Chapter XI: Part 11

I had barely finished my ciphering when I was called to horse, and in a few minutes was riding across a vast plain, nearly bare of grass in this drought, but dotted with mesquite-bushes, prickly pear, and other scrub, so that the general effect was still green. The riding was rough, as much loose stone lay about, and badgers’, “Jack Rabbits’” and other creatures’ holes abounded; but the small Mexican horse I rode was perfectly sure-footed, and I ambled along, swelling with pride at my quaint saddle, with pummel some eight inches high, and depending lasso, showing that for the time I was free of the honourable fraternity of “gentlemen cow-punchers.” Besides myself, our party consisted of the two ranche-men--an Englishman and an American, aged about thirty, old comrades on long drives 1000 miles away to the North, but now anchored on this glorious ranche on the Bio Grande--and a cowboy. The Englishman’s yellow hair was cropped close to his head, and his fair skin was burnt as red, I suppose, as skin will burn; the Marylander’s black hair was as closely cropped, and his skin burnt an equally deep brown. The cowboy, an English lad of about twenty, reconciled the two types, having managed to get his skin tanned a deep red, relieved by large dark brown freckles, from the midst of which his great blue eyes shone out in comical contrast. I fear--

The very mother that him bare,

She had not known her child.

They were all attired alike, in broad felt sombreros, blue shirts, and trousers thrust into boots reaching to the knees. Each had his lasso at pummel, and between them they carried a rifle, frying-pan, coffee-pot, big loaf, and forequarter of a porker--for we were out for a long day. A more picturesque or efficient-looking group it would be hard to find. I must resist the temptation of telling all we did or saw, and come at once to our ride home shortly before sunset. The ranche-men and I were abreast, and the cowboy a few yards behind, when we came across a bunch of cattle, conspicuous amongst which strode along a stalwart yearling bull calf, whose shining brindle hide and jaunty air showed that he, at least, was not suffering from the scanty food which the drought has left for the herds on these wide plains. He was already as big as his poor raw-boned mother, who went along painfully picking at every shrub and tuft in her path, to provide his evening meal at her own expense. Now these dude calves (who insist on living on their parents, and will do nothing for their own livelihood) can only be cured by the insertion of a horse-ring in the upper lip, so that they cannot turn it up to take hold of the maternal udder, and it is often in bad times a matter of life or death to the cows to get them ringed. After a conference of a few seconds, the Marylander shifted the rifle to the saddle of the Englishman (already ornamented with the frying-pan and the coffee-pot), and calling to the cowboy, dashed off for the bunch of cattle. Next moment the cowboy shot past us at full speed, gathering up his lasso as he went; the bull-calf was “cut out” of the bunch as if by magic, and went straight away through mesquite-brush and prickly pears, at a pace which kept his pursuers at their utmost stretch not to lose ground. It was all they could do to hold it, never for a full mile getting within lasso-reach of Boliborus, the ranche-man following like fate, upright from shoulder to toe (they ride with very long stirrups), bridle hand low, and right hand swinging the lasso slowly round his head, awaiting his chance for a throw; the cowboy close on his flank; ranche-man number two clattering along, pot, kettle, and rifle “soaring and singing” round his knees, but availing himself of every turn in the chase, so as to keep within thirty or forty yards. I, a bad fourth, but near enough to see the whole and share the excitement (if, indeed, I hadn’t it all to myself, the sport being to the rest a part of the daily round). The crisis came just at the foot of a mound, up which Boliborus had gained some yards, but in the descent had slackened his pace and the pursuers were on him. The lasso flew from the raised hand, and was round his neck, a dexterous twist brought the rope across his forelegs, and next moment he was over on his side half, throttled. I was up in some five seconds, during which his lassoer had him by the horns, ranche-man number two was prone with all his weight upon his shoulders, and the cowboy on his hind quarters, catching at his tail with his left hand. That bull calf’s struggle to rise was as superb as Bertram Risingham’s in _Rokeby_, and as futile; for the cowboy had caught his tail and passed it between his hind legs, and by pulling hard kept one leg brandishing aimlessly in the air, while the weight of the ranche-men subdued his forequarters. The ring was passed through his upper lip, and the lasso was off his neck in a few seconds more, and the ranche-men turned to mount, saying to the cowboy, “Just hold on a minute.” The cowboy passed the tail back between the hind legs, grasped the end firmly, and stood expectant. Boliborus lay quiet for a second or two, and then bounded to his feet, glaring round in rage and pain to choose which, of his foes to go for, when he became aware of something wrong behind, and looking round, realised the state of the case. Down went his head, and round he went with a rush for his own tail end, but the tail and boy were equal to the occasion, and the latter still holding on tight by the former, sent back a defiant kick at the end of each rush, which, however, never got within two feet of the bull’s nose, and could be only looked upon as a proper defiance. Then Boliborus tried stealing round to take his tail by surprise, but all to as little purpose, when the ranche-men, who were now both mounted, to end the farce, rode round in front of the beast, caught his eye, and cried, “Let go.” Whisking his freed tail in the air he made a rush, but only a half-hearted one, at the nearest, who just wheeled his horse, and as he passed administered a contemptuous thwack over his loins with a lasso. Boliborus now stood looking down his nose at the appendant ring, revolving his next move, with so comic an expression that I burst into a roar of laughter, in which the rest joined out of courtesy. This was too much for him, as ridicule proves for so many two-legged calves, so he tossed his head in the air, gave a flirt with his heels, and trotted off after his mother, a sadder, and let us hope, wiser bull-calf; in any case, a ringed one, and bound in future to get his own living.

On my ride home my mind was much occupied by that cowboy, who rode along by me--telling how he had been reading _Gulliver’s Travels_ again (amongst other things), found it wasn’t a mere boy’s book, and wanted to get a Life of Swift--in his battered old outfit, for which no Jew in Rag-Fair would give him five shillings. The last time I had seen him, two years ago, he had just left Hallebury, a bit of a dandy, with very tight clothes, and so stiff a white collar on, that on his arrival he had been nicknamed “the Parson.”

At home he might by this time be just through responsions by the help of cribs and manuals, having contracted in the process a rooted distaste for classical literature. Possibly he might have pulled in his college boat, and won a plated cup at lawn tennis, and all this at the cost of, say, £250 a year. As it is, besides costing nothing, he can cook a spare-rib of pork to a turn on a forked stick, hold a bull-calf by the tail, and is voluntarily wrestling (not without certain glimmerings of light) with _Sartor Resartus_. Which career for choice? How say you, Mr. Editor?

Crossing the Atlantic, 4th September 1885.

A mug-wump! I should like to ask you, sir--not as Editor, not even as English gentleman, but simply as vertebrate animal--what you would do if a stranger were all of a sudden to call your intimate friends “mug-wumps,” not obscurely hinting that you yourself laboured under whatever imputation that term may convey? I don’t know what the effect might have been in my own case, but that the story of O’Connell, as a boy, shutting up the voluble old Dublin applewoman by calling her a “parallelopiped,” rushed into my head, and set me off laughing. I haven’t been able to learn more of the etymology of the word than that it is said over here to have been first used in a sermon (?) by Mr. Ward Beecher, and now denotes “bolters” or “scratchers,” as they were called last autumn, or in other words, the Independents, who broke away from the party machine of Republicanism and carried Cleveland. More power to the “mug-wump’s” elbow, say I; and I only wish we may catch the “mugwumps,” “mug-wumpism,” or whatever the name for the disease may be, in England before long. One of the groups on the deck of the liner, amongst whom I first heard the phrase, was a good specimen of the machine-politician, a democrat of the Tammany Hall type. “You bet” I stuck to him till I got at his candid account of the campaign of last autumn, most interesting to me, but I fear not so to the general English reader, so I will only give you his concluding sentence:--“Well,” with a long suck at the big cigar he was half-eating, half-smoking, “I tell you it was about the thinnest ice you ever saw before we were over,--but, _I got to land!_” From what I heard on board and since, I believe the President is doing splendidly; witness his peremptory order for the great ranche-men to clear out of the Reserves which they had leased from the Indians, and fenced to the extent of some millions of acres; the righteousness of which presidential action is proved (were proof needed) by the threatened resistance of General B. Butler, one of the largest lessees. I can see too clearly looming up a determined opposition to the President’s Civil Service reform from politicians of both parties, mainly on the ground that he is “establishing a class” in these U.S.--a policy which “the Fathers” abhorred and guarded against, and which their only legitimate heirs, the machine politicians, will fight to the death. You may gauge the worth of this opposition by contrasting their two principal arguments--(1) Nine-tenths of the work of the Departments (Post Office, Customs, etc.) can be learnt just as well in three months as in ten years; and (2) the other tenth, requiring skilled and experienced officers, has never been interfered with by either side. But, if argument two is sound, _cadit quostio_, as there is _ex hypothesi_ already a permanent class of civil servants, I conclude that were I an American I would accept “mug-wump” as a title of honour instead of resenting it, and help to get up a “Mug-wump” club in every great city.

We had a splendid crossing, deck crowded all the way, and the company gloriously cosmopolitan and communicative during the short intervals between the orthodox four full meals a day. There is surely no place in the world where that universal instinct, the desire to get behind the scenes of one’s neighbours’ lives, is so easily and abundantly gratified. Here is one of my rather odd discoveries. On reaching the deck, after my bath on the first morning, for the tramp before breakfast, I was joined by a fine specimen of an old Yorkshireman. It seems we had met years ago, at some political or social gathering, and as he looked in superb health and fit to fight for his life, I congratulated. Yes, he said, it was all owing to his having discovered how to pass his holiday. He used to go to some northern seaside place, one as bad as the other, for “whenever the wind blew on shore you might as well be living in a sewer.” So he saved enough one year to buy a return-ticket on a Cunard liner, calculating that whatever way the wind blew he must be getting sea-air all the time. He has done it every year since, having found that besides sea-air he gets better food and company than he could ever command at home. My next “find” was a pleasant soldierly-looking man who called to me from the upper deck to come up and see a sword-fish chasing a whale. Alas! I arrived too late. The uncivil brutes had both disappeared by the time I got up; but I was much consoled by the talk which ensued with my new acquaintance. He was a Lieutenant of Marines in the Admiral’s flag-ship off Palermo in King Bomba’s last days, and was sent ashore to arrest and bring on board all sailors found with the Garibaldini. He seems to have found it necessary to be present himself at the battle of Metazzo (I think that was the name) and at the storming of the town afterwards, in which the Garibaldini suffered severely. The dead were all laid out before the gate after the town was taken, and he counted no less than seventy bluejackets amongst them! They used to drop over the sides of the ships and swim ashore, or smuggle themselves into the bum-boats which came off to the fleet with provisions. No wonder that we have been popular in Italy ever since.

Then, attracted by a crowd on the fore part of the deck, roped off to divide steerage from saloon passengers, I became one of a motley group assisting at a sort of moral “free-and-easy,” got up for the 300 steerage folk by two ecclesiastics, whom I took at first for Romish priests from their costume. I found I was mistaken, and that they were the Principal and a Brother of “the Fraternity of the Iron Cross,” an order of the American Episcopal Church, which, it seems, has taken root in several of the large cities. The Brethren are vowed to “poverty, purity, and temperance” (or obedience, I am not sure which); and these two were crossing in the steerage to comfort and help the poor folk there--no pleasant task, even in so airy a ship and such fine weather. One can imagine what power this kind of fellowship must give the Iron Cross Brethren with their rather sad fellow-passengers, to whom they could say--one of them, indeed, did say it--“We are just as poor as the poorest of you, for we own no property of any kind, and never can own any till our deaths.” This Brother (a strapping young fellow of twenty-five, who I found had been an athlete at Oxford) waxed eloquent to them on his experiences in Philadelphia, especially on the working-men Brethren there. One of these, a big, rough chap, with a badly broken nose, he had rather looked askance at, first, till he found that the broken nose had been earned in a rough-and-tumble fight with a fellow who was ill-using a woman. Now they were the closest friends, and he looked on the broken nose as more honourable than the Victoria Cross, and hoped none of the men there would fail to go in for that decoration if they ever got the same chance.

In melancholy contrast to the Iron Cross Brethren were two other diligent workers in quite another kind of business. They haunted the smoking-room from breakfast till “lights out,” officious to help to arrange the daily sweepstakes on the ship’s run; gloating over, and piling caressingly as they rattled down on the table, the dollars and half-crowns; always on the watch and ready to take a hand at cards, just to accommodate gents with whom time hung heavily. Bagmen, they were said to be; but I doubt if they travel for any industry except plucking pigeons on their own account--unmistakable Jews of a low type, who never looked any man in the face:--

In their eyes that stealthy gleam,

Was not learned of sky or stream,

But it has the hard, cold glint

Of new dollars from the mint.

Their industry was pursued cautiously, as the fine old captain is known to hold strong views about gambling, and there was less on this ship than any other I have crossed on. No baccarat-table going all day, with excited youngsters punting their silver (gold, too, now and then) over the shoulders of the players,--only a quiet hand at euchre or poker at a corner table, in the afternoon and after dinner; but even with such straitened opportunities, youngsters may be plucked to a fairly satisfactory figure. From £10 to £20 was often at stake on one deal at poker, and, I was told, not seldom much higher sums. I saw myself one mere boy inveigled into blind-hookey for a minute or two while the poker party was gathering. He won the first cut; and two minutes later I saw “Iscariot Ingots, Esq., that highly respectable man,” looking abstractedly across the room, and dreamily gathering up a large handful of silver which the boy rattled down as he flung off to take his seat at the poker-table; and so on, and so on.

It occurs to one to ask, not without some indignation, why this sort of thing is allowed on these Atlantic steamers. My own observation confirms the general belief that professionals cross on nearly every boat; and, on every boat, there are youngsters fresh from school or college, out of leading-strings for the first time, and with considerable sums in their pockets. It is a bad scandal, and might be stopped with the greatest ease. Prohibit all cards, except whist for small points in the smoking-room; and let it be the purser’s or some other officer’s duty to see the rule enforced. As things stand, I do not know of a more dangerous place for youngsters--American or English--than an Atlantic steamer.

One never gets past Sandy Hook, I think, without some new sensation. This time, for me, it was the harbour buoys, each of which carried a brilliant electric lamp. They are lighted from the shore!

Notes from the West, Cincinnati, 24th September 1886.

I never come to this country without stumbling over some startling differences between our kin here and ourselves, which it puzzles me to account for. Take this last. Some days ago, I met a young Englishman from a Western ranche. He had run down some six hundred miles, from Kansas City, into which he had brought a “bunch” of steers from the ranche. As he would not be wanted again for a fortnight, he had taken the opportunity of looking in on his friends down South. In our talk the question of railway fares turned up. “Oh, yes,” he said, “the fare is $25; but I only paid $16.”

“How is that?”

“Why, I just went to the ‘ticket-scalpers’,’ right opposite the railway dépôt--here is their card (handing it to me); and, you see, my ticket is to Chatanooga; so I might go on for another hundred and fifty miles if I wanted to.” There was the business card, “Moss Brothers, ticket-brokers, opposite central dépôt, Kansas City, members of the Ticket Brokers’ Union.” It went on to say that every attention is paid to travellers, inquiries made, and information given, by these enterprising Hebrews; and on the back, a list of the towns to which they could issue tickets, including nearly every important centre in the Northern and Western States. Since then I have made inquiries at several towns, and find that the “scalper” is an institution in every one of them; and, apart from the saving of money, is much in favour with the travelling public, on account of his civility and intelligence. The ordinary railway clerk is a remarkably short-tempered and ill-informed person, out of whom you can with difficulty extract the most trifling piece of information, even as to his own line; while the despised “scalper” across the road (generally a Jew) will take any amount of trouble to find out how you can “make connections,” while furnishing you with a ticket, which he guarantees, at a third less, on the average, than his legitimate but morose rival in “the dépôt.” But the strangest thing of all is, that even the railway directors seem to think it all right; or, at any rate, that it is not worth their while to try to stop this traffic. One friend, a first-rate business man, actually said that he should have no scruple what, ever in going to the “scalpers” when off his own system, over which, of course, he is “dead-headed.” I heard several explanations of the phenomenon, the only plausible one being that it is impossible to control the enormous issues of cheap excursion tickets which are made by all the main lines. But surely, then, the question occurs, “Why impossible!” At any rate, the average Briton is inclined to think that if such establishments appeared opposite the Euston Square or Waterloo termini, they would soon hear something from Mr. Moon and Mr. Ralph Dutton not to their advantage.

I gleaned other items of information from my young friend from Kansas which may be useful to some of your readers, now that there is scarcely a family in England (so it seems to me, at least) which is not sending out one or more of its younger members to try their fortunes in the Far West. This, for instance, seems worth bearing in mind: When a young fellow comes out from home, he shouldn’t go and hire himself out at once to a farmer. If he does, he’ll find they’ll make the winter jobs for an Englishman pretty tough. He’ll get all the hardest work laid out for him, and mighty poor pay at the end. Let him go and board with a farmer. Any one will be glad to take him for a few dollars. Then he can learn all he wants, and they’ll be glad of his help, because they’ll see it’s a picnic. If you like it, you can buy and settle down. If not, you can just pull out, and go on somewhere else.

The administration of justice on the plains is still in a primitive condition. The difficulty of getting a jury of farmers together makes a gaol delivery a troublesome matter. Another youngster from Dakota illustrated this from his section. There was a turbulent member of the community who, after committing other minor offences, at last got lodged in the shanty which does office for a gaol, on the serious charge of a murderous attack on a girl who refused any longer to receive his attentions, and on her father when he came to the rescue. He had lain in gaol for some weeks, waiting for a judge and jury, when 4th July came round. The Sheriff-Constable, with all the rest of the neighbours, was bound for the nearest railway-station, some ten miles off, where the anniversary of “the glorious Fourth” was to be commemorated, with trotting marches and other diversions. He had one other prisoner in charge, and so, after weighing the matter well, and taking the length of their incarceration into account, came to the ingenious conclusion to let them out for the day, each going bail for the return of the other on the following day. On the morrow, however, it was found that the chief culprit had not turned up, and the fathers of the little community gathered in indignant council to consider what was to be done. After some debate the Sheriff-Constable gave it as his opinion that, on the whole, Dogberry’s advice was sound, and they should let him go, and thank God they were rid of a knave, “the country having spent too much already over the darned cuss.” To this the _patres conscripti_ agreed, and went home to their farms. Even stranger is another well-authenticated story from one of the most active and important of the new cities in the North-West. Amongst the first settlers there was one who had dabbled in real estate, and grown with the growth of the city, until he had become “one of our principal citizens.” No one seemed to know whether he was a lawyer by profession, and he never conducted a case in Court. But one thing was quite clear, that he was intimate with all the judges, had the _entrée_ to their private rooms, and, especially in the case of the Judges of the Supreme Court, scarcely ever failed to avail himself of this privilege when the Courts were sitting. He had a capital cook and good horses, which were always freely at the service of the representatives of justice. Gradually it began to be quietly understood, no one quite knew how, amongst suitors, that it was possible, and very desirable, to interest the gentleman in question in their cases. He was ready, it would seem, to accept a retaining-fee. His charge was fixed at a very moderate percentage on the value of the property in dispute, which nobody need pay unless they thought it worth while. Moreover, the system was one of “No cure, no pay.” He gave every one an acknowledgment in writing of the amount paid in their respective cases, with an undertaking to return the full sum in the event of their proving unsuccessful. It therefore naturally appeared to the average Western suitor about as profitable an investment as he could make. Strange to say, this queer practice seems to have gone on for years, and no shadow of suspicion ever fell on this “principal citizen,” whatever might have been the case as to his friends the judges. The strong individuality and secretiveness which marks the Western character may probably account for the fact that during his life no one would seem to have taken any public notice of this peculiar industry. If a suitor was successful, he was content; if not, he got back his money, and it was nobody’s affair but his own. Well, the good man died, and was buried, and his executors, in administering his estate, were astonished to find bundles of receipts from suitors of all classes and degrees, acknowledging the repayment to them of sums varying in amount from $5 and upwards “in the case of Brown v. Jones,” “in the matter of United States v. Robinson,” “_ex parte_ White,” etc. This led to further inquiry, and the facts came ~ gradually to light. The sagacious testator had, in fact, taken his percentage _from both sides_ in almost every case of any importance which had been heard in the Courts for years. He had never mentioned suit or suitor to any of the judges, his visits to them being simply for the purpose of asking them to dinner, offering them a drive, or a bed if they were on circuit away from home, or interchanging gossip as to stocks, railways, or public affairs. And so for years five honest men had been presiding in the different Courts, entirely innocent of the fact that almost every suitor was looking upon each of them as a person who had received valuable consideration for deciding in his favour. I own that my experience, though, of course, narrow, is decidedly favourable as to the ability and uprightness of the judges in out-of-the-way districts; so that nothing but what I could not but regard as quite unimpeachable evidence would have satisfied me that a whole-community of litigants should have gone on paying black-mail in this egregiously stupid manner.

I was considerably astonished, and a little troubled, to find so many of my friends among Northern Republicans--men who had gone through and borne the burden of the War of Secession--not, indeed, sympathising with the Irish, whom they dislike and distrust more than we do, but saying: “Oh, you had better let them have their own way. Look at our experience of twenty years after the war. Until we let the Southern States have their own way, and withdrew the troops, and threw over the carpetbaggers, we had no peace; and now they are just as quiet as New England.” To which, of course, I made the obvious reply: “Let the seceding States have their own way, did you? Why, I had always understood that they went out because you elected a free-soil President, pledged to oppose any further extension of their peculiar institution, and that at the end of the war that institution had not only been confined within its old limits, but had absolutely disappeared. The parallel would have held if you had said to Mr. Jefferson Davis and his backers in the spring of 1861, ‘Do what you please as to your negroes; take them where you will; it is a purely domestic matter for you to settle in your own way.’ Instead of this, you said, ‘You shall not take your slaves where you please, and you shall not go out of the Union.’ In the same way, we have to say now to the Irish, ‘You shall not do what you please with the owners of property in Ireland, and you shall not go out of the Union.’”

You will be glad to hear that, wherever I went, there seemed to be the expectation of a revival of trade in the near future. I can see no ground myself for the expectation, so long as all industry remains in its present competitive phase, and the power of production goes on increasing instead of diminishing. Why should men not desire as eagerly to take each other’s trade this next year as they did last year? But the knowing people think otherwise, and I suppose that is good for something.

Westward Ho! 2nd April 1887.

It must be nearly thirty years since I first wrote to you over this signature, but never before except in long vacations, and from outlandish parts. Why not keep to a good rule? you may ask, at this crowded time of year. Well, the fact is I really want to say something as to this “Westward Ho!” gadfly, which seems to have bitten young England with a vengeance in these last months. I am startled, not to say alarmed, at the number of letters I get from the parents and guardians--generally professional men--of youngsters eagerly bent on cattle-ranches, horse-ranches, orange-groves in Florida, vineyards, peach and strawberry-raising, and I know not what other golden dreams of wealth quickly acquired in the open air, generally with plenty of wild sport thrown in. I suppose they write from some fancy that I know a good deal about such matters. That is not so; but I do know a very little about them, and may possibly do some good by publishing that little just now in your columns.

First, then, as to cattle and horse-raising on ranches. This is practically a closed business on any but a small scale, and as part of farm work. All the best ranche-grounds are in the hands of large and rich companies, or millionaires, with whom no newcomer can compete. It will, no doubt, be a valuable experience for any young man to work for a year or two on a big ranch as a cowboy; but he must be thoroughly able to trust his temper, and to rough it in many ways, or he should not try it. At the end, if prudent, he will only have been able to save a few hundred dollars. But this is not the kind of thing, so far as I see, that our youngsters at all expect or want. Orange-groves are excellent and profitable things, no doubt, and there are parts in Florida and elsewhere where there is still plenty of land fit for this purpose, though the choice spots are probably occupied. But an orange-grove will not give any return till the sixth year, cautious people say the seventh.

Vineyards may, with good luck, be giving some return in the third or fourth year; but the amount of hard work which must be put into the soil in breaking up, clearing out stumps, and ploughing, even if there is no timber to fell, is very serious; and the same may be said of peach-orchards and early, fruit and vegetable-rearing. Moreover, the choice places for such industry, such as Lookout Mountain, are for the most part occupied. In a word, though it is quite possible to do well in other industries, and in ordinary farming, nothing beyond a decent living can be earned, without at any rate as free an expenditure of brain and muscle as high farming requires at home. On the other hand, sport, except for rich ranche-men who can command waggons, horses, and men, and travel long distances for it, is not to be had generally, and apt to disappoint where it can be had.

So much for the working side of the problem. The playing side--outside whisky-shops, which I will assume the young Englishman means to keep clear of--ought also to be looked fairly in the face before the experiment is tried. Perhaps the most direct way to bring it home to inquirers will be to quote from the letter of a young English public-school boy who has lately finished his first year as a cowboy on the cattle-ranche of one of the big companies:--

_Friday night_ we had quite a time. We went to an exhibition of the home talent of----, and really of all shows this was the worst I ever saw. One man, the town barber, and our greatest “society man,” played a nigger, and played it so well that one could not help fancying he has at one time been a “profesh.” The rest were so dull and such sticks that it made him shine more than ever. After the home talent, there was a “social hop,” at which Jerry and I shone as being the “bored young men.” You can, of course, see why I was bored; and Jerry, he is from Ohio, and of course------ cannot compete with Ohio. However, as Jerry was somewhat of a great man, the quadrilles being all called by him--i.e. he stood on the stage and shouted, “balance all,” “swing your partners,” “lady’s chain,” at the right time--we had to stay, and more or less to dance. Jerry took great pains to find me partners worthy of a man who had danced in a dress-coat. He did not succeed but once, when he introduced me to a very lively little school-lady, “marm,” I should say; the rest were very wooden in movement and conversation. The school-marm amused me very much. She had not long returned from the--------- University, where all the young ladies, though they met the other sex at school, were not allowed to speak to them at other times. The girls were allowed to give dances, but she and three or four others thought that a “hen-pie” dance was too much of a fraud, so they contrived a plan by which they could get three or four dancing men in without going to the door. They fastened a pulley on to the beam where the bell hung, and with the aid of a clothes-basket and a rope they spoiled the “hen-pie” with two or three young men. This plan worked well several times, till one night three or four of them were exerting themselves to get a very heavy boy up, when instead of a boy they perceived the bearded face of the head-master. In horror they turned loose the rope and fled, leaving him twelve feet from the ground, hanging on by his fingers to the window-sill, from which, as no one would respond to his call for help, he finally dropped. The young lady told it much better than I have. Jerry was very popular as a “caller.” I noticed he understood his audience well, and whenever they got a figure they didn’t know, he came in with “grand chain,” which they all knew and performed very nicely; so you would see a whole set lost in the intricate feat of “visiting” (say) and all muddled up, when you would hear the grand voice of Jerry, “grand chain,” and all the dancers would smile and go to it, and Jerry was quite the boss. We however lost our reputation as good young men, as towards midnight we were overcome with a great thirst; so wicked I, a hardened sinner, persuaded the social barber to let me have half-a-pint of whisky; and J------ and I were caught in the barber’s shop, eating tinned oysters with our pocket-knives, and biscuits, and indulging in whisky-and-water. We were caught by three young men who had “got religion” last fall, and who were, of course, highly shocked; but I think they would have overcome all their scruples but for the stern mothers in the background, and they not only envied us our whisky-and-water, but also our mothers. Half the fight in drinking, I think, is to have been “raised” to look upon it as an every-day luxury, and not as a thing to be had as a great treat on the sly. Well, good-bye! I have written a lot of rubbish, but beyond that am fatter than I have ever been in America.

This will probably give readers a pretty clear notion of the social life available in the West. It is, as they will see at a glance, utterly unlike anything they have been used to. If this kind of social life (and there is something to be said for it) is what they want, in the interludes of really hard manual labour and rough board and lodging, let them start by all means, and they may do very well out West. Otherwise they had better look the thing round twice or thrice before starting. In any case, no young man ought to take more ready money with him than will just keep him from starving for about a month.

If he cannot make his hands keep him by that time, he has no business, and will do no good, in the West.

The Hermit, Rugby, Tennessee, 19th September 1887.

I have always had a strong curiosity about hermits--remember I paid a shilling as a small boy, when I could ill afford it, to see one, somewhere up by Hampstead, a cruel disappointment--used to make shy approaches to lonely turnpike keepers before they were abolished, with no success; finding them always, like Johnson’s “hoary sage,” inclined to cut sentiment short with, “Come, my lad, and drink some beer,” I came to the conclusion long since that the genuine hermit is as extinct as the dodo in the British Isles. I was almost excited, therefore, the other morning, to get a note on a dirty scrap of paper here, asking for the loan of a book on geology, for, on inquiry, I found it came from “the Hermit.” He had suddenly appeared to the man who drives the hack, and sent it in by him. No one could tell me anything more except that the writer was “the Hermit,” and lived, no one knew how, in a shanty four miles away in the forest. I got the book out of the library, “loaned” a pony, and in due course found myself outside a dilapidated snake-fence, surrounding some three acres of half-cleared forest, and the rudest kind of log-hut; evidently the place I was in search of, but no hermit. While I was meditating my next move, a dismal howl, like, I should think, the “lulilooing” of Central Africa, came from out the neighbouring bush. I shouted myself, and in a few moments “the Hermit” appeared, and certainly at first glance “filled the bill” satisfactorily. His head was a tangled mass of long hair and beard, out of which shone two big, blue eyes; a long, lean figure, slightly bent, and clothed in a tattered shirt, and trousers which no old Jew clothesman would have picked off a dunghill. I explained my errand and produced the book.

He thanked me, excused his dress; had other clothes, he said, in the house, which he would have put on had he expected me; was rather excited, so I must excuse him, as his “buck” had gone right off, in disgust, he believed, at the smallness of his flock, as he had only eight ewes. “Buck” I found to be _Anglice_ “ram,” and that it was in the hope of luring back the insufficiently married lord of his flock that he had been howling when I came up. On my doubting whether such a call would not be more likely to speed the flight of the truant “buck,” he rushed awray in the other direction and uplifted it again; and in two or three minutes the eight ewes, with several lambs, were all round him, rubbing against his legs, while an Angora goat looked on with dignity from some yards off. From our talk I found that he was a Shrewsbury man, knew three or four languages, and mathematics up to the differential calculus; found England “too noisy,” and, moreover, could get no land there; had come out and gone to the agricultural class at Cornell University; had now bought this bit of land, on which he could live well, as he was a vegetarian (pointing round to some corn, turnips, etc., in his enclosure); had indigestion at first, but now had found out how to make bread which agreed with him. His trouble was the forest hogs, which were always watching to get at his crops, and his fence, having weak places, would not keep them out, so he had to be always on the watch. If he had any one to keep out the hogs, he could go and find his “buck,” he said, wistfully. The better man within me here was moved to offer to keep watch and ward against hogs while he sought his “buck”; but, on the whole, as the sun was already westering, and I had doubts as to when he might think of relieving guard, my better man did not prevail, and I changed the subject to the book I had brought. He glanced at the title-page, was pleased to find that it was of recent date, as his geology was rusty. Then, as he did not invite me into his log-hut, I rode away. Next evening, as I was strolling down our street, my attention was called to the noticeboard outside the chief store, kept by an excellent, kindly New Englander, Tucker by name, who very liberally allows any of his neighbours to use it. Here I found the following notice from “the Hermit,” which had been sent up by the hackman, to be posted. It opens, you will remark, in the true prophetic style. It ran: “Ho! all ye passers by! Strayed--like a fool!--a Ram (a male sheep,) butts like a nipper, and runs after! God will bless the seer if he lets Isaac Williams, of Sedgemoor Road, know. That is all. Please, Mr. Tucker, post this. Oh, I forgot,--Buy of Tucker!” I think you will agree that I have struck a _bona fide_ hermit in my old age.

But to return to my loafing idyll. Perhaps, if I had to select out of several the ideal loafing haunt in these parts, it would be the verandah of our doctor, another bright New Englander, a graduate of Harvard, and M.D., who, after fourteen years’ practice at Boston, was driven South by threatenings of chest troubles, and happily pitched on this tableland amongst the mountains. Not that he is a loaf-brother, except on rare occasions; a man diligent in his business, and prompt to answer any professional call; but as nobody seems ever to be ill, his leisure is abundant. The greater part of this he spends in the study and practice of grape-culture, in which he has, in the five years since he took it up, earned a high reputation. But in these autumn months, all the pruning, thinning, and tending are over in the forenoon, and in the hours which follow, which are delightfully hot and enjoyable to all sun-lovers, he is generally to be found in his verandah, well supplied with rocking-chairs. In front of the verandah is his principal vineyard, sloping south, and at the bottom of the slope, right away to the distant mountain-range (with Pike’s Peak soaring to the clouds, the centre of the military telegraph system in the war, from which messages were flashed to Look-out Mountain, over Chattanooga, in the critical days of battle, before Sherman started on his march to the sea), wave beyond wave, as it were, of many-coloured forest, each taking fresh tints as clouds flit over, and the triumphant old sun slopes to the West. There one may find the doctor in his rocker, his feet higher than his head on one of the verandah supports--and all who have learnt to appreciate the rocking-chair will agree that “heels up” is half the battle--his tobacco and a book on vines on a small table by his side, and over his head, within easy reach, a rope depending from the verandah roof. At first I took it for the common domestic bell-pull, but soon discovered its more subtle bearing on the luxury of loafing. The doctor had been much exercised by the visits of birds of outrageous appetite to his “Norton’s Virginia,” and other precious vines. At first he had resorted to his double-barrelled gun and small shot--indeed, it yet stood in a corner of the balcony, loaded--but had soon abandoned it. Its use was compatible neither with his love for birds nor the enjoyment of his rocking-chair. So, by an ingenious arrangement, he had hung bells at five or six points in the vineyard, connecting each and all with the depending-rope, so that no sooner did a bird settle with a view to lunch or dinner, than it was saluted by a peal from a bell close by, which sent it skirling back to the forest, while the doctor had neither to lower his heels nor take the pipe from his mouth.

Watching the entire discomfiture of the birds adds, I must own, a keener zest even to the delicious view and air, and to the racy stories of Western life poured out by one or another of the loaf-brethren. A specimen or two may amuse your readers. Placard over the piano in a favourite resort of Texan cowboys: “Don’t shoot the musician; he is doing his best.” Cowboy entering the cars at midnight, thermometer below zero, after snorting for a minute, lets down a window, is remonstrated with, and replies, “Wal, I’d as soon sleep with my head in a dead horse as in this car with the windows shut!” Another tale I repeat with hesitation, though it was seriously vouched for by the narrator as going on in his neighbourhood, and within his own cognisance. An eccentric settler, who played the fiddle powerfully, and lived next a man who had thrown a bridge over a creek, in respect of which the knotty question of “right of way” had arisen between them, read, or discovered somehow, that excessive vibration was the cause of the fall of bridges, and that a well-known railway iron bridge had been distinctly felt to vibrate to the notes of a fiddle, all that was necessary being to find the right chord and play up. Thereupon he set himself on the peccant bridge, and fiddled till he had hit on the sympathetic chord to his own satisfaction; since which he has put in all his spare time at the bridge, fiddling on the right chord and looking for the signs of a crash and the discomfiture of his neighbour. A mad world, my masters! And lucky for the world, say I. But for the cracked fellows going up and down, what a dull place it would be!

The whole neighbourhood, or, at any rate, the men of hunting age, have suddenly been roused into unwonted excitement and activity by the presence of a specimen of the larger carnivora close to this town. It is either a large panther or what they call a Mexican lion--at any rate, as big a beast of this kind as are bred over here, as his footprint, seen of many persons, clearly proves. He has been heard to roar by numbers, and Giles, the saw-mill man, who, passing along wholly unarmed, saw him gliding through the bush close by, puts him at five feet from nose to tail (root, not tip) at least. Giles adds that, at the sight, his hair stood up and distinctly lifted his straw hat--so perhaps his evidence must be discounted considerably. Any way, a party, now collecting dogs to bring him to bay, start to-morrow at dawn to give an account of him. It is more than a year since one has ventured down this way. A slaughter-house which has lately been set up in the woods near by would seem to have drawn him. Let us hope that no cunning old sportsman will watch there to-night and bag him single-handed, and I may possibly have to tell you of a memorable hunt next week.

American Opinion on the Union, SS. Umbria, 5th October 1887.

That panther-hunt went off in a “fizzle.” Our contingent of determined sportsmen kept tryst at daylight, fully armed, but some neighbours who were to bring the proper dogs failed. The sun rose, broad and bright, and so, after a short advance in skirmishing order over the ground where the sawmill man had been so scared--just to save their credit as Nimrods--the chase was abandoned; wisely, I should think, for I can scarcely imagine a more hopeless undertaking than the pursuit of a panther in a Tennessee forest in broad daylight without dogs. Whether Sawyer Giles had grounds for his scare, and what was the length of that panther, must now remain for all time in that useful category of insoluble questions--like the identity of “Junius,” and Queen Mary’s guilt--which innocently employ so much of the spare time of the human race.

I have been back for the last fortnight “in amongst the crowd of men,” and if the things they have done are but “earnest of the things that they shall do,” well, our grandchildren will have a high old time of it! At any rate, our cousins hold this faith vigorously. Take, for instance, the case of a leading dry-goods man who has been sitting by me in the smoking-room of this ship, which has been carrying us for the last four days against a head-wind at the average rate of twenty miles an hour. Recollect, sir, that this ship is about 400 feet in length, of 8800 tons register, with engines of 14,000 horse-power, and must at this moment be as heavy as (say) lour big luggage-trains. I ventured to suggest that, whatever may be in store for us in the way of flying, science has about said her last word in the direction of driving steam or any other ships on the Atlantic. I felt almost inclined to resent the pity tinged with scorn with which he said, “Why, _sir!_ this is the hundred and twenty-eighth time I have crossed this ocean. The first time it took me twenty-two days. This vessel does it in six days and a half, and I shall do it in half that time yet,--yes, _sir!_” My friend must be at least sixty!

The New York hotels were crammed as I came through with men who had come from all parts of the States for the yacht-race. I went out on a friend’s steam-yacht on the Thursday, when the second day’s race should have come off. There was fog and no wind off Sandy Hook, so after lying-to in a lopping sea for a couple of hours, we just steamed back, some hundred of us. But the game had been well worth the candle. Anything so beautiful as the movements of those two yachts in and out amongst the expectant fleet of sightseers, I never beheld. There were several old yachtsmen (Americans) on board, who seemed rather to think the _Thistle_ the more perfect of the two, and when the second and deciding race had been sailed, still guessed that if their Commodore, Pain, or Malcolm Forbes had sailed the _Thistle_, she would not have been twelve, or any, minutes behind.