Part 6

Absalom was cut down, like a hollyhock in November--he was dead broke, and felt, in his present situation, flat, stale, and unprofitable enough.

"Mr. Smith," said Absalom, the day after the collapse, "I am once more on my oars."

"Yes, Ab, so it seems; it's a queer world, sometimes we are up, and sometimes we are down. Time, Ab, works wonders, as you once very forcibly remarked."

"It does, indeed, sir."

"We have only to keep up our spirits, Ab, go ahead; the world is large, if it is full of changes."

"True, sir, very true. I was about to remark, Mr. Smith--"

"Well, Ab."

"That we have known one another--"

"Pretty well, I think!"

"A long time, sir--"

"Yes, Ab."

"And when I was up and you down--"

"Yes, go on."

"I gave you a chance to keep your head above water."

"True enough, Ab, my boy."

"Now, sir, I want you to give me charge of the bar again, and I'll off coat and go to work like a Trojan."

"Ab Hart," said Smith, "when you came to me, you was so green you could hardly tell a crossed quarter from a bogus pistareen--the 'run of the till' you learnt in a week, while in less than a month you was the best hand at 'knocking down' I ever met! There's fifty dollars, you and I are square; we will keep so--go!"

Poor Absalom was beat at his own game, and soon left for parts unknown.

People Do Differ!

Fifty years ago, Uncle Sam was almost a stranger on the maps; he hadn't a friend in the world, apparently, while he had more enemies than he could shake a stick at. Every body snubbed him, and every body wanted to lick him. But Sam has now grown to be a crowder; his spunk, too, goes up with his resources, and he don't wait for any body to "knock the chip off his hat," but goes right smack up to a crowd of fighting bullies, and rolling up his sleeves, he coolly "wants to know" if any body had any thing to say about him, in that crowd! Uncle Sam is no longer "a baby," his _physique_ has grown to be quite enormous, and we rather expect the old fellow will have to have a pitched battle with some body soon, _or he'll spile!_

Bill Whiffletree's Dental Experience.

Have you ever had the tooth-ache? If not, then blessed is your ignorance, for it is indeed bliss to know nothing about the tooth-ache, as you know nothing, absolutely nothing about pain--the acute, double-distilled, rectified agony that lurks about the roots or fangs of a treacherous tooth. But ask a sufferer how it feels, what it is like, how it operates, and you may learn something theoretically which you may pray heaven that you may not know practically.

But there's poor William Whiffletree--he's been through the mill, fought, bled, and died (slightly) with the refined, essential oil of the agony caused by a raging tooth. Every time we read _Othello_, we are half inclined to think that _more_ than half of Iago's devilishness came from that "raging tooth," which would not let him sleep, but tortured and tormented "mine ancient" so that he became embittered against all the world, and blackamoors in particular.

William Whiffletree's case is a very strong illustration of what tooth-ache is, and what it causes people to do; and affords a pretty fair idea of the manner in which the tooth and sufferer are medicinally and morally treated by the _materia medica_, and friends at large.

William Whiffletree--or "Bill," as most people called him--was a sturdy young fellow of two-and-twenty, of "poor but respectable parents," and 'tended the dry-goods store of one Ethan Rakestraw, in the village of Rockbottom, State of New York.

One unfortunate day, for poor Bill, there came to Rockbottom a galvanized-looking individual, rejoicing in the euphonium of Dr. Hannibal Orestes Wangbanger. As a surgeon, he had--according to the album-full of _certificates_--operated in all the scientific branches of amputation, from the scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew luminous! In short, Dr. Wangbanger had not been long in Rockbottom before his "gift of gab," and unadulterated propensity to elongate the blanket, set every body, including poor Bill Whiffletree, in a furor to have their teeth cut, filed, scraped, rasped, reset, dug out, and burnished up!

Now Bill, being, as we aforestated, a muscularly-developed youth, got up in the most sturdy New Hampshire style, _his_ teeth _were_ teeth, in every way calculated to perform long and strong; but Bill was fast imbibing counter-jumper notions, dabbling in stiff dickeys, greased soap-locks, and other fancy "flab-dabs," supposed to be essential in cutting a swarth among ye fair sex.

So that when Dr. Wangbanger once had an audience with Mr. William Whiffletree in regard to one of Mr. Whiffletree's molars which Bill thought had a "speck" on it, he soon convinced the victim that the said molar not only was specked, but out of the dead plumb of its nearest neighbor at least the 84th part of an inch!

"O, shocking!" says the remorseless _hum_; "it is well I saw it in time, Mr. Whiffletree. Why, in the course of a few weeks, that tooth, sir, would have exfoliated, calcareous supperation would have ensued, the gum would have ossified, while the nerve of the tooth becoming apostrophized, the roots would have concatenated in their hiatuses, and the jaw-bone, no longer acting upon their fossil exoduses, would necessarily have led to the entire suspension of the capillary organs of your stomach and brain, and--_death would supervene in two hours!_"

Poor Bill! he scarcely knew what fainting was, but a queer sensation settled in his "ossis frontis," while his ossis legso almost bent double under him, at the awful prospect of things before him! He took a long breath, however, and in a voice tremulous with emotion, inquired--

"Good Lord, Doctor! what's to be done for a feller?"

"Plug and file," calmly said the Doctor.

"Plug and file what?"

"The second molar," said the Doctor; though the treacherous monster _meant_ Bill's wallet, of course!

"What'll it cost, Doctor?" says Bill.

"Done in my very best manner, upon the new and splendid system invented by myself, sir, and practiced upon all the crowned heads of Europe, London, and Washington City, it will cost you three dollars."

"Does it hurt much, Doctor?" was Bill's cautious inquiry.

"Very little, indeed; it's sometimes rather agreeable, sir, than otherwise," said the Doctor.

"Then go at it, Doctor! Here's the _dosh_," and forking over three dollars, down sits William Whiffletree in a high-backed chair, and the Doctor's assistant--a sturdy young Irishman--clamping Bill's head to the back of the chair, to keep it steady, as the Doctor remarked, the latter began to "bore and file."

"O! ah! ho-ho-hold on, _hold on!_" cries Bill, at the first _gouge_ the Doctor gave the huge tooth.

"O! be me soul! be aizy, zur," says the Irishman, "it's mesilf as untherstands it--_I'll howld on till yees!_"

"O--O-h-h-h!" roars Bill, as the Doctor proceeds.

"Be quiet, sir; the pain won't signify!" says the Doctor.

"Go-goo-good Lord-d-d! Ho-ho-hol-hold on!"

"O, yeez needn't be afeared of that--I'm howldin' yeez tight as a divil!" cries Paddy, and sure enough he _was_ holding, for in vain Bill screwed and twisted and squirmed around; Pat held him like a cider-press.

"Let me--me--O--O--O! Everlasting creation! let me go-o-o--stop, _hold on-n-n!_" as the Doctor bored, screwed, and plugged away at the tooth.

"All done, sir; let the patient up, Michael," says the Doctor, with a confident twirl of his perfumed handkerchief. "There, sir--there was science, art, elegance, and dispatch! Now, sir, your tooth is safe--your life is safe--_you're a sound man!_"

"Sound?" echoes poor Bill, "sound? Why, you've broken my jaw into flinders; you've set all my teeth on edge; and I've no more feelin'--gall darn ye!--in my jaws, than if they were iron steel-traps! You've got the wuth of your money out of my mouth, and I'm off!"

That night was one of anxiety and misery to William Whiffletree. The disturbed _molar_ growled and twitched like mad; and, by daylight, poor Bill's cheek was swollen up equal to a printer's buff-ball, his mouth puckered, and his right eye half "bunged up."

"Why, William," says Ethan Rakestraw, as Bill went into the store, "what in grace ails thy face? Thee looks like an owl in an ivy-bush!"

"Been plugged and filed," says Bill, looking cross as a meat-axe at his snickering Orthodox boss.

"Plugged and _fined_? Thee hain't been fighting, William?"

"Fined? No, I ain't been _fined_ or fighting, Mr. Rakestraw, but I bet I do fight that feller who gave me the tooth-ache!--O! O!" moaned poor Bill, as he clamped his swollen jaw with his hand, and went around waving his head like a plaster-of-paris mandarin.

"O! thee's been to the dentist, eh? Got the tooth-ache? Go thee to my wife; she'll cure thee in one minute, William; a little laudanum and cotton will soon ease thy pain."

Mrs. Rakestraw applied the laudanum to Bill's molar, but as it did no kind of good, old grandmother proposed a poultice; and soon poor Bill's head and cheek were done up in mush, while he groaned and grunted and started for the store, every body gaping at his swollen countenance as though he was a rare curiosity.

"Halloo, Bill!" says old Firelock, the gunsmith, as Bill was going by his shop; "got a bag in your calabash, or got the tooth-ache?"

Bill looked daggers at old Firelock, and by a nod of his head intimated the cause of his distress.

"O, that all? Come in; I'll stop it in a minute and a half; sit down, I'll fix it--I've cured hundreds," says Firelock.

"What are you--O-h-h, dear! what are you going to do?" says Bill, eyeing the wire, and lamp in which Firelock was heating the wire.

"Burn out the marrow of the tooth--'twill never trouble you again--I've cured hundreds that way! Don't be afeared--you won't feel it but a moment. Sit still, keep cool!" says Firelock.

"Cool?" with a hot wire in his tooth! But Bill, being already intensely crucified, and assured of Firelock's skill, took his head out of the mush-plaster, opened his jaws, and Firelock, admonishing him to "keep cool," crowded the hot, sizzling wire on to the tin foil jammed into the hollow by Wangbanger, and gave it a twist clear through the melted tin to the exposed nerve. Bill jumped, bit off the wire, burnt his tongue, and knocked Firelock nearly through the partition of his shop; and so frightened Monsieur Savon, the little barber next door, that he rushed out into the street, crying--

"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Ze zundair strike my shop!"

Bill was stone dead--Firelock crippled. The apothecary over the way came in, picked up poor Bill, applied some camphor to his nose, and brought him back to life, and--the pangs of tooth-ache!

"Kreasote!" says Squills, the 'pothecary. "I'll ease your pain, Mr. Whiffletree, in a second!"

Poor Bill gave up--the kreasote added a fresh invoice to his misery--burnt his already lacerated and roasted tongue--and he yelled right out.

"Death and glory! O-h-h-h-h, murder! You've pizened me!"

"Put a hot brick to that young man's face," said a stranger; "'twill take out the pain and swelling in three minutes!"

Bill revived; he seemed pleased at the stranger's suggestion; the Brick was applied; but Bill's cheek being now half raw with the various messes, it made him yell when the brick touched him!

He cleared for home, went to bed, and the excessive pain, finally, with laudanum, kreasote, fire, and hot bricks, put him to sleep.

He awoke at midnight, in a frightful state of misery; walked the floor until daylight; was tempted two or three times to jump out the window or crawl up the chimney!

Until noon next day he suffered, trying in vain, every ten minutes, some "known cure," oils, acids, steam, poultices, and the ten thousand applications usually tried to cure a raging tooth.

Desperation made Bill revengeful. He got a club and went after Dr. Wangbanger, who had set all the village in a rage of tooth-ache. Ten or a dozen of his victims were at his door, awaiting ferociously their turns to be revenged.

But the bird had flown; the _teuth-doctor_ had sloped; yet a good Samaritan came to poor Bill, and whispering in his ear, Bill started for Monsieur Savon's barber-shop, took a seat, shut his eyes, and said his prayers. The little Frenchman took a keen knife and pair of pincers, and Bill giving one awful yell, the tooth was out, and his pains and perils at an end!

A-a-a-in't they Thick?

During the "great excitement" in Boston, relative to the fugitive slave "fizzle," a good-natured country gentleman, by the name of Abner Phipps; an humble artisan in the fashioning of buckets, wash-tubs and wooden-ware generally, from one of the remote towns of the good old Bay State, paid his annual visit to the metropolis of Yankee land. In the multifarious operations of his shop and business, Abner had but little time, and as little inclination, to keep the run of _latest news_, as set forth glaringly, every day, under the caption of _Telegraphic Dispatches_, in the papers; hence, it requires but a slight extension of the imagination to apprise you, "dear reader," that our friend Phipps was but meagerly "posted up" in what was going on in this great country, half of his time. I must do friend Phipps the favor to say, that he was not ignorant of the fact that "Old Hickory" fout well down to New Orleans, and that "Old Zack" flaxed the Mexicans clean out of their boots in Mexico; likewise that Millerism was a humbug, and money was pretty generally considered a cash article all over the universal world.

But what did Phipps know or care about the Fugitive Slave bill? Not a red cent's worth, no more than he did of the equitation of the earth, the Wilmot proviso, or Barnum's woolly horse--not a _red_. He came to Boston annually to see how things were a workin'; pleasure, not business. The very first morning of his arrival in town, the hue and cry of "slave hunters," was raised--Shadrack, the fugitive, was arrested at his vocation--table servant at Taft's eating establishment, Corn Hill, where Abner Phipps accidentally had stuck his boots under the mahogany, for the purpose of recuperating his somewhat exhausted inner-man. Abner saw the arrest, he was quietly discussing his _tapioca_, and if thinking at all, was merely calculating what the profits were, upon a two-and-sixpence dinner, at a Boston _restaurateur_. He saw there was a muss between the black waiter and two red-nosed white men, but as he did not know what it was all about, he didn't care; it was none of his business; and being a part of his religion, not to meddle with that that did not concern him, he continued his _tapioca_ to the bottom of his plate, then forked over the equivalent and stepped out.

As Phipps turned into Court square, it occurred, slightly, that the niggers had got to be rather thick in Boston, to what they used to be; and bending his footsteps down Brattle street, once or twice it occurred to him that the niggers _had_ got to be thick--darn'd thick, for they passed and repassed him--walked before him and behind him, and in fact all around him.

"Yes," says Phipps, "the niggers are thick, thundering thick--never saw 'em so thick in my life. _Ain't they thick?_" he soliloquized, and as he continued his stroll in the purlieus of "slightly soiled" garments, vulgarly known as second-hand shops, mostly proprietorized by very dignified and respectable _col'ud pussons_, it again struck Phipps quite forcibly that the niggers were _a_ getting thick.

"Godfree! but ain't they thick! I hope to be stabbed with a gridiron," said Phipps, "if there ain't more _niggers_--look at 'em--more niggers than would patch and grade the infernal regions eleven miles! Guess I've enough niggers for a spell," continued Phipps, "so I'll just pop in here, and see how this feller sells his notions." And so Abner, having reached Dock square, saunters into a gun, pistol, bowie, jack-knife, dog-collar, shot-bag, and notion-shop in general. Unlucky step.

The stiff-dickied, frizzle-headed, polished and perfumed shop-keeper was on hand, and particularly predisposed to sell the stranger something. Just then a nigger passed the door, and looked in very sharply at Phipps, and presently two more passed, then a fourth and fifth, all _looking_ more or less pointedly at the manufacturer of wooden doin's, and white-pine fixin's.

"That's a neat _collar_," says the shop-keeper, as Phipps, sort of miscellaneously, placed his hand upon a brass-band, red-lined dog-collar.

"Collar! don't call that a _collar_, do you?"

"I do, sir, a beautiful collar, sir."

"What for, _solgers_?" asks Phipps.

"Soldiers, no, dogs," says the shop-keeper, puckering his mouth as though he had _sampled_ a lemon.

"_O!_" says Phipps, suddenly realizing the fact. "I ain't got no dogs; bad stock; don't pay; tax 'em up where I live; wouldn't pay tax for forty dogs." More niggers passed, repassed, and looked in at Phipps and the storekeeper.

"I say, ain't the niggers got to be thick--infernal thick, in your town lately?"

"Well, I don't know that they are," replied the shop-keeper; "getting rather scarce, I think, since the Fugitive bill has been put in force over the country, sir, but it does appear to me," said the shop-keeper, twiging sundry and suspicious-looking col'ud gem'en passing by his store, gaping in rather wistfully at the door, and peeping through the sash of the windows--"it does appear to me, that a good many colored persons are about this morning; yes, there is, why there goes more, more yet; bless me, there's another, two, three, four, why a dozen has just passed; they seem to look in here rather curiously, I wonder--only look; what has stirred them up, I want to know!" the fluctuation of the _Congo_ market completely attracted the handsome man's attention; his surprise finally assumed the most tangible shape and complexion of fear, for the niggers, one and all, looked savage as meat-axes, and began to get too numerous to mention.

[Illustration: "What dat! got pistils in your pocket, eh?" says one of two big buck Niggers, shying up alongside of the new velocipeding up-country artisan. "What dat! got de hand-cuffs in he pocket!"--_Page_ 99.]

"Well, guess I'll be goin'," says Phipps, after fumbling over some of the shooting-irons, jack-knives, etc.; reaching the street, he was more fully impressed with the fixed fact, that the niggers were all sorts of thick. They fairly crowded him; one buck darkey rubbed slap up against Phipps, as he moved out of the store. "Look here, Mister," says Phipps, "ain't all this street big enough for you without a crowdin' me?"

The nigger stopped, looked arsenic and chain lightning at Phipps, and then moved off, saying in a sort of undertone--

"Gorra, I guess you'll be crowded a wus'n dat afore dis day is ober."

"Will, eh?" responded Abner Phipps, slightly mystified as to the why and wherefore, that _he_ should, in particular, be "crowded," especially by an Ethiopic gentleman.

"I guess I _won't_ then," resumed Phipps; "if any body ventures to crowd me, just a purpose, I guess I'll be darn'd apt, and mighty quick to squash in their heads, or whoop'm on the spot."

"What dat? got pistils in your pocket, eh?" says one of the two big buck niggers, shying up alongside of the now velocipeding up-country artisan. Phipps looked back, the negroes were following him. "Pistils? who's talkin' about pistils, mister?" he ventured to ask.

"Dat's him, watch'm."

"Why, we see'd you goin' in dar, dat pistol shop; want to lay in a stock of dirks and pistils, eh?" says the negro.

"You--you got any hand-cuffs in you' pocket?" inquired another.

"What dat? got de hand-cuffs in he pocket?"

"Pistils and bowie knibes!" says a third.

"Dat's him! watch'm!"

"Knock'm down, put dat white hat ober his eyes! Hoo-r-r!"

The negroes now fairly beset our victimized friend Phipps; he stopped, buttoned his coat, the negroes augmented; glared at him like demons; he fixed his hat firmly upon his head; the negroes began to grin and move upon him; he spat upon his hands; the negroes began to yell, and to close in upon him; with one grand effort, one mighty gathering of all the human faculties called into action by fear and desperation, Phipps bounded like a Louisiana bull at a gate post; he knocked down two, _square_; kicked over four, and rushing through the now very considerable and formidable array of ebony, he _broke_ equal to a wild turkey through a corn bottom, or a sharp knife through a pound of milky butter; and it is very questionable whether Phipps ever stopped running until his boots _busted_, or he reached his bucket factory on Taunton river. His negro deputation _waited on him_ with a rush clear outside of town, where the speed and bottom of Abner distanced the entire committee. The key to this joke is: Phipps was dogged from Tafts'--by the "vigilant committee," as an informer, or slave-hunter at least, and hence the delicate attentions of the col'ud pop'lation paid him. I have no doubt, that if Abner Phipps be asked, how things look around Boston, he would observe with some energy,

"Niggers--niggers are thick--Godfree! _a-a-a-in't they thick!_"

A Desperate Race.

Some years ago, I was one of a convivial party, that met in the principal hotel in the town of Columbus, Ohio, the seat of government of the Buckeye State.

It was a winter evening when all without was bleak and stormy, and all within were blythe and gay; when song and story made the circuit of the festive board, filling up the chasms of life with mirth and laughter.

We had met for the express purpose of making a night of it, and the pious intention was duly and most religiously carried out. The Legislature was in session in that town, and not a few of the worthy legislators were present upon this occasion.

One of these worthies I will name, as he not only took a big swath in the evening's entertainment, but he was a man _more_ generally known than our worthy President, James K. Polk. That man was the famous Captain Riley! whose "narrative" of suffering and adventures is pretty generally known, all over the civilized world. Captain Riley was a fine, fat, good-humored joker, who at the period of my story was the representative of the Dayton district, and lived near that little city when at home. Well, Captain Riley had amused the company with many of his far-famed and singular adventures, which being mostly told before and read by millions of people, that have ever seen his book, I will not attempt to repeat them.

Many were the stories and adventures told by the company, when it came to the turn of a well known gentleman who represented the Cincinnati district. As Mr. ---- is yet among the living, and perhaps not disposed to be the subject of joke or story, I do not feel at liberty to give his name. Mr. ---- was a slow believer of other men's adventures, and at the same time much disposed to magnify himself into a marvellous hero whenever the opportunity offered. As Captain Riley wound up one of his truthful, though really marvellous adventures, Mr. ---- coolly remarked, that the captain's story was all very _well_, but it did not begin to compare with an adventure that he had "once upon a time" on the Ohio, below the present city of Cincinnati.

"Let's have it!" "Let's have it!" resounded from all hands.