unshaded; a natural, incorruptible blonde. That is the last time any
body fools Tom on hair dye.
The eye he has for immaculate linen and faultless collars. How it
amazes his mother and sisters to learn that there isn't a shirt in the
house fit for a pig to wear, and that he wouldn't wear the best collar in
his room to be hanged in.
168 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
And the boots he crowds his feet into ! A Sunday-school room^ the
Sunday before the picnic or the Christmas tree, with its sudden influx
of new scholars, with irreproachable morals and ambitious appetites,
doesn't compare with the overcrowded condition of tliose boots. Too
tight in the instep; too narrow at the toes ; too short at both ends ; the
only things about those boots that don^t hurt him, that don't fill his
very soul with agony, are the straps. "When Tom is pulling them on,
he feels that if somebody would kindly run over him three or four
/ times with a freight train, the sensation would be pleasant and reassur-
ing and tranquilizing. .The air turns black before his starting eyes,
there is a roaring like the rush of many waters in his ears; he tugs at
the straps that are cutting his fingers in two and pulling his arms out
,t by the roots, and just before his bloodshot eyes shoot clear out of
^^^^^^\^hia head, the boot comes on — or the straps puILjoJL- Then when he
^.IM^"^ stands up, the earth rocks beneath his feet, and bethinks he can faintly
hear the angels calling him home. And when he walks across the floor
the first time, his standing in the church and the Christian community
is ruined forever. 0r would be if any one could hear what he says. He
never, never, never gets to be so old that he cannotremember those
boots, and if it is seventy years afterward, his feet curl up in agony at
the recollection. The first time he wears them, he is vaguely aware, as
he leaves his room that there is a kind of ^^fixy " look about him, and
his sisters* tittering is not needed to confirm this imi^ression.
He has a certain half-defined impression that every thing he has on
is a size too small for any other man of his size. "That his boots are a
trifle snug, like a house with four rooms for a family of thirty-seven.
That the hat which sits so lightly on the crown of his head is jaunty but
limited, like a junior clerk^s salary; that his gloves are a neat fit, and
can't be buttoned with a stump machine. Tom doesn't know all this: he
has only a general, vague impression that it may be so. And he doesn't
know that his sisters know every line of it. For he has lived many
/ years longer, and got in ever so much more trouble, before he learns that
I one bright, good, sensible girl — and j_hftlipvp^ th^y j^^g all ifhat — will see
\ and notice more in a glance, remember it more accurately, and talk
% N^ore about it, than twenty men can see in a week. Tom docs not know,
for his crying feet will not let him, how he gets from his room to the
earthly paradise where Laura lives. Nor does he know, after he gets
there, that Laura sees him trying to rest one foot by setting it upon the
heel. And she sees him sneak it back under his chair, and tilt it up on
the toe for a change. She sees him ease the other foot a little by tug-
ging the heel of the boot at the leg of the chair — a hazardous, reckless,
THE BAWKE7B MAN, 169
presumptaous experiment. Tom tries it so far one night, and slides his
heel so far npthe leg of his boot, that his foot actually feels comfortable,
and he thinks the angels mast be rubbing it* He wiJks out of the par- •
lor sideways that night, trying to hide the cause of the sudden elonga-
tion of one leg, and he hobbles all the way home in the same disjointed
condition. But Laura sees that too. She sees all the little knobs and
lumps on his foot, and sees him fidget and fuss, she sees IJie look of
anguish flitting across his face under the heartless, deceitful, veneering
of smiles, and she makes the mental remark that master Tom would fe31
much happier, and much more comfortable, and more like staying longer,
if he had worn his father's boots.
But on his way to the house, despite the distraction of his crying
feet, how many pleasant, really beautiful, romantic things Tom thinks
up and recollects and compiles and composes to say to Laura, to impress
her with his originality and wisdom and genius and bright, exuberant
fancy and general superiority over all the rest of Tom kind. Bcal ear-
nest things, you know; no hollow, conventional compliments, or nonsense,
but such things, Tom flatters himself, as none of the other fellows can
or will say. And he has them all in beautiful order when he gets at the
foot of the hill. The remark about the weather, to begin with; not the
stereotype*^ 9]^ plir^*^r but a quaint, d^oll, humorous conceit that no •
one in the world but Tom could think of. Then, after the opening '
overture about the weather, something about music and Beethoven's
sonata in B flat, and Haydn's symphonies, aiidj of coiTfs^ometlrtng^ ^^
about 15eethoven's grand old PifOi sympliony, somebody's else mass, in yd-iS-t
heaven knows how many flats; and then something about art, and a
profound thought or two on science and philosophy, and so on to poetry,
t and from poetry to *^ business. " ^
13ut alas, when Tom reaches the gate, all these well ordered ideas
display evident symptoms of breaking up; as he crosses the yard, he is
dismayed to know that they are in the convulsions of a panic, and when
he touches the bell knob, every, each, all and several of the ideas, orig-
inal and compiled, that he has had on any subject during the past ten
years, forsake him and return no more that evening.
When Laura opened the door, he had intended to say something real
splendid about the imprisoned sunlight of something beaming out a
wi'lcome upon the what-you -may-call-it of the night or something.
Instead of which he says, or rather gasps:
" Oh, yes, to be sure; to be sure; ho."
And then, conscious that he has not said anything particularly brill-
iant or original, or that most any of the other fellows could not say
170 KING 8 OF THE PLATFORM^ AND PULPIT.
with a little practice^ he makes one more effort to redeem himself
before he steps into the hall, and adds:
• • " Oh, good morning; good morning/'
Feeling that even this is only a partial success, he collects his scat-
tered faculties for one united effort, and inquires:
" How is your mother? '*
And then it strikes him that he has about exhausted the subject,
and he goes into the parlor, and sits down, and just as soon as he has
nlaced his reproachful feet in the least agonizing position, he proceeds
ApWhollVy completely .Md^uccessfully forget every thinyr he eyer knew
Tnhis life. He returns to consciousness to find himself, to his own
amazement and equally to Laura's bewilderment, conducting a conyer-
sation about the crops, and a new method of funding the national debt,
subjects upon which he id about as well informed as the town clock.
He rallies, and makes a successful effort to turn the conyersation into
literary channels by asking her if she has read ^* Daniel Deronda," and
wasn't it odd that George Washington Eliot should name her heroine
"Grenadine,'' after a dress pattern? And in a burst of confidence he
assures her that ho would not be amazed if it should rain before morn-
ing (and he hopes it will, and that it may be a flood, and that he may
get caught in it, without an ark nearer than Cape Horn). And so, at
last, the first eyening passes away, and, after mature deliberation and
many unsuccessful efforts, he rises to go. But he does not go. He
wants to; but he doesn't know how. He sajs good eyening. Then he
X rftpAftta if. in a Tuftf^jnal reference. Thgn he puts it in a footnote.
^^ TheiTne adds the remarks in an appendix and shakes hands. By this
timeTie gef rSi far as the parlor door, and catches hold of the knob and
holds on to it as tightly as though some one on the other side were try-
ing to pull it through the door and run away with it. And he stands
there a fidgety statue of the door holder. He mentions, for not more
than the twentieth time that eyening, that he is passionately fond of
music, but he can't sing. Which is a lie; he can. Did she go to the
centennial? "No." "Such a pity — " he begins, but stops in terror,
lest she may consider his condolence a refiection upon her financial
standing. Did he go? Oh, yes; yes; he says, absently, he went. Or,
ly that is to say, no, not exactly. He did not exactly go to the Centennial;
/he staid at home. In fact, he had not been out of town this summer.
Then he looks at the tender little face; he looks at the brown eyes,
' sparkling with suppressed merriment; he looks at the white hands,
dimpled and soft, twin daughters of the snow; and the fairy picture
grows more loyely as be looks at it, until his heart outruns his fears; he
171
ICL^^EE HAWKBTB MAN, f D i
must speak, he must say something impressive and ripe^with meaning,
for how can he go away with this suspense in his breast? His heart
trembles as does his hand; his quivering lips part, and — Laura deftly
hides a vagrant yawn behind her fan. Oood-night, and Tom is gone.
There is a dejected droop to the mustache that night, when in the
solitude of his own room Tom releases his hands from the despotic
gloves, and tenderly soothes two of the reddest^ puffiest feet that ever
crept out of boots not half their own size, and swore in mute but eloquent
anatomical profanity at the whole race of booi-masers. An(k his heart is
ueufl^ U full Uf Burrow and bitterness as his boots. It appears to him
that be showed off to the worst possible advantage; he is dimly conscious
that he acted very like a donkey, and he has the not entirely unnatural
impression that she will never want to see him again. And so he philo-
sophically and manfully makes up his mind never, never, never, to think
of her again. And then he immediately proceeds, in the manliest and
most natural way in the world, to think of nothing and nobody else
under the sun for the next ten hours. How the tender little face does
haunt him. He pitches himself into bed with an aimless recklessness
that tumbles pillows, bolster and sheets into one shapeless, wild, chaotic
mass, and he goes through the motions of going to sleep, like a man who
would go to Sleep by steam. He stands his pillow up on one end, and
pounds it into a wad, and he props his head upon it as though it were
tlie guillotine block. He lays it down and smooths it out level, and pats
all the wrinkles out of it, and there is more sleeplessness in it to the
square inch than there is in the hungriest mosquito that ever sampl(^ a
martyr's blood. He gets up and smokes like a patent stove, although /^y
not three bours ago he told Laura that he de - tes - ted tobacco. t')^^Lt^ »•• ^
This is the enly time Tom will ever go tlirough this, in exactly this
way. It is the one rare, golden experience, the one bright, rosy dream
of his life. He may live to be as old as an army overcoat, and he may
marry as many wives as Brigham Young, singly, or in a cluster, but this
will come to him but once. Let him enjoy all the delightful misery^ all
the ecstatic wretchedness, all the heavenly forlornness of it as best he
can. And he does take good, solid, edifying misery out of it. How he
does torture himself and hate Smith, the empty-headed donkey, who
can talk faster than poor Tom can think, and whose mustache is black
as Tom's boots, and so long that he can pull one end of it with both
hands. And how he does detest that idiot Brown, who plays and sings,
and goes up there every time Tom does, and claws over a few old, for-
gotten five-finger exercises and calls it music; who comes up there, some
night when Tom thinks he has the evening and Laura all to himself.
172 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AM) PULPIT,
and brings up an old, tuneless, voiceless, cracked guitar, and goes crawl-
ing around in the wet grass under the windows, and makes night per-
fectly hideous with what he calls a serenade. And he speaks French,
too, the beast. Poor Tom; when Brown's lingual accomplishments in
the language of Charlemagne are confined to — *^aw — aw — er ah —
vooljLIoo?" and, on state occasions, to the additional grandeur of **avy
voojnong shape ?'^ But poor Tom, who once covered himself with con"
fusion by tellmg Laura that his favorite in "Eobert le Diable*' was the
beautiful aria, '*Eobert toy que jam,'' considers Brown a very prodigal
in linguistic attainments; another Cardinal Mezzofanti; and hates him
for it accordingly. And he hates Daubs, the artist, too, who was up
there one evening and made an off-hand crayon sketch of her in an
^ album. The picture looked much more like Daubs' mother, and Tom
^ knew it, but Laura said it was oh, just delightfully, perfectly splendid,
f and Tom has hated Daubs most cordially ever since. In fact, Tom hates
' every man who has the temerity to speak to her, or whom she may treat
with ladylike courtesy.
Until there comes one night when the boots of the inquisition pattern
sit more lightl }1pn their suffering victims ; when Providence has been
on Tom's side and has kept Smith and Daubs and Brown away, and has
frightened Tom nearly to death by showing him no one in the little par-
lor with its old-fashioned furniture but himself and Laura and the fur-
niture ; when, almost without knowing how or why, they talk about
life and its realities instea^l of the last concert or the next lecture; when
they talk of their plans, and their day dreams and aspirations, and their
ideals of real men and women; when they talk about the heroes and
heroines of days long gone by, grey and dim in tlie ages that are ever
made young and new by the lives of noble 'men and noble women who
lived, and never died in those grand old days, but lived and live on, as
\/ imperishable and fadeless in their glory as the glittering stars that sang
at creation's dawn ; when the room seems strangely silent, when their
voices hush; when the flush of earnestness upon her face gives it a tinge
of sadness that makes it more beautiful than ever; when the dream
and picture of a home Eden, and home life, and home love, grows every
moment more lovely, more entrancing to him, until at last poor blunder-
ing, stupid Tom, speaks without knowing what he is going to say, speaks
without preparation or roliearsal, speaks, and his honest, natural, manly
heart touches his faltering lips with eloquence and tenderness and ear-
nestness, that all the rhetoric in the world never did and never will in-
spire; and . That is all we know about it. Nobody knows what is
said or how it is done. Nobodv. O^^ly the silent stars or the whisper-
ing leaves, or the cat, or maTOe Laura's younger brother, or the hired
jxiUp
THE HAWEBTB MAN. 173
girly who generally bulges in just as Tom reaches the climax. All the
rest of us know about it is, that Tom doesn't come away so eatly that
nighty and that when he reaches the door he holds a pair of dimpled
hands instead of the insensate door knob. He never clings to that door
knob again; never. Unless Ma, dear Ma, has been so kind as to bring
in her sewing and spend the evening with them. And Tom doesn't
huto anj^body^ nor want to kill any body in the wide, wide world, and
he feefajust as good as though heEad just come out of a six months'
revival\ and is happy enough to borrow money of his worst enemy. \
But^there is no rose withou|; a thorn. Although, I suppose on an \
inside computation, there is, in this weary old world as much as, say a j
peck, or a\)eck and a half possibly, of thorns without their attendant /
roses. Jus^he raw, bare thorns. In the highest heaven of his newlyx
found bliss, Tom is suddenly recalled to earth and its miseries by a ques-
tion from Lama which falls like a pluiAmet into the unrippled sea of
the young man's happiness, and f atnomsits depths in the shallowest
place. ''Has per own Tom" — as distin^ished from countless other f/ Q
Toms, nobody '§ Toms, unclaimed Toms/ ty all intents and purposes ^^^^i
swamp landson the public matrimonial domain — " Has her own Ton«
said any thing to pa?"
*' Oh, yes! pa; " Tom says. >X* To be sure; yes.**
Grim, heavy-browed, austerexiSiThe living embodiment of business.
Wiry, shrewd, the life and ominspring of the house of Tare & Tret.
" 'M.' Well. N' no, " Tom had not exactly, as you might say, poured /
out his heart to pa. Somehow or other he had a rose-colored idea that^
the thing was going to go right along in this way forever. Tom had an r"^^ Wr^
idea that the programme was all arranged, printed and distributed, rose-
colored, gilt-cdgcd and perfumed. He was going to sit and hold Laura's
hands, pa was to stay down at the office, and ma was to make her visits
to the parlor as much like angels'^ for their rarity jnd brevity, as possi-
ble. But he sees, now thai The matter has been refeT-refl toTUiat it is a
grim necessity. And Laura doesn't like to see such a spasm of terror
pass over Tom's face; and her coral lips quiver a little as she hides her
flushed face out of sight on Tom's shoulder, and tells him how kind and
tender pa has always been with her, until Tom feels positively jealous
of pa. And she tells him that he must not dread going to see him, for
pa will be, oh, so glad to know how happy, happy, happy he can make
his little girl. And as she talks of him, the hard working, old-fashioned
teniler-heartod old man, who loves his girls as though he were yet only
a big boy, her heart grows tenderer, and she speaks' so earnestly and ♦
eloquently that Tom, at first savagely j^^alous of him, is persuaded to fall
in love with the old gentleman — he calls him **pa," too, now — himself.
174 KINGS OF TBE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
But oy the following afternoon this feeling is very faint. And when
he enters the counting room of Tare & Tret, and stands before pa — Oh,
land of love, how could Laura ever talk so about such a man I Stnbbly
little pa ; with a fringe of the most obstinate and wiry gray hair stand-
ing all around his bald, bald head ; the wiriest, grizzliest mustache
bristling under his nose ; a tuft of tangled beard under the^sharp chin,
and a raspy undergrowth of a week's run on the thin jaws ; business,
business, business, in every line of the.hard, seamed face, and profit and
loss, barter and trade, dicker and bargain, in every movement of the
nervous hands. Pa ; oltTousiness I He puts down the newspaper a
little way, and looks over the top of it as Tom announces himself, glanc-
ing at the young man with a pair of blue eyes that peer through old-
fashioned iron-bowed spectacles, that look as though they had known
^ these eyes and done business with them ever since they wept over their
/Vv \r^^^ ^'^ ^^ peeked into the tall fetone jar Sunday afternoon to look for
d the doughnuts.
Tom, who had felt all along there could be no inspiration on his
part in this scene, has come prepared. At least he had his last true
statement at his tongue's end when he entered the counting-room. But
now, it seems to him that if he had been brought up in a circus, and
cradled inside of a sawdust ring, and all his life trained to twirl his
hat, he couldn't do it better, nor faster, nor be more utterly incapable
y of doing any thing else. At last he swallows a lump in his throat as^
^ as a ballotbox. and faintly gasps :
'^ Good morning."
Mr. Tret hastens to recognize him. *^ Eh ? oh ; yes ; yes ; yes ; I see ;
young Bostwick, from Dope & Middlerib's. Oh yes. Well — ?"
** I have come, sir," gasps Tom, thinking all around the world from
Cook's explorations to ^^ Captain Eiley's Narrative," for the first line of
that speech that Tare & Tret have just scared out of him so completely
that he dosen't believe he ever knew a word of it. *^ I have come — "
and he thinks if his lips didn't get so dry and hot they make his teeth
ache, that he could get along with it ; " I haye sir, — come, Mr. Tret ;
Mr. Tret, sir — I have come — I am come — "
'^ Yes, ye-es," says Mr. Tret, in the wildest bewilderment, but in no
very encouraging tones, thinking the young man probably wants to bor-
row money ; '^ Ye-es ; I see you've come. Well ; that's all right ; glad
to see you. [Laughter.] Yes, you've come ?"
Tom's hat is now making about nine hundred and eighty revolutions
per minute, and apparently not running up to half its full capacity.
** Sir ; Mr. Tret," he resumes, ''I have come, sir ; Mr. Tret— ^l am
here to— to sue — to sue, Mr. Tret — I am here to sue — ^"
THE HAWKE7B MAH. , 176
''Sue^ eh ?^' the old man eohoes sharply^ with a belligerent mstle of
the newspaper ; '^ sne Tare k Tret, eh? Well, that's right, young man;
that's right. Sne, and get damages. 'JV'ell give you all the law yon
want/'
Tom's head is so hot, and his heart is so cold, that he thinks they
mnst be abont a thousand miles apart.
** Sir," he explains, ** that isn't it. It isn't that. I only want to
ask — ^I have long known — Sir," he adds, as the opening lines of his
speech come to him like a message from heaven, ''Sir, you have a
flower, a tender, lovely blossom'; chaste as the snow that crowns the
mountain's brow; fresh as the breath of- morn; lovelier than the rosy-
fingered hours that fly before Aurora's car; pure as the lily kissed
by dew. This precious blossom, watched by your paternal eyes, the
object of your tender care and solicitude, I ask of you. I would wear it
in my heart, and guard and cherish it — and in the — "
'* Oh-h, ye-es, yes, yes," the old man says, soothingly, beginning to,
see that Tom is only drunk. ''Oh, yes, yes; I don't know much about
them myself ; my wife and the girls generally keep half the windows in
the house littered up with them, winter and summer, every window so
full of house plants the sun can't shine in. Come up to the house,
they'll give you all you can carry away, give you a hat full of 'em."
" !No, no, no ; you don't understand," says poor Tom, and old Mr.
Tret now observes that Tom is very drunk indeed. " It isn't that, sir.
Sir, that isn't it. I — I — I want to marry your daughter I "
And there it is at last, as bluntly as though Tom had wadded it into
a gun and shot it at the old man. Mr. Tret does not say anything for
twenty seconds. Tom tolls Laura that evening that it was two hours
and a half before her father opened his head. Then he says, " Oh, yes,
yes, yes, yes ; to be sure ; to — be — sure." And then the long pause is
dreadful. "Yes, yes. Well, I don't know. I don't know about that,
young man. Said any thing to Jennie about it?"
"It isn't Jennie/' Tom gasps, seeing a new Bubicon to cross;
" its " '
''Oh, Julie, eh ? well, I don't "
•' No, sir," interjects the despairing Tom, " it isn't Julie, its-
" Sophie, eh ? Oh, well, Sophie —
UI, lb IBll b «/ UllU, iWI
99
" Sir," says Tom, *' if you please, sir, it isn't Sophie, its-
99
"Not Minnie, surely? Why Minnie is hardly — well, I don't know
Young folks get along faster than "
" Dear Mr. Tret," breaks in the distracted lover, "it's Laura."
THE NE^A^ YORK
PUPUC LlPhARY
TILDES fPU.N'wATlONS
TEE KAWKETE MAN. 177
right over her natural curls^ and drags them out by the hairpins. If ^ at
sociable or festival, they are left alone in a dressing-room a second and
a half, Laura emerges with her ruffle standing around like a railroad
accident ; [laughter] and Tom has enough complexion on his shoulder
to go around a young ladies' seminary. When they drive out, they sit
in a buggy with a seat eighteen inches wide, and there is two feet of
unoccupied room at either end of it. Long years afterward, when they
drive, a street-car isn't too wide for them ; and when they walk, you
could drive four loads of hay between them.
And yet, as carefully as they guard their precious, little secret, and
as cautious and circumspect as they are in their walk and behavior, it
gets talked around that they are engaged. People are so prying and
suspiciouj
.nd so the months of their engagement run on ; never before or
since, time flies so swiftly — unless, it may be, some time when Tom
has an acceptance in bank to meet in two days, that he can't lift one
end of — and the wedding day dawns, fades, and the wedding is over.
Over, with its little circle of delighted friends, with its ripples of pleas-
ure and excitement, with its touches of home love and home life, that
leave their lasting impress upon Laura's heart, although Tom, with
man-like blindness, never sees one of them. Over, with ma, with the
thousand and one anxieties attendant on the grand event in her
daughter's life hidden away under her dear old smiling face, down,
away down under the tender, glistening eyes, deep in the loving heart;
ma, hurrying here and fluttering there, in the intense excitement of
something strangely made up of happiness and grief, of apprehension
and hope ; ma, with her sudden disappearances and flushed reappear-
ances, indicating struggles and triumphs'^in the turbulent world down
stairs; ma, with the new fangled belt with the dinner-plate buckles,
fastened on wrong side foremost, and the flowers dangling down the
wrong side of her head, to Sophie's intense horror and pantomimic
telegraphy; ma, flying here and there, seeing that every thing is going
right, from kitchen to dressing-rooms; looking after every tning and
every body, with her hands and heart just as full as they will hold, and
more voices calling, *'nia," from every room in the house than you
would think one hundred mas could answer.
But she answers them all, and she sees after every thing, and just in
t'ne nick of time prevents Mr. Tret from going down stairs and attend-
ing the ceremony in a loud-figured dressing-gown and green slippers;
ma, who, with the quivering lip and glistening eyes, has to be cheerful,
and lively, and smiling; because, if, as she thinks of the dearest and
)
if
178 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
best of her flock going away from her fold, to put her life and her hap-
piness into another's keeping, she gives way for one moment, a dozen
reproachful voices cry out, "Oh-h ma!'' How it all comes back to
Laura, like the tender shadows of a dream, long years after the dear,
clear face, furrowed with marks of patient suffering and loving care,
rests under the snow and the daisies; when the mother love that
glistened in the tender eyes has closed in darkness on the dear old home;
and the nerveless hands, crossed in dreamless sleep upon the pulseless
breast, can never again touch the children's heads with caressing
gesture; how the sweet vision comes to Laura, as it shone on her wed-
ding morn, rising in tenderer beauty through the blinding tears her
own excess of happiness calls up, as the rainbow spans the cloud only
through the mingling of the golden sunshine and the falling rain.
[Applause.]
And Pa, dear, old, shabby Pa, whose clothes will not fit him as they
Qt otlier men; who always dresses just a year and a half be^jn*^ *^^ft
gtyjft;. Pa, wandering "upT and "Sown thiuugh the house, as though he
were lost in his own home, pacing through the hall like a sentinel,
blundering aimlessly and listlessly into rooms where he has no business,
and being repelled therefrom by a chorus of piercing shrieks and
hysterical giggling; Pa, getting off his well-worn jokes with an assump-
tion of merriment that seems positively real; Pa, who creeps away by
himself once in a while, and leans his face against the window, and
sighs, in^rect violation of all strict hotrg8!roW7f){P^^°^'^'^'°T ''T^^ against
the glass, as Te'thrnks^oTliis little girl going away to-day from the
home whose love and tenderness and patience she has known so well.
Only yesterday, it seems to him, the little baby girl, bringing the first
music of baby prattle into his home; then a little girl in short dresses,
with school-girl troubles and school-girl pleasures; then an older little
girl, out of school and into society, but a little girl to Pa still. And
then . But somehow, this is as far as Pa can get; for he sees, in
the flight of this, the flrst, the following flight of the other fledglings;
and he thinks how silent and desolate the old nest will be when they
have all mated and flown away. He thinks, when their flight shall have
made other homes bright, and cheery, and sparkling with music and
prattle and laughter, how it will leave the old home hushed, and quiet
and still. How, in the long, lonesome afternoons, mother will sit by
the empty cradle that rocked them all, murmuring the sweet old cradle-
songs that brooded over all their sleep, until the rising tears check
the swaying cradle and choke the song — and back, over river, and
prairie and mountain, that roll, and stretch and rise between the
THE HAWKETB MAN. IflB
old home and the new ones, comes back the prattle of her litUe
ones, the rippling music of their laaghter, the tender cadences of
their songs, until the hushed old home is haunted by memories of its
children — gray and old they may be, with other children clustering
about their knees; but to the dear old home they are ''the children''
still. And dreaming thus, when Pa for a moment finds his little girl
alone — his little girl who is going away out of the home whose love she
knows, into a home whose tenderness and patience are all untried — he
holds her in his arms and whispers the *"^^;t^fir^?"^ ^^^"ling that ft^**"
throbbed from a father's heart; and Laura's wedding day would be
incomplete mid Uhieelmg without her tears. So is the pattern of our
life made up of smiles and tears, shadow and sunshine. Tom seefl 116116 ■
of these background pictures of the wedding day. Jle' sees none of . its
real, heartfelt earnestness. Ho sees only the bright, sunny tints and
happy figures that the tearful, shaded background throws out in golden
relief; but never stops to think that, without the shadows, the clouds,
and the somber tints of the background, the picture would be flat, pale^
and lusterless.
And then, the presents. The assortment of brackets, serviceable,
ornamental and-^heap. The French clock, that never went, that does
not go, that never will go. And the nine potato mashers. The eight
mustard spoons. The three cigar stands. Eleven match safes; assorted
patterns. A dozen tidies, charity fair styles, blue dog on a yellow back*,
ground, barking at a green tfOJ' CttXUl^illg over a red fenc6, after seal
brown apples. The two chums, old pattern, straight handle and dasher,
and they have as much thought of keeping a cow as they have of keep-
ing a section of artillery. Five things they didn't know the names of,
and never could find anybody who could tell what they were for. Au^
a nickel plated, pocket corkscrew, that Tom, in a fine burst of indigna-
tion, throws out of the window, which Laura says is just like hqr qwUj^
impulsive Tom. And not long after, her own, impulsive Tom catches
His death of cold and ruins the knees of his best trowsers crawling
around in the wet grass huniing for that same corkscrew. Which is
also just like her own, impulsive Tom.
And then,'"lhe young people go to work and buy e-v-e-r-y thing they
need, the day they go to housekeeping. Every thing, trust as well,
Tom says, to get every thing at once and have it delivered right up at
the house, as to spend five or six or ten or twenty years in stocking up
a house, as his father did. And Laura thinks so, too, and she wonders
that Tom should know so much more than his father. This worries
Tom himself, when he thinks of it, and he never rightly understands
i ■'
180 KINQ8 OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT. •
how it is, until he is forty-five or fifty years old, and has a Tom of his
own to direct and advise him. So they make out a list, and revise it,
and rewrite it, until they have every thing down, complete, «nd it isn't
until supper is ready, the first day, that they discover there isn't a knife,
a fork, or a plate or a spoon in the new house. And the first day the
washerwoman comes, and the water is hot, and the clothes are all ready,
it is discovered that there isn't a wash-tub nearer than the grocery.
And further along in the day the discovery is made that while Tom has
bought a clothes line that will reach to the north pole and back, and
then has to be coiled up a mile or two in the back yard, there isn't a
clothes pin in the settlement. And, in the course of a week or two,
Tom slowly awakens to the realization of the fact that he has only begun
' to get. And if he should live two thousand years, which he rarely does,
and possibly may not, he would think, just before he died, of something
they had wanted tfie worst way^or five centuries, and had either been
too poor to get, or Tom had always forgotten to bring up. So long as
he lives, Tom goes on bringing home things that they need — absolute,
simple necessities, that were never so much as hinted at in that exhaus-
tive list.
And old Time comes along, and knowing that the man in that new
house will never get through bringing things up to it, helps him out,
and comes around and brings things, too. Brings a gray hair now and
then, to stick in Tom's mustache, which has grown too big to be orna-
mental, and too wayward and unmanageable to be comfortable. He
brings little cares and little troubles, and little trials and little butcher
bills, and little grocery bills, and little tailor bills, and nice, large milli-
nery bills, that pluck at Tom's mustache and stroke it the wrong way and
make it look more and more as pa's did the first time Tom saw it. He
brings, by and by, the prints of baby fingers, and pats them around on
^ the dainty wall paper. Brings, some times, a voiceless messenger that
lays its icy fingers on the baby lips, and hushes their dainty prattle, and
in the baptism of its first sorrow, the darkened little home has its
dearest and tenderest tie to the upper fold. Brings, by and by, the
tracks of a boy's muddy boots, and scatters them all up and down the
clean porch. Brings a messenger, one day, to take the younger Tom
away to college. And the quiet the boy leaves behind him, is so much
harder to endure than his racket, that old Tom is tempted to keep a
\ brass band in the house until the boy comes back. But old Time brings
him home at last, and it does make life seem terribly real and earnest to
Tom, and how the old laugh rings out and ripples all over Laura's
face, when they see old Tom's first mustache, budding and struggling
into second life, on young Tom's face.
THE HAWRBTE MAN. 181
And still old Time comes round, bringing each year whiter frosts to
scatter on the whitening mustache, and brighter gleams of silver to glint
the brown of Laura's hair. Bringing, the blessings of peaceful old age
and a lovelocked home to crown these noble, earnest, real, human lives \
bristling with human faults, marred with human mistakes, scarred and /
seamed and rifted with human troubles, and crowned with the com-/
passion that only perfection can send upon imperfection. Comes, with
happy memories of the past, and quiet confidence for the future. Comes, ,
with the changing scenes of day and night; with winter's storm and,
summer's calm ; comes, with the sunny peace and the backward dreamy
of age; comes, until one day, the eye of the relentless, old reaper rest^
upon old Tom, standing right in the swath, amid the golden cornj.
The sweep of the noiseless scythe, that never turns its edge. Time passep '
on, old Tom steps out of young Tom's way, and the cycle of a life ifi
compute. [AppW] ,.^^^^^.^ SC^tt^uU^
BURDETTE'S ROMANCE OF THE^CAfiPET. ^ ^ j. -^ j
Basking in peace, in the warm Spring sun, ^'^''^-■^^i (J^'^/jliffjl C A
South Hill smiled upon Burlington. "^*V> / w /!_ JLt '
The breath of May I and the day was fair, ^ ajlJ^^ *Ai^ x-rn.-^ P
And the bright motes danced in the balmy aJrr^/ / I/^
And the sunlight gleamed where the restless brccifr-^'*^-^ " C ■ i (^ ^
Kissed the fragrant blooms on the apple trees. .^J (^
His beardless cheek with a smile was spanned ^ / / *jaXA>lM^/^
As he stood with a carriage-whip in his hand.
And he laughed as he doffed his bob-tailed coat,
And the echoing folds of the carpet smote.
And she smiled as she leaned on her busy mop.
And siiid she would tell him when to stop.
So he pounded away till the dinner bell
Gave him a little breathing spell.
But he sighed when the kitchen clock struck one;
And she said the carpet wasn't done.
But he lovingly put in his biggest licks,
And pounded, like mad, till the clock struck six.
And she said, in a dubious kind of way.
That she guessed he could finish it up next day.
Then all that day, and the next day too,
The fuzz from the dustless carpet flew.
182 KINQB OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
And she'd give it a look at eventide,
And say, ** Now beat on the other side."
And the new days came, as the old days went,
And the landlord came for his regular rent.
And the neighbors laughed at the tireless boom,
And his face was shadowed with clouds of gloom;
Till, at last, one cheerless Winter day.
Ho kicked at the carpet and slid away,
Over the fence and down the street,
Speeding away with footsteps fleet;
And never again the morning sun
Smiled at him beating his carpet drum;
And South Hill often said, with a yawn,
** Where has the carpet martyr gone? "
Years twice twenty had come and passed,
And the carpet swayed in the autumn blast;
For never yet, since that bright spring time.
Had it ever been taken down from the line.
Over the fence a gray-haired man
Cautiously dim, dome, clem, clum, clam;
He found liim a stick in the old woodpile,
And ho gathered it up with a sad, grim smile.
-' A flush passed over his face forlorn
• As he gazed at the carpet, tattered and torn;
And he hit it a most resounding thwack,
Till the startled air gave its echoes back.
And out of the window a white face leaned.
And a palsied hand the sad eyes screened.
She knew his face — she gasped, she sighed:
" A little more on the under side."
Right down on the ground his stick he throwed.
And he shivered and muttered, "Well, I am blowcdl
And he turned away, with a heart full sore,
And he never was seen, not none no more.
THB HAWKBTB MAN. 183
BXJBDETTE'S MASTEB-PIEOE.
On the road once more> with Lebanon fading away ijn the distance^
the fat passenger drumming idly on the window-pane, the cross passen-
ger sound asleep, and the tall, thin passenger reading ''6en. Grant's
Tour Around the World/' and wondering why ''Green's August Flower"
should be printed above the doors of '' A Buddhist Temple at Benares."
To me comes the brakeman, and, seating himself on the arm of the seat,
says:
" I went to church yesterday."
''Yes?" I said, with that interested inflection that asks for more.
"And what church did you attend? "
"Which do you guess? " he asked.
" Some union mission church," I hazarded.
"No," he said, "I don't like to run on these branch roads very
much. I don't often go to church, and when I do I want to run on the
main line, where your run is regular and you go on schedule time and
don't have to wait on connections. I don't like to run on a branch.
Good enough, but I don't like it."
"Episcopal?" I guessed.
" Limited express," he said, "all palace cars and $2 extra for seat,
fast time and only stop at big stations. Nice line, but too exhaustive
for a brakeman. All train men in uniform, conductor's punch and lan-
tern silver-plated, and no train boys allowed. Then the passengers are
allowed to talk back at the conductor, and it makes them too free and
easy. No, I couldn't stand the palace cars. Bich road, though. Don't
often hear of a receiver being appointed for that line. Some mighty
nice people travel on it, too."
" Universalist? " I suggested.
" Broad gauge," said the brakeman; " does too much complimentary
business. Every body travels on a pass. Conductor doesn't get a fare
oDcc in fifty miles. Stops at flag stations, and won't run into any
thing but a union depot. No smoking-car on the train. Train orders
are rather vague, though, and the trainmen don't get along well with
the passengers. No, I don't go to the Universalist, but I know some
good men who run on that road."
" Presbyterian?" I asked.
" Narrow gauge, eh?" said the brakeman. "Pretty track, straight
as a rnlc; tunnel right through a mountain rather than go around it;
spirit-level grade; passengers have to show their tickets before they get
on the train. Mighty strict road, but the cars are a little narrow; have
184 KINQS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
to sit one in a seat, and no room in the aisle to dance. Then there are
no stop-over tickets allowed; got to go straight through to the station
you're ticketed for, or you can't get on at all. When the car is full, no
extra coaches; cars huilt at the shop to hold just so many, and nobody
else allowed on. But you don't often hear of an accident on that road.
It's run right up to the rules."
'' Maybe you joined the Free-Thinkers?" I said.
'^ Scrub road," said the brakeman; " dirt roadbed and no ballast; no
time card and no train dispatcher. All trains run wild, and every engi-
neer makes his own time, just as he pleases. Smoke if yon want to;
kind of go-as-you-please road. Too many side-tracks, and every switch
wide open all the time, with the switchman sound asleep and the target
lamp dead out. Get on as you please and get off when you want to.
Don't have to show your tickets, and the conductor isn't expected to do
any thing but amuse the passengers. No, sir. I was offered a pass, but
I don't like the line. I don't like to travel on a road that has no ter-
minus. Do you know, sir, I asked a division superintendent where
that road run to, and he said he hoped to die if he knew. I asked him
if the general superintendent could tell me, and he said he didn't
believe they had a general superintendent, and if they had, he didn't
know any thing more about the road than the passengers. I asked him
whom he reported to, and he said 'Nobody.' I asked a conductor whom
he got his orders from, and he said he didn't take orders from any liv-
ing man or dead ghost. And when I asked the engineer whom he got
his orders from, he said he'd like to see any body give him orders; he'd
run the train to suit himself, or he'd run it into the ditch. Now, you
see, sir, I'm a railroad man, and I don't care to run on a road that has
no time, makes no connections, runs nowhere, and has no superintend-
ent. It may be all right, but I've railroaded too long to understand it/'
'* Maybe you went to the Congregational church?"
''Popular road," said the brakeman; ''an old road, too— one of the
very oldest in this country. Good roadbed and comfortable cars. Well
managed road, too; directors don't interfere with division superintend-
ents and train orders. Road's mighty popular, but it's pretty independ-
ent, too. Yes, didn't one of the division superintendents down East
discontinue one of the oldest stations on this line two or three years
ago? But it's a mighty pleasant road to travel on. Always has such a
pleasant class of passengers."
" Did you try the Methodist?" I said.
"Xow you're shouting! "he said, with some enthusiasm. ''Nice
road, eh? Fast time and plenty of passengers. Engines carry a power
THE RAWKEYE MAK 185
of steam, and don't you forget it; steam-gauge shows a hundred and
enough all the time. Lively road; when the conductor shouts 'All
aboard/ you can hear him at the next station. Every train-light shines
like a headlight. Stop-over checks are given on all through tickets;
passenger can drop off the train as often as he likes, do the station two
or three days, and hop on the next reyival train that comes thundering
along. Good, whole-souled, companionable conduct6rs; ain't a road in
the country where the passengers feel more at home. No passes; every
passenger pays full traffic rates for his ticket. Wesleyanhouse air brakes
on all trains, too; pretty safe road, but I didn't ride over it yesterday."
*' Perhaps you tried the Baptist?" I guessed once more.
''Ah, hal"said the brakeman; "she's a daisy, isn't she? Kiver
road; beautiful curves; sweep around any thing to keep close to the
river, but it's all steel rail and rock ballast, single track all the way, and
not a side-track from the roundhouse to the terminus. Takes a heap of
water to run it through; double tanks at every station, and there isn't
an engine in the shops that can pull a pound or run a mile with less
than two gauges. But it runs through a lovely country, those river
roads always do; river on one side and hills on the other, and it's a
steady climb up the grade all the way till the run ends where the fount-
ain-head of the river begins. Yes, sir; I'll take the river road every
time for a lovely trip, sure connections and a good time, and no prairie
dust blowing in at the windows. And yesterday, when the conductor
came around for the tickets with a little basket punch, I didn't ask him
to pass me, but I paid my fare like a little man — twenty-five cents for
an hour's run and a little concert by the passengers throwed in. I tell
you, pilgrim, you take the river road when your want "
But just here the long wliistlo from the engine announced a station,
and the brakeman hurried to the door, shouting:
'' Zionsville! The train makes no stops between here and Indian-
apolis!"
BURDETTE'S COUNTRY PARSON.
The parson of a country churcli was lying in liis bed ; throe months'
arrears of salary was pillowing iiis head ; his couch was strewn with
tradesmen's bills that pricked his sides like thorns, and nearly all life's-
common ills were goading him with thorns. The deacon sat beside him,
as the moments ticked away, and bent his head to catch the words his
pastor had to say :
" If I never shall arise from this hard bed on which I lie, if my war-
fare is accomplished and it's time for me to die, take a message to the
186 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Bextou^ before I pass away ; tell him fires are for December and opeu
doors for. May. Tell him when he lays the notice upon the polpit's
height to shove them 'neath the cushion, far out of reach and sight.
And when he hears the preacher^s voice in whispers soft expire, that is
the time to slam the doors and rattle at the fire. And tell the other
deacons, too» all through the busy week, to hang their boots up in the
sun to hatch a Sunday squeak ; with steel-shod canes to prod the man
who comes to sleep and snore ; and use the boys who laugh in church to
mop the vestry floor. There's another, too, the woman who talks the
sermon through; tell her I will not mind her buzz — my hearing hours
are few; tell her to hang her mouth up some Sunday for a minute, and
listen to a text, at least, without a whisper in it. And tell the board of
trustees not to weep with bitter tears, for I can't be any deader now
than they have been for years. And tell half my congregation I'm glad
salvation's free, for that's the only chance for them — between the desk
and me. And a farewell to the choir — how the name my memory
racks! If they could get up their voices as they do their backs — ^why
the stars would hear their music and the welkin would rejoice, while
the happy congregation could not hear a single voice. But tell them I
forgive them, and oh, tell them I said I wanted them to sing for me-~
when you're sure that I am dead."
His voice was faint and hoarser, but it gave a laughing break, a kind
of gurgling chuckle, like a minister might make. And the deacon he
rose slowly, and sternly he looked down upon the parson's twinkling
eyes with a portentous frown, and he stiffly said '• good morning," as he
went oS in his ire, for the deacon was the leader of that amiable choir.
III Perkins.
"ELI PERKINS."
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
Melville D. London (Eli Perkins) was born in Eaton, Madison County, N. Y.,
September 7, 1839. He graduated at Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., in 1861.
His father was John Landon from Litchfield County, Cold. Mr. Landon entered the
service in the Clay Battalion in Washington, in April, 1861; was in the United States
Treasury, and afterward became a planter in Louisiana. In 1867, the humori&t visited
Europe, and was selected by Cassius M. Clay, as Secretary of Legation at St.
Petersburgh. Since then he has been engaged in literature. He has published four
books: "The History of the Franco-Prussian War," G. W. Carleton <k Co.; ''Saratoga
in 1901. "Sheldon & Co.; "Eli Perkins at Large. Ford and Hurlbert, and **Wit and
Humor of the Age," The Western Publishing House, Chic ago. He has delivered thous*
andsof humorous and philosophical lectures throughout the Union;isa member of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and lives with an accomplisheil
wife and interesting family, in a beautiful, brown stone residence, 44 East Seventy*
sixth street, New York.
Melville D. Landon's wit and humor has been widely copied,
and he has done much towards a philosophical analysis of wit.
Like all wits he deals a good deal in the imagination. He believes,
and proves in his lectures, that all wit is imagination, while all
humor is the absolute truth itself. His exaggerations have been so
much on the Baron Munchausen order, that the press of the country
are alwavs referrintr humorouslv to his veracitv.
One day a reporter of the New York World asked Mr. Perkins
how I lis veracity first came to be questioned.
''Who questioned it first?"
'' Well," said Eli, *' I don't mind telling you the truth about this.
The name Eli ran easily into alie, olie and uli, and the paragraphers
have used it as a lay figure to hang their jokes on. Lewis, of the
Detroit Free Press, got to calling me Eliar Perkins, and Josh
Billings said, 'truth is stranger than fiction — to Eli Perkins.'
188
BLI PERKIN8. 189
" One day Nasby wrote this paragraph: ^ While Eli Perkins was
in Toledo, Congressman Frank Hurd questioned his veracity. This
made Eli very indignant, and he immediately challenged Hurd to a
deadly duel. On the morning of the duel Frank Hurd was in San
Francisco, and Eli was in Halifax.' "
" What was the funniest paragraph the boys ever wrote about
you ? "
" It was this way: I wrote up the Ohio gas wells for the New
York Sun, Of course I described them glowingly and truthfully.
Well, the Chicago Times copied the article with this editorial
paragraph :
'' Our readers will notice that in another column Eli Perkins has writ|>cn up the
Ohio gas wells. He speaks very favorably of them, which is very magnanimous on
the part of Mr. Perkins, when we come to consider that these gas weUs are the only
real rivals that he has."
" One day," continued Eli, " I was riding in the Pullman car
with Wm. M. Evarts, our distinguished lawyer. I had been read-
ing an article on sleep, in a health paper, and, turning to Mr. Evarts,
I said:
'• ' Mr. Evarts, to sleep well, is it the best to lie on the right side
or on the left side ? '
" * If 3'ou are on the right side, Eli,' said the great lawyer, ^ it
isn't usuadly necessary to lie at all.' "
Mr. Perkins always looks on the funny side of all questions, and
he will tell a joke as quick at his own expense, as at the expense of
his brother humorist.
" One day," says the humorist, '' a young gentleman came to me
on the Boston and Maine train, and, smiling and bowing, })olitely
asked me if I was the gentleman who delivered the lecture before
the Portsmouth Y. M. C. A. the night before.
" I am," said Mr. Perkins, with some pride.
*' Well, I want to thank you for it. I don't know when I ever
enjoyed myself more than when you were talking."
" You are very complimentary," said Eli, blushing to his ears —
" very complimentary. I am glad my humble effort was worthy
of your praise," and the complimented humorist took the young
man warmly by the hand.
'' Yes," continued the 5^oung man, " it gave me immense pleas-
ure. You see I am engaged to a Portsmouth girl, and her three
190 KIKG8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
sisters all went, and I had my girl in the parlor all to myself. Oh,
it was a happy night I — the night you lectured in Portsmonth!
When are you going to lecture there again? "
At another time the Yale football team, after beating Princeton,
came back to the hotel tired and exhausted.
"Landlord," said the tired captain, as the rest of the team were
yawning in the office, after supper — "I say, landlord, is there any
thing quiet in the amusement line going on in Princeton to-night ?"
" Well, there's Eli Perkins' lecture at the Y . M. C. A. and "
" O, that's too active. He'll keep us laughing and thinking. We
want something restful. We want sleep — cjuict sleep."
" O well, then," said the landlord, catching at a new idea, " try
Joseph Cook, on Evolution, at the Methodist Church. That comes
the nearest to bed-time of any thing in Princeton to-night."
Speaking of short courtship, Eli Perkins says: " The quickest
courtship I ever heard of, was when my Uncle, Consider Perkins,
courted the widow Jenkins up in Connecticut."
" IIow sudden was the courtship ?"
"Well, my Uncle Consider cantered his horse over to the widow's
farm before breakfast one morning, hustled into the house and
gasped:
" Widder Jenkins, Pra a man of business. I am worth $10,800,
and want you for a wife. I give you just three minutes to answer.'
" ' I don't want ten seconds, old man ,' she replied as she shook out
the dish cloth. 'Pm a woman of business, worth $10,000, and I
wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth! I give you
four seconds to git! ' "
Mr. Perkins has told a good many stories on Ben Butler. In a
]X)litical speech, Eli said : " There was an old Deacon Butler, of
Lowell, who had one son, Ben. This Ben was very smart at every
thing, but the deacon could not tell what profession to give him. So
one day he put the boy in a room with a Bible, an apple and a dollar
bill."
'' ' If I find Ben reading the Bible when I return,' said the deacon,
' I shall make him a clergyman ; if eating the apple, a farmer; and
if interested in the dollar bill, a banker.'
" What was the result ? " you ask.
"Well," said Eli, "when the deacon returned he found his son
sitting on the Bible, with the dollar bill in his pocket, and the apple
\lmost devoured."
ELI PBRKINS, 191
"What did he do with him ? "
"Why, he made him a politician, and is still running for Gov-
ernor of Massachusetts. Ben is still devouring that apple."
On another occasion the humorist said : " General Butler went
into a hospital in Washington not long since, to express sympathy
with the patients.
'* ' What is the matter with you, my man ? ' asked the General, as
he gazed at a man with a sore leg.
" ' Oh, I've got gangrene. General.'
" ' Gangrene ! why, that's a very dangerous disease, my man —
v-e-r-y d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s,' said General Butler. * I never knew a man
to have gangrene and recover. It always kills the patient or leaves
him demented. I've had it myself.' "
To pay the humorist back for his many banterings, Butler arose
at a dinner, at which the humorist was present, and said :
'* Gentlemen, I have the honor of knowing three of the greatest
liars — the greatest living liars in America."
" Who are they ? " asked the venerable Sam Ward, as he dropped
a chicken partridge to listen to the General.
" Well, sir," said the General, as he scratched his head thought-
fully, " Mark Twain is one, and Eli Perkins is the other two I"
One day I asked Mr. Perkins to tell me the most disagreeable
position he was ever placed in.
'* Well," said Eli, " it was when I was a witness — when Lawyer
Johnson had me as a witness in a wood case. In my direct testi-
mony I had sworn truthfully that John Hall had cut ten cords of
wood in three days. Then Johnson sharpened his pencil and com-
menced examining me.
' Now, Mr. Perkins,' he began, ' how much wood do you say was
cut by Mr. Hall ? '
'Just ten cords, sir,' I answered, boldly. * I measured it.'
' That's your impression ? '
' Yes, sir.'
' Well, we don't want impressions, sir. What we want is facts,
before this jury — f a-c t-s, sir, facts! '
'The witness will please state facts hereafter,' said the Judge,
while the crimson came to my face.
'Now, sir,' continued Johnson, pointing his finger at me, 'will
you swear that it was more than nine cords? '
192 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
* Yes, sir. It was ten cords — just — '
'There! never mind/ interrupted Johnson. *Now, how much
less than twelve cords were there ? '
' Two cords, sir.'
* How do you know there were just two cords less, sir ? Did
you measure these two cords, sir ? ' asked Johnson, savagely.
' No, sir, I — '
'There, that will do! You did not measure it. Just as I
expected. All guess work. Now didn't you swear a moment ago
that you measured this wood ? '
* Yes, sir, but '
' Stop, sir! The jury will note this discrepancy.'
'Now, sir,' continued Johnson, slowly, as he pointed his finger
almost down my throat, ' Now, sir, on your oath, will you swear
that there were not ten cords and a half ? '
* Yes, sir,' I answered meekly.
' Well now, Mr. Perkins, I demand a straight answer — a truth-
ful answer, sir.' 'Now, on your solemn oath, how many cords were
there ?.'
' T — T — Ten c-c-cords,' I answered, hesitatingly.
' You swear it ? '
^I_I_d_d_do.'
' Now,' continued Johnson, as he smiled satirically, ' do you know
the penaltj^ of perjury, sir ? '
' Yes, sir, I think '
' Never mind what you think, sir. Thoughts and opinions are
not facts. Now I say, on your oath, on your s-o-l-e-m-n oath, with
no evasion, are you willing to perjure yourself by solemnly swear-
ing that there were more than nine cords of wood?'
'Yes, sir, I '
'Aha! Yes, sir. You are willing to perjure yourself then?
Just as I thought (turning to the Judge); you see, your Honor, that
this witness is prevaricating. He is not willing to swear that there
were more than nine cords of wood. It is infamous, gentlemen of
the jury, such testimony as this." The jury nodded assent and
smiled sarcastically at me.
*Now,' said Johnson, 'I will ask this perjured witness just one
more question.'
'I ask you, sir — do you know— do you realize, sir, what an
awful — a-w-f-u-1 thing it is to tell a lie ? '
ELI PBRKIN8. 198
* Yes, sir/ I said, my voice trembling.
* And, knowing this, you swear on your solemn oath that there
were about nine cords of wood ? '
* No, sir, I don't do any thing of '
' Hold on, sir 1 Now how do you know there were just nine
cords ? '
* I don't know any such thing, sir ! I '
' Aha ! you don't know then ? Just as I expected. And yet ypu
swore you did know. Swore you measured it. Infamous I Gen-
tlemen of the jury, what shall we do with this perjurer? '
i But I '
*Not a word, sir — hush! This jury shall not be insulted by a
perjurer 1
' Call the next witness ! '
" * This is why,' said the humorist, * that I am now unfit to keep
the books in a lunatic asylum.' "
When I asked the humorist how it happened that he became a
writer and lecturer, he said, gravely :
" I studied law once in the Washington Law School. In fact, I
was admitted to the bar. I shall never forget my first case. Neither
will my client. I was called upon to defend a young man for pass-
ing counterfeit money. I knew the young man was innocent,
[)ecause I lent him the money that caused him to be arrested. Well,
there was a hard feeling against the young man in the county, and
I i)leaded for a change of venue. I made a great plea for it. I can
remember, even now, how fine it was. It was filled with choice
rhetoric and passionate oratory. I quoted Kent and Blackstone
and Littleton, and cited precedent after precedent from the Digest
of State Reports. I wound up with a tremendous argument, amid
the applause of all the younger members of the bar. Then, san-
guine of success, I stood and awaited the Judge's decision. It soon
came. The Judge looked me full in the face and said :
*' Your argument is good, Mr. Perkins, very good, and I've been
deeply interested in it, and when a case comes up that your argu-
ment fits, I shall give your remarks all the consideration that they
merit. Sit down ! '
** This is why I gave up law and resorted to lecturing and writing
for the newspapers/'
>
194 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Eli Perkins' witty and humorous articles would fill volumes, and
his name will go down to posterity and become brighter and
brighter as the people find out what a vast amount of good literary
work he has done.
ELI PERKINS' LECTUEE.
THE PHILOSOPHY OP WIT AND HUMOR.
The aim of Mr. Landon In his lectures has always been to convey truth as well
as to produce laughter. His sharp distinction between wit and humor is consis-
tently and strongly carried through his lectures and writings. Heretofore, humor
has usually been placed over wit. Mr. Landon proves that wit is more Intellectual
than humor. He separates satire and ridicule, showing that satire is to kill error,
while ridicule is to kill truth.
In representing a live lecture, bristling with gesture, genuine eloquence, or
mock oratory, the cold dead types can convey but a vague idea. Much is left to the
lively Imagination of the reader.
Ladies and Oe^itlemen: — Before making any remark on the subject
of '* Wit and Humor/' we will first ask the simple, natural questions.
What are *' Wit and Humor?'' What is it that produces laughter? Here
we all laugh a hundred times a day ; now, I say, what is it that produces
this laughter?
I know the old rhetoricians. Lord Karnes and Whateley and Blair
and Wayland, all tell us that "wit is a short-lived surprise'' — that
laughter is always produced by a ''short-lived- surprise;" and there
they stop. But that is a false definition. False? Prove it! If wit were
a ''short-lived surprise," as they say, that is, if laughter were caused
by a ''short-lived surprise," then those railroad passengers who pitched
over Ashtabula bridge must have screamed with laughter — for it was a
" short-lived surprise." [Laughter.]
Again: Suppose you were walking along and a serpent should dart
out in front of you. It would be a " short-lived surprise," but it would
not produce any laughter — would it? But if you were walking along
and you should see a double-headed rooster — running both ways to get
away from itself — [laughter] you all would burst out laughing.
So you see, my friends, that laughter is not always produced by a ''short-
lived surprise," but laughter is always caused by some deformity^ some
eccentricity inart or nature. But that deformed thing which makes us
laugh is something which we neither love nor hate; for laughter is an
emotion and not a passion. You wouldn't laugh at your own deformed
BLI PEttKINS. 195
child, because yon love it But yon wonld laugh at something which
you neither love nor hate— like deformed music — you neither love it nor
hate it— deformed grammar, deformed rhetoric, deformed spelling, de-
formed oratory, deformed gesture and deformed truth itself. You
would not laugh at a chariot wheel rolling grandly down the street, and
nothing, says Hogarth, is more beautiful than a rolling wheel; but dish
that wheel, pull the spokes over and let it come along lop-sided and you
would all burst out laughing.
Now, as we neyer laugh at a perfect things we never laugh at the
climax in rhetoric. The climax is a perfect sentence ; but we do all
laugh at the anti-climax, which is a deformed sentence — a case where
that same perfect sentence runs right against a post and breaks off.
As good an example of the anti-climax as I know of occurred over in
New Jersey the other day. A good old colored clergyman was describ-
ing a storm, and he pictured it something like this:
*^ The winds howled like the roaring of Niagara; the thunder rum-
bled and grumbled and pealed like Vesuyius laboring with an earth-
quake ; the lurid lightnings flashed through the sky like — like — sixty I^'
[Laughter.]
Now, if that comparison had been complete, there would have been
no laughter. What did we laugh at ? We laughed at deformed rhet-
oric. The deformity causes both the surprise and laughter. Without
it there could be neither.
Suppose your physician should give you as lame a definition as the
rhetoricians have been giving you for a thousand years? Suppose,
when you asked him what killed his patients, he should say, *'My
patients died from want of breath 1 "
" But what caused the want of breath? '*
*'0h, the ffe7ius, disease — species, small-pox! *' [Laughter.]
What we want is the cause of t]ie cause, so to-night I give you the
genus and species of all deformities which will cause laughter. No, not
all of the deformities — we haven^t time to talk about deformed music;
but you know if some one were playing a beautiful symphony on an
organ here, and a key should get caught and s-q-u-e-a-kI should go
through the audience [laughter], how you would all burst out laughing.
We haven't time to talk about deformed spelling, but you all know
that two-thirds of dear old Josh Billings' wit was caused by deformed
spelling; half of Nasby's wit was deformed spelling, and the funniest ^
thing in Thackeray's '' Yellow Plush Papers " was when he spelled gen-
tlemen ''genlemen.'*
190 KTNOS OP THJ^ PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
All the dialects, too — the Dutch dialect, Irish dialect and negro dia-
lect— are funny; and why? Because they are a language deformed. I
could tell you a simple story in plain English, and you wouldn't smile at
N(t^ all, and then I could tell that same story in an Irish, Scotch, Dutch or
negro dialect, and you would all burst out laughing. So, if you ever
have a story that isn't funny enough to suit you, put it into any dialect
that you can command, and you^l double the fun of it. To illustrate
the fun of dialect:
One frosty morning I met a German, shiTering with the cold, and
remarked :
*'Hans, you have frozen your nose/'
** Nein, he froze hisself , Mr. Berkins/'
*' How did it happen, Hans?'*
"I no understand dis ting. I haf carry dot nose dese fordy year,
unt he nefer freeze hisself before. '* [Laughter.]
A good instance of Irish brogue, or dialect, is instanced in Mrs.
Colonel Kelly's cross-examination in the O'Toolihan suit for damages.
**You claim, Mrs. Colonel Kelly,'' said the Judge, *Hhat Mrs.
O'Toolihan gave you that bruised and blackened face?"
'' She did, yer Honor — indade she did, or I'm not Irish bom."
''And what you wanti? damages, Mrs. Kelly?"
''It is damages yez says, yer Honor? Damages! No, bad hick ter
the O'Toolihan, I have dam-ages enough. I wants sat-is-fac-shan,
begorry ! " [Laughter. ]
Another case. John Quinn, our Irish waiter, jerked his finger out
of a box of turtles, and held it up in great pain.
*' What are you doing there, John? '^ I asked.
" I wor investigating."
*' Investigating what?"
*' I wor trying to see which was the head and which was the tail ov
that baste over there in the corner ov the box."
*' What do you want to know that for?"
'' I've a curiosity to know whether I've been bit or stung." [Laugh-
ter.]
Again, an Irish judge, who had been over from the old sod but two
years, was examining a Corkonian who had just arrived in New York*
'* Phat's yer name, yez spalpeen?" he asked.
*' Patrick McGoolihan, yer Honor."
'' Is it an Irishman yez are? Begorra, yez shows it by yer sthrong
wakeness for the Oirish accint."
** Yis, yer Honor; I was boru abroad."
ELT PERKTKS. 197
" That's what oi thought, sorr. Yer accint is f roightful. Yer not
in Oirlancl,mon,aud yez should spake our Unighted Shtates toong more
dacently and not begivin' uz yer furren brogue."
Nothing is more amusing than to hear that rich, Irish brogue:
'* Phat is this I see*, Moike?'' asked Mr. O'Kelly. '' And is itdhrinkin
whiskey yez are? Sure it was only yestherday ye towld me ye was a
taytotler."
*' Well, your right. Mister O'Kelly," said Mike, "it's quoite right ye
are — I am a taytotler, it's true, but begorra I'd have ye understhand
I — I — I'm not a bigoted taytotler."
Scotch dialect is always dry and funny:
'* Dae ye ken," said a member of the Newark Caledonian Club, as he
walked homeward from church with a fellow-countryman, '* dae ye ken,
I think oor minister's in the habit o* gemblin'?"
'' What gars ye think that? "
*' rU tell ye, Sandy. Ae Sunday no lang ago in his prayer instead
o' saying, 0, Thou who hast the hearts of kings in Thy hands, he prayed,
' O, Thou, who has the king of hearts in Thy hands.' What dae ye
think o' that?"
**It dis'na look richt," commented the other, shaking his head sadly.
The simplest incident, if told with a dialect, will produce laughter.
For instance:
Two Germans met in San Francisco. After affectionate greeting,
the following dialogue ensued:
'* Fen you said you hev arrived?"
'* Yesterdav."
** You came dot Horn around?"
''No."
*' Oh ! I see; you came dot isthmus across?"
'*Xo.*'
*' Oh ! den you come dot land over? "
''No."
" Den you hef not arrived?"
*' Oh! yes, I hef arrived. I come dot Mexico tlirought." [Laughter.]
The Hebrew dialect is funny because it is simple, and every one can y
jnderstand it. Yet many Hebrew stories would be ruined if told in
good English. For instance:
One day I met my friend Jacob from Chatham street. He looked
very sad, and I said:
*' Why so gloomy this morning, Jacob?
"Ah, my poor leetle Penjamin Levi — he is tead!
" Dead? You surprise me. How did that happen?
99
f
198 KmGS OF TBS PLATFORM: AND PULPIT,
^' Veil, you see, my leetle Penjamin he vas at der synagogue to say
his brayers, and a boy put his het at der door and gries, * Job Lot ! * and
leetle Penjamin — he vas gilt in der grush." [Laughter.]
The Chinese dialect, or pigeon English, is always funny.
Mrs. Van Auken, of Fifth avenue, recently employed a Chinese
cook — Ah Sin Foo. When the smiling Chinaman came to take his
place, Mrs. Van Auken asked him his name.
" What is your name, John? *' commenced the lady.
" Oh ! my namee. Ah Sin Foo.*'
''But I can't remember all that lingo, my man. I 11 call you
Jimmy. '*
"Velly wellee. Now what chee namee I callee you?'' asked Ah Sin,
looking up in sweet simplicity.
'' Well, my name is Mrs. Van Auken; call me that."
'' Oh ! me can no 'member Missee Vannee Auken. Too big piecee
namee. I callee you Tommy — Missee Tommy." [Laughter.]
The Italian dialect is sweet and laughter-provoking. A New York
policeman thus accosted an Italian organ-grinder:
'' Have you a permit to grind this organ in the street?
''No. Me no habbe de permit.
"Then, sir, it becomes my duty to request you to accompany me—
"Alia righta. Vatta you sing?" [Laughter.]
The dialect of the dude is very modem, but we recognize it as a
deformed language.
"Going widing to-day, Awthaw?" asked one dude of another.
"Naw. Got to work, demmit."
"So sawy, deah boy. What is the — aw — blawsted job, eh?"
"Maw's written me a lettaw, and I've — aw — got to wead it befaw I
can make another dwaft on haw. Did you evaw heah of such a boah?"
"Nevaw, deah boy, nevaw." [Laughter.]
Dialect itself is funny, but when you clothe a witty idea in dialect it
doubles the fun. For instance: I lectured in a good old Quaker town
up in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago, and after the lecture, the lecture
committee came to me with my fee in his hand, and said, as he counted
the roll of bills:
"Eli, my friend, does thee believe in the maxims of Benjamin
Franklin?"
"Yea," I said.
"Well, friend Eli, Benjamin Franklin, in his Poor Bichard maxims,
says that 'Time is money.'"
O Ul^aU IXX t/UU OLlCCbt
99
ELI PERKINS. 199
*' Yea, verily, I have read it, I said.
** Well, Eli, if 'Time is money,* as thy friend. Poor Eichard, gays,
and thee believe so, then verily I will keep the money and let thee take
it out in time/' [Laughter.]
The deformed language of the colored, preacher always produces
laughter among the whites, while the colored auditors, who do not see
the deformity, never dream of smiling.
So I always love to hear the good old orthodox colored preacher. He
may trip in his grammar and pronounce his words wrong, but the child-
like faith of the true Christian is always there. I heard a sermon once
from a dear, good old clergyman, who had once been a slave in Mary-
land, and who had converted many souls. The words were often wrong
but the true spirit was there. I remember the old man started off with
these words:
" I takes my tex' dis maunin', bredrin', from dat portion ob de scrip-
ter whar de Postol Paul points his pistol to de Fenians. '' [Laughter.]
Do not laugh my friends, for the old man grew very eloquent over
the text. He implored the thoughtless young men to bo kind to their
fathers and mothers. '* Don't wed yerself to strange godeses,*' he said,
''an' leave yer ol* f adder an' mudder to starve." [Laughter.]
'* Why, bress yer soul, young men/' he continued, " I'zo got an' ol'
mudder, an' I hab to do f o' her, ye see, an' ef I don't buy her shoes an'
stockin's she don't get none. Now, ef I war to get married, young men,
rd hab to buy des fings for my wife, an' dat would be taking de shoes
and stockin's right ont o' my vuidder^s monf.'' [Laughter.]
In the evening, said Mr. Perkins, the good old preacher, in announc-
ing his text, said:
" Dis ebenin', brederin', do Lord willin', I will preach from de tex'.
** An St. Paul planted and Apollinaris watered." [Laughter.] X^
Deformed words will always produce laughter. All the wit in Mrs.
Malaprop's and in Mrs. Partington's sayings was caused by using de-
formed words. See how funny is a paragraph from that dignified man,
Benjamin P. Shellabar.
'* Diseases is very various," said Mrs. Partington. "Now they say
old Mrs. Haze has got two buckles on her lungs. Deacon Sempson has
got tensors of the throat. Aunt Mary Smith is dying of hermitage of
the lungs, and now ** Josh Billings" finds himself in a jocular vein.
New names and new nostrils every where!"
"They say Mrs. Putnam, who has such a lovely husband, can't bear
children," I remarked.
200 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
''Perhaps if she could she would like them better/' replied the old
lady, disdainfully. Then she wiped her glasses and looked over them to
read the close type in the advertisements.
When her eye wandered down the amusement column she read that
at the Academy of Music the *' Prayer of Moses was being executed on
one string.'*
''The Prayer of Moses executed on one string/' she repeated. "Well,
I declarel Praying to be cut down I suppose. Poor Moses I "she sighed,
"executed on one stringl [Laughter.] Well, I don't know as I ever heard
of any body being executed on two strings, unless the rope broke."
[Laughter.]
Again: A deformed quotation will produce laughter. This is why
the parody, which is the original poem deformed, always amuses people.
Jo Mills, the brother of D. 0. Mills, used to open oysters, but becoming
rich he joined the stock exchange, and while on Wall street, he kept
all the bankers laughing at his deformed quotations. Once, on return-
ing from navana to Key West, he telegraphed August Belmont, to tell
the brokers that after a stormy sail he had at last landed on Terre Cotta.
[Laughter.] When Mr. Mills arrived in New York, Russell Sage asked
him, how he felt. *'I felt very bad before the trip," said Jo, "but now,
slapping his leg with his hand, I feel new plus ulster.^' [Laughter.]
Stammering stories are a species of dialect, and are funny on account
of the deformity of the language. To illustrate a stammering story:
I was lecturing up at Ballston Spa, and the chairman of the lecture
committee, Major Stevens, who is a great stammerer, was rather late in
calling on me at the hotel. When he finally came, I said:
" Major, where've you been? Where've you been?"
" I've b — b— been down to, been d — d — down t — t — to — to——"
'*Wheredid you say?" [Laughter.]
" I've been d — d — down to A — A — Albany, the c — c^-c— capital."
" What have you been down to Albany for?"
" I've b — b — been there to see the m — m — members of the leg — ^leg —
legislature."
" What did you want to see the members of the legislature for?"
" Well, I wanted to get 'em to c — c — change the state con— consti —
constitution."
" Why, what did you want to change the New York State constitu-
tion for?"
" Because the st — st — state constitution g — g — ^guarantees to ev —
ev — every m — m — man f — f — free s — s — speech, and I w — w — want it or
I w — w — want the d — d— darned thing changed! " [Load laughter.]
ELI PERKINS, 201
There is another deformity that I will refer to, very prolific of
laughter — deformed grammar. To illustrate: I saw a little girl learn-
ing to «ead the other day.
Said I: " Little girl, didn't you have a hard time learning to read ?"
*' Yes,'' she said, '* I did have a hard time — a very hard time learning
to read, but I kept on learning to read — kept on learning to read and
bime-by I rode." [Laughter.]
Another instance of deformed grammar: Two little girls were play-
ing in their play-house. They had a mock kitchen and one of them was
passing the pickles, tomatoes and potatoes to the other, when finally one
took a potato on a fork and said :
"Shall I skin this potatoe for you Jenny?"
**No," replied Jenny, '^you needn't skin that potato for me; I have
one already *skun."* [Laughter.]
Another instance of deformed grammar — well it occurred at the
hotel where I'm staying, not ton minutes ago : I heard a coupleof chamber-
maids talking in the hall. They were talking about '' banging'' their
hair. One of them asked the other if she banged her hair.
*' Yes, " she said, " I ba-ba-bang my hair — I keep banging my hair,
but it don't stay b-b-bung! [Great laughter.]
One Sunday morning I attended Dr. Potter's service in Orace Ohnrch,
New York. After waiting a while I dropped into one of the back pews.
The owner soon came in, and seeing me sitting in her pew nervously
approached Sexton Brown and said :
*'Mr. Brown why do you permit a stranger to occupew my pie?"
[Laughter.]
Listen to the deformed grammar in the stanza about the cautious
burglar:
A cautious look around he* stole.
His ])ags of chink he chunk:
And manv a wi(."ked smile he smole,
And many a wink lie wunk.
You would hardly think that a deformed quotation will always pro-
duce laughter. Now, how often have you heard the quotation "I have
other fish to fry?" When you used the expression you did not really
mean that you were really going out to cook any fish. You simply sa^
it to indicate haste, but while in Boston, General Butler said that one
day he was returning home from — prayer meeting [laughter] when he
nvcrhear<l a young Harvard student saying good-bye to his Boston sweet*
heart. lie svas just saying good-bye, had just kissed her ear (left ear
over the gate) the last, last time, when he said, "There ! Good-bye,
202 EING8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Mariah, I must go now. Tve got to go and cook another fish!'*
[Laughter.]
There is one other deformity which is a great source of laughter^ and
that is deformed logic, and where do we find deformed logic?
Why, every single pun or conundrum that was ever made in the
English language is simply the deformed logic of Aristotle and Pl^to
in another form, and those old Greeks used to laugh at the very same
puns and conundrums that we do, and they laughed at them in the
form of a syllogism, while we laugh at them in the modern form of the
pun and conundrum. To prove this I will make a conundrum and
then change it to a false syllogism.
Now, why are conundrums funny?
It is because in every conundrum you prove something to be true
which you really know to be false. It is the false logic that you are
laughing at. To prove this I will make a conundrum and change it to
the syllogistic form of the Greeks.
I will make a conundrum about that distinguished colored statesman
— that learned colored man — Fred Douglass — proving something to be
true about him that you know to be false:
Conundrum: Why is Fred Douglass a very wicked man?
Answer: Because he is supported by black legs.
Now, the syllogist would put this conundrum into a syllogism like
this:
First premise: Any one supported by black legs must be very wicked.
Second premise: Frederick Douglass is supported by black legs.
Conclusion: Therefore, Frederick Douglass must be very wicked.
In both cases an untruth has been proven by false logic.
Now, the syllogism, or deformed logic, was the common form of all
wit among the Greeks. For instance, Aristippus came into Athens one
day, and saw Diogenes, and instead of giving him a conundrum, he gave
him this syllogism:
** All words, 0 Diogenes,*' said Aristippus, " come out of your mouthy
do they not?*'
*' Yes, granted. All words do come out of my mouth.*'
*' Well, snakes and toads are words, aren't they? Then they come
out of your mouth.'' [Laughter. J
We have changed a conundrum to a syllogism, and now we will
change a syllogism to a conundrum. We will prove a hen to be immor-
tal by both.
ELI PERKINS. 303
Syllogism: (Major) — Any one whose sun never sets is immortal.
(Minor) — A hen's son never sets.
(Conclusion) — Therefore, a hen is immortal.
[Laughter.]
The conundrum would be: " Why is a hen immortal? Because her
son never sets/'
Now^ up to this time we have spoken of the ordinary^ regular conun-
drum; but we can have a deformed conundrum. A deformed conun-
drum is a case where the conundrum kicks back, or where the answer is
different from what you expect. It is a kind of conundrum that a smarts
shrewd boy generally gives to his poor old father, when he comes home
from college. [Laughter.] I remember I got one on to my father
when I returned home from college [laughter], and he turned round to
a neighbor, the tears streaming down his cheeks, and said, '^ Brother
Jones, that conundrum cost me seven hundred dollars.'' [Laughter.]
To illustrate one of these deformed conundrums: Henry Bergh gave
me one just before he died, and I've been trying for six months
to find out what he meant by it. He died without giving me the
answer. [Laughter.] Perhaps you can help me out. He came tome
and said he had a deformed conundrum.
''What is it, Mr. Bergh?"
** Well, what is the difference between your mother-in-law and a
tree?"
'*I don't know," I said; '' I don't think there is much difference.
[Laughter.] But what is the difference ?"
** Well, the difference is this: A tree leaves every spring — and — and
— ." [Loud laughter interrupted the lecturer.]
**Well, I see you've all brought your mothers-in-law with you.
[Laugliter.] That's right, every man should bring his mother-in-law
to a humorous lecture; it's the only way you can get even with her."
[Laughter.]
There is a species of deformed logic where the effect follows the
cause suddenly, without any logical reasoning. In the following case
the boy's funeral takes place before his death is announced:
' Tis only an infant pippin,
Growing on a limb ;
*Tis only a typical small boy,
VVlio devours it with a vim.
'Tis (;nly a doctor's carriage,
Wliicli stopped before the door ;
But why go into details —
The wrvioes begin at four. [Laughter]
WOULD YOU TAKE ANYTHlNfi, BBlDaBr?
BLI PERKINS, 205
Again: You all remember the triumphant appeal of an Irishman^ a
lover of antiquity, who, in arguing the superiority of old architecture
over the new, said:
** Where will you find any modem building that has lasted so long as
the ancient?"
Again: An Irishman got out of his carriage at a railway station for
refreshments, but the bell rang and the train left before he had finished
his repast.
"Hould on!" cried Pat, as he ran like a mad man after the car, "hould
on, ye murthen ould stame injin — ye've got a passenger on board that^s
left behind/' [Laughter.]
Again: My wife's cook was sick. She was sure she was going to die.
It was the colic.
*' Would you take any thing, Bridget?" asked my wife, pouring out
some bitter cordial.
'^ Indade," said Bridget, '^ I would take any thing to make me well,
if I knew it would kill me." [Laughter.}
Again: ''A man who'd maliciously set fire to a barn," said Elder
Podson^ '' and bum up a stable full of horses and cows, ought to be
kicked to death by a jackass, and Fd like to be the one to do it."
[Laughter.]
Again: Two deacons once disputing about a proposed new grave
yard, one remarked, ''I'll never be buried in that ground as long as I
live!" **What an obstinate man! " said the other. "If my life is spared
I will." [Laughter.]
Said Congressnian Ben Eggleston, of Ohio, to Sam Cox, of New
York, who was trying to tell him something about hogs: "You can't
tell me any thing about hogs. I know more about hogs than you ever
dreamtof. I was brought up in Cincinnati right among 'em." [Laugli-
ter in Louisville, but tears in Cincinnati.]
Another instance of deformed logic, or the paradox, was the case of
the two farmers who were talking about the sun and the moon. One
was trying to prove that the moon was of more account than the sun.
"How do you make that out?" asked his friend.
"Why," said he, "the moon shines at night when it's dark, and
the sun shines in the daytime when it's light enough without it.
[Laughter.]
}>
ij
There is one other deformity that I will speak of, and that is
deformed truth, [laughter] hyperbole, extravagant statement, or, in
plain English, lying. [Laughter.]
206 KTNQS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Now, I don^t say that to be witty, you must always be telling lies.
If that were the case, the editors would be the funniest men in the
world; [laughter] but I do say that a great, big, innocent Baron Mun-
chausen exaggeration — ^a deformed truth — is just as funny as any other
deformity and for the same philosophical reason. But 0, my friends, it
must be an innocent exaggeration. It must be an exaggeration to make
your fellow-men happy and to harm no man — and for this reason the
humorists — no not the humorists; and right here I am going to draw a
line between wit and humor that has never been drawn. Why not the
humorists? Because the humorist always tells the absolute truth. This
is the difference between wit and humor. Humor is always the absolute
truth, close to life, dialect and all, while wit is always a "magnification '*
or a " minification." Humor, I say, is the actual incident photographed,
while wit is simply imagination which when expressed in words is
exaggeration.
Dickens was the king of the humorists, but those stories that Dickens
wrote, the story of *'Sam Weller,'' ''Little Nell,'' and "Smike,''and
*' Oliver Twist,'* as you know, were all absolutely true.* Bret Harte's
" Luck of Roaring Camp" is another charming piece of humor — abso-
lute truth. But the wits all deal in the imagination; they are all great
truth deformers, all great liars! Mark Twain is a fearful — liar.
[Laughter.] But Mark Twain is both a humorist and a wit. When-
ever he tells the absolute truth, close to life, like Dickens, he is a
humorist; but just the moment he lets his imagination play — just the
moment he begins to exaggerate — stretch it a little — then that humor
blossoms into wit.
To show you the fine dividing line between wit and humor — the
invisible line — and how humor can gradually creep into wit through
exaggeration, Mark Twain, in one of his books, has a chapter on building
tunnels out in Nevada. He goes on for five pages with pure humor —
pure truth. He describes those miners just as they are — describes
their dialects, describes their bad grammar, describes the tunnel; but
Mark can't stick to the truth very long before he begins to stretch it a
little. He soon comes to a miner who thinks a good deal of his tunnel.
They all tell him he'd better stop his tunnel when he gets it through the
•The London Literary iroWtisays: Smike is still livinfir in Bury, St. Edmund*^ where he
keeps a toy shop. He is a tall, hatchct-faced old geDtleman, proud of his romnntio emioenoe.
Carkerwasconnected, through his father, with an eminent euinnccring firm, and livod in
Oxford road, where ho prowled about, a nuisance to all the servant girls in the neighborhood.
Carker, Major fiagstock, Mrs. Skewton, whose real name was Campbell, and her daughter,
were well-known characters in Leamington. Fifty years ago the Shannon coach, running
between Ipswich and London, was driven by a big, burly old fellow named Cole, who was the
▼eritable elder Weller.
m.T PBRKTNS. 207
hill, but he says he "guesses not — it's his tunnel/' so he runs his tun-
nel right on o?er the valley into the next hill. [Loud laughter.] You
who can picture to yourselves this hole in the sky, held up by trestle
work, will see where the humor leaves off and the wit begins — where
the truth leaves off and the exaggeration commences. [Applause.]
We see humor all around us every day. Any one can write humor
who will sit down and write the honest truth. There is no imagination
in humor, while wit is all imagination — like the tunnel. Humor is
what has been; wit is what might be. I saw as ^ood a piece of humor
to-day as I ever saw in my life. I wish I had photographed it. I would
if I had thought that it could be so good. A dear, good old lady and
her daughter came into the depot at Poughkeepsie. She wasn't used to
traveling, and was very nervous. Her eyes wandered about the depot
a moment, and then she walked nervously up to the station window and
tremblingly asked:
''When does the next train go to New York?*'
"The next train, madam/' said the agent, looking at his watch,
" goes to New York at exactly 3.30."
"Will that be the first train?" [Laughter.]
"Yes, madam, the first train."
"Isn't there any freights?"
"None."i
" Isn't there a special?"
" No, no special."
"Now if there was a special would you know it?" [Laughter.]
"Yes."
" And there isn't any — ain't they?"
"None."
" Well Fm awful glad — awful glad," said the old lady, *'Now Marial
jou and I can cross the track." [Loud laughter.]
There is not a day but what every one in my audience sees' something
funnier than that. All you have to do is to describe it truthfully to
make humor of it.
Take the simple scene of two married women taking leave of each
other at the gate on a mild evening and describe it truthfully and it will
be humor. To illustrate, two women shake hands and kiss each other
over the gate and then commences the conversation:
"Good-bye!"
" Good-bye. Come down and see us soon.
"I will. Good-bye.
" Good-bye. [Laughter.] Don't forget to come soon.
own auu see us soon."
208 KiNOa OF TBE PLATFOBM AND PXTLPIT.
" No, I won't. Don't you forget to come np."
" I won't. Be sure and bring Sarah Jane with you next time."
" I will. I'd have brought her this time, but she wasn^t very welL
She wanted to come awfully."
*^ Did she now? That was too bad! Be sure and bring her next
time." [Laughter.]
'^ I will. And you be sure and bring baby."
" I will. I forgot to tell you that he's cut another tooth." [Laugh-
ter.]
" You don't say so! How many has he now?"
*^ Five. It makes him awfully cross."
" I dare say it does this hot weather."
*\ Well, good-bye! Don't forget to come down." [Louder.]
"No I won't. Don't you forget to come up. Good-byl" [Still
louder.]
* ' Good-bye ! " [Screaming. ]
'^ Good-bye!" [Yelling.]
Now this is a very shallow conversation but the humorist who can
render such scenes close to life has his fortune in his hands. But there
is a humor where imagination is added to the truth, that almost leaves
the domain of humor and blossoms into wit.
There is a kind of half -sad humor where two earnest people miscon-
strue each other's thoughts. I once heard a dialogue between a
sweet, dear old clergyman of Arkansaw and an illiterate parishioner,
which with a little of my own imagination added illustrates this idea:
*' Your children here all turned out well, I reckon," said the clergy-
man as he sat down to dinner with the parishioner he had not seen in
church for several years.
"Well, yes, all but Bill, pore feller."
"Drunk licker, I reckon," said the clergyman, sorrowfully."
"Oh, no, never drunk no licker, but he hain't amounted to nothin'.
Bill was deceived, an' it mint him."
" Love affair? Married out of the church maybe?"
"Yes, an' a mighty bad love affair.
"She deceived him, eh?
"Terribly, terribly.
" Ruined his spiritual life and he married a scoffer?
Oh no, she married him; married him? I guess she did!
[Tjaughter ]
'[ But confidentially, what was the cause of your son's grief and ruinP
" Well you see, brother Munson, she was a widder an' let on she wuz
well off| but she wan't. W'y she wan't able to get Bill a decent suit o'
>y
yy
'» Oh r\t\ aVtCk marriArl hirti* niurrioH hitnV T miAaa nV.^^ AlA^ff
99
BLI PBRK1N8. ' 209
clothes the week airtor they wuz married. Poor Bill has gone ragged
ever since the weddin'. Poor boy, he's lost all confidence in wimmen.
Bill has/' [Laughter.]
To illustrate how humor can ran into the imagination and become
wit:
A young lady came into Alexander Weed's drag store^ and asked him
if it were possible to disguise castor oil.
"It's horrid stuff to take, you know. Ugh I*' said the young lady,
with a shudder.
'MYhy, certainly,'' said Mr. Weed, and just then, as another young
lady was taking some soda water, Mr. Weed asked her if she wouldn't
have some, too. After drinking it the young lady lingered a moment,
and finally observed :
"Now, tell me, Mr. Weed, how you would disguise castor 011?**
" Why, madam, I just gave you some — "
"My gracious me!" exclaimed the young lady. " Why, I wanted it
for my sister!" [Loud laughter.]
This is wit, because it ends up with a snap of the imaginatfon. So
I say wit is pure Baron-Munchausen exaggeration or mii^ification.
The story teller exaggerates, the actor exaggerates, the writer exag-
gerates, and the witty artist exaggerates.
Gil Bias, Oulliver^s Travels, Don Quixote and the Tale of a Tub are
instances of pure imagination, pure fancy. There is no special genius
displayed in reporting a scene close to life. Dickens ceases to be a
humorist when he lets his imagination play in the speech of Buzfuz, and
Murk Twain is irresistibly witty when he comes to the bust of Columbus
and the tomb of Adam. Herein differs the Wit from the Humorist.
The Humorist is a faithful photographer. He tells just what he hears
and sees, while the Wit lets his imagination and fancy play. I believe
the Wit is as far beyond the Humorist as the ideal picture is beyond
the humdram portrait. A witty sketch is as much beyond a humorous
sketch as Raphsel's ideal Sistine Madonna is beyond Bubens' actual
portrait of his fat wife. One is ideal, the other is real. Any patient
toiler can write humor, while it is only the man with brain and
imagination who can write wit. [Applause.]
As perfect a piece of humor as was ever written is Mark Twain's
description of Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence. Human nature
bristles all through it. The Detroit Free Press man is a humorist. All
of his stories are based on the truth. Old " Bijah " was an actual char-
acter; and Mr. Lewis simply described his acts close to life. Brother
Gardner was once a real character and The Lime Eiln Club existed.
X>iO KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AyD PCLPIT,
Mr. Lewis described the meetings of the club so true to life that he once
received a letter from a member of the Indiana State legislature who
wanted to come to Detroit and join the club. [Laughter.] Mr, Lewis
always takes real characters and makes them act in the newspaper just
as they act in nature.
How many times we have all seen the little quarrels of loving brides
and grooms. Picture to yourselves a young married couple fixing up
their first home:
"How glad I am, dearie, that our tastes are so very similar, *' said
young Mrs. Honeylip to her husband when they had returned from tlieir
bridal tour and were furnishing tho flat in which they were to be *^8o
perfectly happy."
'• We agree about every thing, don't Ave, darling?'* she continued.
"We both wanted cardinal and gray to be the prevailing tones in the
parlor, we agreed exactly about the blue room, and both wanted oak for
the dining room and hall. We like the same kind of chairs. Oh, we
agree exactly, don't we, and how nice it is. Td feel dreadful if we didn't
agree, particularly about any important thing."
"So would I, darling," he said. '*It's lovely to live in such perfect
harmony. Now, I guess I'll hang this lovely little water color your aunt
gave us right over this cabinet, shan't I?"
" I don't hardly know, my dear. Wouldn't it look better over that
bracket on the opposite wall?"
"I hardly think so, love; the light is so much better here.'*
"Do you think so, George? Really, now, I don't like it in that
light."
"You don't? Why, it's just the light for it. It's entirely too dark
for a water color on the other wall."
" I don't think so at all. Water colors don't want a great deal of
light."
"They certainly don't wtmt to be in the shade."
" They certainly don't want to hang in a perfect glare of light/'
" I guess I've hung pictures before to-day, and "
"Oh, George, how cross you arel" [Laughter.]
"I'm nocrosser than you, and "
"You are, too, and I — I — oh, how can you be so cruel?''
"Pshaw, Helen, I only said '*
"Oh, I know, and it has broken my heart."
"There, there, dear "
"Oh, it has! I — I — George do you really want me to go back' to
mamma and papa?"
BLI PERKTNS. 211
''Why, darling, yon know-
«>
** lie — b<j — oauso, boo, hool if yon <1 — d — o, boo, hoo! I will. It
would bo better, boo, hoo! than for us to quarrel so over every thing,
and ''
"There, there, my dear, I ^'
*' Alanmia was afraid we were too unlike in disposition to get along
well, but I — I — oh, George this is too perfectly dreadful I " [Tjaughter.]
Now I will show you how the wit and Immorist do their work. 1*11
lift the veil right here. The humorist takes any ordinary scene, like
the old lady in the depot, and describes it true to life. That's all.
Dickens used to go down into the slums of London and get hold of such
quaint characters as Bill Sykes and Nancy. Then he used to watch
them, hear every word they uttered — hear their bad grammar and
dialect — see every act they performed. Then he used to come into hia
room, sit down and write a photograph of what he saw and heard. And
that was humor — truth in letter and in spirit.
The humorist is truer than the historian. [Sensation] The historian
is only true in spirit, while the humorist is true in spirit and in letter.
Sir Walter Scott, when he wrote true humor was truer than Macaulay.
[Sensation.] Take King James of Scotland. He had never stepped
upon English soil. He could not speak the English language. He
spoke a sweet Scotch dialect. But when Macaulay makes King James
45peak, he puts in his mouth the pure English of Addison and Dr.
Johnson. He deceives us to add dignity to his history. [Applause.]
^'ot so with Sir Walter Scott. When he describes King James in Ivan-
lioe he puts nature^s dialect in his mouth — that sweet Scotch dialect —
iuid Sir Walter Scott is truer than Macaulay. [Applause.]
Humor is what has been; wit is what might be. Humor is the abso-
lute truth, dialect and all, and wit is that same truth exaggerated by the
imagination — carried farther than nature, like Mark Twain's tunnel.
[Applause.]
Tlie most humorous thing '"The Danbury News Man" ever wrote,
was that account of putting up a stovepipe, and that actually occurred.
The Danbury News Man and his wife were going to church one day,
and the stovepipe fell down. He called his wife back to help him put
it up; but she was a very religious woman, and went on to church and
left him to put up that stovepipe alone. He put up that stovepipe,
[laughter.] That stovepipe did every thing that any stovepipe could
<lo. [Laughter.] It didn't go out of the room. [Ijaughter.] I had a
212 KINO a OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
stovepipe once tliat got out the back door, went clear around the block
twice, and came back and got onto the wrong stove. [Loud laughter.]
Well, after he got the stovepipe put up, he sat down and wrote a faith-
ful account of it, and you enjoy reading it. You say " that is so true!''
That man put up a stovepipe — he's been there! [Laughter].
Now, if the writer had wanted to add wit to his humor, he would
only have had to add imagination. In his mind's eye he could have put
two joints on the stovepipe, and the soot could have poured right out of
one joint down his shirt collar, and he could have shaken it out of the
bottom of his trousers; [Laughter] and the other joint could have
slipped right over his head and taken off one of his ears. [Laughter.]
But that would have been a lie, for the stovepipe was No. 6, and his
head was No. 7. [Laughter.]
The most humorous creations of the Danbury News man are his
description of cording the bedstead and Mrs. Munson " shooing " the
hen. We can see Mrs. Munson now. Her husband, the old farmer, had
been at work all the morning with two hired men and three dogs trying
to drive the hens into the cooj). Mrs. Munson looked up from her
churning, saw the situation and screamed :
"John! ril * shoo' those hens!"
Then she goes out — gets her eyes on the hens — holds up her dress
from both sides — then drops her whole body as she says "Sh ' "
[Laughter.] That settles it! [Loud laughter.]
We have shown what wit and humor are, and now we come to satire.
And what is satire?
Satire is a species of wit. Satire is to exaggerate an error and make
it odious. Nasby was a satirist. He always called himself a satirist —
not a humorist. He never tried to produce laughter. Ilis aim was to
convince people of error, by exaggerating that error so that they could
see it. His mission was to exaggerate error, or overstate it and make
it hideous. So Nasby never told a truth in his life — in the newspapers.
Of course he has told private truths at home — to his wife. [Laughter.]
Even the date of every letter Nasby ever wrote was an exaggeration.
There is no such place as the " Confederate Cross-Roads" in Kentucky,
no "Deacon Pogram" — all an exaggeration! The mission of the
satirist, I say, is to exaggerate an error. Why, you can kill more error
with exaggeration in a week than you can kill with truth in a thousand
years.
How long had they been trying to break up that awful error of
knight-errantry in Spain? They couldn't do it. They flung arguments
ELI PERKINS. 213
at it; the arguments fell to the ground, and the error of knight-errantry
went on. One day Cervantes, that great Spanish satirist, wrote Don
Quixote^ — a pure exaggeration — no Don Quixote ever existed, no Sancho
Panza. It was knight-errantry exaggerated, and the people saw the
crime and ground it under their feet. Juvenal changed the political
history of Kome with satire, as Thackeray ran snobbery out of England
by exaggerating it in satire.
Nasby created red-nosed Deacon Pogram, placed him in the Cross-
Road, Bourbon county, saloon, filled him with rum, riot and rebellion,
made him abuse the '^nigger *^ and the Republican party, and defend
slavery. He made the secessionist odious, and did more with his satire
to kill slavery and rebellion than Wendell Philli2)s did with his denunci-
ation. r^PP^^use.]
Satire is used all through the Bible to kill error. Job used it —
Elijah and our Savior — what cutting satire did our Savior use to call
the attention of the Jews to their crimes. Don^t you remember, when
the Jews were washing their hands before and after every meal — little
one-cent observances, while great crimes went creeping into Judea —
Christ wanted to call their attention to their crimes, lie used satire.
With what dreadful satire He exclaimed:
** Ye are blind leaders of the blind. Ye strain at a gnat and swallow
a camel I "
Our Savior didn't mean to say these Jews could literally swallow a
camel — lie knew they'd try — [Laughter interrupted this sentence. j
If I want to satirize the humbuggery of our jury system, 1 exaggerate
a juryman's ignorance, and then the people see it. For example: A
Chicago lawyer was visiting New York for the lirst time. Meeting a
tuan on the crowded street, he said:
" Here, my friend, I want you to tell me something about this city.''
" I don't know any thing about it," said the hurrying business man,
'Vrith a far-away look.
"What street is this?''
"I don't know," said the busy man, with his mind occupied, and
staring at vacancy.
"What city is it?"
"Can't tell; I am busy."
" Is it liOndon or Kcw York?'*
"Don't know any thing about it.-'
-You don't?"
"No."
'* Well, by Heavens, .sir, you are the very man Pm looking for. I've
been looking for you for year^.*'
2UK KINGS OF TUE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
** What do you want me for?'*
" I want you to sit on a jury in Chicago." [Loud laughter.]
Satire intensifies an absurdity. Now if I were going to expose the
error of evolution, which is a direct assault upon the Bible, I would not
deny evolution, I would satirize it.
I would say with Darwin and Huxley, that before we can adopt evo-
lution and modern reason we must do away with the Bible. Yes, destroy
the old Bible !
The old theory of creation is all wrong. Nothing was created.
Every thing grew. In the old Bible we read: ^' In the beginning God
created heaven and earth.''
*' Now this is all wrong," says Darwin and I. '^ Our new Bible is to
commence like this:
Genesis. Chap. I.
(1) There never was a beginning. The Eternal, without us that
maketh for righteousness, took no notice whatever of any thing,
(2) And Cosmos was homogeneous and undifferentiated and some-
how or another evolution began, and molecules appeared. [Laughter.]
(3) And molecule evolved jirotoplasm, and rhythmic thrills arose and
then there was light.
(4) And a spirit of energy was developed- and formed the plastic
cell, whence arose the primordial germ.
(5) And the primordial germ became protogene, and protogene
somehow shaped eocene — then was the dawn of life. [Laughter.]
(6) And the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit
after its own kind, whose seed is in itself, developed according to its
own fancy. And the Eternal, without us that maketh for righteous-
ness, neither knew nor cared any thing about it. [Laughter.]
(7) The cattle after his kind, the beast of the earth after his kind,
and every creeping thing became evolved by heterogeneous segregation
and concomitant dissipation of motion.
(8) So that by survival of the fittest there evolved the simiads from
the jelly fish, and the simiads differentiated themselves into the anthro-
pomorphic primordial types.
(9) And in due time one lost his tail. This was Adam and he
became a man. [Laughter.] And behold he was the most cunning of
all animals; and lo! the fast men killed the slow men, and it was
ordained to be in every age that the fittest should survive!
(10) And in process of time, MosevS and Christ died, and by natural
selection and survival of tlic fittest, Matthew Arnold, Herbert Spencer,
and Charles Darwin appeared, and behold it was very good. [Applause.]
ELI PERKINS. 215
Now we come to the hardeBt of all things to explain, and that Ib ridicule
— and what is ridicule?
Ridicule bears the same relation to the truth that wit does to humor — it
is the truth exaggerated. Satire is to exaggerate an error till you see it
and stamp it out ; while ridicule is to exaggerate a truth, deform it and
you laugh it out. With satire the error goes with a kick, while with rid-
icule the truth goes with a laugh. [Applause.] Ridicule is an awful
weapon, because with it you can liarm the truth. In fact the only way
to harm truth is to ridicule it. Deny truth? That don^t hurt truth any.
You will simply impeach your own veracity — kill yourself. But you can
ridicule truth and, as the lawyer's say, ''laugh it out of court. '^ This is the
reason why lawyers always use ridicule — in all law cases only one side is
right ; the other must be wrong; and the man who is on the wrong side,
if he is a good lawyer, will not say a word about his side, but he will walk
over to the right side, exaggerate it and '' laugh it out of court. '^
To show you how lawyers ridicule the truth, to kill it: I attended a
murder case a while ago in Akron, Ohio. It was a homicide case — ^a
case where a man had accidentally killed his friend. This lawyer wanted
to win the sympathy of the jury, and he told the jury, in a very pathetic
and truthful manner, how bad his client felt.
*'0! My client felt so bad," he began in weeping tones — **felt so
bad when he killed his friend; the tears rolled down his cheeks; ho
knelt down by that fallen form!"
Well, the jury knew that his toucliiug pathos was true, and so did
the other lawyer. Still he could not let it stand because it had touched
the jury. What did he do? Why, he took that true pathos right over
on the other side, exaggerated it, and turned it into ridicule, and
laughed it out of court.
" Yes," he said with exaggerated pathos, *' he did feel bad when he
killed his friend. The tears did roll down his cheeks. He took off one
boot, and emptied it [lauij^hterj; then he cried some more; then be
emptied his other boot [laughter]: then he tied his handkerchief around
his trousers — cried 'em full, boo — hool" | Laughter. |
In a moment he had that jury laughing at exaggerated truth and
pathos.
The truth was gone!
A good lawyer never denies a true statement before the jury; it is
much easier to exaggerate that statement, and make the jury '*laugh it
out of court.'*
Incrorsoll in his discussions with Talmaire, never denied a true state-
nuni of Talmagt . He p-\a£igeratr«| them, \\\v\ made them ridiculous.
216 KiyOS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
For instance, Talmage made a statement about Jonah. He said, **Per-
haps the wliale didn^t swallow Jonah. Perhaps the whale simply took
Jonah in his mouth, carried him round a day or two, and then vomited
him up/' That was enough for Bob. lie didn't deny it. He went
across the platform, and exaggerated Talmage's statement.
" Yes/' said Ingersoll. " I can see JonaJi in the whale's month — he
ties himself up to a tooth and when the whale chews, Jonah, he crouches
down — crouches down, [laughter, while Bob crouches down, keeping
time with the whale's jaw,] and, by-and-by, when the whale isn't look-
ing, Jonah, he jumps over into a hollow tooth, builds a fire, reaches out
and catches a few fish and fries 'em; peek-a-boo!" [Great laughter.]
And so he laughs Talmage's statement out of court; but has ho denied
it? Not at all.
Now, again, when Ingersoll wants to ridicule the church, he doesn't
take the church of to-day. lie couldn't ridicule that. So what does he
do? Why he goes back four hundred years for that church. He goes
back to the barbarous inquisition, when every man was a savage, with a
spear in one hand and a hatchet in the other, trying to kill his fellow-
man. [Applause.] He goes back to bloody Spain, where the State
had seized the church, and they were burning Protestants at the stake,
pulling their arms out on the rack, or boring their eyes out with
augurs; or he goes to England in the time of liloody Mary, when the
State had seized the church, and the church was not [applause] where
they were toasting John Huss. and Cranmer and Lattimer in the fires
of the Inquisition — where they were burning the saints' eyes out — I say
he finds the church in the hands of Bloody Mary, and he takes that church
and puts it down before our young men of to-day. Then he sets Deacon
Thompson to boring Deacon Monson's eyes out with an augur, and then
asks our young if they want to belong to any such wicked old church as
that? [Laughter.]
Now, that isn't the church they are asked to belong to. {Applause.]
Ridicule is to harm truth, not error. Our clergymen have no occa-
sion to use ridicule, for the business of the clergyman is not to harm
truth but to harm error. So he can use satire all day long, because
our Savior used it. Our Savior never used ridicule. [Applause.]
In fact, when any man uses ridicule in speech or editorial he is trying
to stab the truth, for that is what the weapon is for.
Still, our clergymen should understand ridicule, so as not to deny it.
1'here is your trouble. You have been denying ridicule all these days,
when you should have explained it. If you want to answer Ingersoll,
don^t deny his ridicule, but explain it.
I
ELI PERKINS. 217
I heard IngersoU deliver his great lecture on the '' Mistakes of
Moses/' in Indianapolis. Splendid speech! I wouldn't take one plume
from the hat of that eloquent infidel I But what did that speech con-
sist of ? Like all of his speeches, it was made up of nine magnificent
truths about human liberty, and human love, and wife's love, and then
be took one little religious truth, multiplied it by live, turned it into
ridicule and 'Maughed it out of court." And the result? Why, the
next day, as usual, all our clergymen came out and denied the whole
lecture— denied ridicule ! That is the mistake our clergymen have hefia
making for ten years. I meet young men every day trembling in the
balance, because you clergymen have denied too much, and not explained
at all. You have not met the infidel logically. If I had followed the
great agnostic, I shoi^d have said:
** Why, IngersoU, you have just found out that Moses and the Jews,
the anti-Christ, made mistakes! We Christians knew that Moses made
mistakes two thousand years ago. It is written there in the ^Mble as
plain as day how Moses murdered an Egyptian, hid him in the sand and
lied about it. Why, Bob, if Moses and tlie Jews hadn't made mistakes
there wouldn't have been any New Testament, there wouldn't have been*
any Cliristianity, there wouldn't have been any need of Christ. Christ
came to correct the mistakes of Moses. [Applause.] Why, Bob, where
did you get your news? You must have just got your Jemsalein
Herald — delayed in a storm! " [Laughter.]
Then I would have said to those Ingersollized Christians, *'Why, my
dear, trembling brothers and sisters, we haven't got to defend Moses,
the Jew, because he made mistakes, because he murdered and lied;
[sensation] we Christians haven't got to defend the faltering Noah when
he got drunk; we Christians haven't got to defend David when he became
a Nero and slaved and debauched his people; and we Christians haven't
got to defend that miserable king of the Jews, Solomon, when he had four
hundred more wives than Brighara Young. [Sensation.] But all wo
Christians have got to do, and it is so easy, is to stand by the Bible
account^ — that the Bible is true, just as it is written in black and white!
They did make mistakes, those Jews did, and they made such grievoiu
mistakes that God threw the whole Jewish dispensation overboard as a
failure — Ciod did nothing in vain — and started a new dispensation, the
Christian dispensation, and sent His only beloved Son, Christ, to sit on
the throne at the head of it. [Applause.] What ! you defending the
unbelieving Jew — the anti-Christ? God never defended them. They
did just the best they conld, those poor Jews did, without Christ.
[^Ap[>lause.] There could bo no perfection without Christ. [Applause.]
218 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM ANb PULPIT,
'' Now^ Christians^ wait till some one shall assault Christianity^ not
Judaism; wait till some one shall assault Christy not Moses. But no one
has assaulted Christ. Renan? Never. IngersoU? Never. When they
come to Christ they stand with heads uncovered. [Loud applause.]
^' I would say more on tliis theological subject — I would kill the
devil — I hate him, and I would kill him, but I see there are i^veral
clergymen present and they — have — their — families — to — support!'*
[Loud laughter drowned the speaker's voice.]
The fact is, a great many people who never think of reading the
Scriptures, but who keep a dusty Bible to press flowers in and as a
receptacle for receipts for making biscuits, often cavil about some the-
ology that they hear about in the corner grocery. A grocery theologian
said to me one day, ^' You don't believe in Noah and the flood, do you?'*
'^ Yes,'' I said, *'and in the Johnstown flood too, when 18,000 were eat-
ing and drinking and 'that flood came and took them off.' Christ said
that 'when He should come again it would be as in the days of Noah.'"
"And the whale story, too. Do yon believe that?"
*' Now there is your corner grocery theology again. The Bible don't
say any thing about a whale. It says, * And God prepared a great fish,'
and if God could make the universe — if lie could say, ' let there be
light,' He could say, ' let there be a big fish.' The world is a miracle,
the violet is a miracle, man is a miracle, the fish is a miracle."
"And that story of Balaam. Do you believe that?" says the gro-
cery theologian. " Why, scientists have examined the mouth of an ass,
and they say it is physically impossible for him to speak."
To this I answer with all the sarcasm of Moody: "If you will
make an ass I will make him speak! " It's all a miracle, life, joy, laugh-
ter, tears and death, and he who can create man can resurrect his soul
and waft it away to eternal joy! [Loud applause.]
What is pathos?
Pathos is the absolute truth about asoloinn subject; but when pathos
is rendered true to nature, it is just as entertaining as humor. How
many times you have seen a sentimental young hidy reading a sorrriwful
love story. She would read and cry, read aiul cry — the villain still pur-
sued her! [Loud laughter.] She enjoyed that pathos. If she hadn't
she would have thrown that book away.
I saw an old slave woman die on a Louisiana plantation during the
war. The scene was humorous an<l )>jith(^tit':
** Doctor, is I got to go?" ai^kod the venerable Christian, her eyes
filled with tears of joy.
*' Aunt 'Liza, there is no jiope for you." 4
*
\
SLl PBRKIN8. 219
'' Bress the Oreat Master for His goodness. Ise ready."
The doctor gave a few directions to those colored women who sat
around 'Liza's bed, and started to leave, when he was recalled by the 6ld
woman, who was drifting out with the tide:
^' Marse^John, stay wid me till it's ober. I wants to talk ob de 61d
times. I knowed you when a boy, long 'fore yon went and been a doc-
tor. I called yon Marse John den; I call you de same now. Take yb'
ole mammy's hand, honey, and hold it. Ise lived a long; long time.
Ole marster and ole missus hab gone before, and de chillun from de old
place is scattered ober de world. I'd like to see 'em 'fore I starts on de
journey to-night. [Sensation.] My ole man^s gone, and all de chillun
I nnssed at dis breast has gone too. Dey's waitin' for dere madder on
de golden shore. I bress de Lord, Marse John^ for takin' me to meet
'cm dar. Ise fought de good fight, and Ise not afraid to meet de Sa-
vior. No mo' wo'k for poor, ole mammy, no mo' trials and tribulations
— hold my hand tighter, Marse John—fadder, mudder — marster — mis-
sus—chillun — Ise gwine home. [Tears in the audience.]
The soul, while pluming its wings for its flight to the Oreat Beyond,
rested on the dusky face of the sleeper, and the watchers, with bowed
heads, wept silently. She was dead! [Sensation.]
Is exaggeration wit?
You have no idea how much of our innocent laughter is caosed by
innocent exaggeration. We sec it all around us. If a person imagines
a thing and expresses it, that is exaggeration. Yon can't imagine a
thing that is. You must imagine something that is not. It is only the
brightest people who have vivid imaginations, and it is only the bright-
est people who have wit.
The charm of the Poet is caused by his imagination or exaggeration.
When the divine Psalmist says '^the morning stars sang together," it is
imagination. l)on*t hold the Psalmist to strict account. Joaquin Miller
in a late poem speaks of the '* clinking stars."
** Why, Joaquin," I said, when I met him, **did you ever hear the
stars clink?" *'No," he said laughin^s 'Mmt the old poetical exaggera-
tion about the stars sinf^iug got to boa * chestnut' ami I thought I'd
make my stars clink " [Ljiughtcr.]
Dear old Longfellow was a sweet Christian, and still he tunes his liar
[laughter] and sings :
"TIh^ sun kiss^'il tin* ilrw ilrops :unl 1ln'y wen* |K3irl8."
This is the swct't wit of the iiiiairi nation — frcnu Apollo's lyre,
[laughter. ]
Our clergymen aro <il>out th*> hrinlitest wits we have, because they
have the brightest imaginations. I iu< i .^ <Iprgymanon the cars to-day.
220 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
I'm sorry I talked to him, for I found afterward, from the brakemaiiy
that he used to be a chaplain in the army — and sometimes these old
chaplains are loaded [laughter] — and I think he had several charges
in him that hadn't been shot ofT since Gettysburg. [Laughter.] Well,
we were talking about cannons, and he asked me if I had seen the can-
non they had just cast for West Point.
I told him I hadn't. *'IIow does it work?"
'* Well, it carries the biggest ball — "
'* How does it work ? ''
'* They shot that cannon off the otlier day, but the ball was so large
that it stood right still, and tlic cannon — went twelve miles!"
[Xiaughter.]
I found out afterward that he was really a clergyman — in good
standing — in Chicago. [Laughter drowned the sentence.]
Now, this was from an innocent clergyman. [Laughter.] But
exaggeration is just as likely to come from a simple farmer. One day,
out in Sioux county, the extreme northwestern county of Nebraska, I
met the professional homesteader. He stood by a prairie schooner, out
of which came a stove-pipe. Behind was a cow and calf and two dogs.
*' Where is your home? '' I asked.
*^ ll'nt got no house," he said, as he kicked one of the dogs and took
a chew of tobacco.
** Where do vou live?"
**Where'd I livol'' he exclaimed, indignantly. •* I don't have to
live anv where. I'm marchin' ahed of civ'lization, sir. I'm home-
stead in'."
** Well, where do you sleep?"
'* Sleep? I sleep over on the Government land, drink out of the
North Platte, eat jack rabbits and raw wolf. But it's gettin' too thickly
settled round here, for me. I saw a land agent up at Buffalo Gap to-daj,
and they say a whole family is comin' up the North Platte fifty miles
below here. It's gettin' too crowded for me here, stranger. I leave for
the Powder river country to-morrow. I can't stand the rush!''
[Laughter.]
But if you want to see gigantic, innocent exaggeration, you must go
West. There, among the mountain peaks and broad prairies, the imagi-
nation has something to feed upon. Their imaginations are brighter
in the West than ours in the East, and then thev are not troubled With
these compunctions of conscience. In the East here many of us are so
«rood — so good! that if we get hold of a good joke we go right out back
^ side of the orchard, Ket ri^^ht down in the corner of the fence and giggle ..
EU PERKINS, 221
— all to ourselves. [Laughter.] That's the meanest kind of close commun-
ion ism. [Langliter. J But while yon are going West, you must go to the
prairie or the mountains to find imagination. Oo to Kansas — that's
where exaggeration lives — that's where it stays. Let exaggeration get
away from Kansas^ and, if there isn't a string tied to it, it will go right
back there again — so natural! [Laughter.]
Xow 1 was out in Kansas City after that great cyclone they had there
three years ago. Terrible cyclonel A third of Kansas City blown away
— three splendid churches went up with the rest. But they were all per-
fectly happy. You can't make those Kansas people feel bad, since they've
got prohibition. [Applause.] If they have grasshoppers out there now,
they telegraph right over to Kew England, " Got grasshoppers! Got grass-
hoppers I ! '*' [Laughter] And then they claim that their land is so rich
that they raise two crops, grasshoppers and corn. [Loud laughter.]
Well, the next day after I got to Kansas City, I went upon the bluffs
with Colonel Coates. lie was going to show me where his house had stood
the day before. Not one brick left on another — trees blown out by the
roots!
Said I, " Colonel, you had a terrible cvclone here yesterday, didn't
you?''
'* Well, there was a little d-r-a-f-t — " [Laughter interrupting the
sentence.]
So you see you can " minify" truth as well as magnify it, and it will
produce just as much laughter.
'* Well,'' said I, " Colonel, how hard did it blow here in Kansas City?
Don't deceive me now; how hard did it blow ?"
*^ Blow," he said, "why, it blew — it blew my cook stove — blew it
away over — blew it seventeen miles, and the next day came back and got
the griddles!" [Laughter.]
"Did it hurt anybody?"
" Hurt anybody I Why, there were some members of the legislature
over here looking around with their mouths open. We told 'em they'd
iKjtter keep their mouths closed during the hurricane, [laughter] but
they were careless — left their mouths open, and the wind caught 'em in
the mouth and turned 'em inside out!" [Great laughter.]
" Did it kill them?" I asked eagerly.
"No," said the colonel, wiping his eyes, " it didn't kill 'em, but they
were a good deal discouraged." [Laughter.]
"Why," he continued enthusiastically, "it blew some of those legis-
lators— blew 'em right up against a stone wall and flattened 'em out as
flat as pan cakes — and — "
222 KINGS OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
" Wiy, what did yoii do with them?*^ I asked. ^
'* Do with them! why, we went out the next day — scraped them legis-
lators off — scraped off several barrels full of ^em — [laughter] and sent
them over to New England and sold them for liver pads!'* [Loud
laughter.]
Out in Dakota they have imaginations as elastic as their climate:
*'One day/' srid Elder Kussell, *'it is a blizzard from Winnipeg, and
the next day it is a hot simoon from Texas. Sometimes the weather
changes in a second. Now, one morning last spring, to illustrate. Gov-
ernor Pierce, of Bismarck, and I were snow-balling each other in the
court-yard of the capitol. Losing my temper, for the Ciovernor had hit
me pretty hard, I picked up a solid clnnik of ice and threw it with all
my might at his Excellency, who was standing fifty feet away.'*
''Did it hurt him?" I asked.
"Yes,'' said the clergyman, regretfully, *' it did hurt him, and Tm
sorry I did it now, but it was unintentional. You see, as the chunk of
ice left my hand, there came one of those wonderful climatic changes
incident to Dakota, the mercury took an upward turn, the ice melted in
transit and the hot water scalded poor Governor Pierce all over the back
of his neck." [Laughter.]
A good instance of exaggeration was the case of Deacon Munson, of
Central New York. They said he was so mean that he used to stop his
clock nights — to keep the gearing from wearing out. [Laughter.]
I did't see this, but the neighbors said the Deacon kept a dairy, and
after skimming his milk on top, he used to walk up and down the street,
and if no one was looking, he would turn it over and skim it on the
bottom. [Laughter.] But that wasn't dishonest. It was only frugal.
He had a perfect right to skim it on the sides — on the end — [Laughter
interrupted the sentence.]
But there was one very queer thing the Deacon used to do. He used
to come down to the butcher-shop every Saturday night, take off his
old slouch hat, full of something or other, and ask the butcher if he
wouldn't please restuff them sausage skins?" [Great laughie? . ]
One day 1 a^sked the Deacon if there were any potato bugs this year?
"Potato bags !" he repeated almost contemptuously, ** why I counted
4G2 potato bugs this morning on one stalk, in one field, and in theother
field they had eaten up the potatoes, vines, fences and trees, and were
sitting around on the clouds, waiting for me to plant the second crop."
[Laughter. ]
"Why," he continued, as he gesticulated wildly, "I had potato-
bugs this morning marcii right into my kitchen — march right up to a
I ,
ELI PKUh'lXS. 2J>a
red-liot stove — yunk rod-hot potatoes right out of the oven ! [Great
hiiit^hter.] 1 wasn't surprised at all! But I was surprised when I went
down to Townsond's store after dinner to see potato-bugs crawling all
over Townsend's books to see who'd bought seed potatoes for next
yrar." [Loud laughter.]
If you want to see gigantic, innocent exaggeration, you must go
dov. nSoutli — go down to Kentucky or Tennessee. Let a Kentuckian
«;et hold of a new joke, and he just leaps onto a thoroughbred horse
and jlies for his neighbor's. Half of the horses around Lexington are
lame — caused by getting there early with jokes. [laughter.]
And no mean man does that. O. the man that rides up in front of
your house a cold, stormy day, beckons to you, and you come shivering
down to the gate, and he tells you a joke that makes you laugh ha! ha! !
ami you go back into the house and put your arms around your wife's
neck and kiss her — no mean man does thati [Applause.]
Now, I was down in Kentucky last spring, during the overflow on the
Ohio, and I went across the Ohio to Cairo — Cairo on the Ohio river — and
sometimes under it. [Laughter.] It was a great deluge. But the women
were all perfectly happy. If there is anything that a woman loves — utterly
loves — it is to have plenty of nice, wet water [laughter] to wash, and as
the water had been pouring down the chimneys for the last week, faster
than it could run out of the front door, they were perfectly happy.
lUit the next day after I got there, the river went down and the streets
were very muddy. I met a Kentucky clergyman there who told me about
the mud.
** You ought to see the mud over in Levy street," he said, ''mud!
mud! mud! Why,. I was riding over there in my carriage this
morning, and • I jumped oil and went into the mud clear to my
ankles.''
''Why," said 1, ** that wasn't yevy deep."
'* Well," he said, ** I jumped head first." [Laughter.]
"But you ought to go over on Water street, there's mud for you!
Why, I was walking along on Water street — walking along carefully
(ihey all walk carefully in Cairo — buck-shot land), walking along care-
fully riglit in the middle of the street, when I saw a stove-pipe hat. I
nin up to it and kicked it, and hit a man right in the car." [Laugh-
ter.]
'*What are you doing here?" I iisked, ''what are you doing here?"
'• Keep still! keep still! keep still! '' he said, *' J^ni sitting in a load
of hay." [Loud laughter.]
224 Kim8 Of TUB PLATFORM AKD PULPIT.
[Mr. Perkins now ^uvc lau«;:htcM- provoking illustrations of ilefonnetl oratory and
defornicHl gesture \vhi(;li made the audicnc^c roar with laughter, hut which can not
he reported. In fact the funniest passages in tlie lectures of Bill Nye, Artemus
Ward, Qriswold and Burdette, vmw not he reproduced in cold type. They must be
heard.]
The deformity of an interruption by tlie audience often causes
laughter. It causes a deformity of a chain of thought. For instance,,
when President Garfield was running for Congress, in war times, he
made a war speech in Ashtabula. '* Gentlemen," he said, ''we have
taken Atlanta, we have taken Savannah, Columbus and Charleston,
and now at last wo have captured Fctcrsburg and occupy Richmond,
and what remains for us to take?"
'* Take a drink ! " shouted an Irishman, f Laughter.]
''What we want," said Sam Cox, in a great low tariff speech in Tam-
many Ilall, ''what we want is plain common sense — plain common
sense "
"That's just what you do want. Sum I '' interrupted a wicked Repul>-
lican. [Laughter.]
An anti-temperance man arose in tlie temperance convention at Des
Itfoines. lie looked so good and benevolent that every one took him
for a reformer, but they soon found out their mistake.
"Speaking of temperance, gentlemen of the convention," he said,
"speaking of temperance, I wish that there was but one saloon in the
United States, and "
"And what then?" interrupted the President.
"And that I owned it !" ]iut the wicked man's voice was drowned
amid hisses and laughter.
Speaking of witty oratory, I've heard Fred Douglass convulse an
audience. At the reception of O'Connell, in Masonic Hall, Philadel-
phia, Douglass' wit and eloquence luul a wonderful effect on the audi-
ence. Remember it was a black man among Irishmen.
Mr. Douglass told about a conversation that was overheard in a crowd
between two Irishmen after he had made a speech in Ohio.
Said one Irishman: " That's a mighty phoino speech fer to be made
by anayger."
" Ah, yes, it was quoite phoine; but he is only half a nayger."
'^ Well, if half a nayger can make a speech like that, phwat the divil
kind of a magnificent speech would a whole nayger make?" [Great
laughter.]
Douglass only consented to address the Irishmen in order to give a
little color to the meeting. [Laughter.]
BLl PEnKtNS. 22S
Bat the great point of Douglass' speech was reached when he said^
slowly and solemnly: ^' Fifty years ago I stood on the same platform
.with Daniel O'Gonnell, the Irish liberator, on the banks of the Liffey,
and before the vast throng he turned to me and said : ' I rejoice to grasp
by the hand the black O'Connell of America."' [Great applause.]
Speaking of paradoxes for the eye as well as the brain. For instance,
three snakes grab each other by the tail and commence swallowing each
other, and they keep it up till they all disappear. [Laughter.]
A printer would laugh to see a verse of poetry deformed by setting
it up from right to left, instead of the regular way.
em ot smees tl
€b ot thguo ereliT
. guitirw fo elyts luiceps A
csoht fo csii roP
'esorp ni kniht ohW
.gnitidni rieht iiiemylir djiA
All the fun in Ilumpty Dumpty is caused by sensuous deformities,
not intellectual. [Applause.]
Now with our new theory of the deformities we can produce laugh-
ter talking on any subject. We could produce laughter describing a
battle — a bloody battle. Take the battle of Bull Run. Now, what
could be more dreadful than that bloody buttle of Bull Run — with its
gore and carnage, and a nation's life at stake. But to makepeople laugh,
you would have to describe that battle as my Uncle William would. lie
was there. Uncle William was, boldly fighting for three days — some-
times on one side and then on the other. [Laughter.]
I can see my Uncle in my mind's eyo figliting at Bull Run> even as
I saw him with my real eye figliting at the battle of Gettysburg — for, I,
too, was there, fighting for my country, [applause] and while that
bloody conflict was at its heiglit, and while the bloody messengers of
death flew thick and fast around me I — I left! [Loud laughter.]
At one time I saw a brigade of rebels coming up on the right flank
and another coming up on the left flank, and I just stepped aside and
— let them come up! [Laughter.]
Why, my Uncle William, for distinguished services at the battle of
Bull Run, thrice refused a — a German silver watch — stem winder.
[Laughter.] When General Butler urged it upon him he said:
'*No, your Honor, I am not guilty, [laughter] give it to General
Butler. He ought to be watched. [Laughter.]
Alas! my uncle afterwards fell in the battle of the Wilderness — but
--be got up again I [Laughter.]
22r. KTMiS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
lie said he didn't want to stand there and — arid interfere with the
bullets. [Loud laughter.]
When I asked Uncle William wlmt was the worst battle he was ever
in — where the l>all8 were the thickest — lie said:
'* Gettysburg was the spot. The balls flew around us likehail-stpneHy'^'
cannister hissed through the air and "
*/ -'*
''Why didn't you get behind a tree ?
' ''Get behind a tree I" said he, *' Why, there weren't trees enough
for the oflicers.'' [Laughter.]
Yes, my uncle was a patriotic man. He loved the glorious fitara
and stripes — loved to rally around the dear old flag, and he said he
was willing to Itjave right in the tliickest of the fight any timj^ just
to go to the rear and rally around it. [Loud laughter.]
Again, suppose you should ask a wit like Artemus Ward to produce
laughter talking about temperance, Jle could do it by using deformed*
oratory, rhetoric, grammar and the other deformities which I have men-
tioned. He would have to talk a good deal, as my Uncle Consider
would. ' V
My Uncle Consider nays, if he had his way, he would make every man
temperate, if he had to hang him to do it. [Laughter.]
One day he came to me, and said he, " Eli, if you drink wine, you
will walk in winding ways; if you carry too much beer, the bier will sooii
carry you; if you drink Ijrandy punches, you will get handy punches/
and if you get the best of whisky, whisky will get the best of you.**
[Laughter.]
Xow my I'ncle William i.s not temperate like my Uncle Consider.
Far diilerent.
You could see by his features, if you could see them, that he used to
indulge in the llowing bowl. He used to drink every once in a while
with people who invited him, and then he used to sdide oat and. drink
r)otween drinks by himself, [fjaughter.]
He used to drink with impunity — or with anybody else who invited
him. [Laughter.]
One (lay he asked Uncle Con^sider to drink with him. The good -old
man took umbrage — but Uncle William he took whisky. [Laughter.] .
L'ncle William used to do a great many queer things when he hftid
taken too much whisky with his water. One day he insisted againtit
his wife's wishes — against his wife's advice — (0, gentlemen, you slion Id -
never i(o a^rainsi vour wife's advice! Our wives know more than we —
they know more than we — and they are willing to admit it) [load
laughtor] — I s;iy my Uncle Williinn insisted against his wife's wishes. on
Bni'jking on a ioail of hay — ("•mini:: home siiortly afterward without a&v
ELI PhUiKINS. 52^7
whiskers or eyebrows, and the iron work of liis wagon in a gunny-bag.
[Ijiiughter.]
Why, drinking so hard made my Uncle William so absent-minded
that one night he came home from the lodge, got up and washed the
^ face of the clock and then deliberately got down and wound up the
■ ♦baby and set it forward fifteen minutes. [Loud laughter.]
What is caricature?
Caricature is wit with the brush. But there never was a caricaturist
who ever produced laughter without deforming something — either mag-
nifying or minifying it, and whenever Tom Nast or Cruikshanks or John
Jjcech or Ilogarth, tl ise splendid caricaturists, have produced laughter,
they have had to defo-m something — that is add imagination to fact.
WTien Nast wanted to make us all laugh at Carl Schurz, in the
Blaine campaign, he had to exaggerate him. You wouldn^t have
laughidd at Carl Schurz if Nast had painted liim truthfully; you never
^. laugh at the truth in art. Instead of that, Nast, you remember, exag-
gerated Carl Schurz. lie painted him with a lean, lank, long neck.
I'hen he put some great green goggles on him. Then he stuck some
little pipe-stem legs into him. [Laughter.] Now, Carl Schurz' legs are
bigger than slate pencils. [Laughter.]
You all noticed that Tom Nast didn't make any fun of Carl Schurz
nt the last election — and do you know why? It was because they were
brother mugwumps, [laughter] and one mugwump never makes fun of
anotlw?r mugwump. In order to make fun of a mugwump you've got to
exaggerate him, and you can't do it. [Loud laughter.] Nature has
finished him. [Continued laughter]
Suppose a witty artist, a caricaturist, wanted to make you laugh at
B^n Butler. How would he £^o to work? Just like the writer. First
lie would paint Ben Butler just as he is. No laughter now. Then he
would look for some salient feature about Butler that he could
exaggerate. lie would take his wife with him. Our wives are very
observing. She would look at Butler's eyes and say:
'* Why husl)aud, Butler's eves are cut on a bias !"
*• So they are — and then he cuts them more on the bias — this way
[j>ulling down the outside corners of his eyes, amid great laughter].
**And he's got a little bald spot on the top of his head !"
**So he has — and he makes a great big bald spot all over his head"
[moving the palm of his hand all over his head].
''And he's got little .short hair sticking out from under that bald
spot?
*jiy
238
EINGa OF THE PLATFORX AND PULPIT.
" So he has, and tho artist makee long hair sticking down this way
[the epoaker still putting dowu hia eyo-lida and rolling hig eye-balls up,
amid great laughter], and when the artist gets through with this picture,
he's got a better likencaa of Butler than a photograph — and yoa recog-
nize itquicker than a photograph, becausotheearicaturiat has multiplied
the points of likeaeas, carried them farther than nature.
BEN BUTLER, CARICATURED BY NA8T.
One day, after I had made these remarks on caricature, Tom Kaat,
that great caricaturist, took up this old piece of wrapping paper [holiliug
!t up to the audience] and a boot brush, and tJie great caricaturist made
ten lightning strokes of the brush, but tliey were tlio strokes of a maater—
and the result was this wonderful picture of Butler — beautiful Butlorl
[Great laughter in the audience as tJie humorist displayed the Car-
icature.]
BLI PEBK1N8. 229
Now> again, suppose a true artist should paint a mule— -a patient
mule. A mule is patient because he is ashamed of himself. [Laughter.]
If he should paint that mule truthfully, you wouldn't laugh. Why, I saw
a mule painted in St. Petersburg, Russia, by that great animal painter,
Shreyer, that sold for fifteen thousand dollars — a simple mule eating a
lock of hay-^while the original mule from which he painted it you could
buy for a dollar and thirty cents. [Laughter.] No one laughed at that
mule. They stood by it in mute admiration. They said, '^ what a mas-
ter is this who can paint a mule like that.'' They stood before that
mule as solemnly and religiously as I saw the tourists standing before
Baphael's Sistine Madonna, in Dresden. But another artist, a witty
artist, painted that mule and everybody was laughing at it. First he
painted the mule truthfully. No laughter now. Then he looked for
some salient feature of the mule that he could exaggerate. He didn't
take his wife with him — 0, no, a man can see the main features of the
mule! [Laughter.] Smart man! [Laughter.] Well he took that main
feature of the mule — that mule's ear, [laughter] and Tan it on up
through the trees, and the chickens were roosting on it. [LaAghter.]
Then he took the other main feature and spread it around on the ground
and the boys were skating on it. [Laughter.]
Now, when Shreyer painted that mule eating a lock of hay and sold
it for fifteen thousand dollars — and that is no uncommon thing in art.
Why, one day Knaus, that great German artist, painted a dirty, sooty
chimney-sweep^a colored chimney-sweep at that. You wouldn't have
that chimney-sweep in your door-yard. But just the moment he got it
done, so truthfully was it ))ainted that A. T. Stewart paid him forty
thousand dollars for it. That is what art will do.
And Dickens used to go down into the slums of London, get hold of
such strange characters us Bill Sykes and Nancy — murderers and mur-
deresses. You wouldn't speak to Nancy Sykes. '*Go away, don't come near
me!" But Dickensdescribes them so truthfully in his book, that by-and-
by you read about them on Sunday morning in your parlor. [Applause.]
And Meissonier, that great French master, once painted a miserable
Dutch Spy. You wouldn't have that spy on your door-step. But when
he got it done, so truthfully was it painted that Vanderbilt gave him
fifty thousand dollars for it, and, to-day, that spy hangs in that beautiful,
brown stone, palace on Fifth avenue. That is what art will do. So
I say when Shreyer painted that mule and sold the 2)icture for fifteen
thousand dollars, what did \m sell? Ho didn't sell the mule; you could
buy the mule for five. lie sold the indli, [Applause.] The truth on
230 KINGS OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
canvas. O, he who can paint the truth on canvas like Shreyer and
Meissonier or Knaus — or he who can write it on paper like Dickens and
Washington Irving — money can't buy it. [Applause.]
So^ I say, that all good humor, in art or literature, is the truth itself;
and all good wit in art or literature id based upon the truth. It is the
truth improved upon by the human imagination — carried farther than
nature and made truer than it was before, like the picture of Butler
[Applause.] But 0, what a gift it is to follow nature! Suppose Nast,
in caricaturing Bulter, had not followed nature! Suppose, instead of
painting Butler^s eyes "more on the bias,*' he had lifted them up
straight?
He would have looked like a Chinaman. His work would have been
a wretched botch.
Now, again, suppose a caricaturist wanted to exaggerate a pug nose,
how would he do it? Why, he'd make it pugger and puggertillit
finally dwindled down to a wart. [Laughter.] Again, when it comes
to human character, what a task it is to improve upon nature! To do
that, the writer should not only bo a philosopher, but he should be a
moral man, and it were better were he a Christian. The world is full
of wicked books where the writers have not improved upon human
character. They have not exaggerated it upward toward Heaven
and virtue, but downward, away from truth, toward vice and hell I
[Applause.] That is what is the matter with Peck's '^ Bad Boy.*' Peck
wasn't a philosopher when he wrote that book, and instead of exaggerat-
ing that sweet boy up toward Heaven, he exaggerated him downward
toward vice, and the book is gone, condemned by morality. You will
see it in no school library. Was it based upon the truth? Many of you
have read it as the brakeman dropped it, and now, tell me frankly, could
there be a father in real life so ignorant, so stupid and low, that he
would let his boy take him by the ear, lead him out into the garden,
tell him to kneel down, and let a buck — buck — buck him? [Laughter.]
Why a boy mean enough to treat his father so — revere thy father! —
and a father silly enough to allow himself to be treated so; why they both
ought to be taken by the seats of their trousers and dropped down a
well! [Applause.] And they have been dropped down a well. Human
nature, refined lium n nature, couldn't stand it.
But Mrs. Burnett has come with that same boy again. She is a master
of her art. She takes tliat same swoct boy, culls him Lord Fauntleroy,
and exaggerates him upward toward Heaven and virtue. Sweet boy!
And when our good mothers see hini in the play, so pure and gentle, so
true to nature, they want to hug him to their bosoms. [Applause.]
BLI PERKINS. 231
Mothers, if your boy's sonl has been blackened by Peck's bad boy, buy
him Lord Fauntleroy and whiten it out again! [Applause.]
Now Baron Munchausen will live a thousand years. We see him in
every school library, bound in calf. He never debased human charac-
ter. I*d as soon think of having a library without *'Don Quixote,"
without Dean Swift's ''Tale of a Tub/' without ''Gulliver's Travels'*
or without that splendid humor of John Bunyan, as to have a library
without Baron Munchausen. [Applause.]
John Bunyan a humorist! I should say so! You white-haired
Christians who have been in the Slough of Despond with the load of sin.
upon your back — who have come up through the Wilderness of Doubt
and who now stand on the sliores of the beautiful River of Life, look-
ing at the pearly gates of Paradise beyond — Christians, you know John
Bunyan has descril)ed your c:isc close to life a thousand times. [Applause. J
John Bunyan, we take off our hats to you, the King of humorists and
the King of Truth! [Loud applause.]
To illustrate one of Baron Munchausen's exaggerations, I change
one of his stories into modern hmguage. One day the Baron was riding
along in his cutter hunting for wolves near St. Petersburg!!, when he was
attacked by a fierce pack of wolves from behind. Oh, they were savage
fellows, these wolves vere, with ponderous, open jaws! Pretty soon a
wolf made a leap for him. The Baron laid right down in his cutter,
the wolf went right over the cutter, mouth open, bit a hole right into
the horse, when the Baron jumped up, kicked the wolf clear in — the
wolf went on eating — eating — ate his way right to the bit, and the
Haron drove that wolf right into St. Petersburgh! [Uproarious laugh-
ter.]
In conclusion I will say that the brightest wit will not produce
laughter unless you can get your audience to thinking. They talk
about the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling ; the
sixth sense is the brain, the very domo of a man's head, and that is for
wit.
It is only the virtuous man who has a clear head, who can see through
the most subtle wit. The wicked man, sordid with vice, and with mind
blunted with intemperance, cannot appreciate a fine joke. Such jokes
we should keep for the clear-eyed moral num. He appreciates them, and
that is his reward for being virtuous. Be virtuous and you will be happy
— see more joy and jokt s in life I know this from my own experience.
[Laughter.]
• The clear-eyed nioml man is a millionaire — at heart. (»od gives him
a thousand dollars' worth of enjoyment, out of common things every
232 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM ANB PULPIT.
day. Never discourage the happy story-teller. I have listened many a
time to the recital of a long story out of my own bookl I didn't ring the
chestnut bell on the dear good soul who tried to make me happy. One
of the greatest blessings ever given to man is that of laughter. I have
seen many men who could create laughter^ and who could enjoy laugh-
ter, but I have never yet heard any one thank God for the blessing of
laughter. The chestnutphobia is the thing we should avoid. The
glorious sunshine is a chestnut, the sparkling water is a chestnut, the
mother love is a chestnut, aye, happiness itself is a chestnut. The man
who is afflicted with chestnutphobia would become tired of the harps of
heaven after a thousand years, and long for another instrument. The
new song would become old to him — he would yearn for a change of
programme.
*'0, rippling river of laughter, thou art the blessed boundary line
betwixt the beast, and men, and every wayward wave of thine doth
drown some fretful fiend of care ! 0, laughter, rosy-dipped laughter of
joy! there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and
glorify all the tears of grief I '^
** But the source of that river must be in the fountain of purity.*'
[Applause.]
ELI PERKINS' CHILDREN STORIES.
For years Eli Perkins has been writing children stories, inspired
mostly by his little girl Ethel. A few of them are appended:
A Sweet Compliment. — That was a delicate compliment given by
a nigged, little Irish newsboy, to the i)rctty girl who bought a paper of
Jiini. **Poor little fellow/' said she, **aiu't you very cold?"
*' I was, ma'am, before you passed," he replied.
Is God Dead? — **Papa," asked a little girl whose father had become
quite worldly, and had given up family prayers — **I say, papa, is God
dead?"
'•' No, my child, why do you ask that?"
*' Why, Pa, you never talk to him now as you used to do."
These words haunted him until he was reclaimed.
Ethei/s Cakes. — '*0h, dear! "said little Ethel, *'I have so many
cares. Nothing but trouble all the time."
'*What has happened now, Ethel?" asked her sympathetic play-
fellow.
'*Why, yesterday a little baby sister arrived, and papa is on a journej.
Mamma came very near being gone, too. I don't know what I should
have done if mamma hadn't been home to take care of iti"
ELI PERKINS. 233
Exact Obedience. — *' Ethel, I'd like just awfully to kiss you, but
I expect it wouldn't do. You know your mamma said you mustn't never
kiss the boys/' said Willie, regretfully, as he looked in Ethel's beauti-
ful eyes.
"Yes, that's just what she said, Willie. That is, it's about what
she said. I 'member just as well ! She says to me, she says, ^ Ethel
don't you ever let me see you kiss the boys.' Mamma she's gone oyer to
Mrs. Woodsess."
Ethel's Grandmother. — When Ethel tumbled down and broke a
basket of eggs, the children all cried:
*' Oh, Ethel, won't you catch it when your mother sees those broken
eggs. Won't you, though!"
*' No, I won't tach it, either," said Ethel. '* I won't tach it at all.
I'z dot adranmother!"
Ethel's Bible Explanation. — '' What is it to bear false witness
against thy neighbor?" asked Ethel's benevolent old clergyman to the
infant class of Sabbath-school scholars.
'^ It's telling falsehoods about them," said little Emma.
** Partly right, and partly wrong," said the clergyman.
"I know," said Ethel, holding her little hand high up in the air.
*'It's when nobody did anything and somebody went and told of it."
Children's Innocent Love. — *'It was a sweet love saying, and
worthy of Ilim who took little children up."
Little Philip fell down stairs one day and injured his face so seriously *
that for a long time he could not speak. When he ,did open his lips,
however, it was not to complain of pain. Looking up at his mother,
he whispered, trying to smile through his tears:
** I'm pretty ^lad 'twasn't my little sister !"
Ethel's Excuse. — Ethel used to play a good deal in the Sabbath-
school class. One day she had been very quiet. She sat up prim and
behaved herself so nicely, that, after the recitation was over, the teacher
remarked:
'* Ethel, my dear, you were a very good little girl to-day."
** Yes*m. I couldn't help being good. I dot a tiflf neck."
Ethel's Wisdom. — When Ethel's mother came back from the opera
she stooped over to kiss her. As her big eyes opened, her mother said:
••My darling, did you say your prayers to-night?"
** Yes, mamma, I said 'em all alone."
*• Hilt who did you say them to, Ethel, when the maid was out
with nie?
o •>
234 KINHS OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
'* Well, mamma, when I went to bed I looked aronnd the bouse for
somebody to say my prayers to, and there wasn't nobody in the house to
say 'em to, and so I said 'em to God/'
His Lip Slumped. — Ethel went to Dodworth's dancing class, and
one day, when tlie little boys and girls were dancing, they say Freddy
Vanderbilt kissed her.
When she got home she ruslicd up to her mother with tears in her
eyes, and exclaimed, ** 0, mamma, a boy kissed me!"
*'0, Ethel,*' said her mother, with mock grief. *'I*m so ashamed
to think you should let a little boy kiss you! "
"Well, mamma," said Ethel, after a little reflection, "I couldn't
help it."
'^ You couldn't help it?*' exclaimed her mother.
*' No, mamma. You see Freddy and I were dancing the polka,
Freddy had to stand up close to me, and all at once his lip slipped and
the kiss happened."
Ethel's Queer Answek. — When Ethel was five years old she caught
a cold that made her very hoarse, and right in the middle of it she went
to pay a visit to Mrs. James Shindler, her grandmother. During the day
she recited her various successes at school, and ended by declaring that
she could read a good deal better than Sabrina, who was eight years old.
" But wouldn't it sound better if some one else said it?" asked Mrs.
Shindler.
*^ Yes," answered Ethel witha s5ber countenance, '* I think it would;
I have such a bad cold I tant say it very well."
Witty Blunder. — In Portland, where I lectured for the Y. M. C.
A., I was asked to say something to the Sabbath-school scholars on
Sunday evening. Now my talks are "keyed up" to college audiences
or church audiences, which are about as keen of appreciation as college
audiences. I could not think of any thing to talk about, so I looked at
the children and said:
"Now, children, about what shall I talk to-night?"
"About three minutes," said a little girl.
The witty answer convulsed the church with laughter, and the ice
once broken, I had no trouble afterwards."
Those Wicked Uncles. — In my Sunday-school class when I was
in college, was a dear, sweet little boy. lie was beloved by every one,
and especially by \\\a Undo William. Still his uncle used to tease him
a good deal, and teach him all kinds of nonsense rhymes, just to plague
his mother. One day I was telling the children about satan. I told
them that satan was a wicked tempter, and that is why our Savior
said, " Get thee behind me, Satan!"
ELI PEfiKINS. 235
"Now/* said I, "can any of you children tell me any thing about
Satan."
** Alfred can," spoke up one little fellow. ' ,
*^ Well, Alfred," I said, "you can stand up and tell us what you
know about Satan."
Then Alfred arose proudly, and repeated in a boyish key:
** Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I die before I wake,
It'll puzzle Satan to pull me straight."
" Why, Alfred," I said, in amazement, " did your mother teach you
that?"
"No, but my Uncle William did! "
Children's Dreadful Questions. — One day I sat on the New
York Central train, behind a pale, care-worn lady, who was taking a
little boy from Albany to Rochester. As the little boy was of a very
inquiring mind, and every thing seemed to attract his attention, I could
not help listening to some of his questions.
"What is that. Auntie?" the little boy commenced, pointing to a
stack of hay on the marsh.
'' Oh, that's hay, dearest," answered the care-worn lady.
'MVhat is hay, Auntie?"
'* Why, hay is hay, dear.^*
** But what is hay made of? "
'^ Why, hay is made of dirt and water and air."
'MVho makes it?"
*Miod makes it, dear.
*' Does he make it in the day time or in the night?
" lu both, dear.'
'^ And Sundays?
** Yes, all the time."
** Ain't it wicked to make hay on Sunday, Auntie?"
*M)h, I don't know. I'd keep still, AVillie, that's a dear. Auntie is
tired."
After remaining quiet a moment, little AVillie broke out:
** Where do stars come from. Auntie?"
'' I (loir t know; nobody knows."
** Did the moon lav 'cm?"
*^ Ves, I guess so/' ro])lied the wicked lady.
''('an the moon lay eggs, too?"
** I suppose so. Doir't bother ine."
A short silence, when Willie broke out again;
b ill Liiu ui%y uiiiiu ur lu uiiu iii^uui
99
236
KINQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
9f
" Bennie says oxins is a owl. Auntie; is they?"
'* Oh, perhaps so! "
" I think a whale could lay eggs— don't you. Auntie?'*
'' Oh, yes; I guess so," said the shameless woman.
" Did you ever see a whale on his nest? ''
" Oh, I guess so."
"Where?"
*• I mean no. Willie, you must be quiet; Pm getting crazy!
*^ What makes you crazy. Auntie?"
" Oh, dear, you ask so many questions! "
'^Did you ever see a little fly eat sugar? "
'' Yes, dear."
"Where?"
" Willie, sit down on the seat, and be still, or V\\ have to shake you I
Now, not another word! *'
And the lady pointed her finger sharply at the little boy, as if she
were going to stick a pin through him. If she had, what a wicked
woman she would have been!
And still there arc 8,946,217 sweet, innocent little boys, just like
Willie, in the United States, who, though innocent themselves, cause a
good deal of mental profanity.
ELI PERKINS' LECTURE TICKET.
Eli Perkins often used, for college lectures, a burlesque admission
ticket. We copy one used at Union College, Schenectady, his alma mater.
GOOD ANYWHERE ON EARTH FOR 962 YEARS.
AT LARGE.
ADMIT THE BEARER to Eli Perkins' Lecture, anywhere in the
world, for years and ycai*s.
The Lecturer will commence at 8 o'clock sharp, and continue till some-
body request him to stop.
In case of an accident to the lecturer, or if he should die or be hung
before the evening of the disturbance, tliis ticket will admit the bearer
to a front seat at the funeral, where he can sit and enjoy himself the
same as at the lecture.
The highest priced ttcafs, thomi nearest the door, are reserved for the
jMirticular friends of the sjyeaker.
[Please don^t turn over.
\ ./
BLI PERKINS.
237
On the reyerse side of the card were the following burlesque press
testimonials:
OPINIONS OF THE PRES8.
Mr. Perkins refers with pride to the following high testimonials:
When Ell Perkins delivered his lecture in the Tiiiaois House of Beprrtien-
sibles. there was a irreat rush— hundreds of people left the building, and they
said if he had repeated it the next niffht they would have left the city.— CTkleoffo
Timen.
Mr. Beecher, an author quite well known in Brooklyn, thus writes
to the London Times in reguti to Mr. Perkins' eloquence:
Words cannot describe the impressive sight. How sublime! to see Mr.
Perkins standing perfectly erect, with one hand on his broad, massive, thick
skull, talking to the educated classes— to see the gr«ftt orator declaiming per-
fectly unmoved, while streams of people got up and went out I How grand a
spectacle, as joke after Joke fell from the eloquent lips of this Cicero of orators,
to watch the enthusiastic crowds arising, majestically, as one man and waving
their hands as they clamorously demanded their— money back at tlie box office.
Says tiic genial editor of the Congressional Olobe:
We never, but once, experienced more real genuine pleasure than when
this clofiuent man (Mr. Perkins) closed his remarks. That occasion was when
we won the affections of a beautiful young lady, and gained a mother-in-law
—and then saw that mother-in-law sweetly and serenely pass away.
P. S. — ^£1i Perkins distributes a six-dollar (?hromo to all who remain
t^ the end of the lecture. Parties of six who sit the loctunc out, will be
given a House and Lot.
THE ^^DANBURY NEWS MAN/'
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCBNCES.
James Montgomery Bailey, who has made himself famous as the " Danbury News
Man/' was bom in Albany, New York, September 25, 1841. On completing bis educa-
tion, he gave his services to his country, and fought through tlie late war In a Con-
necticut regiment. After the war he settleti in Danbury and establislied the NewM,
Ilitt articles were widely copied wherever the English language went, and his fame
will go down with the foremost humorous writers of the country. Mr. Bailey, has
written several books, and his ** Life in Danbury " is now liaving a large sale.
Mr. Bailey's wit has a delicious mental flavor. In fact, it is
always the shrewd, thoughtful man who enjoys it. It is not in
long, inane dialogues, but a flash of thought. The humorist says a
])oor man came to him with tears in his eyes one day, asking for
help for his destitute and starving cliildren.
" What do you need most*?" asked Mr. Bailey.
" Well, we need bread, but if I can't have that I'll take tobacco."
One day a solemn and religious Danbury man hailed a charcoal
pe<ldler with the query :
" Have you got charcoal in your wagon?"
'' Yes, sir," said the expectant driver, stopping his horses.
** That's right," observed the religious man with an approving
nod, ''always tell the truth and people will respect you."
And then he closed the door just in time to escape a brick hurled
by the wicked i>eddlor.
*' Speaking of lazy men,'' said Mr. Bailey, " we have a man in
Danbury so lazy that instead of shoveling a path to the front gate
he pinches the baby's ear with the nipi)ers till the neighbors come
rusliing in to tread down the snow."
A Danbury man was bargaining for a house of old McMasters,
and asked him if tlio house was cold.
CAN 1 TBDEtT YOD TO DO AN ERRAND FOR ME?
THE DAN BURT NEWS MAN. 241
" Do you say your prayers every night?"
** Yes, ma'am."
" Can I trust you to do an errand for me? "
*• Yes, ma'am."
" I think I can too." said the lady, looking steadily down on the manly face.
* • Here is five cents to get me an apple. Remember God sees you."
" Speaking of good stories, what is the best thing that ever really
occurred in Danbury ?" I asked.
"It was this way: One of our school committee-men, Eben
Tower, was to visit the Danbury school. That he might make a
good appearance, his wife, the day before, mended his trousers and
accidently left the needle in the seat of the garment.
" When Eben arrived at the school, he stiffly returned the salu-
tation of the polite teacher, and majestically settled into the 'com-
pany chair.' It didn't seem to the most acute observer that he had
but just touched the chair, when he at once began to ascend. A
wave of perplexed pain passed over his face, as his hand soothingly
parted his coat tails.
"'Perhaps you prefer an arm chair,' said the teacher, blandly.
" ' Yes, I never could sit in a cane seat.'
"A wooden chair was at once offered him, into which lie
dropped almost as swiftly as he got out of it again.
"'Anything the matter?' asked the teacher, as the old man
stood on his feel with a red face and an unnatural fire in his eye.
" ' Any thing the matter ! ' he shouted, as he shook his fist angrily
at vacancy. ^Any thing the matter! Yes, there is. (iimme mv
liat;' and as he danced toward tlie door he shouted back, 'school
or no school, I kin whip the pewserlanermus boy what stuck the pin
in them cheers.'
"* Lor, Eben I' exclaimed his wife, as he tore into the house,
' what's the matter with you i '
"' Matter!' shouted the infuriated man, as he snatched off his
coat and flung it out of the window, *I have been made the fool of
the entire district bv that snonkin' teacher,' and his Sundav hat flow
through another window. 'Pins stuck into my cheer as I was
a-settin' down as onsuspishus like as i am a-settin' down now in my
own —
" ' Lucretia!' he ominously howled, as he sprung out of^/<a^ chair,
and spasmodically went for the wounded part with both hands,
' you're foolin' with vour best friend now, and he ain't in the humor
to stand the triflin'.'
243
KINQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PVLPIT.
^^ In an instant it flashed into the good lady's mind what tbe
trouble really was. In the next instant Eben's nether gannent was
over her arm, and there — there in the midst of the repairs glistened
the source of all the annoyance.
"The unfortunate man gave one brief stare at the evil thing, and
falteringly remarked, as he thought of the future, 'I'd agi'n twenty
dollars, Lucretia, if you hadn't found it'."
DANBURY NEWS MAN'S LECTURE.
Mr. Bailey sent the following letter with the MSS. of his lecture.
"England from a Back AVindow;
99
7,M nXTTiZZ
Ladies and Gentlevxen: — Being of a confiding nature and brought up
amid tlie simple influences of a country village, my friends have feared
that in this lecture experiment I might become too communicative, and
say things that had better bo left unsaid. There is such a thing as being
THE DANSURT NEWS MAN. 243
too communicative, you know. I have an illustration in view. There
is no object so capable of inundating the human system with the two
extremes of joy and anguish as a shingle. Balance a shingle on a brick;
put a lump of mud on one end and violently strike the other with a rock,
and the mud immediately begins to climb up the infinitude of space.
Split a shingle a part of its length, get the dog next door to back into the
opening, and an effect is produced which will arouse an entire commun-
ity to a clearer conception of the realities of life.
Of the agony a shingle can impart, it is not my purpose to speak.
There are some things too sacred to drag before a public assembly.
Now there is not a shingle in all England. An American with one
bunch of shingles and a change of clothing might travel all over Britain
without a penny expense. As there are no shingles, so, also, there is not
a wooden dwelling in England. This fact placed a Manchester gentle-
men in a rather embarrassing position. He had sojourned in the States
several years, and returned to his native land fully primed with valuable
information. [Laughter.] Several nights after, while entertaining a
few friends in the private bar-parlor of the White Horse Tavern, he ven-
tured on the astounding assertion that, while in America, he had seen a
building moved, and, being made desperate by the horrified expression
on the faces of his companions and the utter impossibility of backing
safely out, followed up the sensation by recklessly claiming that he had
scon a three-story tenement going down the middle of a street. Imme-
diately an impressive and ominous silence fell upon the auditors, and
presently they arose, one by one, and, with glances of significant pity on
the hardened narrator, moodily retired from the room, leaving him
entirely alone with his seared conscience. The last one to leave over-
hauled his predecessor in the entry, and in a gloomy whisper observed
that *^ that was the bloodiest lie he had ever heard.'* And to this day
that returned Englishman is eyed with suspicion.
So much for being too communicative.
We are all more or less conceited until we travel. Our pifU insti-
tutions and customs arc considered the best until we have had opportunity
to compare, them with others. And yet, travel does not always remove
or even modify prejudice. People who run through a foreign country
under the impression that their own land is immeasurably superior in
every rospoct — a notion tliey express on all occasions — can not hope to
gi't a very clear idea of tliat country or of those who inhabit it. Con-
st^(|uently, we have travelers' stories which go to show that England is
principally smoke and fo^, and its people close-mouthed, surly and
selfish. I feel safe in saying that of every one hundred Americans who
244 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AM) PULPIT,
go to Europe, ninety-five stay less than three weeks in England, while
they cheerfully spend months on the continent.
And yet, England, with the wonderful beauty of its scenery, the
glory of its charities, the whirl of its dissipation, the value of its history,
and the hospitality of its people, outranks any nation on the globe.
A newly arrived American is readily recognized in England. There
is so much of him [laughter] that he can easily bo seen on the darkest
night. lie feels that the eyes of an elTeto monarchy^— properly shaded —
are upon him; that his coming is the opportunity of a lifetime for a
down-trodden people, to refresh their sight with a free-born citizen.
While I am upon this subject, I might mention that the English
enjoy a few mistaken ideas in regard to us. There are a great many
things they do not understand, although I think I detected an improve-
ment after my arrival. I liave said that all the English are not burly,
self-containing and exclusive. And I tried to show those with whom I
came in contact that all Americans are neither boors nor assassins — the
only two classes many of the British seem to recognize among us. It is
the style of American journalism to exaggerate, I am pained to say.
Another sad feature is jesting on tragic subjects. These excesses are
readily seized upon by the English press, and the incidents sown broad-
cast among their people as illustrative of our character. It is the mis-
fortune of the English not to understand an American joke. I had
a painful evidence of that while cfonversing with a fellow-countryman
in the coffee room of a London hotel. He spoke to me of the great
number of bow-legged people he had met in England, and asked what
was, in my opinion, the cause. I told him it must have resulted from
their standing too long at a time, contemplating their national debt.
Whereupon an Englisli gentleman sitting near said:
^* And aren't there many bow-legged people in your country ?'*
'^Ko, sir.''
'^Perhaps your national debt is so large your people don't have to
stand up to see it/' he suggested. We made no reply. lie got from
humor right down to solid facts. We saw he did not understand Amer-
ican humor.
Whatever the English may believe of our manners and customs,
many of them have ennobling ideas of money-making in the States.
Numbers have come here with a view to making a fortune in a few
years, and to return to live in a castle with hot and cold water on every
floor. When in Elston, tlie birthplace of Bunyan, I sought to glean
some local traditions of the great preacher. But the old people With
whom I talked knew nothing but Canada. Fifteen years before Bome
THE DANSUBT NEWS MAN. 245
one had gone to Canada from Elston, with scarcely a shilling in hi 4
pockety and had now returned worth $65,000. These aged citizens hail
no special feeling against Bunyan, but they thought the time could be
more profitably employed in talking about Canada. They never liyed ^
so close to Canada as I have.
Of the extent of the United States, these people are not able to grasp
a proper conception. They cannot be made to realize that Canada is not
concealed somewhere within the States, and one of them once asked mo
how far Massachusetts was from Central Park. An English friend
observing an American family stopping at our hotel, said to me:
"Do you know the Fergusons P'
'' No."
** Why, how's that?" he inquired in some surprise; "they come from
America!"
I was obliged to confess that there were some two or three families
in America, besides the Fergusons, with whom I was not personally
acquainted.
They call Michigan, Mitchy-gin, and Connecticut, Connectty-out.
But the name of Chicago is their chief recreation. Even the dreadful fire*
fiend was more merciful than are they. With exasperating complacency
they denominate it Cthi-ka-go, Cthi-cog-o, Chick-a-go, Ghee-a-go; but
the favorite rendering is Shee-caggy. Several Englishmen assured me
they had been as far West as Shee-caggy. [Laughter.]
Our mixed liquors and slang are never failing objects of interest to
them. It is to be regretted that I was not better qualified to give them
the desired information about them. [Laughter.] How they would revel
in the information of an editor fresh from one of our city dailies. [Laugh-
ter.] They asked me if there were such drinks as brandy-smashes, claret-
punches and giu-slings, and when I told them that I did not know for
certain, but thought I had heard those things mentioned by worldly
people in the States, they have said:
**Ah!how wonderful!"
I hope I have not deceived those people.
But when they pressed mo to tell them why Americans called some
of their drinks ** coffin-makers," ** soul-destroyers," '^nose-painters,'*
and ** dead-sliots/' I felt compelled to admit that I never before heard
tlie terms; and then th(»y were disappointed.
Kn^liiiid is made up of Knglishmen, Americans and foreigners, and
the last named are so scarce as to be immediately noticeable, f Ijaugh-'^-
ter.] You do not see there an English builder with German workmen
and Irish servants. The merchants, manufacturers and business men.
\
»46 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
generally, are English; their employees are English; the coachmen are
English, the porters and laborers are English, the servant girls are Eng-
lish, and so are the newsboys, bootblacks, and gamins generally. Wher-
ever you turn, you see English, English, English!
It is an imposing spectacle. Broad jaws, sloping shoulders, red
cheeks, flaxen hair, side-whiskers, gaiters, round sack-coats, stiff hats,
V canes, umbrellas and eye-glasses. All English.
More noticeable than all other Englishmen is the London boy. I
never tired while studying the London boy. There is so much of him,
not individually, but collectively. Individually he is slim in body,
with generally a white, unhealthy face, spindling legs, and rather nar-
row back of the head. He wears trousers tight to his shrinking shanks,
and a cap which makes him look like an orphan boarding with a maiden
aunt. He is a poor boy, without doubt, always on the street^ and
always in the way. I never saw such a boy elsewhere. He is not
quarrelsome, not saucy, not addicted to smoking, and never profane,
even under the most favorable circumstances. He is a helpless yonth,
with a stony stare levelled into shop windows, and when not thus
engaged he is rubbing up against the buildings or toppling over obstruc-
tions. He has a dreadful tendency to be always backing up against
something, and to be always missing it, to the detriment of his bones.
Only they do not fall with sufficient force to break a bone. I have seen
one of them slide from a lamp post, turn a part somersault, recover him-
self, hit up against the post again, slip off the curb, and gradually get
down on his back in the gutter— taking in all some nine seconds to do
it — while an American boy would go down like a flash, stave a hole in
the back of his head, and make a doctor^s bill of eighteen dollars, in
less than a second. [Laughter.]
But the English are all so conservative.
There is one thing I must tell you before proceeding farther. I dis-
like to deceive people. And yet I am constantly in danger of doing it.
No one to see me would doubt for an instant that I had beheld Queen
Victoria. This makes me sad, because I did not see her. It is a humili-
ating confession, but I am too honest to conceal it. I thought but
little, indeed, of this disappointment when I was in England, but on
returning home I was made to see the dreadful mistake I had been
guilty of. I was made to understand what a sickening failure the
whole trip had been. I have had men come to me with a glad light in
their eyes to ask about the Queen, and when I have told them that I
never beheld her I have seen them reel from my presence with blanched
faces and quivering lips like men stricken with a sudden pestilence.
THE DANE UB Y IfEWS MAHf. 247
But I conld not help it. These people do not seem to understand what
a rare being the Queen is. I neither wish to misrepresent nor malign
them, but they imagine the Queen is to be casually met with on the
promenade, at the post-office, or in the ice-cream saloon. This is not
so. The Queen of England is almost as secluded from public view as if
she had been driven into the earth by a steam hammer. It is natural, I
presume, for our people to desire to see royalty. Americans abroad
have an unquenchable longing to look with their own eyes upon a member
of the royal family. It is not to admire them, that we have this wish, but
we want to abhor them. [Laughter.] I think this is the feeling. I
made many efforts to get at the royal family to abhor them, before suc-
cess crowned my efforts. I have gone a hundred miles to abhor a single
member of the Queen's household.
There are but few advantages to the many drawbacks in being royal.
The Queen goes nowhere really. She is the ruler of England, but there
are hundreds of streets in her own city of London which she never saw.
How much she has read of the gayety of the watering places, and how much
sighed for just one glimpse! How frequently she has been told of the
excitement of the Derby day, the exhilaration of a ride on top of a stage-
coach, the fascination of a circus, the glory of the ballet, the comfort of
old inns, the hilarity of a country fair, the glitter and charm of the
lighted shops, the wonders of the underground railway, the delight of a
soda-water fountain in full blast, and many, many other things which
the commonest subject enjoys, but which she is eternally shut out from.
She has her palace and her walled-in garden, and standing there she can
say to the people of London,
** Here you can not come! ''
But they with their miles of streets, and multitude of glories can jaw
back to their queen,
*' Here you can't come! "
This is strictly confidential. I never went by that castle wall with-
out thinking there were just as envious eyes on one side as on the other;
but I never spoke of it, as I did not wish to make trouble.
She can walk there as much as she likes, and by herself. But there
is no swapping gossip and preserve recipes over the gate with the woman
in the next house. [Laughter.] Nor a run out in the afternoon to see
a neighbor's new shawl, and to show her own. What does she know of
the exquisite pleasure of badgering a shop-keeper into lunacy? Or of
the subtle excitement of hoarding up old rags to exchange for new tin-
ware? [Laughter.]
There was no opportunity to get inside of Buckingham Palace — ^the
Queen's city residence — an unpretentious four-story building, so I used
248 KINGS OF THE PL A TFOnST AND PULPIT.
to content myself standing in front of it, admiring the coat of arms over
the gateway. It was the English coat of arms, a lion and a unicorn
standing on their hind legs squaring off at each other. It was a* Ycry
attractive object to me. I have stood before it hours at a time, lost in a
trance of delight. The lion had a smile on his face. He was the first
lion I ever saw laugh. I have seen thousands of these coats of arms, but
never saw a sedate lion among them. He is always laughing as if it
was the best joke he ever heard of, being matched against a unicorn with
a barber pole betweert its eyes. And it is absurd when you come to
think of it; for a lion could whip a unicorn around a stump, and have
its barber pole in front of a millinery shop in less than nine seconds.
You can't change the English lion. He is the one thing all the time.
But you can change an American eagle, [laughter] if you are not con-
nected with the press.
But I like to see a lion look pleased. I think we were all intended
to be happy. A lion that won't laugh is no society for me. [Laughter.]
I had all along been anxious to revel in rural England. There was,
however, one slight drawback to the full enjoyment of the scheme.
When I told a London friend that I proposed going into the farming
region and mixing with its people, to see what tliey did and how they
did it, he gravely shook his head.
" The English farmer, ''said he, ''is a line specimen of perverse human-
ity. He is reticent, suspicious, jealous. Our farming country is divided
into the large estates of noblemen and gentry. These estates are sub-
divided into farms and rented to the men who form an important class
in England. They hold the possession of their lands by good behavior;
and it is the tenant's ambition to keep his place all his life, and at his
death to leave it to his oldest son. Many of the present possessors of
farms were born on them, as were their fathers. It is not only their
home, but their ancestral hall, and they guard it with jealous care
against the advances of rivals. Many a man has lost his farm through
some indiscreet remark made in the presence of a neighbor, who coveted
the place; and who lost no time in creating an unfavorable impression
of him at headquarters. Then, again, as his farm is not his own, but
always, so to speak, in the market, he is careful to keep the proceeds
from it a secret, so, if he is doing well no neighbor will strive to get his
farm by bidding higher, and thus increase the price of his rent to
retain it. There are other things, perhaps, which I do not understand,
that go to make the English farmer tight-headed; and, while I am quite
cortainn one of them will treat you disrespectfully, yet I am positive you
THE DANBUR T NEWS MAN, 24Si
will not have a chance to go over their farms, or mix with their honse-
holds; and, as far as gaining a knowledge of them is concerned, your
mission will be fmitless/'
Thus my London friend sketched the situation. When I got my letters of
introduction and started down into old Norfolk, I made about as gloomy
a procession as was ever precipitated upon that blossoming section of
England. I went direct to the ancient town of Lynn, and even if I were
to be debarred from mingling with the farmers, I had a flood of delight-
ful sensations in the quaint, old town — a counterpart of scores of Eng-
lish cities.
An English town is not so cheerful appearing as an American town.
Far from it. There are no wooden buildings, airily constructed; none
painted white, with green blinds, or in neutral colors, with darker shades
for trimmings; no front yards with shrubs and turf; the residences, like
the shops, come up to the Malk; are devoid of color, except the dingy
color of the brick or stone'which compose them, and make no pretense
whatever to architectural display. That is reserved for the churches.
There are exceptions to this picture, in the suburbs of some of the towns,
but the general aspect is depressing to the American visitor. Where
there is not the wall of a house there is the wall of a garden, and so ma-
son-work faces every street, and the walls to the gardens are so high that
no man could look over them to see whether broken crockery or pansies
illumined the other side. There are no trees on the streets, and scarcely
a hitching post. The sidewalks are generally very narrow, and irregular
in their width, but the streets arc, in all cases, finely paved. And the
people quite frequently use the roadway for walking, especially when
promenading. The Iligli street of a country town on a Saturday even-
ing will be filled with peoj)le, from one side to the other, with not a
team in sight.
The country towns differ from London in one very noticeable par-
ticular. The citizens are not habituated to umbrellas. Every Londoner
carries his umbrella — at least, until some American gets on familiar terms
with him. [Laughter.] He would as soon think of going away with-
out the back of Jiis head as without his umbrella. It is his constant com-
panion on the promenade, in church, at the play, business, everywhere.
He doesn't carry it because he has a special fondness for it, or because he
believes tliere is any j)arti(!ular virtue in its possession. But he carries it
because it is a habit, and he could no sooner break from it than he could
from any other habit once fastened to him, unless he should carefully
diet himself, and consent to be placed under a physician's care. Which
ho rarely does, lie paws over shop goods with it, sticks it into pastry.
250 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPTT.
and, for all I know to the contrary, pokes it into the ribs of dead friends,
to see what they died of
But the rural man seldom carries an umbrella; he is partial to a
stick. From the nobleman down to what is expressively called a clod-
hopper, all carry sticks. At one farmhouse I saw no less than twelve
substantial sticks hung up in tlie hall. They were used by the farmer,
and in looking over them I was very much struck by a remark he made.
It was : '*I must be having a new stick soon.''
The English farmer is just as shrewd and sliarp as his Yankee
brother, but he is far more conservative. The love of home is so woven
into the chords of his heart as to be inseparable from them, and the
family homestead, though merely his by sufferance, becomes sacred in
his eyes. To the oldest son he gives the farm, and he, in turn, gives it
to his oldest son ; and while shops and mills and offices are filled, still
the farm is kept in the family from generation to generation. This ex-
plains why the vast estates of noblemen havje remained in one family
since the days of the Conqueror, and are as nearly intact to-day as when
that Norman pirate awarded them to his clamorous rabble. The
oldest son takes the homestead, and the brothers, if there be no surplus
of property, to give tliom a lift in life, start themselves, or work for
their brother. I am aware that much can be said against this peculiar
division of property, but as I am an oldest son myself, I feel rather
delicate about saying it. There is this much, however, in its favor, the
place is kept in the family, and reaches that perfection which care and
time invariably br\ng to one management. The man who has been
accustomed from infancy to one arrangement of rooms and adornment,
rarely cares to make a change. A repair is made here and there as
needed, but the landlord is seldom petitioned to pull down the old
house and erect a more modern one in its place. And if he incurs the
expense without solicitation, it is an event which has no parallel.
There is a kitchen in one of those old farm houses, which I shall
always remember, and which it seemed that I could never tire looking
at. The floor was of red tile, worn into hollows by the feet of genera-
tions of the present occupant's family. The fire-place was a marvel of
width. The andirons which stood therein, contained almost enough
material to have made a cookstove with ten legs. The huge mantel shelf
above seemed to need all its strength to hold the shining brass candle-
Hticks. Dried vegetables hung in festoons from tlie whitewashed beams
of the ceiling. The windows were as broad as they were high, with seats
capacious enough to have acconnnodatcd a caucus of reformers. The
chairs were of oak, straight in the legs and backs, with one quaintly carved
THE DANBURY NSW8 MAN, 251
80 as to press pomegranates^ angelic skulls and acorns into yonr spine as
jou leaned back in it. And when the huge deal table was set out for
Innch^ with a great round of roast beef in the center, supported by a full-
chested pitcher of foaming ale, the advance and glory of the nineteenth
century melted away from both sight and memory.
But they needed in those days the broad window beaches to have
courted in. There were then no mohair sofas, with spiral springs run-
ning np through, to hold you on, and if our ancestors had depended
strictly upon the stiff, ungainly chairs for their wooing, this world of
ours would to-day be for rent. The Norfolk parish where I spent so
many pleasant days, ia called West Wincli, and is owned by a lord. There
are only forty or fifty houses in tlie parisli, nearly all occupied by farmers,
and yet it has two public houses, and also a church which is five hundred
years old. And the church has a stone coffin from the Boman age.
Nearly all the parish churches have one or more of these coffins, as the
churches themselves are built on the site of Roman temples or burial
places. These coffins are hollowed from oblong blocks of stone, and
when sealed up ready for business, one of them would weigh about half
a ton. To be a pall-bearer in those days, must have been a rather gloobiy
and somber undertaking.
The man who goes to England and neglects to devote days to prowl-
ing about the old parish churches and church-yards, misses a genuine
treat. The English are a remarkably conservative people, with the
bump of reverence sorely crowding every other bump on their heads.
This explains why they keep ruins, why old customs still prevail, why
many of their towns are so little changed, and why they worship in tem-
ples wrinkled and scarred by age and the elements.
Many of these churches, although over five centuries old, are located
in i)arishes numbering sciircely forty houses. The people treat them
with great care and keep them together as long as possible, and, when
no longer possible, they use them as ruins, and are even more tender
than ever with them. It is not my purpose to speak of their composi-
tion, or architectural features, or government — that information you
can find in corres])ondence and books. Rut there are some peculiar
features, as compared with our churches, on which I hope to fix your
attention. To tell the truth I don*b cott(m much, as the wordly
minded say, to ancient church architecture. But you take a thorough-
bred churchman, and he will spend an entire ([x\y with one church and
a sandwich. [Laughter.] He will stand for one whole hour before a
window, and, after he has collected his senses, will discourse fervently
upon the sweep of its arch, the deli(?acy of its tracery and the graceful-
ness of its spandrils. IIo will walk thirty-two times around an ancient
252 KING 8 OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
font in a sort of ecstatic blind-staggers, and I could cut out something
equally beautiful from a bath-brick with a jack-knife. But I shall not
do it. Many of the churches are very, very rusty looking affairs, with
plain oaken seats and blackened pillars, worried by worms and age, and
both defaced by the autographic miscreant from America. Then there
are, in some instances, most wonderful contrasts between the building
and i-ts furniture.
St. Paul's cathedral in London is a noble structure, but its sittings
are common wooden benches without backs. It was there I first saw
notices on the walls prohibiting people from walking about during the
service. In an American meeting-house no such notice is seen. There,
when the service is going on, no one thinks of strolling about the room,
for every American meeting-house has a solemn deacon, fifty-eight years
old, with steel blue eyes and a beard like a curry-comb, alongside of
whom the famed Spanish inquisition tones down to a mere circus per-
formance. [Laughter.]
Of the great number of decayed church edifices I visited, St. Bar-
tholomew in London bears the palm. It has been hacked at by opposing
religions and crumbled by the elements for the past eight hundred
years. But it has its congregation and its service every Sunday.
The floor is broken, the pillars which sustain the roof and sepa-
rate the aisles from the nave are worn in places to a degree calculated
to make one sitting near them quite nervous and thoughtful; the
walls are musty, gashed and filled with doo^-ways with no stairs
leading to them, and windows nailed up, and tombs quaint, stained and
mutilated. Back of the pulpit were several stone cofiins, whose occu-
pants left centuries ago in search of better ventilation, and about them
a ton or so of broken stone-cornices, window frames and door facings,
carefully hoarded up by the reverential wardens.
It is a novel sensation experienced by an American on visiting this
dingy, broken- winded fabric. But precious few Americans visit it, how-
ever, or even know of its existence.
^^ Why isn't it torn down at once, and a new building put up in its
place?'' you ask.
Why don't you tear up the body of your great-grandfather from its
burial place and put down a new body in its stead? But perhaps you
never thought of it. But it can be done. So these people can pull down
an old church and erect another, but they haven't thought of it.
When one of our home churches loses a couple of shingles from its
roof, or a figure from its carpet, or the first tone of its paint, one church
meeting follows another, former friends cease to "exchange greetings or to
-!^
THE DANBUR7 NEWS MAK. 253
borrow from each other a cup of sugar until 'Henry gets home from
school, and picnics are given up, and brotherly love suspended, until
the point is carried, the repair made, and a debt incurred. [Laughter.]
But here is a church which for five hundred years has been in a condi-
tion to get the whole congregation by the ears, and to send tlio entire
parish to the devil, but tlio people go patiently along, raising a little
money here and a little there, and using it, as they get it, to replace a
stone or prop up a pillar, and the following Sunday they drop quietly in
and sit for an hour on a hard bench worshiping God, and admiring the
improvement. [Laughter.]
No carpet is used. Blank stone floors are what the English delight
in for their churches. A stone floor is not so sightly or comfortable as
one carpeted, but it is better adapted to burying people beneath. They
might be planted under a carpet, I suppose, but it wouldn't be so pleas-
ant. Some of the churches have floors of brilliantlv colored tile, which
are very pretty, and might answer, perhaps, the natural craving in this
country for a carpet, but with snow on the heel of the incoming wor-
shiper the result would be most disastrous to the first half-dozen pews
from the door, I'm afraid.
Tlie English combine economy with grief, and come as near to kill-
ing two birds with one stone as you ever see done. By burying their
dead within the building they secure both floor and tomb in one. In
some of the very old churches, like Westminster Abbey, for instance,
the dead are rather promiscuously scattered about. There will be
fathers in the porch, mothers in the aisles, uncles and aunts in
tlie transept, with cousins and grandmothers under the seats.
[Laughter.] I got up from listening to a service in Westminster,
one morning, and found that I had been sitting on an entire fam-
ily. [Laughter.] At a very old church in Derbyshire the flagging of
the walk leading from the gate to the porch is a succession of memori-
als to the dead resting beneath. In Ireland are graveyards located on
<h*solatQ looking islands, graveyards without the vestige of an inclosure,
or with scarcely the vestin:e of a stone. They are the sites of old temples,
which centuries ago passed to ruin, but the places have been conse-
crated as places for burial, and will be used as such as long as there is a
physician in practice. [Laughter.] The British can make a graveyard go
farther than we can. [Laughter.] They have plenty of them five and six
hundred years old. But in America as soon as a graveyard becomes a
little old it is dug up and a new street put down in its place. [Laughter]
Several years later some one comes along, and wants his wife's uncle
who had been laid there. Xo one knows what has become of the old
254 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AITD PULPIT.
•
gentleman, but everybody tries to pacify the grief -stricken nephew, but
hewon^t be comforted. He dances around and demands his uncle, and
finally drags the town into a lawsuit.
There is a chapel in N'orfolk which historically amounts to nothing,
but which has been saved from going down to oblivion by the enterprise
of its present rector. The dead in the churchyard were irregularly
buried, as must necessarily follow four hundred years of interment in a
one-acre lot. So the different grave stones presented a very broken
front to the eye, from whichever way viewed. The rector Was dis-
pleased with that. He said harmony was one of the chief objects of
life, and, to produce a little of the chief object, he pulled up the grave
stones and set them out in symmetrical rows. They look very pretty
now, but as the signs were put up without regard to the location of the
parties who had done business beneath them, the effect is not exactly
picturesque upon the minds of the survivors. In fact, they don't know
where to look for their dead, but have to drop the sad tear at random.
This is unpleasant to the friends, and must be somewhat embarrassing to
the deceased. But one of the chief objects of life is gained.
But I was speaking of farming.
My friend has two hundred acres in his farm. He had the most of
it in wheat. It is a singular feature of the English climate, that, while
its grain is above ground when the soil of New England has not yet
escaped the fetters of frost, yet the harvest is no earlier. My friend had
in his employ four men and two boys. They are the farm laborers
which we hear so much about, through Mr. Arcli and other agitators.
I am not qualified to discuss tlio English farm labor question. There is,
perhaps, much to be said on both sides, which is never heard. The
laborers support themselves and pay their own rent, living in little stone
cottages near to the farm — cottages which the owner of the estates
erected for the purpose. The wages which they aspire to, and which,
in some sections, is paid, is $3.75 a week. There are places where the
pay is but 12.25 a week. In busy seasons the wife, and those of the
children old enough, go into the field. Some of the laborers with an
income of less than three dollars a week, support a family of four or five.
Awful, isn^t it ? But before our war the wages paid to a laborer here
was, at the highest, one dollar a day, and I remember one who sustained
a family of five on seventy-five cents a day, and got comfortably drunk
every Saturday night, too. And he paid more for his clotTiing than
does his English brother, and it wore him a much less time. It is not
unusual for a pair of English made shoes to last two years, and a pair
of corduroy trousers to wear five years, and the latter can be bought for
,*
'*.;
THE DANBUR7 NEWS MAK, ?S5
loss than two dollars. I do not wish to defend the systemof farm wages
in England; ncitlier is it my object to drive the poor and helpless into
corduroy breeches. I think the farmers should pay their help all they
can, and I hesitate to attack them for fear that they do. It is said, and
I have no reason to doubt it, that many of the farm laborers do not
touch a mouthful of meat from one year's end to the other. But they
get along very well without it. I have seen hundreds of them and their
families, and a redder-cheeked, brighter-eyed people, I never saw— even
in a hotel where there is plenty of meat.
They have roses on the walls of their cottages, of course; they smoke,
and are even beginning to take in the god-like sensations of chewing;
and they have their beer daily. If they prefer beer to beef whose busi-
ness is it? They pay less rent than does the American fellow who
lives by himself. Twenty dollars a year is the highest, I believe. There
are sections where the benevolent wealthy have erected model cottages
at a still less rent. On the estate of the Prince of Wales, at Sandring-
ham, there are quite a number of these cottages, of Gothic pattern, con-
taining four or five rooms, and having a bit of garden attached. The rent
is fifteen dollars per annum. This is in surly, downtrodden over-ruled
England, and not in f reef and enlightened America. They are very pretty
cottages, well- ventilated and free from lightning rods. In fact, there
are precious few lightning rods in all England, which is due, perhaps,
to the English people's horror of a thunder storm which they arc always
careful to speak of in terms of the greatest respect, calling it a tempest.
In discussing the relative wages piiid the workmen of the two coun-
tries, it is well to consider the sort of equivalent they give for their pay.
1 contend that the American works the harder of the two. If he is on
3 farm he must be up and choring around at five o'clock in the morn-
ing, and he has but little relief until eight or nine o'clock in the evening,
lie boards with the farmer who sends him to bed when there is nothing
for him to do, and drags him out again as soon as it is liglit enough to
see the shortest way into his clothes. And during the day he works
like a steam saw-mill, spurred up, not by beer, but by an Egjrptian
task-master, who works like a lunatic himself, and can not be made to
understand why every body about him should not do the same. I have
been there myself. If he is. a mechanic, and docs not do a reasonable
amount of work in the hours, he is discharged, and subsequently starts
a saloon.
The English farm laborer gets to work at C A. M. and quits at 6
P. M. On one farm I visited, the men went to work at eight in the morn-
ing, and quit in the middle of the afternoon. The farmer himself do^g
256 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
but little work aside from riding about^ going to market, and looking
after the stock. Consequently the laborer^ in the absence of a stimu-
lating example^ is inclined to establish his own pace. It is not a violently
swift one. In many of the districts there is a piece of land divided up
into what are called allotments, and each laborer can have an allotment
(about a rood) to cultivate for himself by the payment of from $1.25 to
$2.50 a year. At night, after his work, he can devote his time to this
plot of ground, and the charity accomplishes two purposes— contributes
to his support, and fosters a spirit of industry — thus saving him from
the idleness and dissipation of the public house.
As for the mechanics, they have still less hours and a half day on
Saturday. Their wages run from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a
half a day.
The chief weeds with which an English farmer has to contend are
thistles and poppies. Now there is nothing remarkable about a thistle
unless you are barefooted, but the idea of a poppy being a weed is striking
enough. You know ho\^ choice we are of them in our gardens, and
what an addition to a plot are their brilliant tints. Try then to conjure
up the spectacle of thousands of them in one inclosure. They are
called red-weed in England, and flourish principally in the grain fields,
where their deep red contrasts magnificently with the dark green of the
wheat, oats and barley. I have seen fields so abounding with poppies as
to look as if they were splashed with blood, and the beauty of the scene
is beyond all description.
Rearing their brilliant heads among the dark green of the grain
they present a picture which must touch every heart, although differ-
ently. I have seen two men at the hedge on the opposite sides of a field
gaze for half an hour on the wonderful blending of color. One was
speechless, with his eyes glistening with exquisite delight — he wag a
tourist. The other was speechless, too, but his eyes did not glisten —
he was the owner of the field. [Laughter.]
There is not a corn field in all England. They use large quantities
of corn, which they call maize, to feed to stock, but they import it from
America. I saw but three stalks of corn in Britain. Two of them were
in Shakespeare's garden at Stratford, where they equally divided with
the immortal bard the admiration of American visitors. The third was
making a heroic, but hopeless, fight for dear life in a flower-pot in an
Edinburgh hotel. The weather is not hot enough to mature com or to-
matoes, and they have to train their fruit trees against brick walls, as
we do grape vines, in order to ripen the fruit.
THE DANBUR7 NEWS MAN, ^57
They don^t have beans either; I mean the wliite cooking bean.
They grow a yellowish brown bean — fields of it — which is the only bean
they harvest for the winter, and that they feed to stock. When I told
tliem of our white beans, ripened in the field, and served on the table
through the winter and spring, they looked so unfriendly that I dropped
the subject at once.
The absence of this article may explain, perhaps, Boston's inability
to establish a successful steamship line with England.
When I made my trip, it was publicly announced by well meaning
people, that I had gone to England to help put up a stove. This was a
mistake. The English do not associate with stoves. I saw none there,
excepting two withered looking specimens of the cooking pattern, which
were on exhibition in a museum, and several mongrel affairs, half stove,
half grate, which were loftily called American stoves, but which were of
Scotch origin and manufacture. The English don't take to stoves, and
will not use them because they like to see the fire — it is so cheerful and
cozy. Once in awhile I. like to feel it, but I carefully refrained from
saying so. I have seen an Englishmen sit shivering for an hour in front
of a fire-place, with a smile on his face. He liked to see the fire.
I have already referred to the hospitality of the English. It natur-
ally follows that a hospitable people should be good eaters. These are,
excepting at breakfast, when a very little does them, the late supper is
responsible for this, I imagine. This supper comes off some three or
four hours later than the tea, or about nine or ten o'clock. It is always
heiirty, consisting quite frequently of roast meats, sjilads, hot pickles,
tarts, and other things calculated to make a bilious party go raving mad
in the night. After a stranger has got one of these suppers concen-
trated in the pit of his stomach he is in a condition to commit almost
any atrocity, and goes to bed very much in doubt if he will awake again
and somewhat inclined to hope tliat he will not. Speaking to an Eng-
lish friend, after one of tliese late suppers, of the scarcity of butter and
fresh bread at the English table, he exi)lained that fresh bread and too
much butter disagreed with thestomacli. I made no reply; but I looked
from the ruins before us up to the clo(-k which marked 11 p.m. The
English are very careful of their stomachs.
There is an accompaniment to each meal which strikes the stranger
most forcibly. It is their way of saying grace. They are the most sud-
ilen people in this particular I ever saw, and have a fashion of firing off
their gratitude which is most startling. The text is something like
this:
*'For what we are now about to receive make us truly thankful. '*
268 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
And tbis^ by Bome families, is slid in most unexpectedly, and it has
come so rapidly and with such abruptness on several occasions, that I
have missed it entirely, hearing only the word '* about," preceded and
followed by a subdued whistling. There being no abatement in the
work at the table at the time, tended to make the impression the less
distinct. The giving of thanks, where it is the custom, at the end of
the meal, has frequently cut off a valuable mouthful of food, so sudden
and unexpected was its coming; and the conversation and happy laugh-
ter flowed along without a break, and those who were to finish did so,
and every body looked contented and edified.
This is quite a contrast to our New England fashion of being grate-
ful. I have eaten under a grace which froze the gravy [laughter], irre-
trievably damaged the mutton, and imbued the greater part of the
guests with the gloomiest forebodings; in wliich the African and the
South Sea Islander were looked after and secured beyond harm; and all
political cabals were taken under the fifth rib, completely dumbfounded,
and their evil machinations scattered to the four winds of heaven. It
was a fine performance, and a good thing for humanity at large, but it
made the dinner look sick. [Laughter.] I think I like the English
extreme the best, but both can be bettered. And never will be.
The common use of endearing terms in the family circle makes a
lively impression upon the mind of the stranger. '' Love," *Movey " and
"my love'*; "dear," '* deary " and "my dear" are the popular and
soothing adjectives which are constantly floating through the domestic
air. I think it is overdone when four or ?^\q "loves " or " dears " season
a simple request. Yet they sound infinitely better than our "old rtan *'
or "old woman," or even "mutton-head." I never knew "mutton-
head " to work well as a term of endearment; still, it is useful.
There is a popular fallacy that living in England is much cheaper
than in America. It is a fallacy.
Food is more expensive in England than in America. They eat our
bacon and flour, and you can not carry them across the ocean and sell
them as cheajily as here at home.
It costs the English laborer less to live than our laborer, because he
does not live as well. If English farmers lived as well as our farmers,
they would soon be bankrupt.
The English have an exalted idea of wages in this country. As com-
pared with their i)rices for help, ours must appear mountainous. And
they think that saving money must be aj)astime with us. And so it is,
although, of course, we have other recreations. [Laughter.] Their
provisions cost less, because they eat less, but their rents are less than
t
THE DANBURT NSWa MAN. 868
ours. I have occasionally told them that there are females employed in
the hat factories of Danbury who earn four dollars a day. I grew quite
fond of imparting this bit of information, because it so amazed them.
I was fond of doing it until I went to Aberdeen in Scotland, and saw
women make five dollars a day in gold, cleaning herrings; then I dropped
the subject. This sum is equal to ten dollars in America. There are
very few concerns in this country which pay female operatives ten dol-
lars a day, either to put linings in hats or to remove them from fish.
[Laughter.]
Bents are much less, I say, there than here, startling as the state-
ment may sound. Near Oxford street, London, are blocks upon blocks
of quality residences, owned by certain earls and dukes, and rented on a
hundred years' lease to aristocratic tenants at a price which makes the
English stare because of its magnitude, and causes us Americans to
laugh because of its insignificance. At St. John's Wood, where the
west end of the city looks over its back fence upon cultivated fields, a
neat three-story, brick tenement can be rented for two hundred dollars a
year. Try to do the same with a similarly located property in New York
City, and the owner would inveigle you up to the roof and throw you oft,
and no jury in the land could be found to convict him.
While on the subject of extortion I should like to take a pull at my
old foe, the cabman. There is the hackney carriage running on four
wheels, and the hansom cab running on two. In England they are
simply known as " four-wheelers,'' and ** two-wheelers." The latter are
much the pleasanter to ride in, but the pleasure is somewhat modified
by the discussion, recrimination and perspiration which invariably ac-
company the payment of the fare. With the four-wheelers one pluck-
ing appears to suffice, and once away from the railway station you can
expect to be carried a mile in any direction at the fare established for
that distance, which is one shilling.
You take a two-wlieeler, are driven a half mile and throw the driver
a shilling. lie looks at it in a perplexed and commiserative way which
is beyond all imitation and asks, *' What's this for?" You patiently
explain to him. lie says, "eighteen pence is the fare." You protest that
the distance does not warrant the charge. He is obstinate. You can
force him, so the card of rates posted inside say, to drive to the nearest
police station for adjudication. But you are a stranger. He may drive
you to the first i)olice station, and he may drive you over the nearest
embankment. You pay him the extra sixpence, and curse the govern-
ment under which he thrives. The shilling goes to his employer, and
the sixpence is laid up by himself for a rainy day.
260 KING8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
It rains a great deal in England.
When the intricacies of the ^bus lines are once mastered, traveling
about London is an inexpensive and genuine pleasure. The English T)us
system is superior to ours, both in regard to the comfort of the passengers
and the horses which draw them. On the box with the driver is accommo-
dation for four persons. Eunning the length of the roof is a double seat,
reached by a ladder on each side of the door. The 'bus has so much
seating capacity and when that is occupied no more passengers are taken
on. Between the 'bus driver and the cabman there is a feeling of undy-
ing hate, which is most gratifying to him who has suffered at the hands of
the latter, because the wheels and motive power of the 'bus are so much
greater that the utter discomfiture of the cabman is a sure thing in the
event of a collision. I have sat on the box seat for an hour at a time,
and have heard the driver curse tlie cabbies and seen him crowd them
against the curb with his remorseless wheels until it did seem as if my
cup of happiness would run over and drown inoffensive people. I used
the word *^ cursing " unadvisedly, perhaps. We understand by that
profanity, but the English are not given to profanity. Whether this is
because there are no stoves in England, or is due to a national church, I
am not able to state. But I rarely heard en oath during all my sojourn
in England. [Applause.]
The English cab fares are a shilling for a mile, for one or two persons,
and a sixpence for each additional mile. The law which established
these prices knows more about the subject than I do. But, still, the
charge appears to be a very small sum, and, especially so, when it is
understood that the cabman pays from six to ten shillings a day for the
use of the establishment, and must drive that number of fares before he
can begin to make any thing for himself. They generally bite me, and
it makes me mad enough to knock their heads off, but yet I am sorry for
them. They have got to fleece somebody, I suppose, to make both ends
meet; still, it would be much better if poor people did not have two
ends.
But after I had been there awhile they did not scorch me so badly.
I played a march on them by donning a pair of English trousers — the
regular tights. In fact, they clung so tight to me that I had to take
them off when I wanted to get any thing out of the pockets. [Laughter.]
On engaging a cab I would bring my legs conspicuously to the front,
when the driver looked into my open and ingenuous countenance he
would be tempted to charge me a sixpence extra, but on glancing down
at my trousers he would take another thought, and unhesitatingly con^-
promise on a thrip-pence. [Laughter.]
TUB DANB UR T irEWSMAN. 2C1
The money I thus saved I gave to the South Sea Islanders, when I
met them. [Applause.]
BAILEY ON PUTTING UP A STOVE PIPE.
Putting up a stove is not so diflBcult in itself. It is the pipe that
raises four-fifths of the mischief and all the dust. You may take down
a stove with all the care in the world, and yet that pipe won't come
together again as it was before. You find this out when you are stand-
ing on a chair with your arms full of pipe, and your mouth full of soot.
Your wife is standing on tlie floor in a position that enables her to see
you, the pipe and the chair, and here she gives utterance to those re-
marks that are calculated to hasten a man into the extremes of insanity.
Her dress is pinned over her waist, and her hands rest on her hips. She
hus got one of your hats on her head, and your linen coat on her back,
and a pair of rubbers on her feet. There is about five cents* worth of pot-
black on her nose and a lot of flour on her chin, and altogether she is a
spectacle that would inspire a dead man with distrust. And while you
are up there trying to circumvent the awful contrariness of the pipe,
and telling that you know some fool has been mixing it, she stands safely
on the floor, and bombards you with such domestic mottoes as, *' What's
the use of swearing so?" '^ You know no one has touched that pipe.'*
'* You ain't got anymore patience than a child.** ^^Do be careful of
that chair." And then she goes off, and reai)pears with an armful more
of pipe, and before you are aware of it she has got that i)ipe so horribly
mixed up that it does seem no two pieces are alike.
You join the ends and work them to and fro, and to and fro again,
and then you take them apart and look at them. Then you spread one
out and jam the other together, and mount them once more. But it is
no go. You begin to think the pieces are inspired with life, and ache to
kick them through the window. Bui she doesn't lose her patience. She
goes around with that awfully exasperating rigging on, with a length of
pipe under eacli arm and a long-liandled broom in her hand, and says
she don't see how it is some people never have any trouble putting up a
.store. Then you miss the hammer. You don't see it any where. You
stare into the pipe, along the mantel, and down on the stove, and off to
the floor. Your wife watches you, and is finally thoughtful enough to
inquire what you are Idbking after, and, on learning, pulls the article
from her j)ocket. Then you feel as if you could go outdoors, and swear
a hole twelve feet square through a block of brick buildings; but she
262
KING 8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
meekly observes: *' Why on earth don't you speak when you want any
thing, and not stare around like a dummy?'* Wlien that part of the
pipe, which goes through the wall is up, she keeps it up with the broom
while you are making the connection, and stares at it with an intensity
that is entirely uncalled for. All the while your position is becoming
more and more interesting. The pipe don't go together, of course. The
soot shakes down into your eyes and mouth, the sweat rolls down your
face, and' tickles your chin as it drops off, and it seems as if your arms
are slowly but surely drawing out of their sockets.
Here your wife comes to the rescue ])y inquiring if you are going to
be all day doing notlii ng, and if you think her arms are made of cast-
iron; and then the broom slips off the pipe, and in her endeavor to re-
cover her hold, she jabs you under the chin with the handle, and the
pipe comes down on your head with its load of fried soot, and then the
chair tilts forward enough to discharge your feet, and you come down
on the wrong end of that cliair, with a force that would bankrupt a pile-
driver. You don't touch that stove again. You leave your wife ex-
amining the chair, and bemoaning its injuries; and go into the kitchen,
and wash your skinned and bleeding hands with yellow soap. Then you
go down street after a man to do the business, and your wife goes over
to the neighbors with her chair, and tells them about its injuries, and
drains the neighborhood dry of its sympathy long before you get home.
JOHN B. GOUGH.
THE BLOQUBNT TEMPERANCE ORATOR.
BIOGRAPHY AND REIONISCENCES.
When €k)ugh died, temperance lost her best friend. For a quarter of a oentmy he
had raised his voice against intemperance and for the purity of the home. He was
bom in Lancasliire, England, and died in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1888. In
public lectures and in private conversations, he carried on the work of reform. Mr.
Gough published several books, which were in the form of autobiography and
speeches. His lectures were full of anecdotes, in the Lancashire dialect, which
was rendered so exquisitely, that his wit and pathos were novel and wonderful. Mr.
Gough was not a writer. He was an actor. His telling anecdotes were mostly writ-
ten by others.
John B. Gough was the greset war horse of the lecture platform.
Beecher said of him that he lectured against intoxication, but he
intoxicated his hearers with his eloquence. In his earlier lecturing
days Gough was a delightful man to be with, and never grew tire-
some, lie did not like a small audience, and scarcely concealed his
jwtulancy. lie was a good story-teller, and seemed to live entirely
for those around him.
One day a Christian gentleman, in England, came to Gough to
talk about total abstinence. Said the gentleman :
'^ I have a conscientious objection to teetotalism, and it is this:
our Savior made wine at the marriage of Cana in Galilee."
^* I know lie did."
'• He made it because they wanted it."
" So the Bible tells us."
'' lie made it of water."
'^ Yes."
'* Well, lie performed a miracle to make that wino."
- Yes."
264 ^ KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
" Then He honored and sanctified wine by performing a miracle
to make it. Therefore," said he, ^* I feel that, if I should give up
the use of wine, I should be guilty of ingratitude, and should be
reproaching my Master."
" Sir," said Gough, " I can understand how you should feel so;
but is there nothing else that you put by, which our Savior has
honored?"
" No, I don't know that there is."
" Do you eat barley bread ? "
"No;" and then began to laugh.
" And why ? "
"Because I don't like it."
" Very well, sir," said I, " our Savior sanctified barley bread
just as much as He ever did wine. He fed five thousand people on
barley loaves by a miracle. You put away barley bread from the
low motive of not liking it. I ask you to put away wine from the
higher motive of bearing the infirmity of your weaker, brother, and
so fulfilling the law of Christ."
One day I asked Gough to tell some of his first temperance
experiences.
"Well," he said, "when I firs^ signed the pledge, I still con-
tinued the use of tobacco. One day when I was engaged to speak
at an out-door meeting, I met a friend, who said to me, ' I've some
first-rate cigars; will you take a few ?'
"^ No thank you,' I said, ' I have nowhere to put them.'
"^ You can put half a dozen in your cap,' my friend insisted.
Well, 1 put the cigars in my cap, attended the meeting under the
open sky, and ascended the platform before an audience of two
thousand children. I kept my cap on to avoid taking cold, and for-
got all about the cigars. Toward the close of my address, after
warning the boys against all sorts of bad habits, 1 said :
" ' Now, boys, let us give three rousing cheers for temperance.
Now ! Hurrah ! ' In my excitement I pulled off my cap, waved it
vigorously, and flung the cigars right and left at the audience. The
cheers changed to a roar of laughter at my expense. Nor was I
relieved from my confusion when a boy stepped upon the platform,
holding out ' one of those dreadful cigars,' and said, politely, * Here
is one of your cigars, Mr. Gough.' "
JOHN B. GouGii, 'rut; aposti.e ob' tempebahce.
266 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPTT.
GOUGH'S GEE AT LECTURE.
Ladies and Gentlemen: — I read in the ''Christian Almanack'* the
other day that a gentleman said: '' I have drunk a bottle of wine every
day for the last fifty years, and I enjoy capital health." "Yes; but
what has become of your companions?'' ''Ah!" said he, "that is
another thing; I have buried three generations of them."
On one occasion, while a British officer was urging a native to exam-
ine the claims of Christianity, two drunken English soldiers passed.
"See," said the native, "do you wish me to be like that. '^ As a
Mohammedan I could not; as a Christian I might." [Sensation.]
While I was in San Francisco, a number of young men came to me
up the back stairs of the hotel after dark and revealed awful histories.
One man lay on the carpet at my feet, exclaiming:
" Send me home; for the love of God, get me out of here! I will
go in a freight or cattle train — any thing to get out of here! " It was
the cry all around, "Drink is my curse." Everywhere we hear it,
"Drink is my curse."
A poor fellow in Exeter Hall signed the temperance pledge some
twenty or thirty years ago. He was a prize-fighter — a miserable,
debauched, degraded, ignorant creature. A gentleman stood by his
side, a builder in London, employing some hundreds of men, and he
said to him — what did he say? " Stick to it? " Xo! " I hope you will
stick to it, my friend?". No! " It will be a good thing for you if you
stick to it?" No! He said this:
"Where do you sleep to-night?
" Where I slept last night.
" And where is that? "
"In the streets."
"No, you won't; you have signed this pledge, and you belong to this
society, and you are going home with me." [Applause.]
In Edinburgh they have a club-room in which reformed men spend
their evenings, and young men come there to get away from temptation.
One night a man came in very drunk.
"Do you know what place this is?" he was asked.
"This is a teetotalers' club.
" Yes; but you are drunk.
"I know I am; I am awfully drunk.
"What business have you here?
"I am a teetotaler.
" But you are drunk.
99
B you iiei'u r "
99
99
■ I
/ !
JOHN n: i^vms, !W7
** What! did yon never see a drunken teetotaler? Tm dmnk, and I'm
a teetotaler.'^ Some one thinking he was chaffing^ said, '' You had bet-
ter go out/'
^* Gentlemen/' pleaded the man, ^' don't put me out. I am a teeto-
taler. Here's my pledge. I signed it about an hour ago, and I have
not touched a drop since. I have come in here for safety!"
There is a place in London where young men assemble nightly; and
I tell you, young gentlemen, it was to me a fearful and appalling sight.
An immense room, capable of holding some 1,500 persons, with a fine
band of music at one end. I found young men there as genteel in
appearance as any amongst you. The gentlemen with me knew so^e of
them. ^^ There," said one of them, ^'is a man in such-and-such a shop;
there is another in another establishment." And what were they doing?
In one room were the tables set with the sparkling wine, and right before
that assembled crowd of 1,000 persons they had no more shame left than
to be dancing in the middle of that hall with the common women of the
town. I asked, "Why, I should think those young men would be
ashamed of it!"
"Shame, sir! Three or four glasses of wine will destroy shame."
' [Applause.]
A gentleman was once lecturing in the neighborhood of London* In
the course of his address he said:
"All have influence. Do not say tliat you have none; every one has
some influence."
There was a rough man at the other end of the room with a little
girl in his arms.
"Every body has influence, even tliat little child/' said the lecturer,
pointing to her.
"That's true, sir/' cried the man.
Every body looked round, of course; but the man said no mo^re, and
tlie lecturer proceeded. At the close the man came lip to the gentleman
and said:
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I could not help speaking. I was a
drunkard; but as I did not like to go to the public-house alone, I used
to carry this child. As I came near the public-house one night, hearing
a great noise inside, she said :
"'Don't go, father.'
" 'Hold your tongue, child.'
" ' Please, father, don't go.'
" ' Hold your tongue, I say.'
"Presently I felt a big tear on my cheek. I could not go a step
farther, sir. I turned round and wont home, and have never been in a
268 KTK08 Of THE PLATFORM AND PULPTTf
public-liouse sinoe — tlmuk God for it. I am now a liappy man, sir, and
this little girl has done it all; and when you siiid that oven she had
influence I could not help saying' ' That's true, sir;' all have influence."
[Applause.]
We want religion with our temperance.
I heard the Hon. Tom Marshall, of Kentucky, make a ten minutes'
speech in Broadway Tabernacle, in which he said: '^AV.ere this great
globe one chrysolite, and I offered the possession if I would drink
one glasss of brandy, I would refuse it with scorn; and I want no relig-
ion, I want the temperance pledge." With that wonderful voice of his
he thundered out: ''AVe want no religion in this movement; let it be
purely secular, and keep religion where it belongs."
Poor Tom Marshall, with all his self-eonfldoiioo, fell, and died at
Poughkeepsie in clothes given him by Christian charity.
A mother, on the gvQun hills of Vermont, was holding by the right
hand a boy, sixteen years old, mad with the love of the sea. And as he
stood at the garden-gate one morning, she said:
'* Edward, they tell me — for I never saw the ocean — that the great .
temptation of seamen's life is drink. Promise mo, before you quit year
mother's hand, that you will never drink liquor." ,
'^I gave the promise/' said he. Then ho went the world over, to
Calcutta, the Mediterranean, San Francisco, and the Cape of Good
Hope, the North and South Polos.
^'I saw them all in forty years," he said afterward, ^'and I never
saw a glass filled with sparkling liquor that my mother's form at the
gate did not rise up before my eyes; and to-day 1 am innocent of the
taste of liquor."
AVas not that sweet evidence of the power of a single word?
Yet that is not half, '*for,"he continued, ''yesterday there came
into my counting-room a man of forty years.
'* ' Do you know me?'
'^'No.'-
'' ' AVell,' said the man, ' I was brought into your presence on ship-
board; you wore a passenger; they kicked me aside; you took me to
your berth, and kept me there until I had slept off my intoxication.
You then askod me if I had a mother. 1 j-aid I never hoard a word
from her li])s. You told me of yours at the garden-gate, and to-day I
am master of one of the linost ships in Now York harbor, and I have
come to ask you to come and see me.' "
The drunkard is always in danger. [Applause.]
JOfflfB. OOUQIT. 269
I remember riding toward the Niagara Falls^ and I said to a gentle-
man near me, "What river is that, sir?''
'* The Niagara river/' ho replied.
*^ Well/' said I, '* it is a beautiful stream — bright, smooth and glassy.
How far oflt are tho rapids?'*
"About a mile or two."
" Is it possible that only a mile or two from us we shall find the
water in such turbulence as I presume it must be near the falls?"
"You will find it so, sir."
And so I found it; and that first sight of the Niagara I shfdl never
forget. Now launch your bark upon the Niagara river; it is bright,
smooth, beautiful and glassy; there is a ripple at the bow; the silvery
wake you leave behind you adds to your enjoyment; down the stream you
glide; you have oars, mast, siiil and rudder, prepared for every contin-
gency, and thus you go out on your pleasure excursion. Some one cries
out from the biink,
" Young men, ahoy ! "
"What is it?" he asks.
" Tlie rapids are below you. '
" Ila! ha! we have heard of the rapids below us,'' laughs the man,
"but we are not such fools as to get into them; when we find we are
going too fast to suit our convenience, then hard up tho helm and steer
to shore; when we find we arc passing: a given ])oint too rapidly, then we
will set the mast in the socket, hoist the sail, and speed to land."
" Young men, ahoy I" comes the voire again.
"What is it?"
"The rapids are below you."
" Ila! ha! we will laugh and quafT; all things delight us; what care we
for tlie future? No man ever saw it. ^Sufiicient unto the day is the evil
thereof.' We will enjoy life while we may, and catch pleasure as it flies.
This is the time for enjoyment; time enough to steer out of danger when
we find we are sailing too swiftly with the stream."
** Young men, ahoy I "
" What is it?"
" The rapids are below you. Now see the water foaming all around
you I — see how fast you gol* Now hard up the helml — quick! quick! —
pull for your very livesl — pull till the l)lood starts from your nostrilsand
the viMus stand like whipcords upon the brow! Set tho mast in the
socket; hoist the sail I"
* No pen can de«cril)e thn Htartlinff clfMiuencA <>f CioDKh in drawinic thin picture. His
flash fire, his frame shakfHi \pith riKhtooim indignation nnd pity, and only those who hare hMid
tlie great lecturer can appreciate t!ie scono.
270 KIKOS OF THE PLATFOmf AND PULPIT,
Ah I it is too late. Shrieking, cursing, howling, blaspheming, over
yon go; ami ihotisamh thus go over every year ly Ihe potver of evil habits,
declaring, 'MVhen I find out that it is injuring me, then I will give it
up/* The power of evil habit is deceptive and fascinating, and the man
by coming to false conclusions argues his way down to destruction. [Ap-
plause.]
Many people begin and end their temperance talks by calling drunk-
ards brutes. No, they are not brutes. I have labored for about eighteen
years among them and I never have found a brute. I have had men
swear at me; I have had a man dance around me as if possessed of a devil,
and spit his foam in my face; but he is not a brute.
I think it is Charles Dickens, who says: '' Away up a great many
pair of stairs, in a very remote corner, easily passed by, there is a door,
and on that door is written ' woman.^ " And so in the heart of the vile out-
cast, away up a great many pair of stairs, in a very remote corner, easily
passed by, there is a door, on wliich is written '^ man.'* Here is our
business, to find that door. It may take time; but begin and knock.
Don't get tired; but remember God's long suffering for us, and keep
knocking a long time if need be. Don't get weary if there is no answer;
remember Ilim whose locks were wet with dew.
Knock on — just try it — you try it; and just so sure as you do, just so
sure, by-and-by, will the quivering lip and starting tear tell you have
knocked at the heart of a man and not of a brute. It is because these
poor wretches are men, and not brutes that we have hopes of them. They
said, 'Mie is a brute — let him alone.'' I took him home with mo and
kept the *^ brute " fourteen days and nights, through his delirium; and
he nearly frightened Mary out of her wits, once chasing her about the
house with a boot in his hand. But she recovered her wits, and ho
recovered his.
He said to me, *' You wouldn't think I had a wife and child."
''Well, I shouldn't.''
''I have, and — God bless her little heart — my little Mary is as pretty
a little thing as ever stepped," said the *' brute."
I asked, '* Where do they live?"
''They live two miles away from here."
"AVhen did you see them last?"
'* About two years ago." Then he told me his story.
I said, " You must go back to your home again."
"I musn't go back — I won't — my wife is better without me than with
me! I will not go back any more; I have knocked her, and kicked her,
and abused her; do you suppose I will go back again?"
JOniTB. QOUGH. 271
I went to the house with him; I knocked at the door and his wif«
opened it.
** Is this Mrs. Richardson ?'*
"Yes, sir/'
" Well, that is Mr. Richardson. And Mr. Richardson, that is Mrs.
Richardson. Now come into the house. ^'
They went in. The wife sat on one side of the room and the
" brute '* on the other. I waited to see who would speak first; and it
was the woman. But before she spoke she fidgeted a good deal.
She pulled her apron until she got hold of the hem, and then she
pulled it down again. Then she folded it up closely, and jerked it out
through her fingers an inch at a time, and then she spread it all down
again; and then she looked all about the room and said,
* ' AVcll, William ? '' And the * ^ brute *' said,
"Well, Mary?''
lie had a large handkerchief round his neck, and she said,
** You had better take the handkerchief off William; youTl need it
when you go out." He began to fumble about.
The knot was large enough; he could have untied it if he liked; but
he said, "Will you untie it, Mary?'' and she worked away at it; but her
fingers were clumsy, and she couldn't get it off; their eyes met, and the
love light was not all quenched; she opened her arms gently and he fell
into them. If you had seen those white arms clasped about his neck, and
he sobbing on her breast, and the child looking in wonder first at one and
then at the other, you would have said, " It is not a brute; it is a man,
with a great, big, warm heart in his breast."
To show the power of love and sympathy over the human heart, I
will relate a well-known incident:
" In the cabin of the steamer St. John, coming up the Hudson the
other evening," writes Eli Perkins, "sat a sad, serious-looking man, who
looked as if he might have been a clerk or book-keeper. The man seemed
to be caring for a crying baby, and was doing every thing ho could to
still its sobs. As the child became restless in the berth, the gentleman
took it in his arms and carried it to and fro in the cabin. The soba of
the child irritated a rich man, who was trying to read, until he blurted
out, loud enough for the father to hear:
** ' Wluit does ho want to disturb the whole cabin with that d
baby for?'
" ' Hush, baby, hush I ' and then the man only nestled the baby closer
in his arms, without saying a word. Then the baby sobbed again.
*' * WIkm-c is the confouiKhMl mother, that she don't stop its noise?'
continui'd tin* profanr grumbler.
272 KIi\OS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
"At this, the grief -stricken father came up to the man, and with
tears in his eyes, said: 'I am sorry to disturb you, sir, but my dear baby's
mother is in her coffin down in the baggage room. Fm taking her back
to her grandmotlier, in Albany, where we used to live. [Sensation.]
**The hard-hearted man buried his face in shame, but in a moment,
wilted by the terrible rebuke, he was by the side of the grief-atricken
father. They were both tending the baby." [Applause.]
Treat the drunkard kindly. Pity him, and do not scold him.
Wives, speak kindly to your erring husbands. Tliis morning I read a
little story in the PottstoAvn Miner from the pen of *'Eli Perkins.**
" The morning after I lectured in Wilkesbarre,*' said Eli, " there
was a great colliery explosion. Hundreds of Cornish miners were killed
and their corpses lay at the mouth of the coal mine for recognition.
AVives were wringing their hands and children were crying, and a wail of
desolation filled the air.
'^ Sitting at the mouth by a pale corpse was a young wife. She looked
ut her husband, but uttered no cry; her eyes were dry. She rocked her-
self to and fro, her face wliite with anguish.
"'Oh, that I had spoke fair to him at the end!' she moaned. 'Oh
that he would come to life one minute that I could say Jimmy, forgive
me, but nothing can help me now. Oh, I could bear it all if Pd only
spoke fair to him at the end J ' . • ■
*' And then at last, the story came. They had been married a year,
she and Jim; and tlioy both ' had tempers,' but, Jim, he was always the
first to make uj3. And this very morning they had liad trouble.
" It began because breakfast wasn't ready, and the fire wouldn't
burn; and thoy had said hard words, both of them. But at the very
last, thougli breakfast had not been lit to eat, Jim had turned round at
the door and said: '*
*' ' Gi'e me a kiss, lass. You know you love me, and we won't part^
in ill-blood/
'^ ' Xo, Jimmy, I don't love you ! ' I said, petulantly.
^' ' Cf i'e nie one kiss, lass,' pleaded Jimmy. -■
*' ' Xo not one I and now ' and then the tears rushed to her
eyes. With awful sol^s she flung her arms around the corpse. [Team.
in the audience.]
*' ^Dcar Jinimy I Darling Jimmy, speak to mo now.* she moaned.
* Say you forgive nu'. I' . ' * .
*^ ^])o not grieve so hopelessly,' 1 said; 'perhaps Jimmy knows wh^t
you feel now.'
J
■J }*:'
.^-•'-■-
^-. •* ■ .4 iti^'
JOHN B, OOUOn. 273
'' But tho mounier^s ears wore deaf to all comfort, and the wailing
cry came again and again :
^' 'Oh, if I'had only spoke to lilm fair at the last !'
''It is not. an uncommon story, this. We quarrel with those we
love, and part, and jncot and make up again; and death is merciful; and
waits till we are at peace; yet how possible is just such an experience to
any one of us, who parts with some dear one in anger, or who lets, the
sun go down upon our wrath !
" But it is always tho noblest nature, the most loyal heart, which is
the first to cry. 'I was wrong; forgive mu.' *' [Applause.]
,1
r
'^^o. 9l-^/^c^
GEORGE W. PECK,
BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES.
George W. Peck was born in liendcrson, Jefferson county. New York, in! 1844.
lie gave bis services to his country in the last war, and now resides in Milwaukee, in
one of the most elegant mansions in that city. Ho has a lovely wife, whom he
worships a^ the saints worship the angels, and sons growing up, of whom he is justly
proud. Mr. Peck has published three books which have had an immense sale
" Peck's Sunshine/' "Peck's Pun" and "Peck's Bad Boy." Mr. Peck's writings
bubble over with innocent fun.
Many of Mr. Peck's stories are true, or exaggerations from
actual scenes.
The humorist tells a story about Senator Barden, of Wisconsin,
which, they say, actually happened. The senator is a very plain,
democratic-looking man, not above driving a dray or doing any
honest work, lie has a very kind, generous heart, and is always
looking after the comfort of other people. At one time, as Peck
tells the story, Senator Barden had a good many apples, and he
thought he would do a Christian act by presenting a load of the
delicious fruit to his family clergyman, a new man from the East.
When he got the dray loaded, as there was no driver at hand,
the senator jumped on the load and drove up to the clergyman's
liouse with the apples.
"Now," he said to himself, "this is a sweet Christian thing to
do. IIow pleased the tired clergyman and his dear wife and children
will be."
Then he hurriedly rolled the apples through the gate. They
were big, beautiful summer pippins and red cheeked strawberries.
'' Won't the parson be surprised," he said, with a laugh all over
liis happy face, and then he whipped up the horse and tried to get
275
WONT THE I'AIIHON ItE BDBFBIHED.
GEORGE W. PECK. 277
S-^ ^{*^,4lU4»0U^Uy,JieA A su, /y #-3
^^» .*o^»- 45t^;
Ct^
7 V^.^'^^'^^^^^^l^^ifa'^^'S
^ry^^'^'^^ j^/yj.^^^c^
The above is an autograph letter from George W. Peck — a
cbaracteristic letter.
GEORGE W. PECK'S LECTURE.
Brolher Af/riculturisfs : * — I siiy to the farmers of tlie United States
that agriculture is one of the noblest pursuits. I love the man who pur-
sues agriculture, but I do not love the lightning-rod man, the Bohe-
mian-oat man, and the patent-churn man who pursue the agriculturist.
[Laughter.] It is painful to see the noble farmer pursuing agriculture
and the sheriff and Bohemian-oat man pursuing the farmer.
What we farmers want, is to have our rights protected. Yes, pro-
tected ! To gain this protection we must look to the legislative power.
They must puss laws in our favor. The farmers toil early and late, and
what do they get for their recompense ? I have known a farmer to get
up at three o'clock in the morning to help up a calf that had got cast in
(lie barn, and the very first thing that calf did was to kick the gran-
ger's knee out of joint, when there was a hired man standing near that
the calf could have kicked. [Laughter.]
♦ Mr. Pcck'8 lecture, " How T Sulxlued tho UebeUion/' a biffhly republican lecture, was
first **8etup"for thl8 book, but when Mr. Peck was elected by the Democrats mayoruf
MUwaukee, and had one eye on tho frovernor^hip, his republican lecture was suppressed and
this lecture, culcu.uted to catch tho votes of the farmers, was substituted. JLD. L.
278 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM A.XD PULPIT,
What wo want, I say, is protection against calves and railroads.
[Laughter.]
I say, and without fear of contradiction, it is just such unjust discrim-
inations by calves and railroads that is ruining our agricultural inter-
ests. This is not an isolated case. The woods are full of them. Why
stand we here idle and see the bone and sinew of our land kicked around
by such soulless corporations as railroads and calves.
Let lis have their hides on the fence. [Laughter.]
We do not want protection against foreign wool, but we do want
protection against our own rams.
Sheep raising, I believe, does not i)ay the average farmer.
You farmers devote a good deal of time and labor to the raising of
sheep, and what do you get for it. The best sheep can not lay more than
eight pounds of wool in a sea!5on, and even if you get fifty cents a pound
for it, you have not got any great bonanza. Now, the State encourages
tlic raising of wolves, by oiTering a bounty of ten dollars for a piece of skin
off the head of each wolf. It does not cost any more to raise a wolf, than
it does to raise a sheep, [laughter] and while sheep rarely raise more
thtin two lambs a year, a pair of good wolves are liable to raise twenty
young ones in the course of a year, if it is a good year for wolves.
[Laughter.] Iii addition to the encouragement offered by the State,
many counties give as much more, so that one wolf scalp will bring more
money than five sheep. You will readily see that our wise legislators are
offering inducements to you, that you should be thankful for. You can
establish a wolf orchard on any farm, and with a pair of good wolves to
start on, there is millions in it.
Farmers raise wolves ! [Laughter.]
I do not favor the raising of watermelons in cold latitudes— espe-
cially the ordinary trojiical melons.
AVliat the country needs is a melon with fur on it, for cold latitudes
and from which the incendiary ingredients have been removed. It seems
to me that by proper care, when the melon is growing on the vines, the
cholera morbus can be decreased, at least, the same as the cranberry has
been improved, by cultivation. [Laughter.]
The experiment of planting homeopathic pills in the hill with the
melon has been tried, but homeopathy, while perhaps good in certain
cases, does not seem to reach the seat of disease in the watermelon.
What I would advise, and the advice is free to all, is that a porous plaster
be placed upon watermelons, just as they are beginning to ripen, with a
view to draw out the cholera morbus. [Laughter.] A mustard plaster
might have the same effect, but the porous plaster seems to me to be the
•jrf""^
OBORGE IF. PECK. 279'
article to fill a want long felt. If, by this means, a breed of watermelon
can be raised tbat will not strike terror to the heart of the conbumer^
this agricultural address will not have been delivered in vain.
An Eastern scientist has discovered that cucumbers contain tape
worms. Then all we have to say is that farmers are selling their tape
^'- worms mighty high. Twenty cents for a cucumber not bigger than a
' ' clothes-pin, that can't possibly contain tape worm enough to go around
in a small family, is outrageous. But, is there anything that you raise
on your farm, that does not contain something bad, except the bologna
sausage ? [ Laughter. ]
Again some of our Wisconsin agriculturists are asking:
Why not go to raising elephants?
A good elephant will sell for eight thousand dollars. A pair of ele-
phants can be bought by a community, of farmers pooling their issues
and getting a start, and in a few years every farm can bo a menagerie of
its own, and every year we can rake in from eight to twenty-four thou-
- sand dollars from tho sale of surplus elephants. It may be said that
elephants are hearty feeders, and that they would go through an ordi-
nary farmer in a short time. Well, they can bo turned out into the
highway to browse, and earn their own living. This elephant theory is
a good one, and any man that is good on figures can sit down and figure
up a profit in a year sufficient to go into bankruptcy. [Laughter.]
• Would I advise tho farmer to raise fish?
I say, emplmtically, yes. I would suggest that yon permit the subjcci
of the artificial hatcliing of fish to engage your attention, and that you
petition th6 legislature to appropriate several dollars to purchase whale's
eggs, vegetable oysters and mock turtle seeds. [Laughter.] The hatch-
ing of fish is easy, and any man can soon learn it; and it is a branch of
industry that many mIio arc now out of employment, owing to circum-
stancoi beyond their control, [laughter] will be glad to. avail themselves
of. How, I ask you, could means better be adapted to tho ends than for
the retiring ofiTicers of our State to go to setting on fish eggs? [Laughter.]
When should fish be eaten?
This question has often been asked by the agricultural newspaper.
This is easily answered by the scientists among our farmers. Fish should
bo eaten at meal time. [I^iughter.]
Fish without bones are the best to raise and the easiest to eat. llany
farmers eat the largest bones of the largest fish. This is a mistake.
Nothing appears so much out of place iis to see a farmer in business hours
walking along the street ])icking pickerel bones out of the sides of his
neck. [Laughter.]
280 KINGR OF THE PLATFORM AND PVLPTT,
There is but one other sadder siglit than this, and that u, to see an
old maid in a street car, licr hip full of bundles, an iimbrelhi in one
hand, and a pet dog under Jier arm, and the lady trying to cat a juicy
pear with a double set of false teeth that are loose. [Tjaughter.]
The subject of the artificial i)ropagation of fish, by the farmer, has
arrested the attention of many of the ablest minds of the countr}', and
the results of experiments have been thus far so satisfactory that it is
almost safe to predict that within the next ten centuries every farmer^
however poor, may pick bull-heads off of his crab apple vines, and
gather his winter supply of fresh shad from his sweet potato trees at
less than fifty cents a pound. [Laughter.] The experiments that have
been made in our own State, warrant us in going largely into the fish
business. A year ago, a quantity of fish seeds were sub-soil plowed into
the ice of Lake Mendota by a careful farmer, and to-day, I am informed,
that the summer boarders there have all the fish to eat that any reason-
able man could desire. The expense is small and the returns are
enormous. It is estimated that from the six quarts of fish seeds that were
planted in the lake, there are now ready for the market, at least,
11,000,000 car loads of brain-producing food, if you spit on yonr bait
when you go fishing, [Loud laughter.]
Fish are nourishing food for the farmer. Then lie knows what he is
eating. The bones identify the fish. Now, a Kacine farmer, who had
been consuming large quantities of Chicago tenderloin, investigated his
beefsteak, and found tl.at it was a fried liver pad that a former summer
boarder had pawned for his board. The farmer didn't want to lose it,
so he had it cooked. A liver pad, if nicely cooked, id fine eating, with
mushrooms, but, of course — well, this is an isolated case. [Laughter.]
I have been asked by several Oshkosh agriculturists if seed com
should be frozen. *' Does it hurt the ears to freeze them?'* This is a
mooted question. I can only answer the question by telling an anec-
dote.
**A young Boscobel farmer and his girl went out sleighing one day,
and returned with a frozen ear. [Laughter.] There is nothing very
startling in the simple fact of a frozen ear, but the idea is that it was the
ear next to the girl that he was foolish enough to let freeze.'* [Laugh-
ter.] A Wisconsin girl that will go out sleigh-riding with a young
man and allow his ears to freeze is no gentleman, and ought to be
arrested. Why, in ^lilwaukee, on the coldest days, I have seen a young
man out riding with a girl, and his ears were so hot they would fairly
*'sis," and there was not a man driving on the avenue but would have
changed places with the young man, and allowed his ears to cooL
GEORGE W. PECK. 281
[Laughter.] 'So, Wisconsin girls can not sit too close during winter
weather. This climate is rigorous. [Loud laughter.]
Shall farmers spend their money for costly/ farm machinery?
This is a grave question. Millions of dollars^ I understand^ have been
paid out by Wisconsin farmers to buy a new invention called a ** cat
teaser/' This they put on fences to keep cats from sitting there and
singing. It consists of a three-cornered piece of tin^ nailed on the top
of the fence. We hope none of our farmer friends will continue to
invest in the patent^ for statistics show that while cats very often sit on
fences to meditate^ yet, when they get it all meditated and get ready to
sing a duet^ they get down off the fence and get under a currant bush.
[Laughter.] We challenge any cat scientist to disprove the assertion.
[Loud laughter.]
The question often comes up ''shall the farmer be educated?''
I have given this question much thought^ and am unable to decide it.
I read yesterday that a very ignorant man^ unable to r^d or write, has
lately died in Cincinnati, leaving an estate of $250,000 in steamboats
and things. What a lesson this circumstance is to those farmers who
will fritter away their time learning to read and write, when they might
be laying up steamboats for their heirs and assigns. [Laughter.]
Knowledge is power, but steamboats are powerer. [Laughter.]
The poor farmer has many trying moments. There are times when
he requires fortitude — and when he should be as bold as Peter the
Hermit. There is one especial moment in the life of a young farmer,
however humble or however exalted, when he feels the humiliation of
his position, and blushes at what is expected of him. A moment when
he feels as thougli he would prefer to transact the business before him
through an agent. A time when his soul would fain throw off its fet-
ters, and he feels it to be a moral impossibility for him to go through
the task assigned to him, when he feels that he would almost rather die,
if he were satisfied he were good enough. That time is when he has to
go into a store and inquire of the gentlemanly clerk if he has got any
fine- tooth combs. [Laughter.] He looks around carefully to see that
no one is listening, and asks for the harrowing instrument of torture,
but is careful to tell the clerk that it is dandruff that is the matter.
f Liiugliter.J
A serious question, fraught with great interest to the farmer, is now
being discussed by the Farmers' Alliance throughout our country. It
id a touching subject, and I approach it with almost reverential aw^e.
Still, in an address to the agriculturists of the whole country, I can not
remain silent on the great question.
2S2 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
This question is, shall farmers employ female doctors?
I should say, in answer to this great question, that a farmer^ if there
Wi'is nothing tlie matter with him, might call in a female doctor;
[laughter] but if he was sick as a horse — and when a man is sick^ he is
sick as a horse — the last thing he would have around would be a female
doctor, and why? Because when a man wants a female fumbling around
he wants to feel well, [Laughter.] He don't want to be bilous, or
feverish, with his mouth tasting like cheese, and his eyes bloodshot,
when a female is looking over him and taking an account of stock.
Of course these female doctors are all young and good looking^ and
if one of them came into a sick room where a farmer was in bed, and he
had chills, and was as cold as a wedge, and slio should sit up close to the
side of the bed, and take hold of his hand, his pulse would run np to a
hundred and fifty and she would prescribe for a fever when he had chil-
blains. Then if he died she could be arrested for malpractice. 0, you
Ciin*t fool us farmers on female doctors. [Laughter.]
A farmer who has been sick and has had male doctors, knows just
how he would feel to have a female doctor come tripping in and tLrow
lier fur-lined cloak over a chair, take off her hat and gloves, end throw
tliem on a lounge, and come up to the bed with a pair ',1 marine blu'>
eves, with a twinkle in the corner, and look him in the wi "^ changeable
eyes, and ask him to run out his tongue. Suppose he kne his tongue
was coated so it looked like a yellow Turkish towel, do you suppose he
would want to run out five or six inches of the lower end of it, and let
tliat female doctor put her finger on it, to see how it was furred? Not
much! Ho would put that tongue up into his cheek, and wouldn't let
lier see it for twenty-five cents admission. [Laughter.]
We have all seen doctors put their hands under the bed clothes and
feci a farmer's feet to see if they were cold. If a female doctor should
do that, it would give a farmer cramps in the legs. [Laughter.]
A male doctor can put his hand on a farmer's stomach, and liver, and
lungs, and ask him if he feels any pain there; but if a female doctor
sliould do tlic same thing it would make him sick, and ho would
want to get ii}) and kick himself for emi)loying a female doctor. 0,
there is no use talking, it would kill a farmer — a female doctor would! ^.
Now, suppose a farmer had heart disease, and a female doctor shonld
want to listen to the beating of his heart. She would lay her left ear on
his left breast, so her eyes and rosebud mouth would be looking right
into his face, and her wavy hair would be scattered all around there, get-
ting tangled in the buttons of his night shirt. Don't you suppose his
heart would get in about twenty extra beats to the minute? You betl
GEORGE W. FECK. 283
And she would smile — we will bet ten dollars she would smile — and
show her pearly teeth^ and her red lips would be working as though she
were counting the beats^ and he would think she was trying to whisper
to him, and [Laughter.]
Well, what would he be doing all this time? If he was not dead yet^
which would be a wonder, his left hand would brush the hair away '
from her temple, and his right hand would get sort of nervous and move
around to the back of her head, and when she had counted the heart-
beats a few minutes and was raising her head, he would draw the head
up to him and kiss her once for luck, if he was as bilous as a Jersey
swamp angel, and have her charge it in the bill; and then a reaction
would set in, and he would be as weak as a cat, and she would have to
fan him and rub his head until he got over being nervous, and then
make out her prescription after he got asleep. "No; all of a man's symp-
toms change when a female doctor is practicing on him, and she would
kill him dead.
These woman colleges are doing a great wrong in preparing these
female doctors for the war path, and we desire to enter a protest in
behalf of twenty million farmers who could not stand the pressure.
[Loud laughter.]
You farmers write and expect me to give you reliable farm informa-
tion. You expect me to tell you what to raise, when to raise and how to
raise it. The Farmers' Alliance asks^ when should a man raise horses? In
answering this I will say that I always rais6 horses just seven years ago.
[Laughter.] That is always a great year for colts — that seven years ago.
[Laughter.] Ilorses raised before or since may be good horses but no
one wants them. Occasionally some one sells a six-year-old horse, but it
does not often occur, unless the buyer insists upon that age; and then a
thrifty farmer can generally accommodate him. [Laughter.]
Now us farmers who lived around here seven years ago did not have
our attention called to the fact that the country was flooded with colts.
There were very few twin colts, and it was seldom that a mother had
half a dozen colts following her. Farmers and stock-raisers did not go
round worrying about what they were going to do with so many colts.
•The papers, if wo recollect right, were not filled with accounts of the
extraordinjiry number of colts l)orn. And yet you see it must have been
a terrible year for colts, because there are only six horses in Milwaukee
that are over seven years old. One of tliem was found to have been
pretty well along in years when he worked for an Oshkosh farmer, in 1848
and finally the fanner who had a poor memory, owned up that he was
mistaken twenty-six years. ^Vhat a mortality there must have been among
284 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
horses that would now be eight, nine or ten years old. There are none
of them left. And a year from now, when our present stock of horses
would naturally bo eight years old they will all be dead, and a new lot of
seven-year old horses will take their places. It is singular, but it is
true. That is, it is true unless farmers and horse dealers lie, and I would
be slow to charge so grave a crime upon a useful and enterprising class
of citizens. No, it can not be, and yet, farmers, don't it seem peculiar
that all the horses in this broad land are seven years old this springf
We leave this subject for the farmers of the land to wonder over.
In the meantime continue to hire your colts born just seven year*
ago. [Loud applause.]
Another want of the farmer is a farm currency. We want it fixed by
the Treasury Department so we can make change easily.
Wliat we want is a currency that every farmer can issue for himself.
A law should be passed making the products of the farm a legal tender
for all debts, public and private, including duties on imports, interest
on the public debt, and contributions for charitable purposes. Then
w^ shall have a new money table about as follows:
Ten ears of corn make one cent.
Ten cucumbers make one dime.
Ten watermelons make one dollar.
Ten bushels of wheat make one eagle.
Arise and sing I
I
\
\
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
BIOORAPHY AND BEMINISCENCBS.
Ghaunoey M. Depew was bom on a farm near Poufi^hkeepeie in 1888. He came
of poor but respectable parents. When a boy he worked on the farm, and the great
railroad magnate, who now makes presidents, talks politics with Gladstone and
jokes with the Prince of Wales, has many a time driven the cows home in the rain.
Mr. Depew graduated at Yale College, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and
afterward became President of the great New York Central Railroad. His aim in
life seems to be to make everybody happy. He is democratic in all his ways, takes
every man by the hand, is loved at the Union League Olub and is the honored guest
of the St. Patrick, St Andrews and New England Societies. Depew, Horace Por-
ter and Ingersoll are perhaps the best after-dinner speakers of the age, and
Depew is perhaps the best *' all around *' extemporaneous speaker in this country.
Mr. Depew has an eye like an eagle and a smile which throws sun-
Rhine all around him. He is never too busy to see a friend, even if he
has to say " hail and farewell " in the same breath. I say never too
busy, but I now remember calling on him once when he sent out word
that he was engaged with two railroad presidents and could see no one
— " not even on business."
I told tbe boy to tell Mr. Depew that I hadnU any business at
all, only a new joke.
'*A11 right, Eli,'' said Mr. Depew, laughing through the door,
" come right in. But first," he said, " let me tell you my dog story.
'* When I was about fourteen years old, my father lived on the
old farm up at Poughkeepsie. One day, after I had finished a five-
acre field of corn, my father let me go to town to see a circus.
While in town I saw for the first time a spotted coaoh dog. It took
my fancy, and I bought it and took it home. When father saw it,
his good old Puritan face fell.
\
286 ElNOa OF THE PLATFORM Aim PULPIT.
" ' Why, Chauncey/ he said sadly, * we don't want any spotted
dog on the farm — he'll drive the cattle crazy. '
"No, ho won't, father," said Chauncey, proudly ; "he's a blooded
dog."
" ' The next day," said Mr. Depew, " it was raining, and I took the
dog out into the woods to try him on a coon, but the rain was
too much for him. It washed the spots oflF. That night I took the
dog back to the dog-dealer, with a long face. Said I : * Look at that
dog su*; the spots have all washed off.'
" ' Great guns, boy ! ' exclaimed the dog-dealer, ' there was an um-
brella went with that dog. Didn't you get the umbrella ?' "
Mr. Depew's father was a very frugal farmer and also a very
pious man. He never liked to have any time wasted in the prayer-
meeting. One night, when the experiences had all been told, and
the exhortations flagged, and the prayers grew feeble, Brother
Depew arose and solemmly remarked :
"I don't like to see the time wasted — Brother Joslyn, can't you
tell your experience?"
Brother Josyln said he'd told his experience twice already.
"Then Brother Finney can't you make a prayer or tell your
experience ?"
"I've told it several times to-night, brother."
"Well my bretliern," said Mr. Depew, "as the regular exercises
to-night seem to halt a little, and as no one seems to want to pray or
tell his experience, I will improve the time by making a few obser-
vations on the tariff."
I was talking one day with Mr. Depew about demand and sup-
ply. I said the price of any commodity is always controlled by the
demand and supply.
"Not always, Eli," said Mr. Depew, " demand and supply don^t
always govern prices. Business tact sometimes governs them."
"When," I asked, "did an instance ever occur, when the price
did not depend on demand and supply?"
" Well " said IVfr. Depew, " the other day I stepped up to a German
butcher, and out of curiosity asked :
" What's the price of sausages?"
" Dwentv cents a bound " he said.
" You asked twenty-five this morning,"! replied.
CEA VNCST M. DXPSW. 287
^'Ya, dot vas ven I bad some. Now I ain'd got none I sells him
for dwendy cends. Dot makes me a rebutation for selling oheab and
I donM lose noddings."
^^ You see, " said Depew laughing, '^ I didn't want any fiansage
and the man didn't have any — no demand or supply, and still the
price of sausage went down."
I was talking to Mr. Depew one day about his going out to din-
ner so much.
" Yes," he said, " I do go out a good deal."
^' But how can you stand it} I should think it would give you
dyspepsia. I suppose you can eat every thing?"
" No, there are two things which I always positively refuse to eat
for dinner," said Mr. Depew, gravely.
" And what are they ?"
" Wliy breakfast and supper.'*
" But the great crowds you have to face in heated rooms, they
must wear on you ?" I said.
"But the crowded dining room," said Mr. Depew, "is more
iiealthful than a funeral. Now, I have a friend in Poughkeepsie
who goes out more than I do, but he goes to funerals. He never
misses one. He enjoys a good funeral better than the rest of us
enjoy a dinner.
" I remember one day how I attended a funeral with my Pough-
keepsie friend over in Dutchess county. The house was packed.
The people came for miles around — and everybody came to mourn
too. Many eyes were wet, and some good old farmers who had never
seen the deceased except at a distance, groaned and shed real tears.
After we had crowded our way in amongst the mourners, I turned
to my friend and said:
" 'George, I don't see the coffin — where is it?'
" But George couldn't answer.
'^Vfter a while I made a remark to my friend about a lovely
eiirht-day standin*]: clock in the hall.
"'The clock!' said George, mournfully, *why that isn't a clook,
that's the cofBn. They've stood him up in the hall to make room
for the mourners !' "
Mr. Depew has a well-balanced brain. There are no streaks of
insanity in the Depew family. Once, while conversing with Dr.
Hammond, our witty ex-surgcon-general, about insanity, I asked
him how incipient insanity could be detected.
THE NEW YJRK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
II i-
CHA UNOST M, DBPEW. 28S
" How large is it ? I haven't seen a newspaper."
" O, ten shirts and four pair of — "
But Depew's genial laugh drowned the sentence.
" Perfectly sane," I said to myself.
One night I was lecturing to a big audience in I^apoleon, Ohio.
The lecture committee said they would like to have me get a joke
on Judge , I forget his name, who sat in a front seat. So when
I was illustrating the difference between the joke and the anecdote,
I said :
''The joke is the incident itself; the anecdote is a description
of it. You get a joke on a man — a description of it appears in the
newspaper the next day; that is an anecdote. Now," said I, "to
illustrate the difference between the joke and the anecdote — and
this is a very important illustration, and I hope the young people in
the audience will remember it — suppose I were talking about a fast
horse that I have ; suppose I should say I have a horse that could
travel from Napoleon to Toledo, a distance of — of
" * Twenty-six miles," interrupted the Judge.
" Well, Judge," said I, *' if you know more about this lecture than
I do "
But I never finished the sentence. A scream of laughter came
up from the audience, and the house was a bedlam for several
minutes.
When the audience had settled down, I said, *' I beg the Judge's
pardon for answering him so rudely, for it was very kind in
him to tell me the distance, and very rude and ungentlemanly for
me to answer him so bluntly, but the fact is, I had just told the
young gentlemen in the audience that I would illustrate to them
the difference between the joke and the anecdote, and in a way
they would never forget it. "Now this is a joke," I said. "To-
morrow it will become an anecdote — a dead cold anecdote. It
won't produce any laughter to-morrow, and, I believe, if any one
should go to the Judge to-morrow and ask him in the most polite
manner the distance to Toledo, I believe he would pull out his
revolver and " Another scream from the audience drowned
the sentence.
Well it was all very well that night, and would have ended in
laughter bad the Judge been perfectly sane, but he had incipient
insanity, egotism, and when I got onto the train the next morning,
290 Knf08 OF THB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
to go to Toledo, the Judge came down with a big hickory cane, to
chastise me for the joke.
Five months after this the Judge went to an insane asylum.
This story is absolutely true, and I appeal to every man, woman or
child in Napoleon to substantiate it.
It is so different with Depew. A good story on anybody, even
at the expense of himself, is his delight.
The day after his return from Europe the last time, I was in
Cornelius Vanderbilt's room, in the Central Kailroad office, which is
next to Depew's, and told him a little story about Mr. Depew's ex-
perience on the steamer. I didn't know that the great original was
listening to the story through the half open door. The story as
told by the brokers in the street ran like this:
" It seems that every evening, on the ' City of Rome, * a dozen
or so genial passengers clustered in the smoking saloon to tell stories
and yarn about things in general. Every soul save one in the party
kept his end up. The one exceptional member of the party did not
laugh or indicate by even a twinkle of the eye any interest in the
funniest jokes, and was as silent as a door-knob at the best stories.
*' This conduct began to nettle Mr. Depew and the other spirits,
and when the final seance came around they had lost all patience
with the reticent and unresponsive stranger. Mr. Depew was finally
selected to bring him to terms. They were all comfortably seated
and in came the stranger.
" ' See here, my dear sir,' " said Mr. Depew, " ' won't you tell a
story ? ' "
*' * I never told one in my life.' "
" ' Sing a song ? ' "
"'Can't sing.'"
" ' Know any jokes ? ' " persisted Mr. Depew.
U i jf o.' "
"Mr. Depew and all were prepared to give it up when the
stranger stammered and hesitated and finally made it known that
he knew just one conundrum.
" ' Give it to us,' " said Mr. Depew and the others in chorus.
" ' What is the difference between a turkey and me?' " solemnly
asked the stranger.
" ' Give it up,' " said Chairman Depew.
OHA UNCET M. DBPBW. 2'ai
'^ ' The difference between a turkey and me/ " mildly said the
stranger, ^' ^ is that they usually stuff the bird with ohestnuts after
death. I am alive.' "
Yanderbilt smiled audibly, but a merry ba ! ha I ! echoed from
the next room.
It was the happy laugh of Depew himself, and it grew louder till
I left the building. When I meet Mr. Depew now I give him the
whole sidewalk, and when I ride on his railroad I walk. ,
HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW'S LECTURE.
ENGLAND^ IRELAND AKD 8C0TLAKD.
Ladies and 06)11167116)1:-^^ q started in the morning to drive to
Blarney Castle, and kiss its famous stone. The road runs through a
country which gives a fair idea of agricultural Ireland. We passed by
the splendid farms and grand houses to study that most interesting per-
son in Ireland, the Irish peasant. He and his family live in stone cot-
tages about thirty feet long and one story high, with a thatched rool
The floor is of earth, and the single room is often divided so that the
cow and pig may be sheltered in the other half. The Irishman's pig is
a sacred thing. When I saw the proximity of the pig to-day, I said to
its rosy-faced owner:
'' I say, Patrick, don't you think it is unhealthful to have your pig
in the house with your children?"
** An' phy shuld oi not, sor? * It's unhealthy,' is it, ye sez. Be away
wid yer nonsense! Sure the pig has never been sick a day in his life."
[Laughter.]
Around the Irishman's door are always to be seen crowds of children,
locking happy and light-hearted, though the driver said: *' Maybe they
went to bed without supper and have had no breakfast.'' Children
swarm everywhere, for the marriage bond in Ireland is a coupon bond,
and they cut one oil every year.
Blarney Castle is situated half a mile from the public road, and to
got to it we walked through a charming garden. The castle is a
solid square stone tower 120 feet high. Round the top runs a battle-
ment resting on piers projecting from the face of the tower. Between
this battlement or coping and the face of the tower is a space of about
four or six feet, and on the lower side of the coping is the famous Blar-
ney stone, hold in its place by iron bands. As you stand on the top of
the wall of the castle and look at the stone, you are 120 feet from the
ground on the outside, and 100 on the inside, where the different floors
292 RING a OF THE PLATFORM Aim PULPIT,
have fallen through, and the wall on which you are is about three feet
wide. If you attempt to reach down and kiss the stone, you are inevi-
ably pitched to the ground through the open space between the coping
and the castle i)roper. If your friend tries to hold you, when he pulls
you back, both of you fall over into the pit. It could never be touched
by any human being unless he had a derrick. I knew its virtues both
in politics, in law, and in love, and longed to glue my lips to its surface.
I thought over Fatlier Front's famous lines:
There is a stone there, that whoever kisses
Oh ! he never misses to grow eloquent 1
*Tis he may clamber to a lady's cliamber.
Or become a member of Parliament.
A clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or
An out and outer to be let alone;
Don't hope to hinder him or to bewilder him,
Sure he's a pilgrim to the Blarney Stone.
and then threw it a despairing kiss and climbed down. Sir Walter Scott
paid the spot a memorable visit, and it never had a worthier pilgrim to
its shrine. The derricks were there for him, and hence the wonderful
romance and weird poetry of the Wizard of the North. Father Prout
told the wondering Scott a tale about the Blarney stone surpassing the
Wizard's wildest creations.
'* The Blarney stone," said the witty Father Prout, **is superior to the
famed stone of Memnon, the Luxor obelisk, the Sphinx's head, the
Delphic oracle, the Elgin marbles, with all their sculptures, and the
Philosopher's stone. It belonged to the Irish family of O'Neills, who
lived in Egypt in the pre-historic period, and from the river Nile it
received its name, and the twenty-first year after the sack of Troy it was
brought to Ireland.
Under the castle are the dungeons for the prisoners of war or chief-
tain's vengeance. In these cells we realize the cruelties and nameless
horrors which were inflicted on the helpless in the good old times,' I
crept on hands and knees through a low, narrow, winding passage, and
finally emerged into the prisoner's room. No ray of light ever penetrated
it, no grojiiis or cries could be heard through the thick walls, and in a
space not liigli enough to stand upright, in dampness and utter dark-
ness, the poor wretches died in nameless agonies. When I came again
into the light, I gave my guide his fee, and, as I bade him good-bye,
he cried:
O Blarney Castle, my darling.
You're nothing at all but a stone,
And a small, little twist of ould ivy;
Och \visha, ullaloo, ullagone. [Iitiughter.]
0HAUN0B7 M. BSPEW. 298
Tlio rich Irish brogue and blundering bulls of the Irishman con-
stantly amused me. Two Irishmen were crossing a field near Blarney
Castle, and saw, for the first time, a jackass, which was making '^ day-
light hideous *' with his unearthly braying.
Jemmy stood a moment in astonishment, then turning to Pat, who
was also enraptured with the song, he remarked:
'^ It's a fine ear the bird has got for music, but he's got a wonderful
cowld/' [Laughter.]
Again, two Irishmen were working in a quarry around the Castle,
when one of them fell into a deep quarry hole. The other, alarmed^
came to the margin of the hole and called out:
*' Arrah, Pat, are ye killed entirely? If ye're dead, spake.'*
Pat reassured him from the bottom by saying, in answer:
" No, Tim, Fm not dead, but I'm spachless," [Laughter.]
But the Irish brogue is no funnier than the English brogue. One
day an English farmer responded, at an agricultural fair, to the toast of
'^ The Queen." This is the way he talked:
*' Noo, gentlemen, will ye a' fill your glasses, for I'm aboot to bring
forward *The Queen.' [Applause.] Oor Queen, gentlemen, is really a
wonderful woman, if I may say it; she is ane o' the guid auld sort, nae
whignaleeries or falderal aboot her, but a douce daecent body. She's
respectable beyond a doot. She has brocht up a grand &mily o' weel-
faurM lads and lasses — her auldest son bein' a credit to ony mither — and
tlieyVo weel married. Gentlemen, ye'll maybe no believe it, but I ance
«aw tlie queen. [Sensation.] I did. Somebody pointed her oot tae me
at Perth station, and there she was, smart and tidy-like; and says I tae
myself, 'God bless that queen, my queen!' Noo, gentlemen, the
whuskcy's guitl, the nicht islang, the weather is wet, and the roads are
saft, and will harm naebody that comes to grief. So, aff wi'yer drink
tae the bottom! *Thc queen!'" [Loud laughter.]
A mil ride of Iiulf a day from Blarney Castle and we are at Kilfairney.
Whatever else may ho retarded in Ireland, her railways are admirably
managed; an<l in safety, speed, comfort, and high fare, compare fayora*
hly witli any in Europe. Whoeyer expects to find the lakes of Killarney
gems unccjuidlcd in stonic merit, will realize, if an Amerioan, that cen-
turies of undisputed p:aisi\ ilie adjectives cumulating as each cycle rolls
round, like ih<' storieil adulations of tlie old masters, produce a picture
in the imagination never realized by the eye. Lake George, in our own
State wnuld sinile wiili serene superiority ui>on any sheet of water in
Europe, whose I)eauties liave been celebrated in prose and poetry by the
genius of every ago. Xovertheless, the unquestioned charms of Killar*
ney, the ruined abbeys and castles upon its shores^ the wild legeudB
294 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
which are connected with it, make it one of the most impressive places
in the world. I never shall forget the jaunting-car ride with the wild
horse and the wilder driver around to the upper end of the lake.
"See here/' I shouted, as we dashed at full speed down a steep hill,
"what will become of us if that horse stumbles?'' "And sure yer
honor," answered the driver, "why thin, I will fall out first."
At Kate Kearney's cottage the traveler takes a bit of goat's milk and
potheen in memory of the famous beauty, and at the hands of her alleged
granddaughter, and, leaving the jaunting-car, mounts a pony for a ride
through the Gap of Dunloe. The Gap is a wild gorge in the mountain
with a narrow path at the bottom, and barren and precipitous rocks at
the sides.
Did you ever see those beautiful rosy cheeked Irish girls? About
forty of them joined us here, and followed us through the Gap, and a
brighter, merrier party never was met. They made a raid upon our
pockets whicli cleaned out the last shilling, but it was fairly won and
lost.
"Sure, sor," said a pretty girl, "an' are the winters very cold in
Ameriky?"
" Yes," I said.
"Then," said this bright-eyed siren, "I have been expecting you sor,
and have knitted these woolen stockings to niiike you comfortable at
home, and keep your heart warm to oukl Ireland."
"And is there nothing you will buy?" said another.
"Nothing," said I.
"Well, then," she cried, " will yer honor give me a shilling for a six-
pence?"
"lam going to be married, sor," licpcd a mountain beauty, "and
me marriage portion is pretty near made \\\)\ and Pat's getting very
weary waiting so long."
" My money is all gone," said I, when quick as a flash I heard a friend
say to her:
"Mary, thry him on getting to Ameriky." [Laughter.]
Desolate as this spot is, it furnishes an opportunity for that species of
landlordism which is Ireland's curse, and adds needless irritation to
oppression. The man who wakes the echoes with a blast from the bugle
must pay 825 a year for the privilege, the artillery-man who stirs them
up with a cannon is taxed by the land-owner $50.
Oh, the poverty of Ireland!
As we emerged from the Gap and looked into the Black Valley, so
called, because between the steep hills the sun only penetrates at
• -*
L^
CHA UNCBY M. DSPEW. 295
mid-day, I noticed that it was cut up into small fanns of about fire acres
each. Around the little stone cabins were the chickens, the goat^ the
pigs and the donkey, I said to one of their tenants:
'' How much rent do you pay for this land? ''
" For the cottage and five acres, with the privilege of pasturing sheep
on tlie side of the mountain, we each pay $250 a year.'*
" In heaven^s name/' I said, " how can you raise enough to do that
and keep body and soul together? ''
'^ And that's all we do, sir/' he answered, "and we couldn't do that
except for the corn meal which comes to us from your country,"
At the foot of the Black Valley we took a six-oared boat for a trip
through the lakes. They are three in number — ^the first being eight
miles wide by two in length, then a river for two miles to the middle
lake, and then you shoot the rapids to the lower lake which is five miles
wide by three long. The mountains rise from the water to the height
of 1,700 feet, and numberless islands everywhere dot the surface, ' Every
islet, rock and cove has its story of early and bloody strife, of love and
murder, of fairy or ghostly visitant; and the boatmen religiously believe
that once a year the O'Donoghue, on his snow-white horse, rises from
the lake and rides to his ancient castle. All the sights to be seen are
upon the land owned by Mr. Herbert, of Muckross, and the Earl of Ken-
mare. Every few miles you pass through a gate and pay a shilling,
•'AVliy/'I asked the driver, "is this charge made so of ten to ride
over tlie.so roads?''
** Slianio on tlie landlord/' he said, bitterly, "with his thousands of
pounds, who taxes the tourist to keep up his grounds."
Muckross Ab])ey is a fine old ruin, and worth the fee to visit, but
when, after buying a ticket, you are mysteriously directed through a
wicket gate, and climbing a steep hill are ushered into the presence of
the far-famed Tore Water Fall, you involuntarily cry:
"Oh, Sliade of Barnum, the Great; humbug is not a protected
American j)ro(luct, for the wonderful Tore is surpassed in both grandeur
and beauty by Buttermilk Falls, near West Point,"
No greater contrast ever existed in the same country than between
the cities of Belfast and Cork. AVhilethe latter is retrograding, the for-
mer lias increased its j)oi)ulation six-fold in fifty years. It is full of life
and activity, and resembles an American town. Every body has some-
tliin^,^ to do, and there is enough to do for all, and poverty and distress
seem to be unknown. It supports four colleges and over one hundred
ciiiirclies. There is nothing for the sightseer in this busy hive, and so
ho starts for the Giant's Causeway. As you near the causeway there
296 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AKD PULPIT.
stands out in the ocean one of the most romantic ruins in the world.
The sea has cut off a projecting promontory from the land, and upon
this the mediaeval baron built his castle of Dunluce. The precipitous
sides run down 100 feet to the water, and it is joined to the land by a
causeway only eighteen inches wide. As you look at the grand old ruin
and this threadlike bridge, the story of the bloody and cruel past is bet-
ter told than in a thousand volumes. From its gates came the chief
and his armed retainers to plunder and ravage the surrounding country,
and in their train, on their return, was the father, to be tortured for
his hidden treasures, then flung over the battlements, and the daughter
to become the sport of the soldiers. The Bridge of Sighs never heard so
many cries of suffering and despair as were borne from this lonely rock
acrass the lonely waters. The Giant^s Causeway is one of the few mar-
velous freaks of nature sufficiently wonderful to distinguish any country.
It is only by a visit, and not by a description, that this phenomenal
formation can be understood. But here, on the shores of the Atlantic,
are hundreds of acres covered with stone columns more perfect than the
artisan ever worked. There are millions of them. Each is about two
feet in diameter. They are formed of separate blocks about a foot thick,
and yet so perfectly joined that it is difficult to see where they touch,
except you lift one off. The columns are from four to 100 feet in height.
Some are three-sided, and from that to eight sides, but no matter how
many, each side is exactly of the same dimensions as the other, and the
surfaces are as smooth as if polished* by machinery. In the rear they
form the front of a lofty cliff, and, looking like its pipes, are called the
Giant^s Organ, whose music is the reverberation of the dashing waves of
the ocean.
Naturalists and scientists have done their best to solve the problem
of the structure of this grand temple, but after all the Irish explanation
is the best. In the olden time the famous Irish giant. Fin McGoul, had
a quarrel with a Scotch giant across the water. The Scotchman said he
would come over and mop up the floor with Fin if it was not for getting
his feet wet. Whereupon Mr. McCoul, like the fine ould Irish gentle-
man that he was, built this causeway for his Caledonian rival, and greeted
him with the most tremendous thrashing ever given to man. What was
left of the Scot, Mr. McCoul generously set up in business in a grocery,
and the sea in time washed away Fin's bridge to Scotland.
Why is the Irishman poor, and why do the troubles of this people
vex all the world? If you ask an Englishman the remedy, he answers,
*' Leave the island twenty-four hours under water.*' The main difficulty
is that William III., at the petition of the British manufacturers, abol-
ished all the factories in Ireland but the linen ones. In the north of
OHAUNCBT M. ^DEPEW, '■ 897
Ireland^ where these still flourish^ there are thrift and content. The rest
of the country is necessarily purely agricultural. There are no diver-
sified industries for the young men and women. Families are large, and
the tenant farmer divides his holding among his children. If he has ten
and a hundred acre farm he leaves them ten acres apiece. If they each
in turn have ten^ they can give their children but one acre each, and
then it being impossible to either get a living off the land or pay a cent
of rent, there is nothing left but to shoot the landlord. I said to a large
English manufacturer:
" Why don't you solve the Irish question by establishing here new
Sheffields and Birminghams^ and then this island could support 10,000,-
000 in comfort where 4,000,000 can not live.*'
" The beggars," said he, " won't work."
'* But," I said, " In America they reclaim New England farms which
the Yankees have abandoned, and arc usefully industrious in every public
and private work."
I repeated the remark of the English manufacturer to an Irish
member of parliament, and asked his answer. " Well," he said, *' they
will not work for an Englishman."
As the Irish have no capital to start manufactories, this reply added
greatly to the difficulties of the question. In her natural relations to
other nations, and her own proper development, the successful and
wealthy men in Ireland would be her workers in iron and steel, in cotton
and wool. But alas, there are none, and so a brewer restores St. Patrick's
ciithedral at a cost of a million, and a distiller, Christ Church catnedral,
at a cost of another million, and both are knighted here — perhaps here-
after.
A boatman on Killarney told me he supported a family of eight
children on ^75 a year. A bright, intelligent man, who did some work
for me, said he could earn only twenty-five cents a day, and that, in the
same cabin with his domestic animals, himself and ten children lived
upon the food which fattened the chickens and the pigs.
An Irishman in the employ of the Central Bailroad got to the bottom
of the Irish question. lie stepped into a meat market and asked an old
lady the price of fowls.
" A dollar apiece,'' was the reply.
''And a dollar is it, my darlint? Why, in Ireland you might buy
them for a sixpence apiece."
" Then why didn't you stay in that blessed cheap country?"
"Och, faith and there were no sixpences there, to Ik) sure.**
[Laughter. ]
I
298 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
And yet, notwithstanding all these hard conditions^ the Irish are
the quickest and most cheerful of all the peasantry of Europe. While
the English and continental people who are in like condition are little
above the brutes, the Irish are as full of life, fire and humor as if their
8tate was one of frolic and ease. Touch one of them anywhere and at
any time, and he bubbles with fun and smart repartee. When I was in
Dublin, a political orator was describing his opponent as an extinct vol-
cano, when a voice in the audience cried:
"Oh, the poor crater/'
I said to a jaunting-car driver at Queenstown, to whom I owed a
shilling:
" Can you change a half-crown (two and sixpence) "?
" Change a half-crown, is it?" he cried, in mock amazement, "do
you think I have robbed a bank ? '*
At Killamey I met a delicious bit of wit and blunder. I asked the
hotel clerk to stamp a letter for me. He put on the postage stamp
which bears Victoria's image, and then starting back as if horrified,
said:
*' Bedad, but I have stood her majesty on her head/'
" AVell," I said, " that is not astonishing for an Irishman, but that is
a double letter, and w^on't go without another stamp."
''Another stamp, is it?" and slapping the second directly over the
first, '' Begorra," said he, "it will go now." [Laughter.]
I love the witty Irish so well, you must let me illustrate some of
their characteristics. Some friends of mine, and among them a disciple
of Bergh, were walking through Cork, and saw a boy of sixteen beating
a donkey. Said the member of the Society for the Prevention of Cru-
elty to Animals:
"Boy, stop beating your brother! " and as quick as a flash the boy
answered:
" I won't, father! "
I said to an Irish liveryman : " Give me a good horse for a long ride."
"All right, your honor. The best in the world."
The horse broke down in half an hour, and I said: "You rascal,
why did you cheat me in this way?"
"Sure, your honor, that horse is all right, but he is a very intelli-
gent baste, and knowing you are a strangef, he wants you to have time
to see the scenery."
As I was bidding farewell to Ireland, I said to my faithful attendant:
"Good-bve, Pat."
*' Good-bye, yer honor/' he said, pathetically. ** May God bless you
and may every hair in your head be a candle to light your soul to gloiy.*'
OHAJmOT M. DEPSW. 299
" Well, Pat/' I said, showing him my bald pate, '* when that time
comes there won't be much of a torchlight procession/' [Laughter.]
The Irish all love whisky. To be sure, there are temperance men,
but even they, when the bottle comes, invariably break their best reso-
lutions. ,
'' Biddy/' said Mulligan to his vrife, who was a member of the tem-
perance society: " I know yez are a temperance woman, but it is a bad
cowld yez has, and a drop of the craythur would do yez no harrum/'
'^Oh, honey," replied Biddy, "I've taken the pledge; but yez can
mix me a drink and force me to swally it!" [Laughter.]
A rough sail across the Irish Channel and a long ride by rail found
us at midnight at Glasgow, one of the busiest workshops in the world.
But we care not for the industrial and commercial activities of Scotland:
the magic spell of her mountains, her lakes and wild history is upon
us. In the early morning we leave behind the great town, and in a few
hours are sailing over Loch Lomond, the queen of the Scottish lakes.
The vast expanse of water, the beautiful islands, the mountains rising
peak on peak till lost in the clouds, the beetling crags which liieet the
waves, make this one of the few sights which fulfil expectations*
Through the passes surrounding this lake, the Highland chieftains and
their clans raided the Lowland farms. The Celtic warriors of the olden
time followed the golden inile of the day:
The good old rule, the simple plan,
Tliat tliey do take who have tlie power.
And they do keep who can.
The McGregors, the McFarlanes, the Colquhans, here had their lairs
and fought those bloody battles which have given to literature some of
ts best poetry and romance. It was over these mountains that the
fire signals flashed from peak to peak, calling the clansmen to resist the
invader, and it was through these glens that Rhoderick Dhu sent his'
fiery cross. While bold Bob Roy McGregor defied here his enemies, and
far up above tlie beach you see the cave which was his shelter and retreat.
But with all that nature has done for Scotland, and she has been rery
hivish, the country owes the magic charm with which her hills and vales are
invested for all the world to the genius of three men — Sir Walter Scott,*
Robert Burns and John Knox. At every step the stranger comes upon
a scene familiar to him from childhood, through those grand stories and
marvelous verses of Scott and Burns. You have all read the '* Lady of
the Lake,'' but it takers a trip through the Ilighlands to appreciate its
realistic beauty. I stood by the brawling waters of Coilantoglo Ford,
where Rhoderick Dhu challenged Fitz James to mortal combat, by the
300 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND P.ULPIT.
Lanric Mead, Clan Alpine's gathering groand, erotssed the Bridge of
Turk and murmured.
And when the brig of Turk was won.
The headmost horseman rode alone,
rode through the Trossachs, the wild mountain gorge, at whose entrance
Fitz James lost his gallant grey, and stopped at Ellen's Isle, at Liocit
Katrine,
Where for retreat in dangerous hour
Some chief had framed a rustic bower,
long enough to appreciate Scott's description:
With promontory, creek and bay,
And mountains that like giants stand.
To sentinel enchanted land.
Then Ixjfore me seemed to rise the kingly warrior, Fitz James, stand-
ing on the ** silver strand," while from her isle came in her boat the fair
Ellen.
A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid,
Her satin snood, her silken braid,
Her golden brooch such birth betrayed.
And seldom on a breast so fair
Mantled a plaid with modest care.
And never brooch the folds combined
Above a heart more good and kind.
The next morning I stood upon the battlements of Stirling Castle, this
famous fortress of tlie Scottish kings upon a rocky eminence, which
overlooks a vast stretcli of countrv. From its walls are seen the hills
where Wallace bled, and the field of Bannockburii, where Bruce saved
his country.
Legend and story arc about every stone and stream. You stand in
the room wliere King James stabbed the Douglass and threw his body out
of the window. You sit in the chair which Queen Mary and her son
each occupied when crowned. You look at the pulpit from which Knox
thundered liis coronation sermon to the little six-year-old king, whom he
had .taken from his papist mother at the cost of her imprisonment and
exile, andthen you begin to understand the wild tragedies of those troub-
lous times. But tlie center of Scotland's strange and romantic history
for a thouHand years is PMinburgh, the most interesting city of Europe.
On one side of the steej) g<'rge, upon the slopes of which it is built,
rises the old town with the houses, the narrow streets, the fortificationB
of centuries gone by, while on the other side is built one of the most
beautiful of modern cities, and thus the past and the present stand aen-
tinels over each other. Through the old town the castle is reached.
-■^
OEAUNOST M. DSPBW. SOI
This palace and fort is built upon a rock, whose precipitous sides stand
perpendicularly nearly 400 feet from the plain belpw. Within its walls
the noblest and best of Scotland's sons haye been imprisoned, execute
or murdered. In a plain room, not larger than an ordinary closet. Queen
Mary gave birth to James, the future king of England, and he was soon
after lowered down in a basket and hurried to Stirling Gastle that he
might be baptized in his mother's faith, the Soman Gatholic, an act
which caused his mother to lose her crown at the hand of Enox, and
ultimately her life at the hand of Elizabeth. My canny and frugal
guide said to me: '^Sir, the tower is closed which contains the crown
jewels, and you can't get in."
**The doors are locked, you say?"
'^Locked as tight as the Bank of England."
'^Will a sovereign open them?"
^^The half of it will, sir!" he fairly yelled in astonishment at the
reckless prodigality of the offer. [Laughter.]
The ride of ten miles from Edinburgh to Bosslyn gave meanunusui^
opportunity to mark the difference in intelligence between the national-
ities of the coachman class. The Irish driver is full of wit, humor and
fun, but his information is limited, and he is a poor guide. The Eng-
lish driver is the stupidest of all mortals. He has neither imagination
nor knowledge. I said to one as we drove through the ancient gates of
an old walled town:
*' What were those arches built for?" ^
"I don't know, sir."
•* How long have you lived here?"
*' All my life, sir."
Ill the square at Salisbury, stood a statue of Sidney Herbert, for many
years a distinguished member of parliameut. 1 asked the coachman:
*' Whose statue is that?"
** Mr. Herbert's, sir."
" Well," said I, " What did he do to deserve a statue?"
"I don't know, sir, but I think he fit somewhere." [Laughter.]
^^ Well, is that the reason he is dressed in a frock coat, and carries an
umbrella instead of a sword?"
'* Yes, sir, I think so."
I said to my driver at Torquay:
*M)o many Americans come here?"
** Oh, yes, sir. H'Americans are very fond of Torquay. Only yester-
day morning, sir, two h'Americans, young ladies, 'ad me out before break-
fast, and they made me drive them to an h'American dentist to have a
tooth plugged, and the next day I had to go there very early again, beoau"'
302 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
there was some trouble with that plug. Oh, the h' Americans are very
fond of Torquay, sir. "
But the Scotch driver knows as much as a college professor. There
is nothing in the real or legendary history of every spot we pass that he
will not give you with surpassing clearness and accuracy.
I saw a dozen of the thirty-five cathedrals of England. They aver-
age eight hundred years of age. Each has its own distinctive style of
architecture, and they combine all we know of that grand art. Their
builders and designers are gone, forgotten and unknown, but they mark
that era in the history of the race when the church of Christ saved
humanity from slavery and bestiality "under the heel of tyrant kings and
robber nobles. Gratitude, piety, reverence and worship, having no
other way of expressing devotion to the one power which, in an age when
might made right, humbled the lofty and raised the lowly, could bring
royalty in penance to the shrine, and save the liberty and virtue of the
peasant from the feudal lord, built these vast, splendid and enduring
monuments to the ever-living God. I remember, as I sat during service
one Sunday in Rosslyn chapel, near Edinburgh, wondering at the skill
which amidst the rude and almost savage barbarism of the twelfth
century could have fashioned the graceful arches, the superb and lavish
carving, the delicate handiwork everywhere visible in this most exquisite
poem in stone of the middle ages. As the rector was preaching the
thinnest and leanest sermon I ever heard, I became rapt in contempla-
tion of tl^t wondrous pillar, known as the Apprentice's Pillar, which in
a forest of pillars stands alone in the curves, the sj^iral and serpentlike
coils, which give it such remarkable beauty; and thought of .the poor
apprentice genius who fashioned it while his master was at Rome, study-
ing a model, and when the master returned and saw this creation, so
much finer than any he had found abroad, in a fit of jealous rage ho
crushed the apprentice's skull with his hammer.
After leaving Old Sarum, a drive of ten miles over unfenced plains
upon which the sheep grazed in countless herds, attended as in primitive
days, by the shepherd and his dog, brought me to Stonehenge. This
temple was built before recorded time, and its origin is one of tlie
mvsteries of the i)re-liistoric past.
That there were giants in the olden time,
These stones cry out, whether before the flood,
{As some have dreamt) in earth's majestic prime.
The sons of Tubal piled up here sublime
Whatever since in mystery lialh stood
A. miracle; or whether Merlin's rhyme
Or patriarchal Druids with their brood
Of swarming Celts upheaved them, here they stand
In Titan strength, enormous, wonderful.
CHA VNOET JT. DBPEW. 808
There are four rows in circles^ of roughs nncnt stone columns^ each
circle within the other. Two uprights standing about twenty-five feet
high, are bound by a third, resting across them on the top^ and so on all
the way round. This structure is in the midst of a chalk plain, and
there are no stones like it nearer than Ireland. The stones weigh about
eleven tons each. Where did they come from? How did a primitive
people get them there? How did they raise these vast blocks and place
them upon the top of the upright supports? Have other races lived,
flourished and perished with high civilization before our own? I made
all these inquiries and many more of the old guide at the temple, and
finally he said:
'' H'l can h'always tell h^ Americans by the h'odd questions they ask.
Now that big stone yonder fell hoover and broke in the year 1797^ and
when I told this to one of your countrymen he said :
*• ' Well, did you see it fall?' ^
*' * Good heavens/ said I, 'that was nearly a hundred years ago.'
** Then I was only last week pointing out to a pretty young h'Amer-
ican lady, how only one day in the year, and that the longest day, the
first i»ys of the rising sun come directly over that tallest stone, and strike
on that stone lying down over there with the letter 'h'A' on it, which
means the altar.
*^ * Oh/ she said, ' I suppose you have seen it more than a thousand
times.'
** * Lord bless you, miss,* said I, 'it only happens once a year.'"
[Liiuj^hter.]
Henry Irving, tlie actor, told me that Toole, the comedian, said to
him one day: '* And so you have done more in twenty years to revive
and ])ro]>erly present the plays of Shakespeare than any man living, and
were never at Stratford? Let's go at once.'' A few hours found them
roaming over all the sacred and classic scenes by the Avon. As they
•vere returning to the hotel in the early evening, they met an agricultural
laborer coming home with his shirt outside his pantaloons, with his pipe
in his mouth, stolid and content. Toole asked him :
'* Does Mr. Shakespeare live here ? "
''Xo, sor. I think he be dead."
'^ Wl'11, <1o many people come to see his grave ?"
''Oh, ves, sor."
" AVhat (lid he do to make these great crowds visit his house and the
chunrh wlicre he is buried?"
'Tve lived here all my life/' said Hodge, scratching his head in
grejit j)erj)lexity, ** but I don't know exactly, but I think he writ some*
thiu\"
804 KIN08 OF TUB PLATFORM^ AND PULPIT, \^
'' Well, what did he write? ''
'*I think/' said Hodge, Bolemnly, 'Mt was the Bible,*' [Langhter.]
After seeing the great Gladstone and the House of Commons I went
to Windsor Castle, the home of the good Queen. After viewing that
superbest of chapels, with its panels of rarest stones, each bearing an
appropriate text, and in the center the recumbent statue of that devotedly
loved husband, to whom she erected this church as a memorial ; after
wandering — I had almost said for miles — through drawing rooms, re-
ception-rooms, throne-rooms, audience chambers and banqueting halls,
each wonderful in its carvings, appointments, pictures, tapestries and
statuaries, we came to an apartment set apart for the trophies of Eng-
land's great warriors. There are the busts of the Duke of Marlborough,
with mementoes of Blenheim, and of the Duke of Wellington surrounded
by relics from Waterloo, and the foremast of the flagship Victory pierced
by a cannon ball, and upon the top of this most appropriate standard^
the colossal statue of the famous admiral of the Victory, Lord Kelson.
On either side hang the two flags which the Dukes of Marlborough and
Wellington must replace before 12 o'clock on the anniversaries of
the battles of Blenheim and WateHoo, or lose the vast estates voted by
the nation to their ancestors for those victories. On the floor, midway
between these flags and surrounded by memorials of generals, princes
and kings, who have filled the world with their renown, is a plain chair
made from an old oaken beam taken from the little, obscure, roofless ruin
in Scotland, the "Auld Alio way's haunted kirk" of Robeit Bums. Thus,
in the proudest room, in the most magnificent of royal palaces, ttie queen
of that nation upon whose dominions the sun never sets, places, amidst
the most precious memorials of the glory of her empire, pays this simple
and effecting tribute to the genius of the humble Ayrshire plough-boy.
The American, standing there in the very shadow of the throne, but-
tressed as it is by an hereditary legislature and proud nobility, glories in
a citizenship which confers sovereignty, and with bared head repeats the
lines of Burns :
A prince can moke a belted knight.
A marquis, duke, and a' that,
But an hunest man's aboon his might,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp.
The man's the gowd for a* that.
The honest mim though e'er sae poor.
Is king o'men for a' that,
Tlien let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that.
That man to man the world o'er,
Shall hrithers be for a' that. [Loud api)lauie.]
"BILL NYE.
>»
BIOGRAPHY AND RE3fINISCENCES.
Edgar W. Kye, whose humor reaches as far as Uie English language, took hta
pseudonym from the Bill Xye in Bret Harte's poem, "Plain Language from Truth-
ful James." The poem wjis T^Titten years before "Bill Nye "became famous, and
reads:
" All Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny
In regard to the same
What that name might imply.
But his smile it was pensive and childlike.
As I frequent remarked to Bill Xye,"
Mr. Nye, like Artcmus Ward, was born in Maine. He first saw the light neiir
the woods of Moosehead Lake. AVhen 1 asked him about his life, he said:
*' We moved from Moosehead Lake when I was very young, and I lived in the
West among the rattlesnakes and the Indians until I grew up. I practiced law
for about a year, but," he added, without changing a muscle, ** nobody knew much
about it ; I kept it very quiet. I was a Justice of the Peace, in Laramie, for six
years."
" Did you ever marry any one? "
" O, yes, I married my wife, and after that I used to marry others, and then try
them for other oiTenscs."
Mr. Nye is the author of several books, among which are "Baled Hay "and
"Bill Nye's Chestnuts," by Belford- Clarke Co. He has also contributed to the
Century Magazine. Every newspaper in the Englisli language is now filled with
his writings.
The attention of the public was first called to the humorist's
writings, on account of his vigorous English. His language was of
the wild West order. For example : Some one asked the editor of
The Boomerang the question, "What is literature 2 "
"What is literature?" exclaimed Bill, half contemptuously,
pointing to the columns of The Boomerang^ " What is literature}
306
BILL NTs! 307
Cast your eye over these logic-imbued columns, you sun-dried savant
f i*om the remote precincts. Drink at the never-failing Boomerang
springs of forgotten lore, you dropsical wart of a false and erro-
neous civilization. Bead our ^ Address to Sitting Bull/ or our
^ Ode to the Busted Snoot of a Shattered Yenus De Milo/ if yoa
want to fill up your thirsty soul with high-priced literature. Don't
go around hungering for literary pie while your eyes are closed and
your capacious ears are filled with bales of hay.*'
Years after Bret Ilarte's poem was written, Edgar W. Nye com-
menced signing his articles '^ Bill Nye." Mr. Nye always considered
the best joke ever perpetrated by an English newspaper was when
Tlie London News came out with a serious editorial saying that ^^Bill
Nye " was a real character. Then Mr. Nye would get his scrap-
book and read this serious editorial from JTis London New9<
If (>vcr celebrity were attained unexpectedly, most assuredly it was that thrust
upon Hill Nye by Truthful James. It is just possible, however, that the innumera-
bli; readers of Mr. Bret Ilarte's " Heathen Chinee" may have imagined Bin Nye and
Ah Sin to be i)urely mythical personages. So far as the former is conoemed, any
such conclusion now ai)pear8 to have been erroneous. Bill Nye is no more a phantom
than any other journalist, although the name of the organ which he **runs" savors
more of tiction than of fact. But there is no doubt about the matter, for the Wash-
inirton correspondent of Tht Nac York Tribune telegraphed on the 29th instant, that
Bill Nye Iiad accepted a post und(T the government. He has lately been domiciled
in Laramie City. Wyoming Territory, and is editor of The Daily Boomerang, In
refcnnce to Actinix-Post master-Gen. Ilatton's appointment of him as postmaster at
Laramie City, the opponent of Ah Sin writes an extremely humorous letter, "extend-
ing" his thinks, and advising his chief of his opinion that his "appointment is a
triumph of eternal truth over error and wrong." Nye continues: "It is one of the
epodis. I may say, in the nation's onwanl march toward political purity and perfec-
ti(»ii. I don't know when I have noticed any stride in the affairs of state which has
so thorouL^dy inipnssiMl me with its wisdom." In this quiet strain of bantcr,'Bill
Xu< eontitiiK s to the (>nd of his letUT, which suggests the opinion that. Whatever the
n /icial (pialiiu-ations of the new postmaster may Ik\ the inhabitants of Laramie City
must have a very readable newspaper in TJie Daily Boomerang,
308 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM- AND PULPIT,
Below I give a specimen of Mr. Nye's handwriting :
During the preparation of this book, Mr. Nye kindly sent me
the following note, which gives the true history of his family :
Dear Eli: You ask me liow I came to adopt the nom de plume of Bill Nye, and
I can truthfully reply that I did not do so at all.
My first work was done on a territorial paper in the Rocky Mountains some
twelve years ago, and was not signed. The style, or rather the lack of it, provoked
some comment and two or three personal encounters. Other papers began to won-
der who was responsible, and various names were assigned by them as the proper
one, among them Ilcnry Nye, James Nye, Robert Nye, etc., and a general discussion
arose, in whi(;h I did not take a hand. The result was a compromise, by which I was
christened Bill Nye, and the name has clung to me.
I am not especially proud of the name, for it conveys the idea to strangers that
I am a lawkss, profane and dangerous man. People who judge me by the brief
and bloody name alone, instinctively shudder and examine their firearms. It sug-
gests daring, debauchery and defiance to the law. Little children are called hi when
■ I
BILL JSTTS.
I am known to be at large, and a day of fasting is announced by the goveAior of tbe
State. Strangers seek to entertain me by showing mo the choice iniquities of their
town. Eminent criminals ask me to attend their execution and assist them in accept-
ing their respective dooms. Amateur criminals ask me to reyise t^ieir work and to
suggest improvements.
All tliis is the cruel result of an accident, for I am not that kind of a man. Had
my work been the same, done over the signature of "Taxpayer "or •' Vox P(fpuU**
how different might have been the result! Seeking as I am, in my poor, weak way,
to make folly appear foolish, and to make men better by speaking disrespectfully of
their errors, I do not deserve to be regarded, even by strangers, as a tough or a ter-
ror, but rather as a plain, law-abiding American citizen, who begs leave to subscribe
himself, Tours, for the Public Weal» Edoab Wilson Ntb.
One day I asked Mr. Nye bow he kept his teeth so white.
^' Ob, that's easy," he said ; *^all teeth will remain white if they
are properly taken care of. Of coarse I never drink hot drinks,
always brush my teeth morning and evening, avoid all acids what-
ever, and, although I am forty years old, my teeth are as good as
ever."
^^ And that is all you do to preserve your teeth, is it!" I asked.
^^ Yes, dir ; that's all — barring, perhaps, the fact that I put them
in a glass of soft water nights."
Somebody asked Bill what he thought of the Democratic party.
" The Democratic party ? " he repeated. " Why, a Democrat
keeps our drug store over there, and when a little girl burned her
arm against tbe cook stove, and her father went after a package of
Russia salve, this genial drug store Democrat gave her a box of
'Rough on Rats.' What the Democratic party needs," said Mr.
Nye, '^ is not so much a new platform as a car load of assorted
brains that some female seminary had left over."
An Englishman was talking with Mr. Nye about English and
American humor. " In my opinion," said the Englishman, " the
humor of the United States, if closely examined, will be found to
depend, in a great measure, on the ascendancy which the principle
of utility has gained over the imaginations of a rather imaginative
people."
*' Just so," replied Bill, " and, according to my best knowledge,
the humor of England, if closely examined, will be found just
about ready to drop over the picket fence into the arena, but never
quite making connections. If we scan the English literary horizon,
wc will find the humorist up a tall tree, depending from a sharp
knot thereof by the slack of his overalls. He is just out of sight
■MV-'?.-'
1
* ^
•.,<.'
\
1.
"■ * ■ f
' "■<"■.
^■^x.
809
1 '
310 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
at the time you look in that direction. He always has a man work-
ing in his place, however. The man who works in his place is just
paring down the half sole and newly pegging a joke that has
recently been sent in by the foreman for repairs."
Speaking of mean men one day, Mr. Nye remarked:
" I've seen mean men, and Laramie used to have the meanest
man I ever knew — a church member, too."
" How mean was he? " asked a by-stander.
" Why, he was so mean that he kept a Sunday handkerchief,
made to order, with scarlet spots on it, which he stuck up to his
nose just before the plate started round, and then left the church
like a house on fire. So, after he had squeezed out the usual amount
of gospel, he slipped around the corner and got home ten cents
ahead, and had his self-adjusting nose-bleed handkerchief for
another trip."
Mr. Nye was the guest of Lawrence Barrett and Stuart JRobson,
at Cohasset, Massachusetts.
When asked, how he enjoyed his visit, he said :
"O, finely. Barrett enjoyed it too. You know he was in Boston
during the visit. I found Robson, however, at his house, walking
under the trees and thoughtfully eating green apples, of which he
is passionately fond. He raises upward of sixty barrels of apples
on his estate each year, any one of which is fatal.
" ^A neighbor of mine had an odd experience with his apples the
other day,' said Kobson. ' He has some of this same breed. It is
an apple which w^ill turn when it is trodden upon. Nobody but a cider-
press can eat one and live. This friend of mine went out one day
and discovered a boy, named James, sitting up in the branches of
his apple tree, eating the luscious fruit, and filling his shirt and
trousers Avith enough to stay his stomach when he got home. 'I
wish vou would not do that,' said the man. 'I do not care so
much for the fruit, but you are breaking the tree and disfiguring it.'
'Oh you shut up,' retorted the lad, knocking the man's glasvses rlT,
together with tlie bridge of his nose, w^ith a large lignum-vitte appie.
'If you don't go into the house and keep quiet, I will come down
there and injure you.' 'Very well' said the man, ''I will have to
go to-morrow and tell your father about you and your insulting
language.' 'All right,' said the youth. 'Go in, you old pes-
simist, and get the razzle-dazzle, if you wish. I will, in the mean-
time, select a few more of your mirth-provoking fruit.'
BILL NYE. 311
" The next day, full of wrath, the man went over to the boy's
house, and said to the father : ' Sir, I have como to do a very dis-
agreeable duty. I have come to tell you of your boy and the insult-
ing language he used to me yesterday."
" Do not speak of it,' said the old man, softly. ' He told the
doctor and me and his mother about it last night. lie was very
sorry, indeed, very sorry, indeed. Your errand is unnecessary, how-
ever, sir, the boy is dead."
A few years ago the writer passed through Laramie, and was
introduced to an audience by Mr. Nye. His introduction was like
this :
''Ladies and Genileitien : — I am glad that it has devolved upon
me to-night to announce that we are to have an interesting lecture
on Lying by one of the most distinguished [There was a long
pause, for Mr. Nye's inflection indicated that he had finished and
the audience roared with delight, so that it was some time before
the sentence was concluded.] lecturers from the East."
Mr. Nye continued, " We have our ordinary country liars in
Laramie ; but Mr. Perkins comes from the metropolis. Our every-
day liars have a fine record. We are proud of them, but the un-
cultured liars of the prairie can not be expected to cope with the
gifted and more polished prevaricators from the cultured East.
Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to introduce to you Elmjv-^
Perkins." ' f
'^Ladies and Gentlciaen^^ I said in reply, "I feel justly flattered
by your Laramie humorist's tribute to my veracity ; but truly I am
not as great a liar as Mr. Nye " and then I seenied to falter. The
audience saw my dilemma and applauded, and finally I couldn't finish
the sentence for some moments, hut continuing I said, '* I am not as
biff a liar as Mr. Nve would have vou think."
A day or two after this I picked up The Boomeramj and read
this paragraph:
*' When ^fi'. Perkins was passing through Laramie, he said he was
traveling for his wife's pleasure.
''* Then your wife is with j'ou V suggested our reporter.
'' "^ O, no I ' said Eli, * she is in New York." "
312 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
BILL NYE'S BEST SPEECHES AND LECTURES.
One of Mr. Nye's happiest hits was his talk at the recent photog-
raphers' convention in New York. Of course it set the photog-
raphers crazy with delight. I took notes of the speech, and
afterward Mr. Nye corrected them, and the speech now appears for
the first time printed from the great humorist's demi-MSS. the
writer, of course putting in the applause, etc.
Said Mr. Nye, after being introduced to the photographers:
Photographers and Gentlemen: — I will say a few words about the
photograph liabit. [Laughter.]
No doubt the photograph habit, when once formed, is one of the
most baneful and productive of the most intense suffering in after years,
of any with which we are familiar. Sometimes it seems to me that my
whole life has been one long, abject apology for photographs that I have
shed abroad throughout a distracted country.
Man passes through seven distinct stages of being photographed, each
one exceeding all previous efforts in that line.
First he is photographed as a prattling, bald-headed baby, absolutely
destitute of eyes, [laughter] but making up for this deficiency by a
wealth of mouth that would make a negro minstrel olive green with envy.
We often wonder what has given the average photographer that wild,
hunted look about the eyes and that joyless sag about the knees. The
chemicals and the in-door life alone have not done all this. It is the
great nerve tension and mental strain used in trying to photograph a
squirming and dark red child with white eyes, in such a manner as to
please its parents. [Great laughter.]
An old-fashioned dollar store album with cerebro-spinal meningitis,
and filled with pictures of half-suffocated children, in heavily-starched
white dresses, is the first thing we seek on entering a home, and the last
thing from which we reluctantly part.
The second stage on the downward road is the photograph of the boy
with fresh-cropped hair, and in which the stiff and protuberant thumb
takes a leading part.
Then follows the portrait of the lad, with strongly marked freckles
and a look of hopeless melancholy. With the aid of a detective agency,
I have succeeded in running down and destroying several of these pic-
tures which were attributed to me.
1
V
BILL NTS. 813
Next comes the yonng nfan, twenty-one years of age, with his front
hair plastered smoothly down over his tender, throbbing dome of thought.
He does not care so mach abont the expression on the mobile features,-
so long as his left hand, with the new ring on itj^ shows distinctly, and
the string of jingling, jangling charms on his watch chain, including
the cute little basket cut out of a peach stone, stand out well in the fore-
ground. If the yonng man would stop to think for a moment that
some day he may become eminent and ashamed of himself, he would
hesitate about doing this.
Soon after, he has a tintype taken in which a young lady sits in the
alleged grass, while he stands behind her with his hand lightly touching
her shoulder as though he might be feeling of the thrilling circumfer-
ence of a buzz saw. He carries this picture in his pocket for months,
and looks at it wheneyer he may be unobserved.
Then, all at once, he discovers that the young lady's hair is not done
up that way any more, and that her hat doesn't seem to fit her. He
then, in a fickle moment, has another tintype made, in which another
young woman [laughter] with a more recent hat and later coifiure, is
discovered holding his hat in her lap.
This thing continues, till one day he comes into the studio with his
wife, and tries to see how many children can be photographed on one
negative [laughter] by holding one on each knee and using the older
ones as a background.
The last stage in his eventful career, the old gentleman allows him-
self to bo photographed, because he is afraid he may not live through
another long, hard winter, and the boys would like a picture of him
while lie is able to climb the dark, narrow stairs which lead to the
artist's room. *
Sadly the thought comes back to you in after years, when his grave
is green in the quiet valley, and the worn and weary hands that have
toiled for you are forever at rest, how patiently he submitted while his
daughter pinned the clean, stiff, agonizing white collar about his neck,
and brushed the velvet collar of his best coat; how he toiled up the long,
dark, lonesome stairs, not with the egotism of a half century ago, but
with the light of anticipated rest at last in his eyes— obediently, as he '
would have gone to the dingy law office to have his will drawn — and
meekly left the outlines of his kind old face for those ^e loved and for
whom ho had so long labored. [Applause.]
It is a picture at which the thoughtless may smile^ but it is full of
pathos, and eloquent for those who knew him best. His attitude is
stiff and his coat hunches up in the back, but his kind old heart asserts
314 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PTTLPIT.
itself through the gentle eyes, and when he has gone away at last, we do
not criticise the picture any more, but beyond the old coat that hnncl^es
up in the back and that lasted so long, we read the history of a noble
life. [Applause.]
Silently the old finger-marked album, lying so unostentatiously on
the gouty center table shows the mile-stones from infancy to age, and
back of the mistakes of a struggling photographer, are portrayed the
laughter and the tears, the joys and griefs, the dimples and gray hairs of
one man's lifetime. [Applause.]
THE NYE-RILEY LECTUEE.
The most unique, humorous lecture of the century is being
delivered by Mr. Nye and James Whitcomb Eiley, the Hoosierpoet.
It consists of unique stories by Bill Nye and humorous or pathetic
poems by Mr. Eiley. At one time the audience is all in tears at
Mr. Eiley's pathos, and then Mr. Nye gets up and sets them scream-
ing with laughter. It don't make much difference what Bill Nye
says, for his dry way of saying it is enough to convulse an audience.
Sometimes, be tells about his dog, which he called Etymologist.
" I called him thus, because I understand an etymologist spends his
time collecting insects, and my dog often goes out on his researches
and returns with large masses of fleas. [Laughter.] Then he eats
many curious things and comes home and regrets it." [Laughter.]
The humorist tells how hard it is for a reporter to succeed now-
a-days. "They have to be very enterprising. A Chicago reporter
was detJkiled to write up a case of dissection in the medical college.
He was very ambitious and went to his work early in the day —
hours before the dissection took place. Before the doctors assem-
bled, he saw the corpse lying on the table. To kill time, he com-
menced writing a description of the room and a description of the
corpse. All at once he was startled to see the corpse move and then
sit bolt upright and speak.
" ' Who are you ? ' asked the corpse.
" ^ I'm a writer for TJie Morning News, Eugene Field is my
name. I've been sent here to describe the dissection.'
"' What are you writing about now ? '
"^I'm describing the appearance of the room and the corpse.*
" M ), psliaw, young man, you're too late for that. I sent that in
to the Trihme yesterday.' "
BILL NTS.
816
Mr. Nye commences his lecture like this :
Ladiei and OentUmen ."—The earth is that body in the solar system
which most of my hearers now reside upon, and which some of yon, I
regret to say, modestly desire to own [laughter] and control, forgetting
that ''the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof/' Some men do
not care who owns the world as long as they get the fullness. [Laugh*
ter.]
The earth is 500,000,000 years of age, according to Professor Proctor,
but she doesn't look so to me. The Duke of Argyll maintains that she
was 10,000,000 years old last August, but what does an ordinary duke
know about these things? So far as I am concerned I will put Proctor's
memory against that of any low-priced duke that I have ever seen. I
know there is a yearning in lecture communities for the scientific lecture.
I know you love to hear the figures showing the distance of endless
space and the immensity of infinity. [Laughter.] These statistics
about space are very valuable. Said Professor Proctor in his lecture
before the Social Science Congress:
Space is very large. [Laughter.] It is immense, very immense. ▲ great deal
of immfnsity exists in space. [Laughter.] Space has no top, no bottom. In fact,
it is bottomless both at the bottom and at the top. Space extends as far forward as
it (Iocs backward, rice versa, [I^aughter.] There is no compass of space, nor points
of the compass, and no boxing of the compass. A billion million of mfles traveled
ill si):u'e won't bring a man any nearer to the end than one mile or one inch. Con-
s(>({iu>ntly. in space it's better to stay where you are, and let weU enough alone.
[Laughter.] "*^— >'
This brings me to George Washington Newton: "
Newton chMmed that the earth would gradually dry up and become
porous^ and that water would at last become a curiosity. Jtfany believe
this and are rapidly preparing their systems by a rigid course of treat-
ment^ so that they can live for years without the use of water [laughter]
into'Tiiilly or externally.
Ot.e. acientists, who have sat up nights to monkey with the solar
system^ and thereby shattered their nervous systems, claim that the
eiirth is getting top-heavy at the north pole, and that one of these days
wiiile wo are thinking of something else, the great weight of accumu-
lated ice, snow, and the vast accumulation of second-hand arctic*relief
expeditions will jerk the earth out of its present position with so much
spontaneity, and in such an extremely forthwith manner [laughter]
that many people will be permanently strabismused and much bric-a-
brao will be to: sale at a great sacrifice. Phis .may or may not bo true.
I have not been up in the arctic regions to investigate its truth or falsity.
316 KIN08 OF THB PLATFORM AND PULPTT.
though there seems to be a growing sentiment throughout the country in
favor of my going. [Laughter.] A great many people during the past
year have written me and given me their consent. [Laughter.] I feel
that we really ought to have a larger colony on ice in that region than
we now have.
The earth is composed of land and water. Some of the water has
large chunks of ice in it. The earth revolves around its own axle once
in twenty-four hours, though it seems to revolve faster than that, and
to wobble a good deal, during the holidays. Nothing tickles the earth
more than to confuse a man when he is coming home late at night, and
then to rise up suddenly [laughter] and hit him in the back with a
town lot. [Laughter.] People who think there is no fun or relaxation
among the heavenly bodies certainly have not studied their habits.
A friend of mine, who was returning late at night from a regnlar
meeting of the Society for the Amelioration of Something-or-other,
said that the earth rose up suddenly in front of him, and hit him with a
right of way, and as he was about to rise up again he was stunned by
a terrific blow between the shoulder blades with an old land grant that
he thought had lapsed years ago. When he staggered to his feet he
found that the moon, in order to add to his confusion, had gone down
in front of him, and risen again behind him, with her thumb on her
nose.
So I say, without fear of successful contradiction, that if you do not
think that planets and orbs and one thing and another have fun on the
quiet, you are grossly ignorant of their habits.
The earth is about half-way between Mercury and Saturn in the mat-
ter of density. Mercury is of about the specific gravity of iron, while
that of Saturn corresponds with that of cork in the matter of density
and specific gravity. [Laughter.] The earth, of course, does not com-
pare with Mercury in the matter of solidity, yet it is amply firm for all
practical purposes. A negro who fell out of the tower of a twelve-story
building while trying to clean the upper window by drinking a quart of
alcohol and then breathing hard on the glass, [laughter] says that he re-
gards the earth as perfectly solid, and safe to do business on for years to
come. [Laughter.] Ho claims that those who maintain that the earth's
crust is only 2,500 miles in thickness have not thoroughly tested the
matter ])y a system of practical experiments.
Tlio poles of tlie earth are merely imaginary. [Laughter.] I hate to
make this statement in public in such a way as to injure the reputation of
^reat writers on this subject who still cling to the theory that the earth re-
volves upon large poles, and that the aurora borealis is but the reflection
'1
BILL tfTS. , 817
from a hot box at the north pole, bat I am here to tell the tmth, and if
my hearers think it disagreeable to hear the truth, what mast be my an-
guish who have to tell it. [Laughter.] The mean diameter of the earth
is 7,916 English statute miles, but the actual diameter from pole to pole
is a still meaner diameter, [laaghter] being 7,899 miles, while the equa-
torial diameter is 7,925^ miles. [Applause.]
The long and patient struggle of our earnest and tireless geographers
and savants in past years, in order to obtain these figures and have them
exact, few can fully realize. The long and thankless job of measuring
the diameter of the earth, no matter what the weather might be — away
from home and friends — footsore and weary — still plodding on, fatigued
but determined to know the mean diameter of the, earth, even if it took
a leg — measuring on for thousands o( weary miles, and getting farther
and farther away from home, [laughter] and then forgetting, perhaps,
how many thousand miles they had gone, and being compelled to go
back and measure it over again while their noses got red and their fin-
gers were benumbed and — [Great laughter.]
These, fellow- citizens, are a few of the sacrifices that we scientists
have made on your behalf, in order that you may not grow up in ignor-
ance. [Laughter.] These are a few of the blessed privileges which,
along with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are ours— ours to
anticipate, ours to participate— ours to precipitate. [Applause.]
When the laughter had subsided, Mr. Eiley read his exquisite
poem, " Afore He Knowed who Santy Claus Wuz."
Jcs' H little bit o* feller — I remember still —
'Ust to almost cry fer Christmas, like a youngster wiU.
Fourth o' July's nothin' to it ! — New Year's ain't u smell ;
Eiist^T Sunday — Circus day — jcs' all dead in tlio shell !
Lordy, though I at night, you know, to set around and hear
The old folks work the story off about the sledge and deer.
And ' ' Santy " skootin' round the roof, all wrapped in fur and fuzz-
Long afore
I knowed who
"Santy aaus" wuz I
'Ust to wait, and sot up late, a week er two ahead ;
Couldn't hardly k^ep awake, ner wouldn't go to bed ;
Kittle stewin* on the tire, and mother settin' here
Darniii* socks, and rockin' in the skreeky rockln'-cheer.
Pap gap, and wunder where it wuz the money went,
And ({uar'l with his frosted heels, and spill his liniment ;
And me adreamin* sleigh-bells when the clock *ud whir and buzz.
Long afore
I knowed who
'* Santy Claus" wuz!
318 KINOS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
Size tlie fire-place up, and flgger how ** Old Santy " could
Manage to come down the chimbly, like they said he would :
Wisht that I could hide and see him — wundered what he'd say
Ef he ketched a feller layin' fer him that way I
But I bet on him, and liked him, same as ef he had
Turned to pat me on the back and say, ** Look here, my lad,
Here's my pack — jes* he'p yourse'f, like all good boys does I "
Long afore
I knowed who
" Santy Claus " wuz I
Wisht that yam was tvae about him, as it 'peared to be —
Truth made out o' lies like that-un's good enough fer me ! —
Wisht I still wuz so confidin' I could jes' go wild
Over hangin* up my stockin's, like the little child
Climbin' in my lap to-night, and beggin' me to tell
'Bout them reindeers, and "Old Santy " that she loves so well ;
I'm half sorry fer this little girl-sweetheart of his —
Long afore
She knows who
"Santy Claus" is I
[Prolonged applause.]
Mr. Nye now told his famous story about little George Oswald.
It Avas a travesty on the old-fashioned stories in the McGuffy's
school readers, and proved how true merit is always rewarded:
One day, as George Oswald was going to his tasks, and while passing through the
wood, he spied a tall man approaching, in an opposite direction, along the highway.
"Ah," thought George, in a low, mellow tone of voire, "whom have we here?"
" Good morning, my fine fellow," exclaimed the stranger, pleasantly. " Do you
reside in this locality?"
* * Indeed I do, " retorted George, cheerily, dropping his cap. * ' In yonder cottage,
near the glen, my widowed mother and her thirteen children dwell with me."
" And how did your papa die?" asked the man, as he thoughtfully stood on the
other foot awhile.
"Alas, sir," said George, as a large, hot tear stole down his pale cheek and fell
with a loud report on the warty surface of his bare foot, " ho was lost at sea in a
bitter gale. The good ship foundered two years ago last Christmastide, and father
was foundered [laughter] at the same time. No one knew of the loss of the ship
and that the crew was drowned until the next spring, and it was then too late."
" And what is your age, my fine fellow?" quoth the stranger.
" If I live until next October," said the boy, in a declamatory tone of voice, suit-
able for a second reader, " I will be seven years of age."
" And who provides for your mother and her large family of children?" queried
the man.
" Indeed, I do, sir, " replied George, in a shrill tone. " I toil, oh, so hard, sir, for we
are very, very jjoor, and since my elder sister, Ann, was married and brought her
huslniud home to live with us [laughter] I have to toil more assiduously than hereto-'
fore."
BILL NYE. ^ 81»
"And by what means do you obtain k livelihood f exclaimed the man^ in slowly
measured and gnunmatical words. ,
" By digging wells, kind sir/' [great laughter] replied George, i>icking up a
tired ant as he spoke and stroking it on the back. '* I have a good education, and an
I am enabled to dig wells as well as a man. I do this daytimes and take in washing
at niglit. [Laughter.] In this way I am enabled to maintain our family in a pie-
cnrious manner; but, oh. sir, should my other sisters many [laughter] I fear that
some of my brothers-in-law would have to suflfer." [Loud laughter.]
" You arc indeed a brave lad," exclaimed the stranger, as he repressed a smile.
"And do you not at times become very weary and wish for other ways of passing
your time?"
" Indeed I do, sir," said the lad. " I would fain run and romp and be gay like
other boys, but I must engage in constant manual exercise, or wo will have no bread
to cat and I have not seen a pic since papa perished in the moist and moaning sea."
"And what if I were to tell you that your papa did not pcrisli at sea, but was
sa^ed from a watery grave?" asked the stranger in pleasing tones.
"Ah, sir," exclaimed George, in a genteel manner, again doffing his cap. " Fm
too polite to tell you what I would say, and besides, sir, you are much larger than I
am." [Laughter.]
"But, my bnive lad," said tlie man, in low, musical tones, "do you not know
me, Qwrgie? Oh, George!" [Great laughter.]
" I must say," replied George, " that you have the advantage of me. Whilst I
may have met you l>efore, I om not at this moment place you, sir."
" My son I oh, my son! " murmured the man, at tlie same time taking a large
»trawl)err}' mark out of the valise and showing it to the lad. " Do you not reoognize
your parent on your father's side? When our good sliip went to the bottom, all per-
ished save me. I swam several miles through the billows, and at last, utterly
exhausted, gave up all hope of life. Suddenly a bright idea came to me and I walked
out of the wx\ and rested myself. [Laughter.]
"And now, my lirave boy," exchiimed the man with great glee, " see what Ihave
brought for you." It w!is but tlio work of a moment to unclasp fnmi a shawl strap,*
which he held in his hand, and pn'sent to George's astonislicd gaze, a large 40 cent
watermelon, which lie had brought with him from the Orient," [Laughter.]
"Ah." said George, " this is indeed a glml surprise. Albeit, how am I ever
repay you?" [Apphiuse.]
Mr. Ililey now read, with great pathos, his story of "Jim:"
He was jcs' a plain, ever* -day, all nnnid kind of a jour.,
(?onsumpted lookin' — biit la!
The jokeyest, wittiest, story-tellin', song-singin*, laughin*est, Jolliest
Feller you ever saw I
Work(Hl at jes* coarse work, but you kin liet he was tlno enough in hia talk.
And hisfeelin's too!
Lordy ! ef ho was on'y buck on his bench agin to-day, a (»rryiu' on
Like he ust to dol
®^ KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Any shop-mate'll tell you they never was on top o'dlrt
A better feller'n Jim!
You want a favor, and couldn't git it anywheres else—
You could git it o* him !
Most frce-hcartedest man thataway in the world, I guess!
Give ever* nickel he's worth—
And, ef you'd a- wanted it and named it to him, and \t was his.
He'd a- give you the earth !
Alius a-reachin' out, Jim was, and a-helpin' some
Poor feller onto his feet —
He'd a-never a-keered how hungry he was hisse'f
So's the feller got somepin to eat!
Didn't make no difference at all to him how he was dressed.
He ust to say to me:
•* You tog out a tramp purty comfortable in winter-time,
And he'll git along! " says he.
Jim didn't have, nor never could git ahead, so overly much
O' this world's goods at a time —
'Fore now I've saw him, more'n onc't lend a dollar and half to
Turn 'round and borrow a dime!
Mebby laugh and joke about hisse'f fer awhile — then jerk his coai;
And kind o' square his chin,
Tie his apern, and squat hisse'f on his old shoe bench
And go peggin' agin.
Patientest feller, too, I reckon; at every jes' naturally
Coughed hisse'f to death!
Long enough after his voice was lost he'd laugh and say.
He could git ever' thing but his breath —
** You fellers," he'd sorto' twmkle his eyes and say,
**Is a pilin' onto me
A mighty big debt for that air little weak-chested ghost o' mine to pack
Through all eternity I "
Now there was a man 'at jes' 'peared like to me,
'At ornt't a-never died!
"But death hain't a-showin' no favors," the old boss said,
•• On'y to Jim," and cried;
And Wiggcr, 'at put up the best sewed work in the shop,
Er the whole blamed neighborhood.
He says, 'When God made Jim, I bet you He didn't do any thing else that
day
But jes' set around and feel good."
Mr. Nye now told the audience bow he saw a saw-mill upon the
Northern Wisconsin Railway :
Northern Wisconsin is the place where they yank a big wet log into a mill and
turn it into cash as quick as a railroad man can draw his salary out of the pay-car*
BILL NTS. ^ 321
The log is held on a carriage by means of iron dogs while it Is being worked into lum-
ber. These iron dogs arc not like those we see on the front steps of a brown stone
front occasionally. They are another breed of dogs.
The managing editor of the mill lays out the log in 'his mind and works it into
dimension stuff, shingles, bolts, slabs, edgings, two-by-fours, two-by-eights, two-by-
sixes, etc., so as to use the goods to the best advantage, just as a woman takcsadress-
pattcm and cuts it so she won't have to piece the front breadths and will still have
enough left to make a polonaise for last summer's gown. [Laughter.]
I stood there for a long time, watching the various saws and listening to the mon-
strous growl and wishing that I had been bom a successful timber-thief instead of a
poor boy without a rag to my bock.
At one of these mills, not long ago, a man backed up to get away from the car-
riage and thoughtlessly backed against a large saw that was revolving at tlio rate of
about two hundred times a minute. The saw took a large chew of tobacco from the
plug he had in his pistol pocket and then began on him.
JBut there's no use going into the details. [Laughter.] Such things are not
cheerful. They gathered him up out of the saw-dust and put him in a nail keg and
carried him away, but he did not speak again. Life was quite extinct. Whether it
(\'as the nervous shock that killed him, or the concussion of the cold saw against his
liver that killed him, no one ever knew.
The mill shut down a couple of hours so that the head sawyer could file his saw
Paughter], and then work was resumed once more.
We should learn from this never to lean on the buzz-saw when it moveth itself
aright.
RILEY ON ME AND MARY.
All my fcelin's in the spring.
Gits so blame contrary
I can't think of anything
Only me and Maryl
" Me and Mary!" all the time,
" Me and Mary!*' like n rhyme
Keeps a-dingin' on till I'm
Sicko' "Me and Mary!"
"Me and Mary I £f us two
Only was together —
Play in' like we used to do
In the Aprile weather!"
All the night and all the day
I ke<;p wishin' that away
Till I'm gittin' old and gniy
Jist on " Me and Mary!"
Muddy yit along the pike
Sense the winter's frcezin'
And the orchard's backard-like
Bloomin' out this season;
322 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Only heerd one bluebird yit —
Nary robin or tomtit;
What's the how and why of it?
S'pect it's •* Me and Mary!"
Me and Mary liked the birds —
That is, Mary sorto
Liked them first, and afterwerds
W'y I thought I orto.
And them birds — ef Mary stood
Right here witli me as she should —
They'd be singin', them birds would,
All f er me and Mary !
Birds cr not, I'm hopin' some
I can git to plowin':
Ef the sun '11 only come
And the Lord alio win*.
Guess to-morry 111 turn in
And git down to work agin:
This here loaferin won't win;
Not fer me and Mary !
Fer u man that loves like me,
And's afeard to name it.
Till sonicj other feller, he
Gits the girl — dad-shame-it!
Wet (T dry — er clouds er sun —
Winter gone, er jist begun —
Out-door work fer me er none.
No more ** Me and Marj'l "
One of Mr. Nye's l)est stories is about William Taylor, a good
little bov in Hudson, Wisconsin.
William, the son of the present American consul at Marseilles, was a good deal
like other boys while at school in his old home in Hudson, Wis. One day he called
his fatJier into the library and said:
•* Pa, I don't like to tell you, but the teacher and I have had trouble."
•* What's the matter now? "
** Well, I cut one of the desks a little with my knife, and the teacher says Tve
got to pay $1 or take a lickia*! "
'* Well, why don't you take the lickin' and say nothing more about it? I can
stand considerable physical pain, so long as it visits our family in that fonn. Of
course it is not plea&uit to be Hogged, but you have broken a rule of the school, and
I guess you'll have to stand it. I presume that the teacher will in wratli remember
mercy and avoid disabling you so that you can't get your coat on any more."
•* But, Pa, I feel mighty bad over it, already, and if you would pay my fine, I'd
never do it again. A dollar isn't much to you. Pa, but it's a heap to a boy who hasn't
a cent. If I could make a dollar as easy as you can. Pa, I'd never let my little boy
-..N^i&J
BILL N7E. 323
k
get flogged that way to snve n dollar. If I bad a little feUcr Uiat got licked bekuz 1
diMii't put up for him, I'd hate the sight of raoDcy always. I'd foel as ef erery dollar
I liad in my pocket had been taken out of my little child's back."
** Well, now, I'll tell you what I'll do," said his father. "I'll give you a dollar
to save you from pimishmeut this time, but if any thing of this kind ever occurs
again I'll hold you while the teacher licks you, and then I'll get the teacher to hold
you while I lick you. That's the way I feel about that. If you want to go around"
whittliug up our educational institutions you can do so; but you wiU have to pur-
chase tiiem afterwanl yourself. [laughter.] I don't propose to buy any more
damaged furniture. You proba!)ly grasp my meaning, do you not? I send you to
.Hchool to acquire an education, not to ac<iuire liabilities, so that you can come around
and make an assessment on me. [Laughter.] I feel a great interest in jou, Willie,
but I do not feel as though it should be an assessable interest. I want to go on, of
course, and improve the property, but when I pay my dues on It, I want to know
that it goes toward development work. I don't want my assessments to go toward
the purchase of a school-desk with American hieroglyphics carved on it. I hope you
will bear this in mind, my son, and l)cwarc. It will be greatly to your interest to
beware. If I were in your place I would put in a large portion of my time in the
Ixiware business."
The boy took the dollar and went thoughtfully away to school, and no more was
ever said about the matter until Mr. Taylor learned, casually, several months later, that
the Spartan youth had received the walloping and file<1 away the %\ for future refer-
ence. [Laughter.] Tlic boy was afterward heard to say that he favored a much
liigher fine in cases of that kind. One whipping was sufficient, he said, but he
favored a fine of $5. It ought to be severe enough ^ make it an object. [Ltugl^
ter.]
Mr. Riley now guvc his experience in the late war:
I was for union — you agin it —
' Pears like, to me, each sitle was winner;
Lookhr at now and all 'at*sin it.
JjCt's go to dinner.
Le's kind o' jes* set downHogether
And do some pardnership fergettin* —
Talk, sjiy, for instance, Tjout the weather.
£r somepin fittiu'.
Tlie war. you know, 's all done and ended
And ain't changed no p'intso' the compass;
Both Xonh and South the health's Jes' splendid
As 'fore the rumpus.
The old farni.s and the old plantations
Still (K'(iii)icH the'r old positions —
Lo'.s git back to old situations
And old ambitiom;.
I^'s let up on tills blame, infernal.
Tongue lashin' and lap-jacket vauntln'
And git home to the eternal,
Ca'm we're a-wantin'.
t
li
324 ^ KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT
*.
Peace kind o' sort o' suits my diet —
When women does my cookin' for me —
Ther* wasn't overly much pie eat
Durin' the army. [Applause.]
Mr. Nye now told some of his famous cyclone stories :
While I was traveling out in Kansas the passengers got to talking about natural
phenomena and storms. I spoke of the cyclone with some feeling and a little bitter-
ness, perhaps, briefly telling my own experience, and making the storm as loud, and
wet and violent as possible.
Then a gentleman from Kansas, named George L. Murdock, an old cattleman,
was telling of a cyclone that came across his range two years aigo last September.
The sky was clear to begin with, and then all at once, as Mr. Murdock states, a little
cloud, no larger than a mans hand might have been seen. It moved toward
the southwest gently, with its hands in its pockets for a few moments, and
then Mr. Murdock discovered that it was of a pale-green color, about sixteen hands
liigh, with dark-blue mane and tail. [Laughter.] About a mile from where he stood
the cyclone, with great force, swooped down and, with a muffled roar, swept a
quarter-section of land out from under a heavy mortgage without injuring the mort-
gage in the least. lie says that people came for miles the following day to see
the mortgage, still on tile at the office of the register of deeds, and just as good as
ever.
ft"*
Then a gentleman named Bean, of Western Minnesota, a man who went there in
an early day and homesteaded it when his nearest neighbor was fifty miles away,
spoke of a cyclone that visited his county Ixfore the telegraph or railroad had pene-
trated that part of the State.
Mr. Bean said it wjis very clear up to the moment that he noticed a cloud in the
Northwest no larger tlian a man's hand. [Laughter.] It siiuntered down in a south-
westerly direction, like a cyclone that had all sununer to do its chores in. Then it
gave two quick snorts and a roar, wiped out of existence all the farm buildings he
had, sucked the well dry, soured aH the milk in the milk house, and spread desola-
tion all over that quarter-S(?ction. But Mr. Bean Siiid that the most remarkable thing
he remembered was this: He had dug about a pint of angleworms that morning,
intending to go over to the lake toward evening and catch a few perch. But when
the cy(;lone came it picked up thos(; tuigle worms and drove them head first through
his new grindstone without injuring the worms [laughter] or impairing the grind-
stone. [Laugliter.] lie would have had the gnndstt>ne photographed, he said, if
the angle worms could have been kept still long enough. He said that they were
driven just far enough through to hang on the other side like a lambrequin.
Th(! cyclone is certainly a wonderful phenomenon, its movements are so erratic,
and in direct violation of all known ndes.
Mr. Louis P. Barker, of northern Iowa, was also on the car, and he described a
cyclone that he saw in the '7()'s. along in September, at the close of a hot, but clear
day. The tii*st intimation that Mr. Barker had of an approaching storm was a small
cloud no larger than a man's hand [laughter], which he discovered moving slowly
toward the southwest with a gyratory movement. It then appeared to be a funnel-
shaped cU)ud, which pas.sed along near the surface of the groimd, with its apex
now and then lightly touching a barn or a well, and pulling it out by the roots. It
.■:Ai'Aiii^.<
BILL NYK. 325
would thon bound liglilly into tlic air {in<l spit on its liands. "What lie noticed most
< aiflully on the foHowing day >\as the Nvontierlul cvidcmcs of its jmwcrful suction.
It sucked a milch cow absolutely dry, pulleil all the Avater out of his cistern, and
then went around to the wast(;-\vater j>ipe that led from the bath-room and drew a
two-year-old child, who was taking a bath at the time, clear down through the two-
inch waste-pipe, a distanct^ of 150 feet. [Laughter.] He luid two inches of the pipe
VNith him and a lock of hair from the child's head.
It is such circumstances as these, c(miing to us from the mouths cf eye-witnesses,
that lead us to exclaim: How prolilic is nature, and how wonderful an^ all her works,
including p(K>r, weak man! Man, who comes into the world clotheil in a little brief
authority, perhaps, and nothing else to speak of. [Laughter.] He ris(*s up in the
morning, j)revaricates, and dies. AVhere are our best liars to-day? Look for them
where you will, and you will tind that they are pa.s.sing away. Go into the cemetery,
and there you will llnd them mingling with the dust, but striving still to perpetuate »
their business by marking their tombs with a gentle prevarication, chiscded in enduring
stone. [Laughter.]
1 have heard it intimated by people who seemed to know what they were talking
about, that truth is mighty and will i)revail, but 1 do not see much show for her till
the cyclone season is over. [Laughter.]
RILEY'S GOOD BYE ER HOWDY-DO.
Say good-bye er howdy-do —
What's the odds betwixt the two?
C'omin' — goin' — every day —
Rest friends tirst to go away —
Grasp of hands you'd ruther hold
Than their Wright in .s<iliil goM.
Slips ihcir grip while greet in' you —
Sav gn(Ml-bye er howdv-<ln/
Howdy-do, and then. gt>od-bye —
Mixes jest like laugh and en ;
Deal lis aiid births, and worst and Iw'st
Tanghnl tli( ir eontrariest;
Ev'ry jinghn' weddin' bell
Skeearin' up some funenil knell.
Here's my .song, and there's > our sigh:
Howdv do, and then, ir«)o<l-bv<'!
Sav gondl»ve « r howdv-do —
Jest tin.' .same to nie and you;
'Taint worth while to make no fuss,
'Cause the job's i)Ut up on usi
Some one's runnin' tliis eoncern
That's got nothin' eNc tt> learn —
If he's willin,* we'll j)ull through.
Say good hyr er howdy-dol [.\pplaus(?.]
32G KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
BILL NYE MAKES ROME HOWL !
It had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus, returning with
victorious eagles, had amused the populace with the sports of the amphi-
theatre to an extent hitherto unknown, even in that luxurious city. A
large number of people from the rural districts had taken advantage of
half rates on the railroad, and had been in town watching the conflict
in the arena, listening to the infirm, decrepit ring joke, and viewing the
bogus, sacred elephant.
The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired
from the free-lunch counter, and the lights in the palace of the victor
were extinguished. The restless hyena in the Roman menagerie had
sunk to rest, and the Numidian lion at the stock yards had taken out
his false teeth for the night. The moon, piercing the tissue of fleecy
clouds, tipped the dark waters of the Tiber with a wavy, tremu-
lous light. The dark-browed Roman soldier moved on his homeward
way, the sidewalk flipping up occasionally and hitting him in the small
of the back. Xo sound was heard save the low sob of some retiring
wave as it told its story to the smooth pebbles on the beach, or the
unrelenting boot-jack as it struck the high fence in the back yard,
just missing the Roman tom-cat in its mad flight, and then all was still
as the breast when the spirit has departed. Anon the half-stifled Roman
snore would steal in upon its deathly stillness, and then die away like a
hot biscuit in the hands of the hired man.
In the green room of the amphitheatre a little band of gladiators
were assembled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their lips, the
scowl of battle yet hung upon their brows, and the large knobs on their
profiles indicated that it had been a busy day with them in the arena.
There was an embarrassing silence of about five minutes, when
Spartacus, gently laying his chew of tobacco on the banister, stepped
forth and addressed them:
*Sl/r. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: — Ye call me chief, and
ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met in the
arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Borne could
furnish, and yet has never squealed. I do not say this egotistically,
but simply to show that I am the star thumper of the entire outfit.
*^ If tliere be ono among you who can say that ever in public fight,
or private brawl, my actions did belie my words, let him stand forth
and Ray it, and I will spread him around over the arena, till the coroner
will have to soak him out of the ground with benzine. If there be three in
niLL NYB. 327
all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come, and
I will construct upon their physiognomy such cupolas and cornices and
dormer windows and Corinthian capitals, and entablatures, that their
own masters would pass them by in the broad light of high noon
unrecognizeij.
** And yet, I was not always thus — a hired butcher — the savage chief
of still more savage men. My ancestors came from Sparta, Wisconsin,
and settled among the vine-clad hills and citron groves of Syracuse. My
early life ran as quiet as the clear brook by which I sported. Aside
from the gentle patter of my angel mother's slipper on the bustle of my
overalls, every thing moved along with the still and rhythmic flow of
goose grease. My boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We stole
the Itoman muskmelon, and put split sticks on the tail of the Soman
dog, and life was a picnic and a hallelujah.
** When, at noon, I led the sheep beneath the shade, and played 'Lit-
tle Sally Waters' on my shepherd's flute, there was another Spartan
youth, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime; we led our
flocks to the same pasture, and together picked the large red ants out of
our doughnuts.
**One evening, after the sheep had been driven into the corral, and
we were all seated beneath the * Bammygiiead ' tree that shaded our
cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and
Lructra, and Dr. Mary Walker, and other great men, and how a little
band of Spartans at Milwaukee had stood oil the police, and how they
llcil away into the mountains and there successfully held an annual pass
over the railway. Held it for a year! I did not know then what war
was, but my cheeks burned, I knew not why, and 1 thought what a
f^lorious thing it would be to leave the reservation and go upon the
war ])ath. V»\\i my mother kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me
go and soak my head and think no more of those old tales and savage
wars. That very night the Uonians landed on our coasts. They pil-
laged the whole country, burned the agency buildings, demolished the
ranch, rode olT the stock, tore down the smoke-house, and ran their
war horses over the cucumber vines.
** To-day 1 killed a man in the arena, and when 1 broke his helmet
clasps and looked upon him, behold! he wjis my friend. The same sweet
Mhile was on iiis face that I iiad known when, in adventurous boy hoo<l,
wt; ))athed in the glassy lake by our Spartan home, and he had tied my
shirt into 1,7.*)2 lianpjerous and diftioult knots. lie knew me, smiled
faintly, told nic always to tell the truth, and then ascended the golden
stair. I begged of the Pn'vtor that I miglit \h\ allowed u> i)ear away the
328 KIXGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
body and havo it packed in ice and shipped to his relatives at Sparta,
Wisconsin, but he couldn't see it. As upon my bended knees, amid the
dust and blood of the arena, I begged this poor boon, and the Praetor
answered: *Let the carrion rot. There are no noblemen but Romans
and Ohio men. Let the show go on. Bring forth the bobtail lion from
Abyssinia.' And the assembled maids and matrons and the rabble
shouted in derision, and told me to * brace up,' and they threw peanut
shells at me and told me to ^cheese it,' with other Roman flings which I
do not now recall.
" And so must you, fellow gladiators, and so must I, die like dogs.
To-morrow we are billed to appear at the Coliseum at Rome, and reserved
seats are even now being sold at No. 162 East Third Street, St. Paul, for
our moral and instructive performance, while I am speaking to you.
'^ Ye stand here like giants as ye are, but to-morrow some Roman
dude will pat your red brawn and bet his shekels upon your blood.
''0 Rome! Rome! Thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Thou hast
given to that gentle, timid, shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher
tone than a flute note, muscles of iron and a heart of steel. Thou hast
taught him to drive his sword through plaited mail and links of rugged
brass and warm it in the stomach of his foe; to gaze into the glaring eye-
balls of a fierce Numidian lion even as the smooth-cheeked senator looks
into the laughing eyes of the chambermaid. And he shall pay thee back
till the rushing Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy
life blood lies curdled. Ye doubtless hear the gentle murmur of my
bazoo.
'* Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since
he tasted flesh, but to-morrow he will have gladiator on toast, and don't
you forget it, and he will fling your vertebras around his cage and wipe
his nose on your clustering hair.
^* If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting the butcher's
knife. If ye are men, arise and follow me! Strike down the warden
and the turnkey, slide our baggage out the third -story window of the
amphitheatre, overpower the public and cut for the tall timber!
*^0 comrades! Warriors! Gladiators! If we be men, let us die like
men, beneath the blue sky and by the still waters, and be buried accord-
ing to Hoyle instead of having our shin-bones j^olished off by Numidian
lions, amid the groans aiid hisses of the populace here in Rome, New
York. Let us break loose, chaw the ear of the niglit watchman and
go to farming in Dakota! TIteji if the fierce Roman don't like ourstyle^
he knows our postoffice address." [Api)lause.]
.r. m I
BILL NTE. 329
BILL WRITES HIS AUTOBIOQBAPHY.
One of the most humorous things from the pen of the great
humorist is his biography, written for this book.
Editor Kings of Platform and Pulpit: — I send you my auto-
biography, written by myself.
Edgar Wilson Nye was born in Maine, in 1850, August 25th, but at
two years of age he took his parents by the hand, and, telling them that
Piscataquis county was no place for them, he boldly struck out for St.
Croix county, Wisconsin, where the hardy young pioneer soon made a
home for his parents. The first year he drove the Indians out of the St.
Croix Valley, and suggested to the North- Western Railroad that it would
be a good idea to build to St. Paul as soon as the company could got a
grant which would pay them two or three times the cost of construction.
The following year he adopted trousers, and made $175 from the sale of
wolf scalps. He also cleared twenty-seven acres of land, and raised some
watermelons. In 1854 he established and endowed a district school in
Pleasant Valley. It was at this time that he began to turn his attention
to the abolition of slavery in the South, and to write articles for the
press, signed '* Veritas," in which he advocated the war of 1860, or as soon
as the government could get around to it.
In 1855 he graduated from the farm and began the study of law. He
(lid not advance very. rapidly in this profession, failing several times in
Ills examination, and giving bonds for his appearance at the next term
of court. lie was, liowever, a close student of political economy, and
studied personal economy at the same time, till he found that he could
live on ten cents a day and his relatives, easily.
Mr. Nye now began to look about him for a new country to build up
and foster, and, as Wisconsin had grown to be so thickly settled in the
northwestern part of tlie State that neighbors were frequently found as
near as five miles apart, he broke loose from all restraint and took emi-
grant rates for Cheyenne, Wyoming. Here he engaged board at the
I liter- Ocean Hotel, and began to look about him for a position in a bank.
Not succeeding in this, he tried the law and journalism. He did not
succeed in ^^ettiiig a job for some time, but finally hired as associate
editor and janitor of the Laramie t<nifiHcL The salary was small, but
his latit ude great, and he was permitted to write anything that he thought
would jdease the pco]>Ie, whether it was news or not.
.'330 A7A(/.S OF TliK PLATFORM AAD PULPIT.
By aud by he had won every heart by his gentle, patient poverty and
his delightful parsimony with regard to facts. With a hectic imagina-
tion and an order on a restaurant which advertised in the paper, he
scarcely carod the livelong (hiy whether school kept or not.
Thus he rose to ju.^ticu of the peace, and finally to an income which
is reported very hirge to everybody but the assessor.
He is the father of several very beautiful children by his first wife,
who is still living. She is a Chicago girl, and loves her husband far
more than he deserves. He is pleasant to the outside world, but a per-
fect brute in his home. Ife earlv leamed that, in order to win the love
of hi-^ wife, he sh »n]d be ernitie. and kiek the stove over on the children
uiieii lie (;anie lioiiie. He theri lore asserts himself in this way, and the
family love and respect him, being awed by his greatness and gentle
barbarism.
He eats plain food with both hands, conversing all the time pleas-
antly with any one who may be visiting at the house. If his children
do not behave, he kicks tlu'in from beneath the table till they roar with
pain,ashec})ats on with the <:uestswith a bright and ever-flowing stream
(»f //on vinfs, which please and deli<rht those who visit him to that degree
that they almost forget that they have had hardly anything to eat.
In (jonclusion, Mr. Nye is in every respect a lovely character. -He
feared that injustice might be done him, however, in this biographical
sketch, and so he has written it himself. B. N,
I
. J
c
I •
,'l'
■ ■ r- /
v_
INGERSOLL.
/
I
POET, ORATOU AND CKITIC.
I
I
BIOGRAPHY AND UEMINISCEXCES.
Robert Green Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York, in 1833. His father was
an Jiustcre I'resbyterian elergynmn. In early life Mr. In^crsoll studied liiw ami
settled in Peoria, Illinois, lie made many eloquent sj)ceelies in his early life, but
his magnetic speech nominaVinij^Blaii.e to the j)residcncy, in 1880, brought liim a
national reput^ition. His y^nosticj?ie\vs on religious dogmas have created disciLsaioDs^
in two iiemisphercs. He has measured swords with Tahnage and Judge Black, and
even the grcjit Gladstone considered Ingersoll a warrior worth}' of his steeL ^STrl
Ingersoll has written many books, which have been read on two continentsVantTwliich
have been translated into German and French. His lectures on the "Mistakes of
Moses," and "Liberty for Man, Woman and Cliild." have been listened to from San
Francisco to Halifax. The great Agnystic is beloved by his personal friends for liis
charities and love for his fellow-man. He now resides on Fifth avenue, New York,
in a beautiful home, surrounded by comitless friends. Ins beautiful daughters and a
devoted wife. \/
Ingersoll is the John the Baptist of Agnosticism — an eloquent
voice crjung in the wilderness. In writing about the eloquence and
hiimor of the century, you could no more leave out Ingersoll than
the scientists could leave out Huxley, Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
Even Gladstone, who stands on the pinnacle of England's intelli-
gence, had to come out and measure swords with the witty Agnos-
tic. We may all differ from IngersoU's theology, but we must love
him for being the Apostle of Freedom — *^ freedom for man, woman
and child."
Ingersoll is one of the most charming converses of the age,
and hisiiouse is constantly filled with the brainiest people of Woe ity.
There he sits, evening after evening, in the bosom of his family,
charming with his wit and wisdom his delighted guests.
The comparisons of the great orjitor are so mirtli-provokingthat
you break into laughter while you are being convinced.
> -^
INQBRSOLL. 333
One night, when Ingersoll was telling what the Bepublican party «
had done — how it had freed eight million slaves and^ saved the
republic, he was interrupted by. Daniel Voorhees, who said:
^' Oh, bury the past. Colonel ; talk about to-day. We Demoorats
are not always boasting of the past."
" I will tell you," said Ingersoll, "why the Democratic party
wants us to bury the past. Now why should we do so 1 If the Dem-
ocratic party had a glorious past, it would not wish to forget it. If
it were not for the Bepublican party, there would be no United
States now on the map of the world. The Democratic party wishes
to make a bargain with us to say nothing about the past and noth-
ing about character. It reminds me of the contract that the
rooster proposed to make with the horse : Let us agree not to step
on ^achuOther's feet."
ColongPjngersoll is a master, of ridicule^ Thousands of times
he^Tlas usckI up a witness with ridicuFe and laughed him out of
court.
One day, in Peoria, they were trying a patent-chnm case* The
opi)osing counsel used many scientific terms. He talked about the
science of the mahcine, and how his client had always been a devo-
tee of science.
" Sir," he said, " I do not ask this verdict for my client as an
ordinary man. I ask it in the interest of science, and because he
has contributed to science a valuable discovery."
*' Science ! " \'elled the Colonel ; " you want this verdict for sci-
ence. The burden of your speech is for science. You are deeply
and tearfully concerned about science ; and I see, gentlemen of the
jury [looking over at the opposing counsel's brief], I see you spell
science with a * y ,' sir ! C-y, cy, e-n-c-e, ence, cyence, sir." \
Of course this turned the laugh on the other side, and, though ]
the Colonel had lost his case by fair argument, he won it back/
again by the science of ridicule.
It is thus that Mr. Ingersoll often answers the solid argument o&^ s^
the tlie(>]()giiin, . If he can not deny the theologian's statement or
answer his argnincnt, h(^ ridicules it and laughs it out of court.
Ingoi'soirststimiilt'sof public men are often extremely amusing. f^C
In response to an inquiry about Robert Collyer, he said:
* C'oUyer, the blacksmith ? He is a great soul. He has a brain
full of light, the head of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet
u
*
334 KINOa OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
'1
■ i
; '/ and the sincere heart of a child. Had such men as Robert* Collyer
and John Stuart Mill been present at the burning of Servetus, they
would have extinguished the flames with their tears. Had Dr. Pat-
ton and the presbytery of Chicago been there, they would have
quietly turned their backs, solemnly divided their coat tails, and
warmed themselves."
"What do you think of Professor David Swing ?" was asked.
" Professor Swing," said IngersoU, " is too good a man to have
Btayed in the Presbyterian church. There he was a rose amongst
thistles; he was a dove amongst vultures; and they hunted him
out, and I am glad he came out. I have the greatest respect for
Professor Swing, but I want him to tell whether the 109th Psalm
is inspired."
[ ^ Being questioned about superstition, IngersoU said :
.t' ^ "Superstition makes men cowards. 'Are men restrained by
superstition ? ' you ask. Are meiT restrained by what you call
religion? I used to think they were not ; now I admit they are.
No man has ever been restrained from the commission of a real
crime, but from an artificial one he has.
J "There was a man who committed murder. They got the evi-
dence, but he confessed that he did it.
" ' What did you do it for ? ' they asked.
" ' Money ' said the man.
" ' Did you get any money ? '
!. "*Yes.'
• " ' How much ? '
"'Fifteen cents.'
" ' What kind of a man was he ? '
1 " ' A laboring man I killed.'
' " * What did you do with the money V
" ^ I bought liquor with it.'
" ' Did he have any thing else ? '
" ' I think he had some meat and bread.'
" ' What did you do with that ? '
" 'I ate the bread and threw away the meat ; it was Friday.'
" So you see," said IngersoU, " it will restrain in some things,
but, whoever is superstitious is not quite civilized. Superstition isa
souvenir of the animal world. Fcjir is the dungeon of the souT
Superstition is the dagger by which manhood is assassinated.
'^Ji^
moEnsoix, ' 335 . '
long as anybody imagines that this world was made for him, and
that there is some being who will change the order on his accoDnt,
that there is some being that will send a famine because he has not
prayed enough, just so. long the world will be full of fear."
I hav^oftea been amazed at the Colonel's ingenious arguments.
ToUIustraEe: He is opposed to the enforcement of the old Oonnecti-
cut blue laws t6 make people good, .ge^belieyes^ a man made jgood
by law is not really good at heart,, but is aimjjj; mgiTfl "ffl npp^r
good^^^TIa-is3Ptegal hypocrite^ .
ne day a fanatical talker — a Puritanical blue-law man — who
was in favor of enforcing strict Sunday laws, absolute prohibition,
etc., came in on the N. Y. Central train. Mr. Ingersoll heard him
talk a spell, and then asked him several questions :
" Would you like to live in a conmiunity where not one cigar
conld be smoked and not one drop of spirituous liquor could be sold
or drunk?"
^' Certainly," said the blue-law man ; ^^ that would be a social
heaven."
" And you would like to live where no one could play on the
Sabbath day ; where no one could laugh out loud and enjoy a
frolic ? "
" Yes sir ; that would suit me. It would be paradise to live in a
community where every one was compelled to go to church every
Sunday, where no one could drink a drop, where no one could swear
and where the law would make every man good. There the law
would make every man's deportment absolutely correct."
" Then," said Mr. Ingersoll, " I advise you to go right to the
penitentiary. At Sing Sing there is a community of 1,500 men and
women governed in precisely that manner. They are all good by
law."
It is seldom that Ingersoll meets a man who can stand up against
Ills eloquence and wit. The great Agnostic and Talmage met on the
train tbeother day just after afamous Christian banker had defaulted
and fled to Canada.
" That's the way with you Christians," said Ingersoll. " Here is
a professed Christian who has been a class leader and a vestryman,
and now the hypocrite robs a bank and away he goes to Canada."
" Did you ever hear a Christian make an uproar, Colonel, when
an anti-Christian committed a crime — when he robbed a bank and
fled to Canada?" asked Talmage.
• •
\ ■ c
^ r
\--
(
336 RINQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT
" I don't remember any such case now," said IngersoU.
"No, you are not surprised when a worldly man commits a
crime. You don't notice it. It is nothing unusual. You see," con-
tinued Talmage, "you expect us Christians to be perfect. You
expect us to be as pure and holy as our religion."
" Of course," said IngersoU.
"And when you say ' of course,' you pay us a compliment, and
when you show great surprise that one of us should chance to do
wrong, you pay us a still finer compliment. Don't you ? "
. ; Mr. IngersoU was silent, and commenced winding hisJWaterbury
watch. "^ — ■ —
' ^ On another occasion Beecher got a good joke on IngersoU. The
two were always great friends, foe two such great hearts could not
keegjipart. It seems that Mr. Beecher had a beautifiil globe TrTRt^
sfudy, a present from some great manufacturer. It was a celestial
globe. On it was an excellent representation of the constellations
and stars which compose them. There were the rings of Saturn
and satellites of Uranus. IngersoU was delighted with the globe.
He examined it closely and turned it round and round.
" It's j^st what I want," he said. " Who made it ? "
"Who made it?" repeated Beecher, "Who made this globe? O^
^ nobody, Colonel, it just happened!"
IngersoU was so delighted at the good point made that he could
have kissed Beecher on the spot.
Speaking of science in theology and medicine, one day Mr.
IngersoU said:
" AU the advance in religion ever made was caused by the heretics
Luther, John Huss, Latimer and Wycliffe and others who kicked
at orthodoxy."
" What of medicine ? " I asked.
" Well, aU the advance that has been made in the science of medi-
cine has been made by the recklessness of patients — medical here-
tics. I can recollect when they wouldn't give a man water in a
fever — not a drop. Now and then some fellow would get so thirsty
he would say: *Well, I'll die anyway, so I'll drink it,' and there-
upon he would drink a gaUon of water, and thereupon he would
burst into a generous perspiration and get well, and the next morn-
ing when the doctor would come to see him they would teU him
about the man drinking the water, and he would say: * How much I *
•'r»
INOERSOLL 337
"* Well, he swallowed two pitchers full/
"^s he alive?'
« ' Yes.'
^^ So they would go into the room and the doctor would feel his
pulse and ask him:
*" * Did you drink two pitchers of water?'
" ' Yes.'
" ' !My God! what a constitution you have got.'
'* I tell you," ccmtmued Ingersoll, " there is something splendid in
man that will not always mindT^WTfyjlf weTiad done as the'^thigT
^tolcf us five hundred yeaTs ago, we/^votrldalljhave been slaves. If
we had done as the priests told us, we A^^imill have been idiots.
If we had done as the doctors told us, we ^oulcKall have been dead.
We liave beecLsaved by disobedien^. We have been saved bW \
that splendid thing ciHleltlTltreperrdence, and I want to see more orJ
it, da}' after day, and I want to see children raised so they will hMMf\
it. That is my doctrine. Give the children a chance."
Mr. Ingersoll was complaining, in la humorous way, one day, on
the Alton train, about the hardshipsAtue people have to endure in
this world. " They have cyclones in Iowa," he said, "grasshoppers
in Kansas, famines in Ireland, floods in Pennsylvania, yellow fever in
Galveston, George Francis Train in New York, and small pox epi-
demics in Baltimore. It is very hard," said Mr. Ingersoll.
" What does all this prove ? " I asked. /
" It proves that the universe is not governed by a personal Gk)d, -
but by law — law — law. There is no personal God or devil. Such
ideas are only worthy of a savage. Iluxley, and Darwin, and Gal-
ileo would laugh at such ideas. If there is a personal God who
drowned 20,000 people in the Johnstown flood, then He is doing .
very queer things. But no, it was not God, it was law. Foolish j
men built a weak tlain. By the law of gravity the weight of water /
broke the dam and swept saints and sinners down to death." \
''If there were a jHirsonal God, and you were in his place, ooold
you do these things better than they are being done? " asked Fit*
Iluf^h Lee, who hap|K3neil to be on the train and sat listening, atten-
tivelv.
*• Why, yes. I could make some things better than they are," /
said Mr. Ingersoll. . ^^.
338 KI^^GS OF THE PLATFORM 'AXD PVLPIT.
^' Now what is one thing that you would change and improve ?"
asked Governor Lee. "Tell me one thing that you would make dif-
ferent than it is ? Do you mean to say that with our feeble intellect
we could improve on any tiling the Almighty has made? "
" Yes, certainly I could,"' said IngersoU, pushed to the wall.
"Well, tell meone single thing that you could improve on."
" My dear general," said IngersoU, "if I had my wajnn this world,
I would make health catching, instead of disease catching! "
INGERSOLL'S GREAT LECTURE.
LIBERTY — LOVE — PATRIOTISM. / ' ■ / / ^'-
Liberty for man, woman, child, is Ingersoll's great lecture. All
his lectures would fill a volume. -JJo^ we make a selection of his beat
thoughts. ^
Intellectual Liberty. — I do not know what inventions are in the
brain of the future; 1 do not know what garments of glory may be
woven for the world in the loom of years to be; we are just on the edge
of the great ocean of discovery. I do not know what is to be discov-
ered; I do not know what science will do for us. I do not know that
science did just take a handful of sand and make the telescope, and
with it read all the starry leaves of heaven; I know that science took
the thunderbolts from tlie hands of Jupiter, and now the electric spark,
freighted with thought and love, flashes under waves of the sea; I know
that science stole a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it
into steam, and created a giant that turns with tireless arms the count-
less wheels of toil; I know that science broke the chains from human
limbs and gave us, instead, the forces of nature for our slaves; I know
that we have made the attraction of gravitation work for us; we have
made the lightnings our messengers; we have taken advantage of fire
and flames and wind and sea; these slaves have no backs to be whipped;
they have no hearts to be lacerated; they have no children to be stolen,
no craaies to be violated. I know that science has given us better
houses; I know it has given us better pictures and better books, I know
it has given us better wives and better husbands, and more beantifnl
children. I knov7 it has enriched, a thousand-fold, our lives, and for
that reason I am in favor of intellectual liberty.
Kindness. — Above all, let every man treat his wife and children
with infinite kindness. Give your sons and daughters every advantage
.■/
.0
itr&jtmoLL, d3d
within yolii' p^Wdl". In the air of kindness they will grow abont yon
like flowers. They will fill your homes with snnshine and all your years
with joy. Do not try to rule by force.
A blow from a parent leaves a scar on the soul. [Applause.] I L^^i(lA^
should feel ashamed to die surrounded by children I had whipped./!'^ ^ '
Think of feeling upon your dying lips the kiss of a child you haAjr^^^
struck.
See to it that your wife has every convenience. Make her life worth
living. Never allow her to become a servant. Wives, weary and worn;
mothers^ wrinkled and bent before their time, fill homes with grief and
shame. If you are not able to hire help for your wives, help them your-*
selves. See that they have the best utensils to work with. Women can
not create things by magic. Have plenty of wood and coal — good Cel-
lars and plenty in them.
A Strong Government. — I believe in a government with an arm
long enough to reach the collar of any rascal beneath its flag. I want
it with an arm long enough and a sword sharp enough to strike down
tyranny wherever it may raise its snaky head. I want a nation that
(uin liear the faintest cries of its humblest citizen. I want a nation
that will protect a f reedman standing in the sun by his little cabin, just
as quick as it would protect Vanderbilt in a palace of marble and gold.
[Applause.]
American Labor. — I believe in American labor, and I tell you why.
The other day a man told me that we had produced in the United States
of America one million tons of rails. How much are they worth? Thirty
dollars a ton. In other words, the million tons are worth $30,000,000.
llow much is a ton of iron worth in the ground? Twenty-five cents.
American labor takes 25 cents of iron in the ground and adds to it $29.-
75. One million tons of rails, and the raw material not worth $20,000.
We build a ship in the United States worth $500,000, and the value of
the ore in the earth, of the trees in the great forest, of all that enters
into the composition of that ship bringing $500,000 in gold is only $20^
000; iS(480,000 by American labor, American muscle, coined into gold.
Amkhica Forever! — I have been in countries where the laboring
man hud meat once a year; sometimes twice— Christmas and Easter.
And I have seen women carrying upon their heads a burden that no man
would like to carry, and at the same time knitting busily with both hands.
And those women lived without meat; and when I thought of the Ameri-
can laborer, I said to myself, ''After all, my country is the best in th«»
world.'' And when I came back to the sea and saw the old flag flying iu
340 KmOS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
the air, it seemed to me as though the air from pure joy had burst into
blossom.
Labor has more to eat and more to wear in the United States than in
any other land of this earth. I want America to produce every thing
that Americans need. I want it so if the whole world should declare
war against us, so if we were surrounded by walls of cannon and bay-
onets and swords, we could supply all human wants in and of ourselves.
I want to live to see the American woman dressed in American silk; the
American man in every thing from hat to boots produced in America by
the cunning hand of the American toiler.
Religion and Science. — What has religion to do with science or
with facts? Nothing. Is there any such thing as Methodist mathemat-
ics, Presbyterian botany. Catholic astronomy or Baptist biology? What
has any form of superstition or religion to do with a fact or with any
science? Nothing but hinder, delay or embarrass. I want, then, to free
the schools; and I want to free the politicians, so that a man will not
have to pretend ho is a Methodist, or his wife a Baptist, or his grand-
mother a Catliolic, so that ho can go through a campaign, and when he
gets through will find none of the dust of hypocrisy on his knees.
Christ. — And let mo say here, once for all, that for the man Christ
I have infinite respect. Let me say, once for all, tliat the place where
man has died for man is holy ground. Let me say once for all, to that
great and serene m:iu I gladly pay — I gladly pay the tribute of my
admiration and my tears. He was a reformer in His day. He was an infi-
del in His time. He was regarded as a blasphemer, and His life was
destroyed by hypocrites who have in all ages done what they could to
trample freedom out of the human mind. Had I lived at that time I
would have been His friend. And should He come again He will not
find a better friend than I will be. That is for the man. For the theo
logical creation I have a different feeling. If he was in fact God, He
knew there was no such thing as death; He knew that what we call death
was but the eternal opening of the golden gates of everlasting joy. And
it took no heroism to face a death that was simply eternal life. [Applause.]
INGERSOLL'S ELOQUENT VISION.
The following remarkably eloquent words are taken from Col-
onel IngersoU's brilliant address to the veteran soldiers at Indian-
apolis :
The past, as it were, rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great
struggle for national life. We hear the sound of preparation— the music of the
*■ _
1NGBB80LL, 341
boisterous drums — the silver voices of the heraldic bugles. We see thousands of
assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators ; we see the pale cheeks of women, and
the flushed faces of men; and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we
have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when
they enlist in the great army <ff freedom. We see them part with thdlBe they love.
Some arc walking for the last time in quiet woody places with the maddens they
adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they linger-
ingly part forever. Others are bending over cradles kissing babies that are asleep.
Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who
hold them und press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing ; and some
are talking with wives and endeavoring with brave words spoken in the old tones to
drive away the awful fciir. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the
door with the babe in her arms — standing in the sunlight sobbing—at the turn of the
road a hand waves — she answers by holding high in her loving hands the child. He
is gone, and forever.
We see tliem all, as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags, keeping
time to tlie wild gnmd music of war— marching down the streets of the great cities —
through the towns and across the prairies— down to the fields of glory, to do and to
die for the eternal right. [Applause.]
We go with them one and all. We are by their side on all the gory fields, in all
the hospitals of pain^)n all the weary marches. We stand guard with them in (he
wihl storm and \mder the quiet stars. We are with them in nivlnes running with
1)1<mh1— in the furrows of old lields. We are with them between contending hosts,
unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly away among the withered
l<'av(>s. We see tliem pierced by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches of forts,
and in the whirlwind of the charge, where men l)ecomo iron witli nerves of steel.
We are with them in th(> prisons of hatred and famine, but human speech can
novcT tell what tliey endured.
We are at home when the news comes that they are detul. We se<; the maiden in
the shadow of her sorrow. W<' s«'e th(^ silvered head of the old man bowed with the
last grief.
The i>ast rises before us, and we see four millions of human bc^ings governed by
the lash — we see them hound hand and fo<H — we hear the strokes of eniel wliips^
we see hounds tracking women through tangled swamps. Wo see babes sold from the
breasts of ir.othcrs. Cruelty unspeakable! Outrage inflnitcl
Four million bodies in chains — four million souls in fetters. All the sacred
relations of wifi", mother, father and child, tnunpled beneath the brutal feet of might.
And all this was done inider our (^wn beautifid bimner of the free.
The i)ast ris<'S Ix'fore us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting shell.
Th(? broken fitters fall. There heroes died. AVe h)ok. Instead of slaves we see
nun and women and children. The wand of progress touches the auction-block, the
slave pen and the whippingpost, and we see homes and firesides and school-houses
and books, and where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we see the faces
of the free.
Tlus<' heroes a re dead They died for liberty— they died for us. They are at rest.
They sleep in the land they made free, under the Hag they rendered stainless, under
tlie solemn pines, the siul hemlocks, the tearful willows, the embracing vines. Tlicy
sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in
342 KINGS OP TH^ PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars — they are at
peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death .
I have one sentiment for the soldiers living and dead — cheers for the living and tears
for the dead. [Applause.]
INGERSOLL ON CHILDREN.
'* How should you treat your children?'^ you ask.
*' Why, be perfectly honor-bright with your children/' said Inger-
soll, ''and they will be your friends when you are old. Don't try to
teach them something they can neyer learn. Don't insist upon their pur-
suing some calling they have no sort of faculty for. Don't make that
poor girl play ten years on a piano when she has no ear for music, and
when she has practiced until she can play 'Bonaparte Crossing the
Alps,* you can't tell after she has played it whether Bonaparte ever got
across or not. Men are oaks, women are vines, children are flowers,
and if there is any lieaven in this world, it is in the family. It is where
the wife loves the husband, an<l the husband loves the wife, and wheFe
the dimpled arms of cliildren are about the necks of both."
Speaking of children, IngersoU used these burning words that same
night in his Chicago lecture:
If there is one of you here tliat ever expect to whip your child again, let me ask
you something. Have your pliotograph taken at tlie time, and let it show your face
rt'd with vulgar anger, and the face of the little one with eyes swiuuning in tears,
and the little chin dimpled with fear, looking like a piece of water struck hy a sud-
den col/d wind. If that little child should die, I can not think of a sweeter way to
spend an autunui afternoon than to take that photograph and go to the cemetery,
when the maples are clad in tender gold, and when little scarlet runners are coming,
like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth; and sit down upon that moinul,
and look upon that photograph, and think of the flesh, now dust, that you beat.
Just think of it. I could not hear to die in the arms of a child that I had whipped.
I could not bear to feel upon my lips, when they were withered beneath the touch of
death, the kiss of one that I had struck. [Applause.]
I said, and 1 siiy again, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will
make the holiest da}' more suered still. Strike with hand of tire, oh, weird musician,
thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with
symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler blow,
until thy silver notes do touch the skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the lovers
wandering on the vine-clad Jiills; but know, your sweetest strains are discords all,
compared with (!hil(lhood's happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes with light and
every heart with joy; oh, rippling river of life, thou art the blessed boundary line
between the beasts and man, and every wayw^ard wave of thine doth drown some
fiend of care, oh, laughter, divine daughter of joy, make dimples enougli in tlie
cheeks of tin; world to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief. [Loud
applause.]
344 KING8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
I was over in Michigan tlui otbcr day. There was a boy over there at Grand
Hapids about five or six years old, a nice, smart boy, as you will see from the remark
he made^what you might call a nineteenth century boy. His father and mother
had promised to take him out riding. They had promised to take him out riding for
about three weeks, and they would slip off and go without him. Well, after a while
thatjgQtJttad-ot played out with the little boy, and the day before I was there they
played the trick on him again. ~ They went out and got the carriage, and went away,
and as they rode away from the front of the house, he happene<l to be standing there
with his nurse, and he saw them. The whole thing flashed on him in a moment. He
took in the situation, turned to his nurse and said, pointing to his father and mother:
** There goes the two biggest liars in the State of Michigan ! " [Laughter.]
When you go home fill the house with joy, so that the light of it will stream out
the windows and doors, and illuminate oven the darkness. [Applause.]
INGERSOLL OX WOMAN.
''But what do you think about woman? '' was asked the colonel.
"Ah, there/' he exclaimed, ''you touch my heart."
'"I don't believe man ever came to any high station without woman.
There has got to be some restraint, something to make you prudent^
something to make you industrious. And in a country like Santo
Domingo, where you don't need any bed-quilt but a cloud, [laughter]
revolution is the normal condition of the people. You have got to have
the fireside; you have got to have the home, the wife, and there by the
fireside will grow and bloom the fruits of the human race. I recollect
a while ago I was in Washington when they were trying to annex Santo
Domingo. They said: 'We want to take in Santo Domingo.'
" ' We don't want it,' said I.
'" Why,' said they, 'it is the best climate the earth can produce.
There is every thing you want.'
"'Yes,' said I, 'but it won't produce men, only women. We dou't
want it. We have got soil good enough now.'
'"Take 5,000 ministers from New England, 5,000 presidents of col-
leges, and 5,000 solid business men and their families, and take them to
Santo Domingo, and then you will see the effect of climate. The second
generation you will see barefooted boys riding bareback on a mule, with
their hair sticking out of the top of their sombreros, with s rooster
under each arm going to a cock-fight on Sunday.' [Laughter.]
"You have got to have the soil; you have got to have the climate,
and you have got to have another thing — you have got to have the fire-
side, and you have got to have woman.
*'It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it is not necessary to
be rich to be just and generous and to have a heart filled with divine
nrQERSOLL ' ^ 846
affection. No matter whether yon are rich or poor> use yonr wife as
though she were a splendid creation, and womati will fill your life with
perfume and joy. And do you know it is a splendid thing for me to
think that the woman you really love will never grow old to you.
Through the wrinkles of time, through the music of years^ if you really
love her, you will always see the face you loved and won. And a woman
wlio really loves a man does not see that he grows older; he is not
decrepit; he does not tremble; he is not old; she always sees the same
gallant gentleman who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it
in that way; I like to think of all passions, love is eternal^ and as Shakes*
peare says, 'Although time with his sickle can rob ruby lips and spark-
ling eyes, let him reach as far as he can, he can not quite touch love,
that reaches even to the end of the tomb/ And to love in that way
and then go down the hill of life together, and as you go down, hear,
perhaps, the laughter of grandchildren, and the birds of joy and love
will sing once more in the leafless branches of age. I believe in the fire-
side. I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the republican-
ism of the family. I believe in liberty and equality with those we love.
" I despise a stingy man. I don't see how it is possible for a man to
die worth fifty millions of dollars or ten millions of dollars, in a city full
of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary
and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and
liold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty millions of dollars, is
past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not
think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber
where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. I
should not think ho could do it. Do you know I have known men who
would trust their wives with their hearts and their honor, but not with
their pocketbook; not with a dollar. When I see a man of that kind I
always think he knows which of these articles is the most valuable.
''Think of making your wife a beggar ! Think of her having to
ask you every day for a dollar, or for two dollars, for fifty cents!
' What did you do with that dollar I gave you last week?'
''Tliink of having a wife that was afraid of youl What kind of
children do you expect to have with a beggar and a coward for their
iiKHhiT? Oh! I tell you if you have but a dollar in the world and you
liuvc got to spend it, spend it like a king ; spend it as though it were a
dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests! That's the way to
spend it!
*' I had rathor bo a beggar and spend my last dollar like -» king, than
be a king and s])ond my money like a beggar. If it's got to go, let it
346 KINGS OF TEE PLATFORM AlH) PULPIT,
go. Get the best you can for your family — try to look as well as you
can yourself.
*^ When you used to go courting, how nice you looked! Ah, your
eye was bright, your step was light, and you just put on the very best
look you could. Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in you to
suppose that a woman is going to love you always looking as bad as you
can? Think of it! Any woman on earth will be true to you forever
when you do your level best. Some i>eople tell me, 'your doctrine about
loving and wives and all that is splendid for the rich, but it won't do
for the poor.' I tell you to-night there is on the average more love in
the homes of the poor than in the palaces of the rich ; and the meanest
hut with love in it is fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den,
only fit for wild beasts. That's my doctrine! You can't be so poor
but that you can help somebody.
**Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; and love is
the only thing that will pay ten per cent, to borrower and lender both.
Don't tell me that you have got to be rich! We have all a false standard
of greatness in the United States. Wo think here that a man to be
great must be notorious; he must be extremely wealthy or his name
must be between the lips of rumor. It is all nonsense!
*' It is not necessary to be rich to be great, or to be powerful to be
happy; and the happy man is the successful man. Happiness is the
legal-tender of the soul. Joy and love are wealth."
V
'' Mj ' co/M^r
4 • 1
^fe-gt-r^ Wircw^n^
"MARK TWAIN/'
BIOOKAPHY AND REBnNISCEKCES.
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), who has done so much to make our lives
sunny, was bom in Hannibal, Mo., in 1885. From his brother's printing office he
w^ent on the J^lississippi river as a pilot. It was hearing the cry of the soundings "Mark
one! Mark twain! Mark three!" that caused him to take his pseudonym, "Mark
Twain." Prom the river Mr. Clemens went to Nevada, and entered journalism. He
afterwards removed to San Francisco and thence to the Sandwich Islands, and, return*
ing, gave his first lecture, "Roughing It." After traveling in Europe, he wrote
"Innocents Abroad." This book made him famous, and was quickly followed by
" Tom Sawyer," "The Prince and the Pauper," and other sketches. On returning
from the Holy Land, he became editor of the Buffalo Express, but finally moved to
Hartford, Conn., where he now lives in a beautiful home, surrounded by a lovely
family of children. Mrs. Clemens, formerly Miss Langdon, of Elmira, N. Y., ie
beloved by every one in Hartford.
To show the humorist's characteristic handwriting, his preface
from his " Library of Wit and Humor," is reproduced :
CfnAXUuCtf^ iJ^nfi-'C^U^nf
, I nz^.
Mr. David Weloher tells me that Mark Twain When in a good
humor, told him the story of his coortship, and bow he won his
beautiful and wealthy wife. When Mark first met her, he was not so
distinguished as now; his origin was humble, and for some years of
his life he Iiad been a pilot on the Mississippi river. The fotare
Mrs. Clemens was a woman of position and fortune; her father
was a judge, and doubtless expected ^'family " and social importance
in his son-in-law. Clemens, however, became interested in his
daughter, and after awhile proposed, but was rejected.
" Well," he said to the lady, " I didn't much believe you^d have
me, but I thought I'd try."
After a w bile he ^' tried " again, with the same result, and then
remarked, with his celebrated drawl, '' I think a great deal more of
you than if you'd said * Yes,' but it's hard to bear." A third time
he met with better fortune and then came to the most diflScult part
of his task — to address the old gentleman.
^Mudge," he said to the dignified millionaire, ^have you seen
any thing going on between Miss Lizzie and me?"
" What ? What ? " exclaimed the judge, rather sharply, appar-
ently not understanding the situation, yet doubtless gettmg a
glimpse of it from the inquiry.
'^ I lave you seen any thing going on between Miss Lizzie and mef "
'^ Xo, indeed," replied the magnate, sternly. " No, sir, I have
not i "
'' Well, look sharp and you will," said the author of " Innocents
Abroad," and that's the way he asked the judicial luminary for
his daughter's hand.
Mark has a child who inherits some of her father's brightness.
8iie kept a diary at one time, in which she noted the occurrences in
the family, and, among other things, the sayings of her parents.
On one page she wrote that father sometimes used stronger words
whon mother wasn't by, and bethought " we" didn't hear. Mrs.
( Uinens found the diary and showed it to her hjisband, probably
thinking the particular page worthy his notice. After this Clemens
(lid and said several things that were intended to attract tne child's
aitcMition, and found them duly noted afterward. But one day the
followin^r entrv was made:
'• I don't think Fll put down any thing more about father, for I
think lu* does things to have mo notice him, and I believe he reiuls
this diarv." She wasMark's own child.
350 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
When I asked R. E. Morris, of Hannibal, who went to school
Willi Mark when he was a boy, about the great humorist's boyhood,
he said, as he stopped his painting at 520 South Fourth street :
" Know Mark ? I should say I do. We were school-mates."
" 5pnghtly boy, you say."
" Yes, he was. He was a mischievous rascal. I was born and
raised in Hannibal, and know when Mrs. Clemens moved from
Florida, Monroe County, to Hannibal. Mark was a dull, stupid,
slow-going boy, but he was full of pranks, and while he didn't do the
meanness, he planned it and got other boys to do it. We went to
school to Dr. Meredith, and Mark alwavs sat near the foot of the
class. He never took any interest in books, and I never saw him
study his lessons. He left school and went to learn the printing
business, and soon after that left Hannibal and went to steam-
boating.
" I stayed at school, got a good education, and am a painter,
while Mark is a millionaire. It is a scandalous fact, that as a boy,
from ten to seventeen years of age, Mark was awfully dull and
stupid, and it was the wonder of the town, as to what end would be
his. He was pointed out by mothers, as a boy that would never
amount to nothin', if he did not actually come to some bad end.
And he was the most homely boy in school, too. Pranks ! I can
think of a dozen of 'em, and his Huckleberry Finn is full of Hanni-
bal episodes, worked over. I read that with as much interest as I
would a diary of Hannibal, kept during my scliool days. Mark is
three years older than myself, but he was always in a class of boys
two or three \'^ears younger than himself. Still I'm painting houses
and Mark is dining with kings. Don't get your trousers agin the
pain't.'
Mark Twain will go down to posterity as the Dickens of
America. He shows a more vivid imagination than Dickens, be-
cause his early associations were in a wilder, newer and more pic-
turesque country. Dickens was a pure humorist. He described
nature as it was. He added nothing to it. Mark Twain describes
nature and character as truthfully as Dickens, and then, sometimes,
peppers his truthful description with imagination. This is 'wit.
Dickens' "Little Nell," and "Smike" and "Oliver Twist" and
" Fagin" are drawn true to life — dialect and all.
• -.
MARK TWAIir. 851
. Mr. Clemens' writings, like '' Boughing It/' will aJwavs illastrate
our exaggerated early American life. His reputation as a literary
man will go down in history, Boston critics to the contrary.
The quaint humor of Mr. Clemens, shows itself in his every-day
life. To illustrate : At a recent dinner in Boston, there was a long
religious discussion on eternal life and future punishment for the
wicked ; but Mark Twain, who was present, took no part in the dis-
cussion. A lady finally applied to Mr. Twain for his opinion.
^^ What do you think, Mr. Twain, about the existence of a
heaven or hell ? "
" I do not want to express an opinion," said Mr. Twain, gravely.
'^ It is policy for me to remain silent. I have friends in both
places."
MARK TWAIN^S LECTURES AND DINNER SPEECHES.
Mr. Clemens has a qnaintness about his lectures which is indescrib-
able. ''One night/' writes Eli Perkins, *'l sat opposite the humorist
while he made an after-dinner speech. I think it was on the occasion of
the Authors' Club^ dining at the Oilsey House, and, if I remember
rightly, his subject or toast was 'Our children.' It matters not whatthe^
occasion was, it is the speech we want. Well, I took that speech in
shorthand, and I can read it to you as Mark delivered it."
'' llow did ho look and how did he begin,*' you ask?
He arose slowly and stood, half stooping over the table. Both hands
were on the table, palms to the front. There was a look of intense
earnestness about his eyes. It seemed that the weight of an empire was
upon his shoulders. Ills sharp eyes looked out from under his shaggy
eyebrows, moving from one guest to another, as a lawyer scans his jury
in a death trial. Then he commenced, very slowly:
'* Our children — yours — and — mine. They seem like little things to
talk about — our children, but little things often make up the sum of
human life— that's a good sentence. [Laughter.] I repeat it, little
things often produce great things. Now, to illustrate, take Sir Isaac
Newton — I presume some of you have heard of Mr. Newton. [Laughter.]
Well, once when Sir Isaac Newton — a mere lad — ^got over into the man's
apple orchard — I don't know what he was doing there^ — [laughter] — I
dicln't come all the way from Hartford to q-u o s t-i-o-n Mr. Newton's
honesty — but when he was there — in the man's orchard — he saw an apple
fall and he was a-t-t-racted towards it [laughter] and that led to the
266 KTNG8 OF THE PLATFOPIf AKD PULPTT.
" What did he do to you? "
** Him? He never done nothing to me."
*''Well, then, what did you want to kill him for? "
*' Why, nothing — only it's on account of the feud."
"What's a feud?"
*' Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is? "
** Never heard of it before — tell me about it."
"Well," sjiys Buck, **a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another
man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills him; then the other brothers,
on lH)th sides, go for one another; then the cousins chip in — and by-and-by every
iKxly's killed off, and there ain't no more feud. But it's kind of slow and takes a
long time." [Laughter.]
MARK TWAIN'S MASTERPIECE.
Tom Sawyer having offended his sole guardian. Aunt Polly, is by
that sternly affectionate dame punished by being sent to whitewash the
fence in front of the garden. The world seemed a hollow mockery to
Tom, who had planned fun for that day, and he knew that he would be
the laughing stock of all the boys as they came past, and saw him set to
work like a '^ nigger.^' But a great inspiration burst upon him, and he
went tranquilly to work. What that inspiration was will appear from
what follows.
One of the boys, Ben Rogers, comes by and pauses, eating a par-
ticularly fine apple. Tom does not see him. Ben stares a moment, and
then says:
'*Hi-yi! you're up a stump, ain't you?'*
No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist,
then he gave another gentle sweep, and surveyed the result as before.
Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom^s mouth watered for the apple,
but he stuck to his work. Ben said:
" Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey? "
'* Why, it's you, Ben; I wasn^t noticing.''
*' Say, I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could?
But of course you'd ruther work, wouldn't you? Course you would!'*
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
" What do you call work? "
''Why, ain't that work?"
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered, carelessly:
" Well, may be it is, and may be it ain't. All I know is, it suits Tom
Sawver."
*' Oh, come now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?"
The brush continued to move.
"5..
MARK TWAIK. . . 853
if they sec a cow In a far distance and are afraid of guns. They stay at homo all the
time and go to church every Sunday. They are al-ways sick. Tlicy ore al-ways
funy and making fun of boys hands and they say how dirty. They cant play
marbles. I pity them poor things. They make fun of boys and thto turn round and
love them. I don't belave tlicy ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out eveiy
nitc and say, ' Oh a'nt the moon lovely ! ' Thir is one thing I have not told and that
is they al-ways now their lessons bettem boys."
Perhaps the best parodoz in the English language^ was Mr. Twain's
ending to his duel story, when he told the audience how opposed he was
to fighting a duel.
*^ Why/' said he, '^ I'm so opposed to fighting a duel — so seriously
and religiously opposed to fighting a duel, that Fve made np my mind,
solemnly and earnestly, that if any one ever comes to me and challenges
me to fight a duel, I'll take him kindly by the hand, lead him gently
out, behind the bam — take an axe — and kill him I " [Lond langhter].
I never knew Mark Twain to be embarrassed bnt once.
'' When was that?"
Well, it was when he made a speech before the Papyrus Olub, of Bos*
ton, at its annual ''Ladies' Night." On that occasion Mark was struck
speechless. He said so himself. He admitted it. He said:
Ladies and Gentlemen:— I am perfectly astonished a s t — o— n— i o h ed-*
ladies and gentleman astonished at the way history repeats itself. I find myself
situated at this moment exactly and precisely as I was once before, years ago to a jot,
to a tittle—to a very hnir. There isn*t a shade of dilTercnce. It is the most astonish-
ing coincidence tliat ever — but wait. I will tell you the former instance, and then
you will sec it for yourself. Years ago, I arrived one day at Salamanca, N. Y., east*
ward boimd; must change cars there and take the sleeper train. There were cfowds
of people there, and they were swarming into the long sleeper train and packing it
full, and it was a perfect purgatory of rust and confusion and gritting of teeth and
soft, 8wcK?t and low profanity. I asked the young man in tlie ticket office if I could
have a sleeping section, and he answered '* No,** with a snarl, that shriveled me up
like burned leather. I went olT, smarting under this insult to my dignity, and asked
another local ofhcial, supplicatingly, if I couldn*t have some poor little corner some*
where in a sleeping car, but he cut mo short with a venomous " No, you can't; every
comer is full. Now, don't bother me any more;" and he turned his back and walked
ofT. My dignity was in a state now which can not be described. I was so ruffled that-
well, I said to my companion, ** if these people knew who I am they — ** but my com-
panion cut me short there, ** Don*t talk such folly,** he said, ** if they did know who
you arc. do you suppose it would help your high mightiness to a vacancy in a train
which lias no vacancies, in it?**
This did not improve my condition any to speak of, but Just then I observed that
the colored porter of a sleeping car had his eye on me. I saW hia dark countenance
light up. He whispered to the uniformed conductor, punctuating with nods and
jerks toward me, and straightway this conductor came forward, oozing politeneas
from every pore.
I
354 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPTT.
"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked. "Will you liavc a place in tbc
sleeper?"
**Yc8," I said, "and much obliged, too. Give me any tiling, anj_thing will
answer." "^
*' We have nothing left but the big family state-room," he continued, ** with two
berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at your disposal. Here, Tom,
take these satchels aboard."
Then he touched his hat and we and the (rolored Tom moved along. I was
bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in and waited.
Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous gnmt apartment, and then said, with
many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles:
"Now is dey^ anything you want, sah? cast; you kin have jes' any thing you
wants. It don't make no diflference what it is."
** Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night, blazing hot? '* 1
asked.
*• You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch."
** Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it, I'll get it myself."
" Good I now that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle fixed
up just at the head of my bed, so that 1 vm\ rea<l comfort^ibly? "
*' Yes, sah; you kin, I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll bum all night.
Yes, sail; an' you can jes' call for an^.lhiag you want, and dish yer whole railroad
'11 be turned wrong end up, an' inside out for to get it for you. Dat's so." And he
disappeared.
Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my arm-holes, smiled a
smile on my companion, and Siiid, gently:
** Well, what do you Sfiy now? "
My companion wjifl not in a humor to respond, and didn't. The next moment
that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and this speech fol-
lowed:
"Laws bless you, sah, I knowcd you in a minute. I told de conductah so.
Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on ytm."
*' Is that so, my boy? (Handing him a quadru])le fee.) Who am I? "
"Jenucl McClellan," and he disappeared again.
My companion said, vimjgarishly, " Well, well! what do you sjiy now? '* Right
there comes in the marvelous (roincidence T mc'ntioned a while ago, viz., I was speech
less and that is my condition now. Perceive it?
Mr. Twain was about as much astonished as old Mrs. Bagley, when
Iliggins announced the death of her husband out in Nevada. But we
will let Mark tell it:
^'Iliggins was a simple creature,*' said Mark, with a tearful pathos
in his voice and a sad look in his eye, **a very simple fellow. He used to
haul coal for old Mai thy. When the lamented Judge Bagley tripped
and fell down the court-house stairs and broke his neck, it waa a great
question how to break the news to i)oor Mrs. Bagley, But finally the
body was put into Iliggins* wagon, and he was instructed to take it to
Mrs. B. ; but to be very guarded and discreet in his language^ and not
f
MARK TWAIN. • 365
break the news to her at once, but to do so gradually and gently. When
Higgins got there with his sad freight, he shout^ till Mrs. Bagley came
to the door.
" Then he said, ' Does the widder Bagley live here?'
' • ' The widow Bagley ? No, sir ! '
'* ' ril bet she does. But have it your own way. Well, does Judge
Bagley live here?'
** * Yes, judge Bagley lives here.'
'^ ' V\\ bet he don't. But never mind, it ain't for me to contradict.
Is the judge in?' »
*' ' No, not at present.'
'* ' I jest expected as much. Because, you know — take hold o' suthin,
mum, for I'm agoing to make a little communication, and I reckon mAy-
be it'll jar you some. There's been an accident, mum. I've got the old
judge curled up out here in the wagon, and when you see him you'll
acknowledge yourself that an inquest is about the only thing that could
be a comfort to him! ' "
It seems that social matters were conducted in a pretty rude manner
out in Nevada about the time Mark Ti\rain described '' Bcotty Briggs
Funeral." There is no doubt but that Mr. Twain's descriptions were
generally true to life. The humorist tells about another funeral out
there quite as strange as the obsequies of Scotty Briggs. He says:
Tliccliurch was densely crowdeil tlmt lovely summer Sabbath, and all, as their eyes
rested upon the small coffin, seemed impressed by the poor black boy's fate. Above tlio
fitillness the pastor's voice rose and chained the interest of every one, as lie told, with
many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble, daring, little Johnny Greer.
when he saw th3 drowned bcnly sweepinij down toward tho deep part of the river
whence the agonized parents never cctdd have rec^overcd it in this world, gallantly
sprung into \\\v. stn^am and, at the risk of his life, towed tho corpse to shore and lield
it fast till hel]) came and secured it. Johnny Oreer was sitting just in front of mc.
A ni«j:ged street boy, with eager eye, turned upon him insttuitly and said in a lioarse
whisper:
"No— but did you though?"
"Yes."
'* Towed the cark is ashon* and saved it yo'self ? C'rackyI What did they give '
you? "
"Nothing,
" W-ha-t! (with intense disgust.) D'you know what I'd adone? Fd a anchored
him out in the stream and said, ' tlve dollars, gents, or you tran't liavc yo* nigger.' "
[laughter.]
" It is very anuising when Mr. Twain makes Buck Grangerfcnl tell what u feud is.
Buck had just shot at a man in tho woods.
" Did you want to kill him Buck?" asked Huckleberry Finn.
" Welf, I iH't I did."
■I
I
>
:. Ti,M i.LT yn: wiiitew^sjh a utple?
\
\
MARK TWAIN. 357
I
'^ Like it? Well> I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy
get a qhance to whitewash a fence every day?''
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple.
Tom swept his brush daintly back and forth — stepped back to note the
effect — added a touch here and there — criticised the effect again, Ben
watching every move^ and getting more and more interested, more and
more absorbed. Presently he said: '
"Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little."
Tom considered— was about to consent — bnt he altered his mind.
" No, no; I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see. Aunt Polly's
awful particular about this fence — ^right here on the street, ydu know-
but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind, and she wouldn't. Yes,
she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful;
I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, may be two thousand, that
can do it in the way it's got to be done."
" No — is that so? Oh, come now; lemme just try, only just a little,
rd let you, if you was me, Tom."
" Ben, Pd like to, honest Injun; but Aunt Polly — well, Jim wanted
to do it, but she wouldn't let him. Sid wanted to do it, bnt she wouldn't
let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this
fence, and anything was to happen to it "
" Oh, shucks! I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say— 111
give you the core of my apple."
''Well, here. No, Ben; now don't; I'm afeard "
" ni give you all of it r
Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in
his heart. And while Ben worked and sweated in the sun, the retired
artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangling his legs, munched
his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no
lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to
jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out,
Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite in goodrepair;
iind when he played out, Johnny Miller bought it for a dead rat and a
string to swing it with; and so on, and so on, hour after hour* And
when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor, poverty-
stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He
had, besides the things I have mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a Jew's
liarp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key
that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of
a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten
with only one eye, ^ brg^ door-knob, a dog-collar— bnt no dog-*the
' • /
' V
I
I
358 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
handle of a knife^ four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old
window sash. He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while — ^plenty
of company — and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he
hadn't run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the
village.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world after all.
He had discovered a great law of human action without knowing it,
namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only
necessary to make it difficult to attain.
A dinner speech that the Scotch newspapers could never understand
was Mark's at the anniversary festival of the Scottish Corporation of
London. In response to the toast of **The Ladies,'* Mark Twain
replied. The following is the speech as reported in the London
Observer :
I am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this especial
toast, to '* The Ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the preferable temi, per-
haps; it is certainly the older, and therefore the more entitled to reverence. [Laugliter.]
I have noticed that the Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is sudi a con-
spicuous characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even
the illustrious mother of all mankind herself as a "lady," but speaks of her as a
woman. [Laughter ] It is odd, but you will find it is so. I am peculiarly proud of
this honor, because I think that tlie toast to women is one which, by right and by
every rule of gallantry, should take pre(M'dence of all others — of the army, of the
navy, of even royalty itself — perhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day
and in this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general health to
all good women when you (irink tin; health of the Queen of England and the
Princess of Wales. [Loud cheers.] 1 have in nn'nd a poem just now which is
familiar to you all, familiar to every bo<ly. And wliat an inspiration that was (and
how instantly the present toast recalls the verses to all our minds) when the most
noble, the most gracious, the purest, and sweetest of all poets says:
"Woman! O woman! — er —
W(,„i ••
[Laughter.] However, you remember tlu^ lines; and you remember how feelingly,
how daintily, how almost imperceptibly, the verses rise up before you, and as you
contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into worship of the intellect
that could creat(? so fair a thing out of mere bi^eath, mere words. And you call to
mind now, as I speak, how the poet, with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity^
delivers this beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and the sorrows
that must comt^ to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how the pathetic
story culminates in that apostrophe — so wild, so regretful, so full of mournful retro-
spection. The lines run thus;
*• Alas! — alas! — a — alas.
Alas! alas! '■
—and so on. [Laughter.] I do not remember the rest; but, taken altogether, it
seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has ever
.i
*
MARK TWAIN. 859
brought forth— daughter]— and I feel that if I were to talk houn I could not do mj
great theme completer or more graceful justice than I have done nQw in dmp^
quoting tliat poet's matchless words. [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the
womanly nature arc infinite in their variety. Takc^ any type of woman« and yoa
shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love. And
you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was more patriotic than
Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a grander instance of self-
sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you remember well, what a throb of pain,
what a great tidal wave of grief swept over us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo.
[Much laughter.] Who does not sorrow for the loss of Sappho, tiie sweet singer of
Isnicl? [Laughter.] Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the
soft(>ning influences, the humble piety, of Lucretia Borgia? [Laughter] Who can
join ill the heartless libel that snys woman is extmvagant in dress when he can look
back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed in her modfiication
of the Highland costume. [Roars of laughter.] Sir. women liave been soldiers,
women have bccm iiainters. women luivc been poets. As long as language lives the
name of Cleopatm will live. And not IxK^use she conquered Cteorge HI. — [laughter]
—but because she wrote those divine lines:
" Let dogs delight to bark and bite.
For Qod hath made them so.**
[More laughter.] The story of the world is adorned with the names of lUustiioui
ones of our own sex— some of them sons of St. Andrew too— Scott, Bruce, Bums,
tin* warrior Wallace^ Ben Nevis— [laughter] — the gifted Ben Lomond, and the great
new Scotchman. Ben Disraeli.* [Great laughter.] Out of the great plains of history
tcwer whole mountain ranges of sublime women — the Queen gf Sheba, Joaephlne,
Scmiramis. Sairey Gamp; the list is endless— [laughter]— but I will not caH tlie
mighty roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion, lundnous
witli the glory of deeds that can not die, hallowed by the loving worship of the good
and tlH> true of all ep(K>hs and all climes. [Cheers.] Sufiice it for our pride and our
honor that we in our day have added to it such immes as those of Grace Darling and
Florence Nightingale. [Cheers.] Woman is all that she should be — gentle, patiioit,
long KufTering, tru.stful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. It is her blessed misdon
to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor
the di.stresse<l, uplift the f allien, befriend the friendless— in a word, afford the healing f
of her sympathies and a home in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted chfldfen
of misfortune that knock at its hospitable door. [Cheers.] . And when I say, God
Mess her. there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a wife.
or the steadfast devotion of a mother but in his heart will say, Amen! [Loud and
prolonged cheering.]
* Mr. R(>njaiiiin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of Bnglaod, bad Just beeo eiactai
T/orrl Rector of Qlasffow University, and had made a speech which gave rise to a world of
discussion.
1 I
DWIGHT L. MOODY.
THE GREAT KEVIVALIST.
BIOGUAPHY AND KKMIMSCENCES.
Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist of \\iv. nint'tccntli century, was bom at North-
field, Mass., February 5, 1837. His futlier lived in an old-fashioned frame house,
and, by farming u few acres and working at his trade (which was that of a stone
mason) earned a comfortable living for his family. This comprised seven children,
of which Dwight was the youngest. When Dwight was but four years old, his
father died suddenly. Mrs. Moody bore with a brave heart tluj weight of the family
cares and steadfastly refused to part from any of her children.
Through poverty and self denial Dwight grew up — a sturdy, healthy, self-reli-
ant boy. He was full of animal spirits, and liked fun and ane<:dotes so much more
tlian study that his record in school was poor; but he was observant, watchful and
susceptible to lessons learned from real life or nature.
At the age of seventet^n, he left Noilhlield for Boston. After long search for
employment, his uncle, Samu(>l S. llolton. a shoe merchant, agreed to hire him at a
small salary. He soon became anattcfudantat the Congregational church. Through
the direct personal effort of his teacher in \hv, Sunday-school, he was converted, and
gave himself to the service of God. At the age of twenty Mr. Moody left Boston for
Chicago, in onler that he might hav(j a moni extended field. He found it. As
teacher in Sunday-school, as strecjt solicitor for sch(»lars, as mission worker among
sailors, visitor to prisonu and ho.s])itals, his work was constant and self-denying. A
little later he hired a vacant room in a degrad(?d portion of Chicago, and, gathering
around him crowds of al)andoned men and women and unfortunate children, he
preached the gospel to them and saved many souls. A larger nnmi became neces-
sary, and within a year the average attendance at his Sunday-school was 650.
In 1860 he wjis made city missionary of the Young Men's Christian Association,
made longer tours over the city, assisting destitut(^ families and i)raying with them.
In 1861 ho became active in tin; organization of a system of visitation and prayer
meetings among the troojis gathered at Camp Douglas, near the city of Chicago.
After the fall of Donelson. in Fe])ruary, 1862, Ik? was s<*nt to iK'ar consolation to
wounded and dying volunteers. Many of his most vivid and impressive imi*cdotC8
and illustrations are drawn from incidents in his battle- Held experience.
In 1862 he w^•l3 married to Miss Emma C. Rc^vell. His wife w:is an active worker
in missions, and in harmony with his self-denying life. To them have lK»en bom two
children — Emma and Willie — whose names are often mentioned in his anecdotes.
In 1863 a large building was erected in Chiciigo fur his Sunday-school and con-
gregation. This was burned in the great lire of 1871. Mr. Moody then went East,
960
' J
D WIGHT Z. MOODT. 861
holding revivals in Brooklyn, Philadelphia and elsewhere, receiving contributions to
rebuild his church. He was thus enabled to build a mammoth woodoi tabernacle on
the old site. One thousand children were present on the Sunday after it was. flniahed.
Fiuding tlic demand for evangelical labor in other fields urgent, he began to visit
other cities and churches and hold special religious services. In nearly all the large
cities of tlie Union he has labored successfully. In 1871 be met Mr. 1x9l D. Sankqr,
the sweet singer, and soon associated him as a co-worker in the ripened harvest field.
Together they labored in America, England, Ireland, Scotland, and both at home and
abroad created such a revival of religious interest as this century liad not seen before.
A devout student of the Bible, uneducated, except in the art of
saving souls, intensely earnest, untiring in activity, Dwigfat JL
Moody is the foremost evangelist of the century.
His weapon to convert men's souls has been the typical story —
the modern parable. His best anecdotes and stories are contrib-
uted to this book, and no parables except those of our Saviour are
better or more powerful for good.
In speaking of the necessity of a new birth, one day, Mr. Moody
said : '^ The sinner must have a new heart. A man has bought a
farm, and he finds on that farm an old pump. He goes to the
pump and begins to pump. And a person comes to him and says:
*' 'Look here, my friend, you do not want to use that water. The
man that lived here before, he used that water, and it poison
him and his wife and his children — the water did.'
'''Is that so r says the man. 'Well, I will soon make that
right. I will find a remedy.' And he goes and gets some paint,
and lie paints up the (nimp, putties up all the holes, and fills up the
cracks in it, and has got a fine-looking pump. And he says: * Now
I am sure it is all right. '
" You would say, ' What a fool to go Rud paint the pump when
the water is bad !' But th<at is what sinners are up to. They are
trying to paint up the old pump when the water is bad. It was a
new w(?ll he wanted. When he dug a new well it was all rigbU
Miikf^ the fountain goody and t/ie dream wiU he good. Instead of
painting the pinnp and making new resolutions, my friend, stop it,
and ask God tomve vou anew heart."
Mr. :Moody is now president of the Congregational Theological
Seminary, but still gives much time to revival woric.
I •
362 KINQ8 OF THE PLAIFOUM AND PULPIT,
MOODY^S THEOLOGY.
STORIES, ANECDOTES, PATHOS, RELIGION.
The sunny side of life will be in heaven; still there is sunlight hei%.
Love is sunlight, the kiss of love is a ray of sunlight and it will melt a
human soul. Christianity is all sunlight. It is a kiss for a blow. A
soul can be warmed with love and love will save it.
One day a Christian gentleman came to me, all in tears. He said:
''I have just gotten my brother out of the penitentiary. Will you not
take an interest in him? Let me bring him to you. Will you be intro-
duced to a convict?'^
*' Bring him to me," I said. " Let me take him by the hand. Let us
see what kindness and love will do."
The gentleman brought him in and introduced him, and I took him
by the hand and told him I was glad to see him. I invited him up to
my house, and when I took him into my family I introduced him as a
friend. When my little daughter came into the room, I said:
''Emma, this is papa^s friend." And she went up and kissed him,
and the man sobbed aloud. After the child left the room, I said,
''What is the matter?"
" 0, sir," he said, " I have not had a kiss for years. The last kiss I
had was from my mother, and she was dying. I thought I would never
have another one again."
His heart was broken.
A lady came into the office of the New York City Mission, and said
that, although she did not think she could do very much of active work
for the Lord, yet she should like to distribute a few tracts. One day
she saw a policeman taking a poor drunken woman to jail — a miserable
object, ragged, dirty, with hair disordered; but the lady's heart went out
in sympathy toward her. She found the woman after she came out of
jail, and just went and folded her arms around her and kissed her.
The woman exclaimed, " My God ! what did yotc do that for f** and she
replied :
*' I don't know, but I think Jesus sent me to do it."
"Oh, don't kiss me any more," said the woman, "youll break my
heart* Why, nobody hasn't kissed me since my mother died. "
But that kiss brought the woman to the feet of the Saviour, and for
the last, three years she has been living a godly. Christian life, won to
God bv a kiss.
/.
/
\
DWIGUT L. MOODt, 86S
A KISS IS BETTER t6aN A BLOW.
One morning my dear little daughter Emma got up cross and spoke
in a cross way, and finally I said to her:
** Emma, if you speak in that way again^ I shall have to punish
you/'
Now it was not because I didn't love he^; it was because I did love
her, and if I had to correct her it was for the good of l^he little child.
One morning she got up cross again. I said nothing, but when she was
getting ready to go to school she came up to me and said:
* ' Papa kiss me. "
I said, '^ Emma, I can not kiss you this morning/'
''Why, father?"
'' Because you have been cross again this morning. lean not kiss
you."
" Why, papa, " said Emma, " you never refused to kiss me before." '
"Well, you have been naughty this morning.''
*' Why don't you kiss me? " she said again.
'' Because you have been naughty. You will have to go to school
without your kiss."
She went into the other room where her mother was and said,
"Mamma, papa don't love me. He won't kiss me. I wish you would
go and get him to kiss me."
" You know, Emma," said her mother, " that your father loves you,
but you have been naughty."
So she couldn't be kissed and slie went down stairs crying as if her
heart would break, and I loved her so well that the tears came into my
eyes. I could not help crying, and when I heard her going down stairs
I could not keep down my tears. I think I loved her then better than I
ever did, and when I heard the door close I went to the window and saw.
her going down the street weeping. I didn't feel good all that day. I
believe I felt a good deal worse than the child did, and I was anxious for
her to come home. IIow long that day seemed to me. And when she
came home at night and came to me and asked me to forgive her, and told
me how sorry slie felt, how gladly I took her up and kissed her, and how.
happy she went up stairs to her bed. It is just so with God. He lovea.
you, and when He chastises you, it is for your own good. If you will
only come to Him and tell Him how sorry you are, how gladly He will
receive you and how happy you will make Him, and oh, how happy you
will be yourself.
The Motiikr Rules by Love. — The other night I was talking in
the inquiry-room to a noble-looking young man, who was in great agony
I
3(54 RINGS Of TBE PLATFO&M AND PULMT.
of eoiil. I asked him what had made him anxious. Was it the address
or any of the hymns? He looked up in my face, and said, *^ It was my
mother^s letter/' She had written him, asking him to attend that meet-
ing, and had said she would be praying for him when ho was at the
meeting. The thought of his mother's prayers and agony had gone
home to his heart, and that night ho found the Savior.
The Church Wixs by Love. — In Chicago, a few years ago, there
was a little boy who went to one of the mission Sunday-schools. His
father moved to another part of the city, about five miles away, and
every Sunday that boy came past thirty or forty Sunday-schools te the
one he attended. And one Sunday a lady, who was out collecting schol-
. ars for a Sunday-school, met him and asked why he went so far, past eo
many schools.
*' There are plenty of others," said she, '* just as good."
*^ They may be as good,'* said the boy, ** but thev are not so good for
me."
''Why not?" she asked.
*' lk»cause they love a fellow over there," he answered.
Ah! love won him. ** Because they love a fellow over there!" How
easy it is to reach people through love! Sunday-school teachers should
win the affections of their scholars if they wish to lead them to Christ.
Love has Saved a Mother. — I remember when on the North Side
I tried to reach a family time and again and failed. One night in the
meeting I noticed one of the little boys of that family. He hadn't
come for any good, however; he wjis sticking pins in the backs of the
other boys. I thouglit if I could get hold of him it would do good. I
used always to go to the door and shake hands with the boys, and when
I got to the door and saw tliis little boy coming out, I shook hands with
him, and patted him on the head, and said I was glad to see "him, and
lioped he would come again. He hung his head and went away. The
next night, however, he came back, and he behaved better than he did
the previous night. He came two or three times after, and then asked
us to pray for him that ho might become a Christian. That was a
hai)py night for me. He became a Christian and a good one. One
night I saw him weeping. I wondered if his old temper had got hold
of him again, and when ho got up I wondered what he was going tosav.
*^ I wish you would j)ray for my mother," he said. When the meet-
ing was over I went to him and asked, '' Have you ever spoken to your
mother or tried to pray with her?"
*' Well, you know, Mr. Moody," he replied, *' I never had an oppor.
tunitv; she don't believe, and won't hoar me."
D WIGHT L. yfOODT. 365
'*Novv,*' I 8iiiil, " I want you to talk to your mother to-night." For
years I h^ul been trying to reach her and couldn't do it.
So I urged liim to talk to her that night, and I said, "I will pray
for you both." When he got to the sitting-room he found some people
there, and he sat waiting for an opportunity, when his mother said it
was time for him to go to bed. He went to the door undecided. He
took a step, stoppetl, and turned around, and hesitated for a minute,
then ran to his mother and threw his arms around her neck, and buried
liis face in her bosom. ** Wliat is the matter? '* she asked — she thought
ho was sick. Between his sobs he told his mother how for five weeks he
liad wanted to be a Christian; how he had stopped swearing; how he
was trying to be obedient to her and how happy he would be if she
would be a Christian, and then went off to bed. She sat for a few min-
utes, but couldn't stand it, and went up to his room. When she got to
the door she heard liim weeping and praying, ''Oh, God, convert my
dear mother." She came down again, but couldn't sleep that night.
Next day she told the boy to go and ask ^Ir. Moody to come over and
see her. He called at my place of business — I was in business then —
and I went over as quiet as I could. I found her sitting in a rocking-
chair weeping. '"Mr. bloody," she said, *'I want to become a Chris-
tian." ** What has brought that change over you, I tliought you didn't
believe in it?" Then she told me how her boy had come to her, and
liow slie luubrt slei)t any all night, and how her sin rose up before her
like a dark mountain. The next Sunday that boy came and led that
mother into the Sabbat li-school and she became a Christian worker.
Oil, little children, if you find Christ tell it to your fathers and
mothers. Throw your arms around their necks and lead them to Jesus!
LovK Won a Coal Mixkr. — When I was holding meetings a little
time ago al W'harneclitT, in England, a coal district, a great burly coll-
ier came up to me ihul said, in his Yorkshire dialect:
•• Dost know wha was at meet in' t'nipjlit, Mr. Moody?"
'* No," 1 answered.
*' Whv,*' said he, ** Sandy Svkes was there."
The name was a familiar one. Sandy was a very bad man, one of the
wihh'st, wickedest men in Vorksliire, according to his own confession,
and at'cordin*' l(» the confession of every body who knew him.
•' Well." said the man, '* he cam' into nu'etin' an' said you didn't
]>rca«h ri^ht; he suit] thou didn't preach nothin' but the love o* Christ,
an' that won't do for drunken colliers; ye w«n't shake 'em over a pit,
;ii:<l he savs he'll ne'er come again."
366 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Sandy thought I didn't preach about liell. Mark you, my friends, I
believe in the pit that burns, in the fire that's never quonched, in the
worm that never dies; but I believe that the magnet that goes down to
the bottom of the pit is the love of Jesus. I didn't expect to see Sandy
again, but he came the next night, without washing his face, right from
the pit, with all his working clothes upon him. This drunken collier
sat down on one of the seats that were used for the children, and got as
near to me as possible. The sermon was love from first to last. He
listened at first attentively, but by-and-by I saw him with the sleeve of
his rough coat, wiping his eyes. Soon after we had an inquiry meeting,
when some of those praying colliers got around him, and it wasn't long
before he was crying:
" 0, Lord, save me; I am lost; Jesus have mercy upon me;'' and he left
that meeting a new creature. His wife told me herself what occarred
when he came home. Ilis little children heard him coming along — they
knew the step of his heavy clogs — and ran to their mother in terror,
clinging to her skirts. He opened the door as gently as could be. He
had had a habit of banging the doors. When he came into the house and
saw the children clinging to their mother, frightened, he just stooped
down and picked up the youngest girl in his arms, and looked at her,
the tears rolling down his cheeks.
*^Mary, God has sent thy father homo to thee,'' and kissed her.
He picked up another, %^ God has sent thy father home," and from
one to another he went, and kissed them all; and then came to his wife
and put his arms around her neck,
*^ Don't cry, lass," he sobbed, ''don't cry. God has sent thy hus-
band home at last; don't cry," and all she could do was to put her arms
around his neck and sob. And then he said: ** Have you got a Bible
in tlie house, lass?" They hadn't such a thing. " Well, lass, if we
haven't we must pray." Tliey got down on their knees, and all he could
say was:
** Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.
Look upon a little child;
Pity my simi)licity —
for Jesus Christ's sake, amen." It was a simple prayer, but God answered
it. While I was at Barnet, some time after that, a friend came tome and
said : *^ I've got good news for you ; Sandy Sy kes is preaching the gospel
everywhere he goes — in the pit, and out of the pit, and is winning every
body to the Lord Jesus Christ."
Jesus Saves by Love. — An aged man, over ninety years of age,
asked by his pastor this question:
''My dear aged friend, do you love Jesus ?"
f .
f.
DWIQET L, MOODT. 3C7
»
His deeply-furrowed face was lit np with a smile that sixty-seyeii
years of discipleship had imparted^ and grasping my hand with both of
his^ said:
** Oh! I can tell you something better than that/'
" What is that ?" I asked.
*' Oh, sir I '' he said. '' He loves me.''
Love Saves the Children. — My little boy had some trouble with
his sister one Saturday and he did not want to forgive her. And at night
he was going to say his prayers and I wanted to see how he would say
his prayers, and he knelt down by his mother and said his prayers, and
then I went up to him and I said:
"Willie, did you pray?"
" Yes, papa, I said my prayers."
"Yes, but did you pray?"
" I said my prayers,"
"I know you said them, but did you pray?"
He hung his head.
" You are angry with your sister?"
" Well, she had no business to do thus and so."
" That has nothing to do with it, Willie; you* have the wrong idea,
my boy, if you think that you have prayed to-night."
You see he was trying to get over it by saying, "I said my prayers
to-niglit." I find that people say their prayers every night, just to ease
tlieir conscience.
"Willie," I said, "if you don't forgive your sister, you will not
sleep to-night. Ask her to forgive you."
IIo didn't want to do that. He loves the country, and he has been
talking a great deal about the time when he can go into the country and
play out-doors. So he said:
" Oil, yes, I will sleep well enough; I am going to think about being
out there in the country."
That is the way that wo are trying to do; wo are trying to think of
something else to get rid of the thought of these sins, but we can not.
I said nothing more to him. I went on studying, and his mother came
down stairs. But soon he called his mother and said:
'* Mother, won't you please go up and ask Emma if she won't for-
give nie?"
Then I afterward heard him murmuring in bed, and he was saying
his prayers. And he said to me:
" Papa, you were right, I could not sleep, and 1 can not tell you how
happy I am now."
3G8 K1N08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
Don't think, my friends, that there is any peace until your sins are
put away. My dear friends, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the
gospel of peace.
Love Conquers all Things. — In Brooklyn, one day, Imetayonng
man passing down the streets. At the time the war broke out theyoang
man was engaged to be married to a young lady in New England, but
the marriage was postponed. He was very fortunate In battle after
battle, until the Battle of the Wilderness took place, just before the war
was over. The young lady was counting the days at the end of whioh
he would return. She waited for letters, but no letters came. At last
she received one addressed in a strange handwriting, and it read some-
thing like this :
*^ There has been another terrible battle. I have been unfoiittnate
tliis time ; / have lost both my arms. I can not write myself, but a com-
rade is writing this letter for me. I write to tell you that you are as
dear to me as ever ; but I shall now be dependent upon other people for
the rest of my days, and I have this letter written to release yoa from
your engagement/*
This letter was never answered. By the next train she went clear
down to the scene of the late conflict, and sent word to the captain what
her errand was, and got the number of the soldier's cot. She went along
the line, and the moment her eyes fell upon that number she went to
that cot and threw her arms round that young man's neck and kissed
him.
'*I will never give you up/' she said. "These hands will never give
you up ; I am able to support you ; I will take care of you.'*
My friends, you are not able to take care of yourselves. The law
says you are ruined, but Christ says, **I will take care of you.*'
Mother's Love. — I knew a mother who, like Christ, gave her life
for love.
When the Californian gold fever broke out, a man went there, leaving
his wife in Isew England with his boy. As soon as he got on and was sac-
cessful he was to send for them. It was a long time before he succeded,
hut at last he got money enough to send for them. The wife's heart
leaped for joy. She took her boy to Xew York, got on board a Pacific
steamer, and sailed away to San Francisco. They had not been long at
Roa before the cry of '^ Fire ! fire 1 '* rang through the ship, and rapidly
it gained on them. There was a powder magazine on board, and the
captain knew the moment the fire reached the powder every man,
woman and child must perish. They got out the life boats, but they were
LOO small ! In a minute they were overcrowded. The last one was just
DWIQBT L- MOODT. 869
pushing away, when the mother pleaded with them to take hei- iind her
boy.
" No," they said, "we have got as many a* we can hold,"
She entreated them so earnestly, that at last they B»id they would
take one more. Do you think slie leaped into that boat and left her
boy to die ? No I She seized her boy, gave him one last hag, kissed
him, and dropped him over into the boat.
" My boy, " she said, "if you live to see your father, tell him ihat I
died in your place." That is a faint type of what Christ has dono
for us.
Religion is Lovb and Svmpathy — I want to tell you a lesson
taught me in Chicago a few years ago. In the months of July and August
a great many deaths occurred among children, you ail know. I remem-
ber I attended a great many funentis; sometimes I would go to two or
three funerals a day. I got bo asad to it that it did not trouble me to
see a mother take the last kiss and the last look at her child, and see the
coffin-lid closed, I got accustomed to it, as in the war wo got accus-
tomed to the great battles, nnd to see the wounded and the dead never
troubled ub. When I got home one night I heard that one of my Sun-
day-school pupils was dead, and her mother wanted me to como to the
house. I went to the poor home and saw the father drunk. Adelaide
had been brought from the river. The mother told mo she washed for
a living, the Jather earned no money, and poor Adelaide's work was to
get wood for the fire. She had gone to the river that day and seen a
piece floating on the water, had stretched out for it, had lost her balance,
and fallen in. The poor woman was very much distressed.
"I would like yon to help me, Mr. Moody," she said, "to bnry my
child. I have no lot, I have no money,"
Well, I took the measure for the coffin and came away, 1 hud my
little girl with me and she saiil :
" I'apa, suppose we were very, very poor, and mamma hud to work
for a living, and I had to get sticks for the fire, and wan to fall into the
river, would you be very sorry?"
This question reached my heart.
"Why, my child, it would break my heart to lose you," I aaul, and 1
drew her to my bosom.
"Papa, do you feel bad for that mother?" she asked.
This word woke my sympathy for the woman, and I started and w<'nt
back to the house, and prayed that the Lord might bind up that
wounded heart. When the day came for the funeral, 1 went to Grace-
laud. I had always thought my time too precious to go out there, but
\
370 KIN08 OF THB PLATFORM AlH) PULPIT.
I went. The drunken father was there and the poor mother. I bonght
a lot^ the grave was dug and the child laid among strangers. There was
another funeral coming up^ and the corpse was laid near the grave of
little Adelaide. And I thought how I would feel if it had been my lit-
tle girl that I had been laying there among strangers. I went to my
Sabbath-school thinking this; and suggested that the children should
contribute and buy a lot in which we might bury a hundred poor little
children. We soon got it^ and the papers had scarcely been made out
when a lady came and said:
*^Mr. Moody, my little girl died this morning; let me bury her in
the lot you have got for the Sunday-school children.''
The request was granted, and she asked me to go to the lot and say
prayers over her child. I went to the grave — it was a beautiful day in
June — and I remember asking her what the name of her child was.
She said Emma. That was the name of my little girl, and I thought
"what if it had been my own child!'' We should put ourselves in the
laces of others. I could not help shedding a tear. Another woman
came shortly after and wanted to put another one into the grave. I
asked his name. It was Willie, and it happened to be the name of my
little boy. The first two laid there were called by the same names as
my two children, and I felt sympathy and compassion for those two
women.
If you want to get into sympathy, put yourself into a man's place.
We need Christians whose hearts are full of love and sympathy. If we
haven't got it, pray that we may have it, so that we may be able to reach
those men and women that need kindly words and kindly actions far
more than sermons. The mistake is that we have been preaching too
much and sympathizing and loving too little. The gospel of Jesus
Christ is a gospel of love and deeds and not of words.
Christ Wants the Sinner to Come just as he is. — I have r^^ of
an artist, who wanted to paint a picture of the Prodigal Son. He
searched through the madhouses, and thepoorhouses, and the prisons, to
find a man wretched enough to represent the prodigal, but he could not
find one. One day he was walking down the streets and met a man
whom he thought would do. He told the poor beggar he would pay
him well, if he came to his room and sit for his portrait. The beg-
gar agreed and the day was appointed for him to come. The day came,
and a man put in his appearance at the artist's room.
'^ You made an appointment with me," he said, when he was shown
into the studio.
The artist looked at him.
DWIOBT L. MOODY. 371
" I never saw you before," he said. " You can not have an ai)point-
ment with me."
" Yes," said the man, " I agreed to meet you to-day, at ten o'clock."
"You muat be mistaken ; it must have been some other artist; I was
to see a beggar here at this hour,"
" Well," saya the beggar, "I am he."
"You?"
"Yes."
" Why, what have you been doing ?"
"Well, I thought I would dresB myself up a bit, before I got
painted."
"Then,"eaid the artist, " I do not want you ; I wanted you ae you
were; now, you are o( no uao to me." That is the way Christ wanta
every poor sinner — ^juBt aa ho is.
Christ Will Beau OIK BunDKNs.— I like to think of Cbriet as a
burden -bearer. A minister was one day moving his library up stairs.
As the minister was going up-stairs with his loud of books, his little hoy
came in and was very anxious to hdp his father. So his father just told
him to go and get an urmful and take them up stairs. When the father
came back, he met thu little fellow about half way up the stairs, tugging
away with the biggest in the library. lie couldn't- manage to carry it up.
The book was too big. So ho aatdown and cried. His father found him,
and just took him in hia arms, book and all, and carried him up stuirs.
So Christ will carry you and all your burdens.
Let Your Light Shine. — One dark night a friend of mine
was walking along one of the streets of Chicago. It was very dark.
Pretty soon he met a man with a, lantern. The man was blind.
"My friend," he said, "are you really blind ?"
"Yes."
"Then, why are you so foolish as to carry a lantemP"
"To keep people from stumbling over mc \"
Christians, let ua learn a lesson from this. Let us hold up our
Christian lights — hold up Christ. Lot us not hide our lights undur the
bushel and let the world stumble over us.
Sinners, don't be afraid to change your life. Christians be zealous.
Don't rust out.
I knew a professed Christian, whoso little boy w:is converted, and he
was full of praise. When God converts boy or mau, hia heart is full of
joy— can't help praising. His father was a professed Christian, I say.
The boy wondered why ho didn't talk about Christ, and didn't go down
372 KINQa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
to the special meetings. One day> as the father was reading the papers,
the boy came to him and put his hand on his shoulder, and said :
'* Father, why don^t you praise God? Why don't you sing about
Christ ? Why don't you go down to these meetings that are being held?"
The father opened his eyes, and looked at him, and said, gruffly:
''I am not carried away, with any of these doctrines. I am
established/'
A few days after they were getting out a load of wood. They put
it on the cart. The father and the boy got on top of the load, and tried
to get the horse to go. They used the whip, but the horse wouldn't
move — he was established.
The Little Orphan's Prayer. — A little child, whose father and
mother had died, was taken into another family. The first night she
asked if she could pray, as she used to.
" Oh, yes," said the new mother.
" So she knelt down, and prayed as her first mother taught her; and
when that was ended she added a little prayer of her own: **0h God,
make these people as kind to me as father and mother were." Then she
paused and looked up, as if expecting the answer, and added:
''Of course God will."
How sweetly simple was that little one's faith; she expected God to
''do," and, of course she got her request.
Faith Will Save You. — Suppose I should meet a person to-night
when I go away from here — a person that I had met in rags every day,
and should see him all dressed up, and should say to him, "Halloa,
beggar!"
"Why, Mr. Moody, I ain't no beggar; I ain't."
"Well, you were last night. I know you. You asked me for money.**
"True, but I was standing here, and a man came along and put ten
thousand dollars in my hand, real money, and I've got it in the bank
now."
"How do you know you stretched out the right hand to take it?"
" Right hand! What do I care which hand! I've got the money, I
have."
And so people talk abo«t the right kind of faith. Any kind of faith
will do that will get the good. There would be no trouble about peace
and happiness if men had faith in Christ.
Belief. — Not long ago a man said to me, " I can not believe.''
" Whom?" I askedo
He stammered, and said again, " I cannot believe/*
I said, "Whom?"
DWIGUT L. MOODY. 873
" Well,"he said, " I can't believe."
" Whom?" I aeked again.
At last he said, " I caa not believe mjBelf."
" Well, yon don't need to. Yon do not need to put any confidence
in yourself. The less yon believe in yourself the better. But if you tell
me you can't believe God. that is another thing; and I would like to ask
you why?"
Waiting fob the Savior.— A family in a eouthern city were
stricken down with yellow fever. It was raging tliere, and thero wero
very stringent sanitary niles. The moment any body died, a cart wont
aronnd and took the coffin away. The father was taken aicij and died
and was buried, and the mother was at last Btricken down. The neigh-
bors were afraid of the plugne, and none dared to go into thu house.
The mother had a little 'son and was anxious aliout her boy. and afraid
he would be neglected when >^he was called away, ao she called the littlu
fellow to her bedside, and said:
" My boy, I am going to leave you, but Josii« will come to you when
I am gone."
The mother died, the curt came along and she was laid in the grave.
The neighbors would have liked to take liio boy, but were afraid of the
pestilence. He wandered about, and finally started up to the placi-
where they had laid bis mother and sat down on the grave and wopt
himself to sleep. Next morning he awoko and realizi-d hia position^
alone and hungry. A stranger camo along and seeing the little fellow
ritting on the ground, asked him what ho was waiting for.
The boy remembered what his mother had told him and auswcred.
"I am waiting for Jesus," and told him the whole story.
The roan's heart was touched, tears trickled down his cheeks, and
he said:
"Jesus has sent me,"
"You have been a good H-bile coming eir," said the boy.
He was provided for. So it is with us. To wait for results we
must have courage and patience and God will help ua.
SiioKT OK ViiiTUE. — In Chicago, when ntiroonstitution waeyoung.a
bill was passed that no man siiould be apolicvmuii that wan not a certain
heiglit — live feet bix. The commissioniTS advertised for men to come
sound and be examined, and they must bring good lottcrg of recommen.
dation with them. Now, as tboy are passing from one man to another. ,
examining their letters and trying their height, suppose there are two of
na want to get in, and I any to my friend, " There is no man lias a bel-
ler chance than I have ; I have got letten from tho ffnpreme jadge, frotu
I
374 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
the mayor and leading citizens of Chicago; no man can have better let-
ters/' He says, ** Ah, my friend, my letters are as good as yours.*'
Well, the chief commissioner says, ''Look here. Moody, these letters are
all right, but yon must be up to the standard;'' so he measures me, and
I am only five feet, and lie says, *' You are half a foot too short. ** My
friend looks down on me and says, ''I have got a better chance than
you." Well, he stands up and is measured, and is only one-tenth of an
inch short, but he goes with me. He has '' come short." I admit some
men have come shorter than others, but that is the verdict God has
brought in — all are guilty.
If I ONLY HAD. — A man who had charge of a swing-bridge opened
it just to oblige a friend, who said there was plenty of time for his boat
to go through before the train of cars came along. But a moment after
the lightning-like express came thundering on and dashed into the dark
waters below. The bridge-keeper, whose neglect had caused the dis-
aster, lost his reason, and his life since has been spent in a mad-honse.
The first and only words he uttered when the train leaped into the open
chasm were, *'If I only had," and he has gone on constantly repeating
the vain regret. Ah ! that will be the cry of the lost in another world—
•' If I only had."
Little Things. — It is amazing what little things sometimes keep
men from God. One man came to mo and told mo that his business was
that of selling a kind of soap which was advertised to do remarkable
work in taking out grease spots.
" The soap will do all that is claimed for it," said he; " but the tmth
is, it rots the clothes; and if I become a Christian I must give np my
business; and I can't aflford to do it."
And so in his case it was soap which kept him out of the kingdom
of God.
Sceptics Illustrated. — A couple of commercial travelers went to
hear a minister preach. He explained that men don't find out God;
that it is God who has to reveal His nature to man; that it is all a matter
of revelation; that God reveals Christ to man. When they went back
to the hotel they began to talk the matter over, and both maintained
that they could not believe any thing except they could reason it out.
An old man there heard the conversation, and remarked:
"I heard you say you could not believe any thing except you could
reason it out. Now, when I was coming down in the train I noticed in
the field some geese and sheep and swine and cattle eating grass. Can
you tell nic by what process that grass is turned into hair, and bristles^
and feathers, and wool ? ^'
DWIOHT L. M00D7. 876
They ooold not.
"Well, do yoa believe it is a fact?"
"Oh yes, we can't help but believe that."
"Well, then, I can't help but believe in the revelation of Jeans Christ.
I have seen men who haye been reclaimed and reformed through it, and
who are now living happy, when before they were outcasts from sooiety."
The two commercial men were silenced by that eld man's outspoken
faith.
How Rich and How Poor. — A couple of friends of mine in the war
called upon one of our great lliinoia farmers, to get him to givo some
money for the soldiers, and during their stay he tooii them up to the
cupola of his house and told them to look over yonder, jit st agfaras their
eyes could reach, over that beunttfiil rolling prairie, and they said,
" That is Tery nice." Yes, and it was all hia. Then ho took them up
to another cupola, and said, " Look at that farm, and that, and that; "
these were farms stocked, improved, fenced, ttnd they said, "Those are
very nice;" and then ho showed them horses, cattle, and aheep-yards,
and said, "They art' all mine." He showed them the town where he
lived, which had been named after him, a great hall, and building lots,
and those were all his, and he said:
"I came out West a poor boy, without a farthing, and I am worth
all this;" but when he got through my friend said:
"How much have you got upyoodsr?" and the old man's counten-
ance fell, for he knew very well what that meant. ' ' What have you got
up there — in the other world?"
"Well," he said, "1 have not got any thing there."
"Why," said my friend, "what a. mistake! A man of your intelli-
gcnceand forethought and judgment to amass all this wealth; and now,
that you are drawing near to your grave, you will have to leave it all.
You can not take a farthiug with you, but you must die a beggar
and a pauper; " and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he said,
" It does look foolish."
Only a few months after, he died, as he had lived, and his property
passed to others.
"Hold the Fort, for I Am Cominq." — When General Sherman
went through Atlanta toward the sen— through the Southern States — he
left in the fort in theKenesaw Mountainsa little handful of men to guard
some rations that he brought there. And General Hood got into the
outer rear and attacked the fort, drove the men in from the outer works
into the inner works, and for a long time tho battle rased fearfully.
Half of the men were either killed or wounded; the general who was in
1
I
J
376 KINGS OF TILE PLATFORJH AND PULPIT.
command was wounded seven different times; and when they were abont
ready to run up the white flag and surrender the fort, Sherman got within
fifteen miles, and through the signal corps on the mountain he sent the
message:
" Hold the fort; I am covnng. W. T. Sherman/'
That message fired up their hearts, and they held the fort till rein-
forcements came, and the fort did not go into the hands of their ene-
mies. Our friend, Mr. Bliss, has written a hymn entitled 'Hold the Port,
for I Am Coming/' and I'm going to ask Mr. Sankey to sing that hymiu
I hope there will ho a thousand young converts coming into our ranks to
help hold the fort. Our Savior is in command, ^nd He is coming.
Let us take up the chorus.
1 1.) I my comrades, see the signal
Waving ill the skyi
Kcinforcemeiils now appetiring,
Victory is nigh!
Chonis—'' Hold the fort, for lam c-Jining."
Jesus signals stiil.
Wave tlu; answer back to lieaven,
" By Thy grace we will."
Se(; the mighty hosts advancing,
Satan leading on;
Mighty men around us falling.
Courage almost gone. — Chorus.
Se(; the glorious banner waving.
Hear the bugle blow.
In our Leader's name W(r*ll triumpli
Over every foe. — Cliorus.
Fierce and long the battle rages,
Hut our Help is near;
Onward comes our Great Commander,
Cheer, my comrades, cheer! — Chorus.
Parting Words. — ^'Another story /^ said Mr. Moody, **and I have
done to-day.
^^ It was Ralph Wallace who told me of this one: A certain gentle-
man used to be a member of the I^resbyterian church. He is a good
man, but his heart has grown old. One day his sweet, little boy was
taken sick. AVhon he went home, his wife was weeping, and she said:
'^ ' Our boy is dying; ho has had a change for the worse. I wish you '
would go in and see him, John.'
*• The father went into the room and placed his hand upon the brow
of bis dying boy, and could feel the cold, damp sweat was gathering there;
that the cold, icy hand of death was feeling for the chords of life.
HOLD THE FORT.
T. DB WITT TALMAQS. 879
business man. He Is of pleasant address and sociable disposition. He is not only a
preacher among preachers^ but a man among men.
In doctrine, Talmage is absolutely orthodox. He has never
changed his belief like Beecher, nor leaned toward the Agnostics
like Heber Newton. His sermons abound in ancedotes like Moody's,
Collyers and Patton's. Sometimes his stories provoke laughter
but they always convince. He always looks on the bright side of
life and his greatest lecture is called "The Bright Side of Life."
His illustrations are startling.
One day, to illustrate the cost of salvation, he used this parable:
" Mamma," said a little child to her mother, when she was being
put to bed at night, "Mamma, what makes your hand so scarred
and twisted, and unlike other people's hands?" "Well," said the
mother, "my child, when you were younger than j'ou are now,
years ago, one night, after I had put you to bed, I heard a cry, a
shriek, upstairs. I came up, and found the bed was on fire and you
were on fire ; and I took hold of 3'dli and I tore off the burning
garments, and while I was tearing them off and trying to get
you away I burned my hand, and it has been scarred and twisted
ever since, and hardly looks any more like a hand ; bnt I^t thcU,
my child ^ in trying to save youP
I wish I could show you the burned hand of Christ — burned in
plucking you out of the fire; burned in snatching you away from
tho flame. Ay, also the burned foot, and the burned brow, and the
burn(Ml heart — burned for j^ou. By His stripes we are healed.
In religion we have said that Mr. Talmage is orthodox. Beecher
often called him an old Hunker. He never strays from CalvinisnL
lie takes no stock in Darwin's theories, and has no sympathy with
Beeclier's theory (?) that everlasting burning does not oveft^ke the
icked. He maintains, with Moody, that the miracles did occur as
^])resented, and has no patience with Heber Newton, who accounts
lOr them through natural causes. Still, Mr. Talmage never quar*
lels with the theologians. He begs them all to work for Christian-
ity. When asked about opposing some new theological ideas one
da3% he said :
" No, I haven't time. I will keep on the main track. There is
nothing gained to Christianity by wrangling. You remember the
storv of the two brothers," he said, "who went out to take an
evening Avalk, and one of them looked up to the sky and said:
380 KINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
^^ ' I wish I bad a pasture-field as large as the night heavens.
And the other brother looked up into the sky, and said :
" * I wish I bad as many oxen as there are stars in the sky.'
" ^ Well,' said the first, * how would you feed so many oxen ! '
" * I would turn them into your pasture,' replied the second.
" ' What I whether I would or not ? '
" * Yes, whether you would or not.'
^^ And there arose a quarrel; and when the quarrel ended, one
had slain the other."
One day, speaking of joining the church, Mr. Talmage said:
"Every Christian should anchor to a church. If he gets into
trouble, the church will take care of him. A pious captain of a
Cunarder was riding over to Philadelphia on the cars. A young
man came and sat down by him, when the captain said:
"' Going over to Philadelphia?'
*^ * Yes, Pm going there to live,' replied the young man.
" * Have you letters of introduction ? ' asked the old captain.
" ^ Yes,' said the young man, and he pulled some of them out.
" ^ Well,' continued the old sea-captain, ' haven't you a church
certificate ? '
" ' Oh, yes,' replied the young man, * I didn't suppose you would
want to look at that.'
" ' Yes,' said the sea-captain, * I want to see that. As soon as
you get to Philadelphia, present that to some Christian church. I
am an old sailor, and I have been up and down in the world, and it's
my rule, as soon as I get into port, to fasten my ship, fore and aft, to
the wharf, although it may cost a little wharfage, rather than have
my ship out in the stream, floating hither and thither with the
tide.' "
Mr. Talmage is always talking about heaven. One day he said:
" Well, my friends, heaven comes very near to-day. It is only
a stream that divides us — the narrow stream of death ; and the
voices there and the voices here seem to commingle, and we join
trumpets and hosannahs and hallelujahs, and the chorus Ok the
united song of earth and heaven is, ^ Home, Sweet Home.'
" And this," ho continued, " reminds me of a war story : In our
last dreadful war, the Union and rebel troops were encamped on
opposite banks of the Kappahannock, and one morning the brass
band of the ^Northern army pJay^d the ^ Star-Spangled Bmrner/and
r. DB WITT TALMAOS. 881
all the North cheered: Then, on the opposite Edde of the Bappar
hannock, the brass band of the Confederates plaved ' My Mary-
land ' and ' Dixie,' and then all the Southern troops cheered and
cheered. Put after a while one of the bands struck np ^ Home,
Sweet Home,' and the band on the opposite side of the river took
up the strain, and when the tune was done the Confederates and
the Federals all together united, as the tears rolled down their
cheeks, in one great ^ Huzza ! huzza I '
^'So will all Christians unite in heaven — ^the 'HomOy Sweet
Home.'
"Going to heaven I what a sweet saying I " exclaimed Talmage.
" A Christian man," he continued, '^ was dying^ in Canada. Bis
daughter Nellie sat by the bedside. It was Sunday evening, and
the bell of the old church was ringing, calling the people to church.
The good old man, in his dying dream, thought that he was on the
way to church, as he used to be when he went in the sleigh across
the river ; and as the evening bell struck up, in his dying dream he
thought it was the call to church. He said :
" ^ Hark, children, the bells are ringing ; we shall be late; we
must make the mare step out quick ! ' He shivered, and then said :
' Pull the buffalo-robe up closer, my lass I It is cold crossing the
river; but we will soon be there, Nellie, we will soon be there I'
And he smiled and said, * Just there now.'
"No wonder he smiled. The good old man had got to church.
Not the old Canadian church, but the temple in the skies. Just
across the river."
TALMAGE'S LECTURES.
ELOQUEXT, LOGICAL, ORTHODOX.
Ladies and Oentlemen: — Before talking about agreeable or pleasant
people, I will say something about disagreeable people: \
Of all the ills that flesh is heir to, a cross, crabbed, ill-contented num
is the most unendurable, because the most inexcusable. No oooasionj
no matter how trifling, is permitted to pass without eliciting his dissent,
his sneer, or his growl. Ills good and patient wife never yet prepared
a dinner that he liked. One day she prepares a dish that she thinks
will particularly please him. He comes in the front door, and says.
"Whew! whew! what have. you got in the house? Now, mydear,
you know that I never did like codGsh.*' [Laughter.]
382 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AJH) PULPIT.
Some evening, resolving to be especially gracious, he starts with hia
family to a place of amusement. lie scolds the most of the way. lie
can not afford the time or the money, and he does not believe the enter-
tainment will be much, after all. The music begins. The audience
is thrilled. The orchestra, with polished instruments, warble and
weep, and thunder and pray, all the sweet sounds of the world flowering
upon the strings of the bass viol, and wreathing the flageolets, and
breathing from the lips of the cornet, and shaking their flower-bells
upon the tinkling tambourine.
He sits motionless and disgusted. He goes home, saying: *'Did you
see that fat musician that got so red blowing that French horn? He
looked like a stuflfed toad. Did you ever hear such a voice as that lady
has? Why, it was a perfect squawk! The evening was wasted."
And his companion says, ** Why, my dear!'*
^* There you needn't tell me — you are pleased with every thing. But
never ask me to go again!''
He goes to church. Perhaps the sermon is didactic and argu-
mentative. He yawns. He gapes. He twists himself in his pew, and
pretends he is asleep and says, ^' I could not keep awake. Did you ever
hear any thing so dead? Can these dry bones live?"
Next Sabbath he enters a church where the minister is much given to
illustration. He is still more displeased. He says, *' How dare that
man bring such every-day things into his pulpit? He ought to have
brought his illustrations from the cedar of Lebanon and the fir-tree,
instead of the hickory and sassafras. He ought to have spoken of the
Euphrates and the Jordan, and not of the Kennebec and SchuylkilL
He ought to have mentioned Mount Gerizim instead of the CatskiUs.
Why, he ought to be disciplined. Why, it is ridiculous!"
Perhaps, afterward, he joins the church. Then the church will have
its hands full. He growls, and groans, and whines all the way up toward
the gate of heaven. He wisJies that the choir would sing differently,
that the minister would preach differently, that the elders would pray
differently. In the morning, he said, **The church was as cold as Green-
land;'' in the evening, **it was hot as blazes." They painted the church;
he didn't like the color. They carpeted the aisles; he didn't like the
figure. They put in a new furnace; he didn't like the patent. He
wriggles and squirms, and frets, and stews, and worries himself. He is
like ahorse that, prancing and uneasy to the bit, worries himself into a
lather of foam, while the horse hitched beside him just pulls straight
ahead, makes no fuss and comes to his oats in peace. Like a hedge-
hog, he is all quills. [Laughter.] Lik,e a crab, that you know always
\
T, DB WITT TALMAGE. 888
goes the other way, and moves backward in order to go forward, and
turns in four directions all at once, and the first yon know of his where-
abouts you have missed him, and when he is completely lost he has gone
by the heel — so that the first thing yon know you don't know any thing
— and while you expected to catch the crab, the crab catchea yon.
[Tjaughter.]
So some men arc crabbed — all hard-shell, and obstinancy and oppo-
sition. 1 do not see how he is to get into heaven, unless he goes in back-
ward^ and then there will be danger that at the gate he will try to pick a
quarrel with St. Peter. [Laughter.] Once in, I fear he will not like
the music, and the services will be too long, and that he will spend the
first two or three years in trying to find out whether the wall of henven
is exactly plumb. Let us stand off from such tendencies. Listen for
sweet notes rather than for discords, picking np marigolds and harebells
in preference to thistles and coloquintida, cnltnring thyme and anemoDes
rather than nightshade. And in a world where God hath pnt exquisite
tinge U])on the shells washed in the surf, and planted a pafftdise of
bloom in the child's cheek, and adorned the pillars of the rock by hang-
iug a tapestry of morning mist, the lark saying, '^I will sing soprano,^
and the cascade replying, '*I will carry the bass,'' let as leave it to the
owl to hoot, and the frog to croak, and the beast to growl, and the
grumbler to find fault. [Applause.]
Now we will talk about agreeable people:
Strange that, in such a very agreeable world, there should be so
many disa;;;^reeal)le people I So many everywhere but — here! [Laughter.]
1 see by your looks^ in y friends, that none of you belong to this class.
These good-humored husbands before me are all what they ought to be,
good-natured us a May morning; and when the wife asks for a little
sj?efi(ling-money, the good man of the pursesays, *' All right; here's my
])ocket-book. My dear, take as much as you want, and come aoon
again." [Laughter.] These wives at eveningtide always greet their
companions homo with a smile, and say, '^My dear, your slippen are
ready and the muffins warm. Put you feet up on this ottoman. Blets
the dear man!" [Laughter.] These brothers always prefer the oom-
panion-ship of their own sisters to that of any one else's sister, and take
them out almost every evening to lectures and concerts. And I suppose
that in no ]Mil)]i(* building to-night in this city, or in any other city, is
there a more mild, affable, congenial and agreeable collection of people
than ourselves.
The world has a great many delightful people who are easily pleased.
They have a faculty of finding out that whi^h 19 uttr^ctive, Thej are
384 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
IlL'c a bee that no sooner gets out of the hive than it pitches for a cloYer-
top. They never yet walked into a picture-gallery but they were
refreshed and thankful. They saw some exquisite gem that kindled
their admiration. There was some pleasant face in a picture that for
hours kept looking over their shoulder.
They will never forget how in one of them a vine in filial affection^
with its tender arm hugged up an old grandfather of a tree that was
about to feel the stiff breeze.
They never came from a concert, but there was at least one voice that
they admired, and wondered how in one throat God could have placed
such exhaustless fountains of harmony.
They like the spring, for it is so full of bird and bloom, and, like a
priestess, stands swinging her censer of perfume before God's altar; and
the summer is just the thing for them, for they love to hear the sound of
mowing-machines, and battalions of thunderbolts grounding arms
among the mountains; and autumn is their exultation, for its orchards
are golden with fruit, and the forests march with banners dipped in sun-
sets and blood-red with the conflicts of frost and storm. [Applause.]
And they praise God for winter, that brings the shout of children,
playing blind-man's buff, with handkerchief they can see through,
around a blazing lire, and the snow shower that makes Parthenons and
St. Mark's Cathedrals out of a pigeon-coop, and puts brighter coronets
than the Georges ever wore on the brow of the bramble, and turns the
wood -shed into a ** royal tower ^' filled with crown jewels; and that sends
the sleigJi-riding party, in buffalo robes, behind smoking steeds, with
two straps of bells, and fire in the eyo, and snort of the nostril, and
flaunt of the mane, impatient of the sawing of the twisted bit and the
reins wound around the hands of the driver, till, coming up to the
other gay parties, we slacken the rein and crack the whip, and shout,
**Go 'long, Charley!'' and dart past every thing on the road, and
you can only take in the excited roan span by putting your foot against
the djish-board, and lying back with all you strength, and sawing the
bit, while the jolly hearts in the back seats mingle the ha, ha, ha, ha!
with the jingle, jingle, jingle of the sleigh-bells, and the hostler of the
hotel grabs the bridle of your horses, while you go in to warm and take a
glass of — very weak lemonade! [Laughter.]
Now, there are niiuiy i)eople thus pleased with all seasons, and com-
plain not in any ('irtnimstiinccs. If you are a merchant, they are the
men whom you want for customers; if you are a lawyer, they are the
men you want for clients and jurors; if you are a physician, they are
the men you want for patients; but you don't often get thesii for they
T. DB WITT TALMAQB. 885
■
care themselves by a bottle of laughter, taken three or four tunes a
day, well shaken ap« Three cheers for the good-natured man; three
groans for the gouty and sour-tempered! [Applause.]
One more description of disagreeable people and I haye done:
Scene — A crisp morning. Carriage with spinning wheels, whose
spokes glisten like splinters of the sun. Boan horse, flecked with foam,
bending into the bit, his polished feet drumming the pavement in
challenge of any horse that thinks he can go as fast. Two boys run-
ning to get on the back of the carriage. One of them, with quick
springy succeeds. The other leaps, but fails and falls. No sooner has
he struck the ground than he shouts to the driver of the carriage, ''Cut
behind!''
Human nature the same in boy as man. All running to gain the
vehicle of success. Some are spry and gain that for which they strive.
Others are slow and tumble down; they who fall crying out against
those who mount, ''Cut behind!''
A political office rolls past A multitude spring to their feet, and
the race is on. Only one of all the number reaches that for which he
runs. No sooner does he gain the prize, and begin to wipe the sweat
from his brow, and think how grand a thing it is to ride in popular pre*
ferment, than the disappointed candidates' cry out, "Incompetency!
Stupidity! Fraud!" Now let the newspapers and platforms of the
country "Cut behind!"
Tliero is a golden chariot of wealth rolling down the street. A thou-
sand people are trying to catch it. They run. They jostle. They
tread on each other. Push, and pull, and tug! Those talk most
against riches who can not get them. Clear the track for the racers!
One of the thousand reaches the golden prize and mounts. Forthwith
the air is full of cries: "Got it by fraud! Shoddy! Petroleum aris-
tocracy! His father was a rag-picker! His mother was a washer-
woman! I knew him when he blackened his own shoes! Pitch him off
the back part of the golden chariot! Cut behind! Cut behind!"
[Laughter.]
It is strange that there should be any rivalries among ministers of
religion, when tliere is so much room for all to work. But in some
things they are much like other people. Like all other classes of men,
tlicy have one liver apiece, and here and there one of them a spleen. In
all cases the epigastric region is higher up than the hypogastric, save in
the act of turning a somersault. Like others, they eat three times a day
when they can get any thing to eat. Besides this, it sometimes happens
that we find them racing for some professional chair or pulpit. They
386 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
run well — neck and neck — while churches look on and wonder whether
it will bo** Dexter '' or the "American Girl." Bowels plnnge deep,
and fierce is the cry, " Go 'long! Go ^ong!'* The privilege of pi:each-
ing the gospel to the poor on five thousiind dollars a year is enough to
make a tight race anywhere. But only one mounts the coveted place;
and forthwith the cry goes up in conventions and synods: "Unfit
for the place! Can't preach! Unsound in the faith! Now is your
chance, oh, conferences and presbyteries, to cut hehindl '' [Laughter.]
A fair women passes. We all admire beauty. He that says he don%
lies. A canting man, who told me he had no admiration for any thing
earthly, used, instead of listening to the sermon, to keep squinting over
toward the pew where sat Squire Brown's daughter. Whether God
plants a rose in parterre or human cheek, we must admire it, whether
we will or not. While we are deciding whether we had better take that
dahlia, the dahlia takes us. A star does not ask the astronomer to admire
it, but just winks at him, and he surrenders, with all his telescopes.
This fair woman in society has many satellites. The boys all run for this
prize. One of them, not having read enough novels to learn that ugli-
ness is more desirable than beauty, wins her. The cry is up : **She
paints ! Looks well ; but she knows it. Good shape ; but I wonder
what is the price of cotton ! Won^t she make him stand around ! Prac-
ticality worth more than black eves I Fool to marry a virago ! **
In many eyes success is a crime. ''I do not like you,'* said the snow-
flake to the snowbird. '* Why ? '' said the snow-bird. " Because/'said
the snowflake, ^'You are going up and I going down ! " [Applause.]
We have to state that the man in the carriage on the crisp morning,
though he had a long lash-whip, with which he could have made the
climbing boy yell most lustily, did not '^cut behind.'' He was an old
man ; in the corner of his mouth a smile, which was always as ready to
play as a kitten that watches for some one with a string to offer the
slightest indueemont. ITo heard the shout in the rear, and said:
'^ Good-morning, my son. That is right ; climb over and sit by me.
Here are the reins ; take hold and drive.''
Thank God there an^so many in the world that never "cut behind,**
but are ready to give a follow a ride whenever he wants it. Here is a
young man, clerk in a store. He has small wages, and amother to take
care of. For ten years he struggles to get into a higher place. The
first of January conies, and the head of the commercial house looks
round and says : ''Trying to get up, are you?" And by the time three
more years have passed the boy sits right beside the old man, who hands
over the reins, and says, *' Drive!" Jonathan Goodhue was a boy
T. DB WITT TALMAQS. 38t
behind the counter; but his employer gave him a ride, and London, Can-
ton and Calcutta heard the scratch of his pen. Lenox, Orinnell, and
the Aspin walls carried many young men a mile on the high road of pros*
perity.
There are hundreds of people whose chief joy is to help others on.
Now it is a smile^ now a good word, now ten dollars. May such a kind
man always have a carriage to ride in and a horse not too skittish ! As
he goes down the hill of life, may the breeching-strap be strong enough
to hold back the load !
When bo has ridden to the end of the earthly road, he will have
plenty of friends • o help him unhitch and assist him out of the carriage.
On that cool night it will be pleasant to hang up the whip with which he
drove the enterprises of a lifetime, and feel that with it he never ^' oat
behind '* at those who were struggling. [Applause.]
TALMAGE'S GREAT TEMPERANCE LECTURE.
Joseph's brethren dipped their brother's coat in goat's blood, and
then brought the dabbled garment to their father, cheating him with the
idea that a ferocious animal had slain him, and thus hiding their infa*
nious behavior.
Hut there is no deception about that which we hold up toyonrobser*
vation to-night (or to-day). A monster such as never ranged African
thicket or Ilindostau jungle hath tracked this land, and with bloody
maw hath strewn the continent with the mangled carcasses of whole
generations; and there are tens of thousands of fathers and mothers who
could hold up the garment of their slain boy, truthfully exclaiming: "It
is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him."
There has^ in all ages and climes, been a tendency to the improper
use of stimulants. Noah, as if disgusted with the prevalence of water
in his time, [laughter] took to strong drink. By this vice, Alexander'
the Conqueror was conquered. The Romans at their feasts fell oil their
seats with intoxication. Four hundred millions of our raoe are opium
eaters. India, Turkey and China have groaned with the desolation; and
by it have been quenched such lights as Ilalley and De Quincey. One
hundred millions are the victims of the betel-nut, which has specially
bhisted the Fast Indies. Three hundred millions chew hashish, and
Persia, Hrazil and Africa suffer the delirium. The Tartars employ
murowa; the Mexicans, the agave; the people at Ouarapo, an intoxicat-
ing quality taken from sugar-cane; while a great multitude, that no man
can number, are disciples of alcohol. To it they bow. Under it they
388 iJN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
are trampled. In its trenches they fall. On its ghastly holocaust they
burn.
Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and they could
come up from the dead^ what eye could endure the reeking, festering
putrefaction and beastliness? What heart could endure the groan of
agony?
Drunkenness: does it not jingle the burglar^s key? Does it not whet
the assassin^s knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does
it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician reel-
ing into the sick-room; and the minister with his tongue thick into the
pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very top of his fame, fall
a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way to be married to one of the
fairest daughters of New England, and at the very hour the bride was
decking herself for the altar; and did he not die of delirium tremens,
almost unattended, in a hospital?
Tamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand skulls with
which to build a pyramind to his own honor. He got the skulls, and
built the pyramid. But if the bones of all those who have fallen as a
prey to dissipation could be piled up, it would make a vaster pyramid.
Who will gird himself for the journey, and try with me to scale this
mountain of the dead — going up miles high on human carcasses, to find
still other peaks far above, mountain above mountain, Tthite with the
bleached bones of drunkards?
We have too much law.
The Sabbath has been sacrificed to the rum trafQc. To many of our
people, the best day of the week is the worst. Bakers must keep their
shops closed on the Sabbath. It is dangerous to have loaves of bread
going out on Sunday. The shoe store is closed; severe penalty will
attack the man who sells boots on the Sabbath. But down with the
window-shutters of the grog-shops! Our laws shall confer particular
honor upon the rum-traffickers. All other trades must stand aside for
these. Let our citizens who have disgraced themselves by trading in
clothing and hosiery and hardware and lumber and coal, take off their
hats to the rum-seller, elected to particular honor. It is unsafe for any
other class of men to be allowed license for Sunday work. But swing
out your signs, on ye traffickers in the peace of families, and in the souls
of immortal men! l^ct the corks lly and the beer foam and the rum go
tearing down the half-consumed throat of the inebriate. God does not
see! Does Ho? Judgment will never come! Will it? [Voices ** YesI
yes I"]
People. say, ''Let us have more law to correct this evil/' We have
more law now than we can execute. In what city is there a mayoraltgr
71 DE WITT TALMAQE. 389
that dare do it? The fact is^ that there is no advantage in having the
law higher than public opinion. What would be the use of the
Maine law in Now York? Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland^ came out
with a posse and threw the rum of the city into the street*. But I do
not believe that there are three mayors in the United States with his
courage or nobility of spirit.
I do not know but that God is determined to let drunkenness triumph,
and tlie husbands and sons of thousands of our best families be destroyed
hy tliis vice, in order that our people, amazed and indignant, may rise
up and demand the extermination of this municipal crime. There is 9-
way of driving down the hoops of a barrel so tight that they break.
We can't regulate intemperance.
We are in this country, at this time, trying to regulate this evil by a
tax on wliirtky. You might as well try to regulate the Asiatic cholera,
or the smallpox, by taxation. The men who distil liquors are, for the
most part, unscrupulous; and the higher the tax, the more inducement
to illicit distillation. New York produces forty thousand gallons of
whisky every twenty-four hours; and the most of it escapes the tax. The
most vigilant otlicials fail to discover the cellars and vaults and sheds
whore this work is done.
Oh, the folly of trying to restrain an evil by government tariffs! If
every gallon of whisky made, if every flask of wine produced, should bo
taxed a thousand dollars, it would not be enough to pay for the tears it
has wrung out of the eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the blood it has
dashed on the altars of the Christian church, nor for the catastrophe of
the millions it has destroved forever.
Oh ! we are a Ciiristian people I From Boston a ship sailed for Africa,
with three missionaries and twenty-two thousand gallons of New Eng-
land rum on board. Which will have the most effect; the missionaries,
or the rum?
Shall we try the power of the pledge? There are thousands of men
who have been saved by putting their names to such a document. 1
know it is laughocl at; hut there are men who, having oncepromised a
thing, do it. ** Some have broken the pledge." Yes, they were liars.
I)Ut all men are not liars. I do not say that it is the duty of all persons
to make such signature; hut I do say that it will be the salvation of many
of y<»u.
'I'hi' trlorious \v(u k of Theobald Matthew can never be estimated. At
his hand four millions of people took the pledge, including eight prelates
and seven hundred of the Roman Catholic clergy. A multitude of them
were faithful.
390 KllfOS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand drunkards had been per*
manently reformed in five years.
Through the great Wushingtouian movement in Ohio^ sixty tbonsand
took the pledge; in Pennsylvania, twenty-nine thousand; in Kentucky,
thirty thousand, and multitudes in all parts of the land. Many of these
had been habitual drunkards. One hundred and fifty thousand of them,
it is estimated, were permanently reclaimed. Two of these men became
foreign ministers, one a governor of a State several were sent to Congress.
Hartford reported six hundred reformed drunkards; Norwich, seventy-
two; Fairfield, fifty; Sheffield, seventy-five. All over the land reformed
men were received back into the churches that they had before dis-
graced; and households were re-established. All up and down the land
there were gratulations and praise to God.
The pledge signed, to thousands has been the proclamation of
emancipation. [Applause.]
There is no cure but prohibition,
. I think that we are coming at last to treat inebriation as it ought to
be treated, namely, as an awful disease, self-inflicted, to be sure, but
nevertheless a disease. Once fiisteued upon a man, sermons will not cure
him; temperance lectures will not eradicate the taste; religious tracts
will not arrest it; the gospel of Christ will not arrest it. Once under
the power of this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on; and if the
foaming glass were on the other side of perdition, he would wade through
the fires of hell to get it. A young man in prison had such a strong
thirst for intoxicating liquors, that ho cut off his hand at the wrist,
called for a howl of biandy in order to stop the bleeding, thrust his
wrist into the bowl and then drank the contents.
Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between a man and his cups!
Clear the track for him! Away with the children; he would tread their
life out! Away with the wife; he would dash her to death! Away with
the Cross; he would run it down! Away with the Bible; he would tear
it up for the winds! Away with heaven; he considers it worthless as a
straw! ** Give me the drink! Give it to me! Though hands of blood
pass up the bowl, and the soul trembles over the pit, — the drink! give it
tome! Though it be pale with tears; though the froth of everlasting
anguish flout in the foam; give it to me! I drink to my wife's woe;
to my (Oiildron's rags; to my eternal banishment from God and hope
and heaven! (Jive it to me! the drink!''
The rum fiend is coming into your homos.
Oh, how this rum fiend would like to go and hangup a skeleton in
your beautiful house, so that when you opened the front dpor to go in
r. DB WITT tALMAGt!. ^91
■
you would see it in the hall; and when you sit at your table yoa
would 8ce it hanging from the wall; and when you open your bed-
room yon would find it stretched upon your pillow; and waking at night
you would feel its cold hand passing over your face and pinching at
your heart !
There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awfal
curse. It throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony. What was it
that silenced Sheridan's voice and shattered the golden scepter with
which he swayed parliaments and courts? What foul sprite turned the
sweet rhythm of Robert Bums into a tuneless ballad? What brought .
down the majestic form of one who awed the American senate with his
eloquence, and after a while carried him home dead drunk from the
office of secretary of state? Wliat was it that crippled the noble
spirit of one of the heroes of the late war, until the other night, in a
drunken fit, he reeled from the deck of a Western steamer and was
drowned I There was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He was
one of the most classic orators of the centnry. People wondered why a
man of so pure a heart and so excellent a life should have suoh a sad
countenance always. They knew not that his wife was a sot.
^' AVoe to him that giveth his neighbor drink! '' If this curse waspro*
claimed about the comparatively harmless drinks of olden times, what '
condemnation must rest upon those who tempt their neighbors when
intoxicating liquor means copperas, nux vomica, logwood, opium,
sulphuric acid, vitriol, turi)entine and strychnine! " Pure liquors;'*
pure destruction! Nearly all the genuine champagne made is taken by
the courts of Europe. What we get is horrible swill I
Women! we call upon you to help us!
I call upon woman for her influence in the matter. Many a man
who had reformed and resolved on a life of sobriety, has been pitched
olT into old habits by the delicate hand of her whom he was anxious to
please.
Bishop Potter says that a young man, who had been reformed, sat at
a tabic, and when the wine was passed to him refused to take it, A
lady sitting at his side said, '' Certainly you will not refuse to take a
cflass with me?" Ag«iin he refused. But when she had derided him
for lack of manliness he took the glass and drank it. He took another
and another; and putting his fist hard down on the table, said, '*Now I
drink until I die/' In a few months his ruin was consummated.
I call upon those who are guilty of these indulgences to quit the
path of death. Oh, what a change it would make in your homel Do
you see how everything there is being desolated ! Would yon not like
392 KIN08 OF THU PLATFOtiM AND PtTLPlT.
*
to bring back joy to your wife's heart, and have your children come out
to meet you with as much confidence as once they showed? Would you
not like to rekindle the home lights that long ago were extinguished?
It is not too late to change. It may not entirely obliterate from your
soul the memory of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor smooth
out from anxious brows the wrinkles which trouble has plowed. It may
not call back unkind words uttered or rough deeds done — for, perhaps,
in those awful moments you struck her ! It may not take from your
memory the bitter thoughts connected with some little grave; but it is
not too late to save yourself and secure for God and your family the
remainder of your fast-going life.
But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. I may address one
who may not have quite made up his mind. Let your better nature
speak out. You take one side or the other in the war against drunken-
ness. Have you the courage to put your foot down right, and say
to your companions and friends: **I will never drink intoxicating
liquor in all my life, nor will I countenance the habit in others? " Have
nothing to do with strong drink. It has turned the earth into a
place of skulls, and has stood opening the gate to a lost world to let in
its victims, until now the door swings no more upon its hinges, but day
and night stands wide open to let in the agonized procession of doomed
men.
Do I address one whose regular work in life is to administer to
this appetite? I beg you get out of the business. If a woe be
pronounced upon the man who gives his neighbor drink, how many
woes must be hanging over the man who does this every day, and every
hour of the day!
A philanthropist going up to the counter of a grogshop, as the
proprietor was mixing a drink for a toper standing at the counter, said
to the proprietor, **Can you tell me what your business is good for?''
The proprietor, with an infernal laugh, said, '* It fattens graveyards!"
God knows better than you do yourself the number of drinks you
have poured out. You keep a list; but a more accurate list has been
kept than yours. You may call it Burgundy, Bourbon, Cognac, Heid-
seck, Ilock; God calls it strong drink. Whether you sell it in low
oyster cellar or behind the polished counter of first-class hotel, the
divine curse is upon you. I tell you plainly that you will meet your
customers one day when there will be no counter between you. When
your work is done on earth, and you enter the reward of your basinesSi
all the souls of the men whom you have destroyed will crowd around
you and pour thoir bitterness into your cup. They will show you their
t, DB WITT TALMA&B. 368
»
woands and say^ '^ You made them;^' and point to their unqaendiftUe
thirst, and say, ''Yen kindled it;^' and rattle their chain^ fuid say,
'' You forged if Then their united groans will smite your ears, and
with the hands, out of which you once picked the sixpences and the dimes,
they will push you off the verge of great precipices; while, rolling up
from beneath, and breaking among the crags of death, will thunder:
'* Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink r
TALMAGE'S INTERESTING THOUGHTS.
Protestantism. — The term Protestantism reminds uik of the prompt'
answer which was given by Wilkes, who was asked by a Bomanist, •
** Where was your church before Luther?'* "Where was your face
before you washed it this morning? '* replied Wilkes.
Ikconsistekcy. — A poor boy slyly takes from the basket of a mar-
ket woman a choke pear — saving some one else from the cholera — and
you smother him in the horrible atmosphere of Raymond street jail, or
New York Tombs, while his cousin, who has been skilful enough to
steal $50,000 from the city, you will make a candidate for the Now
York Legislature.
SiK. — The Egyptian queen was a fool when she dissolved a prioeless
pearl in a single cup of pleasure! The Indian chief was a fool when
he, underrating the momentum of the current, and thinking he could
stem the mighty flood, launched his canoe in the rapids and went over
Niagara! He is a fool who sports with a deadly serpent! A man is a
fool who, unarmed and alone, springs to combat with a lion! But sin
is stronger than a lion, and more venomous than a serpent! The
momentum of its destroying flood is mightier than Niagara's, and, more
precious than all queenly regalia, it dissolves in one cup of evil gladness
'' the Pearl of Great Price! *'
m
The Bible. — After the battle before Richmond had been over sev-
eral days, a man was found dead, with his hand on the open Bible. The
summer insects had taken the flesh from the hand, and there was nothing
but the skeleton left; but the skeleton fingers lay on the open page, and
on this passage: '^ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil; Thy rod and Thy stafiF they comfort me.
Well, the time will come when all the fine novels we have on our bed-
room shelf will not interest us, and all the good histories and all the
exquisite essays will do us no good. There will be one Book, perhaps
its cover worn out and its leaf yellow with age, under whose flash we
shall behold the opening gates of heaven
V
394 KIN 08 OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
Eemorse. — For every sin, great or small, conscience, which is the
voice of God, has a reproof more or less emphatic. Charles DL,
responsible for the St. Bartholomew massacre, was chased by the bitter
memories of his deeds, and in his dying moments said to his doctor,
Ambrose Parry :
'* Doctor, I don^t know what's the matter with me ; I am in a fever
of body and mind, and have been for a long while. Oh, if I had only
spared the innocent and the imbecile and the crippled!'' Rousseau
declared in old age that a sin he committed in his youth still gave him
sleepless nights. Charles II., of Spain, could not sleep unless he had
in the room a confessor or two friars. Cataline had such bitter memo-
ries he was startled at the least sound. Cardinal Beaufort, having slain
the Duke of Gloucester, often in the night would say:
'* Away! away! Why do you look at me?''
Bichard III., having slain his two nephews, would sometimes in the
night leap from his couch and clutch his sword, fighting apparitions.
EiCHES. — Among the Sierra Nevada mountains I was walking with
some of the passengers to relieve the overladen stage, and one of them
gave me his history. He said : *^ With my wife I came to California
twenty years ago. We suffered every hardship. I went to the mines,
but had no luck. I afterward worked at a trade, but had no luck.
Then I went to farming, but had no luck. We suffered almost
starvation. Every thing seemed to go against us. While we were
in complete poverty my wife died. After her death I went again
to the mines. I struck a vein of gold which yielded me forty
thousand dollars. I am now on my way to San Francisco to transfer
the mine, for which I am to receive one hundred thousand dollars."
''Then," said I, ''you are worth one hundred and forty thousand
dollars.''
"Yes," he said, "but it comes too late. My wife is gone. The
money is nothing to me now."
Life. — I once stood on a platform with a clergyman, who told this
marvelous story: "Thirty years ago two young men started out to
attend Park Theater, New York, to see a play which made religion ridic*
ulcus and hypocritical. They had been brought up in Christian fam-
ilies. They started for the theater to see that vile play, and their early
convictions came back upon them. They felt it was not right to go,
but still they went. They came to the door of the theater. One of the
young men stopped and started for home, but returned and came up to
the door, but had not tlie courage to go in. He again started for home,
and went home. The other young man went in. He went from one
T. DB WITT TALMAQB. 895
degree of temptation to another. Caught in the whirl of friyolity and
sin^ he sank lower and lower. He lost his business position. He lost
his morals. He lost his soul. He died a dreadful death, not one star
of mercy shining on it. I stand before you to-day/' said that minister, ^
''to thank God that for twenty years I have been permitted to preach
the gospel. I am the other young man.''
Forgiveness.— An old Christian black woman was going along t^e
streets of New York with a basket of apples that she had for sale. A
rough sailor ran against her and upset the basket, and stood back,
expecting to hear her scold frightfully; but she stooped down and
picked up the apples and said: '' God forgive you, my son, as I do."
The sailor saw the meanness of what he had done, felt in his pocket for
his money^ and insisted that she should take it all. Though she was
black, he called her mother, and said: "Forgive me, mother, I will,
never do any thing so mean again.*' . Ah I there is a power in a forgiv-
ing spirit to overcome all hardness. There is no way of conquering
men like that of bestowing upon them your pardon, whether they will
accept it or not.
Destiny. — In the State of Ohio there is a court-house that stands
in such a way that the rain-drops that fall on the north side go into
Lake Ontario and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while those that fall on
the south side go into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Just a
little pull of wind determines the destiny of a rain-drop for two
thousand miles. What a suggestive thought, that you and I may be
setting in motion influences that shall determine a man^s destiny for
eternity I
Mercies. — There was a man who came over from New York some
years ago, and threw himself down on the lounge in his house, and said,
'' Well, every thing's gone.'' They said, " What doyoumean?'' " Oh/'
he replied, '^ we have had to suspend payment; our house has gon,e to
pieces — nothing left." His little child bounded from the other side of
the room, and said:
**Papa, you have me left." And the wife, who had been very
sympathetic and helpful, came up and said:
*'Well, my dear, you have me left." And the old grandmother,
seated in a corner of the room, put up her spectacles on her wrinkled
forehead and said:
'^My son, you have all the promises of God left." Then the
merchant burst into tears and said:
''What an ingrate I ami I find I have a great many things left,
God forgive me."
396 KING 8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Salvation. — I was reading of a ship that was coming from Cali-
fornia during the tirpe of the gold excitement. The cry of " Pirel fire!"
was heard on shipboard^ and the captain headed the vessel for the shore,
but it was found that the ship would be consumed before it reached the
beach. There was a man on deck fastening his gold around him in a
belt, just ready to spring overboard, when a little girl came up to him
and said:
*' Sir, can you swim ?'' He saw it was a question whether he should
save his gold or save that little child, and he said:
'* Yes, my darling, I can swim," and he dashed his gold on the deck.
**Now," ho says, *'put your arms around my neck; hold on very hard;
put your arms around my neck."
And then the man plunged into the sea and put out for the beach,
and a great wave lifted him high upon the shore, and when the man
was being brought to conscioubuess he looked up; the little child^ with
anxious face, was bending over him. He had saved her.
Self. — General Fisk says that he once stood at a slave-block where
an old Christian minister was being sold. The auctioneer said of him,
'' What bid do I hear for this man? He is a very good kind of a man;
he is a minister." Somebody said:
^'Twenty dollars." (He was very old, and not worth much.)
''Twenty-five," said a second.
"Thirty," "Thirty-five," "Forty."
The aged Christian minister began to tremble; he had expected
to be able to buy his own freedom, and he had just seventy dollars, and
expected with the seventy dollars to get free. As the bids ran tip the
old niim trembled more and more.
*• Forty," "Forty-five," "Fifty," *' Fifty-five," "Sixty," ''Sixty-
five."
The old man cried out, ^^Sevoity for mij sttuL Not a cent for the
hoihj!'' The men around were transfixed. Nobody dared bid; and the
auctioneer struck him down to himself.
" Done — done! Soul and body for seventy dollars!"
The wicked value the body more than the soul.
Man. — I never saw the honors of this world in their hoUowness and
hypocrisy so much as I have seen them within the last fewdays, as I have
been looking over the life and death of that wonderful man, Charles
Sumner. Now that he is dead the whole nation takes off the hat. The
fiags are at half-mast and the minute-guns on Boston Common throb,
now that his heart has ceased to beat. Was it always so? While. he liyed.
—J.
T. r>R WITT TALMAaS. 8W
how ceDBDred of le^stative resolutions, how caricatured of the pictorials,
hovi charged with every motive mean and ridiculous; how, wlion Btnick
down in the senate-chamber, tiiere wore huudreda of thonsundaof people
who said, "Good for him. served him rigiit!" Oh Commoiiweallh of
MassachuBettal who is that man that sleeps to-night in your public hall,
covered with garlands and wropped in the Stars and Stripea? Is that
the man who, only a few months ago, you donouuced as the foe of
Kepublican and Democratic institutions? Is that the same man ? You
were either wrong then or you are wrong now — a. thing most certain. Oh
Commonwealth of Massachusetts! When I see a man like that pursued
by all the honnds of the political kennel so long ae he lives, and then
buried under garlands almost mountain high, and amid the lamentations
of a whole nation, I say to myself, " What an unnttcrably hypocritical
thing is ail human applause and all human faror!" Yon tooit twenty-
five years in trying to pull down his fame, and now you will take twenty-
five years in trying to build Iuk niontiment. You were either wrong then
or you are wrong now. My friends, was there ever a better commeulary
on the hoi 1 own ess of all earthly favor?
Baitism. — When I was in San Francisco a few summers ago, at the
close of the preaching serrice. a young man came up on the steps of the
pulpit and said:
" You don't know me, do you ? "
" No," I replied, " I do not remember you."
S:iid he, "I am James Piirrish. Don't you know James Parriah?"
"Oh, yes," I said, " I <Jo know you; I remember." Then the scene
all lliished back upon me of a small room in SynicuBe. New York,
and u dying mother who sent for me and an elder Of the church to come
iitid liuptize her children; and again I saw her lying there aa ahe turned
to nit! and said, " Mr. Talmage, I sent for you; 1 am going to die, but I
iiin't die until my children are in the chui*h of God. Will you pleuso
to baptize them?" And " in the name of the I-'iilher, and of the Son,
ami of tiic Holy Ghost," I baptized them. Then she folded h«r hands
and said, " It is.cnough. Lord Jesus, corao quickly."
What was the use of having her children in the church?
I said to the young man standing on the pulpit stairs in San Fran-
cisco, '■ Oh, yes. I suppose you yourself have become a Uhristian, haven't
you ? "
" Oh, yes," he said, " I have."
" 1 know you would," I said. "Any young miiu who had a mother
like yours could not help but be a Christiau."
I
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d
398 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
A father said to his son, '^ Yon are too yonng to connect yoarsdf
with the church of God;*' and tlie next day, while they were out in the
fields, there was a Iamb that had strayed away, and it was bleating for its
mothcrf and the father said to the son:
" Take that lamb over to the fold *to its mother/'
** Father," said the boy, " I guess not; you had better let it stay out
here six months, and see whether it lives or not; and if it lives then we
can take it in."
The father felt the truth at his heart, and said:
'^ My son, take that lamb in, and y^u go yourself the next time the
Lord's fold opens/' ,
"Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for
of such is the kingdom of heaven."
.^ .- ~^_ '".J. La
ROBERT COLLYER.
THE RLACKSUITH PHBACBSU.
BIOORAI'IIV ATTD RBHINrSCENCBS.
The Rev. Dr. Robert Colljir was ynm in Yorksliirv. England, in 1888, HIa paf
cnls were poor. IIo camo to AiiuTiua as a bluckBUiiili aiiJ sctikil lu » litUu luilulot
, In Pcnasylvmiia. George Airr<-;1 TowDBcod gives nuin}: rumiiiisceucm nluiut Hr. Call-
yer wlien Iw was a villugu Muik^jiiltli like Eliliii Biirrlu, TIte gn«X prcndier
sludii'd iiarti, and bis wisdom jiri>l v-l>jwliib' I'luquviii^i.' 80uu ruistHl liiiu uliuvo Uu.' aliop
into 91'liolaslie luid theologiail i irtirs, iintiUiu now pnaidw over oiu? nf Ihi; moitt btuu'
liriil I'liitiirinn cliurchca iu Nfw York. Dr. Collier and Dr. -lolin fliili nix nid to
Ih' n\'oof ilie tiimdsonicKt, and, ul llie saino time, two of the moxt inodeHl cler^niiiu
ill [iiMic life. Dr. Colljcr lias writltm Mivcntl books, auil bin leelurua liuvti bmm
widuiy [lopuiar, eapeeiully Lis f.ivorlte lecture " Grit."
Dr. Collycr is always looking ou Uio sunny side of life. '* A
dear good old liuly tauglii, me to look for ihe silver lining," said iho
doctor.
'■ How did she teach you i " I asked.
'■ I>y e.xiiniple," said the doctor, smiling benignly. " She ivas a
very poor uoiiian and was overwhelmed with trouble. She had a
diuiikeu linsband and a sick baby. Still she was always cheerful.
" One day I said : * Mary you must have some very dark days;
they must overcome you with clouds sometimes.'
'* * Yes,' ^he replied ; ' but then I often dnd there's comfort in a
cloud.'
" ' ('ijmfort in a clout), Mary J '
"•Yes," she said ; ' when I am very low and dark I go to the win-
ilovv; and if I SCO a iieavy cloud I think of those precious words, " A
cloud reeeivcd Ilim out of llieir sight," and I look up iind Hee the
clovid sure enough, and then I think— well, that may bo tlio cloud
that hides Uim; and so you see there is comfort in a cloud.' "
I
1
I
400 EINOa OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Dr. Colly er is a strictly temperate man, but still likes a good din-
ner. English roast beef and plum pudding are his favorite dishes.
The doctor told me that one of his best dinners was almost
spoiled by a joke.
" But a joke ought to spice a dinner," I saio.
" It did spice this dinner a little too much," said the doctor.
*' I was dining one evening at Delmonico's,and had arrived at the
cheese stage of my repast. A delightful piece of Roquefort was set
before me, ripe, vivacious, self-mobilizing. There is nothing I like
better than a lively cheese, and I had just transferred a spoonfal of
the delicacy in question to my plate, when Henry Bergh, sittiiig at
a neighboring«tablo, sprang to his feet with a cry of horror, datofaed
my wrist with an iron grasp, and exclaimed:
" * Hold, monster! Xcver shall yoii swallow a mouthful of that
cheese in my presence ! '
" ' And why not?' I inquired in perplexed amazeoient.
" ' Because, cruel man, I am a member of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and I will not sit by calmly and
see those innocent insects tortured.'"
Dr. Collyer tells a good many anecdotes at his own expense, but
they are all as pure as our Savior's parables. One day Mr. CoUyer
was talking to a good old colored man down in Kentucky. Mr. Coll-
yer always wears his white clerical tie, so the conversation was
naturally about preachers.
"So, Uncle Jack," said Dr. Collyer, "you don't much believe- in
the idea that men are called to preach/'
"Wall sah, de Lawd mout call some niggers ter preach, but it
sorter 'peers ter mo dat whar de Lawd calls one old man, Laziness.
calls er dozen. Nine nigger preache*" iten ten is de lazies' possens
in do worP sah."
" How do vou know Uncle Jack ? "
■
" Case Tse a preacher ineiWf, sah."'
This caused a scream from all the clergyman in the car.
Dr. Thomas, of Chicago, who believes a good deal like Collyer,
said afterward that he had some experience about being called to
preach once that reminded him of the old colored man's call.
'* How was it ? " asked CoUver.
" WelV said the doctor, "I had a call at an advance salary to go
to Richmond, after considering it a good while I finally concluded
"HOW DO TOD KNOW, BKCLE JACKr
408 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
" Now, Mary, tell us all what you must first do to have your sins
forgiven."
" Well," said little Mary, with a lisp, " I des I must first do out
and do the sin."
Dr. CoUyer has a big, loving heart, and was never known to
resent an indignity. The soft answer was always in bis mouth.
One day the blacksmith preacher bought a horse of a Pennsylvania
farmer. The next day the horse strayed into the road and a mean
neighbor caught him and put him in the pound. When Mr. Collyer
called on him the next morning, the man said, very savagely:
" Yes, 1 did catch your horse in the road and I put him in the
pound, and I'll do it again!"
"Neighbor," replied Dr. Collyer with a polite smile, ''not long
since I looked out of my window in the night and saw your cattle
in my meadow, and I drove them out and shut them in your yard;
and I'll do it again."
Struck with the doctor's reply, the man liberated the horse from
the pound, and paid the charges himself.
" A soft answer turneth away wrath."
"Speaking of politeness," said the doctor, "I learned my first
lesson in that accomplishment from a young lady."
" How was it ? " I asked. *
" Well, one evening a sweet, young lady, came round the comer
of our church in great haste. I think she was hastening to catch a
car. As she abruptly turned the corner she ran against a boy who
was small and ragged and freckled. Stopping as soon as she could,
she turned to him and said.
" ^ I beg your pardon ; indeed, I am very sorry.'
" The small ragged and freckled boy looked up in blank amaze-
ment for an instant; then, taking off about three-fourths of a cap,
he bowed very low, smiled until his face became lost in the smile,
and answered.
" ' You can hev my parding, and welcome, Miss; and yer may
run agin me and knock me clean down, an' I won't say a word..'
"After the young lady passed," said the doctor, "the boy turned
to a comrade and siiid, half apologetically, ' I never bad any one ask
my parding, and it kind o' took me off my feet.' "
"One day," said the doctor, "a good, old Scotchman^ uncon-
sciously paid me a great compliment. I had preached a stnMig^
nOBERT COLLTER. WW
plain Bennon — just such a sennon as a blacksmith would preach.
When I got through, the old gentleman came up to me and I asked
him how he liked the sermon.
" ' Well, air,' was the unei|uivocal reply, ' I can't say that I liked
it very well. It was a little too pline for me. I likes a preacher as
joomblea the r'ason and confoonds the joodgnient; and of all the
born preachers I've heerd, you cooms the furthest from that.' "
The doctor, who speaks the Scotch and Yorkshire dialects as
well as English, delights to tell this story.
Dr. Collyer, like Ohapin and Beecher and Dr. Storrs, always
makes every text simple and plain. There was nothing like tho
vagueness of Emeraon about their reasoning.
Dr. Chapin used to tell about a little experience he had with a
dear, good, old colored preacher down in Kentucky. After Chapin
had talked with Uncle Jacob a little while, the old colored clergy-
man turned to him and said: " Yes, Brudder Chapin, we preachoi-s
must wuck with energy, ef we wucker tall. Scriptah says, 'Wot-
somever you hastest fer to do you oughter dust it wid all yo' hawt
an' mine an' stren'th.' An" above all things, doan pronasticrate."
"Don't whichtycrate. Uncle Jacob? What do you meanl"
asked Chapin.
" I mean doan pronasticrate, Brudder Chapin. Doan put off toll
nex' week whatchah orter done lass year. Time, Brudder Chapin,
is a mighty hahd boss to head. Tharfo' it behoofs you, as Scriptah
says, to ketch him by the fetlock ef you wantah come undah do
wiah 'fo' he does."
DK. COLLYEB'S LECTURE TO YOUNG MEN
OK TWO EMIORANTS.
OESESia IX. 31, St.
If you take a map of the region in which tho man lived, wticido ittory
I wiint to touch for you aa it touches my own heart, I think you will b©
xtblo to form some iOea of what he did in contrast with wliHt ho fi^t out
to ilo. Ilaran is about a day's march from tho old homostoad ho left,
while Cutiikan is ten or twelve ; and it ieeosy going to Ilaran, one would
think, but very hard to Canaan, because after you leave the place at
wliicli ho hailed, and push on toward that be aimed at, yon have tocrods
a river over which there is or was no bridge, a desert of seven dnyB' jour-
ney, and the rugged pasaes of the moantains. So that to reach Hann
I
I
404 KING 8 OF THE PLATFORM AJSTD PULPIT.
from Ur would be a sort of picnic^ but to reach Canaan after that
would be a painful pilgrimage, which would demand about all the plnck
and courage there was in you.
Then, if we could see this Edessa, as it came to be called at a later
day, we might guess how Terah caught the idea of going to CanaaxL
Edessa is a pretty little place, travelers say, as you shall find anywhere
in old Chaldada. It stands in a sort of desert, beside a deep, clear spring,
in the midst of shade- trees and fruit-trees, and, above this, there^isesa
great rock on which there has stood a fortress, time out of mind, to which
they could retreat when the enemy came, and defend themselves when
tliere was no hope that they could do this on the plain. This was
about the sum and substance then of Edessa, a small place standing
by itself in a desert, very pleasant and good to live in if you are content
to live iu a small way, and nourish no ambition for a wider and larger life.
Now, Terah, if we may trust the old traditions, was a brass-founder
in tliis pent-up place, and his special line of business was the making of
molten gods. But such an industry as that must have been rather
limited, for good reasons. Only so many would be wanted, at the most,
and they would not wear out as wagons do, and plows, but the older
they grew, the better the people would like them. Nor would there be
any great improvement possible, except by permission of the priests,
who are usually the last men iu the world to admit that such things can
be improved ; so the poor man could not strike a new idea in this matter of
the molten gods, and ])ush the old incumbents from their stools, or melt
them over and bring them out in a finer fashion, allowing buyers so
much for the old metal.
We may guess, tlierefore, in what a strait Terah found himself at
last, and why he may have begun to look with longing eyes westward.
This Canaan away over the river, the desert, and the mountains, seems
to liave been a sort of Pacific Slope in those times; a splendid land of
promise, in which you could live to your heart's content, when once you
got there; widen the whole horizon of your life; find untold outlets for
your powers; plant the stocks anew which had no room to grow in the
pent-up garden-plat of Edessa, and then die when your time came,
happy in the thought that you had made your stroke, and opened the
way toward a larger and fairer life.
So Terah, as I have come to think of him, it may be because I am an
eniigrant myself, began to look with longing eyes toward the land of
Canaan. He wa« ready, as he thought, to give up comfort for freedom;
and a home and workshop in a pent-up place, in which he was bound to
follow time-honored traditions and usages, for a tent, if it most be 80|
• -._• _...!
BOBBIiT COI.LTER. 405
on the breezy slopes sw&j beyond the mountains, with the ocean for hla
boundary on the one aide aiul the dcyert on the other; and to exchange
tlic Bafecicadel on the rock fur the nobler fastness of a manhood that
would hold its own againet the world, and win.
It wiia a tremendouB thing, as things stood then, to do. I think I
can Eee him through the mists of time, sitting there in his workshop with
his gods about him, trying to count the cost, and all the time, tie he
thinks of it, the plan grows more and more feasible. Then ho consults
the young men about itj his son and nepliew; and of ull things in the
world, of course, this is what they would like to do, especially hig son,
who has already begun to di'Piim of a wider and higher life for himsulf-
So there would be a notice, we maypreauTlic, sent through the town, of
a house and shop for sale, and the molten gods withal, at the buyer's
own price, because Terah must be rid of them, he is going far away.
Then the roots of hia life would be torn out of the soil in which they had
flourished, from father to son, ever since the time of the Tower of
Babel. And there would be weeping among them, I think, and visits
made to the graves of those tlioy had loved, and the homes of their kins-
folk all about; and then, on a morning, you would see them set out on
their day's march to JJamn, whore they would halt, and start on the
morrow toward the river and tiic promised land. That morrow never
came to Terah. How it was, we do not know — we know only thia, that
forward to Canaan he does not take another step. Haran itself is a
jiloiisiint place, I hear, with plenty of good land about it; and there
wotiM be a better chance for life and a living, it may be, there, than any
he liad left behind him in Edosaa. Be this as it may, reason or none,
llii'i'c lie stayed a great while, and there he died. One day's march from
the place he had left, ten or twelve from that he dreamed of, for
auiiy yet from the promised land. And so, never now will he see the
wiiite glories of Lebanon, never the summer splendors of Hermon aud
Sharon, and never the bliic&ea turning to gold as he watches it at sun-
set from tiie crests at Carmel. He started on a journey; it ondwi, one
irii^lit almost Ray, in a jaunt. He dreamed of the mountains, and sctbltjd
i»ti a flat. His ideal was freedom, to be bought with a great prleo; ho
>lruek this one stroke for it, and accepted comfort »gaia oh good
mi'urities. He went back no more; but then, he went forward no farther
—got hi.s chance just this once at a singular, separate, generous, free
life, whieh held in its heart unknown truasures of grealnen* and worth,
if he had only gone forth that morning, and mailO Ihcm hia own. The
morning came, and Terah w;ia nut ready. He wan not to be one of the
units in our life, after all, but only one of the migar fractions; not one
I
1
406 KTNQ8 OF THB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
of the men who stand out in clear and bold relief against the darkneii
of the ages^ but one of the masses of men — Terah^ the father of Abra-
ham, who set out for the promised land, and then halted at the end of
the one day's march.
But now, as I watch him sitting Inhere, I am moved to make some
plea for a kindlier judgment than this I have rendered touching hii
failure. It is clear, for one thing, that he is far on in years when he
feels this impulse to strike out toward a wider and finer life, and so his
years would tell against him. Old men soon tire of new adventnret.
They are *' afraid of that which is high." Then this was not ^nly
change which was waiting in his outward life, but a wrench to his inward
life also. This son of his, who grows to be one of the supreme men, you
know, of the world, has set his face already against the old gods, and is
no doubt looking forward to the new home as a place where he will not
only be free to go where he will and do what he will earthward, but
heavenward too; and I think Terah guesses this is just what will befall
them. So we may imagine where tlie main trouble lies. Here is a man
setting out on a great new enterprise, at a time of life when natnre
opposes instead of helping him; looking forward with his eyes, while his
heart is looking backward; a man with Canaan on his lips and £d
in his marrow; giving up the old paths which are as familiar to him
his own dooryard, to wander away over hills and dales all new to him,
and all strange. I do not wonder the old man's heart failed him. He
needed more than an impulse to lift him out of his old life. Only an
inspiration could do that, and I am not sure even this could have mas-
tered him when so much of life lay behind him. And so he must have
said, sadly enough, '' It is no use. I will not go back, but I can not go
forward. I will settle down here, and wait for the angel of death. I
can still do a very good day's work in Haran. They have no such gods
here as I used to turn out in the old place. Their ideals are low. I
will go to work and improve them." Something like this he must have
said to the young men, while they talked with him of the better land,
its freedom and beauty, and its rich reward. They spoke of freedom, he
preferred safety; of the mountains, he was wedded to the flat; of the
sea, he liked the little river better, purling along in the sunshine; of
great rides across the greensward, he liked his arm-chair better, on the
porch in summer, and in winter by the fire. " So Terah took Abram
his son, and Lot his brother's son, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, and
went forth with them from Ur of the Ohaldees to go to Canaan; and
they came to Haran and dwelt there, and Terah died in Haran."
ROBERT COLLYER. 407
But we have to notice, iLgain, that this is by no means tlie end of the
one day's march, for now we see what we have come to call " tvulution "
at work. Terah brings tlio young men no fur toward this larger and
better life he would fain have found, aud then the impulse iu him to go
forward is mastered by the longing to sit still. But the time eotnes
when that which was only an imjmlse in the fatUfr changes iu the son
to an inspiration, through which he notonlycarriesouttbo whole inten-
tion of Terah, but does niore than he ever dreamed of doing, because
that which was only a deniit' in tlie litst man to better himself, becomes
in the second, a blessing to the nice, and the whisper of ambition in thu
one man changes in the otlier to the voice of God.
I need not dwell long on this point in the story. I need only say that
there is no evidence, or hint even, of a Divine light and leading in what
these men are doing, until Terah is dead. But then God speaks to his
sou, bids him get out of Ilanin, and pass over to the promised land;
and once there he becomes the spring-liead of the floods of blessing to
which the prophets belong and the psulmists, the seed of a mighty and
matchless harvest the worM is reaping still for the everlasting life. So,
while the old man never saw the promised laud, the young man saw it.
and pre-empted it, as we siiy, for the homo of the race which lay iu his
loins when he did cross i\\v river and the mountains, and saw the land
he had been dreaming of eo long, while the old father's arm was about
his neck, holding him back from his great desire. And so it seems but
the simple truth to say that »ome touch of this glory rests on the old
man's grave, after all, because we have uo sure reason to think that the
son would have gone to Canaan if the father had not set out to go, even
if he did break down at the end of the first day's march. The impalse
<':une liri!t, the insgiiratioii followed; but who shall be suruwe could have
hud tlie one without the other? There are those, I suppose, in Kdesm
to-day, who have come straight down from »omg m:in who was qnlto
(-oiitcnt to stay there when Terah tore out the roots of his life; ofttlml
liiin an old fool, perhaps, for not letting well enough alone; iMught his
molten gi'ds, it may be — li dead bargain — made money on thoni ; and
never once in all hie life, looked beyond the palm-trees ami tho spring;
but in all the world you would hardly find a poorer story of what men
may do for the world's help and blessing than such a line of men would
have to tell you. It is the fin^t step which costs; and taking this firstatep, I
love to believe, did something very noble for the geniue and inspiration
which hits made our Bible fhc supreme book of the world, and thi»
Hebrew line the greatest t<.Hi,:hing the roligiouB life the world has evtir
known. Tuah's dream never came true; but then, he had tho dream,
408 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
and did something to make it come true to liis son, and so to the race.
U'liey say the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, here is
one of the good intentions, then, that pave the way to heaven. He did
see the promised land, after all, throijgh the eyes of the man he had
gotten from the Lord; and there was a strain of the sturdy striving
which ha<l paid the price of leaving the old place, in him who would
never stop until he cnme to the new. So his feet also are beautiful upon
the mountains, though he never saw them. I said he started on a jour-
ney, and it ended in a jaunt; but this must not blind us to what that
jaunt must have cost him — the great sorrow 61 parting — the heart-ache
of the man who seems to have stopped for the bone-ache. He did not do
all he set out to do, let us allow this; but he did more than any other
man of his clan in Edessa; and dying in Ilaran, he was not only one
day's march on the road to this larger and finer life, but he had made it
so much easier for the young men to go dght on to the end.
And so this man's life touches yours and mine, and opens out toward
some truths we may well lay to our hearts, and this is the first: Tliat, if
I want to do a great and good thing in this world, of any sort, while
the best of my life lies still before me, the sooner I set about it the
better. For, wliile there is always a separate and special worth in a
good old ago, tliis power is very seldom in it, I would try to verify; and
it is not your old Philip, but your young Alexander, who conquers the
world. I can remember no grand invention, no peerless reform in life
or religion, no noble enterprise, no superb stroke of any sort, that was
not started from a spark in our youth and early manhood. Once well
past that line, and you can dream of Canaan; but the chances are, you
will sto]) at Ilaran, so this i)Utting olT any great and good adventure
from your earlier to your later age is like waiting for low water before
you launch your ship. If we want to make our dream of a nobler and
wider life of any sort come true, we must push on while the fresh strong
powers are in us, which are more than half the battle. The whole
wealth of real enteri)rise belongs to our youth and earlier manhood. It
is then that we get our chance of rising from a collective mediocrity into
s.oniy sort of distinct nobility. We may be ever so sincere after this,
as far as wt* can go; but we shall only go to Ilaran. Yes, and we may
have a si)k'udid vision, as when this man saw llermon and Sharon and
the sea in his mind's eye, as he sat in his chair; and a noble and good
intention, as when he started for the mountains, and halted on the
])lain; but just this is what will befall us also, if we are not true to this
holy law of our life.
ROBERT COLL TER. 409
This is my first thought; and my second must tako the form of aplea
with thoso wlio do strike Out to do grand and good things in this world,
and do not hiilt^ ])ut march right on^ and then nourish a certain coiitempt
for thoso who still lag behind. The chances are, it is because these
begin too latu^ thutthey end too soon; and it is no small matter that they
begin at all. For myself^ I can only blame them, when, with the
visions of a nobler life haunting the heart, they tell me that Uaran is
good enough for anybody, and we need none of us look for anything
better. If they know all the while, as this man knew, that the land of
promise still lies beyond the line at which they have halted, and will
say so frankly, though they may go only the one day's march, I can
still bare my head in reverence before such men. I know what it is to
leave these Edessas of our life, and what it costs; how the old homes
and altars still have the pull on you, and the shadows of the palm-trees,
and the well at which you have drunk so long, and what loving arms
twine about you to hold you back from even the one day's march. So,
when I hear those blamed who stop short still of where I think they
ought to be, I want to say, have you any idea of what it has cost them
to go KO far as that, and whether it was possible for them to go any
farther? And then, is it not a good thing anyhow to take those who
belong to them the one day's march, and, setting their faces toward the
great fair land of promise, leave God to see to it, that this which may
be no more than an impulse in the man who has to halt, may grow
attain to a great inspiration in the son of his spiritand life who goes
riglit on?
Add this, I think, is what we may count on in every honest endeavor
after a wider and better life. So I like the suggestion that the way the
eagle got his wings, and went soaring up towards the sun, grew out of
the impulse to soar. That the wings did not precede the desire to fly,
but the desire to fly pre(reded the wings. Something within the creat-
ure whispered: ''Get up there into the blue heavens; don't be con-
tent to crawl down in the marsh. Out with you!" And so, somehow,
through what would seem to us to bo an eternity of trying — so long it
was between the first of the kind that felt the impulse, and the one
that really did the thing, done — it was at last, in despite of the very law
of gravitation, as well as by it; and there he was, as I have seen him,
soaring over the blue summits, screaming out his delight, and spreading
his pinions twelve feet, they said, from tip to tip.
I like the suggestion, because it is so true to the life we also have to
live — trying and failing; setting out for Canaan, and stopping at Ilaran;
intending great things, and doing little things, many of us, after all. I
410 RIN08 OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
tell you again^ the good intention goes to pave the way to heaven, if U
be an honest and true intention. There is a pin-feather of the eagle^i
wing started somewhere in our starting — a soaring which goes far
beyond our stopping. We may only get to the edge of the slough, but
those who come after ns will soar far up toward the sun.
So let me end with a word of cheer. The Moslem says: '* God
loved Abdallah so well that He would not let him attain to that he most
deeply desired." And Coleridge says: "I am like the ostrich: I can
not fly, yet I have wings that give me the feeling of flight. I am only
a bird of the earth but still a bird.'' And Kobcrtson, of Brighton, says:
*' Man's true destiny is to be not dissatisfied, but forever unsatisfied."
And you may set out even in your youth, therefore, with this high
purpose in you I have tried to touch. You will make your way to a
good place, a wider and more gracious life, do a great day's work, rise
above all mediocrity into a distinct nobility, find some day that, though
you have done your best, you have fallen far below your dream, and
the Canaan of your heart's desire lies still in the far distance. All
great and grand things lie in the heart of our strivings.
Dr. Collyer has the poetic instinct. AH his prose is but another
form of poetry.
The following poem is from the Doctor's fruitful pen.
A PSALM OF T^A^'KSGIVING AFTER THE GREAT FIRE OP 1871.
O Lord our Go<l, when storm and flame
Hurled Iioines and temples into dust,
We gathered here to bless Thy name,
And on our ruin wrote our tnist.
Thy tender pity met our pain,
Swift through the earth Thine angels ran.
And then Thy Christ appeared again,
Incarnate, in the heart of man.
Thy lightning lent its haughty wing
To hear the tear-blent sympathy,
And fiery chariots rushed to bring
The offerings of humanity.
Thy tender pity met our pain,
Thy love has raised us from the dust,
Wemec't to l)les8 thee. Lord, agidn.
And in our temples sing our trust.
.V* L
SAM JONES.
PREACHER, TALKER, REFORMER AND WIT.
BIOGRAPHY AND RElflNISCENCBS.
Samuel Jones was born in Chambers county, Alabama, October 16, 1847. Whfle
a child his parents removed to Carters ville, Barlow county, Georgia, where he now
resides, near Bill Arp. He comes from a church family and from a family of preach-
ers, four of his uncles having been clergymen. His father was a brilliant lawyer, and
his mother a most religious woman. The seeds of religious conviction were planted
in tlie l)osom of the great revivalist by his mother, and Mr. Jones* veneration for
tliat sainted mother crops out in all liis sermons. Mr. Jones studied law with his
father, and began his law practice with brilliant prospects, but dissipation drew him
away from his work and well nigh eclipsed his talents.
A solemn exhortation from Mr. Jones' father on his death bed caused him to
reform, and he soon aftcrwanl married Mis.s I^ura McElwain, of Eminence, Ey., a
lovely character, who still cheers his life in his good work.
From a lawyer Mr. Jones became a traveling Methodist preacher in 1872. As a
revivalist he met with extraordinary success, until he attracted the attention of Rev.
T. DeWitt Talmage. who employe<l him in a grand revival at the Brooklyn Taber-
nacle.
Mr. Jones* first great revival was in St. Louis. Here J. B. McCullough, the
etlitor of the Globe, really brought the great preacher out. Mr. McCullough hmi his
sermons reported verbatim, sometimes filling six columns of the Olobe, Mr. McCul-
lough is a good Catholic, and his generous support of a Protestant clergyman should •
be appreciated by the whole Protestant church in America.
Mr. Jones uses plain language. He uses the every-day language
of the street. Clergymen who bore their audiences call it slang,
but Mr. Jones wins souls with this every-day language. Our ortho-
dox clergy, seeing his works, have been compelled to endorse him.
Mr. Jones is sensational and so was Paul, and Peter the Hermit
and Gough and Beecher and Wendell Phillips and Spurgeon, and
his meetings produce intense interest and he always reaps an
immense harvest of converts whom ho turns over to any church in
the fold of Christ.
411
c
412 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Sam Jones (he prefers to be callcKl plain Sum Jones) preaches
without notes, depending upon the itispiration of the moment.
One day, while in conversation with the great revivalist, I asked
him how he could preach such long sermons, night after night,
without notes when such great men as John Hall, Prof. Swing,
Storrs and Cuyler always read their sermons.
" It's easy enough," said Sam, "easy enough if you go to work
in the right way. Now," he continued, "if I was to tell my serv-
ant girl to go to the shop and get some sugar and bluing, some
coffee and starch,, some cakes, some soap and some almonds, some
candles and spice, some nuts and some tea, some potash and butter,
she would sav:
"^Oh dear, sir, I never can think of all that.'
." But suppose I should say, 4ook here, Betty, you know to-mor>
row your mistress is going to have a largo wash, and she will want
some bluing and soa)), candles and pc^tash; the next day she will
have company, and will want some tea and coffee, sugar, spice, nuts,
cakes, butter and almonds.'
" 'Thank you, sir,' says Betty, 'now I can think of them all.'
"So it is in preaching. You want a logical, but simple arrange-
ment."
Sam Jones makes a great deal of money out of his lectures, but not
so much out of his preaching; still he hiis very little love for money.
"Are you saving your money?" I asked the revivalist, one day on
the train.
" Saving my money!" he exclaimed, " What for ? Why a man
who saves money is a miser. Christ didn't have a bank account
Josh Billings says the old miser that has accumulated his millions
and then sits down with his millions at last, without any capacity for
enjoying it, reminds him of a fly that has fallen into a half-barrel of
molasses. There you've got the picture just as complete as Josh
Billings ever drew a picture.
"No sir," continued Sam, "I never had much money — never will
I reckon. I saw in the papers some time ago where a man had died
in North Carolina and left Sam Jones a wonderful legacy — ^and all
that sort of thing. I was at home at the time. Several of my
friends ran up with the paper, and said:
" ' Sam, did you see this?'
" ' Yes.'
' SAM J0NB8, 413
" ^ "What are you going to do about it?*
" ' I ain't going to do anything.'
" * Well, I'd write on and tell them where you are.'
"*No sir,' said I, 'I am getting on right well without a legacy,
and God knows what Fd do if I had one. I am getting on so well
without one that I don't want to fool with one.*
*'Don't you see? I want you all to have legacies and live in
line houses, and I will go around and take dinner with you, and let
you pay the taxes and servants, and I will enjoy the thing. Don't
you see ? That is a good idea, ain't it? "
''If I get wealth without religion," continued Sam, thoughtfully,
" why, I'll be poor in the next world. Cornelius Vanderbilt was
the richest man that ever bade America good-bye, and stepped into
eternity. He turned to his oldest boy and passed $75,000,000 into
his hands; $25,000,000 additional he turned over to the rest of bis
heirs, and, then in his last moments, turned to his Christian wife and
asked her: 'Wife, please sing,
** Come, yc sinners, poor and needy;
Weak and wounded, sick and sore.' "
'' The richest man that America ever produced asking his wife to
sing the song of a beggar ! "
I do not think there is a man living who can use as strong Eng-
lish as Sam Jones, or rather, as strong Saxon. The great but
pe<hintic Dr. Johnson once said, speaking of one of Addison^s
essays : '* There is not virtue enough in it to preserve it from putre-
faction." Sam Jones would have said in his bold Saxon: "There
ain't wit enough in it to keep it sweet." One day, when the
reporters had been criticising the revivalist's Saxon language, he
became indignant, and said :
'' Do you want my opinion of these reporters, who abuse our
meetings?"
'* Yes."
*' Well, in my humble opinion, I will be in heaven when these
stinking miserable little reporters who malign me are sitting on one
ear in hell, trying to keep cool by fanning themselves with the
othrr."
'* Do the}' ever answer back to you from the audience when you
talk so savagely ? " I asked.
414 KINO a OF TUE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
" Yes, often. Every now and then a burnt sinner will squeal
Sometimes they get a good joke on me, too. One day, in St
Louis,*' continued the preacher, laughing, " an awful funny thing
happened. I had been attacking the gamblers and drunkards for
an hour, and I said a drunkard is lower than a dog. ' Why,' said I,
' I've seen a man and a dog go into a saloon, and, in an hour, the
man would get beastly drunk, and stagger out like a hog, while the
dog would come out and walk away like a gentleman,'
^' Just then a shabby, blear-eyed man arose tremblingly, and
started to leave the church.
" ' Stop ! young man,' I said. * Stop ! '
*' The young man stood still, with a thousand eyes on him.
" 'If you'd rather go to hell than hear me preach, just go on !'
" ' Well,' replied the man, after a pause, ' I believe Pd rather.^
And out he went.
" ILi ! ha ! ha ! '' chuckled Sam, " it was a good one, wa'nt it!
" The very next night," continued the preacher, " I saw the same
man in the audience. By and by I saw him standing up.
" ' Well,' said I, kindh% ' what do you want, my man ? '
*' ' I want to know, Elder, if you think you can get the devil out
of me ? '
" ' O, yes,' I said, ' but I don't think it would improve you any.
The little left would be worse than. the devil.'
" I suppose you learn a good deal from your audiences ?" I sug-
gested.
'^ Oh, yes. A good old Christian lady rose one night and said
she had got repentance.
" * Do you know what true repentance is, mother ? ' I asked.
" ' Yes. It is being sorry for your meanness and feeling that
you ain't going to do it any more.'
*' ' That's the best definition of repentance I ever heard in my
life mother,' I said. ' That is repentance. Good Lord, I am so
sorry for my meanness that I don't intend to do it any more. And
now mother,' said I, * Do you know what true religion is ?'
" ' Yes.'
" ' What ? '
" ' It's this,' said the old lady : ' If the Lord will just forgive me
for it, I won't waiit to do it any more,'
^' ' Eight mother ! ' said I. ^ There is repentance and religion iu
a nutshell, so every man in the world can get hold of it.' "
.i * ■
SAM JONES. ^15
SAM JONES'S GREATEST SERMON.
THUNDER AND LIOHTNING ON SINNERS' HEADS.
Brothers and Sisters : — I don't care so much aboat my text as I do
about my sermon^ but did you oversee such a string of pearls as this
text — such a monosyllabic utterance ?
Let— your— light— so— sliino— before— men— that— they— may— see— your— good
—works— luid— glorify— your— Father — which— is— in — Heaven.
I have frequently gone into a community, and while there, I have
kicked the bushol off a great many men's lights, and they would fall out
with me and say I put their light out. And I didn't. Their light had
gone out over ten years before, when they went and tamed that bushel
down over it. It went out the minute they turned that bushel over
it. Sometimes it is the bushel of neglect. Sometimes it is the bushel
of willful tnmsgression. Sometimes it is the bushel of avarice. And
there are a thousand bushels that will be famished yon at any time yoa
want one to turn down over your light. And at any moment, if yon put
a bushel over your light — if your light was burning and you have taken
and turned a bushel and put over it — you will find year light is oat.
And don't be foolish enough to think that the man that removed the
bushel put your light out. It was the bushel turned down over it that
\n\i the light out.
Never mind a))out other people's lights. Look after your own light.
Some clergymen, instead of shedding their own light by preaching
(1n ist, are looking after Tom Paine and Ingersoll — looking after false
lights. [Applause.]
Who cares about Bob Ingersoll's infidelity, or who cares aboat any
body else's infidelity? Thediffcrence between Ingersoll and the church-
man is that the man in church believes every thing, and won't do any-
thing, while Bob Ingersoll is a sort of theoretical infidel, who gets $1,500
a night for being one, and you dead Christians here, like fools, are one
for nothing and board yourselves. That's all there is about it.
[Laughter J
Chunli members should let their lights shine by their actions. Win
the sinner by love. A worldly man recently entered one of the charohes
in Indianapolis, and was allowed to stand fifteen minutes in the aisle.
Then lie walked around to another aisle. No Christian offered him a
Stat. By and by, after ho got tired out standing, he leaned over to a
brother who had his light under a bushel, and ventured to inquire;
** What church is this?**
416 KING 3 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
*' Christ's church, sir — Christ's/' said the church member, impa-
tiently.
" Is he in?'* asked the man, meekly. [Laughter.]
The churchman left his light under the bushel, and went and got the
stranger a seat. He was so mad about it that when he got back to hb
bushel, the light was out. [Laughter.]
How many Christians hero to-night have put out their light?
Many clergymen, instead of making Christ shine, are trying to shine
themselves. Their sermons are not to save sinners, but they are made
to win the praise of men. They read well, but they don't save souls.
The good, old colored sexton in Memphis jumjied up one day^ and
said:
** Brethren, I've been hearing this book preaching for years. Our
pastors don't put the fodder down low enough. I went to see our
l)reacher in his study, this inorning, and he had six books open before
him. I said to him:
^* ^ Brother, if you got one sermon out of six uooks, you are going to
put that fodder up where I can't reach it, and where a great many others
ean't reach it, and we Avill all go in, Sunday morning, hungry, and come
out starving — starving for Christ's i)lain, simple food.*'* [Applause.]
And that's a fact. Every one can reach a thing when it is on the
ground, and as far as I u\n concerned, I believe it is the Christlj way to
iind a common level and stand on that level to 2)reach to the masaes.
And if you see me drop down at all while I am here, you may know that
I am seeking a level and that's all the meaning there is in it at all. If
you see my style don't exactly suit you, and the grammar, and rhetoric
and logic are a little butchered, I am just endeavoring to adapt my style
to my crowd; don't forget that, and I'll find your level before I leave
you. [Laughter.]
I want 11 man to do every thing in earnest.
Jf I see a young lawyer, instead of pouring over Blackstone, spend-
ing his evenings in saloons or ilirting with girls along the street it don't
need the tongue of a prophet to say that fellow will never get but one
case and tlie slieriif will get his client. [Laugiiter.]
I see a young fellow starting out to bo a doctor. I see hiiu loitering
away his time and spending his evenings in parties, and paying no atten-
tion to pliysiology and anatomy and hygiene, and so forth. I turn
around and I can see what you will be. You will hare but one patient,
and the undertaker Avill get him next day, and that will wind up your
practice. [Laughter.]
'i ■ -
SAM JONES. 417
I SCO a preacher starting out. He never looks in a book, never
thinks, never studies; ho is going to open his mouth and let the Lord
fill it. Well, the Lord does fill a fellow's mouth as soon as he opens it,
but lie fills it with air. [fjaughter.] And there's many an old air-gun
going through this country professing to bo a preacher. [Laughter.] I
thiivc listened to some men preaching an hour, and they didn't say one
hi ng in the hour; and I got perfectly interested seeing how the fellow
could dodge every idea in the universe and talk an hour. [Laughter.]
I just watched him. That kind of preaching is worse than book
preaching.
I sec a farmer the first three months of the year, instead of cleaning
out his fence corners and repairing his fences and turning his land and
being just us energetic and active in January as he is in May — instead
of thiit he is loitering around doing nothing. I don't need any tongue
of the prophet to tell how he will come out farming. I have seen him
down South. I Ijavo watched him, and I have told him before he started
in how he would come out, too. Said I: '^ 1*11 tell you what will happen
to you. You'll buy you corn from the West; you put in forty acres to
the old mule;" and said I, '' before the yoar is out the grass will have
your cotton, and tho birds will have your wheat, and the buzzards will
have your mule, and the sheriff will have you [laughter]; and that's
about where you'll wind up." Didn't mean any thing — that's the troa-
blc. [ Ljiughter.]
r>ut, on the otlier hand, when I see a^young lawyer pouring over bis
books (lay uft(>r day, and niglit after night he burns tho midnight oil,
and I see the blood fading from his cheek, and his eyes growing brighter
CM ry day, I don't need tho tongue of tho prophet to toll you there will
be one day a judge of the supreme court; that there will bo one day one
of the finest lawyers that America ever produced.
Von lit nie watcrli a fellow the first three months after he joins the
ehnnli, I can tell you wiiether he means businessor not. I sec him begin
to stay out of his prayer meetings, and begin to neglect his duty, and begin
to tiiink that he has got more religion than ho wants, and he'll run the
rnlc of sn])tra<'tion or (livisi(m through it, instead of the rule of addition,
and I know just about where he'll land at. You are there now. [Laugh-
trr. I Winn 1 in-r a man come into the churcli of Ood Almighty, and
In* feels like ** I'm ;;oing to take every chaiu'c for tho good world, I'm
j^'oin;^ to p't all the good out of every thing that comes my way, or comes
within a mile of me^ or ten miles of me," and I see him do his best, and
at his ])laee, and he is drawing in from all sources in heaven and earth,
and I sec that man as he begins to move forward in his church, and
418 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
begins to bo one of the i^illars in church — I don't mean p-i-1-l-o-'
you've got a great many of this sort of pillars in your charchcB in thi^
town, good old cases for others to crawl in, and lay their heads on, and
go to sleep; that sort of pillows! downy fellowsl [Laughter.]
If I had children who would not read a book, and would not be inter-
ested in any thing that ought to be interesting to intelligent beings, I
would learn them all to play cards. [Laughter.] The little simpletonfl,
I would run them on that line. [Laughter.] If I had a daughter who
was such a simpleton that she had only just sense enough to behave her-
self, I would send her to a hook-nosed French dancing-master [laugh-
ter], and I would tell him to make her graceful, and "if her head is a
failure, I want you to make it up on the feet." [Renewed laughter.]
The law of com pensation, of checks and balances, ought to work here,
ought it not? I would say to the hook-nosed Frenchman: " Bring her
feet up right. She isa failure in her head/* I would learn her to dance
gracefully, and marry her off to some ball-room dude, and buy them a
place away off in the country, and tell them never to come and see me.
When I got anxious to see them, I would take her mother, and go, and
see them. [Laughter.]
Of course, this is irony, for I should never have such children, and
you all know that I am opposed to dancing.
I was sitting in a train some time ago, and the train rolled up to the
station, and just up on the platform, near by, were three ladies. One
of .the ladies said to the other:
'•'Are you going to the ball to-night?"
'*No, I'm not going/' was the reply.
" Oh, I forgot. You Methodists don't go to such places. Pshaw!
I wouldn't be a Methodist; I want to enjoy myself."
" Well," said her friend, *'I am a Methodist — thank God— and I
don't want to go to such places."
''No Methodism for me!" and then the train rolled off, and I felt
like jumping on the top of that train myself and hollering, '^Hurrah for
Methodism!" [Laughter.] And whenever she goes into co-partnership
with ball-rooms and with all of the worldly amusements that embarrass
the Christian and paralyze his power — whenever the Methodist Ohnrch
goes into co-partnership with these things, I will sever my connection
with her forever. And I love her and honor her to-day because she has
stood like a bulwark against these things, and denounced them from
first to last.
*' Oh," but you say, ''I don't believe in Puritanism. I don't belioTQ
in that. I believe the Lord means us to enjoy ourgelvpg 9 little **
*
I
Yes, that is the way I used to talk* «
"Why don't the Lord want us to dance? Tliere ain't no harm in
that/* you say.
I tell you^ I can go to houses — houses morally dark and morally
degrading as perdition itsell— and I can look at that i>oor, lost woman
and ask her^ ''Where did you take your first downward step to death
and hell?"
"At a ball room/' she savs.
There is not a family — I speak it because I believe it — ^there is not a
family in the city of St. Louis where the father who trains his children
for ball rooms and germans can lay his hands upon the head of his
daughter and say : "This daughter will die as pure as an angel/' Yon
can not say it. Other men's daughters as pure^ as lovely as yours> have
been down with the devil's feet on them — and a woman never gets
up when the devil puts his feet on her pncel Submission to Christ —
there is the test.
Imagine Christ dancing.
I never saw a spiritual man in my life who would stand up and ask
me, "Do you think there is any harm in the dance?" Why don't you ask
nic if I think there is any harm in a prayer meeting, or I think there is
any harm in family prayer? You know there ain't. And whenever you
hear a fellow asking if there is any harm in the dance, yon can reply,
"You lying old rascal, you know there is." [Laughter and applause.]
Mr. Jones, turning to the ministers seated behind him, asked, "Why
don't you say Amen?" [Renewed laughter and applause.]
That young man says, "I would join the church, but I love to dance."
That young lady says, "I would join the church but I love to dance.^
Well, young lady, go on. We will say that you go to two hundred
balls — that is a big allowance, ain't it? — and that you dance hundreds of
sets. By and by you die without God and without hope, and down into
the flames of despair you go forever; and as you walk the sulphurous
streets of damnation you can tell them: " I am in hell forever, it is tme,
but I danced four hundred times, I did." [Laughter.] Kow, won't
that be a consolation?
What do you want to dance for, young lady; what use is it to you?
If I had to marry a dozen times — and I am like the Irishman who said
he hoped he would not live long enough to see his wife married again,
[laughter] if I had to marry a dozen times, I would never go to a ball-
room to get my wife. I used to dance with the girls, but when I wanted
to marry I did not go to the ball-room to get my wife. A fellow might
possibly get a good one in the ball-room, but man^ a fellow lui8a%
420 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
[Laugliter.] God gives a man a good wife but ho gets a bad one from
the devil, and he has to go where that devil is to get her. [Benewed
laughter.]
What good does it do you to be able to dance? Take the best girl in
this town after her family is reduced to a fearful crisis by her father^B
business reverses. Now they are poor and that girl must earn a living.
I will introduce her to a dozen of the leading citizens of the town^ and
give her a worthy recommendation in every respect. She is just what
every body would want as a music teacher, as a clerk or in any other
capacity, but I will add as a postscript to the recommendation, ''she is
a first-class dancer," [laughter] and that will knock her out of every
job -she applies for in this world. And so with every ain. And I
declare to you to-night that tlie thing that keeps us away from Gtod and
out of the church, that is the price we put on our soul.
Then there is the man who wants to drink.
He says: '*I would be religious if it w^ere not for so and so,'* and I
never think of this without thinking of an incident in which a husband
sat by his wife at a revival meeting. When the penitents were asked to
come to the altar, he was asked by his wife: ** Come, won't you give
yourself to God?" lie shook his head and went home.
That night she said to her husband, **I saw you were affected. I
wish you had given your heart to God I"
lie said: ** Wife, I cannot be a Christian in the business I am in."
She said: **I know that."
He was a liquor dealer.
And she added: " Jlusbaud, I want you to give up your business and
give your heart to God."
'' Oh, wife, T can't," he said, '*I can't afford it."
"Well, husband," she said, *Miow much do we clear every year on
whisky?"
''We clear 82,000 a year, my darling."
*'But how long, husband, shall we live to run this business?**
''Twenty years, and then we'll have $40,000."
" Forty thousand dollars! Now, my darling husband, if we conld
get $40,000 all in a lump, would you sell ^our soul to hell for that samf
Would you?"
*'Xo, wife," he said. "No, no! no! ! I'll close out my business in
the morning and Til give my heart to God, right now. I would not sell
my soul for four million dollars! " [Applause.]
Christ will save us if we follow Him; God will shield as if we tmst
in Him.
SAM JONm 421
I learned a great lesson in my relations toward God in a little incident
that happened at my own home. We had in our employ a colored serv-
ant girl nursing for us. She was rather a careless, indifferent servant.
I was sitting in the room one morning, just after breakfast, and this girl
walked in and my wife said:
'^ Sally, you can go to your home this morning, and tell your mother
to come over after awhile and I will pay your wages to her. I don't
want you any longer, Sally, you may go.*'
I looked up from my book and the girl stood there, full face toward
my wife, and the tears commenced running down her cheek, and directly
slie turned to my wife and she says:
'' Mrs. Jones, please ma'am, don't turn me off. I know I'm the
poorest servant you ever had, but I don't want to be turned off. Please
ma'am keep me."
I commenced to beg for the poor girl, and said: ''Wife, bear with
her a little while longer." And then I thought to myself: f'lf the
Lord Jesus were to come down this morning and discharge me and tell
nie, ^I don't want you any longer,'! would fall down at His feet and say:
Blessed Savior, don't turn me off. I know I'm the poorest servant you
ever had, but, blessed Christ, keep me in Thy life employ.'"
Oh, blessed Christ! So good to us! So merciful to usi But we
must stand by God if we expect Ilim to stand by us. We must stand as
firm as old Daniel did. They got after Daniel, you know, and said:
*' If you don't stoji prayin' to God and go toprayin' to the king, he'll
^ put you down in the lions' den."
*' Let them do what they please," said Daniel, and down he went on
his knees and the next minute he went. He knew that if he did wrong
he would go to hell; if he did right he*d go to heaven. God went
down with him into the den, and the first thing Daniel knew a big lion
went to slecj) and Daniel stretched himself by his side, and, pillowing
his head on the shaggy mane of the brute, said: "This beats hell." I
choose to serve God, forever, and I stand in no fear of kings. [Laughter.]
Now, don't criticise mei^ I'm doing the best I can. Don't find faalt
because there is an occasional laugh. I don't care what a man does
while I'm skinning him; if he laughs, it is all right. But if yon will
hold while I skin the price of hides will go down, I assure yon of that.
I was getting on a railroad train some months ago in my State, and a
gentleman boarded the train at one of the stations, and, after shaking
haiuls and talking a moment, I asked him the news.
'* Well," he said, ** nothing special, I believe, except I came very
near being killed last night."
«."'*.■ ■*•■«<
SAM JONSa. 4S3
five lines. I say^ *' He didn't think. I will hant him up and beg hia
pardon." I go out on the back porch and there I find little Bob crying
as if his heart would break. I take him up in my arms and say, '^For-
give me, my little pet ; I didn't think.'' And the little one sobs oat :
'' Mamma told me not to bother you^ but I forgot. I ask you to for-
give me."
0, if you want to be received into the inner kingdom, you must
have a converted tongue. 4
Oh, these tongues of ours ! These tongues of ours ! We Methodists
pour the water on, and the Presbyterians sprinkle it on, and the Bap-
tists put us clean under, but I don't care whether you sprinkle, or pour,
or immerse, the tongue comes out as dry as powder. Did you ever see
a baptised tongue? [Laughter.] Say, did you ? [Laughter.] Did
you ever see a tongue that belongs to the church ? You will generally
find the tongue among man's reserved rights. [Laughter.] There '
come in some reservations, and always where there is a reservation the
tongue is retained. The tongue I The tongue ! The tongue I Pam-
bus, one of the middle-age saints, went to his neighbor with a Bible in
his hand and told him, "I want you to read me a verse of Scripture
every day. I can't read, and I want you to read to me." So the neigh-
bor opened the Bible and read these words:
I will take heed to my wuyH that 1 sin not with my tongue.
Painbiis took tlie book out of his hand and walked back honfe, and
about a week after that the neighbor met him, and he said :
*' Pain bus, 1 thought you were to come back and let me reau you a
passage of Scripture every day ?" and Pambus said :
** Do you recollect that verse you read to me the other day ?"
'' Xo/' said the neighbor.
*' Well/' said Pambus, **I will quote it :
I will take heed to my ways than I sin not with my tongue.
'' And/' ho said, '* I never intend to learn another passage of Script-
ure until I learn to live that one."
Oh, me! If every man, woman and child in this house to-night
would go away from here determined to live that passage of Scripture. "
Once in Jerusalem a great crowd — it was 1,800 years and more ago^
as the legend goes, or the allegory — a great crowd was gathered in Jeru-
salem, and they were gathered around a dead dog, and they stood
and looked, and one of them said:
*' That is the ugliest dog I ever saw/' Another said: '^Oh, heis
not only the ugliest dog I ever saw, but I don't believe his old hide is
worth taking off him." Anoiher said: ''Just look how crooked his
424 KINO 8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
legs lire/' And so tliey criticised the poor dog. And directly one
spoke up and said, '* Ain't those the prettiest, pearly white teeth you
ever looked at?'* And they walked off and said, '^That must have been
Jesus of Xazarcth that could have found something good to say al)oat a
dead dog." Oh, me! I like those people that always like to see some-
thing kind in people in their ways and walks of life. As bad as we are
maybe, Jesus will see some thing good in us.
Down South before the war we used to put a nigger on the block
and sell him to the highest bidder. Sometimes he would ran away and
we could not get him on the block, but we would sell him on the run.
'* IIow much for him running away."
Well, brother, when God Almighty turned this world over to Jesus
Christ he turned it over on the run, running away from Ood, running
away to hell and death, and the Lord Jesus Christ came as swift as the
morning light and overtook this old world in her wayward flight, threw
His arms around her and said:
'^ Stop, stop, let us go back to God. Let us go back."
Oh, Jesus Christ, help every man here to say: *^ I will go back. I
have strayed long enough. I will go back now." Will you, brother?
God help every man to say, **Thi8 night I have taken my last step in
the wrong direction, and have turned round." That is just whtit God
wants sinners to do — to turn round— to turn round. Will you to-night
say, " God being my helper, I will stop. I will turn my attention to
Heavenly things and eternal things. I will look afler my soul, if I
starve to death." Will you do that?
Now we are going to dismiss this congregation, and those who wish
to retire can do so, but 1 hope those who are not Christians will reokain,
and if you are a Christian and want to help us, remain with us. Leii ns
make this Friday night a night of preparation for a higher j^nd abetter
life. Let one hundred of us say: " I want to prepare to enter >he
church on Sunday morning." If there is any man interested in his M il
let him stay and talk and pray with us to-night.
.«'.s^. ^^
-A^^ •:.
"MRS. PARTINGTON/
THE AlfBRICAN MB& MALAPROP.
BIOGRAPHY AND RKMINI8CBNCBS.
Benjamin P. Shillaber, bom in New Hampshire, 1814, was a printer at Dover,
New Ilauipshire, in 1830, and in 1835 went to Demerara, Guiana, as a compositor, and
rt'muiued there three years. From 1840 to 1847 he was in the printing office of the
Boston Post, and after that time for three years was connected with the same paper
(-ilitorially. It was at this period that he wrote under the name of "Mrs. Parting*
ton," and gained a reputation as a humorist by the qliaintness of his style and mat-
ter. Between 1850 and 1852 he tried his hand at newspaper proprietorship in the
Pathfinder and Carpet-Bag, but returned to the Poit 1858 56. From 1856 he was foi
ten years one of the editors of the Boston Saturday Evening Qaaette. He has pub
lished •' Rhymes with Reason and Without;" "Poems;'* "Life and Sayings of Blrs.
I Partington;" ** Knitting Work," and other volumes.
No American has caused more delight to his countrymen than
Benjamin P. Shillaber. He is the American " Yellow Plush," but
'riiiickeray's Yellow Plush papers never began to cause the laughter
— innocent laughter, that Mrs. Partington's sayings have.
During the preparation of this book, Mr. Shillaber wrote the fol-
lowing letter to Mr. Bok, which will go down as the most authentic
liistory of his 7i07n deplmne:
}fi/ Dear Mr, Bok: — The beginning of the Partington paragraplis was something
like the loss of Silas Wegg's leg, "in an accident." There was no intention or pre-
in* (litatiou in the matter, and the result was a great surprise to me. It was at a time
\\ Inn steamers twice a month brought news from Europe, and one arrival brought
the ii-.t<'Ih'gence that breadstufTs had advanced in price. This was the occasion for a
tlini line parugniph, which, I think, I ''set up" witliout writing, stating that "Mrs.
P:iri iiiLTton sjiid that it made no difference to her whether tlie price of flour increased
or nut, as she always had to pay just so nuich for half a dollar's worth." The name
was not ( hosen. but it aune with a sudden memory of Sydney Smith's dame who
inopiM-d l)aek the Atlantic when it overflowed into her cottage at Sidmouth. I had
no intention of aught beyond the moment. Flattered by the success of this virgin
effort , which was copied every when*. I tried it again, with like success, and what was
begun in a spoilive moment became a sort of paint d'appui for many things latent In
4»
426 KlNQa OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
my inkstand, until the little one became a thousand. I was surprised to find tfait
Mrs. Partington was u bona fde name, and I regretted that, under the drcumstances,
I had not taken another, but it had grown into public favor, and could not be changed
without being abandoned altogether, and therefore was continued until the affenae
l>ecamo mountuinouH. I justilled it to myself by laying the original blame on Sydney
Smith, to who8(^ assumption I liad merely given "a local liabitation and name "on
tluti side of the water. Uis character, however, said nothing; mine was gamilous, and
that is all the story. B. P. Shiu^abbb.
THE PARTINGTON LECTURE.
Ladies and Gentlemen: — It was with strong emotion of wonder
that Mrs. Partington read in the papers that a new wing was to be
added to the Cambridge Observatory.
^'What upon airth can that be for^ I wonder? I dare say they are
putting the now wing on to take more flights arter comics and such things;
or to look at the new ring of the planet Satan — another link added to
his chain, perhaps, and, gracious knows, he seems to go father than ever
he did before."
She stopped to listen as the sounds of revelry and drunkenness arose
upon the night air; and she glanced from her chamber, over the way,
where a red illuminated lantern denoted * 'Clam Chowder." Why should
she look there just at that moment of her allusion to Satan? What con-
nection could there be, in her mind, between Satan and clam-chowder.'
Nobody was present but Ike, and Isaac slumbered.
Mrs. Partington was in the country one August; and for a whole
month not one drop of rain had fallen. One day she was alowly walking
alonp: the road, with her umbrella over her head, when an old man, who
was mending up a little gap of wall, accosted her, at the same time
depositing a large stone upon the top of the pile.
**Mrs. Partington, what do you think can help this 're drought?"
The old lady looked at him through her spectacles, at the same time
smelling a fern leaf.
^^I think,^\saidshe ina tone of oracular wisdom,'^! think a little
rain would help it as much as anything.^' It was a great thought. The
old gentleman took off his straw hat and wiped his head with his cotton
handkerchief, at the same time saying that he thought so too.
''Does Isaac manifest any taste for poetry, Mrs. Partington?" asked
the schoolmaster's wife, while conversing on the merits of the youthfal
Partington.
The old lady at the time was basting a chicken which her friends had
sent her from the country.
9
I
MRS, PARTINGTON. 427
**0h, year she said, smiling; "he is very partially fond of poultry,
and it always seems as if be can't get enough of it.''
The old spit tnmed by the fire-place in response to her answer, while
the basting was going on.
^'I mean/' said the lady, '^does he show any of the divine afBiatus."
The old lady thought a moment.
''As for the divine flatness, I don't know about it. He's had all the
complaints of children; [laughter] and, when he was a baby, he fell
and broke the cartridge of his nose; but I hardly think he's had this
that you speak of." [Laughter.]
The roasting chicken hissed and spluttered, and Mrs. Partington
basted it again.
''What is the matter with Mrs. Jinks, doctor?" asked Mrs. Parting-
ton as Dr. Bohn passed her house. She had been watching him for half
an hour through a crack in the door, and people who saw the end of a
nose thrust through the crack stopped a moment to look at it.
"She is troubled with varicose veins, madam," replied the doctor,
blandly.
•'Do tell!" cried the old lady. ''Well, that accounts for her very
corse behavior. If one has very corse veins what can you expect? Ah,
we are none of us better than we ought to be and ^"
''Good morning, mem," broke in Dr. Bohn, as he turned away and
the oM lady closed the door.
" Xo better than we ought to be! "
What an original remark on the part of the old lady, and how candid
the admission! The little front entry heard it, and the broad stair that
led to the chamber heard it, and Ike heard it, as he sat in the kitchen
daubing up the old lady's Pembroke table with flour and paste, in an
attempt to make a kite out of a choicely-saved copy of the Puritan
Recorder, "We are no better than we ought to be" — ^generally.
" If there is any place where I like to ransact business in," said Mrs.
Partington, " it is in a bank. There is no beatin' down there. All yon
have to do is to put your bill on the counter and they exonerate it at
once."
"Speaking of intemperance," said the old lady, solemnly, with a
rich emotion in her tone, at the same time bringing her hand, oontain-
ing the snuff she had just brought from the box, down upon her knee,
while Lion, with a violent sneeze, walked away to another part of the
room, "intemperance is a monster with a good many heads, and
creeps into the bosoms of families like any oonda or an alligator, and
destroys its peace and happiness, forever."
428 KINQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
'^Buty thank Heaven/*' she continaed, a ^'new Erie has dawned
apon the world, and soon the hydrant-headed monster will be over-
turned! Isn't it strange that men will put enemies into their months to
steal away their heads?"
''Don't yon regard taking snuff as a yiee?" we asked, innocently.
*'If it is/' she replied, with the same old argument, ''it's so small t
one that Providence won't take no notice of it; and, besides, my oil fac-
tories would miss it so!"
Ah, kind old heart, it was a drunkard's argamenti [Applanae.]
When they were talking about Vesuvius, the old lady said, ^'La me !
Why don't they give it sarsaparilla to cure its eruptions ?" [Laughter.]
The old lady says that she '^intended the concert of the Female Cem-
etery last evening, and some songs were extracted with touching pythag-
oras." She declares ''the whole thing went off like a Pakenham shot,
the young angels sung like syrups," and, during the showers of applause,
she remembered she had forgot her parasol.
When a friend spoke of suffering the agonies of death, the old lady
interrupted her : "La me !" she said, "here I have been snfFering the
bigamies of death for three mortal weeks. First I was seized with a
bleeding phrenology in the left hampshire of the brain, which was
exceeded by a stoppage of the left ventilator of the heart. This gave me
an inflammation in the borax, and now I'm sick with the chloroform mor-
bus. There's no blessing like that of health, particula>rly when yoa're
sick !" [Laughter.]
Speaking of statues, the old lady says she prefers the Venus de Med-
icine to any other statute she knows of.
** Here's Dr. Johnson's Dictionary," said Mrs. Partington, one day,
as she handed it to Ike ; ''study it contentively, and you will gain agreat
deal of inflammation." [Laughter.]
^'Overland roots from India ! " said the old lady, on hearing the
Indian news read. ^' Bless me! " she exclaimed, '^ those must be the roots
they make the Indian meal of ! "
They were talking about the right of suffrage, when Mrs. Partington
overheard them, and remarked:
'^ How these men talk about exercising their right of suflering! Ai
if nobody in the world suffered but themselves! They don^t know of
our sufferings. We poor creturs must suffer and say nothing abont it,
and drink cheap tea, and be troubled with the children and the cows, and
scrub our souls out; and we never say a thing about it* Bnfc a man
comes on regularly once a year, like a Farmer's Almanac, and gramUss
MBS. PABTINQTON, 429
about his sufferings; and it's onjj then jest to choose a goyernor, after
all. These men are hard cretnrs to find out."
This was intended as a lesson to Margaret^ who was working Char-
lotte and Werter, on a blue ground, at her side; but Margaret had her
own idea of the mat^r and remained silent, while Ike yelled and sang:
I wish you a merry Christmas
And a happy New Year,
With your stomach full of money
And your pocket full of beer,
as he skipped into Mrs. Partington's kitchen, where the old dame was
busily engaged in cooking breakfast on Christmas morning.
'^ Don't make such a noise, dear/' said the kind old lady, holding up
her hand: ** You give me a scrutinizing pain in my head, and your young
voice goes through my brain like a scalpel-knife. But what did the
good Santa Cniz put into your stocking, Isaac?" And she looked at him
with such an arch and pleased expression, as he took out of his pocket a
jack-knife and a hum-top painted with gaudy colors! Ike held them up,
joyously; and it was a sight to see the two standing there — she smiling
serenely upon the boy's happiness, and he, grateful in the possession of
his treasures.
''Ah!" said she, with a sigh, '^there's many a house to-day, Isaac,
that Santa Cruz won't visit; and many a poor child will find nothing in
his stocking but his own little foot!"
It might have been a grain of the snuff she took, it might have been
a fleeting mote of the atmosphere; Mrs. Partington's eyes looked humid,
though she smiled upon the boy before her, who stood trying to pull the
cord out of her reticule to spin his new top with.
** People may say what they will about country air being so good for
Vni." said tl>e old lady, '* and how they fat upon it; for my part I shall
always think it is owing to the vittles. Air may do for cammamilerand
other rei>tiles that live on it, but I know that men must have something
substantialer."
Tile old lady was resolute in this opinion, conflict as it might with
freneral notions. She is set in her opinions, very, and, in their expres-
sion, nowise backward.
'* It may he as Solomon says," said she, *'but I have lived at the
pastmaire in a country town all one summer, and I never heard a turtle
siiiL-^ini: in the branches. I sav 1 never heerd it, but mav l>e so too; for
1 have seen Vin in brooks under the tree, where they, perhaps, dropped
oil. I \vi<h ponie of our great naturalists would look into it." With
this wish for iitrht, the old lady lighted her candle and went to bed.
430 KINOa OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPFT.
*^1 can't believe in spiritous knockings/' said Mrs. Partington,
solemnly, as a friend related something he had seen which appeared very
mysterious. '* I can't believe about it ; for I know, if Paul conld come
back, he would envelop himself to me here, and wouldn't make me mn
a mile, only to get a few dry knocks. Strange that the world should be
so superstitious as to believe such a rapsody, or think a sperrit can go
knocking about like a boy in vacation ! I don't believe it, and I don't
know's I conld if that teajK>t there should jump oflf the table right
afore my eyes." She paused; and, through the gloom of approaching
darkness, the determined ex})res8ion of her countenance was apparent. A
slight movement was heard upon the table; and the little black teapot
moved from its position, crawled slowly up the wall and then hung
passively by the side of the ]>rofile of the ancient corporal. The old lady
could not speak, but licld up Iicm* liands in wild amazement, while her
snuff-box fell from her norvless grasp, and rolled along on the sanded
floor. She left tlio room to j)rocure a light; and, as soon as she had
gone, the teapot was lowered by the invisible hand to its original station;
and Ike stepped out from beneatli the table, stowing a large string
away in his pocket and grinning prodigiously.
'^ What a label it is ui^on the character of Boston! " said Mrs. Parting-
ton, as she read a speecli on tlie liquor bill, that reflected on Boston*
** There is no place where benevolence is so aperient i\A here. For my
part, I don't know where so much is done for the suffering; and any body
can see it that (ran read; for how often we see * Free Lunch' in the win-
dows of our humane institutions I [Laughter.] You never see such
things in the country, as much better as they think themselves.
'^ I think," said Mrs. Partington, getting up from the breakfast table,
** I will take a tower, or go upon a discursion. The bill says, if I collect
rightly, that a party is to go to a very plural spot, and to mistake of cold
collection. I hope it won't be so cold as ours was, for the poor last
Sunday; why, there wasn't money efficient to buy a foot of wood for a
restitute widder.
**But there is no knowing how all these things will turn out, till they
take place." [Laugliter.J
Poor old lady ! she Avasn't thinking of this lecture, when she said:
**We shall all come to an end some dav, though wo rni^y never live to
see jt." [Laughter.]
K»
^'"
THE NEW TORIt |
PUBLIC l&
ARV
ABTOK lif*
,*.- .
TlLASNrOUNbATlONl: {
R
_^ 1
^
.;*•
432 KTN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
myself the benefit of the doubt, I believe I'd sooner work half an
hour than go into that yard again. I would ! "
A Cincinnatian, who was about to fail in business, went to Grris-
wold and asked his advice.
"I'll tell you how it is" said the Fat Contributor, "you cam
make a fortune by going into bankruptcy, if your debts are only big
enough. The more you owe, you know, the more you make. Do
you see ? "
"No; I don't really see how I shall make money by losing it,"
said the unfortunate friend. "I owe enough, the Lord knows, if
that's all you want, but how I'm ever to pay even fifty cents on the
dollar and have any thing left to commence over again, is one of
the things I can't see into."
" But you don't want to pay your debts, man. Well, but yon
are a green 'un — that is too good. Pay ! Hal ha f What are you
going to fail fori!"
" Because I can't help it. Kow, what are you laughing about?"
" I'm laughing because you don't seem to understand that you
can't afford to fail in these hard times unless you can make a
snug thing out of it. You mustn't plunge headlong into ruin, you
know, with your eyes shut," said brother Griswold, adjusting his
diamond pin.
"Mustn't I?"
" No ! Never do in the world. Have your wits about yon, and
keep your head clear. Don't let the trouble worry you into fog-
ging your brain with too much drink. Wouldn't do it at alL Keep
you eye peeled and watch for the main chance."
" Yes — yes ; I see. But how, Mr. Griswold — how t "
" Well, first, you must appoint your own receiver, and be sure to
select the stupidest man you can find. Get a man who don't know
enough to drive a cow, and too lazy to add up a column of figures,
even if he knows how. If you can find an ignoramus that oan't
read, so much the better. Make him believe there ain't hardly any
thing to divide, and you can buy him off cheap."
" So, ho, tliat's the way, is it ? Go on, I'm learning fast."
"If the man you get is green enough and not too blamed awk*
ward to stumble onto the true state of things acidentally, you wonH
have a bit of trouble. Divide with him right on the st^urt, and—*"
" But the creditors — what are they to do?"
THE FAT OONTRIBUTOB. 488
'^Them? The creditors ! Oh! nevermind them. You just take
care of yourself. You can't take care of everybody when you fail ;
but take care of yourself, my boy, and if you fail often enough
you'll die a millionaire. I've tried it myself, you know. Look at
nie ! Failed eight times, and now I'm president of two savings
banks, and to-morrow I'm going to endow a theological seminary."
And Brother Griswold consulted his magnificent stem-winder,
and said it was about time to go in and join Elder Mines and Dea-
con Skinner to arrange about the $4,000 which the church had lent
him for safe-keeping.
THE FAT CONTfilBUTOB'S LECTURE.
HIS PHILOSOPHICAL DISQUISITION ON INJUN MEAL.
Ladies and Gentlemen :— My subject is Injun Meal. My lecture is a
scientific treatise on the American Indian. I shall treat the Indian
fairly. I shall not treat him so often as he would like, but I will treat
him honestly and scientifically, with no humor or levity.
It is comparatively but a few years ago that this vast continent, now
resonant with the hum of commerce and manufactures, and radiant in
the garb of civilization, was one vast forest in which the Indian ruled
supreme. But the Indian has been compelled to retire. I put it as
mildly as possible, out of consideration for the feelings of any sensitive
siiva^e who may be in this assembly to-night [laughter] — to retire before
the onward march of civilization. "He has been compelled,'' in the
language of an eloquent Indian orator, *'to land on other lands, and to
climb — other climes'' — and I might add, to live — on other liver ! Once
Ik- wore the white man's scalp at his belt, but now the white man 'belts
liim over the seal]).' lie has followed upon the scent of the red man,
until the red man luisn't a red cent.
In the language of the psalmist:
OiiiX' hert' the lone Indian took his delights
Fished, fit and bled;
Now most of the inhabitantH is whites
With narv red.
The decline of the American Indian, so sudden as to presage his early
and final extinction^ was due to a combination of causes which I nirill not
stop to enumerate. They are too well known. There was one^ however,
to whirh I must allude, more potent than all the rest. Thefwhite man
iuiroduced it^ at the same time that he introduced gunpowder, but it has
434 KING 3 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
proved a more potent destroyer than the white man's bullet. This dread*
fill scourge, this fearful destroyer of the Indians^ whose victims oat-
number those destroyed by pestilence and war combined, waa [here
Mr. Griswokl would pause in a perplexed way, striving to recall the name,
tlien ho would draw a piece of paper from his pocket, adjust his eye-
glasses and scan it carefully to make sure of no mistake] whisky I
[Laughter.] That was it. Whisky destroyed the Indians. I put it
down so that I would remember it. [Laughter.] And any man will
remember it if he puts enough of it down. [Laughter.]
The Indians took to whisky with a readiness that can hardly be
accounted for when we consider how many years they had been without
it. In an incredibly brief period of time after the discovery of America
by Columbus, every savage — of any pretentions whatsoever — had whisky
on his sideboard and in his wine cellar. [Laughter.]
"Who?'' said Logan, in that eloquent and touching speech of his,
delivered before one of the early Wasiiingtonian societies, at Washington,
'*who ever entered Logan's cabin hungry — and didn't get a drink!"
The Indians were not given to poetry. The most of the poetry writ-
tcMi by the Indians has been found, upon careful examination, to have-
been comi)(>8ed by white people. [Laughter.] I have written some
very beautiful Indian poetry myself. There was a period in my life
when I didn't H(M?ni to think any thing of throwing off a poem — and the
public didn't seem to think any thing of it, either! [Laughter.]
Some years ago, while editing a paper in the far West, I received
some verses Avritten by the Avidow of a celebrated Indian killer, eulogiz-
ing her deceased husband, Avith a request to copy. The first verse, I
remember, ran like this — the other verses walked. [Laughter]:
My hnsbiind he was galliant,
My husband he was gay,
And when he took a warlike stand
The Injuns nin'd away,
lie laiii^h'd a laugh of scornful wrath
To s<;e the cowards flee
With their high, their low, their —
Puni-a-diddle, ripa-tog-a —
Rally-goggle, juni-lM)-ree! [Laugliter.]
There were ninety-five verses in all, and each verse had a like satis-
factory termination.
The Indian ladies were not of a literary turn of mind. They didn't
(•;ire to vote. Not being literary there were no blue stockings among
ihoni. In fact very few stockings— of any color whatsoever. They
THB FAT OONTRIBUTOB. 486
were not passionately fond of dress. There is no instance on record
where a business Injun — a thorough business Injun — has been compelled
to make an assignment^ on account of his wife^s extravagance in dress.
[Laughter.]
The diversions of the Indians were of the most innocent and cheerful
description. They consisted principally in running the gauntlet and
burning gentlemen at the stake. I thinks in the latter case, I should
prefer to have my steak done as rare as possible.
Running the gauntlet is an ingenious combination of the gymnastic,
calisthenic and acrobatic exercises, intensified by the exciting phases of
the chase, which run quite through it. The Indians form two lines,
between which the culprit is to run, and jocosely brandish sled stakes,
cleavers, plow-handles, bedstead wrenches, cistern poles — and other
stuffed clubs, the judicious exercise of which is calculated to produce
the highest muscular development, while their application on the gentle-
man under treatment has the most exhilarating effect.
The Indians had many interesting traditions ; one in particular I
recall. There was once an adventurous young Indian — a sort of copper-
colored Christopher Columbus — who, before the discovery of America,
wanted to get up an expedition to discover Europe. [Laughter.] fie
told the Indians that way across that great body of salt water was an
old world, and assured them that if they didn't discover it pretty soon,
some one Avould come over from there and discover them. And if he
Lad succeeded in his plan, the whole current of emigration would have
turned from America to Europe. [Laughter.] Indians would have
froiie over there, planted colonies and driven out the white men. [Ap-
plaiLse.J
lie claimed, this Indian did, that by taking a Cunard steamer and
sailing many days — in those times ocean steamers only sailed days; they
tied up nights — he would reach the old world, to the perpetual confusion
of Columbus.
lie asked, in case they did not open communication with Europe,
how they could expect to have the luxuries of the East here — such as the
cholera — and the rinderpest ? He advised, among other things, that a
ship-load of Indian missionaries accompany the expedition, for the pur-
))ose of introducing the principles of Indian morality in sections of the
old world corrupted by Eastern civilization.
In the midst of this harangue, news was telegraphed to the Indians
that Columbus had come [laughter] and the red man's expedition to dis-
cover Europe came to an untimely end. [Applause.]
/
/
•^/- /.
'-'■V
"BILL ARP.
ft
BIOGRAPHY AND BEMINI8CSNCE8. i
The name of Major Chas. H. Smith, the great Southern humorlgt, whoae nmn
deplume is *' Bill Arp," is familiar in every Southern household. Ho was bom in
Gwinnett county, Georgia, in 1B26. His father came to Savannah, from Haaaachu-
setts and his mother was a South Carolinian. Major Smith graduated at Athens
uuiverHity, Gkiorgia; was luimitted to the bar in 1860, and then gave Ids services to the
State in the lute war. During the war the humorist wrote his first letter from the
camp in Virginia, afterwards published by G. W. Carleton. They were charming
bits of humor, and Wattcrson's Courier-Journal said of his letter to Artemus Ward In
1805 : "It Ls the first chirp of any bird after the surrender, and gives relief and hope
to thousands of drooping hearts/*
Major Smith fought bravely on the Southern side, and wrote as he shot, but
when the surrender came he ran up the old flag from the gable of his Cartenvllk*
puhu house, dropped his swoni, seized the plantation hoe and led a battelioa of
lu'irnx^ iu the field. He is reconstructed now. and no man loves the republic more
than he.
The whole life of '^ Bill Arp " has been humorous, and no man
will stop hard work quicker and more cheerfully than he to hear a
good joke.
Whf^n I asked him one day if he really ever killed nmny Yankees,
he said:
** Well, 1 don't want to boast about myself, but I killed as many
of them as they did of me."
Speaking of pensions one day, Mr. Arp said:
*• Every Yankee soldier ought to have a pension.**
'* lUit tliey were not all injured in the army, were they!" I
askod.
**V(?s, they all did so much hard lying about us poor rebels that
th«»v strained their consciences."
ft
r>ill Arp tolls a good story of an occurrence in New York when
he came here to lecture in Chickering IlalL He said he was standing
437
438 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PVLPTT.
on the steps of the Astor House, one afternoon, with a frienii, whoi
a man with a decidedly militjary bearing hobbled up.
lie greeted my friend as he passed.
" That's a fine soldierly lookin g chap," I said.
" Yes; he's a veteran — Colonel Jones, of the G. A. R."
"Did he lose his leg on the battlefield?"
" Yes ; at Gettvsburor."
" Ah! Kepelling Pickett's charge, I suppose."
" No ; a monument fell on it."
They tell this story in Eome, Georgia, about the Major. They
say that in the summer of 1803, ''Bill Arp" was in the Richmoiid
hospital. The hospital was crowded with sick and dying soldiers
and the Richmond ladies visited it daily, carrying with them deli-
cacies of every kind, and did all they could to cheer and comfort
the suffering. On one occasion a pretty miss of sixteen was dis-
tributing flowers and speaking gentle words of encouragement to
th(;se around her, when she overheard a soldier exclaim: "Oh, mj
Lord !''
It was ''Bill Arp."
Stepping to his bedside to rebuke him for his profanity, she
remarked: ^'Didn't I hear you call upon the name of the Lord! I
am one of His daughters. Is there any thing I can ask Him for
you {
Looking up into her bright, sweet face, Bill replied: " I don't
know but you could do something for me if I wasn't married."
" Well,"^' said she, "what is it?"
liaising his eyes to hers and extending his hand, he said: "As
you are a daught<jr of the Lord, if I wasn't married, Td get you to
ask llini if He wouldn't make me His son-in-law.**
Major Andrews, a Yankee captain, was telling some jolly Bebs
in Go(^rgia about his experience at Bull Kun.
'• Thu only time that I ever really felt ashamed in my life was in
that Bull Ilun battle/"* said the major. " My horse fell nnder me,
and I was obliged to ride an army mule during the rest of the
enrairemcnt, and he iinallv carried me clear into the rebel lines."
'• Yes, I remember the incident well," said "Bill Arp,'* who was
stand in<r bv, " I found that mule.with a U. S. brand on him the next
dav after the battle."
BILL ARP. 489
4
I
" You did, really?" said the major, hardly expecting to be corrob-
orated so promptly. "Where did you find him?" asked the major.
Bill saw that there was a door wide open as he replied, "Stone
dead beliind a rail fence."
" Shot?"
'' No ; mortification."
Bill Arp is such a good citizen now, and so loyal to the republic,
tliat you would hardly believe how zealous he was for the Confed-
eracv, in '62.
A friend of mine, Major Munson, had charge of the Dalton dis-
trict, in Georgia, when the humorist surrendered. It was a hard
thing for him to do it, and it took a week or two to come down to
it, but he finally laid down his sword. As Bill delights to tell good
stories on the Yankees, I can not resist teUing the story of his final
surrender, as Major Munson gave it to me. Of course the major
])ut^ in the Southern dialect a little stronger than Bill uses it now,
but the reader must remember that when the incident occurred, Bill
was still unreconstructed :
'' Most of the ^ Con feds' came in very quietly," said the major,
" and seemed glad to have the thing settled, but once in a wbUe I
struck a man who hated to come under. One day a big, handsome
man with tangled hair, and with Virginia red mud on his boots,
came in to talk about surrendering. It was Bill Arp.
"'Dog on it, sir,' ho began in the Georgia dialect, 'I have come
in, sir, to see what terms can be secured in case I surrender.'
'" Haven't you surrendered yet?' I inquired.
''* No, sir! Not by a dog-on sight! I said I'd die in the last
ditch, and I've kept my word.'
'* ' Whose company did you belong to?'
" ' Belong ! Belong ! Thunderation 1 I didn't belong to any one's
company! Why, sir, I fought on my own hook.'
*** Where was it?'
"'No matter, sir; no matter. I can't be crushed. I can be
insulted, but not crushed. Good day, sir. I'll seethe United States
\\ eop tears of blood before I'll surrender. Haven't a card, but my
name is Arp — Colonel Bill Arp.'
^* lie went oflf, but in about a week he returned and began :
" ' As the impression seems to be general that the Southern Con-
fe<h'racy has been crushed, I called to see what terms would be
granted me in case I concluded to lay down my sword.'
440 KTNGF^ OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
** ' Unconditional surrender,' I briefly replied.
" ' Then, dog on it, sir, I'll never lay it down while life is left
The cause is lost, but principle remains. You can inform General
Sheridan that Bill Arp refuses to surrender.'
" Colonel Arp returned two weeks later. He seemed to have bad
a hard lime of it, as his uniform was in rags and his pockets empty.
" ' Look a-here. Captain,' he said as he came in, * I don^t want to
prolong this bloody strife, but am fo'ced to do so by honor. If
accorded reasonable terms I might surrender. What do you say?'
" ' The same as before.'
" 'Then you are determined to grind us to powder, eh ? Sooner
than submit Dl shed the rest of my blood ! Send on your armies,
Captain — I am ready for 'em ! '
" Just a week from that day. Colonel Arp came in again, said he'd
like to surrender, drew his rations with the rest, and went oflf in
great good humor to his Cartersville farm."
BILL ARP'S LECTUEE!
Ladies and (ientlemen : — Bill Arp, from whom I got mjnom deplume
an<l Big John were samples of the rough, uncultured men, in the uewly
Reltled country of North Georgia and North Alabama. Every commnnitj
liiid such men. They constituted a large class among the backwoodsmen
of the South, from thirty to forty years ago. They were generally poor
and uneducated, and they enjoyed life more than they enjoyed money.
Tliey were sociahh* and they were kind. When one was sick they nursed
him ; when he died, they dug his grave and buried him, and that was
the end of the chapter. As the Scriptures say of the old patriarchs,
**And Jarod lived to be 800 years old and he died." There is no other
epita])h or obituary.
A little farther north are the simple mountaineers of East Tennessee,
and tlioir kindness and generosity is only exceeded by their poverty.
One day Eli Perkins says ho was riding up along the foot of the Camber-
land mountains in East Tennessee, when he met the typical £«ft
Tennesscan and the following dialogue ensued:
'* Which Avay istlie county seat ?■' asked Eli :
** I <lidn't know/' she said, with a look of wonderment, "that the
county had any seat." [Laugliter.]
*' Whai is the population of your county ?"
BILL ARP. 441
•
'' I dun no/^ said the old lady^ chewing her snuff stick, '' I reckon it's
up in Kentucky." [Laughter.]
A mile farther on, the same writer met one of those smoke-colored
Tennesseans and his wife. Their sole possessions seemed to be a brindle
dog and a snuff stick.
*' Got any whisky about yer P'' asked the old clay-eater.
^'Whisky is a deceitful, dangerous and nnhealthful drink/' said Eli,
"Fm sorry to hear you ask for it."
** Whisky !!" said the old Tennessean, *'why, whisky stranger, it's
the best drink in the world. That's what saved Bill Fellers' Jife."
'^ But Bill Fellers is dead^-died five years ago, "said a by-stander.
" That's what killed him — didn't drink any whisky. Poor Bill, he
never knew what killed him. How he must have suffered." [Laughter.]^
Then there was a middle class, who owned and worked their own farms
and built churches and jails like civilized people, and filled them with
their best citizens. They were good Methodists and Baptists, and obeyed
the law — as Webster used to'say, re-spec-ta-ble cit-i-z-e-n-s !
But there was still another class that more signally marked the people
and the history of the South — a class of more ambition and higher calt-
ure. The aristocracy of the South was, before the war, mainly an aristoc-
racy of dominion. The control of servants or employes is naturally
elevating and ennobling, much more so than the mere possession of other
property. The Scriptures always mention the number of servants, when
speaking of a patriarch's consequence in the land. This kind of aristoc-
ra(;y Lrcu^bt with it culture and dignity of bearing. Dominion dignifies
a man just as H did in the days of the centurion who said, *' I say unto
this man go, an 1 he goeth, and to another come, and he cometh."
Dominion is the p*:^<^ of a man — dominion over something. A negro is
proud if he owns a po6>nim dog, and can make him come and go at his
])leasure. A poor man is proud if lie owns a horse and a cow and some
razor-back hogs. The thrifty farmer is proud if he owns some bottom
land and a good horse and top buggy, and can take the lead in his country
church and country politics. But the old Anglo-Saxon stock aspires to
a higher degree of mastery. They glory in owning men, and it makes
l)ut little (lifTerence whether the men are their dependents or their slaves.
The glory is all the same if they have them in their power. Wealthy
rorporat ions and railroad kings and princely planters have dominion over
their employes, and regulate them at their pleasure. It is not a dominion
in law, but is almost absolute in fjict, and there is nothing wrong or oppress-
ive about it when it is humanely exercised. In fact, it is generally an
agreeable relation between the poor laborer and the rich employer. An
442 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
humble, poor man, with a lot of little children coming on, loves to lean
upon a generous landlord^ and the landlord is proud of the poor man's
homage.
The genuine Bill Arp used to say he had rather belong to Col. John-
son than be free^ for he had lived on the Colonel's land for twenty yean,
and his wife and children have never suffered, crop or no crop; for the
Colonel's wife threw away enough to support them^and they were alwaji
nigh enough to pick it up.
He was asked one day how he was going to vote^ and replied : " I don't
know until I ax Colonel Johnson^ and I don't reckon he can tell me, till
he sees Judge Underwood, and maybe Underwood won't know till he
hears from Alek Stephens but who in the dickens tells little Alek how
to vote ril be dogged if I know."
Those simple people had their courtings and matings. They had
their coon hunts and country parties^ that the aristocracy farther Sonth
knew nothing about. They used to have a unique kissing game up there
in the mountains that they still keep up o^er in East Tennessee.
This is the way they practiced it:
A lot of big-limbed, powerful young men and apple-cheeked, buxom
girls, gather and select one of their number as master of ceremonies.
He takes his station in the center of the room, while the rest pair off
and parade around him. Suddenly one young woman will throw up her
hands and sav :
" I'm si-pinin.'' [Laughter.]
The master of ceremonies takes it up and the following dialogue and
interlocution takes place :
'* Miss Arabella Jane Apthorp says she's a-pinin. What is Miss Ara-
bella Jane Apthorp a-pining fur?"
*'I'm a-pinin' fur a sweet kiss/'
*'Miss Arabella Jane Apthorp says she's a-pinin' fura sweet kiss.
Who is Miss Arabella ^-axiq Apthorp a-pinin' fur a sweet kiss from.**
* 'I'm a-pinin' fur a sweet kiss frum Mr. William Arp/' (Blushes,
convulsive giggles and confusion on the part of Miss Arabella Jane Ap-
thorp at this forced confession.) Mr. William Arp now walks up man-
fully and relieves tlie fair Arabella's pinin' by a smack which sounds
like a three-year old steer drawing his hoof out of the mud. [Laughter.]
Then a young man will be taken with a sudden and unaccountable
pinin', which after the usual exchange of questions and volunteered
information, reveals the name of the maiden who causes the gnawin'and
j>inin'. She coyly retreats out doors, only to be chastnl, overtaken, cap-
tured and forcibly compelled to relieve her captor's distress*
BILL ARP. 443
At one of these entertainments which it was the narrator's fortune
to attend, there was a remarkably beaatifal yonng woman, who had been
married about a month. Her husband was present, a huge, beetle-browed,
black-eyed young mountaineer, with a fist like a ham. The boys fought
shy of the bride for fear of incurring the anger of her hulking spouse.
The game went on for some time, when symptoms of irritation developed
in the giant. Striding into the middle of the room, he said :
" My wife is ez pooty, 'n' ez nice, 'n' sweet ez any gyurl hyah. You
uns has known her all her life. This game hez been a-goin' on half an
hour, an' nobody has pined fur her onct. Ef some one doesn't pine fur
her pooty soon, thar will be trouble." [Laughter.]
She was the belle of the ball after that. Every body pined for her.
[Laughter.]
The dominion of the old aristocracy of the South was not over their
own race, as it was at the North, but over another, and it was absolute
both in law and fact ;
Hence it naturally grew into an oligarchy of slave-owners, and the'
poorer whites were kept under the ban. There was aline of social oaste
between them, and it was widening into a gulf, for the poor white man
could not compete with slave labor, any more than the farmer or
mechanic can now compete with convict labor, in the hands of lessees.
There are but a thousand or so of convicts in the State of Oeorgia, and
this does not amount to an oppression; but there were two hundred
thousand slaves, and the poor Avhite had but little chance to rise with
Riich formidable foes. This kind of slave aristocracy gave dignity and
leisure to the rich ; and Solomon says, that in leisure there is wisdom ;
and 80 these men became our statesmen and jurists and law-makers, and.
they were shining lights in the councils of the nation ; but it was an
aristocracy that waa exclusive, and it shut out and overshadowed the
masses of the common people, like a broad spreading oak overshadows
and withers the undergrowth beneath it.
Rnt now a chan<?e has come! There are only two general classes of
people at the South— those who have seen better days and those who
haven't. The first class used to ride and drive, but most of them now
take it a-foot or stay at home. Seventy-five per cent of them are the
families of old Henry Clay AVhigs. Thirty-fivc years ago they were the
patrons of hicfh-sehools and eolleprcs, and stocked the learned professions
will) an annual prop of hiffh-Rtrunjr graduates, who swore by Henry
nay and Fillmore and Stephens and Toombs and John I Jell and the
Code of Honor. They were proud of their birth and lineage, their
wealth and culture, and when party spirit ran high and fierce^ they
bawded together against the pretensions of the stniggling democracy.
444 KIXOS OF THE PLATFORM AKD PULPIT.
When I was a young man, a Whig girl deemed it an act of amiable
condescension to go to a party with a Democratic boy. But the wear and
tear of tlie war, the loss of their slaves, and a mortgage or two to lif t^broke
most of these old families up, though it didn't break down their family
pride. They couldn't stand it like the Democrats, who liTed in log
cabins, and wore wool hats and copperas breeches.
I speak with freedom of the old Georgia democracy, for I was one of
them. The wealth and the refinement of the State was in the main cen-
tered in that party known as the old-line Whigs. Out of 160 students in
our State university, thirty-five years ago, 130 of them were the sons of
Whigs. I felt politically lonesome in their society, and was jnst going
over to the Whig party, Avhen I fell in love with a little Whig angel who
was flying around. [Laughter.] This hurried me np, and I was jast
about to go over to that party, Avhen suddenly the party came over to
me. I don't know yet whether that political somersault lifted me np or
pulled the little angel down — but I do know she wouldn't have me, and
at last I mated with a Democratic seraph who had either more pity or
less discrimination. She took me, and she's got me yet; she snrren*
dered, but I am the prisoner. [Laughter.]
These grand old gentlemen of the olden time were the pioneers in all
the great enterprises of their day. They sowed the seed and we are
reaping the harvest. They planted the trees and we are reaping the
fruit. Tliey laid the foundations of the proud structure of our Common-
wealth, and we have built upon it. My good old father took t5,000of
stock in tlio (Georgia railroad before it was built. He kept it for twelve
years witliout a dividend, and Avhen financial embarrassment overtook
him, the st()(?k was down at its lowest point, and he sold it to Jadge
Ilutchins at !??27 a sliare. There was a gloom over the family that night,
but I tried to diRi)erse it, for I told them that I had just made a matri-
monial arrangement with the judge's daughter, [laughter] and maybe
the stock matter would come out all right; and it did. I got it all back
for nothing, and the judge^s lovely daughter to boot, and it was the best
trade I ever made in mv life.
Most of these old families are poor, but they are proud. They are
highly respected for their manners and their culture. They are
looked upon as good stock, and thoroughbred, but withdrawn from the
turf. Their daughters carry a high head and a flashing eye, stand up
square on their pastern joints, and chafe under the bit. They come just
as nigh living as they used to as they jmssibly can. They dress neatly in
})lain clothes, wear starched collars and corsets, and a perfumed hand-
kerchief. They do up their hair in the fashion, take Godey's Lady's Book
\ V— _ J
BILL ARP. 445
or somebody's bazar. If they are able to hire a domestic^ the darky
finds out in two minutes that free niggers don't rank any higher in that
family than slaves used to.
The negroes who know their antecedents have the highest respect
for them^ and will say Mas' William or Mies Julia with the same defer-
ence as in former days. One would hardly learn from their genera]
deportment that they cleaned up the house^ made up the beds, washed
the dishes, did their own sewing and gave music lessons — in fact, did
most everything but wash the family clothes. They won't do that. Fve
known them to milk and churn, and sweep the back yard, and scour
the brass, but I've never seen one of them bent over the wash-tub yet,
and I hope I never will. I don't like to see any one reduced below
their position, especially if they were bom and raised to it. In the good
old times their rich and patriarchal fathers lived like Abraham, Jacob
and Job. They felt like they were running an unlimited monarchy on
a limited scale. When a white child was born, it was ten dollars out of
pocket, but a little nigger was a hundred dollars in, and got fifty dollars
a year better for twenty years to come.
The economy of the old plantation was the economy of waste. Two
servants to one white person in slave times was considered moderate and
reasonable. In a family of eight or ten — with numerous visitors and some
poor kin — there were generally a head cook and her assistant, a chamber-
maid, a seamstress, a maid or nurse for every daughter and a little nig
for every son, whose business it waste trot around after him and hunt up
mischief. Then there was the stableman and carriage driver and the
gardener and the dairy woman, and two little darkies to drive up the
cows and keep the calves ofT while the milking was going on. Besides
these there were generally half a dozen little chaps crawling around or
picking up chips, and you could hear them bawling and squalling all the
day long, as their mothers mauled them and spanked them for some-
thing or for nothing with equal ferocity. This was the paradise of Dixie.
The masters were happy, and so were the slaves.
But the good old plantation times are gone — the times when these
old family servants felt an affectionate abiding interest in the family,
when our good mothers nursed their sick and old helpless ones, and
their good niothers waited so kindly upon their "mistis," as they called
her. and took (\ire of the little children by day and by night.
Our old black nianiniy was mighty dear to us children, and we loved
her. for she was always doing something to please ua, and she screened
us from many a whipping. It would seem an unnatural wonder, but
446 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
nevertheless it is true, that these faithful old domestics loyed their mai-
tcr s children better than their own^ and they showed it in nnmberlw
ways without any hypocrisy. Our children frolicked with theirs^ and
all played together by day and hunted together by night, and it beat the
Arabian Nights to go to the old darky^s cabin of a winter night and
hear him tell of ghosts and witches and jack-oMantems and wild cati
and graveyards, and we would listen with faith and admiration nntil we
didn't dare look around, and wouldn't have gone back to the big house
alone for a world full of gold.
Bonaparte said that all men were cowards at night, but I reckon it
was these old niggers that made us so, and we have hardly recovered
from it yet.
When 1 used to go a-courting I had to pass a graveyard in the
suburbs of the little village, and it was a test of my devotion that I
braved its terrors on the darkest night and set at defiance the wander-
ing spirits that haunted my i)ath. Mrs. Arp appreciated it then, for
she would follow me to the door when I left, and anxiously listen to
my retiring footsteps. Rut now she declares she could hear me mnning
up that hill by the graveyard like a fast-trotting pony on a shell-road.
It was a blessed privilege to the boys of that day to go along with
the cotton wagons to Augusta, or to Macon or Columbus, and camp out
at night and hear the trusty old wagoners tell their wonderful advent-
ures, and it was a glorions time when they got back home again, and
brought sugar and coffee and molasses and had shoes all roand for both
white and black, and the little wooden measures in them, with the
names written upon every one.
They had genuine corn shuckings in those days, and corn songs that
were honest, and sung with a will that beat a camp-meeting choms and
they had Ohrisiinas, too, for white folks and black folks. Little red
ijiiawls and bandanas and jackknives and jews-harps and tobacco
and old-fashioned ])ipe8 were laid uj) for the family servants, who
always managed to slip up about break of day with a whisper of "Chri«t-
masgif " before the family were fairly awake.
Then how J remember how we all used to scream at the quarrels the
darkies had. They were always so fierce— their eyes would snap fire
so, and then it would all die out in smoke.
There had been some hard words between Julius and Moses on sev-
tM'al oe(*asi()ns, hut one da}' the collision came; Julius went round to the
kitchen iind sj)ied Moses talking to his girl. An awful jealousy filled
his whole being and he began:
*^ Look heah, boy; Fze dun got my eyeball on you, an* de fust thing
you know Til pound ye to squash! " [Laughter, J
J i
BILL ARP. 447
"Shoo! Does yon know who you is conversin' widP*' dcmandcil
Moses. Doan' you talk to me dat way, black man/'
"Who's black man?"
" You is."
" You was a liah, sah! "
"So was you!"
" Look out, boy! A feller dun called me liah one time, an' de
county had to bury him." ,
" An' you look out fur me, black man. I'ze mighty hard to wake
up. but when I gits aroused I was pizen all de way frew." [Laughter.]
" Shoo! I jist want to say to you dat de las' fight I was in it took
eight men to hold me. Doan' you git me mad, boy; doan'you doit."
" Bum! I dass put my hand right on yo' shoulder."
" An' I dass put my hand on yours."
" Now what yo' gwine ter do?"
** Now what yo' gwine ter do?"
"Shoo!''
"Shoo!" [Laughter.]
And after standing in defiance for a moment, ^ach backed slowly
away, and went about his business, to renew the "defi" at the first
opportunity, and always with the same result.
Hut it's all over now — and slaves and masters aire gone, and the new
South has come! Like Job of old, these proud old masters have all
beon put upon trial. They lost their noble sons in the army, and their
property soon after. The extent of their afflictions no one will ever
know, for tlie lieart knoweth its own bitterness, but they have long
since leiiriied how to suffer and be strong.
1 have now in mind a proud old family, living in quiet obscurity —
the children of one of (veorgia's noblest governors, a statesman of
njitioiml reputation. They are poor, but they are not subdued. Their
c liildrcn work in the field and milk the cows and chop the firewood, but
th(»y liMve never forgotten or dishonored their grand old ancestor, from
whom they sprung. I recall another one who, forty-five years ago,
rcprcsontrd us in the National Congress — who was for many years almost
a monarch in his ruk^ over Iiundreds of employes, and whose draft was
honored for thousands of dollars. With tottering gait and trembling
linLTirs lie now i>ar<(ains for a nickel's worth of soda, but still is grand and
noi)h.» in his poverty. Always cheerful, he welcomes those who visit him
with^he same kindness and dignity which characterized him in his better
tlay
448 KINGS OF THE PL A TFORM AND PULPIT.
I believe the day of prosperity is coming back, and the childxen d
the present generation will yet reap an inestimable blessiiig from tlie
great calamity.
'' Hard indeed was the contest for freedom and the straggle for inde-
pendence/' but harder still has been the struggle of these old famillN
to live up to the good old style with nothing hardly to live upon. Societ?
is exacting, and then there were the long-indulged habits of eleganoeand
ease which are hard to be broken. The young can soon learn to serft
themselves, but the middle-aged and old found it no labor of love to b^in
life anew on an humbler scale.
What a change it was to the refined and dignified housewife when the
chambermaid withdrew and set up for herself, and the good old cook,
who had grown fat and greasy with service, departed from the old home-
stead in search of freedom, and the good lady, who was well versed in
the theory of cooking, lu«l to take her first lesson in its practice. The
times have wonderfully changed since then — some things for better
some for worse.
The grand old aristocracy is passing away. Some of them escaped
the general wreck that followed the war, and have illustrated by their
(jnergy and liberality the doctrine of the survival of the fittest bat
their name is not legion.
A new and hardier stock has come to the front — that class^ which
prior to the war, was under a cloud, and are now seeing their better
(lavs.
The pendulum has swung to the other side. The results of the war
made a new South, and made an opening for them and developed their
(jnergies. With no high degree of culture, they have nevertheless
[)roved equal to the struggle up the rough hill of life, and now play an
important part in running the financial machine. Their practical
(Miergy has been followed by thrift and a general recuperation of wasted
tiekls and fenceless farms and decayed houses. They have proved to
bo our best farmers and most prosperous merchants and mechanics.
They now constitute the solid men of the State, and have contributed
largely to the building up of our schools and churches, our factories and
railroads, and the development of our mineral resources. They are
sdirewd and practical and not afraid of work.
The two little ragged brothers who sold peanuts in Rome in 1860
are now her leading and most wealthy merchants. Two young men who
then clerked for a meager salary are now among the merchant princes
of Atlanta. These are but types of the modern self-made Southerner
a class who form the most striking contrast to the stately dignity and
'....■\f\
BILL ARP. 449
aristocratic repose of the grand old patriarohs and statesmen, whose
beautiful homes and long lines of negro houses, adorned the hills and
groves of the South some thirty years ago.
But business is business now, and we must keep up with it or get run
over and be cruslied and forgotten. The only apprehension about this
modern class, is the disposition of some of them in our cities to place their
children as far above a safe and substantial social footing as they them-
selves used to be below it — a disposition to assume an aristocracy that will
not stand the test of time, much less of misfortune. They have seen
what a power gold exerts over the human family, and are too much
inclined to use it for selfish purposes. They will spoil their children with
money and luxury, and then in another generation the pendulum will
swing back again. Even the religion of some of them is gilded with a
golden gloss and made a matter of business calculation. Their practi-
cal views in tliis regard remind me of a yenerable and learned French-
man, who said to a la(fy not long ago, ''Madam, a man must join ze
church in zis countree to have ze privilege of good society yile lie lives,
and insure a Christian burial ven he die. I yas a Boman Catholic at
home, but I tinks I vill join ze Episcopal Church very soon ; I like him
ze pest." Before she met him again he had joined the Baptist church.
" I thought you liked the Episcopal the best ?'' said she.
'* I does, madam, but ven I ask ze cashier how much he charge me
by ze year, he say he reckon about a hundred dollars. Then I ask the
Presbyterian cashier, and he tink about fifty dollars, and ze Methodist
cashier say about twenty-five — but ze Baptist cashier look at my old
coat, and say ten dollar is enough for me, so I make ze contract and
join heem."
A few days after, the venerable doctor was found to be in a great
hurry. lie said he was looking for the cashier of his church. "What
for ? " he was asked. *' Why, mine freend, zat cashier forgot mine con-
tract, and he keep sending me his leetle notes, wanting five dollars for
zis ting and five dollars for zat ting, and so I get ze life insurance tables,
which say I sliust have six years to live, and zat makes sixty dollar, and
for cash in advance it comes down to forty-eight dollars, and I pay heem
all up in fool to-day and take von clear receipt, and then zey buries me
when I die, and I go straight up to heaven, vere zey troubles me no
more.''
But there is one feature in the new order of things which has sur-
prised and bewildered the most philosophic minds, that is the disposi-
tion which the present generation have to educate their daughters* In
the good old times the sons were the special objects of the parents' care.
I
/
450 KTNGFi OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
'V\\Q ))ettc'r classes gave to both sons and daughters a first-class edn-
ciition if they could, but if either had to be neglected it was the
daujjjliters. Tht* female colleges were few, while the male colleges
abounded all over the land, and were thronged with the sons of wealthy
and aristocratic Southerners. Now the rule is reversed. The pendii-
luui is swin^ring. The boys are sacrificed and the girls are sent to col-
le<re.
This is all very well, I reckon, and if it is not, I don't see how we are
;r()in*i: to help it. The trouble is to find out who these college girls are
;^'()ing to marry. 1 don't suppose they will marry any body until some*
body asks them, but it's natural and very proper for man and wife to be
pretty niueh alike, mentally and socially. They should, as it were, class
together, like the cotton buyer classes his cotton, or the merchant his
sugar, or th(? farmer his cattle, or the geologist his strata of rocks. I
don^t allude to property at all, for that is about the last consideration
that secures real hai)pine88 in wedded life, thougb I wouldn't advise any
poor man to marry a poor girl just because she is poor, and I hope none
of these girls will ever refuse a rich num because he is rich.
Money is a right good thing in a family, and no sensible girl will tnrn
up her nose at it. Money is a social apology for lack of brains or educa-
tion or graceful manners, but it's no apology for lack of honesty or
good principles. Money enables a man to step up higher in the social
circle than he could do without it. Hence we see a rich man without
culture ranks pretty well with a poor man with culture. Hence it is
that lawyers and doctors and teachers and preachers and editorfl, how-
ever poor, move in the same strata with bankers and merchants, however
rich. The difTerence is that money may be lost, but education and
eulture can not be; and when an uneducated man loses his money, he
loses caste, and must stej) down and out.
The v.'ilue of a man's money depends, however, upon the manner in
which he obtained it. Shoddy fortunes don't amount to anything. They
may shiiH- for a while in gilded coaches and splendid halls, but they will
not last. H the possessor does not lose it, his children will spend it, and
l«*ave tlie world as poor as their father came into it. A fortune gained in a
\i*:ir rarely .sticks to anybo<ly. Five years is not secure. But one gained
l)y liie j)ur3uit <^f an honorable calling for ten, twenty or thirty years
l)rings with it that liigli social position which justly entitles a man to be
called (»n»* of ihr aristocracy. It is a great mistake for anybody to desire
a fortune to conic suddenly. It would embarrass him. A big pile of
surplus money will make a fool of most any body on short acquaintance.
It takes a man several years to learn its best uses, and to handle it with
BitL ARP. ' i6l
becoming dignity. If a man never rode in a phaeton behind a spanking
team, it takes him a good while to get used to that. He doesn't know
exactly what to do with his hands or his feet, whether to lean compla-
cently back or cautioirsly forward. If the yehicle crosses a sudden rise,
he dosen't rise with it in graceful undulations, but humps himself awk-
wardly and imagines that every body is observfng his conscious embarrass-
ment.
Money-making sense is very good sense, but I know a wealthy young
inan^ without culture, who was made to believe that an ostrich egg which
he saw in a museum was laid by a giraffe. I know a nabob in Atlanta,
who subscribed for Appleton's Cyclopedia, and when they came said that
he didn't know there was but one volume, and refused to pay for any
niorc. And there is another one there whom I have known since
his boyhood when he plowed barefooted in a rocky field over
threadsafts and dewberry vines at ten dollars a month. ^ He now swims
in shoddy luxury and lucky wealth. He took me through his new and
elegant mansion. He talked gushingly about his liberry room. He
showed me a beautiful piece of furniture in the dining room, and when I
said it was unique, he said no, it was a sideboard. [Laughter.] When I
inquired after the health of his wife, he said she had a powerful bad pain
in her face and the doctor said it was newralogy, but he believed she had
an ulster in her nose.
But what troubles me is that these girls are climbing up where there
arc no boys, or very few at most. Mental culture begets mental superi-
ority, and that raises one socially and puts him or her in a higher strata.
There are, I suppose, not less than ten or fifteen educated girls in the
South to every educated young man; but where are the boys? They are
in the stores or the workshops or on the farms. It did not use to be l^o,
but the bottom rail is now on the top. I don't know that it can be helped
for the war left our people so poor they can't send all their children off
to college, and so they send the girls and put the boys to work to pay for
it. The consequence will be that these girls when they go home can't
find any body good enough for them. A nice, clever, country girl
graduated last year, and when she came home and asked her farmer
brother to name his fine colt Bucephalus, after Alexander's famous
horse:
''Why, Mary," he said, **I didn't know that Tom Alexander had
any horse." [Laughter. J
Well, now, you sec a college girl is not going to marry a man like that
— that is, not right away quick, on the first asking. She will wait a year
or so at least for some chevalier Bayard or some first-honor man to come
452 KINQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPtT.
along, but by and by she will get tired waiting, for lie won't come, and
then, in a kind of desj^eration, she will mate with some good, honest,
hard-working youth, and educate him afterwards. Maybe this will all
work out very well in the long run; for it's the mother who makes the
man, and if she is smart, so will her children be. Of course it will delay
and put off these early marriages, which our wives and mothers say are
all wrong.
I have been very intimate with a lady for thirty-five years, who was
married at sweet sixteen, but she thinks it would be awful for her
daughters to do likewise unless the offer was a very splendid one in all
respects. I reckon that was the reason why she went off so soon.
[Laughter.]
I did not marry my first love, but Mrs. Arp did — [laughter] — ^bless
her heart — and she now declares I took advantage of her innocent youth
and gave her no chance to make a choice among lovers. That is so, I
reckon, for I was in a powerful hurry to secure the prize and pressed my
suit with all diligence for fear of accidents.
Once before I had loved and lost, and I thought it would have killed
me, but it didn't, for I never sprung from the suicide stock. I had loved
a pretty little school-girl amazingly. I would have climbed the Chim-
borazo mountains and fought a tiger for her — a small tiger. And she
loved me, I know, for the evening before she left for her distant home, I
told her of my love and my devotion, my adoration and aspiration and
admiration and all other '^atioiis/'and the i)alpitating lace on her bosom
told me how fast her heart was beating, and I gently took her soft hand in
mine and drew her head upon my manly shoulder and kissed her. Deli-
cious feast — delightful memory. It lasted me a year, I know, and has not
entirely faded yet, for it was the first time I had ever tasted the nectar on
a school-girl's lips. I never menti(jn it at home, and I never quote this
passage when my wife comes to my lecture — no, never — but I think of it
sometimes on the sly — yes, on the sly. I never saw her any more, for
she never came back. In a year or so she married another feller and
was happy, and, in course of time I married Mrs. Arp, and was happy,
too. So it is all right and no loss on our side.
The old Southern girl was thus described by the poet:
Ilcr dimpled checks are pale;
Slic's a lilv of the vale.
Not a rose.
In a nmslhi or a lawn
She is fairer than the dawn
To her beaux.
BILl MiP. 4fi3
"IIb a mittterof n'f.-ri't
Bhc's a bit uf a i<'<iiii'iie of
• ■ Whom 1 anj,'.
On licr L'rud piilh she ^-oi's
With lidf a t]o/cii W:mk
On her string.
I Btill love to dwell iind linger upon those heavonly dnj-s. I love to
Itmk biiek over my checkered life, and in sweet memories live ovor the
past and treasure up the good of it iind kment tho bnd of it. Memory
Wits given to ub for some good purpose, and I have no respect for a man
wlio wants to blot out every thing ijthind him and keep rushing ahead In
11 wild linnt for fame or fortune.
"Stop, poor sinner, stop and tliink," was one of the first hymns I
ever learned, and it fits me now as well as it did then.
I thought of all this the otherilay us the cars swept along the base of
Stone mountain, and as I looked upon its barren and majestic slimmit,
memory carried me back to the days of my gushing youth when there was
aloflytower up there, and Mrs. Arji, who was then my loving awect-
lieiirt, and I mounted its spiral stairs and Bat together at the top in sweet
communion with nature and ourselves, and as I looked into her soft,
hazel eyes, it seemed to me we were a little nearer heaven than I had
ever beeu before. It was a glorioQs hour, but it could not last, for there
was a storm impending and the lightning flashed and thv thunder pealed,
and we hurried down to a safe retreat. Not long afterwards the storm
ciime, and the winds blew and beat upon that lower and it fell. Just so
it is with ourlife and our ambition. Tlie mountain's top ia grand and
I'luirming for a little while — but it ia bleak and cold and dangerous. Our
sitfi'st refuge and happiest retreat is down among thebumbU'flowi'rsthat
blossom iit its base.
]!iit what arc the college girls going to do when they graduate and
settle down in the old homestead? It will be right hard to descend from
iho beautiful heights of astronomy, the enchanting fields of chemistry
iind botany, the entertaining grotn^s of history and geology, and llio
'■Ijjiriuitig chambers of music and Eoriul pleasures dowu to the dnidgory
of washing dishes, soouring brass kettles, making Httlo breeches, and
iIciIti;; all sorts of household and d'<uu'stic work. It will take a good,
s'i<ui,t; ri'Sdliition atid common sense and filial lespect to do it. and do it
;;nn"frLilly and cheerfully, and bo ill ways ready to brighten up the family
bearUi with her educated smile. Such girls are not only happy in tbetn-
i^elves. but iliey makeoihcrs happy, and that is the highest, purest sad
noblest of all ambitions.
454 KTNG8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PTTLPTT.
Be content, then, with your lot, however humble, and enjoy what
you have got; and if you haven't got any thing, then enjoy what yon
haven't got, and be contented still.
I know every true man wishes from his heart it was so that the dear
creatures did not have to work, only when they felt like it. I never see
ladies of culture and refinement doing the household drudgery but what
it shocks my humanity, and I feel like Mr. Bergh ought to establish %
society for the prevention of cruelty to angels. The burden of bearing
children and raising them is trial enough, and involves more of the
wear and tear of the sinews of life than all the men have to endure.
Mothers are entitled to all the rest and indulgence that is possible, and
those who have brought up eight or ten children ought to be retired ona
comfortable pension from the government.
There is an old gander at my house, who, for four weeks, stood guard
by his uiate as she set on her nest. She plucked the down from luB
breast and covered her eggs, and when she left them for food he escorted
her to the grass and escorted her back with a pride and a devotion that
was impressive. My respect for geese has been greatly enlarged since I
made their more intimate acquaintance.
Woman loves money, but she loves it for its uses. You never knew
one to be a miser. She wants it to spend, and there is no goodlier sight
than to see her enter a fashionable dry goods store with a well-filled
purse. What a comfort it must be to a loyal husband to surprise his
wife with a liberal sum and say:
'*Now, my dear, just spend it to suit yourself.'' What a harmonizing
oiTect it has upon domestic affairs! Woman is a 2)hilosopher by Instinct.
Solomon considered his long experience and said, ** It is good for a man
to enjoy the fruits of all his labor, and to live joyfully with his wife
whom he lovctli, for this is his portion." But this was no new or sur-
prising thing to w^onian. She knew it before. She understands the
secret of human happiness, and it is astonishing how readily she can
accommodate herself to surrounding circumstances. During the war,
when the husbands were away, the wives lived cheaper and managed
better than ever before. They patched and pieced and turned old
garments wrong side out; they made coffee out of potatoes and rye and
ground i)eas, and stewed salt out of smoke-house dirt. Mothers who
used to call in the family doctor if a child had a sore toe, or the green-
apple colic, soon learned to do their own practice, for the doctors all
went off to the army.
Many men get discouraged if they can't do some big thing, or the
crop fails^ and they mope around and do nothing, but a woman never
BILL ARP. 4B6
gives up. The more oppressed, t))e more she is nronsed, and many a
good, easy, good-for-nothing sort of a husband is kept up and sustained
by his diligent and managing wife. Woman loves dress and jewelry,
for it is her nature to be fond of the beautiful, nnd why shouldn't she?
Our Heavenly Father dresses the l)irdg with plumage and the lields with
flowers and the heavens with stare. We all love to sec the ladies arrayed in
garments as rich and as lovoly as they can afford. It was this that mado
Ahasiierus hold out the golden sceptre to his queen, and saved a nation
from destnictioa. Isaac understood this when ho sent Rebecca the ear-
rings and bracelets. Moses says the eur-rings weighed half ashekel apiece,
which, accordingto the Hebrew ttiblea, made the pair cost exactly sixty-
two and a half cents. Couldn't catch Rebecca now with such jewelry as
that. But they had a curious way of courting iu those primitirQ days,
for whenever a bashful lover ventured to kiss his girl, the Scriptures toll
us he lifted tip his voice and wept. They had fool boys then.
[Laughter.]
But after all, there need be no serious or gloomy apprehension con-
cerning the future of the sons and daughters of the South. If the boys
can not go to college they will guther culture by absorption and ussooia-
tion, and acquire property by diligence and industry. Our young men
have learned that it is best to remiiiii iu the land of thuir birth, and few
emigrate to another clime; and, indeed, the attachments of the Southern
pcojilo to their neighbors and kindred and country are stronger than
those of our Kotlhcrn brethren. Our society is not made up of u
ini.xturc of all nicca. We have a common ancestry, and have assimilated
in thought and habits and customs and languages and principles.
Added to this, wc liiive the influence of a genial climate, mild winters,
ferlilityot soil, lovely sunsets, variegated Bcenery, with fruits aud flowers
ahiiunding everywhere to sweeten and make glad the rosy days of our
childhood. We huve more latitude and longitude. Our homes are
luore spacious, and our manhood is comforted with the memories of onr
youth, when we roamed over the fields and forests, and huntod the
di'iT and turkey by day aud the 'coon and 'possum by night. It is a hard
jitrugt,'lc for our young men to emigrate from the homes of their child-
hood, and when they do, a i-esoltition to return at some futiiru day
lin;;t'rs with them like a sweet perfume, and comforts thorn on their
weary way.
Nrit Ku with the sons of New England, or the remote, inclement
N.irih. Their e;iilicat training is to go — go Wc«t — go anywhere for
bii.siuuss. They snap tho cord that binds thorn to home and State and
kindred as they would snap a thread. I du not know H people upon
I
45C KINGS OF THE PLATFOIiJf AND PULPIT,
earth who have less eniotiouul love or veneration for home and the local
memories of childhood tlian the universal, cosmopolitan Yankee.
I use the term respectfully — for there is no other that designates the
descendants of the Puritans. I use it advisedly, for I have mingled
with them, and know them, and have many relatives in the old Bay
State. I had three mule cousins in one family, and they were off almost
as soon as they began to wear breeches — one to Australia, one to Cali-
fornia, and the other to Jcddo, in Jai)an. They are at home in every
land but ours. They venture boldly among the bears and panthers and
the wild Indians of the West, but the Kuklux and the barbarians of the
South have been a combination of terrors too terrible and appalling:
We have been calling them kindly ever since the war We have
tendered the olive brancli, and gave cordial welcome to those few who
did venture among us. We have sold them cotton and sugar and rice
and tobacco, and bought their patent medicines and fly-traps and
picture papers and Yankee notions and gimcracks and all their tom-
fooleries, and go to all their circuses and monkey shows; but still they
seem to be afraid of us. I know we whipped them pretty bad during
the late war — that is, at first and all along the middle, but at last they
got the best of it, and it looks like they ought to be satisfied, and make
friends. We used to think slavery was the cause of all this alienation,
but slavery has been abolished twenty-five years, and their dislike of us
remains about the sanio.
Now, the Yankee is an Anglo-Saxon, and has many admirable traits
of character, some of which we have not, but need, and we have been
living in the hope tliat he would come down and live with us, and teach
us economy and contrivance, and mix up and marry with us, and give
us a cross that would harmonize the sections, but he will not. The last
census shows that there are 180,000 more females than males in the New
England States.
Before the war their educated young ladies used to venture South
and teach school, and our young men and widowers married them^ and
tliey made good wives and good mothers; but they don't come now, and
their young men keej) going off, and the poor girls up there are in a bad
fix. I have been trying to persuade some of our poor and proud young
men who seem so liard to please at home, to go up there and take the
])ick of the lot, and bring them down here, and they say they would if
the girls would send them the money to travel on. [Laughter,]
My good father was horn in ^lassachusetts. He came South just
seventy yi'ars jii^o, with a cargo of brick, and never returned. AVell, he
couldn't rotiini, for he was shipwrecked, and lost his oargOi and had
B!LL AMP. 467
nothing to return on. My good mother was born in Cliarleeton, and
was liurried away from there to Savannah during the yellow lever panic
of 1814, She wegt to school to my father, and he married her. When
I was old enough to underataml my peculiar lineage, I wondered that I
coulil get along with myself as well as I did. AVhena email chap, I used
to bite myself and bump my head against the door; but my good mother
always said:
"You can't help it Bill; it is South Carolina lighting Massachu-
setts." A storm lost my father's cargo, and caused him to settle down
in Savannah. It was a fearful pestilence that hurried my mother away
from Charleston when she was an orphan child. So I was tiie child of
storm and pestilence and two belligerent States — how could I behave?
But for these remarkable comMnations, I reckon my father would have
lived and died in the old Bay State, and my mother in Charleston; but
what would have become of me? [Laughter.] But fifty years' resi-
dence made my father a good Southern man, and the Palmetto Cross
made me a high-strung rebel, and on the eve of secession I loaded my
pen with paper bullets and shot them right and left. We soon found
out it would take some other i^ort to whip them in fight, and I joined
the army. But we have all made friends again after a fashion, and now
lovo one another's money with a devotion that is unaffected and atipreme.
The hatred of many of the \orthern people to those of the South
arose, in part, from their jealousy of our power and influence in the
councils of the nation; for it is a historic fact that the statesmen of the
South controlled the government for fifty years. Nearly all the presi-
dents and their cabinets were Southern men. Another cause of their
euniily was our condemnation of their immoral pnictieca in trade and
tlic pursuit of money. Our people set thomselvcaupua ii kind of blooded
aristocraey, and had negroes to wait upon them, and do the menial service
these people liad to do themselvi'^. Hoiico Inoy began a fanatical crusade
agiiiust slavery — notwithstanding llu'y had sold us the alar es and the
Mti with them more than a century ago, and warranted the title to ns
and our heirs forever. But, I repeat, slavery has been abolished fur
twenty-five years, and they seem to dixlikc us lis much aa before. This
eati not be aci;ounted for, urilej-3 it is like a feller wlio killed a dog for
biting him, and after the dog was dead lie kicked him and mauled him
and cursed him until a friend who etninl hy rGmunstrntod, and said:
"Don't you see the briito is dead — what arc you Ix-aling him now
for?"
" Dog on him," saiil he, " I want to teach him that there i,
hell and punishmeJitarUTdeuH.." ll.aughler.J
458 KIKGa OF THE PLATFORM AND PUPILT.
The Yankee moralist remiuds me of a man who became convinced of
the evils of the liquor traffic. He sold out his stock of whiskey and
joined the Good Templars^ and then lectured the man he sold to for
pursuing such an ungodly calling. [Laughter.]
ISovfy while we all admit that the abolition of Southern slavery will
eventually prove a blessings yet we have no apologies to make for the
institution as it was, and we have no sympathy with the manner of the
change. Judge Tourgce says, in his ^'Foors Errand^ ^' that nobody but
fools would have forced freedom in such a summary way. We believe
that slavery was established in the providence of God; it was the same
providence that caused its overthrow, and I don't question Providence.
In an address on education in the South, delivered some months
ago before the American Institute of Instruction, by Eev. A. .D. Mayo,
we find the first acknowledgment we have ever seen from a Northern
source of the real part that Southern slavery has played in the history
of the negro race. The whole address breathes a spirit and purpose at
once noble, refined and appreciative. Dr. Mayo says: *'The colored
people must be told that no six millions of people in any land was ever,
on the whole, so marvelously led by Providence as they for the past two
hundred and fifty years. Indeed, all the good there ever was in slavery
was for them. It was that severe school of regular work and drill in
some of the primal virtues which every race must get at the start; and
American slavery was a charity school contrasted with the awful deso-
lation of the centuries of war and tyranny by which every European
people has come up to its present station of civilized life."
The Southern negro is away in advance of the Congo negro. He is
Christiuhized. The Congoite is still a savage, eating snakes and snails.
The negro is religious, but he warps his religion to fit his every-day life.
Eli Perkins says he asked a good^ old colored clergyman in Tennessee:
*' Uncle Josh, don't you believe in the efficacy of special prayer?**
'MV^hat you mean by special prayer?'* asked Uncle Josh, picking a
turkey feather off his trousers.
** I^y special prayer I mean where you pray for a special thing."
** Wal, now, Mister Perkins, dat depends. It depends a good deal on
what yo' pray for."
'' How is that. Uncle Josh?''
^' Wal, I allays notice dat when I pray de Lord to send one of Hassa
Shelby's turkeys to de ole man it don't come, but when I prays dat Hell
send de ole man after de turkey, my prayer is allays answered. TLangh-
ter.]
BILL ARE 461*
The negro ia a distinot nation — one of the original creations of the
Almighty, and hae originiil traits and habits and Instincts as all the
unmixed nations have. He loves the present good and has no morbid
desire for the accumnlation of riches; unlike the white man, he rarely
cheats or swindles anybody, r.nd uulika the white miin, nerer steals on a
large scale. He would not rob a bank. If he finds *I,000 in the road
he takes it to his employer, but he will take a chicken from the roost or
a breast pin from the bureau, or a dolkx from the drawer with perfect
satisfaction and a peaceful conscience. Small pilfering is the extent of
his capacity and the extent of his inclination. When my stable boy
finds a hen's neat, I feel like thankinghim for bringing me half the eggs.
TVhen our cook hides away a little fiour, Mrs. Arp shuts her eyes and
says nothing, for it hurts their feelings so bad to be accused when they
are guilty.
But for hard work, contented work, humble work, who could tako
their places on the drays iiiul the steamboats iind the railroads, who
would do the white man's bidding with so little murmuring and so
much cheerfulness. The negro is etill uu important factor in our
Southern homes and Southern industries, and with all his faults, wu
like him and are willing for him to remain. We must study him and
apologize for him like we do other nations. The Indian sutrauks him
in bis emotional nature, for tho Indian has gratitude and baa revenge
largely developed. lie will tiarorse swamps and a wildernesa to reward
a friend, aud he will do the some thing to avenge an enemy, but the
negro will do neither. Ilo iit-vcr piues away in the chain gang. When
his term is out, he is the same nnconccnied creature, and fre<iuenlly
repeats his crime and goes biii:k to convict work, Wlien he is under the
gjillows he unifurmly dcnits the justice of his soutence and eays ho is
going to Jesus, and so dies in the faith of an ignorant superstilion. A
special Providence has thrown him among us, and oar faith is that the
same Trovidence will tako care of him and of US, He is grafted on to
the Southern tree. Other natioua have boon similarly tninsphinted and
still live and prosper. The Jews, like the mistletoe that fastens and
feeds upon every tree, still find a home in every land and yet hare pre-
served tJieir habits and religion aud nationality, and so we think tliat
the white and the black races can live together in j)eace.
In recurring to the grand old days that are past, I sometimes feel bucI
because our children know so little of what the South was in the good
timca, 6;iy from twenty-fivn to thirty years ago — nothing of the old
patriurcbal system — nothing of hijivury as it was — nothing of those
4C() KL\GS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
magnificent leaders and exemplars of the people, such as Clay and Cal-
houn and Berrien and Crawford and the Lamarsand Styles.
They and their illustrious compeers molded manners and sentiment
and chivalry and patriotism, and stood up above the masses like the
higher heads overtop the rest in a field of golden grain. Bat the diffn-
sion of knowledge is now bringing the masses up to the standard of eda*
cation which these noblemen created. The field of grain is coming ap
to a uniform and unbroken level. The chances of men for fortune and
for fame are more generally diffused, and more nearly equal than they
have ever been, and the rise of a man from the humblest walks of life Ib
no longer considered a miracle.
The Joe Brown type is in the ascendant^- the pendulum is always
swinging. Generations play at see-saw — up to-day, down to-morrow—
but still the pivot on which they play is rising higher and higher at the
South. Then let us not complain about that which we can not help^ for
whether we are up or down, we have a goodly heritage. Let us all stand
fast — stand fast by our land and our people, and by the blessed mem-
ories of the ))ast.
Arise and singi [Laugliter.]
BILL WW 10 ARTEMUS WARD.
KoME, Ga., September 1, 1865.
Mr. ArU'7}U(fi Ward, Showman. Sir: The reason I write to you in
pcrtidcr, is bt*cjiuse you are about the only man I know in all '* God's
country '* so-called. For some several weeks I have been wan tin to say
sunUhin. I*\>r some several years we rebs, so-called, but now late of said
country deceii;c(l, have been tryin mighty hard to do somethin. We
didn't quite do it, and now it's very painful, I assure you, to dry npall
of a sudden, and make Out like wo wasn't there.
^ry friend, I want to say somethin. I suppose there is no law agin
thinkin, but thinkin don*t help me. It don't let down my thermometer.
1 must explode myself generally so as to feel better. Yon see, I'm tryin
to harmonize, Tm tryin to soften down my feeling. Fm endeavoring
to sul)iu;r:ite nivself to the level of surroundin circumstances, so-called.
Hut I can't do it until I am allowed to say somethin. I want to qnai^
rel with somebody an<l then make friends. I ain't no giant killer. I
ain't no Xorwegian bar. I ain't no boar-const rikter, but 111 be honia-
wa^<];l(Ml if the talkin ainl writ in and slanderin has got to be all done on
one side any lon.c^er. Sum of your folks have got to dry up or tnm onr
folks loose. It*s a blamed outrage, so-called. Ain't you editors ffot
..i
BILL ARP, 461
nothiti elee to do bat peck at us, unil sqnib ftt we, luid crow over us? Is
every man what can write a paragraph to consider us burs in i\ cage, and
be always a-jobbin at us to hear ue growl? JJow you sec, my friend,
that's what's disharmonious, and do you jest tell 'em. ono and alio plnri-
bus UQum, so-called, that if they don't stop it at onc.c or turn lis looao
to Bay what wo please, why we reba, so-called, have nnanimonsly and
jointly and severally resolved to — to— to — think very hard of it— if not
harder.
That's the way to talk it. I ain't ngoin to commit myself. I know
when to put on the breaks. I ain't goin to sny all I think, like Mr.
Etheridge, or Mr. Adderrig, so-called. Nary time. No, air. Hut I'll
jest tell you, Artemus, and you may tell it to your show. If we ain'i
allowed to express our sentiments, wo can take it out in faatin; and liatiu
runs heavy in my family, sure. I hated a man once so bad that all the
hiiir cum oft my head, and the man drowne<l himself in a hog-waller
that night. I could do it agin, but you see, I'm tryin to lisrmonizc, to
acqnicss, to becnm calm and sereeii.
Now, I Eupj)oae that, poetically speakin.
In Dinlf's full,
WesionwUll.
But talkin the way I see it, a big feller and a little feller, so-called,
got into a fitc, and they fout and font a long time, and everybody all
round kept holleriii, "hands off," but hclpin tlie big feller, until finally
the litfle foller caved in and hollered ennf. He made a, bully file. I tell
you, Seliili. Well, what did the big feller ]o? Take him by the hand
iiiul liL'lp him up, and brush Ihodirt olf his clothes? Nary time! No sur!
Hut he kicked him arter ho was down, and throwed mud on him, and
drugged hini about and rubbed sand in liis eyes, and now he'egwino
about huntin up his poor little' jiroperly. . Wants to confiscBte it, w
called. Blame my jacket if it ain't i>nuf toil^e your head swim.
liui I'm a good Union man, so-otfled, I aiu't agwiiie to tight no
more. 1 shan't vote for the next war. I ain't no gurrilla. I've
done tuk the oath, and I'm gwine to keep it, but n« for my bcin subju-
gated and humilyatcd and amalgamated and enervated as Mr. Uhaso
wiu", it ain't so — nary time. I ain't ashamed of niithin neither — niu't
repi'niin — ain't axin for no one-horse, short-winded pardon. Nobody
iieoilu't be phiyin priest around nic. I ain't got no Iwcnty thousand dol-
l;irs. Wi.-li I Inid; I'd give it to theso poor widdom and orGns. I'd
fatten niv own numerous and int('re«itin ofTsprinj; in about two minutes
iind II hair. Thev shouldn't eat roots and drink branch-water no louf^ur.
I'uor liifortunatc things! lo cum into this subloonury world nC lich u
462 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
time. There's four or five of them that never saw a sirkis or a mooky-
show — never had a pocket-knife nor a piece of chees nor a reetin.
There's Bull Run Arp and Harper's Ferry Arp and Ghioahominy Aq>
that never saw the pikters in a spellin book. I tell yon, my friend, we
are the poorest people on the face of the earth — but we are poor and
proud. We made a bully fite, Selah, and the whole American nation
ought to feel proud of it It shows what Americans can do when they
think they are imposed upon — "so-called." Didn't our four fathers fight,
bleed and die about a little tax on tea, when not one in a thousand drunk
it? Bekaus they succeeded, wasn't it glory? But if they hadn't, I suppose
it would have been treason, and they would have been bowin and scrapin
round King George for pardon. So it goes, Artemus, and to my mind,
if the whole thing was stewed down it would make about half pint of
humbug. Wc had good men, great men, Christian men who thong^ht we
was right, and many of 'em have gone to the undiscovered country, and
have got a pardon as is a pardon. When I die I am mighty willing to
risk myself under the shadow of their wings, whether the climate be hot
or cold. So mote it be. Selah!
Well, maybe I've said enough. But I don't feel easy yet. I'm a good
Union man, certain and sure. I've had my breeches died blujBy and I've
bot a blue bucket, and I very often feel blue, and about twice in awhile
I go to the doggery and git blue, and then I look up at the blue semlean
heavens and sing the melancholy chorus of the Bluetailed Fly. I'm
doin my durndcst to harmonize, and think I could succeed if it wasn't
for sum things. When I see a blackguard goin around the streets with a
gun on his shoulder, why right then, for a few minutes, I hate the whole
Yankee nation. Jerusalem! how my blood biles! The institution what
was handed down to us by the heayenly kingdom of MassachuBetts, now
put over us with powder and ball! Harmonize the devil! Ain't we
human beings? Ain't we got eyes and ears and feelin and thinkin?
Why, the whole of Africa has cum to town, women and children and
babies and baboons and all. A man can tell how fur it is to the city by
the smo 1 better than the milepost. They won't work for us, and they
won't work for themselves, and they'll perish to death this winter as sure
as the devil is a hog, so-called.' They are now basking in the summer's
sun, livin on resting ears and freedom, with nary idee that the winter
will come again, or that castor oil and salts cost money. Sum of 'em
over a hundred years old are whining around about going to kawlidge.
The truth is, my friend, sombody's badly fooled about this bizness.
S(mil)()dy has drawd the elefant in the lottery, and don't know what to
do with him. He's just throwing his snout loose, and by and by he'll
mi.L ARp. 4fir)
hnrt eombody. These nigg-crs will have to go baolc to thn plantations
and wurk. I ain't iigoin to support nary one of 'cm, mid wln;ii you hfvr
any one say ao you tell him ■■ it'e a lie," so-culIeJ. I, golly! I iiin't got
nwthin to support myself on. We fought oumelves out of evury thing
cxcepin children and land, tiiid 1 suppose the land is to be turned over
to the niggers for graveyards.
Well, my friend, I don't want much. I aiu't ambitious, an I nsed to
was. You all have got your aliows and monkeys and sircuasi'ii and briiss
bands and organs, and can play on the patrolyitm and the harp of a thou-
sand strings, and so oa, but I'vo only got one favor to ax you. I want
enough powder to kill sbi^ ynller stump-tail dog that prowls around
m; premises at night. Poii my honor, I won't shoot at anything hlus
or black or mulatter. Will you seud it? Are you and your folks to
skecrcd of mo and my folks iliat you won't let ua have any ummunllioni'
Are tlie squirrels and crpwH uiul black racoons to eat up our poor little
corn-patches? Are the wild turkeys to gobble all around ns with impn*
nity? If a mad dog takes the hidcrphoby. is the whole oommiinity to
run iteelf to death to get out of the way? I golly! it looks like your peo-
ple hud all took the rebelfoby for good, and was never gwino to got over
it. Hce here, my friend, you moat send me a little powder and a ticket
to your show, and me and you will Imrmonize sertin.
With these few rcmarke I think I fuel better, and I hope I hain't
made uobody fitjn mad, for I'm not on that lino at this time.
I am truly yoiir friend, nil present or accounted for.
1'. -S. — Old man Harris wanted to bny my fiddle the other day with
Confedcrit money. He scd il. "ould bo good agin. He tayx that Jim
l-'iimU-rbuk told him tliat Wiirrcii's .lack seen a man who had jest come
fi'iiu Vii'ginny, and he sail) :i niiin ha<l told hla cousin Mandy that Leo
bad » hipped 'em agin. Old Harris says that a feller by the name of
.MiiL-k V-. .Million is coming ovc-r willi a million of men. But neverthe-
less, Tiotwithatandin, soniehmv or somehow else. I'm dubuo about the
luuiicy. If you waa mo, Artcmus, would you make the fidillo traile?
Yours truly,
Bill Abp.
i
I THr :■;:;•.• V,-,.,.
' ) I • . T
I I. I .' ■
' 1
( WBNDBLl_ rmu.IPS. 4fi5
Hall, where there would probabl^v ho a very c-xciLing meeting. Presi-
dent Grant had called out the lioojis in New Orteans to suppress
riots. There was a great Demoerutic crowd in tlic old historic liall,
and it appeared dangerous for aliepublican to atiempt to speak. I
entered in front, and just as I cast my eyes on tlie platform, I saw
Mr. Phillips begin to ascend it from the speaker's entrance, A
Democratic orator was speaking, hut no sooner had Mr. Phillips'
head appeared above the platform than the people began to slioiit,
"Phillips, Phillips!" Very soon he was addressing the audience,
and endeavored to conciliate and parify his hearers.
" In all cases where great peril c.^isLed to citizens," he said. " it
was the duty of the government lo protect them. No sooner had
he finished the sentence than a nunii>cr of men began to hiss.
The great orator paused a moriiont, ami then an inspired wrath
took hold of him, his great eyes ^rjeamed, and in a blast of irony
he exclaimed :
"Truth thrown into the cauldron of licli wniild make a ni»iso
like that."
BEECIIEK'S ESTDfATE (IF WKXDEI.l, I'lIILLIl'S.
The power to discern right amiil ilII Lho wrujijiiiigs of interest and itli
the seductions of nmbition was ainj,'iilarlj' \\\%. To choose '.he lowly Tor
their siike: to abandon all favor, ul I jiowit. alt comfort, ail ambition, nil
grcjitiiess — that was his genius and glory. Ilo confronted lho spirit o(
tlie nation and of the age. I liui.i almost said, he set himself aguinft
nature, ua if he had been a decree of (.!od overriding all these other
insuperable obstacles. That was )iis function. Sir. Phillips was not
ralli'd to be a universal orator, any luorc than he was-a universal thinker.
In literature und in history he was widely read; in porsou most elegant;
in niannera most accomplished; gentle uaa babe; sweet as a new-blown
rose; in voice, clear and silvery, lie was not a man of tempests; he
was not an orchestra of a hundred instruments; ho was not un orgHn,
mighty and complex. 'I'he nation alept, and God wanted a trumpet,
Kliiirp, far-sounding, narrow and intense; and that waa Mr. Phillips.
Tlie long roll is not particularly agreeable in music or in times of peace,
hut it is better than flutea or harps wliun men are iu a great battle, or
are on the point of it. Ilis eloqiierii^R was penetruting and alarming,
lie ilid not llow us a mighty gulf stream; be did cot diksh U[ion Ihti
wutinent as the ocean does; ho wa^ Ju>t a nilgl ty rushing Hver. HIi
ARCHDEACON FARRAR.
The Right Rev. F. W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. &, Arohdeamn of
* Westminster, is the foremost preacher of the Oharoh of England,
He occupies the position in church circles so long adorned bj the
late Dean Stanley. His scholarship is wide and deepu His ^ Life of
Christ '^ and ^'Seekers after Grod," have had a wonderful m^wumiv^
amongst the disciples of liberal Christian thought. Dr. Famr
visited America in 1884, and preached in the chief oitiea of the
Union and gave his famous lecture on Dante.
ARCHDEACON FARRAR'S ARGUMENT.
Bev. Archdeacon F. W. Farrar^ examines the philosophy and moialitf
of Seneca, the wisest of the pagan philosophers, Marcus Anieliiia the loft-
iest and most moral pagan ruler, and Epictetns, the most moral and just
of pagan stoics, and finds that pagan morality &iled to bring happlnea
to humanity, and that Christ is a necesstty.
With all the learning and morality of Socrates and Plato, who pro-
ceeded Seneca, says the Archdeacon, an^ with Seneca still liTing, Boom
was barbarous and beastly, and brutal Caius CsBsar flourished* Nero^
who was Seneca^s pupil, was as miserable and wicked as hia peopbii
Seneca was contemporary with Christ, and his own pupil, Kwo, net raly
slew the Christians, but finally slew Seneca himself.
Archdeacon Farrar thus describes the barbarism of B<mie : Oaiai
Caesar ruled Rome when the highest pagan morality flonrished. The
wicked reigns of Paul of Russia, and Christian VIL of Dennuffk, were
angelic compared to those of Caius Csasar and Nero. The mactneai e(
Caligula, another name for Caius, showed itself sometimea in glntten*
ous extravagance, as when he ordered a supper which eott mora than
forty-thousand dollars ; sometimes in a bizarre and di^gxaoefol aaode eC
dress, as when he appeared in public in women's stooldiigHyembteidand
.-4-5^
M^.-n^
ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 469
with gold and pearls ; sometimes in a personality and insolence of
demeanor towards every rank and class in Rome^ which made him ask a
senator to supper, and ply him with drunken toasts, on the very evening
on which he had condemned his son to death; sometimes in sheer raving
blasphemy, as when he expressed his furious indignation against Jupiter
for presuming to thunder while ho was supping, or looking at the panto-
mimes ; but most of all in a ferocity which makes Seneca apply to him
the name of " Bellua,'' or ^* wild monster, ''and say that he seems to have
oeen produced ''for the disgrace and destruction of the human race/'
It was an age of the most enormous wealth, existing side by side with
the most abject poverty. Around the splendid palaces wandered hun-
dreds of mendicants, who made of their mendicity a horrible trade, and
even went so far as to steal or mutilate infants in order to move compas-
sion by their hideous maladies. This class was increased by the exposure of
children, and by that overgrown accumulation of landed property which
drove the poor from their native fields. It was increased also by the
ambitious attempt of people whose means were moderate to imitate the
enormous display of the numerous millionaires. The great Boman con-
quests in the East, the plunder of the ancient kingdoms of Antiochus,
of Attalus, of Mithridates, had caused a turbid stream of wealth to flow
into the sober current of Roman life. One reads with silent astonish-
ment of the sums expended by wealthy Romans on their magnificence or
their pleasures. And as commerce was considered derogatory to rank
and position, and was, therefore, pursued by men who had no character to
lose, these overgrown fortunes were often acquired by wretches of the
meanest stamp— by slaves brought from over the sea, who had to con-
ceal the holes bored in their ears or even by malefactors who had to
obliterate by artificial means the three letters which had been branded
by the executioner on their foreheads. But many of the richest men in
Rome, who had not sprung from this convict origin, were fully as well
deserving of the same disgraceful stigma. Their houses were built,
their coffers were replenished, from the drained resources of exhausted
provincials. Every young man of active ambition or noble birth, whose
resources had been impoverished by debauchery and extravagance, had
])nt to borrow fresh sums in order to give magnificent gladiatorial shows,
and then, if he could once obtain an aedileship, and mount to the higher
offices of tlie State, he would in time become the procurator or procon-
sul of a province, which he might pillage almost at his will. Enter the
house of a Felix or a Verres. Those splendid pillars of mottled green
marble were dug by the forced labor of Phrygians from the quarries of
Synnada; that embossed silver, those murrhine vases, those jeweled cups.
470 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
those masterpieces of antique sculpture, have all been torn from the
homes or the temples of Sicily or Greece. Countries were pillaged and
nations crushed that an Apicius might dissolve pearls in the wine he
drank, or that LoUia Paulina might gleam in a second-best dress of
emeralds and pearls which had cost 40,000,000 sesterces, or more than
$160,000.
Each of these '' gorgeous criminals " lived in the midst of an humble
crowd of flatterers^ parasites, clients, dependents and slaves. Among the
throng that at early morning jostled each other in the marble atriam were
to be found a motley and heterogeneous set of men. Slaves of every age
and nation — Germans; Egyptians; Gauls; Goths; Syrians; Britons;
Moors; pampered and consequential frcedmen; impudent, confidential
servants; greedy buffoons, who lived by making bad jokes at other peo-
ple's tables; Dacian gladiators, with whom fighting was a trade; philoao-
pliers, whoso chief claim to reputation was the length of their beards;
supple GreekUngs of tlieTartuffe species, ready to flatter and lie with
consummate skill, and spreading their vile character like a pollution
wlierever they went; and among all these a number of poor but honest
clients, forcsd quietly to put \\\} with a thousand forms of contumely
and insult, and living in discontented idleness on the sportnla or daily
largesse wliich was administered by the grudging liberality of their
haughty patrons. The stout old Roman burgher had well-nigh disap-
peared; the sturdy independence, the manly self -reliance of an indastrial
population were all but unknown. The insolent loungers who bawled
in the forum were often mere stepsons of Italy, who had been dragged
thither in chains — the dregs of all nations, which had flowed into Borne
as into a common sewer, bringing with them no heritage except the
specialty of their national vices. Their two wants were bread and the
sliows of the circus; so long as the sportula of their patron, the occa-
sional donative of an emperor, and the ambition of political candidates
supplied these wants, they lived in contented abasement^ anxioos
neither for liberty nor for power.
It was an age nt once of atheism and superstition. Strange to say,
the two things usually go together. Just as Philippe Egalit6^ Duke
of Orleans, disbelieved in God, and yet tried to conjecture his fate from
tlie inspection of cofTce-grounds at the bottom of a cup— just as Loois
XL shrank from no perjury and no crime, and yet retained a profound
reverence for a little leaden image which he carried in his cap — so the
Eomans under the empire sneered at all the whole crowd of gods and
goddesses whom their fathers had worshiped, but gave an implicit cre-
dence to sorcerers, astrologers, spirit-rappers, exorcists and eveij
AltCHDEACON FABBAR. 471
species of impostor and quack. The ceremonies of religion were per-
furincd with ritualistic splcDtlor, but all belief in religion was dead and
gone. "Tliut tlicroaresuchthiugsasgho8tsandBubteTraneaarealms,not
even boys believe," says Juvenal, " except thoBo whoare still too young
to pay a farthing for a bath." Nothing can exceed the cool imperti-
ucticc with which tbo poet Martial prefers the favor of Domitian to
tbjit (if the great Jupiter of the Capitol. Seneca, in his lost book
" Agiiiuat Superstitions," openly sneered at the old mythological legends
(if gods married and gods unmarried, and at the gods Panic and
I'alciiess, and at Cloacinn, the goddess of sewers, and at other
deities whoso cruelty and license would hare been infamous even in
mankind. And j'ct the priests and Salii and I'luiueus and Augurs
continued to fulfill their solemn functions, and the biglicst title of tbo
Kmperor iiimsclf was that of Pontifex Maximue, or Chief Priest, which
ho chiimcd as the recognized head of the national religion. " Thecom-
nion worship was regarded," says Gibbon, "by tbo people us equally
true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by tbo magistrates as
equally useful." And tins famous remark is little more than a transla-
tion from Seneca, who, after exposing the futility of the j>o pu la r beliefs,
adda: "And yet the wise man will observe them all, nut as pleasing to
llii: gods, but as commanded by the laws. We !:!i;ill so adnre all that
iguoblo crowd of gods which long superstition li.> li- ■.[■■. il t..-(ili(.T in a
long period of years, as to remember that their v. i ■ . to Jo
witb custom than with reality." " Becauso he was an illustrious sena-
tor <pf tbo Itomau pcoplo," observes St. Augustine, who has preserved
for us this fragment, " lie worshiped what ho blamed, he did what he
ri-futed, be adored that with which he found fault." Could any thing
be more hollow orbeartlcf^s than this? Is there any thing whicbismore
cei'lain tc sip the very foundations of morality than the pnblio mainte-
nauee of a creed which lia.s long ceased to command the assent, and even
t!ic rc-jiect of its recogniwd defenders? Seneca, indeed, and a few
ciiligbtcned philosophers, might have taken refuge from the snpersti-
tions which they abandoned in a truer and purerform of faith. "Aocord-
tiigly,*' .savM I.ai'tantius, one of the Christian Fathers, "he has Baid
many thing.s like ourselves concerning God." He utters what Tertnllian
finely ciill.s " llie toslinu)iiy of A MIND NATURALLY Chbistiait." Bnt,
iiip'iLiiwiiile, wliiit became of the common multitude? They too, like
their superiors, learnt to disbelieve or to question the power of the
aucicut deitio.^; but, as the mind sbsolntely requires some religion on
nljifli to rest, thoy gave their real devotion to all kinds of strange and
foreign deities, lu Isi^ and Osiris, and the dog Annbue, to Chaldieaa
472 KINQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
magicians^ to Jewish exorciaers, to Greek quacks, and to the wietohfll
vagabond priests of Cybele, who infested aU the streets with fheir Ori-
ental dances and tinkling tambourines. The Tisitor to the rains cf
Pompeii may still see in her temple the statue of Isis, through whoM
open lips the gaping worshipers heard the mnrmnred answers thej
came to seek. No doubt they believed as firmly that the image qioke,
as our forefathers believed that their miraculous Madonnas nodded and
winked. But time has exposed the cheat. By the mined shrine tlie
worshiper may now see the secret steps by which the priest got to the
back of the statue, and the pipe entering the back of its head through
which he whispered the answers of the oracle.
It was an age of boundless luxury — an age in which women reek*
lessly vied with one another in the race of splendor and eztrayaganoe, and
in which men plunged headlong, without a single scruple of conacitocej
and with every possible resource at their command, into the pnrsait of
pleasure. There was no form of luxury, there was no refinement of Tioe
invented by any foreign nation, which had not been eagerly adopted bf
the Roman patricians. ''The softness of Sybaris, the manners of Bhodes
and Antioch^ and of perfumed, drunken, fiower-crowned Milefau,''
were all to be found at Rome. There was no more of the ancient Boman
severity and dignity and self-respect. The descendants of iEmilins and
Gracchus — even generals and consuls and prastors — ^mized familiailj
with the lowest canaille of Rome^ in their viltst and most squalid purlieus
of shameless vice. They fought as amateur gladiators in the arena.
They drove as com}>eting charioteers on the race-course. Th^ pven
condescended to appear as actors on the stage. They devoted them-
selves with such frantic eagerness to the excitement of gambling, that
we read of their staking hundreds of pounds on a single throw of the
dice, when they could not even restore the pawned tunics to their duT*
ering slaves. Under the cold marble statues, or amid the waxen like*
nesscs of their famous stately ancestors, they turned night into day
with long and foolish orgies, and exhausted land and aea with the
demands of their gluttony. ** Woe to that city,'' says an aaeient pror-
crb, ''in which a fish costs more than an ox;'' and this exactly dessribes
the state of Rome. A banquet would sometimes cost the prioe of an
estate; shell-fish were brought from remote and unknown shores^ birds
from Parthia and the banks of the Phasis; single dishes wers mads
of the brains of the peacocks and the tongues of nightingales and lla-
mingoes. Apicins, after squandering nearly a million o( monej in ths
^';;^j^^
ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 473
pleasures of the table, committed suicide, Seneca tells us^ because he
found that he had only $400,000 left. Cowley speaks of
" Vitellius' table, which did hold
As many creatures as the ark of old."
'^They eat," said Seneca, '^and then they vomit; they Tomit, and
then they eat." But even in this matter we can not tell any thing like
the worst facts about
" Their sumptuous gluttonies and gorgeous feasts
On citron tables and Altantic stone,
Their wines of Sctia, Gales, and Faleme,
Chios, and Crete, and how they quaff in gold.
Crystal and myrrhine cups, embossed with gems
And studs of pearl."
Still less can we pretend to describe the unblushing and nnntterable
degradation of this period as it is revealed to us by the poets find the
satirists. **A11 things," says Seneca, *^are full of iniquity and vice;
more crime is committed than can be remedied by restraint. We strug-
gle in a huge contest of criminality; daily the passion for sin is greater,
the shame in committing it is less. • . • Wickedness is no* longer
committed in secret; it flaunts before our eyes^ and
" The citron board, the bowl embossed with gems,
whatever Is known
Of rarest acquisition; Tyrian garbs,
Neptunian Albion's high testaceous food.
And flavored Chion wines, with incense fumed.
To slake patrician thirst: for these their rights
In the vile streets they prostitute for sale.
Their ancient rights, their dignities, their laws.
Their native glorious freedom,
has been sent forth so openly into public sight, and has prevailed so
completely in the breast of all, that innocence is not rare, but nop-
existent."
And it was an age of deep sadness. That it shonld have been so is
an instructive and solemn lesson. In proportion to the luxury of the
age were its misery and its exhaustion. The mad pursuit of pleasure
was the death and degradation of all true happiness. Suicide — suicide
out of pure emiui and discontent at a life overflowing with every possi-
ble means of indulgence — was extraordinarily prevalent. The stoio
philosophy, especially as we see it represented in the tragedies attributed
to Seneca, rang with the glorification of it. Men ran to death because
their mode of life had left them no other refuge. They died beoanae it
seemed so tedious and so superfluous to be i^ing and doing and saying
474 Kn^OS OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
the same things over and over again; and because they had exhauted
the very possibility of the only pleasures of which they had left them*
selves capable. The siitirical epigram of Destonches,
** Ciglt .Twin Kosbif , tcuycr.
Qui so iRMuiit pour se deacnnuycjr,**
was literally and strictly true of many Romans during this epoch. Mar*
cellinus, a young and wealthy noble, starved himself, and then had him-
self suffocated in a warm bath, merely because he was attacked with a
perfectly curable illness. The philosophy which alone profeeaed itaeU
able to heal men's sorrows applauded the supposed courage of a Tolna-
tary death, and it was of too abstract, too fantastic, and too purely the-
oretical a character to furnish them with any real or lastiag oonada-
tions. No sentiment caused more surprise to the Roman world thaathe
famous one preserved in the fragment of Msecenas, which may be para-
phrased
" Numb my hands with palsy,
Ilack my feet with gout.
Hunch my back and shoulder,
Let my teeth fall out;
Still, if Life be granted,
I prefer the loss;
isave my life and give mo
Anguish on the cross.
t>
Seneofl, in his 101st letter, calls this ''a most disgraceful and moatcon-
teiMptiblu wish;'^ but it may be paralleled out of Euripides^ and still
more closely out of Homer. *' Talk not/' says the shade of Aohillee to
Ulysses in the Odyssey
" ' Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom.
Nor think vain lies,' he cried, ' can ease my doom.
liettfr l»y far laboriously to bear
A weight of wcK's, and breathe the vital air,
Slavic to the mean(>st hind that begs his bread,
Timn reign the wcpterifd numarch of tke dead."*
But this falsehood of extremes was one of the sad outoomee of the
popular paganism. Either^ like the natural savage, they dreaded death
with an intensity of terror; or, when their crimes and sorrows had made
life unsupporta))U% thoy slank to it as a refuge, with a oowardice which
vaunted itself as courage.
And it was an age of cruelty; The shows of gladiatoia, the aangni*
narf combats of wild beasts^ the not unfrequent spectacle. <tf itTage
tortures and capital punishments, the occasional sight of innooent mar-
tyrs burning to death in their shirts of pitchy fire^ most have haidened
■^ «t)f.
ARCBDBACON FARRAB. 475
and imbruted the public seneibility. The immense preralence of slarerj
tended atill more inevitably to the general corruption, " Lust," as UBual,
was " hard by hate." One hears with perfect amazement of the number
of slaves in the wealthy houses. A thousand slaves was no extravagant
iiiiinbcr, and the vast majority of them were idle, uneducated and cor-
nipt. Treated aa little better than animala, they lost much of the dig-
nity of men. Their masters possessed over them the power of life and
death, and it is shocking to read of the crnelty with which they were
often treated. An accidental murmur, a cough, a sneeze, was punished
with rods. Mute, motionless, fasting, the slaves had to stand by while
their niastei's supped. A brutal and stupid barbarity often turned a
house into the shambles of an executioner, sounding with scourges,
chains and yells. One evening the Emperor Auj^uetuB was aiipping ut
the house of Vedlus Pollio, when one of the slaves, who was carrying a
crystal goblet, slipped down and broke it. Tmnsported with ruge,
VediuB at once ordered the slave to be seized, and |)Iunge<l into the fish-
pond aa food to tlie lampreys. The hoy escaped fnini tho hands of hts
fellow-slavea, and fled to CiEBur"a feet to implore, cot th:it hia life nhould
be spared — a pardon which he neither expected nor hoped — bnt that
he might die by a mode of death less horrible than being devoured by
fishes. Common as it was to torment slaves, and to put them to death,
.\iiguBtu8, to his honor be it spoken, was horriCt'il by the cruelty of
Vodiiis, and commanded both that the slave shniiid h(> set free, that
ovtTV crystal viise in the house of Vedius should be broken in hisprcs-
t'lii'i-. und that the lish-pond should be filled up. Even women inflicted
iqiuii their fumale slaves punishments of the most cruel atrocity, for
faults of the moat venial character. A brooch wrongly placed, a treaa
of hair ill-arranged, and the enraged matron orders her slave to he
lashed :ind crucilied. If her milder husband interferes, she not only
jusiiliea the cruelty, but asks in amazement: " Whati is a slave so
niui.-h of a human being? " No wonder that there was a proverb, "As
many slavoa, so many foes." No wonder that many masters lived in
perpetual fear, and that " the tyrant's devilish plea, neceesity," might
hi' urged in favor of that odious law which enacted that, if a master
wii.o murdered by an unknown hand, the whole body of his slaves should
snlfer doatli — a, law which more than once was carried into effect under
till' reijrns of (he emperors. Slavery, as we see in the case of Sparta and
many other nations, always involves its own retribution. The class of
free peasant proprietors gradually disappears. Long before this time
Tib. Oracrhus, in coming home from Sardinia, had observed that there
was scarcely a single freeman to be seen in the fields. The slaves were
476 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
iufinitely more numerous than their owners. Hence arose the constant
dread of servile insurrections; the constant hatred of a slaye populatkm
to which any conspirator revolutionist might successfnlly appeal; and the
constant insecurity of life, which must have struck terror into manj
hearts.
Such is but a faint and broad outline of some of the featares of Sen-
eca^s age; and we shall be unjust if we do not admit that much, at least,
of the life he livedo and nearly all the sentiments be uttered, gain mnch
in grandeur and purity from the contrast they ofFer to the common
life of
•' That people victor once, now vile and base."
After Caligula and Nero (A. D. 121) came Marcos Aurelins, the pur-
est pagan the world has ever seen. He was almost a Christian. Anre-
lius was emperor of Home and master of the world. His philoBopbj
was ennobling and his teachings pure and sweet. But still, he saw no
future immortality and happiness. Christianity includes all of the good
in Aurelian stoicism and then adds a crown of immortality. All Aore-
lius could say was^ ^^ Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from
life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.''
. . . Death certainly and life^ honor and dishonor, pain and
])leasure^ all these things happen equally to good men and bad, being
things which make us neither better nor worse, therefore they are
neither good nor evil.'*
^'Hippocrates cured diseases and died; and the Chaldseans foretold
the future and died; and Alexander and Pompey and Caaaar killed
thousands^ and then died; and lice destroyed Democritua, and other
lice killed Socrates; and Augustus and his wife and daughter and all
his descendants and all his ancestors are dead; and Vespasian and
all his courts and all who in his day feasted and married and
were sick and chaffered and fought and flattered and plotted and
grumbled and wished other people to die and pined to become kings or
consuls are dead; and all the idle people who are doing the same things
now are doomed to die; and all human things are smoke and nothing at
all; and it is not for us^ but for thegods^ to settle whether we play the
play out, or only a part of it. * There are many grains of frankincese
on the same altar; one falls before, another f alls after \ but it makes no
difference/ And the moral of all these thoughts is, 'Death bangs o?er
thee while thou livest: while it is in thy power be good. 'Thou hast
embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou hast come to 9kore;^toiitr
ARCHDBACON FARRAB. 477
If ^ indeed^ to another life there is no want of gods^ not even there. But
if to a state without sensation^ thou wilt cease to be held by pains and
pleasures/*'
Nor was Marcus at all comforted under present annoyances by the
thought of posthumous fame. '^How ephemeral and worthless human
things are/* he says^ '^and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow
will be a mummy or ashes/* ''Many who are now praising thee, will
very soon blame thee, and neither a posthumous name is of any value,
nor reputation^ nor anything else/* What has become of all great and
famous men, and all they desired, and all they loved ? They are
''smoke and ash and a tale, or not even a tale/* After all theii;
rages and envyings, men are stretched out quiet and dead at last. Soon
thou wilt have forgotten all, and soon all will have forgotten thee. But
liero, again, after such thoughts, the same moral is always introduced
again: "Pass then through the little space of time conformably to
nature, and end the journey in content. Just as an olive falls off when
it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it and thanking the tree on
which it grew.**
The morality of paganism was, on its own confession, insufficient.
It was tentative, where Christianity is authoritative; it was dim and
})artial, where Christianity is bright and complete; it was inadequate to
rouse the sluggish carelessness of mankind, where Christianity came in
with an imperitil and awakening power; it gives only a rule, where
Christianity supplies a principle. And even where its teachings were
al>solutely coincident with those of Scripture, it failed to ratify them
with a sufficient sanction; it failed to announce them with the same
powerful and contagious ardor ; it failed to furnish an absolutely fault-
kss and vivid example of their practice; it failed to inspire them with
ail irresistible motive; it failed to support them with comfort, hope and
liapi)y immortality after a consistent and moral life.
Seneca, Epictetus, Aurclius, are among the truest and loftiest of
pagan moralists, yet Seneca ignored the Christians, Epictetus despised,
and Aurelius persecuted them. All three, so far as they knew any thing
about the Christians at all, had unhappily been taught to look upon
them as the most detestable sect of what they had long regarded as the
most degraded and the most detestable of religions.
There is something very touching in this fact; but, .if there be some-
thing very touching, there is also something very encouraging. God was
their God as well as ours — their Creator, their Preserver, who left not
Himself without witness among them; who, as they blindly felt after
Him, suffered their groping hands to grasp the hem of His robe ; who
478
KING 8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
sent them rain from hoaven, and fraitful seasons^ fOling their hearts with
joy and gladness. And His Spirit was with them, dwelling in them, thonf^
unseen and unknown, purifying and sanctifying the temple of their
hearts, sending gleams of illuminating light through the gross darknes
which encompassed them, comforting their uncertainties, wf^JriTig inter-
cession for them with groaning which can not be uttered. And moro
than all, our Savior was their Savior, too ; He, whom they regarded u
a crucified malefactor, was their true, invisible King; through His right-
eousness their poor merits were accepted, their inward sicknesses were
healed; He whose worship they denounced as an '^ execrable super-
fStition,^' stood supplicating for them at the right hand of the Majesty on
high.
Stoical philosophy had no influence over the heart and character;
'^ it was sectarian, not universal; the religion of the few, not of the many.
It exercised no creative power over political or social life; it stood in no
^uch relation to the past as the New Testament to the Old. Its belt
thoughts were but views and aspects of the truth; there was no center
around which they moved> no divine life by which they were impelled;
they seemed to vanish and flit in uncertain succession of light.**
But Christianity, on the other hand has glowed with a steady snd
unwavering brightness; it not only sways the hearts of individniils by
stirring them to their utmost depths, but it molds the hiws of nations,
and regenerates the whole condition of society. It gives to mankiud a
fresh sanction in the word of Christ, a perfect example in His life,
a powerful motive in His love, an all-sufficient comfort in the life of
immortality made sure and certain to us by His resurrection and ascen-
sion. But if without this sanction and example and motive and com-
fort, the pagans could learn to almost do His will; if, amid the gron
darkness through which glitters the degraded civilisation of imperisl
Rome, an Epictetus and an Aurelius could live blameless lives in a cdl
and on a throne, and a Seneca could practice simplicity and self-deiiisi
in the midst of luxury and pride, how much loftier should be both the
zeal and the attainments of us to whom Ood has spoken by his Son?
What manner of men ought we to be?
jblf
i(4ii
.."v^
PROFESSOR DAVID SWING.
BIOOOAPHT.
I'mfcssor David Swing was bom in CinciimaLi. on Ibe IBlh ot August. 1831. IIb
piirsiwd Ilia oarty studies at Oxford, Ohio, bat subsequcnllj went to AliiLini Univt^r-
siry, where lie graduated io 18fi2. Proresaor Swing and Prcaidi-nt Ilarrisoii wprp
tlassmaioa at Sliumi. After a brief pastorate, Professor SwiD){ waa niipoiutvil I'laa-
sical tutor Id Miami Cnircrsitj; a poai lion which hefllled with great hun'w fur nmni
Ihiin twelve yoara. lie then removed to Chicago, aiid became pMtiiroI a Preebyteiian
<'huri.*li. on tlie North Si<le. lie soon became fiiiiinun. But tits t«achiDg was of loo
bMad a rhnmcter to please llic conservative elemcni of Preabytvrlaiu. At the iDsIuuce
of Dr. Putton lie was tried for heresy, but the venliit WEisiiihin fnvor. Dtviriag, how-
ever, (o live in perfect pence. Dr. Swing left ihi- Pn-phyirriiiii body, wid liwnino
pastor of the Central Church, which now worshlji-iui iln^fr'niriil Music Hall. Ohimgii.
[•rofessor Swing is almost univeraally recognized us ihii:riiiii'»i ini-uclier uftho Wert.
He pri'aches only once on the Sabbath, and usually liike^ iht- miirjihs of July, Augiut
and part of September for vacation.
PROFESSOR SWING'S SCHOLASTIC THOUGHTS.
Education does not imply stores of knowledge or information; it
means tlie expansion of the brain. The mind is created fnl) of tend-
encies or aptitudes, and, expanded by education and training, these
tundeiicies develop into great forces. The soul of the Itidian girl con-
luins it tendency toward a love of the beautiful. She will prefer a wild
llnwer to !i stone or a stick, and will enjoy a local love song to quite a
'•\ if^h degree. This aptitude in the natural wild girl can, by education,
l>e enlarged in successive generations until we have, instead of this
Inilian maid, a De Stael, or a Charlotte Bront&, or a Urs. Browning.
liy this process of enlarging by use, a muttering red man becomes a
Cieero or Tacitus, or a flowing writer or an exquisite artist. In puraa-
iiig. for thousands of years, this work of evoking mental forces, two
inriiiiries have attended the advancing race — what studies do most
?trcTii;tliim the mind ? and what kind of informatioois of most absolute
value ? It is perfectly safe to say that no answer hae yet come to then
480 KINQS Oh TUB PLATFORM Al^I) PULBIT:
questiono it is perhaps equally safe to say that none df er'wiU beme^ %
beiug pro'ja'jiy true that there are many studies of egnai merits jniia
there are thousands of landscapes of equal sweetness; tfiofd' thbnauiSBiDf
faces and forms of equal beauty.
For many centuries it has been assumed that the study of the deii
languages^ that is^ the dead great languages — Latin and Oreek — eiid il '
the higher mathematics^ is the labor which gives best results, the ezeidie
which turns a plowboy into an orator or a statesman or a philoei^btf.
College courses have been run amid these three shapes of toil and iiif»
mation, and it came to pass long ago, that a mind not reared updn thai ^
strong food was deemed still an infant, having known only the wedmM
that comes from a diet of diluted milk. That power of prejudice^ tiie
power of what has long been, over the frail form of what might 'be^iHuish
we see in old medicine, or old religion, or old politics, reappears ia'idd-
education, and a scholar or a thinker without the help of liatitt and.
Oreek was as impossible as a state without a king, or a salvation Witbtaia
clergyman. The feeling in favor of the classic course has not beeiiaU a.
prejudice, for that was and is a noble course of mental progress, but it .
was a prejudice so far as it denied the value of all other forma of meh^
industry, and failed to perceive that what the human mind needsii
exercise, and not necessarily Oreek exercise or Latin exercise. A speeisl
must not thus dethrone a universal. A king may be a good governor,
but his courtiers and sons and daughters must not overrate the crowned
man and predict the utter failure of any nation that may ever dare attempt
to live without the help of a throne and royal children. EvidentlTi
the greatest, widest truth is, that the mind is made more powvr^
ful by exercise, and it will always be a secondary consideration whether
this exercise shall come by loading the memory with the words andfohns-
found in several languages, by compelling the judgment to worikcdntfaH
ually amid the many possibilities of syntax and translation, or riiall
come by a direct study of facts and causes and laws, as found in science
and history and literature.
It favors the classic course amazingly that no other course of mentsl
development has ever been attempted in what is called the great era^
the Christian era; but it might well shake our opinion, the thought that
the Oreeks and Latins became great without being fed exclusiTely upon
a diet of grammars and dictionaries and mathematics. Bichter adcB,
''Whither do those sunflowers turn which grow upon the sun?*^ 86
may we ask, what made mighty those children that were bom into tke
classic tongues? What made the man Pericles and the man PlatoP and
the women Sappho and Aspasia? What seven-years course had they in
PB0PB830R DATW 8WI1T0.
481
defid languageaP ' There can be but one answer, and that mnat be that
Che mind is-m&de powerful and great by all far-reacMng after the troths
and fancies ai>oiuid ib^by a constant and loving effort co enlarge its
powers and accumulations. Pericles and Plato and Cicero and Hnm-
boldt and Mill and Webster and Clay were educated by intellectual toil
and hope and 7£al in their adjacent worlds, whatorer those wor: Id may
have been. The clasB-rooma of Oxford and Camhriilg*? aio, indeed, good
worlds for the forming mind to master, but not ntaiiy of the -saglet' ot
genins have, comparatively speaking, taken, in snch linguistic sclmois,
their first lessons in lofty flight- All the ages are echooUhouses, ;.'.J the
great men have been those who never played trnnnt nor shirked, but
who loved the school-house, whether it whs by the Nile, under Itamoaes,
or at'Athens, under Pericles, or at Oxford, under Elizabeth or Victoria.
The Latin and OreeK tongues once possessed un inestimable worth,
because there was little of broad and powerful thought outside of those
two literatures, and within them there were a power and beauty
not yet, perhaps, surpassed. Soon alter the opening of the Christian
drama, the human mind became enslaved by a politico-religious govern-
menty which discouraged all thought, except that which tended to
establish a throne and mark out an expcusive way to a strange heaven, or
a still more strange hell. Hind grew narrower and weaker m the
centuries passed by. Scholars were content to write the life of some
ascetic monk, and to fill up with miracles a life that had been empty of
both usefulness and food. Far along in the clouded periods, when
some of the monks happened upon Latin and Greek books, it was as
though the deaf bad begun to hear, the blind to see and the dumb to
speak. Compared with a biography of some whining zealot, whose
glory lay in the scarcity of his food and in the abundance of his per-
sonal dirt, the poems of Homer and Virgil, and the orations of Oicero
and the meditations of Plato were full of almost divine beauty, and
thus exalted by a value both intrinsic and relative, Latin and Greek
ascended the throne in the great kingdom of mind and sentiment. No
broader or freer literature than the old classic thought has ever exiated.
From Homer to Tacitus there was freedom of the mind. No chnroh or
state told the thinkers what to think or express. Indeed each ruler was
hiuiiielf a scholar of his period, and, republic or empire, the state was
alwaya literary in its tastes and works. The rulers and statesmen were
all poets or orators and philosophers, with full permission to select any
theme, and to say upon it whatever pleased the hand that held the pen.
Through the Latin and Greek gates there rushed out upon the dark
Christian ages a stream of intellectual liberty and power. Oat of stones
482 KIN08 OF THE PLATFOBM AMD PXJLPlt,
8o noble, the colleges and Hniversities, which now reckon their ages by
centuries, built up their greatness of merit and famb, and our ags viD
never be able to express too much gratitude toward those old atitai
which furnished the new epoch with such foundationa of mental aiil
spiritual development.
We come now to a universal phenomenon — that of the pnpil exoBlUag
the master. Moses was surpassed by Daniel and Isaiah. Watta* engiBe
is superseded. The man who taught music to Beethoven ia forgettn
in the splendor of his humble student. Modem Europe haa moved far
beyond old Oreeoe, and in the modem languages and lifceratiue aad
sciences, all said and thought of on the coast of the old Meditenanfltt
finds its amazing equivalent. Once the roll of human greatnaai nad
thus: Homer, Hesiod, ^schylus, Euripides, Periclea, Plato, Wif!^
Cicero, Csesar, Tacitus, and the splendor of the catalogue none viD
have the rashness to deny; but in the later centuries the book ao bqg
sealed has been opened, and there have been added Dante and Miltoa
and Shakspeare and Goethe and Schiller, and such thinkers aaBaoonaiil
Newton, and such students as Cuvier and Humboldt and MoUeraiil
Darwin and Huxley and Agassie. By these enormous additiona tin
equilibrium of the old earth has been disturbed, and a side, whioh oiiei
lay in perpetual shadow, enjoys now a long summer time. The boned
palms and ferns of the Arctic latitude tell us that what is now the Kortli
Pole, and the region of almost lifeless frost, was once a land npon whiA
the warm sun shone, and over which hot thunder-storms paaaad. Sodm
external force came to make the planet revolve upon some new ineUna-
tion of its axis, and to remand to night and ice a continent whioh had
once enjoyed the seasons, which now bless America or Franoe. Into
the intellectual world came a wonderful company of modem prineoa a
Newton, equaling a Plato, and a Shakspeare balancing all antiqnilj;
and, under the heavy footsteps of all these modems, the earth haa beta
whirled about, and a longer and deeper shadow falls upon the land,
where Demosthenes once thundered and Sappho once aaag^, WUk
this tipping over of the earth, the Greek and Boman landa loafc fhair
oxclusiveness of empire, and were invited to become only brotheriy
states in a world-wide republic. The reasons for the long, patient atodf
of those old tongues have, in part, thus passed away, sinoe they an na
longer the languages which contain the most or the beat of homaa
learning and thought. As acquisitions and as mental ezerolae% thoM
languages will always be valuable, but this will take place henoeCoitli» ia
a world where other studies, equally valuable in aU respeota, will piewrt
their claims to the student, old or young, abounding in wealth er
PROFESSOR DAVID SWING. 483
pinched by poverty. As language is made np of embalmed ideas, the
modern tongues must be confessed to be powerful rivals of Greek and
Latin, for the world having grown larger since Homer and Virgil, the
modern tongues contain more ideas than were held by all the ancient
kingdoms and republics.
Not only is it questionable whether the dead languages should any
longer outrank, as studies, the gretit modern dialects, but it is also a
matter of grave doubt whether an argument can be framed in support
of the educational theory which devotes yei^s, early and late, to the
study of any of the forms of speech, ancient or modem. It may seem
a form of mortal sin — a sin beyond the reach of masses and holy water
— to confess that there exists, under Heaven, any such doubt, and yet
something must be said on this linguistic mania, even though the utter-
ance should prove most amazing and unwelcome. Language in essence
is a catalogue of names. Words are the names of things and of actions.
If yEschylus spoke of kumaion anarithmaton gelasma, he saw and
embalmed in sound the beautiful truth of nature, and the merit lies not
in the sounds of the vowels and consonants, but in the genius that saw, in
the morning ripple of the sea, '*the numberless smiles of the waves. ^'
What the human soul needed was some one able to lay upon the broad
ocean that sweetness of expression which had been sought for and found
only upon the lips and face of woman. If a smile is a sudden flash of
light and kindness, then what an interpreter of the ocean is he who first
tells us to look out upon its widespread and delicate smilings! But it is not
the language that is so great; it is the sudden spiritualizing of the ocean.
Language is only a name for the strange beauty of the water, and, hence^
it is of no consequence whether the name be ^* kujnaton anarithmaton
gelasjna," or the ''sea's innumerable smile," or the '' many twinkling
smile of the waves," or whether the Frenchman or German or Spaniard
bedecks the simile with his raiment of words and syntax. The expres-
sion uttered by the Greek poet becomes the world's single fact and prop-
erty, and the possession of a hundred languages by any one individual
will not add anything whatever to that morning and evening radiance of
the Atlantic or Pacific. When we who had spent seven years over Greek,
first stood upon the sea-shore, our hearts asked the old dead tongue to
help us estimate that infinite scintillation of the flood, and did we not,
all of us, bless God that He had permitted us to study Greek? Did wc
not feel that all who had not read the ''Prometheus** in the original
were cut off from nature, as though born blind? What a mistake of a
name for a substance! for now, when all we ex-denizens, far away at last
from college walls, happen upon the beach, and look out upon the blue,
484 KINGS OF THE PLATFOBM AND PULPIT.
we ask for no more blessed expression of the soe t l our own toogw
can bring us in its powerful sounds, '' the nnmberleBB smiles of the
waves/' . Ooethe expressed the same thought in the Gemuui, Lamaitiiie
in the French, and thus let the speech change a thousand tuneSy fliBn
is only the one thought hidden away in the varied accents.
In any one of the great modem tongues there is now stored ftwsj sD
the facts of the earth up to this date. If Virgil asked ns to note tlie
beauty of the moon at midnight, when it passes in and ont amid flsaej
clouds, we so do, and our heart is happy or sad, as was hisip ife being of
no importance that he called the planet ''lona,^ while wo osH it
''moon,'' and that he called ''nubila'' those msoses which we eill
'' clouds." Compared with the grandeur of the scene, all iheoe nris>
tions of the vowels and intonations are things of ohildisih importsnoe.
It might, therefore, easily come to pass that the student, young or oU,
may, in the study of many tongues, be giving years of time to aoeidentail
matters, instead of to those facts of being and action whioh are the per-
manent and valuable estate of man. A certain Boman orator we call
Cicero. In his own day he may have been called Tnllius. Tntimstf
friends may have called him Marcus. We do not now know how his
family pronounced the ''c " or the. ''u.'' But let it be tme that this
lawyer had three names, and that there are many possible ways of utter-
ing those names, the one fact only remains valuable — ^the oian i»i«n— R
' As such he has entered into the world's intellectual and moral richsSi
and we have him, be we German or French or English, in our lip and
tongue service. Compared with this gold of possession, all dee is dost
To compare the thoughts of this lofty Boman with the thoughts of
Burke and Pitt and Sumner, in the arena of political study; to pan over
to morals, and compare him with Puffendoif an^ Spencer; to pass to
religion, and compare him with Wesley or Stuart Mill or JefEQnon;to
pass to rhetoric, and compare his mode of argument with that of Foz or
Webster or Clay — would be to be engaged in pursuits greater than a
mastery of these tongues, in which all these widely separated minds may
have done their sincere thinking in the sight of man and God« Tfattr
words, like their clothing or their food, were local and ineidentsl.
Indeed, of less importance than the food these chieftains ate, for that
food might be good for us to imitate or avoid, whereas it is of littk
value to us that Cicero called that being Deus whom we oall Ghi4# Aud
that quality ''pietas^' which we call ''piety/' It is the unohangiBg
contents of the earth man must chiefly seek, and so brief is life that its
lamp burns out before we have read the great volume of enmts aad
experiences, and no time is left for the study of ngismavfca aad
::bf.
PROFESSOR DAVID SWINO. 485
BouiidH in which Egyptian or Persian or Atbeniah or Koman may have
made record of his life or wisdom or sentiniuiit. A hundred languageH
have passed awuy, in all of which the golden rule was putting forth its
slow leaves, and men care not with what gutturals or labials or aapiratca
the first moralists began to express the worth to society of brotherly
love. As man himself has come along over lands which hare become
deserts, passing in and out of temples sad homes which have become
dust, and falling into tombs which have no stone and by which no flower
blooms, and yet ho is here to-day in divine 8]>l<;ndor; so truths, like the
law of love, have come along, stepping from juuguago to language, and
then leaving to decay or neglect the stairway of their long ascent. So
sabordinate is language to idea that the Ghri^ttiin world, which rests its
hope upon the beatitudes of Jeans, does not know in what speech Ho
first said, "Blessed are the pure in heart." As the sea changes its
shore line, and leaves far inland temples wiiioh once stood where the
solemnity of the waves joined in the worship, and yet it is the same sea,
flowing and re-flowiug in tide and storm, Bo humanity leaves as dead
and abandoned its old shores of speech, and along some new coast of
forms and sounds flows and re-fiowe with a tide of wisdom and emotion
rising iiigher as the ages pass. Each great lungunge, English, French,
Ocrmun, is the present shore of the living sea, and if borne into one of
these tongues, that tongue is for you or me a measureless main. It ts
the Aggregate of the past six thousand years.
Do I apeak French?
Kot yet have I learned the universe hidden away in the language of
my birth and soul. When you have caught up with the world's facts,
then, if time remains, you might ask what the Frenchman would call
those fifls. After having studied the life, the tendencies, the loves of
the suiiworshipers and the Egyptians; after having seen the Queen of
Slieba journeying to behold the greatness of Solomon; after having com-
mitted to memory the sublime chants of Job; after an inquiry into old
liberty and old bondage, and into old science and art, it might be of
interest to know what letters and sounds a Frenchman would ose in
expressing the world's history, but to know all about the wanderings of
riysses and his son is the thing to be desired more than the information
thut the French called the father Ulysse and the son Telemaqae.
Ijft it be conceded that persons who are to devote all their life to
intellectual pursuits have time for mastering several of the great dia-
lects, ancient and existing; it yet remains a fair inquiry, what quantity
of this linguistic work may enter into those courses of study over which
the multitude must pass. Must young persons who have only one ides
486 KINQa OF THE PLATFOSX AMD FULPJT.
learn ten ways of expressing it? Or must this p^^^m/u, often a bemtiftl
girl^ find ten ideas in the grand language of her natiTO land? Wkt
made a Bubenstein was not a score of pianos, bat it was geniiis nl
labor, practicing upon one adequate instrument. It ii well known ihii^
when some years ago certain thousands of families, men and wooMiy
were flying before a great conflagration, one citizen was aeen to ramovi
from his library nine yiolins of all ages and pedigrooe a eoene flnde
laughable, even at such a gloomy time, by the equally wall-known bdL
that this lover of the flddle could not, from any or all of the stringi^
elicit more than the one-ninth part of a tune. Aa tiie oart-Ioai fl(
instruments moved onward toward a place of safety, eran the btik
friends of the amateur could not help wishing that the noble gentleiitfi
had less of fiddle and more of music. In the department of faBhionaUc
education a similar event may be detected in the fact that many ycmiC
persons are learning more ways of expressing thought than khey ban
thoughts to express, and instead of having ten ideas of Tilne, thejgifi
promise of reaching, at last, ten methods of stating one idea^ and pe^
haps a small one at that. For suppose your beantifol da^tghter fl(
seventeen years has, by much toil and expense, learned to aay in fifi
tongues, ^^ He has the pretty yellow dog;^^ in Greek: Ehn habm dboa
ku?ia; in Latin: /{abet bellum canem gilvurn; in French: iZ aumjdi
chien dejaune; in German: Er hat den schonen gelben ffundj and coaU
she by industry find the Chinese and Zulu vowel sounds, need by ihoiB
remote people, to convey that idea of property in an animal, it would
be well for the girl and parent to remember that, amid all this iparietf
of speech, there is only the same yellow dog all the time. Under aonie
other theory of education, the mind might have mastered the whole
science of Cuvier, and have moved away from the yellow dog to study
the whole animal kingdom, from the elephants of India to the gaidsa-
making birds of the tropics, and the bank-swallow of Ameiioa. The
poor man, in the cold of mid-winter, does not need ten shoreis with
which to put one ton of coal into the scuttle, but what he erases is tm
tons of coal and one good shovel. It might be of interest to him to
know the shape of a Russian or Hindoo scoop, to gaie at the kind of
instrument by which the Hebrews put wheat into a laek, or i^plss into
an ox-cart, but the highest happiness of the multitude will always etao
more from the coal they may possess in December, than from any oot
lection they might covet of old and modem utensils of lifting and mof'*
ing fuel from vault to grate. If the remark will not give any oflemB^
it may be let fall here, that there are thousands of boys and girls, eldor
and younger, whose ability to express thought hsi i oulgrawn tho
:^^^.tu•
PROFESSOR DAVID SWING, 487
thought they have on hand awaiting expression^ and^ having mastered
a great many styles of saying things^ they are finding themselves in the
position of having nothing to say. When the lovely young lady, who
had mastered her French and Italian and Spanish, was led by some
machine-loving gentleman to gaze for a moment at the great engines in
the hydraulic works of Chicago, asked him, in her delight, whether the
big wheel was turned by men or by a horse, it gave him no peace that
she could have put the inquiry into any one of the modem tongues.
The questions placed him, for a time, beyond the consolation of phi-
losophy and religion.
The prevailing idea among the upper American classes that even
their little children must learn French, and to that end must speak it at
the table, is highly blamable, for reasons more than one. It is based
upon entire ignorance of the fact that it will require the life-time of
each mortal to master the language of his birth and country. All the
young years given by Americans to the study of French are years
turned away from the greatest language yet known to man. All the
acquisitions of the human race, all the sciences, and arts, and histories,
and sentiments of humanity have passed into the English tongue. Each
word stands for an idea, and in each great modern dialect all ideas
reappear. He that has perfectly mastered his own language has a store
of information immense in bulk and rich in value. To excavate many
channels for a river is to lessen the unity and power of the stream other-
wise niiijestic. It will always be proof of some blunder of judgment, or
of some stubborn vanity, when Americans will be found using a little
French and German and Italian, who have not mastered the English
of William Wirt, or of Tennyson, or of the eloquent Buskin. It is not
languages man needs, but language. It is not a room full of violins,
but the power to make music. It is therefore simply painful to hear a
fashionable girl or woman or man combining several languages in con-
versation, when the listener knows well that this bright talker could not
by any possibility compose an essay in the English of Washington Irving,
or Charles Sumner, or the poet Whittier. While they have trifled with
grammars and lexicons, or have said elegantly this or that compliment
of the season, their own grand English has moved away from their mind
and heart just as husband and home at last disappear from the world of
the artful beauty, leaving in her possession the old faded bouquets and
the old yellow cards of invitation to dinner or to dance — invitations sent
and accepted long ago, when the forehead was smooth and the lips red.
A modern language is a prodigious affair. All will admit that, as a
systim of sounds for expressing truths, the Greek language has no equals
488 KIN08 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
but it comes short in just this particular — that the Qt^Jka had not ■
much to express as the Germans and French and English bow have ii
their keeping. An island has become a continent^ a rlTer hat widnal
into a sea. Each of these three modem tongnes holds in ita embnosa
universe^ while Oreek held only a star. To master one of tbeae mm
forms of speech^ is the task of a life, and happy the Amerioui who dnU
ever reach in his own tongue the ease and skill reached in their owa
tongue by Chateaubriand and Lamartine, and by Oastelar in his diabdi
or by Schiller in the rich German. Such a result can not he reaohod by
attempts to study the words of Lamartine and Oosthe, hat hj atndjim
the same universe as that which enveloped them, and by oompeDiiig ear
own English harp to play for us all our sincere and passionaie nmria R
must be that the popularity of French comes from a forgetfalneM ot the
absolute immensity of the English language — ^an immeneeneii wiiA
asks for many years of early and late study, and which ahonld ao oapti*
vate each one born into its confines, that, like the contented eoulf ens
should never care to wander away from home.
The chase after French must come from the want of thought as to
the greatness of our own speech, and hence must be one of the popular
delusions of the age, but there lies against this worship of French a asp*
arate objection. In our generation that nation is not coming to nt ai
Greece came, laden with deep and inspiring thoughts. Oreek ipeedi
was once the speech of the world's greatest minds. We recall Plato and
Aristotle and Thucydides^ and that type of manhood. Theee were the
men who projected Greek into the old courses of study* Bat that old
type of manhood is now standing in England and Germany and Amerioi^
and the French verbs and nouns and adjectives are coming to na only in
the name of fashion and Paris. ^'Parlez-vous Francois t*^mmplj means,
'' Have you seen Paris? " Have you some of her dreeacB, her dnimaByhar
wall paper, her furniture, her luxury? A language which seta na aD
wild for elegant clothing, and for handsomer fnmitare^ and for new
shapes of wedding cards, and which so delights as at the drama^ oaa
never come in the dignity of those old classic verba which nerer men-
tioned any thing except the great emotions and exploits of the aooL
The Greek showed man human life in its wars and travela and rhetorie
and logic and liberty and assthetic yearnings, but the French of oar
board ing-scliools does little for the average student, except ennUe hln
or her to read the bill of fare at a fashionable hotel, and to call hy the
charming name of buffet what once was a sideboard, and to bny and
enjoy as an escritoire what had once been known aa a writing^eBikj and
'.■^'^Oir',^sk,r-,ii^i,^
PROFESSOR DAVID SWIUfO. 489
to feel wise over that progress which remores from a lady her wnrk-
table, and places before her a chiffoniere. So far as the study of this
modern dialect inflames the young heart in the direction of bills of faro
and novelties for the parlor or dining-room, it can hardly compnro
favorably with the study of those classic forms wliicli ignored t)ie hotel-
keeper and the cook, and introdnced the student to Homer and Cicero.
The world's facts and experiences being gathered up in langnage,
there mnst needs be men skilled in different langnages, that the goods
of one land ma; be transported to another oonntry. Thns ChampoUion
became a transfer boat to ship Egyptian history and learning from
hieroglyph to French, Others came to forward the goods from French
to English. Immense is this carrying trade — Oarlyle carried Ocethe
across the channel; Longfellow has brought Dante across the sea. But
not all the educated need embark in this form of importation, for what
we all need is not the key to the hieroglyphics on the old rocks, but the
English of the tilings thus recorded. The Sermon on the Mount is jour-
neying around the world in two hundred tongnes, but it ie not an
acquaintance with these forms the young orold soul needs, but the Sermon
on the Mount in the native tongue of Him who must live and die among
its snblimc lessons. Diamonds may be re-set, and having passed a gen-
eration upon a queen's hand, they may be seen on tht? neck of her
daughter, and at last be transferred to a coronet ; but the es^titiiil vuluo
is in the glittering stones themselves, be they on forehead ov tJiif;er. It
is not otherwise with the truths which man has evolved from bis obser-
vation tind experience. They are all one, whether they arewhispered to
hiH ear by English, or Greek, or Arabian lips, and blessed is he to whom
some one of these great voices has come with its infinite utterances
about lime and the world called timeless. When, therefore, a distin-
guished clergyman declared that when a minister of the Gospel was not
keeping well up in Greek, he was losing the use of the right arm, he
simply blundered along, for the right arm of an orator or statesman or
thinker or ]ireacher can never be in any manner the power to read a
foreign test, but it must always be the power to examine or establish a
tliinie which docs not depend in the least upon the vowels and con-
»:oii:int8 of a time or place. Not a single great idea in the Bible is await-
ing any new light from the linguist. The Greek and Hebrew lexicons
cim ilo nothing toward answering a single one of the problems of man-
kind; can aiifd no light upon the existence of a God, or a life beyond,
or upon the patii of duty, and hence a long dwelling over those old
forms can not be the right arm of a clergyman. His inspiration mnst
4
490 KmQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AJW PUXPOl
come from ideas mighty as the human racej and not from any wondfl^
ment what some particle may hare implied when ISomm mm a lad, cr
when John was baptizing in the wilderness.
Even when a whole life is given to one's native Tfagliah or natin
French, so inadequate still is that language to express the aonl, that it
seems a form of wickedness to divide the heart between many masten^
and to have no supreme friend. Ohateaubriand, the greatest master oi
the French tongue, when he stood near the Niagara Falls almost a hun-
dred years ago, and saw evening coming down from the sky upon all
the sublime scene; saw the woods growing gloomy in the deep shadowy
and heard the sound of the waters increasing its solemnity as the litUa
voices died away in the night's repose, said: ''It Is not within tht
power of human words to expresb this grandeur of nature.^ Skilled as
he was in a most rich and sensitive form of speech, that speeoh, all of
whose resources he knew so well, now failed him, and his spirit had to
remain imprisoned, there being no gateway by which its ffftntiwMff><=T
could escape to the heart of his countrymen. What are yon and I to do»
then^ if we have not loved early, and late, and deeply^ our own Bnglish
— that English which is now the leader in literature and all learning; if
we have not mastered its words, its elegancies, its power of li^o, and
humor^ and pathos, and rhythm, and have not permitted onr minds to
become rich in its associations; if we have for years gone along with a
heart divided in its love, or with a mind that has studied words more
than has thought and prayed, and laughed, and wept, amid the snUime
scenes of nature, or the more impressive mysteries of mankind?
"Farlez vous Francaisf^' Not well ; not at all; would to HeaTen we
could even learn to speak English !
--.V.-i
. ii.J-a
SPURGEON.
THE ELOQUENT, THE EARNEST AND THE BELOVED.
The Eev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon is the Beecher of England.
Ue has always taught a religion of love and happiness. He has
won the people to him by love, and won them to Christianity, by
Christ's love. Beecher and Cuyler and Dr. Hall, after hearing the
famous Baptist in his Tabernacle, always come back to America
enraptured with the great preacher. Spurgeon's Tabernacle is analo-
«^ous to Plymouth Church when Beecher was at his zenith.
C. n. Spurgeon is the son of a Congregational minister. He
was born at Kelvedon, Essex, in 1834. He became a Baptist com-
municant while he was yet a very young man, and assumed the pas-
torate of a Baptist church at Waterbeach. He had already made
local fame as a "boy preacher." From Waterbeach he went to New
Park Chapel, Southwark, London, and here he rose to immediate
l)opularity. This was in 1853. From the New Park Chapel he
moved twice to larger halls, but they in turn proving inadequate, the
Metropolitan Tabernacle was projected by him, and was opened in
1861. The Tabernacle was dedicated free from debt. It is a mon-
ster building, seating between 6,000 and 7,000 people, and is located
in Newington Butts. This building, with some modifications, is
the present house of worship. The Tabernacle has been filled on
nearly every occasion when Mr. Spurgeon occupied the pulpit. On
several occasions, when he has preached in a larger hall, the oongre-
♦ration has been still greater. At the Crystal Palaceand Agricultural
Hall, Islington. 20,000 people came to hear him. Notwithstand-
inir his extraordinary power of drawling and holding hearers,
]\Ir. S])iir<^eon is not an orator in the usual sense of the term.
Neither has he a commanding figure, nor an impassioned or florid
delivery. People go and listen to him and are pleased without
m
492 KINQ8 OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
knowing why. They go again and have the same experience and
then try again and again with like results. The speaker is ear*
nest, and ready, and is fascinating because of the ever present
touch of human kindness in his tone and manned. His Toice is clear
and sweet, and that is the extent of his quaiificatioiis for pleasing
platform effects.
Mr. Spurgeon's teachings have been strictly orthodox, perhaps
nearer to Calvin's than to that of any teacher of later timea
A couple of years ago it was announced that SpnrgeoD had
renounced the doctrines of the Baptists, but while his action led to a
permanent separation from the Baptist Union of Great Britain and
Ireland, the Tabernacle society and its pastor have remained Bap-
tists in all the essentials of doctrine and practice. Mr. Spnrgeon
withdrew from the Union because he believed it too liberal and fol-
lowing the lead of the Broad Churchists in the cardinal doctrines of
atonement, justification by faith, incarnation, total depravity and
eternal punishment. After several conferences the difference was
narrowed down to the single point of eternal punishment, and the
union declined to make belief in that a test of fellowship.
On the question of communion, Mr. Spurgeon occupies middle
ground between open and close. Those in bis congregation who
are Christians, but have never been baptized by immersion, may
receive communion twice, but on presenting themselves a thiid
time, if they belong in the neighborhood, they are requested to
become members by the usual methods or retire from the commun-
ion service.
Spurgeon's salary has been his only source of personal inoome.
He has never spoken as preacher or lectuf^r for pay ontside of his
pulpit. In his pastoral and general church labors he has been aided
by his wife, whom lie married when a young man.
When I asked Mr. Moody what he thought of Spnrgeon, he said :
" He is a perpetual stream of Christian sunlight. One Snnday
morning in London," continued Mr. Moody, ^^Spui^geon said to me,
just before he commenced his sermon : * Moody, I want you to
notice that family there in one of the front seats, and when we go
home I want to tell you their story.'
'' When we got home," said Moody, " I asked him for the story,
and he said :
" * All that family were won by a smile.'
" * Why,' said I, ' how's that » '
8PUR0E0N, 493
" ' Well,' said he, * as I was walking down a street one day, I saw
a child at a window ; it smiled, and I smiled, and we bowed. It was
tlie same the second time; I bowed, she bowed. It was not long
before there was another child, and I had got in a habit of looking
and bowing, and pretty soon the group grew, and at last, as I went
by, a lady was with them. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want
to bow to her, but I knew the children expected it, and so I bowed
to them all. And the mother saw I was a minister, because I car-
ried a Bible every Sunday morning. So the children followed me
the next Sunday and found I was a minister. And they thought I
was the greatest preacher, and their parents must hear me. A min-
ister who is kind to a child and gives him a pat on the head, why,
the children will think he is the greatest preacher in the world.
Kindness goes a great way. And, finally, the father and mother
and five children were converted, and they are going to join our
church next Sunday.'
" Won to Christ by a smile I " said Moody. " We mast get the
wrinkles out of our brows, and we must have smiling faces, if we
want to succeed in our work of love."
Speaking of love one day, Mr. Spurgeon said :
^'In the French Revolution, a Voung man was condemned to the
guillotine, and shut up in one of the prisons. He was greatly loved
by many, but there was one who loved him more than all put
together. How know we this? It was his best earthly friend, his
own father, and the love he bore the son was proven in this way :
When the lists were called, the father, whose name was exactly the
same as the son's, answered to the name, and the father rode in the
gloomy tumbril out to the place of execution, and his head rolled
beneath the axe instead of his son's, a victim to mighty love. See
here an image of the love of Christ for sinners. * Greater love hath
no man than this ; that he laid down his life for his friends.' But
Jesus died for the ungodly ! He is the friend of sinners. There is
no friendship like Christ's."
One day a poor little orphan boy in London came up to Mr.
Spurgeon and said: "Mr. Spurgeon, would you allow me to speak
to you ? "
"Certainly,"" he said, "get upon my knee."
The little fellow got up and said: " Mr. Spurgeon, supposing
that your mother was dead, and that your father was dead, and that
you were put into this institution, and that there were other little boys
494 KINQ8 OF THB PLATFORM AND PUPILT.
that had no father or mother, but that they had oonsiiis and imclfli
and aunts, and that they brought them fruit and oandy and a lot of
things. Don't you think that you would feel bad It 'Oanse that'i
me?"
The tears came to his eyes and he put his arms around him and
kissed him and gave him a handful of money. The little fellovr had
pleaded his cause well. ^^ When *men oome to God and tell their
story," says Mr. Spurgeon, '^ I don't care how vile yoa are, I dont
care how far down you have got, I don't care how for off yoa have
wandered — if vou will tell it ail into His ear, the relief will soon
come."
When asked which was the besi sermon he ever ^«adied, the
eloquent divine said: '^ My best sermon was the one whidh had the
most love and the most Christ in it. One day," continned Spni^gecm,
^^ a young man preached a showy sermon before the great Jonathaii
Edwards, and when he had finished he asked Mr. Edwards what he
thought of it.
^^ ^It was a very poor sermon indeed,' said Edwards.
'^ ^ A poor sermon! ' said the young man, ^ It took me a long time
to study it.'
'' ' Ay, no doubt of it.'
<( < Why, then, do you say it was poor ! Did yoa not think my
explanation of the text to be accurate ? '
" ' Oh, yes,' said the old preacher, * very correct indeed.'
" ' Well, then, why do you say it is a poor sermon! Didn't you
think the metaphors were appropriate, and the argoments ocmoln-
sive?'
'^ ^Yes, they were very good, as far as that goes, bat still it was a
very poor sermon.'
'' 'Will you tell me why you think it a poor sermon t'
'^ ' Because,' said the old minister, ^there was no Christ in it.'
'' 'Well,' said the young man, ' Christ was not in the tut; we are
not to be preaching Christ always, we must preach what is in the
text.'
'' ' Then don't take a text without Christ in it. Bot ycm will
find Christ in every text if you examine it. Don't yoa know, yoong
man, that from every town, and every village, and every little
hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London t'
'' ' Yes,' said the young man.
aPUROSOS. 405
" ' Ab! ' said the old divine, 'and so from every text in Scripture
there la a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ.
And, my dear brother, your business is, when you y;ct to a text, to
say, " Now, what is the road to Christ? " and then pieach a sermon,
running along the road towards the great metropoliH— Christ.
" ' No,' the old clergyman continued, ' I have never yet found a
text that had nota plain and direct road to Christ in it; and if ever
I should tind one that has no such road, I will make a road. I
would go over hedgeand ditch bat I would get at my Master, for a
sermon is neither fit for the lord nor yet for the peatant unless there
is a savor of Christ in it.* "
"Yon must continue to call upon Christ," said Spurgeon, "a«
the Turkish lady who fell in love with Thomas t Meckel's father
called upon him. Becket's father, Gilbert, went tu the CrusadeH,
and was taken prisoner by the Saracens. While a prisoner this
Turkish lady loved him, and when be was set free and returned lo
England, she took an opportunity of escaping fruiu her lather's
house — took ship, and came to England. But she liiiew not where
to tind him she loved. And all that she knew about him was that his
name was Gilbert. She determined to go through n.11 the streets of
England, crying out the name of Gilbert, till she had found him.
Slie came to London first, and passing every streot. persona were
surprised to see an Eastern maiden, attired in an Eastern costume,
crying, 'Gilbert! Gilbert! Gilbert!' And so she [lassed from town
to town, till one day, as she pronounced the name, the ear for which
it was intended finally caught the sound, and they became happy
iind blessed.
" And so the sinner to-day knows little, perhaps, of religion, but
lie knows the name of Jesus.
" Take up the cry, sinner, and to-day, as thou goest along the
-St reels, say in thine heart, 'Jesus! Jesus! Jesus I* and when thou
art in thy chamber, say it still, 'Jesus! Jesusl Jesus!' Continue
tlie cry, and it shall reach the ear for which it is meant."
A sorrowful Christian, half converted, was talking with Spur-
goon about Christians enjoying themselves. "I don't think they
should try to enjoy themselves in this world," be said, "I think
there must be something in the Homan Catholic religion, from the
extremely starved and pinched appearance of a oertaio ecclesiastic.
406 KI'^'GS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Look,'' said he. ^' how the man is worn to a skeleton by his daily
fastings and nigiitly vigils ! How he must mortify his flesh !
^'Therc is no call for the Christian to mortify the flesh,'' said
Spurgeon. ^'Lct savages do that, not Christians. The probabilities
are that your emaciated priest is laboring under some internal dis-
ease, which he would be heartily glad to be rid of, and it is not con-
quest of appetite, but failure in digestion, which so reduces him ; or,
possibly, a troubled conscience, which makes him fret himself down
to the light weights. Certainly I have never met with a text lifhich
mentions prominence of bone as an evidence of grace. If so/ the
living skeleton ' should have been exhibited, not merely as a natural
curiosity, but as the standard of virtue. Some of the biggest rognes
in the world have been as mortified in appearance as if they
had lived on locusts and wild honey. It is a very vulgar error to
suppose that a melancholy countenance is tbe index of a Christian
heart. Do not cut yourself with stones, and weep, but look np to
Christ, with a smile of joy and hope in your eye V
» . •
REV. JOSEPH PARKER,
THS GREAT ENGLISH PRSACHEB.
The Rev. Joseph Parker and the Ber. Mr. Spargeon are the
great preachers of England. They are the Talmage and Beecher of
Great Britain.
During his American tour, some one asked Mr. Parker what he
thought of Bible theology.
" We must have some system of theology," said Mr. Parker. *1f
every man was left to get up his own system of astronomy, geology,
medicine and architecture, things would go on but slowly. The
Bible is, at all events, something to begin with."
Speaking of the fighting doctors, one day Mr. Parker said: "One
doctor says bolus, and another says globule. Globule calls Bolus a
butcher, and Bolus calls Globule a quack, and the hydropathist'says,
* Beware of pick -pockets.' And Bolus will not speak to Globule,
though Globule says, 'Let us make it up and begin again;' and Bolus
says, 'Never, as long as I live. I will leech and blister and cup and
bleed and do things with scientific vigor.*"
Speaking of paying ministers Mr. Parker said: "Why people
think they do us a great favor by coming to hear us preach. A
Scotchman asked a minister for five shillings, and in return for the
favor said, 'I'll give you a day's hearing sometime.'
'• It is undoubtedly understood by many that in listening to a min-
ister they are conferring a favor upon him. A person once asked
me to lend him a sovereign, and in support of his request informed
me that he had long attended my ministry. Possibly," continued
^fr. Parker, smiling, "the man richly deserved a sovereignf f or having
done so ; at the same time it is a popular mistake to sup|K)se that the
minister is the party receiving the favor, lie gives his hearers his
497
408 KINOa or THE PLATFORM AJfO)
best thinking, his best power of all kinds, and it is, therefore, a pitj
to show him thankfulness by borrowing money of him."
One of Mr. Parker's finest bits of word painting was his descrip-
tion of the great W. E. Gladstone, who was his personal friend:
"If you nsk mc to dcsc^ribe, personally, the Rt. Uon. W. E.Gladstone." said Mr
Parker, "I could not do fu) lK*yotid describing the two or three dominant lines in his Cai.t.
Ever>' time I looked tit him he took on a new aspect. Every thing depended nn ilic
intellectual action of the moment. I could not begin to tell you of the grandeur i>{
that rough, strong face when the spirit of the man is aroused.
"When he is amused liis face lights up, and even tlmt Cxsar-like nose is almost
agreeable as a patch of sunshine on a great crag. Is he stem? Then let his anta^
onist seek mmm other man. Is Ik; li.steningV He is an eagle on a mountain crag as if
intent on se<;king his pn;y. TIk.'U that voice; was there ever one like it? Xot boisttr-
ous, not loud. 1)ut round, rolling and rich; monotonous indeed, but so dignified that tbc
monotony is forgc^tten in the intellectual action that the voice reveals. It rises grad-
ually and you are not aware that the thunder is going to roar until you find youistlf
in the renter of the stonn."
After speaking of Gladstone's versatility of knowledge. Dr. Parker continued:
"Xow let met speak of Gladstone's progres.siveness. Strange as it may appear, Glad-
stone Ix.'gan lif(j as a Tory. You should hear him pronounce the word Tory now.
You think it (!onsists of two syllables, but when he says it. it seems to be a polysyl-
lable.
*' He is ending his career as a leader of philosopliical liberalism. "When the strug-
gle for home rule in In-land was first begun, when a small party in Parliament made
it the 4U(;stion of the day to the exclusion of all other business, then, in Gladstone's
judgnK'nt it was \\w. demand of a faction and not of a jwople. But when the gt'o-
end elect inn in Ireland sent H) out of 1(K5 Home Rule members to Parliament, then
Gladstone reeognizetl the claim, in a substantial sense, of a nation. Then be acted
with the belief that Parliament exists for the people and not the people for Parlia-
ment.
" He aims to convince the country. The bill which I Mieve will form the text
of any bill that will be introduced in Parliament in favor of home rule must be mod-
eled on Gladstone's 1)ill. It lias gone so far that the nation um not recede from tlmt
l)osilion. We must allow something for w^ords spoken in panic such as followed his
bill. Jklen now, <lay by day, are drawing nearer to his position. Day by day, men are
studying Irish history and charactcT and historical precedents, and the end is not far
o(T. AV'hen Chamberlain and others left him and he stood alone, it was without a sign
of witlnlrawing or budging from his position. His belief is that righteousness \it11
prevjul in the long run.
" The I.ibenil rnionists arc a curious kind of inexpressible middle quantity. Arc
they repent inn:? I will answer by an anecdote. An American lady, in retrenching
exi)enses in the household, conceived the notion of l)cginning the operation by making
that part of her littl(? boy's garments which is known in some parts of America by
th<> eu]>honious and pleas:mt name of ])ants. She made them alike before and behind.
an<l some relative of t he lady asked how slie succeeded. Tlie lady said: * Very nicely;
but they lu-e so made that at a short distance of! I can't tell whether JoXmnio is coming
SBV. JOSEPH PARKER.
4M
home or going away.' Some relative of the lady most have made thei>oIitical pants
of tho Liberal Unionists.
** If the leaders withdraw, then the people will lead the way. That is an Amer-
ican idea. No aristocracy can really understand the people. I don't blame the aris-
tocrats; they were bom so. They are reared to believe that the land is theirs, whereas
it is given to all mankind. Gladstone lives among the people, and he stands for the
people, and is hailed everywhere in England as ' The People's Willie.' He can not
fawn on royalty.
" It has been asked whether any tenderness was in the Spartan granite of Glad-
stone's character. If tears of imbecility, shed over the drivel of hypocrisy, is what is
meant by tenderness, then Gladstone is not tender. But I have seen him after din-
ner, while going back to the days of the union of England with Ireland, take down
from the shelves a history and read aloud, until the sorrows and atrocities in connec-
tion with that event caused Iiis voice to break, and finally he would have to lay down
the book in tears. The question of home nile in Ireland is always with liim in* ooA-
versation. He is approaching 80 years of age. When last I saw him he looked as
vigorous and ready for battle, his port as erect, his eye as bright, his voice as reso-
nant as ever."
The Rev. Joseph Parker was called by Plymouth Church to suc-
ceed Mr. Beecher, and would have filled the place, if he had been
left untrammeled. As it is, Dr. Lyman Abbott preaches in Beecher's
pulpit, but no human being will ever fill Beecher's place. God made
one Bcecher and destroyed the die.
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED
MEN.
REMINISCENCES, JOKES, ANECDOTES AND ELOQUENGB.
(BY ELI PERKINS.)
STORIES ABOUT MR. WANNAMAKER.
Postmaster John Wannamaker has been for years super-
intendent of i)robably one of the largest Sunday-sciiools in the
world. Mr. Wannaniaker has a theory that ho will never put a boy
out of his school for bad conduct. He argues if a boy misbehaves
himself, it must be through bad training at homeland that if we put
him out of the school, no one will take care of him.
"Well, this theory was put to the test one day.
A teacher came to him, and said, "I've got a boy in my class,
that must he taken out; ho breaks the rules continually, he swe:irs
and uses obscene language, and I can not do any thing with him."
Mr. Wannamaker did not care about putting the boy out, so he
sent the teacher back to his class. But he came again, and said, that
unless the boy was taken from his class, he must leave it. Well, he
left, and a second teacher was appointed. The second teacher came
with the same story, and met with the same reply from Mr. Wanna-
maker. And he resigned. A third teacher was appointed, and he
came with the same story as the others. Mr. Wannamaker then
thought he would be compelled to turn the boy out at last.
One day, wiion a few teachers were present, and Mr. Wannamaker
said: ^^I will hring this boy up, and read his name out in the
school, and publicly excommunicate him."
Then a. sweet young lady came u]), and said to him : " I am not doing
what I might for Christ; let me have the boy; I will try and save
600
A nUNDRBD ANBCDOTSa OF A HUNDBED MEN. 501
him." But Mr. Wannamaker said : ^^ If these young, men can not
do it, you will not." But she begged to have him, and^Mr. Wanna-
maker consented.
" She was a wealthy young lady," said Mr. Wannamaker, " sur-
rounded with all the luxuries of life. The boy went to her class,
and for several Sundays he behaved himself, and broke no rule. But
one Sunday he broke one, and, in reply to something she said, spit
in her face. She took out her pocket-handkerchief, and wiped her
face, but she said nothing. Well, she thought upon a plan, and she
said to him : ' Johnnie, please come home with me.'
" *• No,' says John, ' I won't ; I won't be seen on the streets with
you.'
"She was fearful of losing him altogether if he went out of the
school that day, and she said to him : ' Will you let me walk home -
w^ith you?'
" ' No, I won't,' said he ; * I won't be seen on the street with
you.'
''Then the young lady thought of another plan. She thought on
the 'Old Curiosity Shop,' and she said :
" 'I won't be at home to-morrow, Johnnie, but if you will come
round to the front door on Wednesday morning, there will be a
Uttle bundle for you.'
" ' I don't want it,' said John, savagely, "you may keep your old
bundle.'
"The young lady went home, but made the bundle up. She
thought that curiosity might make him come.
" Wednesday morning arrived, and he had got over his mad fit,
and thought he would just like to see wliat was in that bundle. The
little fellow knocked at the door, which was opened, and he told his
storv.
" She said : ' Yes, here is the bundle, Johnnie.'
" The boy opened it, and found a vest and a coat, and other cloth- .
ing", and a little note, written by the young lady, which read some-
thing like this:
" Deau jounnie: — Ever since you have been in my class I have prayed for
you every niorning and evening, that you might be a good boy, and I want yoa to
sloji in my class. Do not leave me.
'' The next morning, before she was up, the servant came to ber,
and said there was a little boy below, who wished to see her. She
f»02 KI^^Ga OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
dressed hastilj^ and went down-stairs, and found Johnnie on the
sofa, w<M>|>ing. She i)iit licr arms around his neck, and he said to her
'' ' My dear teacher, I have not had any happiness since I got
this note from you. I want you to forgive me.'
*' * W(»irt vou let mo prav for you to come to Jesus?' said the
teaclier; and she went down on her knees and prayed. And now,"
says ilr. Wannamakor, "that boy is the !>est boy in his Sunday-
school. And so it was love that won that boy's heart."
The best story this year was told at Saratoga, at the memorable
meeting of Mr. Wannamaker and Jay Gould, wlio were introduced
by myself.
" The details of the olRce of the Postmaster-general," said Mr.
Wannainaker, '' are often v(?ry disagreeable. Changing officers who
have families is often painful. So I let Mr. Clarkson attend to this,
telling him to do every thing business-like and conscientiously."
" Your turning this work over to Clarkson," said Eli, smiling, *'i8
like th(i case of a young woman, years ago, in our church. She was
a good young lady, but would always wear very showy toilets,
attracting the attention of the whole church. One day some good
sisters expostulated with her about her worldly ways.
" ' The love of these bright bonnets,' they said, ' will drav7 yonr
soul down to perdition.'
"Still the somewhat worldly sister continued to wear a bright
bonnet. Rut finally, one night," said Eli, "came repentance. The
young lady came to prayer meeting in a plain hat. She arose and
said :
" * I fe(jl, brothers and sisters, that I have done wrong. I know
that my love for bright bonnets was ruining my fature life. I
knew it was endangciring my soul, and that it would draw me down
to perdition. But I will never wear that hat again. Never! It
shall not destroy my soul. I'm through with it. I've given it to
my sister.' "
LOWELL'S GREATEST POEM.
When :i (Iced is done for Freedom. t]in>i];rli the liroiul enrth*s aching breast
liUns :i tlirill of joy {)ro[)h('tic, treiiiljliii;^ on f roiii c'ii8t to west;
Aiiil ilii- >\.\\'f. wlwn'rr Ik; (owns, fi^flstlie Houl within him climb
Tn tln' jiwfiil vcrji" (.f i[iiiiiho(Ml. ;(-» thr (riicriry sublime
of ;i ( ( htiiry hursts fuU-blnssoincd on tho tlioruy stem of TiniGt
t
1
A EVNBREB ANECDOTES OF A HUNDBED MilT. 603
.V ■ . ■*
Through the waUs of hut and palace Bhootsthe Instantaneous thioe»
When t lie travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, *
Nation wildly looks on nation, standing with mute lips apart.
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Fatu:)re*8 heart.
For mankind arc one in spirit, and an instinct bears along.
Hound the earth's electric circle, the swift fl^ of right or wrong;
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame,
Tlirough its ocean-sundered fibers, feels the gush of Joy or shame;
In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal daim.
Once, to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide.
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight^
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right.
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Host thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand.
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust agaiflst our land?
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet *tis Truth alone is strong;
And albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.
TVe see dimly, in the Present, what is small and what is great;
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn tlie iron helm of Fate;
Hilt the soul is still oracular — amid the market's din.
List the ominous stem whisper from the Delphic cave withinl
"They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with Sinf
Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellcst of the giant brood,
Sons of brutish Force and Diu-kness, who have drenched the earth with blood/.
FamisluMl in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day.
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;
Shall wo guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?
'Tis as easv to l)e heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a Ic.ircndary virtue carved upon our Father's graves;
WorshiptTs of light ancestral make the present light a crime.
AV{is the Mayflower launched by cowanls? steered by men behind their time?
Turn those tracks toward Past, or Future, that make Plymouth l^ock sublime?
They were men of prt^sent vidor — stalwart old inconodasts;
Unconvinced by ax or gibl)et that all virtue was the Past's,
But we make their trutli our falsehood, thinking that has made us free.
Hoarding it in moldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee
The rude grasp of that gvvat impulse which drove them across the sea.
Nrw occasions teach new duties! Time makes ^cient good uncouth;
Tiny must ui)war(l still, and onwani, who would keep abreast of Truth;
Lo, Ix'forc us glrarn iHTcamp-flR's! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayl1ow(T and steer boldly through the desperate winter 8C;i,
Xor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.
/
.004 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
TIIURLOW WEED ON INGERSOLL.
Thurlow Weed, at the age of eighty-two, delivered this little
speech before the Nineteenth Century Club :
Mr. President: — In sjjeaking of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoirs
agnosticism, I will say, in all kindness, that the Colonel is a gentit-
nian of education, with a well-stored mind and attractive personal
manners, who speaks fluently and eloquently. Colonel Ingersoll i^
not a l)eliever in a religion which has been making the world wiser,
better and happier for almost nineteen centuries. Without ques-
tioning Colonel Ingersoll's sincerity or impugning his motives, I am
persuaded that if half the time and labor ex])ended in fortifying
himself with arguments against religion had been devoted to an
intelligent and impartial consideration of the evidences establishing
its truths, the country would have had a gifted follower of Him
wliose mission, labors and character, viewed merely from a worldly
standpoint, inspire admiration, affection and gratitude.
No act of the Savior's life and no word lie ever uttered has
b<?en, or can be, constru(Ml or tortured into hostility to the welfare
and hap})iness of every member of the human family. Hunuin
laws are founded upon the divine law. All that concerns our hap-
pin(»ss here and our hopes of hapjuness hereafter is derived from
the Scriptures.
On the other hand, what has infidelity done for us? Who prof-
its by its teachings!? After depriving its followers of their belief
in a future, how docs it compensate them? What does it offer in
exchange for a life of immortality? If, for example, Colonel
Ingersoll should be summoned to the bedside of a dying friend or
relative, what words of comfort or of hope could he offer? Of
what service could he be to that stricken friend ? Would he ^ssmr
vate the sufferings of one whose last hours needed soothing by tell-
ing him there was nothing but the cold, dark grave awaiting h\mi
This ciuiel tli(;ory is repelled, not only by revelation, but bj the laws
of nature. Nature is instinct with evidences and confirmations of
the truths of jevclation. The vcfjetable and floral world only die
to live again. The products of the earth live and die annually.
TIkj buried acrorn rifproduces the living oak. And yet infidelity
insists that man, tiie image of his Creator, wonderfully endowed
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN. 606
and gifted, under whose auspices the world has been enlightened,
c levated and adorned, is, after a brief existence, to be as though he
had never been.
Contrast the labors of Voltaire and Paine with those of John
Wesley. Can it be said with truth that the two former made any
one better or happier? Hundreds of thousands of the followers of
John Wesley have lived and died, and other hundreds of thousands
survive, rejoicing in their conversion from a sinful to a Christian
life. The memory of Wesley is everywhere cherished by the good
and the pure, while Yoltaire and Paine are only remembered for
the evil, rather than for the good, they did.
If it be urged that the promises of the Savior have not all
been realized, that sin still abounds, and that the world is as bad as
ever, it may be answered that religion is working out its mission :
that its benign influences are constantly extending, and that light
is irradiating the darkest recesses of heathenism and idolatry. It
requires no argument to demonstrate the fact that our race is
iniproved by civilization, or that civilization owes its origin and
progress to religion. To religious influences we are indebted for all
the reforms which benefit society. Our Sunday-schools were insti-
tuted in obedience to a divine command. In these schools children
are taught, " without money and without price," all that concerns
their present welfare and their future happiness. These intellectual
nurseries have enriched and fertilized, and continue to enrich and
fertilize, every city, village, hamlet and household throughout* the
Christian world. If religion had done nothing mere than to bless
our race with the consecrating influences of Sunday-schools, scoffers
should be shamed into silence.
Infidels of all ages found their strongest arguments against
revealed religion upon what they regard as improbable. And yet
we are not called on to believe anything more incomprehensible
than our own existence. We might, with about the same degree of
leason, deny this fact, as to refuse to believe in a future existence.
W(» know that we live in this world. Is it unreasonable to believe
that we may live in another world ? If we are to believe nothing
hut what we understand, we should go through life incredulous and
aimless. We are ready enough to believe on information the things
that relate to this world. But we are slow to believe in prophecy
and revelation, though both are corrobomted by observation, experi-
ence and events. Infidelity, claiming su{)eriority in ^^ reason " and
.i
506 KINGS OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
common sense, asks us to believe that all of grandeur and sublimity,
all of vastness and power in the beautiful heavens and upon the
bountiful earth, comes by chance ; that every thing is self-created
and self-existing, and that law, order and harmony are accidents.
Those who accept this theory would find its application to their bus-
iness affairs anything but advantageous. Infidelity and communism
are kindred in character, and aim, by different methods, to under-
mine the sanctions and securities upon which the world's welfare
and happiness rest. Infidelity strikes at religion,* communism at
property. One seeks to weaken our faith, and the other demands
for the idle and worthless an equal share in the savings of the indos-
frious and frugal. Agrarianism (communism of a milder type)
came to us some forty years ago from England, with Fanny Wright
and Kobert Dale Owen as its apostles. This bad element has been
reinforced by communism from France and Germany. All three
are working'out their destructive mission in a city where, unhappily,
they find co-operation and sympathy. To these birds of ill omen
comes infidelity, equally aggressive, with Robert G. Ingersoll as its
teacher. If it be said that, unlike the communistic leaders, Mr.
Ingersoll is a ''gentleman and a scholar," the danger is thereby
intensified.
The strongest ai'ginnent urged against Christianity, from the
days of Voltaire and Paine, is that bad men made a profession of
it; that hyi)ocrites are found in all our churches. This is true.
]Jut is it not equally true that every thing intrinsically valuable gets
debased ? Fi*auds are practiced in business. The richest fabrics
have tlieir imitations. Gold and silver coins are debased or coun-
terfeited. The evils, however, resulting from impositions of this
nature are not serious. The intelligence of our people and the pen-
alties to which offenders are subjected afford adequate protection,
and for one hypoi-rite who makes a false profession there are
at least nine conscientious, devtjted Christians.
Another argument against religion is that our Savior was an
impostor, and as a corollary that His teachings exert a baneful influ-
ence. And yet both of the accusations are disproved by the experi-
ence of 2,000 years. If Jesus of Nazareth had been an impostor,
llis name and every thing ccmnected with it would hardly have sur-
vived a second generation. There would then have been no occa-
sion for the labors of Voltaire, Paine or IngersolL Other and
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN. 507
numerous false teachers have appeared and disappeared. But time
and truth have been attesting the divinity of our Savior. His a|)os-
tles and their successors, obeying His instructions, have carried and
are carrying the glad tidings to the uttermost ends of the earth.
As far and as fast as this gospel travels, the world is civilized and
its inhabitants benefited.
Civilization and its beneficent institutions abound by the relig-
ion wliich our Savior instructed His apostles to preach to the
heathen. Geographical lines are not more distinctly established
than those which mark the progress of missionaries; and while
religious light brightens the Christian world, its rays dawn upon
the darkest portions of the earth. What have the doctrines of
Confucius, Mohammed and other false teachers done for their fol-
lowers but to hold them for centuries in ignorance and barbarism ?
[Applause.]
DON PIATT'S FUNNY SPEECH.
Don Piatt, the great siitirest and humorist was called upon for a
speech before the Hatchet Club, on the 22d of February, Washington's
birthday. lie arose and said.
Ladies and Gentlemen: — Mark Twain and Petroleum V, Nasby, dined
witli Eli Perkins at the latter'a residence in New York, on Washington's
birtliday, last year. The conversation at that dinner I shall never for-
get. The stories told and the truthful reminiscences brought out at that
dinner would fill a small booK.
After the last course, and after the ladies had withdrawn, the con-
versation turned upon horses. Finally Mr. Twain laid down his cigar
and asked Perkins and Nasby if they had ever heard of a fast horse he
(Mark) used to own in Nevada.
*' I think not," said Xasby.
'' Well, gentlemen," continued Mr. Twain, as ho blow a smoke ring
and watched it, ** that wjis a fast horse. lie was a very fast horse. But
h(? was so tough-bitted that I couldn't guide him with a bit at all.'*
*^ How did you guide liini?^' asked Eli.
**Well, gentlemen, I had to guide him with electricity. I had to
have wire lines and had to keep a battery in the wagon oil the time in
onliT to stop liiin."
*' Why didn't you stop him by hollering who-a?" asked Eli.
508 KISO^s OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
€<
Stop him by hollering who-a!" exclaimed Mr. Twain. ''Why I
conld not holler loud enough to make that horse hear me. He traTeledao
fast that no sound ever reached him from behind. [Laughter.] He went
fiister than tlio sound, sir. Holler who-a and he'd be in the next tovn
hofore I lie sound of your voice could reach the dash board. [Langhter.]
' Triivel fast?' I should say he could. Why I once started from Virginii
(.'ity for Meadow Creek right in front of one of the most dreadful nio-
storms we ever had on the Pacific coast. Wind and rain? Whv liie
wind blew eighty miles an hour and the rain fell in sheets. I drove
ri;rht befon? tliat storm for three hours — just on the edge of that hurricaue
and rain for fortv miles.''
'^Didn't you get drenched ?" asked Perkins.
"Drenched? Mo, sir. Why, I tell you, I drove right in front of that
rainstorm. I could loan forward and let the sun shine on me, or lean
backward and feel rain and catch hailstones. When the hurricane 8lacke«l
\\\) tlie hor.se filiicked up, too, and when it blew faster I just said * g — Ikl'
to tlic lior.sf and touclie<l the battery, and away we went. Xow I don't
II ktf to lie about my horse, Mr. Perkins, and I don't ask you to Ijelieve
^\ilat 1 H;iy, but I tell you truthfully that when I got to Meadow Creek
ijiy linen cluster was as <lry as powder. Xot a drop of rain on the wagon
M-at (fitlM.T, wiiile the wagon Imix was level full of hailstones and water,
or I'm a , a " |rJn*rit Iau;(litor. ]
*' Look JuTt! ^^rcnilMiiuMi," iiii(;rrupt(*d Mr. Nasby, '* speaking of the
truth, did vou i.*\« r In ar about niv strikin;? that man in Toledo?"
Mari\ >.\\\A lie lia«l never heard about it.
*' Well, sir, it was this way: There was a man there — one of thoee
worhlly, skeptical fellows, who questioned my veracity one day. He
said he had doubts ab(»ut the triuhfulness of one of my cross-roads inci-
dents. Jle didn*i say it pul^liely, but privately. Pni sorr}', for the sake
of iiis wile and family, now, that he said it at all — andsorry for the man,
to(;, beeaiihe he wasn't pre])ared to go. If he'd been a Christian it
W'lild liave Immii difrercnt. I say I didn't want to strike this niant
breaiise it's a h.id habit to ^a't into — this making a human chaos out of a
f<iIi)U' man. r>iin he questioned my veracity and the earthquake came.
I siruek hiuj onee — just once. I remember he was putting downs
eaijiei at the time aiirl had his mouth full of carpet-tacks. But a man
can't Htop to discount carpet- tack J in a man's mouth, when ho questioni
}f()\\v vr ra<Mty, can he? I never do. I simply struck the blow."
*' Did it hurt, (he man mueh?*' asked F^li.
'' I ditn't tliihk it did. It was {it\) sudden. 'I'lie bvstanders said if I
wab going to At ilk u a bcuuud blow they wanted to move out ol ths
.-J
A BUNDBED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN. 609
State. Now, I don't want you to believe me, and I don't expect you
will, but to tell you the honest truth, Mr. Perkins, I squashed that man
right down into a door-mat, and his own wife, who was tacking down ^
ono Cilgc of the carpet at the time, came right along and took him for a
gutl:>-nercha rug, and actually tacked him down in front of the door.
Poor u oi.LMi; she never knew she was tacking down her own husband I
What became of the tacks in his mouth? you ask. Well, the next day
the boys pulled them out of the bottoms of his overshoes, and — — '*
[Loud ^lughter drowned the speaker's voice.]
^'ixODtlemen!" interrupted Eli, "it does me good to hear such
truths. I believe every word you say, and I feel that I ought to
exchange truths with you. Now, did you ever hear how I went to
prayer-meeting at New London, Gonn., in a rain storm?"
Tlioy said they had not.
*' Well, gentlemen," siiid Eli, " one day I started for the New Londoh
prayer-meeting on horseback. When I got about half-way there, there
came up a fearful storm. The wind blew a hurricane, the rain fell in
torrents, the lightning gleamed through the sky, and I went and
crouched down behind a large barn. But pretty soon the lightning
struck the barn, knocked it into a thousand splinters, and sent my
horse whirling (Ver into a neighboring corn-patch."
'• Did it kill you, Mr. Perkins?" asked Mr. Twain; the tears rolling
down his cheeks.
*' No, it didn't kill me," I said, " but I was a good deal discouraged."
" AVflK what did you do, Mr. Perkins?"
''What did I do? Well, gentlemen, to tell the honest Connecticut
truth, I went right out into the pasture, took off my coat, humped up
my bare back, and took eleven clips of lightning right on my bare back-
bone, drew the electricity all out of the sky, and then got on to my horse
and rode into New London in time to lead at the evening prayer-
meetincf.
"Arise and singi" [Loud laughter.]
JOSEPH COOK.
When Joseph Cook was asked if any thing came by chance,
be siiid :
'* Xo, no. no; God and ITis law are behind every thing.'*
'' How will you prove il^''
'' I>y this illustration,-' said Mr. Cook: "The Scotch philosopher,
Beattie, once went into his garden and drew in the soft earth ihe
510 KINGS OF TBE PLATFOBM AND PULPIT.
letters C. W. B. He sowed these farrows with garden cream
smoothed fhe earth and went away. These were the initials of fail
little boy, who had never been taught any thing cx>noemmg God,
although he had learned to read. 'Ten days later,' says Beattie,
' the child came running to me in amazement, and said : ^^ My name
has grown in the garden."
" ' "Well, what if it has? ' said the philosopher: 'that is nothing/
and turned away.
'' But the child took his father by the hand, led him to the
garden plat, and said: ' What made those letters ? '
'^ ' I see very well,' the father replied, ' that the initials of your
name have grown up here in the garden. That is an accident,' and
he turned away again.
'' The child followed him, took him by the hand, bronght him
back to the spot, and said, very earnestly : ' Some one mast have
planted the seeds to make the letters.'
" ^ Then you believe those letters can not have beto produced
by chance,' said the father.
" ^ I believe somebody planted them,' said the son, who probably
did not know what chance meant.
u < Yery well,' said the father, ' look at your hands and your feet :
consider your eyes and all your members. Are they not skillfully
arranged ? How did your hand get its shape ? '
''* Somebody must have made my hands,' said the boy.
" ' Who is this some one? ' asked the father.
" ' I do not know,' said the child.
^' ^ Do you feel certain that somebody planted those seeds, and
sure that some one made your hands?'
** ' Yes,' said the boy, with great earnestness.
*' And then the father communicated to the child the name of
the great Being by whom all things are made, and the boy never for
got tlie lesson nor the circumstances which led to it."
DR. PENTECOST ON GOD'S APPROVAL.
''One winter's day," said Dr. Pentecost. "I was at a railway
station at New York. There was a large crowd of persons desiring
to go from New York to Boston, and we all had to pass through a
4. f*-
A nmmRED anbodotbb of a RxnmBSD ifaxr. 5il
narrow way by the gatekeeper. Everybody had to show his ticket,
and, as usual, there were many who could not conveniently find
them. They said they had them, bat the gatekeeper was inezor>
able.
'^ ^ Tou must show your ticket,' he said, *if you please.'
^' There was both grumbling and swearing on the part of the
passengers. After most of them had passed through, b gentleman
said to the ticket-collector :
" ' Tou don't seem to be very popular with this crowd.'
" The ticket-collector just cast his eyes upwards to the ceiling on
the floor above, where the superintendent's office was, and said :
" ' I don't care anything about being popular with this crowd ;
all I care for is to be popular with the man up there.' '' ^
EDMUND CLAEENTE STEDMAN.
BIOGRAPHY.
Edmund Clarence Stcdman was bom in Ilartford, October 8, 1888. He is now •
member of the N. Y. Stock Exchange, where he is called the banker-poet. Hr. Bted.
man lias made himself famous as a poet, critic and journalist. His most ambitkms
criticul work has been the publication of his " History of American Lttentore'* In
nine (x^tavo volumes, completed during the present year.
Mr Stcdman has written volumes, but we select only the sketch:
KEARNY AT SEVEN PINES.
So that soldier}' legend is still on its journey —
Tliat stor}' of Kearny who knew not to yield?
Twas tlie day when, with Jameson, fierce Berry and Bimey,
• Against twenty thousand he rallied the field.
Where the rctl volleys p< aired, where the clamor roMj highestp
Where the dead lay in clumps tlirough the dwarf -oak and pine;
Where the aim from tlie thicket was surest and nighest
No charge like Phil Keamy*s along the whole line.
'When the battle went ill, and the bravest were solemn.
Near the dark Seven Pines, where we still held our gioond,
lie nxle down the lengtli of tlie withering column,
And his liejirt at our war-er}- leaj^ed up with a boimd;
lie snufTed, like his charger, the wind of the powder.
His swonl waved us on, and wean8were<l the sign;
Loud our clieers as we nished, but his laugh rang the louder,—
•• There's the devil's own fun, boys, along tlie whole linel "
^^
"il^^ KiyOS OF THE PLATFORM AIW PTTPILT.
now he strcHle liis brown steecl! How we saw his blade brigbtea
In tlio one hand still Ifft — and the ruins in his teeth!
lie liiu^hrrl like a boy when the holidays lieighten.
But a soldier's irlance shot from his visor beneath.
Up came tin* ri'scrvcs to the medley infcTnal,
Asking where to go in — through the clearing or pine?
** Oil, anywhere! ForwardI 'Tis all the Sjune, Colonel;
You'll find lovelv llirhtiiiir alonir the whole linel "
O, evil tlie Mack shroud of niu^ht at Chantllh',
That hid him from si.:lit of iiis brave men and tried!
Foul, foul sped tliehullrt that cliiJjx'd the white lily,
Tlu; llnwrr of our kniL!lilh(»Hl, tlu; whole army's pride!
Yet wo dream th.it. In; still, in that shadowy region,
Where the (lead form their ranks at the wan drummer's sign.
Rides on, as of old, down \\\o length of his legion.
And the word .still i. — ** F(trward! " along the whole line.
AXECDOTES ABOUT TliAYERS, STEWART, CLEWS
AND JEROME.
Mr. Wm. R. Travcrs was a unique character. He vras not a
literary man. II(^ did not write anecdotes but he perpetrated jokes,
and he j)er])etrated so many that lie kept the literary men of New
York busv for years recordin*^ them. Mr. Travers married a
danti^diter of th(^ Hon. R(iverdy Johnson, of Baltimore, and ex-minister
to England, after which he moved to New York and formed a part-
ners]] ip with Leonai'il Jc.-rome, whose daughter married Lord Ran-
dolpli Churchill. lie died in Bermuda, March 19, 1887.
Travel's was a stammerer. He never spoke three consecutive
words without stammei'inf^^ This stammer added to the effective-
ness of his wit, as Charles Laml/s stammer added to his wit. His
fame \i^A to be so areat as a stammerer that he was made the hero
of a thousand siammei'in^ storic^s, which he never heard of until
they weie rt'a<l to liim from tiie newspaper. But his slfOulders
wei(i bi'oad emmiih and liis heart was big enough to father them all.
One dav Mr. Ti'avers went into a bird-fancier's in Centre stnvl.
'' Il-h-jjave \i>\\ liot a-a all kinds of b-b-birds?" he asked.
^' Yes, sii", all kinds," said the l)ird-fancier, politely.
"T w'-w-wa.nt to b-buy a ])-p-])arrot," hesitated Mr. T.
"Well, here is a beauty. See its golden plumage!"
.1 HUNDRED AXECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MES. 613 x
*aj-b-beautiful," stammered Travers. "G-c-can he t-t-talkf
''Talk!'" exclaimed the bird-fancier. ''If he cauH talk better
than you can I'll give him to you!"
**Mr. Travers," says Jay Gould, "once went down to a dog-fan-
cier's in Water street to buy a rat-terrier.
" Is she a g-g-^^'^d ratter?' asked Travers as he poked a little,
shivering pup with his cane.
" *Yes, sir; splendid! FU show you how Be'll go for a rat,' said
the dog-fancier — and then he put him in a box with a big rat"
'* How did it turn out i " I asked Mr. Gould.
*' Why, the rat made one dive and laid out the frightened terrier
in a second, but Travers turned around, and sez he — 'I say, Johnny^
w-w-whani ye t-t-take for the r-r-rat?'"
Henry Clews, the well-known bald-headed banker, who always
prides himself on l)eing a self-made man, during a recent talk with
Mr. Tnivers had occasion to remark that he was the architect of his
own destiny — that he was a self-made man.
'^ AV-w-what d-did vou s-av, Mr. Clews?" asked Mr. Travers.
^* I say with pride, lS\r. Travers, that I am a self-made man — ^that
I made mvself — "
''Hold, Il-henry," interrupted Mr. Travers, as he dropped his
ci^ar, **w- while you were m-m-making yourself, why the devil,
(l-ilid-<lidn't vou }>-put some more hair on the top of y-yourh-
head?*'
One day Colonel F'isk was showing Mr. Travers over the "Ply-
nioutii Rock," the famous Long Branch boat. After showing the
rest of the vessel, he pointed to two large jwrtraits of himself and
Mr. (iould. hanging, a little distance apart, at the head of the stair-
wav.
'• There," savsthe Colonel, ''what do vou think of them?"
*' Tiiey're good. Colonel — ^\'ou hanging on one side and Gould on
the other; f-i-r-s-t rate. But Colonel," continued the wicked Mr.
Travers, buried in thought, 'Sv-w-where's our Savior?'*
Mr. Tnivers, who is a vestryman in Grace church, says he
knows it was wicked, but he couldn't have helped it if he'd been on
iiis dvin*^ bod.
'•Ono dav," savs Ilcnrv Clews in his *'Thirtv Years in Wall
Sti'tM t," * after Mr. Travel's had moved to Kew York, an old friend
from naltimore met him in Wall Street. As it had been a long time
5U KrXaS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
since thc\^ saw each other, they had a considerable number of topics
to talk over. Thev liad been familiitr friends in the Monumental
Cit}^ and were not, therefore, restrained by tlie usual social formali-
ties.
" 'I notice, Travers,' said the Baltimorean, Hhat you stutter :,
great deal more than when you were in Daltirnore/
" 'AV-h-y, y-e-s,' replied Mr. Travers, darting a look of surprise at
his friend; ^of course I do. Tliis is a d-d-damned sight b-l>--bigger
citv.' "
Travers saw Jay Gould one afternoon standing in front of the
Stock Excliange buried in deep thought.
""'Clews,' he said, turning to the banker, "that'sa queer attitude
for G-G-Gould.'
" * IIow so?' asked Clews.
'"'Whv he's got his hands in his jv-p-pockets — his own p-p-poct
ets.' ^'
Travers belonged to IMcAlister's *'400,'' was a good deal of an
aristoci'at and was always saying s])iteful things about tradesmen
like Astor, Lorillard and A. T. Stewart. Stewart, was elected on
one occasion to ])reside at a meeting of citizens during the war.
Travers w<is present in the audience. When Mr. Stewart took his
gold |)encil case from his pocket and rapped with its head on the
table for the meeting to come to order, Travel's called out, in an
audible tone*, **C-cash I" which brought down tlie house, and no one
laughed more heartily than Mr. Stewart, although it was a severe
thrust at himself.
One of Travel's' best hon 7)iots was ins|)ired by the sight of the
Siamese twins. After carefully examining the mysterious ligature
that had bound them together from birth, he looked up blankly at
them and said, '' l>-b-br-brothers, I presume."
Mr. (/lews says that the last time he saw Travers, the genial
brok(»r called at his office. Looking at the tape. Clews remarket!:
'* Tiie market is pretty stiff to-day, Travers."
'* Y- v-ves, but it is the st-st -stiffness of d-d-death."
One day, many yeai's ago, Mr. Travers was standing on the curb
of Xew street, opposite the Exchange, buying some stock from a.
gentleman whose aspect was unmistakably of the Hebrew stamp.
'* Wh-wh-what is your name ! '" asked Travers.
^'Jacobs/' i'es|)onded the seller.
A nUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN. 616
" B-b-but wh-what is your Christian name ? " reiterated Travers.
The Uebrew was nonplussed, and the crowd was convulsed with
laughtter.
The first time Mr. Travers attempted to find Montague street, in
Brooklyn, he lost his way, although he was near the place. Meet-
ing a man, he said :
^' I desire to r-reach M-Montague st-street. W-will you b-be
kik-kind enough to pup-point the way ? "
" You-you are go-going the wrong w-way,*' was the stammer-
ing answer. " That Ib M-Montague st-street there."
"Are y-you mimick-mimicking me, making fun of me-me?'*
asked Mr. Travers, sharply.
"Nun-no, I assure you, sir," the other replied. "I-I am ba-
badly af-flict-flicted with an imp-impediment in my speech."
"Why do-don't y-you g-get curetl?" asked Travers, solemnly.
"G-go to Doctor Janvrin, and y-you'Uget o-cured. D-don't y-you '
see how well I talk ? H-he cu-cured m-m-me."
An obtuse Englishman, a friend of Lord Eandolph Churchill,
was dining with Larry Jerome and Mr. Travers. An Englishman
was always the natural prey of Jerome and Travers. They
pumped him full of the most astonishing stories of Travers* career
JUS warrior, editor, hunter, fisherman, yachtsman, statesman, guide,
philosopher and friend.
"I came f-from a large f-f-family," stammered Mr, Travers.
" Tliero were t-t-ten of us b-b-bovs, and each of us had a s-s-
sister.-'
"Ah, indeed!'' remarked the obtuse Englishman, " twenty of
vou/'
"No/' said Travers, scornfully, " 1-1-leven."
K. Q. PHILANDER DOESTICKS.
Below is the first article Mortimer M. Thompson — "Doesticks"
— wrote. It was first published in Rocliester, but Chas. A. Dana,
eter a great lover of wit, saw its merits, and one day, in the absence
of Horace Greeley, republished it in the Trihvm.e. The article was
extensively copied, and made Doesticks famous. Mr. Thompson was
nir; Kixns of tjte platform and pvlptt.
a brother of " Fanny Fem/' whose husband was Jainos Parton. We
give the article as recited by Doesticks in a lecture :
Ladies and Gentlemen : — I have been to Niagara — you know Niagara
Falls — big rocks, watcr^ foam^ table rock, Indian curiosities^ squaws,
moccasins, stuffed snakes, rapids, wolves, Clifton House, suspendcm
bridge, place where the water runs swift, the ladies faint, scream and
get the paint washed off their faces ; where the aristocratic Indian ladies
sit on the dirt and make little bags ; where all the inhabitants swindle
strangers ; where the cars go in a hurry, the waiters are impudent andall
the small boys swear.
When I came in sight of the suspension bridge, I was Tividly
impressed with the idea that it was ^^some" bridge ; in fact a considerable
curiosity, and a '' considerable '' bridge. Took a glass of beer and walked
up to the Falls; another glass of beer and walked under the Falls;
wanted another glass of beer, but couldn't get it ; walked away from the
Falls, wet tlirough, mad, triumphant, victorious ; humbug ! humbng !
Sir, all humbug ! except the dampness of every thing, which is a moist
certainty, and tlie cupidity of everybody, which is a diabolical fact, and
the Indians and niggers every where, which is a satanic truth.
Anotlier glass of beer — 'twas forthcoming — immediately — also
another, all of wliich I drank. I then proceeded to drink a glass of
beer; [laughter] went over to the States, where I procured a glass of
Seer — went up-stairs, for which I paid a sixpence; over to Goat Island,
toi which I disbursed twenty-five cents; hired a guide, to whom I paid
half a dollar — sneezed foui- times, at nine cents a sneeze — [laughter] went
up on the tower for a quarter of a dollar, and looked at the Falls — didn't
feel sublime any; tried to, but couldn't; took some beer, and tried again,
but failed— drank a ^^lass of beer and began to feel better — thought the
waters were sent for and were on a journey to the— [pointing down-
ward amid great laughter', thought the place below was one sea of beer
— was going tc jump down and get some; guide held me; sent him over
to the hotel to i^et a glass of beer, while I tried to write some poetry —
result as follows:
Oh, thou (spray in one eye) awful, (small lobster in one 8hoe>) sub-
lime (both feet wet) master i)iece oi (what a lie) the Almighty I terrible
and majestic art thou in thy tremendous might— awful (orful) to behold,
(cramp in my right shoulder,) gigantic, huge and nice! Oh, thou that
tumblest down atid risetli up again in misty majesty to heaven — ^thga
viorious parent of a thousand rainbows — what a huge, grand, awful,
terrible, tremendous, infinite, old swindling humbng yon are; what are
you doing there, you rapids, you— you know you've tumbled over tkerc^
A IIUXDRED ANECDOTES OF A fflTNDBBD MBIT. 517
and can't get up again to save your puny existence; yon make a great
fuss, don't you?
Man came back with the beer^ drank it to the last drop, and wished
there had been u gallon more— walked out on a rock to the edge of the
fall, woman on the sliorc very much frightened — I told her not to get
excited if I fell over, as I would step right up again — it would not'be
much of a fall anyhow — got a glass of beer of a man, another of a woman,
and another of two small boys with a pail — fifteen minutes elapsed, when
I purchased some more of an Indian woman and imbibed it through a
straw ; it wasn't good — had to get a glass of beer to take the taste out of my
month; legs began to tangle up, effects of the "spray in my eyes, got
hungry and wanted something to eat — ^went into an eating-house, called
for a plate of beauB, when the plate brought the waiter in his hand. I
took it, hung up my beef and beans on a nail, eat my hat, [laughter]
paid the dollar a nigger, and sided out on the step-walk, bought a boy
of a glass of dog [laughter] with a small beer and a neck on his tail, with
a collar with a spot on the end — felt funny, sick — got some soda-water
in tin rup, drank the cup and placed the soda on the counter, and paid
for the money full of pocket — [laughter*] very bad headache; rubbed it
against tlio lamp-post and then stumped along; station-house came along
and said if I did not go stniight he'd take me to the watchman — [laugh-
ter] tri(Ml to oblige the station-house, very civil station-house, very— met
a haby with an Irish woman and a wheelbarrow in it, [loud laughter]
rouldti't get out of the way; she wouldn't walk on the sidewalk, but
incited on going on both sides of the street at once;tried to walk between
her; [laughter] conscfjucnce collision, awful, knocked out the wheel-
barrow's nose, broke the Irish woman all to pieces, baby loose, court-
hoiit(> handy, took mo to the constable, [laughter] jury sat on me, and
the jail said the magistrate must take me to the constable; objected; the
dungeon put me into the darkest constable in the city; got out and here
I am pro]>ared to stick to my original opinion.
Mftfinrn nn)i efti excelsiis (egofui) hunibugestl Indignus admirationi!
[Loml laughter.]
Er(;ENE FIELD'S LECTURE.
BIOGRAPHY.
KuL^-tMio Firld u;i> iM.rii in Boston. Mass., in IWK). He received a classical edu-
cMiou. ;iii<l liu' siiM r bc'cuiue famous as a journalist and iivit. He published "Cult*
urcs Garlaud" iu 1887.
518 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AXD PULPIT,
Mr. Field is quite famous as a lecturer in the vicinity of St. Joseph,
^Fo., where lie has delighted thousands of audieneeB. His last great
lecture was delivered in Kalamazoo, Mich., before the Kalamazoo Col-
lege. Mr. Field says he thought it was the morgue when he accepted the
engagement. It was a charming medley of poetry and prose, however,
and is jmblished in this book for the first time.
Ladies and (rcnllcincn:
A litth^ iH'ach in the orchard grew,
A little iH'jidi of emerald hue:
Wanned by the sun and wel by tlie dew,
It grew.
One diiy, walking th(; orchard througli.
That little jM'ach dawned on the view
Of .lolinuy Jones and his sister Sue —
Tliose two. [Laughter.]
Vp at the i>each a club tliey threw:
Down from the limb on whieli itgrew,
Fell the little i)each of emerald hue —
Too true. [Laughter.]
John took a bite, and Sue took a chew,
An<l then the trouble began to brew, —
Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue, —
Paregoric too. [laughter.]
I iider th(* turf where the daisies grew.
They jilanted John and his si.ster Sue;
And their little souls to tlie angels flew —
Boo-h(X)! [Sensiition.]
But what of the i)each of emerald hue,
Wannrd ])y the sun, and wet by the dew?
Ah, Weill its mission on eartli is through —
Adieu! [xVpplause.]
At the panorama of the Battle of Sliiloh in Chicago a few days ago,
a small, shriveled-uj) man made himself conspicuous by going around
tlie place sniveling dolorously. He did not appear to be more than five
feet high. He was dressed all in black, and his attenuated form and
gray whiskers gave him a peculiarly grotesque appearance. He seemed
to be greatly interested in the panorama; and, as he moved from one
point of view to another, he groaned and wept copioufifly. A tall, raw-
boned man approached him; he wore gray clothes and a military slouch
hat, and he had the general appearance of a Missourian away from home
on a holiday.
A HUNDRED .\\Er}>nri^S OF .1 IIUNimED MKy. 510
" life k I) II you were ut Sliilob, eli, slruuger?" asked tho Lull, raw-
boni'il iiian.
" Ves," replieil the smiill, Bhrivelcd-iij) man, "iimi I bIiuU novw
forget it; it wiia tlio touglicBt battle of the wur."
'• I was thar," eaid tlio tall, raw-boned man; " and my regiment was
dmwri up right over yoiuler wheru you aeu tltat clump of trous."
"You were a rebel, then?"
" I was a Coiifcderati'," replied the tiill, raw-twuitl man; "and I did
Eomo right Binart fighting among that clump of treca that day."
" I remember it well," Biiiil the small, flhrivcled-ap man, " for I wiis
a Federal soldier; and the toughest scriuimagc in nil that buttle was
fought amongst that clump of trees."
" Prentiss was the Yankee general," remarked the Tall, raw-boned
man; "and I'd have given a good deal to have seen him that day. lint,
dog-on me! the little cuss kept out of sight, and we uns «ianio to thu
conclusion he was hidin' hack in the rear gomewhar,"
"Our bojB were after Muruiaduke," said tho Bniall. Bhrivcled-up
man; " for ho was the robot general, and had bothered uh a gr(.at deal.
Itut we could get no glimpse of him; ho waa too sharp to come to tho
froni, and it was lucky for him too."
"Oil, but what a scninmagc it wasi" eaid the Ittll, law-honod man.
■' How the sabres cluehod, and how thu miiiivs whittled! " cried tha
small, shrivcled-np man,
Tlie panorama brought hack the old timo with all tbo vividnoM of
a yesterday's occurrence, Tlio two meu were filled wjtii a stmngo jot
beautiful enthusiasm.
" Stranger," cried the tail, raw-boned man, '• we fought t-ach othci
like devils that day, and wo fought to kill. But thu war's over now,
and wo ain't soldiers any longer — gimme your hand!"
"With pleasure," said the email, ahriveled-up man; and the two
clasped hands.
" What might be your name?" inquired tho tall, raw-boned man.
" 1 am Gen. B. M. Prentiss," said tho small, ahriveled-up man.
"Closh, you iiay!"cxclaiuied tho tull, raw-boned man.
" Yos," re-affirmed the small, ehriveletl-up man; "and who arc yon?"
" I." replied the tall, raw-lx)ned mr.u, "lam Gen. John S. SlArma-
duk<.\" [l,oud laughter.]
1 n i^1n■lI I livcil awny down Esst. whi-re t-oitnaU null llw W,.
Anil wIk'ii: Die folks liAVtr pumpkin- pii: EUuI Opptt^wSS tor tUB.
Is linys wlios li^^ll' lipre out Weal, doii'l (ret muro'ii half n sllow ;
\\i- (liiiil tiavr iiniliiii' .-Im- iml.i but jc-*l |<. -.rl. fi' (ttuw.
I
J
520 KTNGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
Oh ! if I wii/. a bird IM tly a nullion mik*8 away
To where thc-y U-iA their boys on pork and 1)ean.s three times a ^txy.
To where the place tliey call the Hub, gives out its shiny spokcfi.
And whcTe tin; folks— so father says — is mostly women-folks. [Laughter.]
Tho meml)cr.s of the Boston Connneivial Club arc oharmiiig gentle-
men. Thoy are now tho guests of the Chicago Commercial Clnb^ and
lire being shown every attention tliat our market affords. They arttafine-
looking h)t, well-dressed and well-mannered, with just enough whiskers
to be impressive without being imposing.
''Tills is a darned likely village," said Seth Adams, of the Boston
Commereial Club, after being in Chicago a day or two. ** Every body
is rnshin' ^round an' doin' business as if his life depended onit. Should
think they'd git all tu(rkered out 'fore night, but Til be darned if there
ain't just as many folks on tlic street after night-fall as afore. We're
stoppin' at the Palmer tavern : an' my chamber is up so all-fired high,
that I can count all your meetin'-housc ptceplesfrom the winder.**
Last night five r)r six of tlies(» Bijstou merchants sat aronnd the office
of tlic hotel, and discussed mjiltcrs and things. Pretty soon they got
to talk in;^ about beans ; this was the subject which they dwelt on with
evident pleasure.
''Waal, sir/' said Ephniim Tiift, a wholesale dealer in maple-sngar
and IhivonMl lozen^^es, ''you kin talk 'liout your new-fashioned dishes an'
liigli-r:iliilin' vittle.'^ ; but, wlien you come right down to it, there ain't
no heltcrejifln' tluiii a dish o' baked pork 'n' beans."
''That's so, W go.sli! " (^honissed the others.
" The truth o' the matter is," continued Mr. Taft, "that beans is
good for everyi)ody — 't don't make no difference whether he'b well or
siek. Why, Tve knoAvn a tl ion sand folks — waal, mebbe not quite a
thousand; but — waal, now, jest to show, take the case of Bill Holbrook:
you remember Bill, don't ye i'''
" P»ill Holbrook?" «aid Mr. Ezra Eastman; "why, of conroe I do!
Used to live down to Brinilluld, next to the Moses Howard farm."
"That's the man," resumed Mr. Taft. '^Waal, Bill fell sick-
kinder moped round, tired like, for a week or two, an' then tuck to hit
1)0(1. His folks sent for Dock Smith — ol' Doek Smith that used to carjy
round a piiir o' h'aiher .sa(Ml(;l):l;^^^ — ^'osh, they don't have 110 soch doc-
tors nowadaysl Waal, tluMloek, lie come, an' he looked at Bill's tongue,
an' felt nv his pulse, an' said that Bill had typhus fever. OP Dock
Smith was a very canfnl conserv'tive man, an' he never said nothin'
unless he knowd he was right.
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN 521
*' Bill began to git wuss, an' he kep' a-gittin' wuss every day. One
mornin* oV Dock Smith sez, ' Look a-here. Bill, I guess you're a goner;
as I figger it, you can't hoi' out till nightfall."
'^Bill's mother insisted on a con-sul -tation bein' held; so ol* Dock
Smith sent over for young Dock Brainerd. I calc-late, that, next to ol*
Dock Smith, young Dock Brainerd was the smartest doctor that ever
lived.
** Wiiiil, pretty soon along come Dock Brainerd; an' he an* Dock
Smith went uU over Bill, an' looked at his tongue, an' felt uv his pulse,
an* told him it was a gone case, an' that he had got to die. Then they
went ofT into the spare chamber to hold their con-sul-tation.
*' Waal, Bill he lay there in the front room a-pantin' an' a-gaspin',
an' a wond'rin' whether it wuz true. As he wuz thinkin', up comes the
girl to git a clean tablecloth out of the clothes-press, an' she left the
door ajar as she come in. Bill he gave a sniff, an' his eyes grew more
natural like; he gathered together all the strength he had, an' he
raised himself upon one elbow, an' sniffed again.
** ' Sary,' says he, ^ wot's that a cookin'? '
*' ^ Beant,' says she, ' beans for dinner.'
'"^ * Sary/ says the dy in' man, 'I must hev a plate uv them beansi'
[Laughter.]
*' * Sakcs alive, Mr. Tlolbrook!' says she, *if you wuz to eat any o'
them beans, itM kill ye! '
** * If I've got to die,' says he, ' I'm goin' to die happy; fetch me a
plate II V them beans.'
'' Waal, Sary, she pikes off to the. doctors.
*' ' Look a-hcre/ says she, * Mr. Ilolbrook smelt the beans cookin*,
an' he says he'8 got to have a plate uv 'em. Now, what shall I do
about it? '
** * Waal, doctor,' says Dock Smith, 'what do you think *bout it?'
*'MIe's got to die anyhow,' says Dock Brainerd; *an' I don't sup-
pose the beans'll make any difT'rence.' [I^aughter.]
*' * That's the way I figger it,' says Dock Smith; ' in all my practice
I never knew of beans hurtin' any body.'
** So Sary went down to the kitchen, an' brought up a plateful of
liot l)ak(Ml beans. l)<Kk Smith raised Bill up in bed, an' Dock Brain-
erd put a pilltM- under tlio small of l^ill's back. Then Sary sat down by
the bed. an' fed them beans into Bill until Bill couldn't hold any more.
*' * How air von feelin' now ?* asked Dock Smith.
" Bill didn't say niithin'; he jest smiled sort uv peaceful like, an*
closed his eyes.
5-2-^ KINGS OF THE PLA TFORM AND PULPIT.
** * Tlie eiul liez come/ saitl Dock Bniiuerd, soriy ; * Bill is dyinV
*' ThoQ Hill muriiuired kind o' far away like (as if he was dreamin'),
•1 ain't dyin' ; I'm dead an' in heaven.' [Loud laughter.]
*'Next mornin' Hill got out uv bed, an' done a big day's work on the
farm, an' lie hain't lied a sick spell since. When they asked him abont
it he said : * Tliey may talk about beans bein' onhealthy, but I'd abiu
ded to-day, by ginger, if I hadn't eaten 'em.'^' [Laughter.]
GKOUriE W. CAHLE\S READINGS.
Mr. (JcorLcc W. C:iM(* has usually road bis sketches to audiences of late voars.
()n(M)f Ills favorite sketches, full of dramatie art. is "Mtiry Ricbling's Ride. '' fruD)
•• Dr. Sevier." It is given liere as read by Mr. Cable:
Ladies and Orhflcmoi: — Mary Kichling, the heroine of the story 1
read to-night, was the wife of John Richling, a resident of New Orleans.
At the breaking out of tlie Civil War, she went to visit her parents in
Milwaukee. About the time of tlie bombardment of New Orleans^ she
received news of tlie dangerous illness of her husband, and she decided
at once to reacii his bedside, if possible. Taking with her her baby
daughter, a child of three years, she proceeded southward, where, after
several unsuccessful attempts to secure a pass, she finally determined to
break througli the lines.
About the middle of the night, Mary Richling was sitting very still
and upright, on a large, dark horse that stood champing his Mexican bit
in the black shadow of a great oak. Alice rested before her, fast asleep
against her ))osoni. Mary held by the bridle another horse, whose naked
suddlc-lroe was empty. A few steps in front of her the light of the full
moon shone almost straight down upon a narrow road that just there
emerged from th(^ shadow of woods on either side, and divided into
a main right fork and a much smaller one that curved around to Mary*8
left. Off in the direction of tlie main fork the sky was all aglow with
ramp-lires. Only just here on the left there was a cool and gratefal
darkness.
She lifted her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread^ and the
next moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a
word, took tln^ l)rid]e of th(» led horse from her fingers, and vaulted into
the saddle. Thi^ hand that rested a moment on the cantle as he arose,
gras[)e«l :i '- navy six." He was dressed in dull homespun, but he was
thesanii^uho had been dressed in l)Iue. lie turned his horse and led
the way down Ihe lesser roa<l.
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN. 523
*^ If we'd of gone three hundred yards further," he whispered, falling
back and smiling broadly, ^^ we'd 'a^ run into the pickets. I went nigh
enough to see the videttes settin' on their hosses in the main road. This
here ain't no road; it just goes up to a nigger quarters. Fve got one o'
the niggers to show us the way.'*
** Where is he?" whispered Mary; but before her companion could .
answer, a tattered form moved from behind a bush a little in advance,
and started ahead in the path, walking and beckoning. Presently they
turned into a clear, open forest, and followed the long, rapid, swinging
stride of the negro for nearly an hour. Then they halted on the bank
of a deep, narrow stream. The negro made a motion for them to keep
well to the right when they should enter the water. The white man
softly lifted Alice to his arms, directed and assisted Mary to kneel in her
saddle, with her skirts gathered carefully under her, and so they went
down into the cold stream, the negro first, with arms outstretched above
the flood; then Mary, and then the white man — or, let us say plainly,
tlie spy — with the unawakened child on his breast. And so they rose
out of it on the farther side, without a shoe or garment wet, save the
rags of their dark guide.
Again they followed him, along a line of stake-and-rider fence, with
tlic woods on one side and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young
cotton on tlie other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs,
now the doleful call of the chuck-will's-widow, and once Mary^s blood
turned, for an instant, to ice, at the unearthly shriek of the hoot-owl
just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim, narrow
road, and the negro stopped.
** Doss keep dish yeh road fo' 'bout half mile, an' you strak 'pon de
broad, main road. Tek de right, an' you go whah yo' fancy tek you.'*
'' Good-bye," whispered Mary.
" (rood-bye. Miss," said the negro, in the same low voice; *' good-bye,
boss; don't you fo'git you promise tek me thoo to de Yankee, when you
come back. I'sc 'feered you gwine fo'git it, boss."
The spy said lie would not, and they left him. The half-mile was
soon passed, though it turned out to be a mile and a half, and at length
Mary's companion looked back as they rode single file, with Mary in the
rear, and said, softly:
*' There's the road," pointing at its broad, pale line with his six-
shooter.
As they entered it and turned to the right, Mary, with Alice again in
)ier arms, moved somewhat ahead of her companion, her indifferent
horsemanship having compelled him to drop back to avoid a prickly
524 KIJ^'OS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
bush. His horse was just quickening his pace to regain the lost position^
when a man sprang up from the ground on the farther side of the high-
way, snatched a carbine from the earth and cried: '*Halt!''
The dark, recumbent forms of six or eight others could be seen,
enveloped in tlieir blankets, lying about a few red coals. Mary turned a
frightened look backward and met the eyes of her companion.
''Move a little faster,'^ said he, in alow, clear voice. As she promptly
did so she heard him answer the challenge, as his horse trotted softly
after hers.
** Don't stop ns, my friend; we're taking a sick child to the doctor."
*' Halt, you hound!" the cry rang out; and as Mary glancetl bat^k,
three or four men were just leaping into the road. But she saw also her
companion, his face suffused with an earnestness that was almost an
agony, rise in his stirrups with the stoop of his shoulders all gone^ and
wildly crv:
She smote the horse and flow. Alice awoke and screamed.
*' Hush, my darling," saiil the mother, laying on the withe;
^* mamma's here. Hush, darling, mammals here. Don't be frightened
darling baby. 0, God, spare my child!" and away she sped.
The report of a carbine rang out and went rolling away in a thousand
echoes through the wood. Two others followed in sharp succession, and
there went close by Mary's oar the waspish whine of a minie-ball. At the
same moment she recognized, once — twice — thrice — just at her back
whore the hoofs of hor companion's horse were clattering — the tart
rejoinders of his navy six.
'*Go! " ho cried again. ** Lay low! lay low! cover the child! '*
But his words wore noodloss. With head bowed forward and form
crouched over the crying, dinging child, with slackened rein and fluttering
dress, and sun-bonnot and loosened hair blown back upon her shoulders,
with lips compressed and silent prayers, Mary was riding for life and
liberty and her husband's bedside.
**0, mamma, mamma," wailod the terrified little one.
'*(Jo on ! Go on!" cried the voice behind: **thcyVe saddling up!
Go! ;:oI We're goin* to make it! We're going to make it! Go-o-o!'*
And they made it! [Applause.]
A nrXDUED AlfBCDOTBH Of A HUNDltBD MEN. 525
MAX O'RELL.
BIOGRAPHY.
We will let Max Blouet (Max O'Rell) tell lib own gtorp
Dear Eli: — My grandfather was an officer in the French anny, and was called
Max Blouet. During the Napoleon war, he was taken prisoner by the English and
sent to England, where he met an Irisli girl, Miss'O'Rell, whom he loved, courted,
married, und brought back to France. Such is the origin of my nom de plume, I
lirst used it on the title-page of "John Bull and His Island." .
Paul Bloust.
MAX O^RELL'S LECTURE ON THE SCOTCHMAN.
Ladies and Gentlemen: — The Scotchman possesses a genius for bus-
iness^ as tlie following dialogue would indicate. One of his favorite
j)roverb8 is, '*IIe will soon be a beggar who does not know how to say
no." A laird of Lanarkshire was one day accosted by one of his neigh-
bors as follows:
'' I^ird, I need £20 sterling. If you will be kind enough to accept
my note, you will be repaid in three months."
**No; it is impossible, Donald."
** But why, Laird ? You have often rendered a like service to jonr
friends."
*' Inipos.sible, Donald, I repeat,"
**Then vou mean to refuse me ?"
*' Listen, Donald, and follow my reasoning: As soon as I accepted
vonr note vou would go and draw the £20 ?"
*' Yes."
** When the maturity of the note arrived, I know yon, and that
you won ill not be ready. Then we should quarrel. Very well! but, Don-
ahl, I >lionM ratlier that we should quarrel at once, while the £20 is in
my pocket." [Laughter.]
Scotchmen themselves enjoy telling this anecdote.
DuiiaM— Ilav( yuii luanl, Dnnnin, that Sawney McXab has been oondcnmed to
six inniitlis ill prison for haviii^^ stolen a cow ?
Duncan— What a f(M>l that McXab is I \A\t he could not have bought the cow—
und never pai<l for it I [Laii^Mitcr.]
Tills may, perhaps, explain why the prisons in Scotland are compar-
ativi'ly empty. Donald often appears before the justice of the peace^
i)ut rarely in the police courts. Every day Donald addresses the follow-
ing^ prayer to Vnn\:
o. I.nni: ;rn;nt that this day I take no advantage of any one, and that no one
tai^f > fi<lvantaL^' of me. But, if. O, Lunl! Thou. canst accord but one of thae favors,
let lio out* take advantage of inc.
.V.>n KTXGS OF T4IE PLATFORM AND PVVILT.
I'o illustrate Scotch thrift, I tell a little anecdote that was told rae
in Scotland:
A worthy father, feeling doatli at hand, sends for his son to hear his
last counsels. **Sandv/' he savs to him, ** listen to the last worda of
your old father. If you want to get on in the world, be honest. Xeyer
forgot that, in all business, honesty is the best policy. You may take
my word for it, my son — I hae tried baith.'' [Laughter.]
The Jews never got a footing in Scotland; they would have starved
there. They came, but they saw — and gave it up. You may find one
or two in Glasgow, but they are in partnership with Scotchmen, and do
not form a bund apart. They do not do much local business; they are
exporters and importers. The Aberdonians tell of a Jew who came once
to their city and sot up in business; but it was not long before he packed
up his traps and decamped from the center of Scotch cuteness.
** Why arc y()u going?'' thoy asked him. *'Is it because there are
no Jews in Aberdeen?''
** Oh, no," he ropliod: '* I am going because you are all Jews here."
[Laughter.]
The Scotchman believes in two trinities; the Father, Son and the
Holy Ghost, and pounds, shillings and pence. Sandy is still more relig-
ious, that is to say, still more church-going than the Englishman. He
treats his Creator, however, as a next-door neighbor. If he comes across
a big word, a dictionary word, he explains it to the Lord. At evening
prayers once, 1 heard the master among a thousand other supplications,
niuko the following:
** 0, Lord, give us receptivity; that is to say, 0, Lord, the power of
receiving impressions."
The entire Scotch character is there. What forethought! What
clevornossl What a business-like talent I
Another prayer was: ** 0, Lord, have mercy on all fools, idiots and
the nienihors of the town council!"
The ri^qdnoss of the Scotch Sabbath is beyond my powers of descrip-
tion; it is still storner in Scotland than in England. When excursion
trains W(mo first ])ut on betwoon Edinburgh and Glasgow, a minister
ox[)os(iihit('(l with a lady passenger who was going on Sunday to visit a
sick ro la live.
*' Whoro are you going?" said he.
"' To (ihisgow,'* answered she.
'• No, you are going to hell!"
"Oh!" rctunuM] the utulaunted lass. '^ Then, I'm all right for I
l)nnght :i return ticket!" [Lauglitor. |
A IIVSDRED ANBCD0TB8 01^ A UUNDIiED MEN. 527
BRET HARTE.
NOVELIST, LECTUBEB AND WIT.
One of Bret Uarte's funniest lecture stories was his account of
the first jury trial in California. Up to August, 1850, all criminals bad
been trietl by lynch law, and, if pronounced guilty by the boys, they
were hung to a tree. But times began to mellow dgwn a little, and
certain solid citizens began to sigh for good old Eastern law. They
wanted the jury trial of the father, and as provided for by the con-
stitution. So at Big Gulch, in 1849, when a man had been accused
of stealing horses, they decided for the first time in California to
give the culprit a fair jury trial— the first jury trial, I say, in Cali-
fornia.
Twelve good men were chosen on the jury, and the witnesses
were brought before them. Some swore to the good character of the
accused and some swore that he was a horse-stealer from way back.
When the last witness got through, the jury retired to give a ver-
dict. They hadn't been in the jury-room over ten mintes, when a
crowd of outsiders came pounding at the door.
''What do you fellers want?" asked the foreman.
" Want to know if you jurymen havn't got most through I**
" Not quite," said the foreman.
'* Well, hurry up — we can't wait much longer — weVegotto have
this room to Uiy out the corjyse in ! "
WHY BRET HARTE MrRDF:RED A MAN.
The following account of how Bret Ilarte IxK^ame a murderer,
lias never before been printed. It is now printed from Mr. Ilarte's
manuscripts :
***** * ««**«
" Dead ! Dead as Wilkes Booth I Stone cold 1 I tell you."
" Fudge and nonsense," said my friend, the rector, offering me
a cheap cigar. *' I dun't believe it."
*' You must believe it — I swear it! " I said, trying to light my
cigar.
" Tell me how^ it happened, then. It's strange," he replied.
'* Well, vou see, I had sold Jacob Einstein mv old clothes for a
great many years. He was always hanl and close at his bargains.
TKF yr'-- V
f. t '
PUPii
I
A HUNDRED ANECD0TS8 OF A HUNDRED MSN. 629
^esht ish out of schtyle. It ish old ash de coat of Joseph. I don't
want de ting at all. What will you take for it as a favor?'
'^ ^ Five dollars,' I said.
'' ' Shut de safe, shut de safe, Shadrach,' cried Jacob to his son.
' Desbe men have come to rob me. Twenty-five cents ish a fortune
to give for such a vesht.'
" ' Five dollars, Jacob,' I said, firmly.
'' ' Tliirty cents, for de shake of an old friend ; not one penny
more.'
" 'Jacob Einstein, what have you to say why you should not give
five dollars for that vest?* I asked, solemnly.
" He said nothing. I took the vest slowly from him.
'' ' It is a very rich cloth,' I said, taking a pinch of it between
my thumb and finger, and snapping it like an ex()ert. 'Hello I what
is tliis ( It feels thick here,' and thrusting my hand through a hole
in the pocket to a remote corner of the vest, I slowly drew forth
anil unfoldod to the light my ten-dollar bill.
'* 1 looked at Jacob; he vras white as a lily.
'' ' De God of Abraham,' he cried, and fell to the ground.
'' We tried to shake him into consciousness. It was no use,
Jacob was more than dead.
** 1 t(»ll you that I am tire<l of starving. I am going to be even
with my friends. I have begun with the pawnbroker."
ANECDOTES OF GOULD, FISK AND DREW.
Mr. Jay Gould, is a lay figure for hundreds of the best jokes on
" the street." The great financier was born at Stratton Falls, Dela-
ware county, N. Y., in 1836. His father was John B. Gh>ald, who
cultivated a small farm and ran a grocery store. At the age of
twenty, (touUI surveyed Delaware county, mapped it, and peddled
the hooks himself. After this, Mr. Gould bought an interest in a
tannerv, then married Miss Miller, whose father was connected with
railroads and who gave him his first start in that line. Mr. Gould's
experience in his partnership with Jim Fisk, who was killed by
Edwin S. Stokes, is well known. Fisk was a big, generous, whole-
souled boy, while Gould was a shrewd, calculating man. Gould is
ri'M) KJXaS OF THE PLATFORM AND PUPILT,
\i moral and temperate man, but he is not a church member. His
favorite daugliter was baptized by Dr. Paxton, whose pathetic
r(»marks caused Gould to shod his first tears in public.
OncMlav last summer the Ilev. Doctor Cuvler, of Brooklyn, was
maldii*; some iiKjuiries as to th(^ roligious status of the guests in
Saratoga. Mo(3iing Mr. Morrosini, Gould's old Italian partner, be
asked him about (touUI's religious status.
*' Gould, I su))pose is a moral man, isn't he," said the Doctor.
"(lould wliatoe^" asked Morrosini, with his Italian accent.
'• I say. 1 su|)posc Gould is a moral man — he keeps the Sabbath,
iloosn't \\v i ''
'*(4ould keepcc the Sabbath!" repeated Morrosini. ^' Gould
ke(»peo tJKj Sab bathi Why, Gould keepee an}' thing he get his
han<ls on — v<>n irv heem!"
*• Colonel Fisk was full of fun, and GoukI was dry and thouo'hl-
I'ul, still h(3 always enjoys a dry joke.
Once T had oct^asion to spend an hour with Fisk, Daniel Drew
an<l (i<jiild in t.lMMi- ])alatial Erie oHice, and a record of that hour I
tli<*n wn)t(^ out. Fisk was being shaved as I entered, and his face
was half covei'ed with foaming lather. J ust then some one came
in and told him that the gentlemen in the oflSce had made up a
])iirse of ^:54 to be presentetl to little Peter, Fisk's favorite little
office \)ov.
*-All right,'' said the Colonel, smiling and wipingthe lather from
his face. "Call in Peter.''
In a moment littler Peter entered with a shy look and seemingly
half frightened.
*'Well, Filler," said the Colonel, as he held the envelope with
th(^ money in one hand and the towel in the other, ** what did you
mean, sir. by absenting yourself from the Erie office, the other day,
when both Mr. Gould and I were away, and had left the whole mass
of business on vour shoulders?"
Then he fi'owned fearfully, while Peter trembled from head to
fof)t.
'^ liut, my I)oy/' continued Fisk, "I will not blame you; there
may br extenuating circumstances. Evil associates may have
t(Mni)ted you away. Here, Peter, take this (handing him the $34)
and hen(»eforth let your life be one of rectitude — quiet rectitude,
iVter. Behold me, Peter, and remember that evil communicationB
A HUNDRBD ANB0D0TB8 OF A BUNDRBD MEN.
681
are not al ways the best policy, bat that honesty is worth two in the
bush."
As Peter went back to his place beside the outside door, every
body laughed, and Fisk sat down again to have the other side of
his face shaved.
Pretty quick in came a little, dhed-up old gentleman, with keen
gray eyes surmounted by an overpowering Panama hat. The Erie
Railway office was then the old gentleman's almost daily rendez*
vous. Here he would sit for hours at a time, and peer out from
under his broad brim at the wonderful movements of Colonel Fisk.
Cautious, because he could move but slowly, this venerable gentle-
man, who has made Wall Street tremble, hitched up to the stock
indicator, all the time keeping one eye on the quotations and the
other on the Colonel. As a feeler, he ventured to ask:
"How is Lake Shore, this morning. Colonel?"
" Peter," said Fisk, with awful gravity, " communicate with the
(treat American Speculator and sliow him how they are dealing on
tlie street! "
The old man chuckled, Gould hid a smile while smoothing his
jetty whiskers, and little Peter took hold of the running tape with
Daniel Drew. It was the beginning and the ending — ^youth and
expei'ieiice — simplicity and shrewdness — Peter and Daniel!
Little Peter was about ten vears old, and small at that. Fre-
quently large men would come into the Erie office and ** bore" the
Colonel. Then he would say:
'^ Here, Peter, take this man into custody, and hold him under
arrest until we send for him! "
'' You seem very busy to-day? " I remarked to the Colonel one
morning.
'" Yes, Eli," said Fisk, smiling. " I'm trying to find out from
all these pai>ers where Gould gets money enough to pay his income
tax. He never has any money — fact, sir! He even wanted to
borrow of nie to pay his income tax last summer, and I lent him
four hundred dollars, and that's gone, too! This income business
will be the ruination of Gould." Here the venerable Daniel Drew
concealed a laugh, and Gould turned clear around, so that Fisk
could only see the back of his head, while his eyes twinkled in enjoy-
ment of the Colonel's fun.
532 KINCfS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT
Wlion Montaland, tho great opera singer, arrived from Paris.
I^'isk had just said farewell to " Josie," and so be took extra [lains
to make a good impression on liis beautiful prima donna.
On the first sunsliinv aftermjon after Mont^iland had seen ibt?
Wonderful Opera House, Kisk took her out to Central Park beliind
his magnificent six-in-hand. Passing up Fifth avenue, Montaland's
eyes rested on A. T. Stewart's marble house.
" Vat ees zat t '' she asked, in broken French.
'* Why, that is my city residence," said Fisk, with an air of pro-
found composure.
'^C^est mnfjn'tjique — o^cHt (jrande! '' repeated Montaland, in admir-
ation.
Soon they came to Central Park.
*' Vat ees zees place ? " asked Montaland.
"O, this is my country seat; these are my grounds — my cattle
and buifalos, and those sheep over there comixjse my |>et shfO|>-
fold." said Fisk, twirling tlie end of his moustache a la Xapoler>!i.
"'C'ed irea 'iiuufnijitjui'I^^ exclaimed Montaland in bewildermpiU.
'' Mr. Feesk is one grand Americain ! "
Bv and hv tlicv rode back and down Hroadwav, i>V A. T. StewarU
mammoth store.
''And is z<»es your grand 'nialH^m, too ^ " asfe^d Montaland, as
she pointed u|) to tlic iron pahK^c
" No, Miss Montaland ; U) be frank with you, tiiat building dot*^
not b(*long to me,'' said Fisk, as he settled back with his hand in liis
bosom — " that bc^iongs to Mr. Gould ! "
One <lay I called at the Erie office. Col. Fisk's old chair was
vacant and his desk was draped in mourning. Fisk's rentiains lay
cold and stiff, just as he fell at the Grand Central Hotel, pierced by
tluj fatal bullet from Stokes' pistol. His old associates were silent*
oi- gathered in groups to tell over reminiscences of the dead Colonel,
whos<; memory was beloved and revered by his companions.
Mr. (iould never tires telling about F'isk's good qualities. Even
while hit is telling the quaintest anecdotes about bis dead partner.
his ev(.'s;:'list(*n with tears.
*-One day," said Mr. Gould, ^'F'isk came to me and told me con-
fi(hMitinllvai)out his first mistake in life."
*-What was it ^'' 1 a.sked.
A UUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN, 532
"Well," said Gould, as he laughed and wiped his eyes alter-
nately, "Fisk said that when he was an innocent little boy, living on
his father's farm up at Brattleboro, Vermont, his father took him into
the stable one day, where a row of cows stood in their uncleaned
stalls.
*'Said he, 'James, the stable window is pretty high for a boy, but
do you think you could take this shovel and clean out the stable V
'' ' I don't know, F'ather,' said Fisk, 'I never have done it."
"'Well, my boy, you are a very smart boy, and if you will do it
this morning, I'll give you this bright silver dollar,' and Fisk's father
patted him on his bead, while he held the silver dollar before his
eves.
"'Good,' says Fisk, 'FU try,' and then he went to work. lie
tugged and pulled and lifted and puffed, and finally it was done,
and his father gave him the bright silver dollar, saying:
" 'That's right, James, you did it splendidly, and now I find you
can do it so nicelv, I shall havo vou <lo it evorv mornino: all winter.'"
On*.* day a poor, plain, binnt njjin stumbled into Fisk's room.
Said he:
'•Colonel, Tve heard you are a generous man, ami Fve come to
ask a great favor/'
*'Well, what is it, my good man f asked Fisk.
"I want to go to Lowell, sir, to my wife, and I haven't a cent of
monev in the world,'' said the man, in a firm, manlv voice.
*'Where have you been f ' asked the Colonel, dropping his pen.
*'I don't want to tell vou,"" replied the man, dropping his head.
*'()ut with it, njv man, whore have vou been /' said Fisk.
*'W(»11, sir, Fve been to Sing Sing State l*ri.son."
-What Un-r
*'(irand larceny, sir. I was put in for five years, but was par-
doned out vest(M'dav, after stavin*^ four years and one half. I am
here, hun<j:rv and without monev."
'•All right, my njan," said Fisk, kindly, *\vou shall have a pass,
and here — hei'e is live dolhu's. (io and get a mi^al of victuals, and
thcTi ride down to the boat in an Krie coach, likt* a gentleman.
('oinnience life a«!ain. and if you are lion»»st and want a lift, ccmie to
me."
FVi'l"e<tly bewildered, the poor convict took the money, and six
months afterward Fisk got a letter from him. lie was doing a
534 K1NQ8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
thriving, mercantile business, and said Fisk's kindness and cheering
words gave him the first hope — his first strong resolve to become a
man.
Ten minutes after the poor convict left, a poor young negro
preacher called.
''What do vou want? Are you from Sing Sing, too?" asked
Fisk.
" No, sir; Tm a Baptist preacher from Hoboken. I want to go
to the Howard Seminary in Washington," said the negro.
'' All right, brother Johnson," said Fisk. "Here, Comer," he
said, addressing his secretary, ''give brother Johnson $20, and
charge it to charity," and the Colonel went on writing without lis-
tening to the stream of thanks from the delighted negro.
One day the Colonel was walking up Twenty-third street to dine
with Mr. Gould, when a poor beggar came along. The beggar
followed after them, saying, in a plaintive tone, " Please give me a
dime, gentlemen ? "
Mr. Gould, who was walking by Fisk, took out a roll of bills
.and commenced to unroll them, thinking to find a half or a
quarter.
'* Here, man I '' said Fisk, seizing the whole roll and throwing it
on the sidewalk, *' take the pile."
Then looking into the blank face of Mr. Gould, he said,
*' Thunderation, (4ould. you never count charity, do youi "
Somebody in l>riitt.leboro came down to New York to ask Fisk
for a donation to help them build a new fence around the graveyard
where he is now buried.
"What in thunder do vou want a new fence fort" ezclainr.ed
tlio Colonel. "Why, that old fence will keep the dead ])eopIe in,
jmd live ])oople will keep out as long as they can, any way I **
What amiseral)lc» rei)robale llie preachers all make Fisk out to
he ! And they an* ri<^ht. Why, the scoundrel actually stopped his
coupe one cold, dreary night on Seventh avenue, and got out,
inquired where she li v(k1 and gave a poor old beggar woman adollar.
lie seemed to have no shame about him, for the next day the
debauched wretch sent her around a barrel of flour and a load of
coal. One dav the black-hearted scoundrel sent ten dollars and a
bag of flour ai'ound to a widow woman with three starving children ;
and, not content with this, the remorseless wretch told the police
A HVNDRED ANE0L0TB8 OF A HUNDRED MEN. 535
captain to look after all the poor widows and orphans in his ward
and send them to him when they deserved charity. What a shame
less performance it was to give that poor negro prpacher twenty
dollars and send him to Howard University ! And how the black-
hearted villain practiced his meanness on the poor, penniless old
woman who wanted to go to Boston, by paying her passage and
iictually escorting her to a free state-room, while the old woman's
tears of gratitude were streaming down her cheeks t Oh, insatiate
monster ! thus to give money to penniless negro preachers and starv-
ing women and children !
JOHN J. CRITTENDEN'S ELOQUENCE.
John J. Crittenden, the eloquent Kentucky lawyer, was once
defending a murderer. Every one knew the man was guilty, but
the eloquence of Crittenden saved him.
^^ Gentlemen," said Crittenden, at the end of his great plea, ^**to
err is human, to forgive divine.' When God conceived the thought
of man's creation, he called to him three ministering virtues, who
wait constantly upon the throne — Justice, Truth and Mercy — and
thus addressed them :
'' ' Shall we make this man ? '
"'O, God, make him not,' said Justice, sternly, 'for he will
surely trample upon Thy laws.'
" ' And Truth, what sayest thou ? '
" ' O, God, make him not, for none but God is perfect, and he
will surely sin against Thee.'
" ' And Mercy, what sayest thou ? '
" Then Mercy, dropping upon her knee^ and looking up through
her te<ars, exclaimed :
"*0, God, make him; I will watch ovfer him with my care
through all the dark paths he may have to tread.'
" Then, brothers, God made man and said to him : *0, man, thou
art the child of mercy; go and deal mercifully with all thy
brothers.' "
5b<, i/A'7.S OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
IIOSCOE CONKi.;>*T AND CHARLES O'CONNOR.
Roscoe Conkling came into Churles O'Connor's office one day,
when be was a young lawyer, in quite a nervous state.
" You seem to be very much exicted, Mr. Conkling," said Mr.
O'Connor, as Roscoe walked up and down the room.
" Yes, I'm provoked — I am provoked," said Mr. Conkling. *'I
never nad a client dissjitisfied about mv fee before."
"Well, what's the matter?" asked O'Connor.
" Why, I defended Gibbons for arson, you know. He was con
victed, but I did hai'd work for him. I took him to the supreme
court and back again, to the supreme court again, and the supreme
court confirmed the judgment and gave him ten years. I charged
him §3,000, and now Gibbons is grumbling about it — says it's too
much; Xow, Mr. O'Connor, I ask you, was tliat too much ?"
"^ Well," said O'Connor, very deliberately, "of course, you did a
<;()0(l deal of work, and $^8,000 is not such a very big fee, but to be
frank with you, Mr. (-onkling, my deliberate opinion is that he
iniirht have been convicted for loss money! ''
WILLIAM M. P:V ARTS AND CllATXCEYM. DEPEW.
Hon. William M. Evarts is the only man, except Chauncey
Depew, who can be witty and not lose his dignity. Mr. Evarts sat
at our tnble at the States yesterday.
Among other things I iisked the great lawyer about some of the
witticisms which have been attributed to him.
'*The best thing the newspapers said I per})etrated," replied Mr.
Kvarts, '" T wasn't guilty of at all."
'' What was that ^ " I asked.
•' It happened when I was Secretary of State. Every morning
the State [)e])artnient elevator came up full of applicants for foreign
missions. One morning, when the applicants for missions was
r.xtrenieiy large, Catlin, the Covivin^eial Advertiser humorist,
romarked : "That is the largest collection for foreign missions you've
had yet.' The newspapers attributed the saying to me, but Catlin
was the real criminal."
A HUNDRED AlfSCDOTES OF A HUNDBBD MBS 537
** After that you sent poor Catlin out of the country, didn'i you ? "
'^O, no, I rewarded him by making him consul at Olasgow- -and
afterwards promoted him."
Speaking of Mr. Evarts' farm up at Windsor, I told him I under-
stood that he raised a large quantity of pigs for the express purpose
of sending barrels of pork to his friends.
'* Yes, I am guilty of that," said Mr. Evarts. " Fve been sending
Bancroft pork for years, and if his * History of America ' is success-
ful it will be largely due to my pen."
A few years ago Mr. Evarts sent his usual barrel of pickled pork
to Bancroft with this letter :
Dear Bakcroft: — I am very glad to send you two products of my pen to-day —
a barrel of pickled pork and my Eulogy on Chief Justice Chase. Tours, Etartb.
Chauncey Depew says: "Evarts once sent a donkey up to his
Windsor farm in Vermont. About a week afterwards Mr. Evarts
received the following letter from his little grandchild:
Dear Grandpa— The little donkey is very gentle, but he makes a big noise
niglit8. lie is very lonesome. I guess he misses you. I hope you wiU come up
s<K)ii and tlien he won*t be so lonesome. MiNKlE.
Evarts says when the Baptists came to Rhode Island they praised
God and fell on their knees, then they fell on the aborigi — ^nese.
When I asked the Ex-Secretary about the early settlement of
Rhode Island, he said :
^' Yes. the Dutch settled Rhode Island and then the Yankees
settled the Dutch.''
JEFFERSON ON FRANKLIN.
.Thomas Jefferson, when minister to France, l>eing presented at
court, some eminent functionary remarked:
*' You replace Dr. Franklin, sir."
**I succeed Dr. Franklin,'' was Mr. Jefferson's prompt reply;
*' no man can replace him."
LINCOLN'S ILLUSTRATION.
When the telegram from Cuniherlnnd Gap informed Mr. Lincoln
that ^^ firing was heard in the direction of Knoxville,^ he remarked
that he was glad of it.
538 KING8 OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
Governor Sprague had the perils of Bumside's position upper-
most in his mind, who was present and who could not see why Mr.
Lincoln should be "glad of it," and so expressed himself.
"Why, you, see, Governor," responded the President, "it
reminds me of ^Mistress Sallie Ward, a neighl)or of mine, who had
a very large family. Occasionally one of her numerous progeny
would he heard crying in some out-of-the-way place, upon which
Mistress Sallio would exclaim, 'There's one of my children that
isn't dead vet.""
EDWARD EVERETT ON JUDGE STORY.
Everett was entertained at a public dinner, before leaving Bos-
ton for England to assume the duties oF a minister at the English
court. The celebrated Judge Story, who was present on the cxxja-
sion, gave as a sentiment.
*• Genius is sure to be recognized where Ever-ett goes.''
Everett gratefully responded with another sentiment. " I-aw,
Equity and Jurisprudence; no efforts can raise them above one
St<jrv/'
GENERAL SHERMAN ON "PAP" THOMAS.
General Sherman is fond of telling thrilling incidents of the
grciat war. 1 was talking with the General one day about General
Tiioinas, when he put his hand to his head as if in deep thought
and exclaimed :
*' Here's something about Thomas: You see General Thonias
w.'is junior U) nie in rank but senior in service. *Pap,' as the bo\'S
called liim. was a severe disciplinarian. Well, in the Atlanta cam-
pai^ni he had rec(4ved many complaints about the pilfering and
plundering committed by one of his brigades, and, being resolved
to put this (offense down, he issued some strict orders, menacing with
(loath any who should transgress. The brigade in question wore
for its badge an aconi, in silver or gold, and the men were inordi-
nately proud of this distinctive sign. Several cases of disobedience
had been reported to the General, but the evidence was never strong
A HUNDRiD ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN. 639
enough for decisive action, until one day, riding with an orderly
down a by -lane outside the posts, Thomas came full upon an Irish-
man who, having laid aside his rifle, with which he had killed a
hog, was busily engaged in skinning the animal with his sword-
bayonet, so as to make easy work with the bristles, etc, before
cooking pork chops. 'Ah,' cried the General, *you rascal, at last
I have caught you in the act. There is no mistake about it this
time, and I will make an example of you, sir! '
'^'Bedad! General, honey!' said the Irishman, straightening
himself up and coming to the salute, Mt's not shootin' me that you
ouo:ht to be at, but rewardin' me.'
'* ' What do you mean, sir ? ' exclaimed General Thomas.
" 'Why, your Honor ! ' the soldier replied, * this bad baste here
had just been disicratin' the rigimental badge; and so I was forced
to dispatch him. It's 'atin' the acorns that I found him atl' Even
General Thomas was obliged to laugh at this, and the soldier saved
his life by his wit."
GARFlELrrS WIT.
At one of Proctor's lectures, a lady wisheil for a seat, when Gen-
eral Gartield brought one and seated her.
'' Oh, you're a jewel," said she.
" Oh, no," replied GarHeld, " I'm a jeweler ; Fve just set the
jewel."
McCOSH'S IMPRESSION.
'* Ah, I have an impression ! " exclaimed Dr. McCosh, the pres-
ident of Princeton College, to the mental philosophy class. "Now,
young gentlemen," continued the doctor, as he touched his head
with his forefinger, *'can you tell me what an impressionist"
Xo answer.
'' What. ; no one knows ? No one can tell me what an impression
is i exclaimed the doctor, looking up and down the class.
*^ I know," said Mr. Arthur. '^ An impression is a dent in a solt
place."
540 KTN08 OF THE PLATFOHM AND PULPIT.
*' Young gentleman," said the doctor, removing his hand from
his forehead and growing red in the face, '* you are excuseil for the
day."
WEBSTER ON SELF-EVIDENCE.
" What do vou mean bv * self-evident ?' " asked President Web-
ster of Union College of his mental philosophy class.
^* I don't know, sir," replied the student.
'* Well, I will try and illustrate," said the president. " Speaking
about mythology — suppose I should ask you if there ever was such a
poi'son as the ' fool killer I ' "
"I should sav I don't ivnow — I never met him.''
ft
" That is 'self-evident,' " said the Doctor.
DAVID 15. HILL OX G ROVER CLEVELAND.
'* L'^iHrio liillv, a venerable servant on President Cleveland's
«
privnlt' car," said (lovernor Hill, *' was very proud of having once
«Cone iishin<i: with President Cleveland."
'' ' Ilow did von come out, Rillv ?" I asked.
"'Well, wljcn we war up in Wes Firginny las' spring, the Presi-
dent ho says Dan Lamont and I. us free, we's "go in Cahoot," Well
wo gets eighteen lish.'
" ' Ilow <Iid tlie President divider ? '
" ' Well Marse Pi'esidenl, he takes eighteen fish and Lamont he
takes de rest.'
'' * And what did you get. Uncle Billy?'
'' ' Well, rdo know,' scratching his head ; then brightening up he
said : ' I reckons I got the '* Cahoot." ' "
PRESIDENT HARRISON ON GENERAL SCOTT,
Presi(UMii IkMij. Harrison belonged to the Volunteers in the late
war, while (Tunerai Scott was a West Pointer of the deepest dye.
Wlien Scrott got old and foolish, all the Volunteer officers used to
inaivc fun of him.
" One day," said General Harrison, " General Scott went into a
hospital in Washington to express sympathy with the patients.
A HUNDRED ANBCDOTEa OF A HUNDRSD MEN. Ml
^ ^^ * What is the matter with you, my man ? ' asked the General as
he gazed at a poor man with a sore leg.
** * Oh, I've got gangrene, General.'
" * Gangrene ! why, that's a very dangerous disease, my man —
v-e-r-y d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s,' said General Scott. * I never knew a man
to have gangrene and recover. It always kills the patient or leaves
him demented. I've had it myself.' "
FITZ HUGH LEE AND GENERAL KILPATRICK.
On the evening before the last unsuccessful attempt to storin
the defenses of Fredericksburg, some of the skirmishers were
endeavoring, under cover of darkness, to draw closer to the rebel
works. One of Fitz Hugh Lee's men discovered Kilpatrick's cav-
alry and shouted :
'** Hello, Yanks! Howdy?"
" We're all right. Were l)ound to come and see you ! "
*'Come on!" shouted Fitz Hugh's men. ''We've got room
enough to bury you ! ''
SEWARD JOKED liV DOUGLAS.
When the Kansas-Nebraska bill was being debated, Senator
Seward tapped Dou^^las on tlie shoulder and whispered in his ear
that he had some ** Bourbon " in the Senator's room which was
twenty years old, and upon which he desired to get Douglas' judg-
ment. The orator declined, saying that he meant to speak in, a few
minutes, and wished his brain unclouded by the fumes of liquor.
At the conclusion of his speech, Douglas sank down, in his chair,
exhausted, hardly conscious of the congratulations of those who
flocked around him. At this juncture, Seward seized the orator's
arm, and bore him off to the senatorial sanctum.
*' Here's the Bourbon, Douglas," said Sewanl, '*try some— its
sixtv years old."
'* Seward," remarked Douglas, ^' I have made to-day the longest
speech ever delivered; history has no parallel for it."
*' How is that?" rejoined Seward, "you spoke for two hours
only."
^'4-^ KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
"= Why," said Douglas, " a moment before I rose to speak you
invited me to partake of some Bourbon twenty years old, and now
you offer me some of the same liquor, with the assertion that it is
.sixty years old I — a forty years' speech was never delivered before/'
VOOKHEES, TANNER AND SECRETARY NOBLE.
The day that Corporal Tanner arrived at the Interior Depart-
ment to I'eceive his commission as commissioner of pensions, Henn'
Watterson and Daniel Voorhees happened to be present. Tanner,
every one knows, was as brave as a lion and lost both feet in the
war. He was a private without much education and a very ordi-
nary, loose-jointed but picturesque-looking man, and he has gmwn
more picturesque with age.
As the Corporal hobbled into Secretary Noble's room in the
Interior Department, lie saluted the Secretary and said:
"Hello, (Jen'rai — come; down to qualify — to be sworn in!"
"All, Corporal Tanner T' said the Chesterfiehlian Noble.
" Yes, Tanner — come to (jualify."'
" L(it me intrcMJuce you to Senator Voorhees and Editor Watter-
snn, Coiporal," said the Secretary, suiting the action to the word.
** Glad to s(ie you. Senator," said Tanner. "Glad to see an hon-
(jst enemy. While Jeff Davis was shooting off my feet, you and
Wattei'son and Thurman were shooting us in the rear. Glad to see
vou!"
4.'
*• And you've come to Washingtcm to get your commission and
be qualified as commissioner of pensions?" remarked the Wabash
Senator.
" You're right I have," said the Corporal, his eyes twinkling
with excitement.
" Well, rii be dog-on ! " was the only reply, as Voorhees took
a (]ui(l of tobacco and looked out of the window.
'• Y(\s, going to be qualified to-day," continued Tanner.
** Well, my friend,'' said Voorhees, surveying the Corporal from
head to foot, this government is not inspired — it is not Providence.
Noble, its re])resentative, can swear you in, but the Department of
Education and all hell couldn't qualify you ! "
A nUNDRED ANRCD0TB8 OF A HUNDRBD MEN, 543
M. QUAD (CHAS. B. LEWIS).
He smiled blandly as he halted for a moment in front of the City
Hall. He looked like a man who could palm off almost anything
on the public at 100 per cent, profit and yet leave each customer in
a grateful mood. He had a tin trunk in his hand, and as he sailed
down LaFayette avenue, the boys wondered whether the trunk con-
tained bug juice or horse liniment. The stranger stopped in front
of a handsome residence, his smile deepened, and he mounted the
steps and pulled the bell.
" Is the lady at home? " he inquired of the girl who answered
the bell.
The girl thought he was the census taker, and she seated him in
the parlor and called the lady of the house. When the lady
entered, the stranger rose, bowed and said :
"Madam, I have just arrived in this town after a tour extending
clear down to Florida, and wherever I went I was received with glad
welcome."
"Did you wish to see my husband ? " she asked, as he opened
the tin trunk.
" No, madam, I deal directly with the lady of the house in all
cases. A woman will appreciate the virtues of my exterminator
and purchase a bottle, where a man will order me off the steps with-
out glancing at it."
** Your — your what ? " she asked.
" Madam," he replied, as he placed a four-ounce phial of dark
liquid on the palm of his left hand ; *' madam, I desire to call your
attention to my Sunset Bedbug Exterminator. It has been tried at
home and abroad, and in no case has it failed to — "
" What do you mean, sir ? " she demanded, getting very red in the
face. "Leave this house, instantly."
" Madam, I do not wish you to infer from my — "
" I want you to leave this house !" she shrieked.
" Madam, allow me to explain my — "
'•I will call the police ! '' she screamed, making for the door, and
he hastilv locked his trunk and hurried out.
Going down the street about two blocks he saw the lady of the
hoi>se at the parlor window, and instead of climbing the steps ho
stood under the window and politely said :
544 KTSaS OF THE PLATFORM AND PUPILT.
'^ Madanij I don't wish to even iiint that any of the 1)e(lstead8 in
your house are inhabited by bedbugs, but — "
" What ! What's that ? " she exclaimed.
" I said that I hadn't the remotest idea that any of the bedsteads
in your house were infested by bedbugs/' he replied.
" Take yourself out of this yard ! " she shouted, snatching a tidy
ofT the back of a chair and brandisliing it at him.
" Beg pardon, madam, Imt I should like to call your — "
" Get out ! " she screamed ; " g(it out, or Til call the gardener!"
"I will get out, madam, but I wish you understood-^-"
" J-a-w-n ! J-a-w-n ! " she shouted out of a side window, but the
exterminator agent was out of the yard liefore John could get
around the house.
11(5 seemed discouraged as he walked down the street, but he liad
traveled less than a block when he saw a stout woman sitting on
the front steps of a fine residence, fanning herself.
"Stout women are always good-natured," ho soliloquized as be
opened the gate.
'' Haven't got any thing for the grasshopper sufferers ! " she
called out as he entered.
There was an angelic smile on his face as he approached the
steps, set his trunk down, and said:
"My mission, madam, is even nobler than acting as agent for a
distressed community. The grasshopper sufferers do not comprise
a one-hundredth part of the world's population, while m}' mission
is to relieve the whole world."
" I don't want any ])C])pennint essence," she continued, as he
stalled to unlock the tnmk.
"Great heavens, madam, do I resemble a peddler of cheap
essences^ '' he exclaimed. " I am not one. I am here in Detroit to
enhance the comforts of the night — to produce pleasant dreams.
Lot me call your attention to my Sunset Bedbug Exterminator, a
licjuid warranted to — "
" Bed what ? " she screamed, ceasing to fan her fat cheeks.
" My Sunset Bedbug Exterminator. It is to-tlay in use in the
humble negro cabins on the banks of the Arkansaw. as well as in
the royal palace of her Majesty Q — "
"You r-r-rascal! you villyun!" she wheezed; "how dare yon
insult me, m— "
A UUNDRED ANECD0TE8 OF A EUNDBBD MEH. 646
" No insult, madam, it is a pure matter of — "
'^ Leave ! Oit o-w-t ! " she screamed, clutching at his hair, and he
had to go out in such a hurry that he couldn't lock the trunk until
he reached the walk.
He traveled several blocks and turned several comers before he
baited again, and his smile faded away to a melancholy grin. He
saw two or three ragged children at a gate, noticed that the house
was old, and he braced up and entered.
^' I vhants no zoap," said the woman of the house, as she stood in
the door.
'^Soap, madam, soap? I have no soap. I noticed that you
lived in an old house, and as old houses are pretty apt to be
infested — "
^^ I vhants no bins or needles to-day ! " she shouted.
^^ Madam, I am not a peddler of Yankee notions," he replied. ^* I
am selling a liquid, prepared only by myself, which is warranted
to—"
^^ I vhants no baper goUers ! " she exclaimed, motioning for him
to leave.
^' Paper collars ! I have often been mistaken for Shakespeare,
madam, but never before for a paper collar peddler. Let me unlock
mv trunk and show — "
"I vhants no matches — no dobacco — no zigars!" she inter-
rupted ; and h<^v husband came round the comer and, after eying
the agent for a moment, roaarked :
" If you don't be quick out of here I shall not have any shoking
about it ! "
At dusk last night the agent was sitting on a salt barrel in front
of a coTumission house, and the shadows of evening were slowly
deepening the melancholy look on his face.
TIIAD. STEVENS AND ALECK STEPHENS.
Thad. Stevens, the great Northern radical, and Alex. Stephens,
of (leorijia, the great Southern radical, met after Appomattox and
talkoil iilK)iit the wiir.
^* Well, Mr. Stephens," said old Thad., *'how do you rebels feej
after being licked by the Yankees^ ''
546 KiyGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
'' We feci, I suppose a good deal as Lazarus did," said the Georgia
fire eater.
" How is that? "
" Why Thad., poor Lazarus was licked by the dogs, wasn't he!"
ZACK CHANDLER ON DEMOCRACY.
Zack Chandler had three men working in a saw-mill in the woods
below Saginaw. During Lincoln^s last campaign, Zack went op
to the saw-mill to see how the men were going to vote. He found
thai each had a different political faith. One was a Democrat, one
a Republican and one a Green backer. A farm-boy had just killed a
fine woodchuck, and Zack offered to give it to the man who would
give the best reason for his political faith.
" I'm a Republican," said the first man, " because my party freed
the slave, put down the rebellion and never fired on the old flag."
" Good 1 " said old Zack.
" And I am a Greenbacker," said the second man,*' because if my
party should get into power every man would have a pocket full of
monev."
" First-rate ! " said Uncle Zack. "And now you," addressing the
third : " Why are you a Democrat ? "
" Because, sir," said the man tryingtothinkof a good democratic
answer — " because — because I want that woodchuck ! "
BLAINE'S KIL-JIA-ROO STORY.
In the Blaine Presidential camjmign, the Democrats were con-
tinually saying that Blaine would be a radical President.
" He'll get up a war with Germany about Samoa,'' they said,
" or get us into an embroglio with France on account of the Suez
Canal."
But at heart Blaine is a conservative man. To illustrate, Blaine
used tliis illustration :
" Ves," he said, *'the Democrats always have some trouble ahead,
but it is always imaginary. The Republicans are going to wreck
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MEN. M7
the republic by bigh tariff, one day, and bankrupt the nation through
the pension office the next. But all this trouble is imaginary.
WTien we get to it it is gone.
'*• The Democrats remind me of the story of the man who was
carrying something across Fulton ferry in a close box. Every now
and then he would open the box curiously, peep in and then dose
the lid mysteriously. His actions soon excited the curiosity of a
naturalist who sat on the seat by him. Unable to conceal his curios-
ity further, the naturalist touched him on the shoulder and said :
" ' I beg pardon, sir, but I'm curious to know what yon have in
that box. What is it?'
** * Oh, I don't want to tell. It will get all over the boat.'
" * Is it a savage animal ?'
" ' Yes — kills every thing.' Then the man peeped in again.
^' Still growing more curious, the naturalist begged him to tell
its name.
'^ ^ It's a Kil-ma-roo from the center of Africa — a very savage
boast — eats men and — '
** ' And what do you feeil it on ? * interrupted the naturalist.
" * Snakes, sir — plain snakes.'
^' ^ And where do you get snakes enough to feed suchamoAster t '
asked the eager but trembling naturalist.
*"Well, sir, my brother in Brooklyn drinks a good deal, has
delirium tremens, and when he sees snakes we just catch 'em and — '
" ' But these ai'e imaginary snakes,' argued the naturalist. * How
can you feed a savage beast on imaginary snakes}'
*' ' Why, the fact is,' said the man, opening the box and blowing
in it, ^ Don't say a word about it, but this is an imaginary Kil-ma-
roo.' "
DE. HAMMOND, DR. BLISS AND GEN. SHERIDAN.
One day when they were criticising Dr. Bliss, General Sheridan
came to the Doctor's defense.
•'Dr. r>liss was a good physician," said General Sheridan, "he
saved mv life once."
"How? IIow did Bliss save voiirlife?" asked Dr. Hammond.
" Well," said Sheridan, ** I was very sick in the hospital after the
548 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
battle of Winchester. One day they sent for Dr. Agnew of Phila-
delphia, and he gave nie some medicine, but I kept getting worse.
Then they sent for Dr. Frank Hamilton and he gave me some more
medicine, but I grew worse and worse. Then they sent lor Dn
^liss, and — "
" And you still grew worse ? "
" Xo, Dr. Bliss didn't come ; he saved my life ! "
CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER.
Cliief Justice Fuller, when a boy, belonged to a debating club in
Oldtown, Me. One evening capital punishment was debated. The
deacon of the church was for hanging. Young Fuller was opposed.
wSaid the deacon, quoting from the Mosaic law: "Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed." Thinking
this to be a bombshell to his opponents he dwelt upon it till his
time had expired, when the boy sprang to his feet and said :
'* Supposing we take the law which the gentleman has quoted
and sec what the logical deduction would come to. For example,
one man kills another; another man kills him, and soon until we
come to the last man on earth. Who's going to kill him ? He
dare not commit suicide, for that same law forbi<ls it. Now, deacon,"
continued the boy, '' what are you going to do with that last man ? "
Tiie boy's logic called out rounds of applause and vanquished the
deacon.
JUDGE OLDS.
Judge Olds, of Richmond, was examininga man who had pleaded
<ruiilv of bank robberv.
*' Did you hnve any confederates?" asked the judge.
" Xo, j(*d^^o/' said the prisoner, **the fellers that helped me was
democrats, o' course, but they wasn't rebs."
GEX. SICKLES ON HOWARD'S DRUMMER.
'• Spcakin;,'' of war stories," said General Sickles, "the best thing
happened over in Howard's Eleventh Corps. It seems that they hq^)
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A HUNDRED MSN. 549
a drummer boy over there who always lived well. He was in Col.
Arrovvsmith's regiment, the 26th N. Y. This drammer, while the
regiment was on the move, had a penchant for foraging on his own
account, and the chickens had to roost high to escape his far-reaching
bands. Whenever night overtook them, this dnunmer bad a good
supper provided for himself. On one occasion he had raked in a eonple
of turkeys and had put them into his drum for convenience in carry-
ing. When the regiment was halted for the night, Ciolonel Arrowsmith
immediately ordered dress parade, and the drummers were expected
to beat up. The forager made his drumsticks go, but the quick-eyed
Colonel noticed that he was not drumming.
^^ ^ Adjutant,' said the Colonel, ^ that man isn't drumming. Why
ain't he drumming?'
''The Adjutant stepped up to him, saying, *Why ain't you
drumming ? '
'^ ^ Because,' said the quick-witted drummer, * I have got two
turkeys in my drum, and one of 'em is for the Colonel.'
''The Adjutant went back and the Colonel asked, ^ What is itt'
'' ' Why, he says he has got two turkeys in his drum, and one
of 'em is for the Colonel.'
'*Up to this point the conversation had been carried on wUo
voce^ but when the Adjutant reported, Colonel Arrowsmith raised
his voice so that all could hear.
'' ' What ! Sick is he 2 Why didn't he say so before ! Send
him to his tent at once.' "
GEEELEY TAKEN FOE A CLEEGYMAN.
Stephen Girard's will prohibited clergymen from ever
the doors of Girartl College. One day Horace Greeley, who usually
wore 'a white tie, and otherwise looked like a Metho^t clergyman,'
was passing in when the janitor shouted:
'* II(?re, you can't pass in here, sir ; the rule forbids it."
''Tim I can't," replied the excited editor.
*' All ri^'lit, sir," rejoined the janifor ; " pass right in,"
550 KIA'GS OF TEE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
SflERMAN AND PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
Gen. W. T. Sherman, has been the subject of a thousand good
stories. One of the best occurred when President Taylor, after the
war with Mexico, sent the young captain out to Arizona and South-
ern California, to investigate the value of our new possessions
gained from Mexico, by the war. Sherman w^as gone a year. He
penetrated the sandy deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and
looked over the cactus country of southern California • and then
returned to Washington, and called on the President.
" Well, Captain," said President Taylor," what do you think of
our new possessions, will they pay for the blood and treasure spent
in the war? "
" Do you want my honest opinion ?" replied Sherman.
" Yes, tell us privately just w^hat you think."
" Well, General,'' said Sherman, " it cost us one hundred millions
of dollars, and ten thousand men, to carry on the war with Mexico."
" Yes fully that, but we got Arizona, New Mexico and Southern
California."
''Well, General," continued Sherman, "Pve been out there and
lookcMl them over — all that countrv, itnd between you and me, I feel
that we'll have to go to war again. Yes, we've got to have another
war."
'' What for ?" asked Taylor.
'' AVhy to make 'em take the d — d country back ! "
SENATOR EVARTS AND GOVERNOR HILL.
Mr. Evarts, with all his learning, often had to listen to long
bursts of empty oratory, from young and inexperienced lawyers.
Many years ago, when Gov. David B. Hill was practicing law, he
had a case where Evarts was his oi)ponent. Hill was delivering his
maiden speech. Like most young lawyers, he was florid, rhetorical,
scattering and weaiy. For four weary hours he talked at the court
and the jury, until every body felt like lynching him. When he got
thiough. Mr. Evarts deliberately arose, looked sweetly at the Judge,
and said :
A HUNDRED AKRCmtm OP A tttlNDRED ME^, SS?
found it necessary to doubt the word of a man, and told liini so
without any circumlocution.
" Don't you call me a liar, sir," said the man, excitedly, " 1 have
a reputation to maintain, and I mean to maintain it, sir."
" I know it," said Logan, " and you are maintaining it every
time you tell a lie."
LONGSTREET ON FAST MARCHING.
" Jabe Mathis," said General Longstreet, " of the 13th Georgia,
was a good soldier, but one day, when the Confederates wei^c
retreating from the gory field of Gettysburg, Jabe threw his mus-
ket on the ground, seated himself by the roadside and exclaimed
with much vehemence:
''Til be doggon if I walk another step! I'm broke down I I
can't do it ! ' And Jabe was the picture of despair.
" * Git up, man,' exclaimed the Captain, * don't you know the
Yankees are following us ? They'll get you sure.'
'' ' Can't help it,' said Jabe, * I'm done for ; I'll not maFch another
step! '
*• The Confeilerates passed along over the crest of a hill and lost
sight of poor, dejected Jabe.
'* In a moment there was a fresh rattle of musketrv and a
renewed crash of shells. Suddenly Jabe appeared on the crest of
the hill, moving like a hurricane and followed by a cloud of dust.
As he dashed ])ast his captain, that oflicer said :
^' 'TIello, Jabe! thought you wasn't going to march any more.'
*'* Thunder!' replied Jabe, as he hit the dust with renewed
vigor ; * you don't call this marching, do you?' "
GENERAL EWELL OX THE IRISHMAN.
" During the war/' said General Ewell, " several Confederate
n'Lriiiients were ordered to march, although none of the privates
knew their (h\stinati()n. AVhen they set out, the road was narrow,
an<l th(^ (•a|)tain in command of one regiment gave the order :
*' * Hy <loul)liiig I Right face I Forward, march I '
552 KINGS OF THIS PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
R. Barnwell Rhett, John Slidell and Henry A. Wise, brother cabinet
officers.
" When I die,'- said Floyd, very seriously, " I wish I could be
buried right under that Confederate monument in Richmond."
" What for ? " asked Toombs.
" Because I want mv last sweet rest to be where a Yankee will
never come."
" I would be buried there, too," said Toombs, " but I hate the
Devil worse than I hate a Yankee, and I almost wish I could be
biried in the colored cemetery."
" Wha — what for? " asked Floyd, deeply surprised.
'* Because," said Toombs, "tlie devil "will never trouble me
there. He'd never think of looking for an old rebel democrat in a
colored graveyard ! "
JOE BROWN, TOOMBS AND ALEX STEPHENS.
Senator Joe Brown oitce came near fighting a duel with Bob
Toombs. Toombs and he had a quarrel as to reconstruction meas-
ures, and the story is that they both expected to fight. Toombs
made no prei)aration for the duel. Joe Brown went about his
arnmgeraents in the same practical business way for which he is so
noted, and which has made him a success as a fortune maker, and a
great statesman. He drew up his will, put his estate in order, and
cUpped all the trees of his orchard in practicing with his pistoL I
think it was in this affair that Brown called Toombs an unscru-
pulous liar, and that Toombs, in talking to one of his friends about
it, characterized Brown as a hypocritical old deacon, saying:
'* What can I do with him ? If I challenge him he will dodge
behind the door of the Baptist Church," and he then referred to the
statement of Ben Ilill, in reply to Alexander H. Stephens, wherein
llill refused to fight, saying to Stephens : " Sir, I have a family to
supj)ort, and a God to serve, but you have neither."
This remark of Toombs was reported to Brown, and Brown
went to his church, and got a certificate, stating that he had left it.
He sent the certificate to Toombs, and told him that he would be
<;la(l to accommodate him, and that he would accept any challenge
he might make. It was while Toombs was waiting to m^ke tbQ
A ntrNDRBD ANSCtOTSS OP A HtlNDBED M)SK 853
challenge that he practioed with his pistol. Toombs knew that he
was a good shot, and he saved his life by not saying any thing
more about it.
FORAKER ON DANIEL VOORHEES.
" The best story about Senator Daniel Voorhees,'* said Ex-Gtov-
ernor Foraker, of Ohio, " is laid years ago in Terre Hante. The
distinguished Senator was once a hard-working lawyer. On one
occasion he defended a gambler for killing a man. There were
some doubts about the case — whether it was murder or manslaughter.
Voorhees made a superb plea, but still the gambler^s friends were
afraid he would be convicted. They had plenty of money and bad
raised $5,000 to influence a juryman, as those were old times when
justice was not as pure as now. Well, they picked out a weak jury-
man and agreed to give him $5,000 if ho would * hang the jury.'
*' The man earned his money," said Foraker, "for, sure enough,
the jury disagreed. The next day there was a meeting of Yoorhees
and the friends to pay the faithful juryman.
" ' You earned the money,' said the friends of Yoorhees, f and
here it is Avith our thanks.'
'' ' Earned it,' said the juryman. * I guess I did. I kept that
jury out two days. 1 wouldn't give them a wink of sleep till they
agreed with me in a verdict of manslaughter.'
'' ' IIow did thev stand when thev first went out ? ' asked Voor-
hcos.
** ' AVell, there were eleven^of them for acquittal — but I brought
'em round ! " ''
BLAINE, CONKLIXG, HAMLIN.
James G. Blaine, our Secretary of State, used to have a fund of
anecdote's before he became a conspicuous presidential candidate,
but of late years he professes to sit still and let other people tell the
funnv stories.
It seems that Blaine, and Lincoln*s old vice-president, Hamlin,
didn't agree very well in the last years of Hamlin's life. I presume
554 K1NQ8 Of TEE PLATFORM AND PlTLPlT.
it was political jealousy. Still lilaino never criticised Hamlin. He
said he liked him, and I believe he did.
** Why Hamlin," he contiqued, "saved the life of a dear friend
once. Yes, he saved my poor friend Brooks from sure death,"
" How was it ? " asked a bystander.
" Brooks says Hamlin saved his life three distinct times in the
Mexican War, and that he could never repay him the debt of grati-
tude he owed him. It was this way : Brooks says he always kept
his eye on Hamlin during an engagement. Whenever Hamlin ran,
he ran, too, and three times Hamlin saved his precious life."
Blaine and Conkling said savage things about each other for
years, but their friendship never fully ceased till Blaine said, "Conk-
ling struts into the Senate like a turkey gobbler." This the Senator
never forgave, and, after it, he never missed a chance to ridicule the
Maine statesman.
When Blaine was up for the presidency in 1884, a friend went
to Conkling and asked him if he would take the stump for the
Maine Senator.
" I can't," said Conkling, spitefully, " I have retired from crimi-
nal practice."
Mr. Blaine got even with Conkling for this by telling a story
about Conkling's vanity. "One day," said Mr. Blaine, "when
Conkling and I were friends, the proud New York Senator askeil
Sam Cox whom he thought were the two greatest characters Amer-
ica ever produced?"
" I should say," said Cox, solemnly, " I should say the two most
distinguished men in America have been General Washington an<l
yourself."
" Very true," said Conkling, " but I don't see why you should
drag in the name of Washington." [Laughter.]
IIEXRY W. LONGFELLOW'S FUNNIEST POEM.
The poet Longfellow wrote this funny poem for Blanche Hose
veil:
There was a little girl, and she had a little curl
Right ill the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good, she was very, very gcxNl,
And when she was bad. she was horrid.
A BVNDBBD AI^BCDOTBS OF A HVNDRED MEN, 655
SWING, COLLYER, JONES, FITZ HUGH LEE.
There is no one so easily shocked by an oath, or even an irre-
ligious story, as Dr. CoUyer. Still he used to delight in telling how
near Professor Swing came to swearing,
'^ It is true," said Dr. CoUyer, ^^ that the Bev. David Swing and I
are very dear friends, and that I really am very fond of him. But
Mr. Beecher told me a story about Brother Swing's profanity that
quite upset me."
"How was it?"
*' Well," said the Doctor, with mock gravity, ** I don't say it
myself, but Beecher says that one day while Dr. Swing was a
guest of Stuart Kobson and Mr. Crane at Cohasset, his conversation
bordered on profanity."
^' Impossible," I exclaimed. ^' What were the circumstances ? "
" Well," said Dr. CoUyer, still very solemn, " it happened this
way: Robson, Crane and Swing were at anchor, with their lines
out for blue fish. After a long and patient waiting, something
caught Robson's line and he exclaimed, excitedly :
" * I just had a d — n good bite I '
" ^ So did I ? ' said Dr. Swing."
When some one told the story to Sam Jones, he said : " Well,
Swing came about as near swearing as the Richmond editors did to
lying, when I held my revival there."
*' IIow was that ? " I asked.
*^ You see we had been accusing the Richmond editors of lying
about our meetings, and the term, 'lying editors,' got into common
use. Even children used it. One day a little son of Governor Fitz
Hugh Lee, who had been oflf at school with some worldly boys, who
made him forget his father's Christian teachings, came home with
this conundrum:
'• ' Father,' he said, ' what is the difference between a man who
dyes wool on lambs and a Richmond editor?'
'''Well, now, really my son,' said the Governor, beaming
benignly on his offspring. *I am not prepared to state. What is,
tlie difference r
" ' Why, pa, one is a Iamb dyer and the other a ^
" ' What ! what ! my son ! ' interrupted the Governor.
'* ' a Richmond editor, I was going to say, before you inter-
rupted me.' "
• >
856 KTXGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PUPTLT.
MOSEBY, ELLSWORTH, KILPATRICK AXD
FITZ HUGH LEE.
"Talk about my war record," said Colonel Moseby at apolitical
meeting in Alexandria, Va. "My war record is a part of the
State's history. Why, gentlemen, I carried the last Confederate
lla*? tlirouo:h this town.''
" Yes,'' replied Fitz Hugh Lee, " for I was there at the time."
"' Thank you for your fortunate recollection," gratefully exclaimed
Moseby. " It is pleasant to know that there still lives some men
wlio move aside envy and testify to the courage of their fellow
beings. As I say, gentlemen, my war record is a part of the State's
historv, for th(5 wntleman hero will toll vou that I carried the last
Oonfederato flag through tliis town."
" That's a fact," said Fitz Hugh Lee. " lie carrietl the last
Confederate flag through this town, but Kilpatrick and Ellsworth
wore after him, and lie carried it so blamed fast you couldn't liave
told whether it was the Confederate flag or a small-pox warning."
TIIADDEUS STEVENS.
One daj^ Thad. Stevens was practicing in the Carlisle courts, and
he didn't like the ruling of the Presiding Judge. A second time the
Judge ruled against " old Thad." when the old man got up with scar-
lot face and quivering lips and commenced tying up his papers as if
to quit tho! coui't room.
" Do T understand, Mr. Stevens," asked the Judge, eying "old
Thad." indignantly, ''that you wish to show your contempt for this
court ? "
"No, sir; no, sir," replied ''old Thad." "I don't wan't to
show my contempt, sir; I'm trying to conceal it! "
GENEEAL LOGAN'S PLAIN TALK.
Daniel Toorhees, who knew John A. Logan in southern Illinois
before the war, tells us that on a certain occasion young Log:in
658 KIXGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT,
" ' To Dublin ! ' shouted an Irislunan in the ranks. * Arrah, good
luck, me boys ! We're going to Dublin ! Sure, the gineral has
found out the right place to go to at last ! '
" * Where do you say we're going? ' called two or three voioes.
"^ To Dublin^ don't ve hear? '
" * Keep still, you foreign bog-trotter ! '
" ' Ah ha, ine boys ! ' continued Tim. ' When yez gets to Dublin,
It'll be you w^ill be the foreigners there, and it'll be me that'll be
the native American.' "
HENRY WATTERSON ON SUMNER AND GREELEY.
Mr. Watterson, who always maintained that the anti-slavery
republicans like Sumner, Greeley and old Ben Wade only loved the
colored man just to get his vote and use, delights to quote this speech
which Watterson says was delivered by old Abram Jasper at the
colored picnic at Louisville dui-ing the last presidential campaign:
" Feller freemen," says he, "you all know me. I am Abram
Jasper, a republican from way back. When thei*e has been any
work to do, I has done it. When thei*e has been any votin'
to do, I has voted early and often. When there has been any
fightin' to do, I have been in the thick of it. I are 'have proof, old
line and tax paid. And I has seed many changes, too. I has seed
the Republicans up. I has seed the Democrats up. But I is yit to
see a nigger up. T'other night I had a dream. I dreampt that I
died and went to heaven. When I got to de pearly gates ole Salt
Teter ho savs :
" *Who's dar ?' scz he.
" 'Abi'am Jasper,* sez I.
" *Is you mounted or is you afoot V says he.
" ' I is afoot,' says I.
" 'Well, you can't get in here,' says he. 'Nobody 'lowed in here
'cept them as come mounted,' says he.
" 'Dat's hard on me,' says I, 'arter comin' all dat distance.' But
he never says nothin' mo', and so I starts back an' about half way
down de hiU who does I meet but dat good ol* Horace Greele}'.
'Wliar's j'ou gwine, Mr. Greeley?' says L
" 'I is gwine to heaven wid Mr. Sumner,' says he.
A BUNDRED ANBCD0TE8 OF A ITtnTDRBD MEN. 669
" 'Why, Horace,' says I, Hain't no use. I's just been up dar an
nobody's 'lowed to get in 'cept dey comes mounted, an' you's afoof
" *Is dat so ?' says he.
''Mr. Greeley sorter scratched his head, an' arter awhile he says,
says he: 'Abram, I tell what let's do. You is a likely lad. Sup-
pose you git down on all fours and Sunmer and I'll mount an' ride
you in, an' dat way we kin all git in.'
" 'Gentlemen,' says I, 'do you think you could work it V
" 'I know I kin,' says bof of 'em.
^' So down I gits on all fours, and Greeley and Sumner gets astrad-
dle, an' we ambles up de hill agin, an' prances up to de gate, an' old
Salt Peter says:
"'Who's dar?'
'* 'We is, Charles Siimner and Horace Greeley,' shouted Horace.
" 'Is you both mounted or is you afoot?' says Peter^
" 'We is bof mounted,' says Mr. Greeley.
" 'AH right,' says Peter, 'all right,' says he; 'jest hitch yourhoss
outside, gen'Iemen, and come right in.' " '
WADE HAMPTON, SUMNER AND BEN WADE.
Gen. Wade Hampton, of South Carolina, and Charles Sumner
were talking in the rotunda of the Senate Chamber, after the war,
about the reconstructed South. General Hampton was praising the
people and the States of Virginia and South Carolina.
"They are great States — and a brave people live in Virginia and
South Carolina," said the General.
Just then Ben Wade came up and joined in.
" Yes," said Ben Wade, " I have known a good many people who
went down there mj^self, and splendid people they were, too, as
brave and high-toned as the Huguenots."
" You did, sir?" said Wade Hampton, proudly.
" Oil, yes, sir. I knew some of the greatest men Virginia and
South Carolina ever saw, sir — knew 'em intimately, sir," continued
old Ben, confidentially drawing his chair closer to General Hamp-
ton.
''Who did vou know down thar, sir — in the old Palmetto
State? " asked General Hampton.
SCO KtNos OF Tim pla tform and pulpit.
'* Well, sir, I knew General Sherman, General Gr: nt and Gen-
eral Kilpatrick, who went — "
" Great guns ! " interrupted Hampton ; and then he threw down
his cigar and rushed straight into the bar-room to drown bis
troubles.
SITTING BULL AND GENERAL MILES.
Sitting Bull, when at the Eed Cloud agency, was interviewed bv
the Quaker Indian Commissioners. They asked him if he had any
grave grievance.
Sitting Bull was silent.
Bv and by he clutched his tomahawk and said : " Indian verv
sensitive. Indian no like being lied about. If Indian ever get back
to the white man again, he'll scalp the white-livered son of a gun
who's been telling around that Sitting Bull graduated at West
Point."
HOW BISHOP POTTER WAS INTRODUCED TO
MAYOR GRANT.
The dignified Bishop Potter and our worldly Mayor Grant did
not know each other the other day. They are acquainted now.
It seems that Mayor Grant went into Knox's, the hatter, to get
his silk hat ironed after being caught in the centennial rain-storm
])arade. After handing his hat to the attendant to be ironed, the
Mayor stood bare-headed waiting.
Just then in came the dignified Bishop Potter, who mistook
Mayor Grant for one of the shoj) walkers. Walking up to the
Mayor, the Bishop held out his hat to him and asked :
" Have you a hat like this ? "
Mayor Grant, in the coolest manner took the hat, turned it over,
examined it closely, looked at the inside, then at the outside and
then remarked in slow and measured tones :
" No sir, I haven't a hat like that, and if I had sir, I am d d
if I would Avear it!"
Just then Mr. Knox came along, and seeing the dilemma, intro-
duced the Bishop to the Mayor, when they both screamed with
laughter.
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OV A HUNDRBD MEN, 561
PHILIP D. ARMOUR.
Henry Villard asked Philip D. Armour to define a mugwomp.
" I am not a politician," said Mr. Armour, the king of pork pack-
ers. '' I don't think I can tell in plain laniguage what a mugwump
is, still I think I saw one once."
- Where ?" asked Mr. Villard.
'* We raised one in Stockbridge, N. Y., where I was bom. We
had a veiy wicked farmer there — very wicked — John Whitney was
his name, but one day he surprised every one by leaving the world
and his wicked associates and joining the Baptist church. He
remained an exemplary church member three days, but coming into
town one day he got drunk and the church turned him out.'*
'' What then ? "
'' Well, Whitney came back into the world again, but the boys
wouldn't speak to him. They even went so far as to hold a meet-
ing in the Bellow's bar-room and resolved not to receive him back.
*' Whitnev is too mean for us," thev said.
•' What became of poor Whitney when both the church ana the
devil refused to receive him?" asked Villard.
'' When I left Stockbridge to go to Chicago," said Armour, "I
left poor Whitney there, dangling between the church and the
world. I never heard of him for years, till he turned up in Kansas.
lie was a mugwump and was making speeches in favor of civil
service."
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
Susan B. Anthony always speaks extemporaneously. One day,
after hearing Prof. Swing, Theodore L. Cuyler asked her if she
remembered Swing's sermon.
^' Remember it ! " said Susan, "why, good gracious, Brother
Cuyler, Prof. Swing, like all you clergymen, couldn't remember it
himself! II(» had to have it written down."
THE SHARP RETORT.
*'Eli Perkins/' says Alex. Sweet, "was wounded at Gettysburg
by a niinie-ball tlirough his right leg. The other day Eli made a
nice retort wlieu an editor maliciously referred to his game leg.
5^W KiyOS OF Tll/a PLATFOliyr AND PULPIT,
** It's not fair,'' said Eli, "for you to attack my weakest part.
Did 1 ever attack your brains T'
BELMONT AND RUFFALO lULL.
One day Belmont, the agent of the Rothschilds, asked Buffalo
Bill if he ever saw a pack of live wolves.
" JJeen chased bv 'um hundreds of times, sir. Once I 'lowed it was
all up with us. The bronchos Wiis runnin' so fast that they almost
spun the wheels oiTen the backboard; but the wolves gained on us at
every junij). Then, as a last desperate resort, jest as the ravenin*
animals wassurroundin' us, I took the stranger who was ridin' with
us by the neck an' pitched him out. Jest as he lit, I heered him
hoi lei*: * Tm a real estate agent.' "
'' Of course they tore him to pieces Ixjfore your eyes," said
Belmont.
'* Xopc! They all shook bands with him, called him brother,
an' asked him how business was u|) in Kansiis."
BAYAUD TAYLOR'S JOKE.
Bayard Taylor and a party of American students were on the
railroad platform at Heidelberg. One of the American students
happened to crowd a Heidelberg student, when he drew himself up
scowled ])ompously, and said:
*' Sir, you are crowding ; keep back, sir/'
" Don't you like it, sonny T'iisked the American.
'*SirI" scowled the pompous German student, pushing a card
into the face of Bayard Taylor, ''allow me to tell you, sir, that I
am at your service at any time and place."
'' Oh, you are at my service, are you ? " said Taylor. " Then just
carry this satchel to the hotel for me !"
COX, BUTLER, GREELEY.
In 1805 there seemed to be no end of trouble between Sam Cox
ii.id Ben Butler. They had a wrangle in the House every day. One
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OF A UUNDBBD MEN, 563
day Cox was particularly loaded for Ben. He had a speech full of
sarcasm and cutting rebuke. He ridiculed Butler's Dutch Oap
Canal and his spoons experience in New Orleans. To give empha-
sis to bis speech, Sam would reach his right hand high above his
head and shake his open fingers as they radiated like the spokes of
a wagon wheel-
Well, old Ben sat through the speech with his one good eye half
shut, not moving a muscle. When Cox had finished and taken his
seat, Ben rose — calm, dignified and impressive — and stood in the
aisle. For a half minute he said nothing. Then he began:
" Mr. Speaker."
Another pause, long and ponderous. Every body waited, with
hushed breath, for him to continue. Raising his arm, Ben repro-
duced exactly the awful shaky gesture of Cox. Then he permitted
his arms to fall again and for another half minute stood still and
silent.
'' That is all, Mr. Speaker," said the shrewd and sarcastic son of
Massachusetts. '*I just wanted to answer the gentleman from
Ohio."
Judging from the wild laughter and applause which followed, old
Ben's speech was at once the shortest and the best ever delivered
in the Lower House.
But Cox got even \\'\i\\ Butler.
Not long after this, Butler had been making a long speech on the
tariff. Every body was tired, but Ben would suffer no one to inter-
rupt him. In fact, by the courtesy of the House, no one can inter-
rupt a speaker unless to ask a question, and that with the consent
of the speaker. So Butler continued his tariff harangue. After
about an hour had passed, Mr. Cox arose and said in a loud tone:
'' Mr. Speaker ! "
" The gentleman from Ohio," said the Speaker.
" I arise," said Mr. Cox, '' on a question of privilege. I wish to
ask the gentleman from Massachusetts a question."
**Th<' trentloinan from Ohio," said the Speaker, turning to But-
ler, '' wishes to ask tlio gentleman from Massachusetts a question."
** Verv well, <^n> on I " said Butler.
'• The gentleman from Ohio has the floor," said the Speaker.
Mr. Cox then arose solemnly and said:
" Mr. Speaker: I wish to ask the gentleman from Massachusette
564 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
a question. I wish to ask him if he hasn't hasn't ^got m-o-s-t
t-h-r-o-u-g-h i "
This was followed by sucli a scream of laughter that Butler
never finished his speech, and Sam had his revenge.
This is thtr way Ben Butler and lloraco Greeley metr
Butler siiw Greeley standing in a crowd one day, in front of the
Astor House, and wishing to have a little innocent fun with him,
walked up to the group and, taking tlmTV^une philnBopher hy the
hand, said :
" Mr. Greeley and I, gentlemen, are old friends. We have dnnk^
ii irood (leal of brand v and water together." ^"^^'^
^ Yes," said Mr. Greeley, *' that is true enough, General, you
drank the brandy and I drank the water."
Sam Cox was a great political favorite. He wasfamou&i for uiuv>
ing into new congressional districts and starting a canvass. The
following good story is told in regard to this peculiarity. One day
ifr. Frank Cai'penter, the correspondent who has written such won-
derful and interesting letters from China and India, called on Mr.
Cox. It was just after Iiis election in a new district. Mr. Carpen-
ter was not recognized by Mr. Cox during this solemn interview:
*' Voui* name/' said Mr. Carpenter, in an assumed bass voice, " is
Cox < "
'* I have the honor."
'' S. S. Cox i "
" The same."
'* Sometimes called Sunset Cox ? "
" That is a sobriquet by which I am known among my more
familiar friends."
*' You formerly resided in Columbus, Ohio i "
" That happiness was once mine."
" Represented that district in Congress ? "
*' I enjoyed that distinguished honor, and, I may add, at a some-
what early a^-e."
" AftcM' a while tli(»y gerrymandered the district so as to make it
<iuite warm for an aspiring democrat i "
'* You luive evidently rcinl the history of your country to good
purpose, my fi'i(jn<l.''
"Then you moved to New York, where you 9tood a better
show?"
A HUNDRED ANECDOTES OV A UUNDBED MSN. 665
" Well, mj friend, your premise is correct. I did move to New
York. But your conclusion is hardly admissible in the form of a
necessary sequence. My reasons for moving to New York were not
wholly political."
^^ We won^t discuss that. After unsuccessfolly trying the State-
at-large you availed yourself of the opportunity afforded by the
death of the Hon. James Brooks to move into his district ? "
^' I moved into the district formerly represented by the honorable
gentleman you name, but again I must dissent from your con*
elusions."
^^ Let 'that pass. You were elected to Congress from Mr. Brooks'
former district?"
^^ I was. But let mo remark, my friend, that at this moment my
time is very much occupied. Your resume of my biography, faulty
as some of your deductions are in point of logic, is decSply interest-
ing to me, and at a time of greater freedom from pressing engage-
ments I would be glad to canvass the subject with you at length.
But just now, being unusually busy, even for me, I must request you
to state the precise object of your visit, and let me add that I shall
be glad to serve you."
" I have no favor to ask," said Mr. Carpenter, gravely. "I am
an admirer of yours. I always vote for you, and always want to do
so if I can. I called this morning merely to inquire if you had
selected your next district."
Mr. Cox simply looked astounded.
"Yes, Mr. Cox," continued Carpenter, " Fm your friend. Pm
glad to see you. I want to shake your hand. My brother and I
liave watched you these last thirty-five years, and I must say I have
a great admiration for you. Why, I believe you're the luckiest
man I ever saw ; indeed, I do. I was in the gallery the day you
were sworn in as a new member, back in 1857. My brother lived
in Ohio, and he had written to me all about you, and so I watched
you as soon as I could pickyou out on the floor. Then I remember,
wlien the Democrats went to pieces in Ohio under Yallandigham's
leadership, you jumped over to Now York. I thought it was a mighty
reckless tiling to do, but bless my soul if you weren't back here
again in 1S69. Then you took it into j^our head to spread your-
self over all New York State in 1872, and you ran for congress-
mau-at-large. I was awful sorry when Lyman Ti^main beat you.
506 EJyGS OF TUB PLATFORM AND PULPIT.
i)ut I declare, if old Brooks, of the Ex^ress^ didn't g^ypflf and die on
account of the Credit Mobilier censure, and when Congress met in
1S73 you rushed in, got the nomination to his vacant seat, and
blamed if you weren't sworn in, shoulder to shoulder, with Lyman
Ti'emain, the man who beat you for congressman-at-large. Yes,
sir, there you two stood, side by side, and then you went out when
Cleveland appointed you to Turkey, but you got tired over there,
came back home, found that Mr. Pulitzer, of the World, wanted to
resign his seat and vou went rii^ht in and were elected to fill the
vacancy. I never saw the like I Why you've got the greatest luck 1
ever saw, I swear."
" But, mv friend "
'' Hear me, Mr. Cox. T admire vou. I believe vou could float
clear around Cape Horn on a shingle without wetting your coat-
taU."
The last sentence so delighted Cox that he put his arms right
around Carpenter and exclaimed:
" Admire me 'i — Avhy I love you, Carp I !'
CLAllA MORllIS' JOKE OX MARY ANDERSON.
Clara Morris says Mary Anderson stepped up to a type-writer
of the Fifth Avenue Hotel and asked her to write a letter for her
to Xarragansett Pier.
** How do you spell it, Miss Anderson? " jisked the type-writer.
'' O, any one can spell it — X-a-r-r-o O, you spell it your
self : "
'' Eut I can't I '' said the type-writer.
" Can't vou w^rite the letter if I don't spell it? "
''No.'' ^
" Then I'll go to Newport 1 "
LINCOLN AND STANTON.
"When they were selecting the Quaker Indian commissioners,
Lincoln called in Chase and Stanton and explain^4 wh$it kind o£
men be wanted Xo appoint,
A tlUSDRED AXKCDoms OV A aCXDHKD MEN.
*'GentlQA», [uruu Imliau cunimissioDer," suid the T'lvsuletit,
" I want a pure-niintled, moral, Christian man — fruj^al and self-sac-
rificitig."
" I tliink," irterrnpted Stanton, '■ that you won't And him." j
" Why not ( " '
"Because, Mr, President, ho waa cnicitted about 1,800 yeans ■
ago."
JEFF DAVIS SEES niTMOK.
"The most humorous thing I ever heard of ," said Jefferson Davis,
"was the surprising humor of one of Joe Johnson's soldiers from
Georgia."
"How was it r' asked General Beauregard.
" Well they bucked and gagged this Gtwrgiu Boldior for stealing
chickens, but he screamed with laughter as soon as they took the
gag out. Then they tied him up by the thumbs but all the lime he ]
laughed louder and louder."
" ' What are you laughing at i ' asked the officer.
" Breaking into louder and more hihirious laughter, he surcamod,
' Why I'm the wrong man ! ' "
PRESIDENT ARTUmi REARS AN ELOQUENT REPLY.
When President Arthur was practicing law iu New York,- before ;
he became President, he defended a poor Irisli woman, who wa.
he " sent up " for vagrancy. She was a good woman, hut could gel '
no work. Judge Brady was very severe on thu woman, andcros»-
examined her somewhat rudely. Arthur thought.
" Have you any means of support, madam i " asked Judge Brady,
severely.
" "\VelI, yer honor," she replied, quietly " I have throe, to tell Ui« -!
truth."
"Tlireo!"
"Yiasor."
"What are thoy?"
'• Me two hands, yer honor," answered the poor creaturi', "n
good health and me God 1 "
"Tears came into Brady's eyes," .said Arthur, "'iis he waived iho
woniaa away."
568 KINGS OF THE PLATFORM AND PUPILT.
HENRY WATTEIISON ON OSCAE wffl)E.
One night Oscar Wildo was in Washington, and there were many
senators and congressmen present. The long-haired aesthetic was
delivering himself of an eloquent tirade against the invasion of the
sacred domain of art by the meaner herd of trades-people and mis-
cellaneous nobodies, and finally, rising to an Alpine height of scorn,
exclaimed :
" Ay, all of you here are Philistines — mere Philistines ! "
"What does Oscar call us?'' asked Henry Watterson of John
Sherman, who sat in front
"He calls us Philistines," said Sherman, softly.
" I see," said Watterson, " we are Philistines, and that, I reckon,
is why we are being assaulted with the jawbone of an ass."
GENERAL SHERIDAN ON GENERAL SCOTT.
General Scott was, perhaps, the proudest man in the Union army.
He never appeared except in a full-dress uniform, covered with gilt
spangles and buttons. Sheridan, Sherman and Grant were just the
opposite. Horace Porter, who was present, says : " Grant received
General Lee's sword at Appomattox while dressed in a common
soldier's blouse."
'' One day," said Sheridan, who had been talking about General
Scott's vanity, "one day General Scott called on a lady away out
in the suburbs of Washington. Her little boy had never seen a
soldier, especially such a resplendent soldier as General Scott.
When the General rang the bell, the boy answered it. As he palled
open the door, there stood the General in gilded epaulets, yellow
sash and a waving plume on his hat.
" Tell your mother, little man," said the General, '* to please
come to tlio door a moment; I want to speak to her."
Charlie went upstairs and appeared before his mother, with the
most awe-struck face.
" Mamma, some one at the door wants to see you," he said,
tremblingly.
" Who is it, my son ? "
" (), I don't know, mamma, but I dess it's Dod,"
A HUXDRED AKBCD0TS8 OF A ntrKDltBD MI^N. 569
W]
GENERAL BRAGG ON GENERAL PRICE.
General Bragg says General Price's army was about worn out at
Pea Ridge. His soldiers straggled all over the field. . Price rode up
in the midst of all the disorder and shouted :
" Close up, boys ! d — n you, close up I If the Yankees were to
fire on you when you're straggling along that way they couldn't hit
a d — n one of you I Close up ! "
GENERAL LEE AND JEFFERSON DAVIS.
^' We made a great mistake,'' said General Lee to Jeff Davis, ''in
the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do,
it will prove to be a fatal mistake.^
^^ What mistake is that, General ? " asked Mr. Davis.
^^ Why, sir, in the beginning we appointed all our worst generals
to command the armies and all our best generals to edit newspapers.
As you know, I have planned some campaigns and quite a number of
battles. I have given the work all the care and thought I could, and
sometimes, when my plans were completed, as far as I could see,
they seemed to be perfect. But when I have fought them through,
I have discovered defects in advance. When it was all over, I founds
by reading a newspaper, that these best editor-generals saw all the
defects plainly from the start. Unfortunately, they did not com-
municate their knowledge to me until it was too late." Then, after
a pause, he added : " I have no ambition but to serve the Confeder-
acy ; I do all I can to win our independence. I am willing to serve
in any capacity to which the authorities may assign me. I have
done the best I could in the field, but I am willing to yield my
place to these best generals, and I will do my best for the cause
editing a newspaper."
LINCOLN'S COLORED VISITOIL
" One day an old negro, clad in rags and carrying a burden on
his head, ambled into the Executive Mansion and dropped his load
on the floor. Stop])ing toward President Lincoln, he said :
"' Am vou de President, sah V
5T0 RTXGS of the PLATPomr AI^D PULPTT:
J»
'' Being answered in the affirmative, he said : ^V
*' * If dat am a fac\ Fse glad ter meet yer. Yer see, I libs way
up dar in de back ob Fergenna, an' I'se a poor man, sah. I hear
dar is some pervishuns in de Con'stution fer decuUud man, and I am
'ere to get some ob 'em, sah.' "
SHEEMAN IN EARKEST.
" What would you do if you were I and I were you ? " tenderly
inquired a young swell of grizzled old General Sherman.
" Well," said the General, putting on his glasses and taking a long
look at it, as it stood there sucking the head of its cane, " I'll tell
you what I'd do. If I were you I would throw away that vile cig-
aret, cut up my cane for firewood, wear my watch-chain underneath
my coat, and stay at home nights and pray for brains/'
FJND.
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