Chapter I: HAVE been the victim of a somewhat singular persecution for several

weeks past. When we came here to live, Judge Pitman was partially bald. Somebody induced him to apply to his head a hair restorative made by a Chicago man named Pulsifer. After using this liquid for a few months the judge was gratified to find that his hair had returned; and as he naturally regarded the remedy with admiration, he concluded that it would be simply fair to give expression to his feelings in some form. As I happened to be familiar with all the facts of the case, the judge induced me to draw up a certificate affirming them over my signature. This he mailed to Pulsifer. I have not yet ceased to regret the weakness which permitted me to stand sponsor for Judge Pitman’s hair. Of course, Pulsifer immediately inserted the certificate, with my name and residence attached to it, in half the papers in the country, as a displayed advertisement, beginning with the words, “_Hope for the bald-headed; the most remarkable cure on record_,” in the largest capital letters.

I have had faith in advertising since that time; and Pulsifer had confidence in it too, for he wrote to me to know what I would take to get him up a series of similar certificates of cures performed by his other patent medicines. He had a Corn Salve which dragged a little in its sales, and he was prepared to offer me a commission if I would write him a strong letter to the effect that six or eight frightful corns had been eradicated from my feet with his admirable preparation. He was in a position also to do something handsome if I could describe a few miraculous cures that had been effected by his Rheumatic Lotion, or if I would name certain ruined stomachs which had, as it were, been born again through the influence of Pulsifer’s Herb Bitters; and from the manner in which he wrote, I think he would have taken me into partnership if I had consented to write an assurance that his Ready Relief had healed a bad leg of eighteen years standing, and that I could never feel that my duty was honourably performed until he sent me a dozen bottles more for distribution among my friends whose legs were in that defective and tiresome condition. I was obliged to decline Pulsifer’s generous offer.

I heard with singular promptness from other medical men. Fillemup & Killem forwarded some of their Hair Tonic, with a request for me to try it on any bald heads I happened to encounter, and report. Doser & Co. sent on two packages of their Capillary Pills, with a suggestion to the effect that if Pitman lost his hair again he would get it back finally by following the enclosed directions. I also heard from Brown & Bromley, the agents for Johnson’s Scalp Awakener. They sent me twelve bottles for distribution among my bald friends. Then Smith & Smithson wrote to say that a cask of their Vesuvian Wash for the hair would be delivered in my cellar by the Express Company; and a man called on me from Jones, Butler, & Co., with a proposition to pump out my vinegar barrel, and fill it with Balm of Peru for the gratuitous use of the afflicted in the vicinity.

But this persecution was simply unalloyed felicity when compared with the suffering that came in other forms. I will not attempt to give the number of the letters I received. I cherish a conviction that the mail received at our post-office doubled the first week after Judge Pitman’s cure was announced to a hairless world. I think every bald-headed man in the Tropic of Cancer must have written to me at least twice upon the subject of Pulsifer’s Renovator and Pitman’s hair. Persons dropped me a line to inquire if Pitman’s baldness was hereditary; and if so, if it came from his father’s or his mother’s side. One man, a phrenologist, sent on a plaster head mapped out into town-lots, with a suggestion that I should ink over the bumps that had been barest and most fertile in the case of Pitman. He said he had a little theory which he wanted to demonstrate. A man in San Francisco wrote to inquire if my Pitman was the same Pitman who came out to California in 1849 with a bald head; and if he was, would I try to collect two dollars Pitman had borrowed from him in that year? The superintendent of a Sunday-school in Vermont forwarded eight pages of foolscap covered with an argument supporting the theory that it was impious to attempt to force hair to grow upon a head which had been made bald, because, although Elisha was bald, we find no record in the Bible that he used renovator of any kind. He warned Pitman to beware of Absalom’s fate, and to avoid riding mules out in the woods. A woman in Snyder County, Pennsylvania, sent me a poem inspired by the incident, and entitled “Lines on the Return of Pitman’s Hair.” A party in Kansas desired to know whether I thought Pulsifer’s Renovator could be used beneficially by a man who had been scalped. Two men in New Jersey wrote, in a manner totally irrelevant to the subject, to inquire if I could get each of them a good hired girl.

I received a confidential letter from a man who was willing to let me into a “good thing” if I had five hundred dollars cash capital. Mrs. Singerly, of Frankford, related that she had shaved her dog, and shaved him too close, and she would be relieved if I would inform her if the Renovator would make hair grow on a dog. A devoted mother in Rhode Island said her little boy had accidentally drank a bottle of the stuff, and she would go mad unless I could assure her that there was no danger of her child having his stomach choked up with hair. And over eleven hundred boys inquired what effect the Renovator would have on the growth of whiskers which betrayed an inclination to stagnation.

But the visitors were a more horrible torment. Bald men came to see me in droves. They persecuted me at home and abroad. If I went to church, the sexton would call me out during the prayers to see a man in the vestibule who wished to ascertain if Pitman merely bathed his head or rubbed the medicine in with a brush. When I went to a party, some bald-headed miscreant would stop me in the midst of the dance to ask if Pitman’s hair began to grow in the full of the moon or when it was new. While I was being shaved, some one would bolt into the shop and insist, as the barber held me by the nose, upon knowing whether Pitman wore ventilators in his hat. If I attended a wedding, as likely as not a bare-headed outlaw would stand by me at the altar and ask if Pitman ever slept in nightcaps; and more than once I was called out of bed at night by wretches who wished to learn, before they left the town, if I thought it hurt the hair to part it behind.

It became unendurable. I issued orders to the servants to admit to the house no man with a bald head. But that very day a stranger obtained admission to the parlour; and when I went down to see him, he stepped softly around, closed all the doors mysteriously, and asked me, in a whisper, if any one could hear us. Then he pulled off a wig; and handing me a microscope, he requested me to examine his scalp and tell him if there was any hope. I sent him over to see Pitman; and I gloat over the fact that he bored Pitman for two hours with his baldness.

I am sorry now that I ever wrote anything upon the subject of his hair. A bald Pitman, I know, is less fascinating than a Pitman with hair; but rather than have suffered this misery, I would prefer a Pitman without an eye-winker, or fuzz enough on him to make a camel’s-hair pencil. But I shall hardly give another certificate of cure in any event. If I should see a patent medicine man take a mummy which died the year Joseph was sold into Egypt, and dose it until it kicked off its rags and danced the polka mazurka while it whistled the tune, I would die at the stake sooner than acknowledge the miracle on paper. Pitman’s hair winds me up as far as medical certificates are concerned.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_MUSIC._

A WILD cat was listening with rapt approval to the melody of distant hounds tracking a remote fox.

“Excellent! _bravo_!” she exclaimed at intervals. “I could sit and listen all day to the like of that. I am passionately fond of music. _Ong core!_”

Presently the tuneful sounds drew near, whereupon she began to fidget, ending by shinning up a tree, just as the dogs burst into view below her, and stifling their songs upon the body of their victim before her eyes—which protruded.

“There is an indefinable charm,” said she—“a subtle and tender spell—a mystery—a conundrum, as it were—in the sounds of an unseen orchestra. This is quite lost when the performers are visible to the audience. Distant music (if any) for your obedient servant!”

_Ambrose Bierce_ (“_Dod Grile._”)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_MAXIMS._

NEVER spare the parson’s wine, nor the baker’s pudding.

A house without woman or firelight, is like a body without soul or sprite.

Kings and bears often worry their keepers.

Light purse, heavy heart.

He’s a fool that makes his doctor his heir.

Ne’er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

To lengthen thy life lessen thy meals.

He that drinks fast pays slow.

He is ill-clothed who is bare of virtue.

Beware of meat twice boil’d, and an old foe reconcil’d.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.

He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner.

_Benjamin Franklin._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_MODEL OF A LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION OF A PERSON YOU ARE UNACQUAINTED
WITH._

PARIS, _April 2, 1777_.

SIR,—The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend him, however, to those civilities which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to; and I request you will do him all the favour that, on further acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the honour to be, etc.

_Benjamin Franklin._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_ECHO-SONG_.

I.

WHO can say where Echo dwells?
In some mountain-cave methinks,
Where the white owl sits and blinks;
Or in deep sequestered dells,
Where the foxglove hangs its bells,
Echo dwells.
Echo!
Echo!

II.

Phantom of the crystal air,
Daughter of sweet mystery!
Here is one has need of thee;
Lead him to thy secret lair,
Myrtle brings he for thy hair—
Hear his prayer—
Echo!
Echo!

III.

Echo, lift thy drowsy head,
And repeat each charmëd word
Thou must needs have overheard
Yestere’en ere, rosy-red,
Daphne down the valley fled—
Words unsaid,
Echo!
Echo!

IV.

Breathe the vows she since denies!
She hath broken every vow;
What she would she would not now—
Thou didst hear her perjuries.
Whisper, whilst I shut my eyes,
Those sweet lies,
Echo!
Echo!

_Thomas Bailey Aldrich._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS._

COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS was in his “library,” which was his “drawing-room,” and was also his “picture gallery,” and likewise his “workshop.” Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was constructing what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy, and was apparently very much interested in his work. He was a white-headed man now, but otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary, and enterprising as ever. His loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap. The room was large, light, and had a comfortable look—in fact, a home-like look—though the furniture was of a humble sort, and not over-abundant, and the knick-knacks and things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly. But there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of somebody with a happy taste and an effective touch.

Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence; in fact, they seemed to belong there, and to add an attraction to the room—a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was like to gaze and suffer till he died—you have seen that kind of pictures. Some of these terrors were landscapes, some libelled the sea, some were ostensible portraits, all were crimes. All the portraits were recognisable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through labelling, added by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as “Earls of Rossmore.” The newest one had left the works as Andrew Jackson, but was doing its best now as “Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore, Present Earl.” On one wall was a cheap old railroad map of Warwickshire. This had been newly labelled, “The Rossmore Estates.” On the opposite wall was another map, and this was the most imposing decoration of the establishment, and the first to catch a stranger’s attention, because of its great size. It had once borne simply the title SIBERIA; but now the word “FUTURE” had been written in front of that word. There were other additions, in red ink—many cities, with great populations set down, scattered over the vast country at points where neither cities nor populations exist to-day. One of these cities, with population placed at 1,500,000, bore the name “Libertyorloffskoizalinski,” and there was a still more populous one, centrally located and marked “Capitol,” which bore the name “Freedomslovnaivenovich.”

The mansion—the Colonel’s usual name for the house—was a rickety old two-storey frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some time or other, but had nearly forgotten it. It was away out in the ragged edge of Washington, and had once been somebody’s country place. It had a neglected yard around it, with a paling fence that needed straightening up, in places, and a gate that would stay shut. By the door-post were several modest tin signs. “Col. Mulberry Sellers, Attorney-at-Law and Claim Agent,” was the principal one. One learned from the others that the Colonel was a Materialiser, a Hypnotiser, a Mind-cure dabbler, and so on. For he was a man who could always find things to do.

A white-headed negro man, with spectacles and damaged white cotton gloves, appeared in the presence, made a stately obeisance, and announced—

“Marse Washington Hawkins, suh.”

“Great Scott! Show him in, Dan’l, show him in.”

The Colonel and his wife were on their feet in a moment, and the next moment were joyfully wringing the hands of a stoutish, discouraged-looking man, whose general aspect suggested that he was fifty years old, but whose hair swore to a hundred.

“Well, well, well, Washington, my boy, it _is_ good to look at you again. Sit down, sit down, and make yourself at home. There now—why, you look perfectly natural; ageing a little, just a little, but you’d have known him anywhere, wouldn’t you, Polly?”

“Oh, yes, Berry, he’s _just_ like his pa would have looked if he’d lived. Dear, dear, where have you dropped from? Let me see, how long is it since——”

“I should say it’s all of fifteen years, Mrs. Sellers.”

“Well, well, how time does get away with us. Yes, and oh, the changes that——”

There was a sudden catch of her voice and a trembling of the lip, the men waiting reverently for her to get command of herself and go on; but, after a little struggle, she turned away with her apron to her eyes, and softly disappeared.

“Seeing you made her think of the children, poor thing—dear, dear, they’re all dead but the youngest. But banish care, it’s no time for it now—on with the dance, let joy be unconfided, is my motto—whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfide, you’ll be the healthier for it every time—every time, Washington—it’s my experience, and I’ve seen a good deal of this world. Come, where have you disappeared to all these years, and are you from there now, or where are you from?”

“I don’t quite think you would ever guess, Colonel. Cherokee Strip.”

“My land!”

“Sure as you live.”

“You can’t mean it. Actually _living_ out there?”

“Well, yes, if a body may call it that; though it’s a pretty strong term for ’dobies and jackass rabbits, boiled beans and slap-jacks, depression, withered hopes, poverty in all its varieties——”

“Louise out there?”

“Yes, and the children.”

“Out there now?”

“Yes, I couldn’t afford to bring them with me.”

“Oh, I see—you had to come—claim against the Government. Make yourself perfectly easy—I’ll take care of that.”

“But it isn’t a claim against the Government.”

“No? Want to be a postmaster? _That’s_ all right. Leave it to me. I’ll fix it.”

“But it isn’t postmaster—you’re all astray yet.”

“Well, good gracious, Washington, why don’t you come out and tell me what it is? What do you want to be so reserved and distrustful with an old friend like me for? Don’t you reckon I can keep a se——”

“There’s no secret about it—you merely don’t give me a chance to——”

“Now, look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a man comes to Washington, I don’t care if it’s from heaven, let alone Cherokee Strip, it’s because he _wants_ something. And I know that as a rule he’s not going to get it; that he’ll stay and try for another thing and won’t get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks and they take up a collection and bury him. There—don’t interrupt me, I know what I’m talking about. Happy and prosperous in the Far West, wasn’t I? _You_ know that. Principal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody, kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington. Well, nothing would do but I must go as Minister to St. James’s, the Governor and everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented—no getting out of it, _had_ to do it, so here I came. _A day too late_, Washington. Think of that—what little things change the world’s history—yes, sir, the place had been filled. Well, there I was, you see. I offered to compromise and go to Paris. The President was very sorry and all that, but that place, you see, didn’t belong to the West, so there I was again. There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little—we all reach the day some time or other when we’ve got to do that, Washington, and it’s not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large all around—I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople, Washington, consider this—for it’s perfectly true—within a month I _asked_ for China; within another month I _begged_ for Japan; one year later I was away down, down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in the gift of the Government of the United States—Flint-picker in the cellars of the War Department. And by George I didn’t get it.”

“Flint-picker?”

“Yes. Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century. The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol. They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts have tumbled down, the decree hasn’t been repealed—been overlooked and forgotten, you see—and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others used to stand still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the same.”

Washington said musingly after a pause:

“How strange it seems—to start for Minister to England at twenty thousand a year and fail for flint-picker at——”

“Three dollars a week. It’s human life, Washington—just an epitome of human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome; you aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer.”

There was another meditative silence. Then Washington said, with earnest compassion in his voice—

“And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamour, you get absolutely nothing for it.”

“Nothing?” The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his amazement to expand. “_Nothing_, Washington? I ask you this: to be a Perpetual Member and the _only_ Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body accredited to the greatest country on earth—do you call that nothing?”

It was Washington’s turn to be amazed. He was stricken dumb; but the wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face, were more eloquent than any words could have been. The Colonel’s wounded spirit was healed, and he resumed his seat, pleased and content. He leaned forward and said, impressively—

“What was due to a man who had become for ever conspicuous by an experience without precedent in the history of the world?—a man made permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James all the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda—salary payable in guano—which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before they got down to my name in the list of applicants. Certainly something august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable experience was my due, and I got it. By the common voice of this community, by acclamation of the people, that mighty utterance which brushes aside laws and legislation, and from whose decrees there is no appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body, representing the multifarious sovereignties and civilisations of the globe near the republican court of the United States of America. And they brought me home with a torchlight procession.”

“It is wonderful, Colonel—simply wonderful.”

“It’s the loftiest official position in the whole earth.”

“I should think so—and the most commanding.”

“You have named the word. Think of it. I frown, and there is war; I smile, and contending nations lay down their arms.”

“It is awful. The responsibility, I mean.”

“It is nothing. Responsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it; have always been used to it.”

“And the work—the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?”

“Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the governors of the provinces? He sits at home and indicates his pleasure.”

Washington was silent a moment, then a deep sigh escaped him.

“How proud I was an hour ago; how paltry seems my little promotion now! Colonel, the reason I came to Washington is—I am Congressional Delegate from Cherokee Strip!”

The Colonel sprang to his feet and broke out with prodigious enthusiasm—

“Give me your hand, my boy—this is immense news! I congratulate you with all my heart. My prophecies stand confirmed. I always said it was in you. I always said you were born for high distinction and would achieve it. You ask Polly if I didn’t.”

Washington was dazed by this most unexpected demonstration.

“Why, Colonel, there’s nothing _to_ it. That little, narrow, desolate, unpeopled, oblong streak of grass and gravel, lost in the remote wastes of the vast continent—why, it’s like representing a billiard table—a discarded one.”

“Tut-tut, it’s a great, it’s a staving preferment, and just opulent with influence here.”

“Shucks, Colonel, I haven’t even a vote.”

“That’s nothing, you can make speeches.”

“No, I can’t. The population only two hundred——”

“That’s all right, that’s all right——”

“And they hadn’t any right to elect me; we’re not even a territory, there’s no Organic Act, the government hasn’t any official knowledge of us whatever.”

“Never mind about that; I’ll fix that. I’ll rush the thing through, I’ll get you organised in no time.”

“_Will_ you, Colonel?—it’s _too_ good of you; but it’s just your old sterling self, the same old, ever-faithful friend,” and the grateful tears welled up in Washington’s eyes.

“It’s just as good as done, my boy, just as good as done. Shake hands. We’ll hitch teams together, you and I, and we’ll make things hum!”

_Samuel L. Clemens_ (“_Mark Twain_”).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_THE OWL-CRITIC._

A LESSON TO FAULT-FINDERS.

“WHO stuffed that white owl?” No one spoke in the shop:
The barber was busy, and he couldn’t stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The _Daily_, the _Herald_, the _Post_, little heeding.
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.

“Don’t you see, Mister Brown,”
Cried the youth, with a frown,
“How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is,
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is—
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck ’tis?
I make no apology;
I’ve learned owl-eology.
I’ve passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And cannot be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskilful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you’ll soon be the laughing-stock all over the town!”
And the barber kept on shaving.

“I’ve _studied_ owls,
And other night fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true:
An owl cannot roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He can’t do it, because
’Tis against all bird-laws.
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches
An owl has a toe
That _can’t_ turn out so!
I’ve made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears.
Mister Brown, I’m amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To _look_ at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed _him_ don’t half know his business!”
And the barber kept on shaving.

“Examine those eyes.
I’m filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They’d make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!”
And the barber kept on shaving.

“With some sawdust and bark
I would stuff in the dark
An owl better than that,
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about _him_ there’s not one natural feather.”

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
“Your learning’s at fault _this_ time, any way;
Don’t waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir critic, good-day!”
And the barber kept on shaving.

_Jas. T. Fields._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_ANNIHILATES AN OBERLINITE._

COLUMBUS, O.,
_June the 21, ’62_.