Chapter XV: Part 15

The next day we had to go home. The snow lay ankle-deep everywhere and the air was chilly and raw. Wheeler and I tried to ride, but the mountain road was so rough that the horses could barely move through the snow, dragging the buggy after them. So we got out and walked on ahead to keep warm. We gained very fast on the team, for we were both long-legged and measured off the miles like a hired man going to dinner. I wore a pair of glove-fitting low shoes and lisle-thread socks. I can remember that yet. I would advise anyone going into the mines not to wear lisle-thread socks and low shoes. You are liable to stick your foot into a snow-bank or a mud hole and dip up too much water. I remember that after we had walked through the pine woods down the mountain road a few miles, I noticed that the bottoms of my pantaloons looked like those of a drowned tramp I saw many years ago in the morgue. We gave out after a while, waited for the team, but decided that it had gone the other road. All at once it flashed over us that we were alone in the woods and the storm, wet, nearly starved, ignorant of the road and utterly worn out!

It was tough!

I never felt so blue, so wet, so hungry, or so hopeless in my life. We moved on a little farther. All at once we came out of the timber. There was no snow whatever! At that moment the sun burst forth, we struck a deserted supply wagon, found a two-pound can of Boston baked beans, got an axe from the load, chopped open the can, and had just finished the tropical fruit of Massachusetts when our own team drove up, and joy and hope made their homes once more in our hearts.

We may learn from this a valuable lesson, but at this moment I do not know exactly what it is.

Lost Money.

Most anyone could collect and tell a good many incidents about lost money that has been found, if he would try, but these cases came under my own observation and I can vouch for their truth.

A farmer in the Kinnekinnick Valley was paid $1,000 while he was loading hay. He put it in his vest pocket, and after he had unloaded the hay he discovered that he had lost it, and no doubt had pitched the whole load into the mow on top of it. He went to work and pitched it all out, a handful at a time, upon the barn floor, and when the hired man's fork tine came up with a $100 bill on it he knew they had struck a lead. He got it all.

A man gave me two $5 bills once to pay a balance on some store teeth and asked me to bring the teeth back with me. The dentist was fifteen miles away and when I got there I found I had lost the money. That was before I had amassed much of a fortune, so I went to the tooth foundry and told the foreman that I had started with $10 to get a set of teeth for an intimate friend, but had lost the funds. He said that my intimate friend would, no doubt, have to gum it awhile. Owing to the recent shrinkage in values he was obliged to sell teeth for cash, as the goods were comparatively useless after they had been used one season. I went back over the same road the next day and found the money by the side of the road, although a hundred teams had passed by it.

A young man, one spring, plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under, and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and, though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it was discovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither they were sent and redeemed.

I lost a roll of a hundred dollars the spring of '82, and hunted my house and the office through, in search for it, in vain. I went over the road between the office and the house twenty times, but it was useless. I then advertised the loss of the money, giving the different denominations of the bills and stating, as was the case, that there was an elastic band around the roll when lost. The paper had not been issued more than an hour before I got my money, every dollar of it. It was in the pocket of my other vest.

This should teach us, first, the value of advertising, and, secondly, the utter folly of two vests at the same time.

Apropos of recent bank failures, I want to tell this one on James S. Kelley, commonly called “Black Jim.” He failed himself along in the fifties, and by a big struggle had made out to pay everybody but Lo Bartlett, to whom he was indebted in the sum of $18. He got this money, finally, and as Lo wasn't in town, Black Jim put it in a bank, the name of which has long ago sunk into oblivion. In fact, it began the oblivion business about forty-eight hours after Jim had put his funds in there.

Meeting Lo on the street, Jim said:

“Your money is up in the Wild Oat Bank, Lo. I'll give you a check for it.”

“No use, old man, she's gone up.”

“No!!”

“Yes, she's a total wreck.”

Jim went over to the president's room. He knocked as easy as he could, considering that his breath was coming so hard.

“Who's there?”

“It's Jim Kelley, Black Jim, and I'm in something of a hurry.”

“Well, I'm very busy, Mr. Kelley. Come again this afternoon.”

“That will be too remote. I am very busy myself. Now is the accepted time. Will you open the door or shall I open it.”

The president opened it because it was a good door and he wanted to preserve it.

Black Jim turned the key in the door and sat down.

“What did you want of me?” says the president

“I wanted to see you about a certificate of deposit I've got here on your bank for eighteen dollars.”

“We can't pay it. Everything is gone.”

“Well, I am here to get $18 or to leave you looking like a giblet pie. Eighteen dollars will relieve you of this mental strain, but if you do not put up I will paper this wall with your classic features and ruin the carpet with what remains.”

The president hesitated a moment. Then he took a roll out of his boot and paid Jim eighteen dollars.

“You will not mention this on the street, of course,” said the president.

“No,” says Jim, “not till I get there.”

When the crowd got back, however, the president had fled and he has remained fled ever since. The longer he remained away and thought it over, the more he became attached to Canada, and the more of a confirmed and incurable fugitive he became.

I saw Black Jim last evening and he said he had passed through two bank failures, but had always realized on his certificates of deposit. One cashier told Jim that he was the homeliest man that ever looked through the window of a busted bank. He said Kelley looked like a man who ate bank cashiers on toast and directors raw with a slice of lemon on top.

Dr. Dizart's Dog.

A man whose mother-in-law had been successfully treated by the doctor, one day presented him with a beautiful Italian hound named Nemesis.

When I say that the able physician had treated the mother-in-law successfully, I mean successfully from her son-in-law's standpoint, and not from her own, for the doctor insisted on treating her for small-pox when she had nothing but an attack of agnostics. She is now sitting on the front stoop of the golden whence.

So, after the last sad rites, the broken-hearted son-in-law presented the physician with a handsome hound with long, slender legs and a wire tail, as a token of esteem and regard.

The dog was young and playful, as all young dogs are, so he did many little tricks which amused almost everyone.

One day, while the doctor was away administering a subcutaneous injection of morphine to a hay-fever patient, he left Nemesis in the office alone with a piece of rag-carpet and his surging thoughts.

At first Nemesis closed his eyes and breathed hard, then he arose and ate part of an ottoman, then he got up and scratched the paper off the office wall and whined in a sad tone of voice.

A young Italian hound has a peculiarly sad and depressing song.

Then Nemesis got up on the desk and poured the ink and mucilage into one of the drawers on some bandages and condition-powders that the doctor used in his horse-practice.

Nemesis then looked out of the window and wailed. He filled the room with robust wail and unavailing regret.

After that he tried to dispel his _ennui_ with one of the doctor's old felt hats that hung on a chair; but the hair oil with which it was saturated changed his mind.

The doctor had magenta hair, and to tone it down so that it would not raise the rate of fire insurance on his office, he used to execute some studies on it in oil--bear's oil.

This gave his hair a rich mahogany shade, and his hat smelled and looked like an oil refinery.

That is the reason Nemesis spared the hat, and ate a couple of porousplasters that his master was going to use on a case of croup.

At that time the doctor came in, and the dog ran to him with a glad cry of pleasure, rubbing his cold nose against his master's hand. The able veterinarian spoke roughly to Nemesis, and throwing a cigar-stub at him, broke two of the animal's delicate legs.

After that there was a low discordant murmur and the angry hum of medical works, lung-testers, glass jars containing tumors and other bric-a-brac, paper-weights and Italian grayhound bisecting the orbit of a redheaded horse-physician with dude shoes.

When the police came in, it was found that Nemesis had jumped through a glass door and escaped on two legs and his ear.

Out through the autumnal haze, across the intervening plateau, over the low foot-hills, and up the Medicine Bow Range, on and ever onward sped the timid, grieved and broken-hearted pup, accumulating with wonderful eagerness the intervening distance between himself and the cruel promoter of the fly-blister and lingering death.

How often do we thoughtlessly grieve the hearts of those who love us, and drive forth into the pitiless world those who would gladly lick our hands with their warm loving tongues, or warm their cold noses in the meshes of our necks.

How prone we are to forget the devotion of a dumb brute that thoughtlessly eats our lace lambrequins, and ere we have stopped to consider our mad course, we have driven the loving heart and the warm wet tongue and the cold little black nose out of our home-life, perhaps into the cold, cold grave or the bleak and relentless pound.

Chinese Justice.

They do things differently in China. Here in America, when a man burgles your residence, you go and confide in a detective, who keeps your secret and gets another detective to help him. Generally that is the last of it. In China, not long ago, the house of a missionary was entered and valuables taken by the thieves. The missionary went to the authorities with his tale and told them whom he suspected. That's the last he heard of that for three weeks. Then he received a covered champagne basket from the Department of Justice. On opening it he found the heads of the suspected burglars packed in tinfoil and in a good state of preservation. These heads were not sent necessarily for publication, but as an evidence of good faith on the part of the Department of Unimpeded Justice. Mind you, there was no postponement of the preliminary examination, no dilatory motions and changes of venue, no pleas to the jurisdiction of the court, no legal delays and final challenges of jurors until an idiotic jury had been procured who hadn't read the papers, no ruling out of damaging testimony, and finally filing of bill of exceptions, no appeal and delay, or appeal afterward to another court which returned the defendant to the court of original jurisdiction for review, and years of waiting for the prosecuting witnesses to die of old age and thus release the defendant. There is nothing of that kind in China. You just hand in your orders to the judicial end of the administration, and then you retire. Later on, the delivery man brings in your package of heads, makes a salaam, and goes away.

Now, this is swift and speedy justice for you. I don't know how the guilt of the defendants is arrived at, but there's nothing tedious about it. At least, there's nothing tedious to the complainant I presume they make it red-hot for the criminal.

Still this style of justice has its drawbacks. For instance, you are at dinner. You have a large and select company dining with you. You are about to carve the roast There is a ring at the door. The servant announces that a judicial officer is at the drawbridge and desires to speak with you. You pull your napkin out of your bosom, lay the carving knife down on the virgin table cloth, and go to the door. There the minister of justice presents you with a champagne basket and retires. You return to the dining hall, leaving your basket on the sideboard. After a while you announce to your guests that you have just received a basket of Mumm's extra dry with the compliments of the government, and that you will, with the permission of those present, open a bottle. You arm yourself with a corkscrew, open the basket, and thoughtlessly tip it over, when two or three human heads, with a pained and grieved expression on the face, roll out on the table.

When you are looking for a quart bottle of sparkling wine and find instead the cold, sad features and reproachful stare of the extremely deceased and _hic jacet_ Chinaman, you naturally betray your chagrin. I like to see justice moderately swift, and, in fact I've seen it pretty forthwith in its movements two or three times; but I cannot say that I would be prepared for this style.

Perhaps I'm getting a little nervous in my old age, and a small matter jars my equilibrium; but I'm sure a basket of heads handed in as I was seated at the table would startle me a little at first, and I might forget myself.

A friend of mine, under such circumstances, made what the English would call “a doosed clevah” remark once in Shanghai. When he opened the basket he was horrified, but he was cool. He was old sang froid from Sangfroidville. He first took the basket and started for the back room, with the remark: “My friends, I guess you will have to ex-queuese me.” Then he pulled down his eyelids and laughed a hoarse English laugh.

Answers to Correspondents.

Caller--Your calling cards should be modest as to size and neatly engraved, with an extra flourish.

In calling, there are two important things to be considered: First, when to call, and, second, when to rise and hang on the door handle.

Some make one-third of the call before rising, and then complete the call while airing the house and holding the door open, while others consider this low and vulgar, making at least one-fourth of the call in the hall, and one-half between the front door and the gate. Different authorities differ as to the proper time for calling. Some think you should not call before 3 or after 5 P.M., but if you have had any experience and had ordinary sense to start with, you will know when to call as soon as you look at your hand.

Amateur Prize Fighter.--The boxing glove is a large upholstered buckskin mitten, with an abnormal thumb and a string by which it is attached to the wrist, so that when you feed it to an adversary he cannot swallow it and choke himself. There are two kinds of gloves, viz., hard gloves and soft gloves.

I once fought with soft gloves to a finish with a young man who was far my inferior intellectually, but he exceeded me in brute force and knowledge of the use of the gloves. He was not so tall, but he was wider than myself. Longitudinally he was my inferior, but latitudinally he outstripped me. We did not fight a regular prize-fight. It was just done for pleasure. But I do not think we should abandon ourselves entirely to pleasure. It is enervating, and makes one eye swell up and turn blue.

I still think that a young man ought to have a knowledge of the manly art of self-defense, and if I could acquire such a knowledge without getting into a fight about it I would surely learn how to defend myself.

The boxing glove is worn on the hand of one party, and on the gory nose of the other party as the game progresses. Soft gloves very rarely kill anyone, unless they work down into the bronchial tubes and shut off the respiration.

Lecturer, New York City.--You need not worry so much about your costume until you have written your lecture, and it would be a good idea to test the public a little, if possible, before you do much expensive printing. Your idea seems to be that a man should get a fine lithograph of himself and a $100 suit of clothes, and then write his lecture to fit the lithograph and the clothes. That is erroneous.

You say that you have written a part of your lecture, but do not feel satisfied with it. In this you will no doubt find many people will agree with you.

You could wear a full dress suit of black with propriety, or a Prince Albert coat, with your hand thrust into the bosom of it. I once lectured on the subject of phrenology in the southern portion of Utah, being at that time temporarily busted, but still hoping to tide over the dull times by delivering a lecture on the subject of “Brains, and how to detect their presence.” I was not supplied with a phrenological bust at that time, and as such a thing is almost indispensable, I borrowed a young man from Provost and induced him to act as bust for the evening. He did so with thrilling effect, taking the entire gross receipts of the lecture course from my coat pocket while I was illustrating the effect of alcoholic stimulants on the raw brain of an adult in a state of health.

You can remove spots of egg from your full dress suit with ammonia and water, applied by means of a common nail brush. You do not ask for this recipe, but, judging from your style, I hope that it may be of use to you.

Martin F. Tupper, Texas.--The poem to which you allude was written by Julia A. Moore, better known as the Sweet Singer of Michigan. The last stanza was something like this:

“My childhood days are past and gone,
And it fills my heart with pain,
To think that youth will nevermore
Return to me again.
And now, kind friends, what I have wrote,
I hope you will pass o'er
And not criticise as some has hitherto here--
before done.”

Miss Moore also wrote a volume of poems which the farmers of Michigan are still using on their potato bugs. She wrote a large number of poems, all more or less saturated with grief and damaged syntax. She is now said to be a fugitive from justice. We should learn from this that we cannot evade the responsibility of our acts, and those who write obituary poetry will one day be overtaken by a bob-tail sleuth hound or a Siberian nemesis with two rows of teeth.

Alonzo G., Smithville.--Yes, you can learn three card monte without a master. It is very easy. The book will cost you twenty-five cents and then you can practice on various people. The book is a very small item, you will find, after you have been practicing awhile. Three card monte and justifiable homicide go hand in hand. 2. You can turn a jack from the bottom of the pack in the old sledge, if you live in some States, but west of the Missouri the air is so light that men who have tried it have frequently waked up on the shore of eternity with a half turned jack in their hand, and a hole in the cerebellum the size of an English walnut.

You can get “Poker and Three Card Monte without a Master” for sixty cents, with a coroner's verdict thrown in. If you contemplate a career as a monte man, you should wear a pair of low, loose shoes that you can kick off easily, unless you want to die with your boots on.

Henry Ubet, Montana.--No, you are mistaken in your assumption that Socrates was the author of the maxim to which you allude. It is of more modern origin, and, in fact, the sentence of which you speak, viz: “What a combination of conflicting and paradoxical assertions is life? Of what use are logic and argument when we find the true inwardness of the bologna sausage on the outside?” were written by a philosopher who is still living. I am willing to give Socrates credit for what he has said and done, but when I think of a sentiment that is worthy to be graven on a monolith and passed on down to prosperity, I do not want to have it attributed to such men as Socrates.

Leonora Vivian Gobb, Oleson's Forks, Ariz.--Yes. You can turn the front breadths, let out the tucks in the side plaiting and baste on a new dagoon where you caught the oyster stew in your lap at the party. You could also get trusted for a new dress, perhaps. But that is a matter of taste. Some dealers are wearing their open accounts long this winter and some are not. Do as you think best about cleaning the dress. Benzine will sometimes eradicate an oyster stew from dress goods. It will also eradicate everyone in the room at the same time. I have known a pair of rejuvenated kid gloves to break up a funeral that started out with every prospect of success. Benzine is an economical thing to use, but socially it is not up to the standard. Another idea has occurred to me, however. Why not riprap the skirt, calk the solvages, readjust the box plaits, cat stitch the crown sheet, file down the gores, sandpaper the gaiters and discharge the dolman. You could then wear the garment anywhere in the evening, and half the people wouldn't know anything had happened to it.

James, Owatonna, Minn.--You can easily teach yourself to play on the tuba. You know what Shakespeare says: “Tuba or not tuba? That's the question.”

How true this is? It touches every heart. It is as good a soliliquy as I ever read. P.S.--Please do not swallow the tuba while practicing and choke yourself to death. It would be a shame for you to swallow a nice new tuba and cast a gloom over it so that no one else would ever want to play on it again.

Florence.--You can stimulate your hair by using castor oil three ounces, brandy one ounce. Put the oil on the sewing machine, and absorb the brandy between meals. The brandy will no doubt fly right to your head and either greatly assist your hair or it will reconcile you to your lot. The great attraction about brandy as a hair tonic is, that it should not build up the thing. If you wish, you may drink the brandy and then breathe hard on the scalp. This will be difficult at first but after awhile it will not seem irksome.

Great Sacrifice of Bric-a-brac.

Parties desiring to buy a job-lot of garden tools, will do well to call and examine my stock. These implements have been but slightly used, and are comparatively as good as new. The lot consists in part of the following:

One three-cornered hoe, Gothic in its architecture and in good running order. It is the same one I erroneously hoed up the carnation with, and may be found, I think, behind the barn, where I threw it when I discovered my error. Original cost of hoe, six bits. Will be closed out now at two bits to make room for new goods.

Also one garden rake, almost as good as new. One front tooth needs filling, and then it will be as good as ever. I sell this weapon, not so much to get rid of it, but because I do not want it any more. I shall not garden any next spring. I do not need to. I began it to benefit my health, and my health is now so healthy that I shall not require the open-air exercise incident to gardening any more. In fact, I am too robust, if anything. I will, therefore, acting upon the advice of my royal physician, close this rake out, since the failure of the Northwestern Car Company, at 50 cents on the dollar.

Also one lawn-mower, only used once. At that time I cut down what grass I had on my lawn, and three varieties of high-priced rose bushes. It is one of the most hardy open-air lawn-mowers now made. It will outlive any other lawn-mower, and be firm and unmoved when all the shrubbery has gone to decay. You can also mow your peony bed with it, if you desire. I tried it. This is also an easy running lawn-mower, I would recommend it to any man who would like to soak his lawn with perspiration. I mowed my lawn, and then pushed a street-car around in the afternoon to relax my over-strained muscles. I will sacrifice this lawn-mower at three-quarters of its original cost, owing to depression in the stock of the New Jerusalem gold mine, of which I am a large owner and cashier-at-large.

Will also sell a bright new spade, only used two hours spading for angle-worms. This is a good, early-blooming and very hardy angle-worm spade, built in the Doric style of architecture. Persons desiring a spade flush, and lacking one spade to “fill,” will do well to give me a call. No trouble to show the goods.

I will also part with a small chest of carpenter's tools, only slightly used. I had intended to do a good deal of amateur carpenter work this summer, but, as the presidential convention occurs in June, and I shall have to attend to that, and as I have already sawed up a Queen Anne chair, and thoughtlessly sawed into my leg, I shall probably sacrifice the tools. These tools are all well made, and I do not sell them to make money on them, but because I have no use for them. I feel as though these tools would be safer in the hands of a carpenter. I'm no carpenter. My wife admitted that when I sawed a board across the piano-stool and sawed the what-do-you-call-it all out of the cushion.

Anyone desiring to monkey with the carpenter's trade, will do well to consult my catalogue and price-list. I will throw in a white holly corner-bracket, put together with fence nails, and a rustic settee that looks like the Cincinnati riot. Young men who do not know much, and invalids whose minds have become affected, are cordially invited to call and examine goods. For a cash trade I will also throw in arnica, court-plaster and salve enough to run the tools two weeks, if ordinary care be taken.

If properly approached, I might also be wheedled into sacrificing an easy-running domestic wheelbarrow. I have domesticated it myself and taught it a great many tricks.

A Convention.

The officers and members of the Home for Disabled Butter and Hoary-headed Hotel Hash met at their mosque last Saturday evening, and, after the roll call, reading of the moments of the preceding meeting by the Secretary, singing of the ode and examination of all present to ascertain if they were in possession of the quarterly password, explanation and signs of distress, the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi, having reached the order of communications and new business and good of the order, stated that the society was now ready to take action, or, at least, to discuss the feasibility of holding a series of entertainments at the rink. These entertainments had been proposed as a means of propping up the tottering finances of the society, and procuring much-needed funds for the purpose of purchasing new regalia for the Most Esteemed Duke of the Dishrag and the Most Esteemed Hired Man, each of whom had been wearing the same red calico collar and cheese-cloth sash since the organization of the society. Funds were also necessary to pay for a brother who had walked through a railroad trestle into the shoreless sea of eternity, and whose widow had a policy of $135.25 against this society on the life of her husband.

Various suggestions were made; among them was the idea advanced by the Most Highly Esteemed Inside Door-Slammer that, as the society's object was, of course, to obtain funds, would it not be well to consider, in the first place, whether it would not be as well for the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi to appoint six brethren in good standing to arm themselves with great care, gird up their loins and muzzle the pay-car as it started out on its mission. He simply offered this as a suggestion, and, as it was a direct method of securing the coin necessary, he would move that such a committee be appointed by the Chair to wait on the pay-car and draw on it at sight.

The Most Esteemed Keeper of the Cork-screw seconded the motion, in order, as he said, to get it before the house. This brought forward very hot discussion, pending which the presiding officer could see very plainly that the motion was unpopular.

A visiting brother from Yellowstone Park Creamery No. 17, stated that in their society “an entertainment of this kind had been given for the purpose of pouring a flood of wealth into the coffers of the society, and it had been fairly successful. Among the attractions there had been nothing of an immoral or lawless nature whatever. In the first place, a kind of farewell oyster gorge had been given, with cove oysters as a basis, and $2 a couple as an after-thought. A can of cove oysters entertained thirty people and made $30 for the society. Besides, it was found after the party had broken up that, owing to the adhesive properties of the oysters, they were not eaten; but the juice, as it were, had been scooped up and the puckered and corrugated gizzards of the sea had been preserved. Acting upon this suggestion, the society had an oyster patty debauch the following evening at $2 a couple. Forty suckers came and put their means into the common fund. We didn't have enough oysters to quite go around, so some of us cut a dozen out of an old boot leg, and the entertainment was a great success. We also had other little devices for making money, which worked admirably and yielded much profit to the society. Those present also said that they had never enjoyed themselves so much before. Many little games were played, which produced great merriment and considerable coin. I could name a dozen devices for your society, if desired, by which money could be made for your treasury, without the risk or odium necessarily resulting from robbing the pay-car or a bank, and yet the profit will be nearly as great in proportion to the work done.”

Here the gavel of the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi fell with a sickening thud, and the visiting brother was told that the time assigned to communications, new business and good of the order had expired, but that the discussion would be taken up at the next session, in one week, at which time it was the purpose of the chair to hear and note all suggestions relative to an entertainment to be given at a future date by the society for the purpose of obtaining the evanescent scad and for the successful flash of the reluctant boodle.

Come Back.

Personal.--Will the young woman who used to cook in our family, and who went away ten pounds of sugar and five and a half pounds of tea ahead of the game, please come back, and all will be forgiven.

If she cannot return, will she please write, stating her present address, and also give her reasons for shutting up the cat in the refrigerator when she went away?

If she will only return, we will try to forget the past, and think only of the glorious present and the bright, bright future.

Come back, Sarah, and jerk the waffle-iron for us once more.

Your manners are peculiar, but we yearn for your doughnuts, and your style of streaked cake suits us exactly.

You may keep the handkerchiefs and the collars, and we will not refer to the dead past.

We have arranged it so that when you snore it will not disturb the night police, and if you do not like our children we will send them away.

We realize that you do not like children very well, and our children especially gave you much pain, because they were not so refined as you were.

We have often wished, for your sake, that we had never had any children; but so long as they are in our family, the neighbors will rather expect us to take care of them.

Still, if you insist upon it, we will send them away. We don't want to seem overbearing with our servants.

We would be willing, also, to give you more time for mental relaxation than you had before. The intellectual strain incident to the life of one who makes gravy for a lost and undone world must be very great, and tired nature must at last succumb. We do not want you to succumb. If anyone has got to succumb, let us do it.

All we ask is that you will let us know when you are going away, and leave the crackers and cheese where we can find them.

It was rather rough on us to have you go away when we had guests in the house, but if you had not taken the key to the cooking department we could have worried along.

You ought to let us have company at the house sometimes if we will let you have company when you want to. Still, you know best, perhaps. You are older than we are, and you have seen more of the world.

We miss your gentle admonitions and your stern reproofs sadly. Come back and reprove us again. Come back and admonish us once more, at so much per admonish and groceries.

We will agree to let you select the tender part of the steak, and such fruit as seems to strike you favorably, just as we did before. We did not like it when you were here, but that is because we were young and did not know what the custom was.

If a life-time devoted to your welfare can obliterate the injustice we have done you, we will be glad to yield it to you.

If you could suggest a good place for us to send the children, where they would be well taken care of, and where they would not interfere with some other cook who is a friend of yours, we would be glad to have you write us.

My wife says she hopes you will feel perfectly free to use the piano whenever you are lonely or sad, and when you or the bread feel depressed you will be welcome to come into the parlor and lean up against either one of us and sob.

We all know that when you were with us before we were a little reserved in our manner toward you, but if you come back it will be different.

We will introduce you to more of our friends this time, and we hope you will do the same by us. Young people are apt to get above their business, and we admit that we were wrong.

Come back and oversee our fritter bureau once more.

Take the portfolio of our interior department.

Try to forget our former coldness.

Return, oh, wanderer, return!

A New Play.

The following letter was written, recently, in reply to a dramatist who proposed the matter of writing a play jointly.

Hudson, Wis., Nov. 13, 1886.

Scott Marble, Esq.--Dear Sir: I have just received your favor of yesterday, in which you ask me to unite with you in the construction of a new play.

This idea has been suggested to me before, but not in such a way as to inaugurate the serious thought which your letter has stirred up in my seething mass of mind.

I would like very much to unite with you in the erection of such a dramatic structure that people would cheerfully come to this country from Europe, and board with us for months in order to see this play every night.

You will surely agree with me that someone ought to write a play. Why it has not been done long ago, I cannot understand. A well known comedian told me a year ago that he hadn't been able to look into a paper for sixteen months. He could not even read over the proof of his own press notices and criticisms, to ascertain whether the printer had set them up as he wrote them or not, simply because it took all his spare time off the stage to examine the manuscripts of plays that had been submitted to him.

But I think we could arrange it so that we might together construct something in that line which would at least attract the attention of our families.

Would you mind telling me, for instance, how you write a play? You have been in the business before, and you could tell me, of course, some of the salient points about it. Do you write it with a typewriter, or do you dictate your thoughts to someone who does not resent being dictated to?

Do you write a play and then dramatize it, or do you write the drama and then play on it? Would it not be a very good idea to secure a plot that would cost very little, and then put the kibosh on it, or would you put up the lines first, and then hang the plot or drama, or whatever it is, on the lines? Is it absolutely necessary to have a prologue? If so, what is a prologue? Is it like a catalogue?

I have a great many crude ideas, but you see I am not practical. One of my crude ideas is to introduce into the play an artist's studio. This would not cost much, for we could borrow the studio evenings and allow the artist to use it daytimes. Then we would introduce into the studio scene the artist's living model. Everybody would be horrified, but they would go. They would walk over each other to attend the drama, and we would do well. Our living model in the studio act would be made of common wax, and if it worked well, we would discharge other members of the company and substitute wax. Gradually we could get it down to where the company would be wax, with the exception of a janitor with a feather duster. Think that over.

But seriously, a play, it seems to me, should embody an idea. Am I correct in that theory or not? It ought to convey some great thought, some maxim or aphorism, or some such a thing as that. How would it do to arrange a play with the idea of impressing upon the audience that “the fool and his money are soon parted?” Are you using a hero and a heroine in your plays now? If so, would you mind writing their lines for them, while I arrange the details and remarks for the young man who is discovered asleep on a divan when the curtain rises, and who sleeps on through the play with his mouth slightly ajar till the close--the close of the play, not the close of his mouth--when it is discovered that he is dead. He then plays the cold remains in the closing tableau, and fills a new-made grave at $9 per week.

I could also write the lines, I think, for the young man who comes in wearing a light summer cane and a seersucker coat so tight that you can count his vertebrae. I could write what he would say without great mental strain, I think. I must avoid mental strain or my intellect might split down the back and I would be a mental wreck, good for nothing but to strew the shores of time with myself.

Various other crude ideas present themselves to my mind, but they need to be clothed. You will say that this is unnecessary. I know you will at once reply that, for the stage, the less you clothe an idea the more popular it will be, but I could not consent to have even a bare thought of mine make an appearance night after night before a cultivated audience.

What do you think of introducing a genuine case of small-pox on the stage? You say in your letter that what the American people clamor for is something “catchy.” That would be catchy, and it would also introduce itself.

I wish you would also tell me what kind of diet you confine yourself to while writing a play, and how you go to work to procure it. Do you live on a mixed diet, or on your relatives? Would you soak your head while writing a play, or would you soak your overcoat? I desire to know all these things, because, Mr. Marble, to tell you the truth, I am as ignorant about this matter as the babe unborn. In fact, posterity would have to get up early in the morning to know less about play-writing than I have succeeded in knowing.

If we are to make a kind of comedy, my idea would be to introduce something facetious in the middle of the comedy. No one will expect it, you see, and it will tickle the audience almost to death.

A friend of mine suggests that it would be a great hit to introduce, or rather to reproduce, the Hell Gate explosion. Many were not able to be there at the time, and would willingly go a long distance to witness the reproduction.

I wish that you would reply to this letter at an early date, telling me what you think of the schemes suggested. Feel perfectly free to express yourself fully. I am not too proud to receive your suggestions.

The Silver Dollar.

It would seem at this time, while so little is being said on the currency question, and especially by the men who really control the currency, that a word from me would not be out of place. Too much talking has been done by those only who have a theoretical knowledge of money and its eccentric habits. People with a mere smattering of knowledge regarding national currency have been loquacious, while those who have made the matter a study, have been kept in the background.

At this period in the history of our country, there seems to be a general stringency, and many are in the stringency business who were never that way before. Everything seems to be demonetized. The demonetization of groceries is doing as much toward the general wiggly palsy of trade as anything I know of.

But I may say, in alluding briefly to the silver dollar, that there are worse calamities than the silver dollar. Other things may occur in our lives, which, in the way of sadness and three-cornered gloom, make the large, robust dollar look like an old-fashioned half-dime.

I met a man the other day, who, two years ago, was running a small paper at Larrabie's Slough. He was then in his meridian as a journalist, and his paper was frequently quoted by such widely-read publications as the _Knight of Labor at Work_, a humorous semi-monthly journal. He boldly assailed the silver dollar, and with his trenchant pen he wrote such burning words of denunciation that the printer had to set them on ice before he could use the copy.

Last week I met him on a Milwaukee & St. Paul train. He was very thin in flesh, and the fire of defiance was no longer in his eye. I asked him how he came on with the paper at Larrabie's Slough. He said it was no more.

“It started out,” said he, “in a fearless way, but it was not sustained.”

He then paused in a low tone of voice, gulped, and proceeded:

“Folks told me when I began that I ought to attack almost everything. Make the paper non-partisan, but aggressive, that was their idea. Sail into everything, and the paper would soon be a power in the land. So I aggressed.

“Friends came in very kindly and told me what to attack. They would neglect their own business in order to tell me of corruption in somebody else. I went on that way for some time in a defiant mood, attacking anything that happened to suggest itself.

“Finally I thought I would attack the silver dollar. I did so. I thought that friends would come to me and praise me for my manly words, and that I could afford to lose the friendship of the dollar provided I could win friends.

“In six months I took an unexpired annual pass over our Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge, or Orphan Road, and with nothing else but the clothes I wore, I told the plaintiff how to jerk the old Washington press and went away. The dear old Washington press that had more than once squatted my burning words into the pure white page. The dear old towel on which I had wiped my soiled hands for years, until it had almost become a part of myself, the dark blue Gordon press with its large fly wheel and intermittent chattel mortgage, a press, to which I had contributed the first joint of my front finger; the editor's chair; the samples of large business cards printed in green with an inflamed red border, which showed that we could do colored work at Larrabie's Slough just as well as they could in the large cities; the files of our paper; the large wilted potato that Mr. Alonzo G. Pinkham of Erin Corners kindly laid on our table-all, all had to go.

“I fled out into the great, hollow, mocking world of people who had requested me to aggress. They were people who had called my attention to various things which I ought to attack. I had attacked those things. I had also attacked the Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge Railroad, but the manager did not see the attack, and so my pass was good.

“What could I do?

“I had attacked everything, and more especially the silver dollar, and now I was homeless. For fourteen weeks I rode up the narrow-gauge road one day and back the next, subsisting solely on the sample of nice pecan meat that the newsboy puts in each passenger's lap.

“You look incredulous, I see, but it is true.

“I feel differently toward the currency now, and I wish I could undo what I have done. Were I called up again to jerk the Archimedean lever, I would not be so aggressive, especially as regards the currency. Whether it is inflated or not, silver dollars, paper certificates of deposit or silver bullion, it does not matter to me.

“I yearn for two or three adult doughnuts and one of those thick, dappled slabs of gingerbread, or slat of pie with gooseberries in it. I presume that I could write a scathing editorial on the abuses of our currency yet, but I am not so much in the scathe business as I used to be.

“I wish you would state, if you will, through some great metropolitan journal, that my views in relation to the silver coinage and the currency question have undergone a radical change, and that any plan whatever, by which to make the American dollar less skittish, will meet with my hearty approval.

“If I have done anything at all through my paper to injure or repress the flow of our currency, and I fear I have, I now take this occasion to cheerfully regret it.”

He then wrung my hand and passed from my sight.

Polygamy as a Religious Duty.

During the past few years in the history of our republic, we have had leprosy, yellow fever and the dude, and it seemed as though each one would wreck the whole national fabric at one time. National and international troubles of one kind and another have gradually risen, been met and mastered, but the great national abscess known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints still obstinately refuses to come to a head.

I may be a radical monogamist and a rash enthusiast upon this matter, but I still adhere to my original motto, one country, one flag and one wife at a time. Matrimony is a good thing, but it can be overdone. We can excuse the man who becomes a collection of rare coins, stamps, or autographs, but he who wears out his young life making a collection of wives, should be looked upon with suspicion.

After all, however, this matter has always been, and still is, treated with too much levity. It seems funny to us, at a distance of 1,600 miles, that a thick-necked patriarch in the valley of the Jordan should be sealed to thirteen or fourteen low-browed, half human females, and that the whole mass of humanity should live and multiply under one roof.

Those who see the wealthy polygamists of Salt Lake City, do not know much of the horrors of trying to make polygamy and poverty harmonize in the rural districts. In the former case, each wife has a separate residence or suite of rooms, perhaps; but in the latter is the aggregation of vice and depravity, doubly horrible because, instead of the secluded character which wickedness generally assumes, here it is the common heritage of the young and at once fails to shock or horrify.

Under the All-seeing eye, and the Bee Hive, and the motto, “Holiness to the Lord,” with a bogus Bible and a red-nosed prophet, who couldn't earn $13. per month pounding sand, this so called church hanging on to the horns of the altar, as it were, defies the statutes, and while in open rebellion against the laws of God and man, refers to the constitution of the United States as protecting it in its “religious belief.”

In a poem, the patient Mormon in the picturesque valley of the Great Salt Lake, where he has “made the desert blossom as the rose,” looks well. With the wonderful music of the great organ at the tabernacle sounding in your ears, and the lofty temple near by towering to the sky, you say to yourself, there is, after all, something solemn and impressive in all this; but when a greasy apostle in an alapaca duster, takes his place behind the elevated desk, and with bad grammar and slangy sentences, asks God in a businesslike way to bless this buzzing mass of unclean, low-browed, barbarous scum of all foreign countries, and the white trash and criminals of our own, you find no reverence, and no religious awe.

The same mercenary, heartless lunacy that runs through the sickly plagiarism of the Book of Mormon, pervades all this, and instead of the odor of sanctity you notice the flavor of bilge water, and the emigrant's own hailing sign, the all-pervading fragrance of the steerage.

Education is the foe of polygamy, and many of the young who have had the means by which to complete their education in the East, are apostate, at least so far as polygamy is concerned. Still, to the great mass of the poor and illiterate of Mormondom this is no benefit. The rich of the Mormon Church are rich because their influence with this great fraud has made them so; and it would, as a matter of business, injure their prospects to come out and bolt the nomination.

Utah, even with the Edmunds bill, is hopelessly Mormon; all adjoining States and Territories are already invaded by them, and the delegate in Congress from Wyoming is elected by the Mormon vote.