Chapter V (6)

WE haven’t given the subject enough study to speak very confidently upon it, but we rather believe, when the end of the world comes, and the last trump calls all mankind together, that the man who died with rheumatism will lie still a long time, and will feel the small of his back, and rub his knees slowly and thoughtfully a great many times, before he finally groans and makes up his mind to get up. And, as like as not, by the time he gets on his feet everybody else will be gone.

* * * * *

MAN--What power of nature has he not subdued? What climate has he not trodden under foot? What arctic rigor and tropical heat, what polar snows and equatorial sunstrokes has he not laughed to scorn? He has tamed the elements, he has made the ocean his highway, he has made fire and water, earth and air, his servants, and bent beneath his all-subduing yoke even the wild lightnings to be his messenger. And yet he can not, arching himself upon the back of his head and on his heels, scoop with his eager palm, cracker crumbs from the irritating sheet with a sufficient degree of success to insure himself a good night’s sleep. He can not, he can not--oh, might of the giant, it kaint be did!

* * * * *

A WOMAN will take the smallest drawer in a bureau for her own private use, and will pack away in it bright bits of boxes, of all shades and sizes, dainty fragments of ribbon, and scraps of lace, foamy ruffles, velvet things for the neck, bundles of old love-letters, pieces of jewelry, handkerchiefs, fans, things that no man knows the name of, all sorts of fresh-looking, bright little traps that you couldn’t catalogue in a column, and any hour of the day or night she can go to that drawer and pick up any article she wants without disturbing any thing else. Whereas a man, having the biggest, deepest and widest drawer assigned to him, will chuck into it three socks, a collar-box, an old necktie, two handkerchiefs, a pipe and a pair of suspenders, and to save his soul he can’t shut that drawer without leaving more ends of things sticking out than there are things in it, and it always looks as though it had been packed with a hydraulic press.

* * * * *

ONE day a young man of respectable appearance attracted considerable attention on Third Street, while crossing over to the Barrett House. He stopped in the middle of the street and yelled, and danced up and down on one leg, while he held the other out and kicked, like the can-can lady on the bulletin boards. The bystanders thought he was crazy, and threw stones and mud at him, and knocked him down and choked him, and held him still, while he never ceased to shriek, “Snake up my leg! Snake up my leg!” Then they reached up and pulled a small roll of bills out of his trousers leg, and let him up, when he raised his hands to heaven and swore he would never carry money in a hip pocket again, hole or no hole.

* * * * *

IT was on a bright April morning that Mr. Alanson Bodley, who lives out on Summer Street, stepped out of the house in a tender frame of mind, singing softly to himself, “Oh had I the wings of a dove, I’d fly, Away from----” Just then the hired girl threw the bed-room carpet out of the window, and as its dusty folds enveloped Mr. Bodley, and threw his struggling form down stairs, he was heard to exclaim in muffled tones, “If I get out of this, if I don’t cut the raw heart out of the bloody-minded assassin that slung that carpet, strike me dead!” Thus, too often, the tenderer influences that bring into life and being our higher and noble emotions and transcendental longings, are warped and distorted by the stern realities of life, like a wet boot behind the kitchen stove.

* * * * *

THEY had the awfulest time up at Jerome Cavendish’s house, on West Hill, one evening, and Mrs. Cavendish went into hysterics, and Miss Cavendish fainted, and young George Cavendish grabbed his hat and ran out of the house, and old Cavendish raved and ramped around like a crazy man, all just because they had waffles for tea, and Miss Cavendish found a--“oh! _ow! ow!!_ OO-OO-OO!!! EE-E-E-E!!!” hard-baked beetle in a waffle. Oh, it was terrible! It was awful! It was too awful! Too awful! Two waffle!

* * * * *

ONE day last Spring a sweet-faced woman, with a smile like an angel and a voice softer and sweeter than the sound of flutes upon the water, was walking up Fifth Street. She was walking very slowly, enjoying the cool, soft air, and the delicious shade of those maple trees just below Division Street. Her languid motions were the perfection of grace, and she was the admiration of every pair of eyes on the street, when suddenly she threw her parasol over the steeple of the church, screamed till she rattled the windows in the parsonage, jumped up as high as the fence three times, and whooped and shrieked, and wailed, and howled, and kicked until everybody thought she had suddenly become insane. But when they ran up and caught hold of her and poured water on her head and $15 bonnet, and shook her until she quit screaming and began to talk, they found that one of those green worms, about an inch long, had dropped from the maple leaves and slid down her back. And they didn’t wonder that she yelled and made a fuss about it.

* * * * *

SOME years ago a public-spirited citizen of Burlington died, and left, by his will, $175,000 to found an orphan asylum; and his sons and daughters, and nieces and nephews, and cousins, and brothers and sisters, and all his wife’s relations, contested the will, and fought and wrangled and called each other names, and told hard stories about each other, and proved up wonderful claims, and hired lawyers by the acre, and kept the fight up manfully until quite lately, when it transpired that the man only had $35 in the whole wide world when he died, and owed that to his grocer, and was in debt about $300 beside, and that the coffin he was buried in hadn’t been paid for yet. And it was sad to see those claimants standing around the streets with gripsacks in their hands trying to get out of town, with a lawyer and a capias lurking behind every corner.

* * * * *

A PAIR of deaf mutes were married in Monroe, Georgia, three years ago, and now it is more fun than a circus to see them quarrel and make faces at each other with their fingers.

* * * * *

IT IS a remarkable coincidence, and shows the beneficent watchcare which a kind Providence exercises over mankind, that the advertisements of new and infallible cholera mixtures should appear in the city papers just about the time watermelons come in.

* * * * *

WHEN a man, coming down to breakfast half awake, with his uncertain feet shod in a pair of slip-shod slippers, steps on a spool on the first step, he is generally wide-awake enough by the time he tries to break the last step to have a very vivid and not entirely incorrect idea of the power and indestructible force generated by the Keely motor. But that isn’t what he talks about when he goes into the breakfast room and the folks ask him what made such a noise in the hall?

* * * * *

AT a charity ball in New York one lady wore diamonds valued at $85,000, and another belle wore a $23,000 dress, and so all the way down to the poor people, whose clothes didn’t cost more than $1,800. The net proceeds of the ball, which were to be devoted to charitable purposes, amounted to $11.25, which the door-keeper and ticket-seller spent for hot drinks.

* * * * *

TWO young ladies of Tama County have finished a quilt containing 10,696 pieces, and the local paper proudly asks if anybody in Iowa can beat that? We haven’t anything in Burlington like that in the quilt line, but Caspar Cruger, up on Eighth Street, fell down the plank walk steps leading down to Valley Street, one morning, and ran 10,697 pine slivers into his back and legs, and a Tama man than he was when he got up you never saw.

* * * * *

ANOTHER “wild boy” has made his startling and erratic appearance in Texas, but since the fact has become generally known that the first time a stranger takes a drink of Texas whisky he goes out on the prairie and looks for a clean place to have a fit, public confidence in Texas “wild boys” has been sadly shaken.

* * * * *

THE Massachusetts papers are discussing the question, “May Cousins Marry?” We should hope so. We don’t see why a cousin hasn’t as good a right to marry as a brother or an uncle or a son or sister. They all get used to cousin’ after they marry, anyhow.

* * * * *

ABDEL MOULK KAHN, the eldest son of the Emir of Bokhara, has made a pilgrimage to Mecca, in accordance with the Mohammedan custom. In this country it is customary for the Moulk Kahns to Mecca pilgrimage to the nearest river just before milking time.

* * * * *

A BURLINGTON man, who is a monomaniac on the subject of roller skates, and who spent ninety-two days in the rink during the past season, and got more falls than he has hairs on his head, and got himself stuck so full of slivers that he wears through his clothes like a nutmeg grater, calls himself a “hard rinker,” and consequently he is haunted by traveling agents of temperance societies.

* * * * *

JOHN THOMPSON, of Muscatine, ran away from home with a circus three years ago, and now he is posted on the bill boards of his native town as “Giovanni Tiompeonatti, the Inimitable and Unapproachable Grand Double Flying Trapeze and Philo Protean Prestiditateurean Athleto-Acrobat.” Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

* * * * *

STEEL ropes are being introduced into the British navy in place of the clumsy hemp hawsers. They had better enlist a few good government contractors from America. They’ll steal ropes, swabs, tar buckets, marlin-spikes, capstan bars, or anything else that isn’t nailed down and under guard.

* * * * *

THE French know how to cook an egg three hundred and sixty-five different ways, and yet, if it is a little bilious to begin with, the strongest combination of all these ways won’t make a very eggy egg of it.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.