Part 30
"Then," said Rhapsody, "I am ready to make all necessary concessions--a clean breast of it, you may say. I am in a false position--struggling against public opinion--false pride--falsely, and yet honestly, working my way through the world. I am no more nor less, nominally, than _Jones, the boot-maker_. Now," continued Rhapsody, "if a false purpose covers not a false heart also, I can yet be happy in the affections of Miss Somebody, and she in mine. For those who can battle as we have, against the common chances of indigence, upright and alone in our integrity, may surely yet win greater rewards by mutual consolation and support, our fortunes joined."
"I have not been mistaken, then, sir," said the reverend gentleman, "in your character, if I was in your occupation; and you may rely upon my friendly service in an amicable and definite arrangement of this very delicate matter."
* * * * *
When General Harrison took the "chair of state," our friend Rhapsody was reinstated in his place, occupied years before, and by fortuitous circumstances he got still higher--an appointment of trust connected with a handsome salary; so that Jones, the boot-maker, was enabled to re-enter the Somebodies into the gay and fluctuating society at the national capital, from which they had been so unceremoniously driven by the death of the husband and father. Mrs. Somebody, that was, however, is now a much older and much wiser person, the wife of our ministerial friend, who vouches the difficulty he had in overcoming Mrs. Somebody's repugnance to leather--and for sundry quibbles--yea, strong arguments against any blood of hers ever uniting with the fates and fortunes of a boot-maker; with what _propriety_, her experience has long since taught her. Alice is the happiest of women, mother of many fine children, the wife of a man poverty could not corrupt, if public opinion forced him to mask the means that gave him bread. Rhapsody is no longer a politician, or office-holder, but engaged in lucrative pursuits that yield comfort and position in society. To relate the trials, courtship and marriage of "Jones, the boot-maker," is one of our friend Rhapsody's standing jokes, to friends at the fireside and dinner table; but that such a safe and happy tableau would again befall parties so circumstanced, is a very material question; and the moral of our story, being rather complex, though very definite, we leave to society, and you, reader, to determine.
A Distinction with a Difference.
A gentleman from "out 'town," came into Redding & Co.'s on Christmas day, and leaning thoughtfully over the counter, says he to Prescott, "Got any Psalms here?"
"N-n-no," says Prescott, reflectingly, "but," he continued, after a moment's pause, and handing down a copy of Hood, "here's plenty of old Joe's!"
The out-of-town gentleman gave a glance at _the pictures_, and with a countenance indicative of having been tasting a crab-apple--left!
Pills and Persimmons.
I remember an old "Joke" told me by my father, of an old, and rather addle-headed gentleman, who some fifty years ago did business in New Castle, Delaware, and having occasion to send out to England for hardware, wrote his order, and as he was about to despatch it to the captain of the ship, lying in the stream, ready for sea, a neighbor got him to add an order for some kegs of nails, and in the hurry, the old man dashed off his _P. S._, but upon attempting to read the whole order over, he couldn't make head or tail of it.
"Well," says he, in a flurry, "I'll send it, just as it is; they are better scholars in England than I am--_they'll make it out_."
Strange enough to say, when the hardware came over, among the rest of the stuff were the so many kegs of nails, but upon opening one of these kegs, it was full, or nearly so, of American quarter dollars. The old man roared out in a [word missing].
"Haw! haw! haw! Well, blast me," says he, "if _they_ ain't scholars, fust-rate scholars, in England; _it's worth while sending 'em bad manuscript_."
A still more comical mistake is related to us, of a commercial transaction that actually took place within a year or two, between
## parties severally situated in Boston and the city of San Francisco,
California. As we consider the whole transaction rather _rich_, we transcribe it for the diversion it may furnish.
Simmons, the "Oak Hall" man, of Boston, had set up a shop in San Francisco, to which he was almost daily sending all sorts of cheap clothing, and making, on the same, more money than a horse could pull; and in his package, he was in the habit of sending articles for friends, &c. A gentleman recently gone to the gold country, from Boston, acquainted with Simmons, and Simmons with him, found, upon looking around San Francisco, that his own business, _lawing_, wasn't worth two cents, as many of his craft were turning their attention to matters more useful to the human family--digging cellars, wheeling baggage, driving teams, &c. So lawyer Bunker _turned_ his attention from Blackstone, Chitty, Coke on Littleton, and those fellows of deep-red, blue-black law, to the manufacture of quack nostrums. Bunker found that the great appetite we Yankees have for quack medicines, pills and powders, suffered no diminution in the gold country; on the contrary, the appetite became rather sharpened for those luxuries, and Bunker found that a New York butcher, with whom he became acquainted, was absolutely making his fortune, by the manufacture of dough pills, spiced with coriander, and a slight tincture of calomel.
"Egad!" says Bunker, "_I'll_ go into medicine. I'll write to a friend in Boston, to send me _out_ a few medicine and receipt books, and a lot of pulverized liquorice, quinine, &c., with a pill machine, and I guess I'll be after my New York butchering friend in a double brace of shakes."
Now, it may be premised that as Bunker was a lawyer, he wrote a first-rate hand; in fact, he might have bragged of being able to equal, if not surpass, the "Hon." Rufus Choate, whose scrawl more resembles the scratchings of a poor half-drowned in an ink-saucer spider, meandering over foolscap, than quill-driving, and as unintelligible as the marks of a tea-box or hieroglyphics on the sarcophagus of ye ancient Egyptians! In short, Counsellor Bunker's manuscript was awful; a few of his most intimate friends, only, pretending to have the hang of it at all; and to one of these friends, Bunker directs his message, transmits it by Uncle Sam's mail _poche_, and in fever heat he awaits the return of the precious combustibles that were to make his fortune. In course of time, Bunker's friends receive the order, but, alas! it was all Greek to them; they cyphered in vain, to make out any thing in the letters except _persimmons_.
"What the deuce," says one of Bunker's friends, "does Joe want with persimmons?"
They went at it again, and again, but there was no mistaking the final sentence, "_send, without delay, persimmons_."
"Persimmons?" said one.
"Persimmons?" echoed another.
"Persimmons? What in thunder does Joe Bunker want with _persimmons_?" responded a third.
"Persimmons!" all three chimed.
"Persimmons," says one, "are not used in law proceedings, anyhow."
"Nor in gospel, even, provided Joe has got into that," responded another.
"Persimmons are not medicinal."
"They are not chemical."
"Persimmons are no part, or ingredient, in art, science, law, or religion; now, for what does Joe Bunker, counsellor at law, want us to forward, without delay, _persimmons_?"
Well, they couldn't tell; in vain they reasoned. Joe's letter was very brief, strictly to the point, and that point was--_persimmons!_ In the first place, it is not everybody that knows exactly what persimmons are, where they come from, and what they are good for. One of Bunker's friends had lived in the South; he knew persimmons; it occurred to him that possums, and some human beings, especially the colored pop'lation, were the only critters particularly fond of the fruit. Webster was consulted, to see what light he cast upon the matter: he informed them that "_Persimmon_ was a tree, and its fruit, a species of _Diospyros_, a native of the States south of New York. Fruit like a plum, and when not ripe, very hard and astringent (rather so), but when ripe, luscious and highly nutritious."
"Well, there," said one of Bunker's friends, "I'll bet Joe's sick; persimmons have been prescribed for his cure, and the sooner we send the persimmons the better!"
"Persimmons! Now I come to think of it," says the man who had a faint idea of what persimmons were, "they make beer, first-rate beer of persimmons, in the South, and it's my opinion, that Joe Bunker is going into persimmon beer business; as you say, he _may be_ sick--persimmon beer may be the California cure-all; in either case, let us forward the persimmons without delay!"
Now persimmons never ripen until _touched_ pretty smartly with Jack Frost. This was in September; persimmons were mostly full grown, but not ripe. A large keg of them was ordered from Jersey, and as fast as Adams & Co.'s great Express to San Francisco could take them out, _the persimmons went!_
Counsellor Bunker, relying upon his friends to forward without delay the tools and remedial agents to make his fortune in the pill business, went to work, got him an office, changed his name, and added an M. D. to it, had a sign painted, advertised his shop, and informed the public that on such a time he would open, and guarantee to cure all ills, from lumbago to liver complaint, from toothache to lock-jaw, spring fever to yaller janders, and in his enthusiasm, he sat down with a ream of paper, to count up the profits, and calculate the time it would take to get his pile of gold dust and start for home.
The day arrived that Doctor Phlebotonizem was to open, and he found customers began to _call_, and sure enough, in comes a large keg, direct through from the States, to his address; the freight bill on it was pretty considerable, but Joe out and paid it, rejoicing to think that now he was all right, and that if the proprietors of gold dust and the lumbago, or any of the various ills set forth in his catalogue of human woes, had spare change, he would soon find them out. He closed his door, opened his cask--
"What in the name of everlasting sin and misery is this?" was the first _burst_, upon feeling the fine saw dust, and seeing, nicely packed, the green and purple, round and glossy--he couldn't tell what.
"Pills? No, good gracious, they can't be _pills_--smell queer--some mistake--can't be any mistake--my name on the cask--(tastes one of the 'article')--O! by thunder! (tastes again)--I'm blasted, they (tastes again) are, by Jove, _persimmons!_ Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! he! he! ha! ha! ha!"
And the ex-counsellor of modern law roared until he grew livid in the face.
"I see--ha! ha! I see; they have misunderstood every line I wrote them, except the last, and that--ha! ha! ha!--for my direction to send out my stuff _per Simmons_, they send me PERSIMMONS! Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho!"
But, after enjoying the _fun_ of the matter, ex-counsellor Bunker discovered the thing was nothing to laugh at; _patients_ were at the door--if he did not soon prescribe for their cases, his now numerous creditors would prescribe for him! What was to be done? Very dull and prosy people often become enterprising and imaginative, to a wonderful degree, when put to their trumps. This philosophical fact applied to ex-counsellor Bunker's case exactly. He was there to better his fortune, and he felt bound to do it, persimmons or no persimmons. It occurred to him, as those infernal persimmons had cost him something, they ought to _bring in_ something. By the aid of starch and sugar, Doctor Phlebotonizem converted some hundreds of the smallest persimmons into _pills_--sugar-coated pills--warranted to cure about all the ills flesh was heir to, at $2 each dose. One generally constituted a dose for a full-grown person, and as the patient left with a countenance much "puckered up," and rarely returned, the _pseudo_ M. D. concluded there was virtue in persimmon pills, and so, after disposing of his stock to first-rate advantage, the doctor paid off his bills; tired of the pill trade, he _vamosed the ranche_ with about funds enough to reach home, and explain to his friends the difference between _per_ Simmons and _persimmons!_
Mysteries and Miseries of the Life of a City Editor.
A great deal has been written, to show that the literary business is a very disagreeable business; and that branch of it coming under the "Editorial" head is about as comfortable as the bed of Procustes would be to an invalid. It may doubtless look and sound well, to see one's name in print, going the rounds, especially at the head of the editorial columns, from ten to fifty thousand eyes and tongues scanning and pronouncing it every day, or week--hundreds and thousands of the fair sex wondering whether he is a young or an old man, a married man or a bachelor; while the pious and devout are contemplating the serious of his emanations, and conjecturing whether he be a Methodist, Puseyite, or Catholic, a Presbyterian, Unitarian or Baptist; and the politicians scanning his views, to discover whether he _leans_ toward the _Locofocos, Free-Soilers, or Whigs_--all being necessarily much mystified, inasmuch as the neutral writer, or editor, is obliged to study, and most vigilantly to act, the part of a cunning diplomatist--stroke every body's hair with the _grain!_
The Tribulations of Incivility.
"A gentleman by the name of Collins stopping with you?"
"Collins?" was the response.
"Yes, Collins, or Collings, I ain't sure which," said the hardy-looking, bronzed seaman, to the gaily-dressed, flippant-mannered, be-whiskered man of vast importance, presiding over the affairs of one of our "first-class hotels."
"Very indefinite inquiry, then," said the hotel manager.
"Well, I brought this small package from Bremen for a gentleman who came out passenger with us some time ago; he left it in Bremen--wanted me to fetch it out when the ship returned--here it is."
"What do you want to leave it here for? We know nothing about the man, sir."
"You don't? Well, you ought to, for the gentleman put up here, and told me he'd be around when we got into port again. He was a deuced clever fellow, and you ought to have kept the reckoning of such a man," said the seaman.
"Ha, ha! we keep so many clever fellows," said he of the hotel, "that they are no novelties, sir."
"I wonder then," said the seaman, "you do not imitate some of them, for there's no danger of the world's getting crowded with a crew of good men."
"If you have any business with us we shall attend to it, sir, but we want none of your impertinence!"
"O, you don't? Well, Mister, I've business aboard of your craft; if you're the commodore, I'd like you to see that my friend Collins is piped up, or that this package be stowed away where he could come afoul of it. His name is Collins; here it is in black and white, on the parcel, and here's where I was to drop it."
One of the "understrappers" overhearing the dispute, whispered his dignified superior that Mr. Collins, an English gentleman, late from Bremen, was in the house, whereupon the dignified empressario, turning to the self-possessed man of the sea, said--
"Ah, well, leave the parcel, leave the parcel; we _suppose_ it's correct."
"There it is," said the seaman; "commodore, you see that the gentleman gets it; and I say," says the sailor, pushing back his hat and giving his breeches a regular sailor twitch, "I wish you'd please to say to the gentleman, Mr. Collins, you know, that Mr. Brace, first officer of the Triton, would like to see him aboard, any time he's at leisure."
But in the multiplicity of greater affairs, the hotel gentleman hardly attempted to listen or attend to the sailor's message, and Mr. Brace, first officer of the Triton, bore away, muttering to himself--
"These land-crabs mighty apt to put on airs. I'd like to have that powder monkey in my watch about a week--I'd have him down by the lifts and braces!"
Let us suppose it to be in the glorious month of October, when the myriads of travellers by land and ocean are wending their way from the chilly north towards the sunny south, when the invalid seeks the tropics in pursuit of his health, and the speculative man of business returns with his "invoices," to his shop, or factory, where profit leads the way.
We are on board ship--the Triton ploughing the deep blue waters of the ocean track from Sandy Hook to New Orleans; for October, the weather is rather unruly, _damp_, and boisterous. We perceive a number of passengers on board, and by near guess of our memory, we see a person or two we have seen before. Our be-whiskered friend of the "first-class hotel," is there; he does not look so self-possessed and pompous on board the heaving and tossing ship as he did behind his marble slab in "the office." "The sea, the sea!" as the song says, has quite taken the starch out of our stiff friend, who is not enjoying a first-rate time. And from an overheard conversation between two hardy, noble specimens of men that are men--two officers of the stoutly-timbered ship, the comfort of the be-whiskered gentleman is in danger of a commutation.
"Do you know him, Mr. Brace?"
"Yes, I know him; I knew him as soon as I got the cut of his jib coming aboard. Now, says I, my larky, you and I've got to travel together, and we'll settle a little odd reckoning, if you please, or if you don't please, afore we see the Balize. You see, that fellow keeps a crack hotel in York; I goes in there to deliver a package for a deuced good fellow as ever trod deck, and this powder monkey, loblolly-looking swab, puts on his airs, sticks up his nose, and hardly condescends to exchange signals with me. Ha! ha! I've met these galore cocks before; I can take the tail feathers out of 'em!" says Mr. Brace, who is the same hardy, frank and free fellow, with whom the reader has already formed something of a brief acquaintance. The person to whom Brace was addressing himself was the second officer of the merchantman, and it was settled that whatever nautical knowledge and skill could do to make things uneasy for Mr. Lollypops, the empressario of the "first-class hotel," was to be done, by mutual management of the two salt-water jokers.
"It appears to me, that a--bless me, sir, a--how this ship rolls!" said Lollypops, coming upon deck, and addressing Mr. Brace; "I--a never saw a ship roll so."
"Heavy sea on, sir," said Brace; "nothing to what we'll catch before a week's out."
"Bad coast, I believe, at this time o' year?" said Lollypops, balancing himself on first one leg and then the other.
"Worst coast in the world, sir; I'd rather go to Calcutta any time than go to Orleans; more vessels lost on the coast than are lost anywhere else on the four seas."
"You don't say so!" said Lollypops.
"Fact, sir," said Brace, who occasionally kept exchanging private and mysterious signals with the second officer, who held the wheel.
"Let her up a point, Mr. Brown, let her up!" Mr. Brown did let her up, and the way the Triton took head down and heels up and a roll to windward, did not speak so well for the nautical _menage_ of the officers as it did for the quiet deviltry of the salt-water Joe Millers. The avalanche of brine inundated the decks, making the sailors look quite asquirt, and driving Mr. Lollypops, an ancient voyager or two, and sundry other travelling gentry--very suddenly into the cabin. The next day the same performance followed; the appearance of Lollypops on deck was a signal for Brace or Brown, to go in, get up a double _roll_ on the ship, an imaginary gale was discussed, wrecks and reefs, dangerous points and dreadful currents were descanted upon, until Mr. Lollypops' health, at the end of the first week, was no better fast; in fact, he was getting sick of the voyage, while others around grew fat upon it. A fine morning induced the invalid to light his regalia and walk the decks; immediately Mr. Brace, or Brown, gave orders to wash down the decks. Mr. Lollypops went aloft, _ergo_, as far as the main top; immediately the first officer had the men "going about," heaving here and letting go there; in short, so endangering the hat and underpinning of the be-whiskered landlord of the "first-class hotel" that he was fain to crawl down, take the wet decks, tip-toe, and crawl into the cabin, damp as a dishcloth, and utterly disgusted with what he had seen of the sea! Accidentally, one afternoon, a tar pot fell from aloft; somehow or other, the careless sailor who held it, or should have held it--"let go all" just when Mr. Lollypops was in the immediate neighborhood; the result was that he had a splendid dressing-gown and other equipments--ruined eternally! Going into the cabin, Lollypops inquires for the Captain--
"Sir!" says he, "I am mad, Sir, very mad, Sir; yes, I am, Sir; look at me, only look at me! In rough weather we do not expect pleasant times at sea, but, Sir, ever since I have been on board, Sir, your infernal officers, Sir, have thrown this ship into all manner of unpleasant situations, kept the decks wet, rattled chains over my berth, wang-banged the rigging around, and finally, by thunder, I'm covered all over with villanous soap fat and tar! Now, Sir, this is not all the result of accident--it's premeditated rascality!"
"Sir"--says the bully mate, coming forward, at this crisis, "my name's Mr. Brace; when I was aboard your craft, in New York, you rather put on _airs_, and I said if you and I ever got to sea together--we'd have a _blow_ out. Now we're about even; if you're a mind we'll call the matter square--"
"Yes, yes, for heaven's sake, let us have no more of this!" says Lollypops.
"We'll have a bottle together, and wish for a clean run to Orleans!" continued officer Brace.
Lollypops agreed; he not only stood the wine, but got over his anger, vowed to look deeper into character, and never again rebuff honest manliness, though hid under the coarse costume of a son of Neptune! A hearty laugh closed the scene, and fair weather and a fine termination attended the voyage of the Triton to New Orleans; for a finer, drier craft never danced over the ocean wave, than that good ship, under _rational_ management.
The Broomstick Marriage.