“You’re perfectly certain I’m dead, are you?” said the major, getting calmer.
“Why, of course.”
“Can a dead man violate the laws?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, then, I’m going to hammer you with this club, and I reckon you’ll find me the most energetic corpse in the county.”
They say that the fight was terrific. First the major was on top, then Myers; and as they rolled over and over in the porch the widow sat by and surveyed the scene. Finally, Myers explained that upon the whole he believed he had enough; and when the major had given him a few supplementary thumps, he got up, and gazing at the prostrate Myers and at the widow, he said,
“Take her; take her, young man. You’re welcome to her. I wouldn’t have her if she was the only woman in the temperate zone. But let me tell you, before you get her, that when you are married to her you’ll wish something’d happen to send you down to the bottom of the ocean and anchor you there.”
[Illustration: “TAKE HER, YOUNG MAN!”]
Then the major slammed the gate and left; and he started life afresh in New York. Myers has written to him since to say that the only grudge that he has against him is that he didn’t kill him in that fight in the porch, for the widow has made death seem blissful to him; and the major’s answer was that the reason why he spared his life was that he wanted to make his revenge fiendish.
Of course I do not vouch for this part of the story which tells of the major’s return. General Trumps is responsible for that; and I know that sometimes, when his imagination is unduly warmed, he is prone to exaggeration. The general’s own domestic matters are in the most charming condition. According to his own story, he never had any unpleasant feeling in his family but once. Several years ago he was in Williamsport attending to his business. While there he had a strong premonition that something was the matter at home; so, in order to satisfy himself, he determined to run down to Philadelphia in the next train. In the mean time, his mother-in-law sent him a despatch to this effect: “Another daughter has just arrived. Hannah is poorly; come home at once.” The lines were down, however, and the despatch was held over; and meanwhile the general reached home, and found his wife doing pretty well and the nurse walking around with an infant a day old. After staying twenty-four hours, and finding that everybody was tolerably comfortable, he returned to Williamsport without anything having been said about the despatch, his mother-in-law supposing of course that he had received it. The day after his arrival the lines were fixed, and that night he received a despatch from the telegraph office dated that very day, and conveying the following intelligence:
“Another daughter has just arrived. Hannah is poorly; come home at once.”
The general was amazed and bewildered. He couldn’t understand it. He walked the floor of his room all night trying to get the hang of the thing; and the more he considered the subject, the more he became alarmed at the extraordinary occurrence. He took the early train for the city, and during the journey was in a condition of frantic bewilderment. When he arrived, he jumped in a cab, drove furiously to the house, and scared his mother-in-law into convulsions by rushing in in a frenzy and demanding what on earth had happened. He was greatly relieved to find that there was but one infant in the nursery, and to learn how the mistake occurred. But he felt as if he would like to see the telegraph operator who changed the date of that despatch. He wanted to remonstrate with him.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
_THE MISDIRECTED ENERGIES OF MR. BRADLEY_.
Mr. Bradley, our inventor, has had some experiences in addition to those already recorded which may perhaps be entertaining to the reader. One of the peculiarities of Bradley’s contrivances is that when they are designed to do a specified work, that is conspicuously the work they cannot possibly be induced to do. There, for instance, was Bradley’s famous steam-pump.
Some years ago Bradley invented a steam-pump for use on shipboard. He claimed for it that it would pump about three times as many gallons in a minute as any other pump, and he got some of his political friends in Congress to use their influence with the Navy Department to have it tried on one of the navy vessels. Finally he succeeded in having it introduced upon a small steamer, which we will call the Water Witch; and when everything was ready, the ship started upon a trial trip. Soon after she got to sea, Bradley, who was aboard, said he would like to try the pump upon the bilge-water to see how she worked.
The captain ordered the engineer to turn it on, and the machine operated apparently in the most beautiful manner. In about an hour one of the officers reported that the water was gaining rapidly in the hold, and the captain sent some men down to discover where the leak was. They came back and reported that they couldn’t find the hole, but that the water was pouring in somewhere in frightful quantities.
Then some of the officers went down and spent half an hour in water up to their waists feeling around after that awful hole, but they couldn’t ascertain where it was. The only thing that they were certain of was that the water was steadily gaining on them, and the ship was certain to sink unless something was done. All this time Mr. Bradley’s pump was working away, and the captain continually enjoined the engineer to give it greater speed.
Then the captain himself went down and made an examination; and although he failed to find the leak, he was alarmed to discover a quantity of codfish and porpoises swimming about in the hold, because he knew that the hole in the hull must be very large indeed to admit the fish. And still the water rose steadily all the time, although Bradley’s pump was jerking away at it in a terrific manner and all the other pumps were running at full speed.
At last the captain made up his mind that he should have to desert the ship, as she was certain to sink; and so the boats were made ready and packed with provisions and water and a few little comforts, and by this time the water in the bilge was nearly up to the furnace fires.
Just then Bradley’s pump suddenly stopped; and then the captain turned pale as death and demanded to know who stopped that pump, while Bradley buckled a life-preserver around him, corked up a note to his wife in a bottle, and said that now that the pump had ceased he would give that steamer just four minutes to reach bottom.
While he was speaking the engineer came up and said,
“Mr. Bradley, what did you say was the capacity of your pump?”
“Six hundred gallons a minute.”
“Six hundred. Well, Mr. Bradley, how many gallons do you estimate that there are in the Atlantic Ocean?”
“Blessed if I know. How in the mischief can I tell that?”
“Oh, it don’t make any particular difference, only I thought you might have some kind of an indistinct idea how long it would take you to run the ocean through your pump.”
“I dunno, I’m sure,” said Bradley.
“Well, I merely wanted to say that, whatever your calculations respecting the number of gallons in the Atlantic, it is perfectly useless for you to try to load up that ocean in this vessel. She won’t hold more’n half of it.”
“What do you mean, sir?” demanded Bradley.
“Why, I mean that that diabolical pump of yours, instead of taking out the bilge, has been spurting water into this vessel for the past four hours, and that if you have a theory that you can strike dry land by that process it is ingenious, but it won’t work, for it’s going to sink this ship.”
Then the captain swore till the air was blue. Then he put Bradley in irons, and ripped out his pump, and unpacked the boats, and pumped out the water, and picked up the codfish and porpoises, and set sail for home for the purpose of making a report on the subject of the new invention. The Bradley Improved Marine Steam-pump went right out of use at the end of the voyage.
Another invention of Bradley’s was a scientific system of foretelling the weather. He had a lot of barometers, hygrometers and such things in his house, and he claimed that by reading these intelligently and watching the clouds, in accordance with his theory, a man could prophesy what kind of weather there would be three days ahead. They were getting up a Sunday-school picnic in town in May; and as Bradley ascertained that there would be no rain on a certain Thursday, they selected that day for the purpose. The sky looked gloomy when they started; but as Bradley declared that it absolutely _couldn’t_ rain on Thursday, everybody felt that it was safe to go. About two hours after the party reached the grounds, however, a shower came up, and it rained so hard that it ruined all the provisions, wet everybody to the skin and washed the cake into dough. On the following Monday the agricultural exhibition was to be held; but as Mr. Bradley foresaw that there would be a terrible north-east storm on that day, he suggested to the president of the society that it had better be postponed. So they put it off; and that was the only clear Monday we had during May. About the first of June, Mr. Bradley announced that there would not be any rain until the 15th; and consequently we had showers everyday right along up to that time, with the exception of the 10th when there was a slight spit of snow. So on the 15th, Bradley foresaw that the rest of the month would be wet; and by an odd coincidence a drought set in and it only rained once during the two weeks, and that was the day on which Bradley informed the base-ball club that it could play a match, because it would be clear.
On toward the first of July he began to have some doubts if his improved weather-system was correct; he was convinced that it must work by contraries. So when Professor Jones asked him if it would be safe to attempt to have a display of fireworks on the night of the 5th, Bradley brought the improved system into play, and discovered that it promised rainy weather on that night. So then he was certain it would be clear; and he told Professor Jones to go ahead.
On the night of the 5th, just as the professor got his Catherine-wheels and sky-rockets all in position, it began to rain; and that was the most awful storm we had that year: it raised the river nearly three feet. As soon as it began Bradley got the axe and went up stairs and smashed his hydrometers, hygrometers, barometers and thermometers. Then he cut down the pole that upheld the weathercock and burned the manuscript of the book which he was writing in explanation of his system. He leans on “Old Probs” now when he wants to ascertain the probable state of the weather.
* * * * *
When his first baby was born, Bradley invented a self-rocking cradle for it. He constructed the motive-power of the machine from some old clockwork which was operated by a huge steel ribbon spring strong enough to move a horse-car and long enough to run for a week without rewinding. When the cradle was completed, he put the baby in it upon a pillow and started the machinery. It worked beautifully, and after watching it for a while Bradley went to bed in a peaceful and happy frame of mind. Toward midnight he heard something go r-r-r-rip! Buzz-z-z-z! Crash! Bang! Then a pin or something of the kind in the clockwork gave way, and before Bradley could get out of bed the cradle containing the baby was making ninety revolutions a minute, and hopping around the room and slamming up against the furniture in a manner that was simply awful to look at.
[Illustration: BRADLEY’S CRADLE]
How to get the child out was now the only consideration which presented itself to the mind of the inventor. A happy thought struck him. He took a slat out of the bedstead and held it under the cradle. On the next down-stroke it stopped with a jerk, and the baby was thrown, like a stone out of a catapult, against the washstand, fortunately with the pillow to break its fall. But the machine kept whizzing round and round the room as soon as the slat was withdrawn, and Bradley, in an ecstasy of rage, flung it out the back window into the yard. It continued to make such a clatter there that he had to go down and pile up barrels and slop-buckets and bricks and clothes-props and part of the grape-arbor on it, so that all it could do was to lie there all night buzzing with a kind of smothered hum and keeping the next-door neighbors awake, so that they pelted it with bootjacks, under the impression that it was cats.
Mrs. Bradley expressed such decided views respecting cradles of that pattern that Mr. Bradley turned his attention to other matters than those of a domestic character. He resolved to revolutionize navigation. It occurred to him that some kind of an apparatus might be devised by which a man could walk upon the surface of the water, and he went to work at it. The result was that in a few weeks he produced and patented Bradley’s Water Perambulator. It consisted of a couple of shallow scows, each about four feet long. These were to be fastened to the feet; and Bradley informed his friends that with a little practice a man could glide over the bosom of a river with the ease and velocity with which a good skater skims over the ice.
It looked like a splendid thing. Bradley said that it would certainly produce a revolution in navigation, and make men wholly independent of steamers and other vessels when they desired to travel upon water with rapidity. Bradley intimated that the day would come when a man would mount a water perambulator and go drifting off to India, sliding over the bounding billows of the dark blue sea as serenely as if he were walking along a turnpike.
And one day Bradley asked a select party to come down to the river to see him make a trial-trip. At the appointed time he appeared with something that looked like a small frigate under each arm; and when he had fastened them securely upon his feet, he prepared to lower himself over the edge of the wharf. He asked the spectators to designate a point upon the thither shore at which they wished him to land. It was immaterial to him, he said, whether he went one mile or ten, up stream or down, because he should glide around upon the surface of the stream with the ease and grace of a swallow. Then they fixed a point for him; and when he had dropped into the water, he steadied himself for a moment by holding to the pier while he fastened his eye upon his destination and prepared to start.
At last he said the experiment would begin; and he struck out with his left foot. As he did so the front end of that particular scow scuttled under water, and as he tried to save himself by bringing forward his right foot, that section of Bradley’s Water Perambulator also dipped under, and Bradley fell.
[Illustration: THE NEW MOTOR]
A moment later he was hanging head downward in the river, with nothing visible to the anxious spectators but the bottoms of two four-foot frigates. The perambulator simply kept the body of Bradley under the water. Then a man went out in a skiff and pulled the inventor in with a boat-hook. When he came ashore, they unbuckled his scows, took off his clothing and rolled him upon an oil-barrel. In half an hour he revived, and with a deep groan he said,
“Where am I?”
His friends explained his situation to him, and then he asked,
“What drowned me?”
They told him sadly that he was injured during an attempt to revolutionize navigation and to prepare the way for a walk to India.
“How did I try to do it?” he inquired.
They wept as they reminded him that he had started to skim over the river like a swallow, with a scow upon each foot, and then he faintly said,
“Where in thunder are those machines?”
His friends produced, the new motor with which Bradley intended to break up the steamship lines; and when he had looked at them for a moment, he fell back and whispered,
“It’s no use. I can’t do ’em justice. Eight men couldn’t cuss ’em to satisfy me. But split ’em up! Have ’em mashed into kin’lin-wood before I get well, or the sight of ’em’ll set me crazy.”
Then he was carried home, and after being in bed about a fortnight he came out with a pallid cheek, a sorrowful heart and ideas for six or seven new machines.
CHAPTER XXIX.
_THE TRIALS OF MR. KEYSER, GRANGER_.
Mr. Keyser mentioned recently that he had employed a new hired girl, and that soon after her arrival Mrs. Keyser, before starting to spend the day with a friend, instructed the girl to whitewash the kitchen during her absence. Upon returning, Mrs. Keyser found the job completed in a very satisfactory manner. On Wednesday, Mrs. Keyser always churns, and on the following Wednesday, when she was ready, she went out; and finding that Mr. Keyser had already put the milk into the churn, she began to turn, the handle. This was at eight o’clock in the morning, and she turned until ten without any signs of butter appearing. Then she called in the hired man, and he turned until dinner-time, when he knocked off with some very offensive language, addressed to the butter, which had not yet come. After dinner the hired girl took hold of the crank and turned it energetically until two o’clock, when she let go with a remark which conveyed the impression that she believed the churn to be haunted. Then Mr. Keyser came out and said he wanted to know what was the matter with that churn. It was a good enough churn if people only knew enough to use it. Mr. Keyser then worked the crank until half-past three, when, as the butter had not come, he surrendered it again to the hired man because he had an engagement in the village. The man ground the machine to an accompaniment of frightful imprecations. Then the Keyser children each took a turn for half an hour, then Mrs. Keyser tried her hand; and when she was exhausted, she again enlisted the hired girl, who said her prayers while she turned. But the butter didn’t come.
When Keyser came home and found the churn still in action, he felt angry; and seizing the handle, he said he’d make the butter come if he stirred up an earthquake in doing it. Mr. Keyser effected about two hundred revolutions of the crank a minute–enough to have made any ordinary butter come from the ends of the earth; and when the perspiration began to stream from him, and still the butter didn’t come, he uttered one wild yell of rage and disappointment and kicked the churn over the fence. When Mrs. Keyser went to pick it up, she put her nose down close to the buttermilk and took a sniff. Then she understood how it was. The girl had mixed the whitewash in the churn and left it there. A good, honest and intelligent servant who knows how to churn could have found a situation at Keyser’s the next day. There was a vacancy.
Mr. Keyser during the summer made a very narrow escape from a melancholy ending. He dreamed one night that he would die on the 14th of September. So strongly was he assured of the fact that the vision would prove true that he began at once to make preparations for his departure. He got measured for a burial-suit, he drew up his will, he picked out a nice lot in the cemetery and had it fenced in, he joined the church and selected six of the deacons as his pall-bearers; he also requested the choir to sing at the funeral, and he got them to run over a favorite hymn of his to see how it would sound. Then he got Toombs, the undertaker, to knock together a burial-casket with silver-plated handles, and cushions inside, and he instructed the undertaker to use his best hearse, and to buy sixty pairs of black gloves, to be distributed among the mourners. He had some trouble deciding upon a tombstone. The man at the marble-yard, however, at last sold him a beautiful one with an angel weeping over a kind of a flower-pot, with the legend, “Not lost, but gone before.”
Then he got the village newspaper to put a good obituary notice of him in type, and he told his wife that he would be gratified if she would come out in the spring and plant violets upon his grave. He said it was hard to leave her and the children, but she must try and bear up under it. These afflictions are for our good, and when he was an angel he would come and watch over her and keep his eye on her. He said she might marry again if she wanted to; for although the mere thought of it nearly broke his heart, he wished her, above all, to be happy, and to have some one to love her and protect her from the storms of the rude world. Then he and Mrs. Keyser and the children cried, and Keyser, as a closing word of counsel, advised her not to plough for corn earlier than the middle of March.
On the night of the 13th of September there was a flood in the creek, and Keyser got up at four o’clock in the morning of the 14th and worked until night, trying to save his buildings and his woodpile. He was so busy that he forgot all about its being the day of his death; and as he was very tired, he went to bed early and slept soundly all night.
About six o’clock on the morning of the 15th there was a ring at the door-bell. Keyser jumped out of bed, threw up the front window and exclaimed,
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me–Toombs,” said the undertaker.
“What do you want at this time of the morning?” demanded Keyser.
“Want?” said Toombs, not recognizing Keyser. “Why, I’ve brought around the ice to pack Keyser in, so’s he’ll keep until the funeral. The corpse’d spoil this kind of weather if we didn’t.”
Then Keyser remembered, and it made him feel angry when he thought how the day had passed and left him still alive, and how he had made a fool of himself. So he said,
“Well, you can just skeet around home agin with that ice; the corpse is not yet dead. You’re a little too anxious, it strikes me. You’re not goin’ to inter me yet, if you have got everything ready. So you can haul off and unload.”
About half-past ten that morning the deacons came around, with crape on their hats and gloom in their faces, to carry the body to the grave; and while they were on the front steps the marble-yard man drove up with the flower-pot tombstone and a shovel, and stepped in to ask the widow how deep she wanted the grave dug. Just then the choir arrived with the minister, and the company was assembled in the parlor, when Keyser came in from the stable, where he had been dosing a horse with patent medicine and warm “mash” for the glanders. He was surprised, but he proceeded to explain that there had been a little mistake, somehow. He was also pained to find that everybody seemed to be a good deal disappointed, particularly the tombstone-man, who went away mad, declaring that such an old fraud ought to be buried, anyhow, dead or alive. Just as the deacons left in a huff the tailor’s boy arrived with the burial-suit, and before Keyser could kick him off the steps the paper-carrier flung into the door the _Patriot_, in which that obituary notice occupied a prominent place.
Anybody who wants a good reliable tombstone that has a flower-pot and an angel on it, with an affecting inscription, can buy one of that kind, at a sacrifice for cash, from Keyser. He thinks the bad dream must have been caused by eating too much at supper.
After he felt assured that he should have to remain a little longer in this troublous world, Mr. Keyser determined to effect some improvements of his farm that he had thought of. He greatly needed a constant supply of water, and he resolved to bore an artesian well in the barn-yard. The boring was done with a two-inch auger fixed in the end of an iron rod, which was twisted around by a wheel worked by two men. One day, after they had gone down a good many feet, they tried to pull the rod out, but it would not come. They were afraid to use much force lest the auger should come off and stay in the hole, and so, as the boring went along well enough, they concluded to keep on turning, and to trust to the force of the water, when they struck it, to drive the loose dirt up from the hole. When they had gone down about three hundred and fifty feet, they began to think it queer that there were no signs of water, but they bored a hundred feet farther; and one day, just as they were beginning on another hundred, something odd happened.
On the day in question Keyser’s boy came running into the house and told him to come into the garden quick, for there was some kind of an extraordinary animal with a sharp nose burrowing out of the ground. Keyser concluded that it must be either a potato-bug or a grasshopper that had been hatched in the spring, and he took out a bottle of poison to drop on it when it came up. When Keyser reached the spot, a couple of hundred yards from where they were boring the well, there certainly was some kind of a creature slowly pushing its way up through the sod. Its nose seemed to resemble a sharp point like steel. Keyser dropped some poison on it; but it didn’t appear to mind the stuff, but kept slowly creeping up from the ground. Then Keyser felt it, and was astonished to find that it felt exactly like the end of a fork-prong. He sent the boy over to call Perkins and the rest of the neighbors. Pretty soon a large crowd collected, and by this time the animal had emerged to the extent of a couple of inches.
[Illustration: A QUEER PLANT]
Everybody was amazed to see that it looked exactly like the end of a large auger; and two or three timid men were so scared at the idea of such a thing actually growing out of the earth that they suddenly got over the fence and left. Perkins couldn’t account for it; but he suggested that maybe somebody might have planted a gimlet there, and it had taken root and blossomed out into an auger; but he admitted that he had never heard of such a thing before.
The excitement increased so that the men who were boring the artesian well knocked off and came over to see the phenomenon. It was noticed that as soon as they stopped work the auger ceased to grow; and when they arrived, they looked at it for a minute, and one of them said,
“Bill, do you recognize that auger?”
“I think I do,” said Bill.
“Well, Bill, you go and unhitch that wheel from the other end of the rod.”
Bill did so; and then the other man asked the crowd to take hold of the auger and pull. They did; and out came four hundred and fifty feet of iron rod. The auger had slid off to the side, turned upward and come to the surface in Keyser’s garden. Then the artesian well was abandoned, and Keyser bought a steam-pump and began to get water from the river.
Another remarkable boring experience that occurred in our neighborhood deserves to be related here. When Butterwick bought his present place, the former owner offered, as one of the inducements to purchase, the fact that there was a superb sugar-maple tree in the garden. It was a noble tree, and Butterwick made up his mind that he would tap it some day and manufacture some sugar. However, he never did so until last year. Then he concluded to draw the sap and to have “a sugar-boiling.”
Mr. Butterwick’s wife’s uncle was staying with him, and after inviting some friends to come and eat the sugar they got to work. They took a huge wash-kettle down into the yard and piled some wood beneath it, and then they brought out a couple of buckets to catch the sap, and the auger with which to bore a hole in the tree.
Butterwick’s wife’s uncle said that the bucket ought to be set about three feet from the tree, as the sap would spurt right out with a good deal of force, and it would be a pity to waste any of it.
Then he lighted the fire, while Butterwick bored the hole about four inches deep. When he took the auger out, the sap did not follow, but Butterwick’s wife’s uncle said what it wanted was a little time, and so, while the folks waited, he put a fresh armful of wood on the fire. They waited half an hour; and as the sap didn’t come, Butterwick concluded that the hole was not deep enough, so he began boring again, but he bored too far, for the auger went clear through the tree and penetrated the back of his wife’s uncle, who was leaning up against the trunk trying to light his pipe. He jumped nearly forty feet, and they had to mend him up with court-plaster.
[Illustration: TOO MUCH OF A BORE.]
Then he said he thought the reason the sap didn’t come was that there ought to be a kind of spigot in the hole, so as to let it run off easily. They got the wooden spigot from the vinegar-barrel in the cellar and inserted it. Then, as the sap did not come, Butterwick’s wife’s uncle said he thought the spigot must be jammed in so tight that it choked the flow; and while Butterwick tried to push it out, his wife’s uncle fed the fire with some kindling-wood. As the spigot could not be budged with a hammer, Butterwick concluded to bore it out with the auger; and meanwhile his wife’s uncle stirred the fire. Then, the auger broke off short in the hole, and Butterwick had to go half a mile to the hardware-store to get another one.
Then Butterwick bored a fresh hole; and although the sap would not come, the company did; and they examined with much interest the kettle, which was now red-hot, and which Butterwick’s wife’s uncle was trying to lift off the fire with the hay-fork. As the sap still refused to come, Butterwick went over for Keyser to ask him how to make the exasperating tree disgorge. When he arrived, he looked at the hole, then at the spigot, then at the kettle and then at the tree. Then, turning to Butterwick with a mournful face, he said,
“Butterwick, you have had a good deal of trouble in your life, an’ it’s done you good; it’s made a man of you. This world is full of sorrow, but we must bear it without grumbling. You know that, of course. Consequently, now that I’ve some bad news to break to you, I feel ‘sif the shock won’t knock you endways, but’ll be received with patient resignation. I say I hope you won’t break down an’ give away to your feelin’s when I tell you that there tree is no sugar-maple at all. Grashus! why, that’s a black hickory. It is, indeed; and you might as well bore for maple-sugar in the side of a telegraph-pole.”
Then the company went home, and Butterwick’s wife’s uncle said he had an engagement with a man in Hatboro’ which he must keep right off. Butterwick took the kettle up to the house; but as it was burned out, he sold it next day for fifteen cents for old iron and bought a new one for twelve dollars. He thinks now maybe it’s better to buy your maple sugar.
CHAPTER XXX.
_MR. BANGER’S AUNT_.
There are two families of Bangers in our neighborhood, the heads of which have the same name–Henry Banger. The Henry who married the widow, heretofore mentioned, is a lawyer in the village, while the other, having no relationship to the former, is a “professor,” and he lives on the opposite side of the river, in a hamlet that has grown up there. One day Henry Banger, the lawyer, received a telegram saying that his aunt had died suddenly in Elmira, New York, and that the body would be sent on at once by express. Mr. Banger made preparations for the funeral, and upon the day that the remains were due he went down to the express office to receive them.
They did not come, however; and when the agent telegraphed to ask about them, he ascertained that Mr. Banger’s aunt had been carried through to Baltimore by mistake. Orders were sent at once to reship the body with all possible speed; and accordingly, it was placed upon the cars of the Northern Central Railroad. As the train was proceeding north a collision occurred. The train was wrecked, and Mr. Banger’s aunt was tossed rudely out upon the roadside.
The people who were attending to things supposed that she was one of the victims of the accident, and so the coroner held an inquest; and as nobody knew who she was, she was sent back to Baltimore and interred by the authorities. As she did not reach Mr. Banger, he induced the express company to hunt her up; and when her resting-place was discovered, they took her up, placed her in a casket and shipped her again.
During that trip some thieves got into the express car and threw out the iron money-chest and Mr. Banger’s aunt, supposing that the casket contained treasure. On the following morning a farmer discovered Mr. Banger’s aunt in the casket leaning up against a tree in the woods. He sent for the coroner; and when another inquest had been held, they were about to bury the remains, and would have done so had not a telegram come from the express company instructing the authorities to ship Mr. Banger’s aunt back to Baltimore.
Mr. Banger, meantime, endured the most agonizing suspense, and began to talk about suing the express company for damages. At last, however, he received information that the departed one had been sent on upon the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. So she had. But as the train was crossing Gunpowder River the express car gave a lurch, and the next moment Mr. Banger’s aunt shot through the door into the water. She sailed around in the bay for several days, apparently uncertain whether to seek the ocean and move straight across for Europe, or to go up into the interior. She chose the latter course, and a week afterward she drifted ashore in the Lower Susquehanna.
As soon as she was discovered the coroner held an inquest, and then put her on the cars again. This time she came directly to Millburg, and Mr. Banger was at the depot waiting for her with the funeral. By some mistake, however, she was carried past and put out at the next town above, and the agent said that the best thing he could do would be to have her brought down in the morning. In the morning she came, and Mr. Banger was there with the friends of the family to receive her.
When they reached the cemetery, Rev. Dr. Dox delivered a most affecting discourse; and when all was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Banger had wiped away their tears, they went slowly home, sorrowful, of course, but somewhat glad that the long suspense was ended.
As Mr. Banger entered his sitting-room he saw a lady reposing in front of the fire, with her back toward him, toasting her toes. Before he had time to speak she looked around, and he was amazed to perceive that it was his dead-and-buried aunt. He was a little frightened at first, but in a moment he summoned up courage enough to ask,
“Why, how did you get here?”
“I came on the train, of course.”
“Yes, I know; but how did you get out of the cemetery?”
“Cemetery? What cemetery? I haven’t been in any cemetery!”
“Not been in the cemetery! Why, either I buried you an hour ago, or I am the worst mistaken man on earth.”
“Mr. Banger, what do you mean? This is a curious sort of a jest.”
Then Banger explained the situation to her; and as she solemnly protested that she had not been in Elmira, Banger was about to conclude that he had been the victim of a joke, when it suddenly occurred to him that maybe it was the aunt of Professor Banger. He sent out to investigate the matter, and found that the conjecture was correct. And when Professor Banger heard about it, he became very angry, and he entered suit against the lawyer Banger for embezzling his aunt. Then Lawyer Banger sued the professor for the express charges and the funeral expenses, and for a time it looked as if that eccentric and roving old lady would be the cause of infinite trouble; but the difficulty was finally compromised by the lawyer Banger accepting half the amount of his expenses.
* * * * *
Professor Banger was originally a telegraph-operator, but some years ago he saved up a small sum of money, with which he constructed a balloon. Then he tacked “professor” to his name, and began to devote himself to science and the show business. His account of one of his recent excursions is not only entertaining, but it proves that he is an ardent student of natural phenomena. He said to me,
“We went up at Easton, Pennsylvania; Conly, Jones and myself, and it was the finest trip I ever took. Perfectly splendid! We got the balloon full about twelve o’clock, and the crowd held her down until we were ready. Then I gave the word and they let go, and we went a-humming into the air. One man got caught in a twist of the rope as she gave her first spurt upward, and it slammed him up against a fence as if he’d been shot out of a gun. Smashed in three or four of his ribs, I believe, and cracked his leg.
“But we went up beautifully about fifteen hundred feet, and while we were looking at the charming scenery we ran into a cloud, and I told Conly to throw out some ballast. He heaved over a couple of sand-bags, and one of them accidentally fell on Major Wiggins’ hired girl, who was hanging clothes in the garden, and the other went into his chimney and choked it up. He was mad as fury about it when we came down. No enthusiasm for science. Some men don’t care a cent whether the world progresses or not.
[Illustration: BALLAST]
“Well, sir, we shot up about a thousand feet more, and then Jones dropped the lunch-basket overboard by accident, and we went up nearly four miles Conly got blue in the face, Jones fainted, and I came near going under myself. A minute more we’d all’ve been dead men; but I gave the valve a jerk, and we came down like a rocket-stick. When the boys came to, Jones said he wanted to get out; and as we were only a little distance from the ground, I threw out the grapnel.
“That minute a breeze struck her, and she went along at about ninety miles an hour over some man’s garden, and the grapnel caught his grape-arbor snatched it up, and pretty soon got it tangled with the weathercock on the Presbyterian church-steeple. I cut the rope and left it there, and I understand that the deacons sued the owner because he wouldn’t take it down. Raised an awful fuss and sent the sheriff after me. Trying to make scientific investigation seem like a crime, and I working all the time like a horse to unfold the phenomena of nature! If they had loved knowledge, they wouldn’t’ve cared if I’d’ve ripped off their old steeple and dropped it down like an extinguisher on top of some factory chimney.
“So, when we left the grape-arbor, we went up again, and Jones got sicker and said he must get out. So I rigged up another grapnel and threw it over. We were just passing a farm near the river; and as the wind was high, the grapnel tore through two fences and pulled the roof off of a smoke-house, and then, as nothing would hold her, we swooped into the woods, when we ran against a tree. The branches skinned Conly’s face and nearly put out my right eye, and knocked four teeth out of Jones’ mouth. It was the most exciting and interesting voyage I ever made in my life; and I was just beginning to get some satisfaction from it–just getting warmed up and preparing to take some meteorological observations–when Jones became so very anxious to quit that I didn’t like to refuse, although it went fearfully against the grain for the reason that I hated to give up and abandon my scientific investigations.
“So I threw out my coat and boots, and made the other fellows do the same, and we rose above the trees and sailed along splendidly until we struck the river. Then she suddenly dodged down, and the edge of the car caught in the water; so the wind took her, and we went scudding along like lightning, nearly drowned. Conly was washed overboard, and that lightened her, so she went up again. I was for staying up, but Jones said he’d die if he didn’t get out soon; and besides, he thought we ought to look after Conly. But I said Conly was probably drowned, anyhow, so it was hardly worth while to sacrifice our experiments on that account; and I told Jones that a man of his intelligence ought to be willing to endure something for the sake of scientific truth. And Jones said, ‘Hang scientific truth!’–actually made that remark; and he said that if I didn’t let him out he’d jump out. He was sick, you know. The man was not himself, or he would never have talked in that way about a voyage that was so full of interest and so likely to reveal important secrets of nature.
“But to oblige him I at last got her down on the other side of the river, and a farmer ran out and seized the rope. While we were talking to him I was just telling him that, as the gas was running out of the neck of the balloon, maybe he’d better put out his cigar, when all of a sudden there was a terrific bang. The gas exploded and wrapped us in a sheet of flame, and the next minute some of the neighbors picked up me and Jones. Jones was roasted nearly to a crisp. Exciting, wasn’t it?
“And they took him over to the farmhouse, where we found that they had fished out Conly and were bringing him to. When he revived, they sent the invalid corps back to town in a wagon, Jones groaning all the way and I arguing with him to show that science requires her votaries to give up a little of their personal comfort for the benefit it does the human race, and Conly saying he wished he was well enough to go out and bang the inventor of balloons with a gun.
“As soon as we got back to Easton a constable arrested me for chucking that ignorant opponent of scientific inquiry up against the fence and wrecking him. When I was let off on bail, I began to build a new balloon. She’s nearly done now, and I’m going to make an ascension early next month in search of the ozone belt. Won’t you go up with me? The day is going to come when everybody will travel that way. It’s the most exhilarating motion in the world. Come on up and help me make scientific observations on the ozone belt.”
But the invitation was declined. The _Patriot_, however, will have a good obituary notice of the professor all ready, in type.
CHAPTER XXXI.
_VARIOUS THINGS_.
It is a notorious fact that itinerant circus companies pay very poorly, and that the man who does not get his money from them in advance is not very likely to get it at all. Major Slott of _The Patriot_ has suffered a good deal from these concerns; and when “The Great European Circus and Metropolitan Caravan” tried to slip off the other day without settling its advertising bill, he called upon the sheriff and got him to attach the Bengal tiger for the debt. The tiger was brought in its cage and placed in the composing-room, where it consumed fifteen dollars’ worth of meat in two days–the major’s bill was only twelve dollars–and scratched one trouser leg off of the reporter, who was standing in front of the cage stirring up the animal with a broom. On the third day the bottom fell out of the cage; and as the tiger seemed to want to roam around and inquire into things, the whole force of compositors all at once felt as if they ought to go suddenly down stairs and give the animal a chance. With that mysterious instinct which distinguishes dumb animals, and which goes far to prove that they have souls, the tiger went at once for the door of the major’s sanctum, and it broke in just as Slott was in the middle of a tearing editorial upon “Our Tendencies toward Caesarism.” The major, however, did not hesitate to knock off. He stopped at once, and emerged with a fine, airy grace through the window, bringing the sash with him; and then he climbed up the water-spout to the roof, where he sat until a hook-and-ladder company came and took him off. _The Patriot_ did not issue for a week; for although the major bombarded the tiger with shot-guns pointed through the windows, and although the fire-engine squirted hot water at him, the brute got along very comfortably until Saturday night, when he tried to swallow a composing-stick and choked to death. When they entered the room, they found that the animal had upset all the type and had soaked himself in ink and then rolled over nearly every square inch of the floor, while the major’s leader on “Caesarism” was saturated with water and perforated with shot-holes. After this circus advertisements in _The Patriot_ will be paid for in advance.
[Illustration: MAJOR SLOTT’S TIGER]
In one of the issues of his paper, just after the trouble with the tiger, the major offered some reflections upon the general subject of “Tigers,” in which he gave evidence that he had recovered his good-humor to some extent. He said,
“We have read with very deep interest a description of how Van Amburgh used to obtain control over tigers and other wild beasts. All he did was to mesmerize them two or three times, and they soon recognized his power and obeyed him. The thing seems simple and easy enough, now that we understand it, and we have a mysterious impression that we could walk out into a jungle and subdue the first tiger we met by making a few passes at him with our hands. But we are not anxious to do this–for one reason, because the Indian jungles are so far away, and for another, because we do not want to hurt an innocent tiger. If we have to meddle with such animals, we always prefer to operate with those that are stuffed. Show us a tiger with sawdust bowels, and we will stand in front of him and make mesmeric motions for a week without the quiver of a nerve. Not that we are timid when the tiger is alive, but simply because a fur-store is more convenient than a jungle, and there is less danger of wetting our feet. If we happened to be in India and we wanted a tiger, we should unhesitatingly go out and stand boldly in front of the very first one we saw–tied to a tree–and we should bring him home instantly if we could find a man willing to lead him with a string. But this kind of courage is born in some men. It cannot be acquired; and timid persons who intend to practice Van Amburgh’s method will find it more judicious to begin the mesmerizing operation by soothing the animal with a howitzer.”
[Illustration: FACING THE TIGER]
* * * * *
The lightning-rod man haunts our county as he does the rest of the civilized portion of the country; and although occasionally he secures a victim, sometimes it happens that he gets worsted in his attempts to beguile his fellow-men. Such was his fate upon a recent occasion in our village.
The other day a lightning-rod man drove up in front of a handsome edifice standing in the midst of trees and shrubs in Millburg, and spoke to Mr. Potts, who was sitting on the steps in front. He accosted Potts as the owner of the residence, and said,
“I see you have no lightning-rods on this house.”
“No,” said Potts.
“Are you going to put any on?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of it,” replied Potts.
“You ought to. A tall building like this is very much exposed. I’d like to run you up one of my rods; twisted steel, glass fenders, nickel-plated tips–everything complete. May I put one up to show you? I’ll do the job cheap.”
“Certainly you may, if you want to. I haven’t the slightest objection,” said Potts.
During the next half hour the man had his ladders up and his assistants at work, and at the end of that time the job was done. He called Potts out into the yard to admire it. He said to Potts,
“Now, that is all well enough; but if it was _my_ house, I’d have another rod put on the other side. There’s nothing like being protected thoroughly.”
“That’s true,” said Potts; “it would be better.”
“I’ll put up another, shall I?” asked the man.
“Why, of course, if you think it’s best,” said Potts.
Accordingly, the man went to work again, and soon had the rod in its place.
“That’s a first-rate job,” he said to Potts as they both stood eyeing it. “I like such a man as you are. Big-hearted, liberal, not afraid to put a dollar down for a good thing. There’s some pleasure in dealin’ with you. I like you so much that I’d put a couple more rods on that house, one on the north end and one on the south, for almost nothin’.”
“It would make things safer, I suppose,” said Potts.
“Certainly it would. I’d better do it, hadn’t I, hey?”
“Just as you think proper,” said Potts.
So the man ran up two more rods, and then he came down and said to Potts, “There! that’s done. Now let’s settle up.”
“Do what?”
“Why, the job’s finished, and now I’ll take my money.”
“You don’t expect me to pay you, I hope?”
“Of course I do. Didn’t you tell me to put those rods on your house?”
“My house!” shouted Potts. “Thunder and lightning! I never ordered you to put those rods up. It would have been ridiculous. Why, man, this is the court-house, and I’m here waiting for the court to assemble. I’m on the jury. You seemed to be anxious to rush out your rods; and as it was none of my business, I let you go on. Pay for it! Come, now, that’s pretty good.”
The people who were present say that the manner in which that lightning-rod man tore around and swore was fearful. But when he got his rods off of the court-house, he left permanently. He don’t fancy the place.
Keyser had lightning-rods placed upon his barn three or four years ago; but during last summer the building was struck by lightning and burned. When he got the new barn done, a man came around with a red wagon and wanted to sell him a set of Bolt & Burnam’s patent lightning-rods.
“I believe not,” said Keyser; “I had rods on the barn at the time of the–“
“I know,” exclaimed the agent–“I know you had; and very likely that’s the reason you were struck. Nothin’s more likely to attract lightnin’ than worthless rods.”
“How do you know they were worthless?”
“Why, I was drivin’ by yer in the spring, and I seen them rods, and I says to myself, ‘That barn’ll be struck some time, but there’s no use in tryin’ to convince Mr. Keyser;’ so I didn’t call. I knowed it, because they had iron tips. A rod with iron tips is no better’n a clothes-prop to ward off lightnin’.”
“The man who sold them to me said they had platinum tips,” remarked Keyser.
“Ah! this is a wicked world, Mr. Keyser. You can’t be too cautious. Some of these yer agents lie like a gas-meter. It’s awful, sir. They are wholly untrustworthy. Them rods was the most ridicklus sham I ever see–a regular gouge. They wa’n’t worth the labor it took to put ’em up. They wa’n’t, now. That’s the honest truth.”
“What kind do you offer?”
“Well, sir, I’ve got the only genuine lightnin’-rod that’s made. It’s constructed on scientific principles. Professor Henry says it’s sure to run off the electric fluid every time–twisted charcoal iron, glass insulators, eight points on each rod, warranted solid platinum. We give a written guarantee with each rod. Never had a house struck since we began to offer this rod to the public. Positive fact. The lightnin’ll play all around a house with one of ’em and never touch it. A thunder-storm that’d tear the bowels out of the American continent would leave your house as safe as a polar bear in the middle of an iceberg. Shall I run you one up?”
“I don’t know,” said Keyser, musingly.
“I’ll put you up one cheap, and then you’ll have somethin’ reliable–somethin’ there’s no discount on.”
“You say the old rod was a fraud?”
“The deadliest fraud you ever heard of. It hadn’t an ounce of platinum within a mile of it. The man that sold it ought to be prosecuted, and the fellow that put it up without insulators should be shot. It’s too bad the farmers should be gouged in this sort of way.”
“And Bolt & Burnam’s rod is not a fraud?”
“A fraud? Why, really, my dear sir, just cast your eye over Professor Henry’s letter and these certificates, and remember that we give a _written guarantee_–a positive protection, of course.”
“Just cast _your_ eye over that,” said Keyser, handing him a piece of paper.
“Well, upon my word! This is indeed somewhat–that is to say it is, as it were–it looks–it looks a little like one of our own certificates.”
“Just so,” said Keyser. “That old rod was one of Bolt & Burnam’s. You sold it to my son-in-law; you gave this certificate; you swore the points were platinum, and your man put it up.”
“Then I suppose we can’t trade?”
“Well, I should think not,” said Keyser. Whereupon the man mounted the red wagon and moved on.
* * * * *
When Benjamin P. Gunn, the life insurance agent, called upon Mr. Butterwick, the following conversation ensued:
_Gunn_. “Mr. Butterwick, you have no insurance on your life, I believe? I dropped in to see if I can’t get you to go into our company. We offer unparalleled inducements, and–“
_Butterwick_. “I don’t want to insure.”
_Gunn_. “The cost is just nothing worth speaking of; a mere trifle. And then we pay enormous dividends, so that you have so much security at such a little outlay that you can be perfectly comfortable and happy.”
_Butterwick_. “But I don’t want to be comfortable and happy. I’m trying to be miserable.”
_Gunn_. “Now, look at this thing in a practical light. You’ve got to die some time or other. That is a dreadful certainty to which we must all look forward. It is fearful enough in any event, but how much more so when a man knows that he leaves nothing behind him! We all shrink from death, we all hate to think of it; the contemplation of it fills us with awful dread; but reflect, what must be the feelings of the man who enters the dark valley with the assurance that in a pecuniary sense his life has been an utter failure? Think how–“
_Butterwick_. “Don’t scare me a bit. I want to die; been wanting to die for years. Rather die than live any time.”
_Gunn_. “I say, think how wretched will be the condition of those dear ones whom you leave behind you! Will not the tears of your heartbroken widow be made more bitter by the poverty in which she is suddenly plunged, and by the reflection that she is left to the charity of a cold and heartless world. Will not–“
_Butterwick_. “I wouldn’t leave her a cent if I had millions. It’ll do the old woman good to skirmish around for her living. Then she’ll appreciate me.”
_Gunn_. “Your poor little children, too. Fatherless, orphaned, they will have no one to fill their famished mouths with bread, no one to protect them from harm. You die uninsured, and they enter a life of suffering from the keen pangs of poverty. You insure in our company, and they begin life with enough to feed and clothe them, and to raise them above the reach of want.”
_Butterwick_. “I don’t want to raise them above the reach of want. I want them to want. Best thing they can do is to tucker down to work as I did”
_Gunn_. “Oh, Mr. Butterwick, try to take a higher view of the matter. When you are an angel and you come back to revisit the scenes of earth, will it not fill you with sadness to see your dear ones exposed to the storm and the blast, to hunger and cold?”
_Butterwick_. “I’m not going to be an angel; and if I was, I wouldn’t come back.”
_Gunn_. “You are a poor man now. How do you know that your family will have enough when you are gone to pay your funeral expenses, to bury you decently?”
_Butterwick_. “I don’t want to be buried.”
_Gunn_. “Perhaps Mrs. Butterwick will be so indignant at your neglect that she will not mourn for you, that she will not shed a tear over your bier.”
_Butterwick_. “I don’t want a bier, and I’d rather she wouldn’t cry any.”
_Gunn_. “Well, then, s’posin’ you go in on the endowment plan and take a policy for five thousand dollars, to be paid you when you reach the age of fifty?”
_Butterwick_. “I don’t want five thousand dollars when I’m fifty. I wouldn’t take it if you were to fling it at me and pay me to take it.”
_Gunn_. “I’m afraid, then, I’ll have to say good-morning.”
_Butterwick_. “I don’t want you to say good-morning; you can go without saying it.”
_Gunn_. “I’ll quit.”
_Butterwick_. “Aha! now you’ve hit it! I _do_ want you to quit, and as suddenly as you can.”
Then Mr. Gunn left. He thinks he will hardly insure Butterwick.
[Illustration: FINIS]