A Guest at the Ludlow and Other Stories Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: ... _'Three or four times as much oxygen is consumed in activity as in repose.' (Hence the hornet's nests introduced by me last season.)_ (Page 124)]

"Yes. I went into it with no notions of making a pile of money, but I argued that these folks would give anything for health. We folks are apt to argy that people from town are all well off and liberal, and that if they can come out and get all the b.u.t.termilk and straw rides they want, and a little flush of color and a wood-tick on the back of their necks, they don't reck a pesky reck what it costs. This is only occasionly so. Ask any doctor you know of if the average man won't give anything to save his life, and then when it's saved put his propity into his womern's name. That's human. You know the good book says a pure man from New York is the n.o.blest work of G.o.d."

"Well, when did this desire to endosmose your fellow-man first break out on you?"

"About a year and a half ago it began to rankle in my mind. I read up everything I could get hold of regarding the longevity and such things to be had here. In the winter I sent in a fair, honest, advertis.e.m.e.nt regarding my place, and, Judas H. Priest! before I could say 'scat' in the spring, here came letters by the dozen, mostly from school-teachers at first, that had a good command of language, but did not come. I afterwards learned that these letters was frequently wrote by folks that was not able to go into the country, so wrote these letters for mental improvement, hoping also that some one in the country might want them for the refinement they would engender in the family.

"I took one young woman from town once, and allowed her 25 per cent. off for her refining influence. Her name was Etiquette McCracken. She knew very little in the first place, and had added to it a good deal by storing up in her mind a lot of membranous theories and damaged facts that ought to ben looked over and disinfected. She was the most hopeless case I ever saw, Mr. Nye. She was a metropolitan a.s.s. You know that a town greenhorn is the greenest greenhorn in the world, because he can't be showed anything. He knows it all. Well, Etiquette McCracken very nigh paralyzed what few manners my children had. She pointed at things at table, and said she wanted some o' that, and she had a sort of a starved way of eating, and short breath, and seemed all the time apprehensive.

She probably et off the top of a flour barrel at home. She came and stayed all summer at our house, with a wardrobe which was in a shawl-strap wrapped up in a programme of one of them big theaters on Bowery street. I guess she led a gay life in the city. She said she did.

She said if her set was at our house they would make it ring with laughter. I said if they did I'd wring their cussed necks with laughter.

'Why,' she says, 'don't you like merriment?' 'Yes,' I says, 'I like merriment well enough, but the cackle of a vacant mind rattling around in a big farmhouse makes me a fiend, and unmans me, and I gnaw up two or three people a day till I get over it,' I says."

"Well, what became of Miss McCracken?"

"Oh, she went up to her room in September, dressed herself in a long linen duster, did some laundry work, and the next day, with her little shawl-strap, she lit out for the city, where she was engaged to marry a very wealthy old man whose mind had been crowded out by an intellectual tumor, but who had a kind heart and had pestered her to death for years to marry him and inherit his wealth. I afterwards learned that in this matter she had lied."

"Did you meet any other pleasant people last season?"

"Yes. I met some blooded children from Several Hundred and Fifth street.

They come here so's they could get a breath of country air and wear out their old cloze. Their mother said the poor things wanted to get out of the mawlstrum of meetropolitan life. She said it was awful where they lived. Just one round of gayety all the while. They come down and salted my hens, and then took and turned in and chased a new milch cow eight miles, with two of 'em holdin' of her by the tail, and another on top of her with a pair of Buffalo Bill spurs and a false face, yelling like a volunteer fire company. Then the old lady kicked because we run short of milk. Said it was great if she couldn't have milk when she come to the wilderness to live and paid her little old $3 a week just as regular as Sat.u.r.day night come round.

"These boys picked on mine all summer because my boys was plain little fellers with no underwear, but good impulses and a general desire to lay low and eventually git there, understand. My boys is considerable bleached as regards hair, and freckled as to features, and they are not ready in conversation like a town boy, but they would no more drive a dumb animal through the woods till it was all het up, or take a new milch cow and scare the daylights out of her, and yell at her and pull out her tail, and send her home with her pores all open, than they'd be sent to the legislature without a crime.

"A neighbor of mine that see these boys when they was scarin' my cow to death said if they'd of been his'n he'd rather foller 'em to their grave than seen 'em do that. That's putting of it rather strong, but I believe I would myself.

"We had a nice old man that come out here to attend church, he said. He belonged to a big church in town, where it cost him so much that he could hardly look his Maker in the face, he said. Last winter, he told us, they sold the pews at auction, and he had an affection for one, 'specially 'cause he and his wife had set in it all their lives, and now that she was dead he wanted it, as he wanted the roof that had been over them all their married lives. So he went down when they auctioned 'em off, as it seems they do in those big churches, and the bidding started moderate, but run up till they put a premium on his'n that froze him out, and he had to take a cheap one where he couldn't hear very well, and it made him sort of bitter. Then in May, he says, the Palestine rash broke out among the preachers in New York, and most of 'em had to go to the Holy Land to get over it, because that is the only thing you can do with the Palestine rash when it gets a hold on a pastor. So he says to me, 'I come out here mostly to see if I could get any information from the Throne of Grace.'

"He was a rattlin' fine old feller, and told me a good deal about one thing and another. He said he'd seen it stated in the paper that salvation was free, but in New York he said it was pretty well protected for an old-established industry.

"He knew Deacon Decker pretty well. Deacon Decker was an old playmate of Russell Sage, but didn't do so well as Russ did. He went once to New York after he got along in years, and Sage knew him, but he couldn't seem to place Sage. 'Why, Decker,' says Sage, 'don't you know me?'

Decker says, 'That's all right. You bet I know ye. You're one of these fellows that knows everybody. There's another feller around the corner that helps you to remember folks. I know ye. I read the papers. Git out.

Scat. Torment ye, I ain't in here to-day buyin' green goods, nor yet to lift a freight bill for ye. So avaunt before I sick the police on ye.'

"Finally Russ identified himself, and shook dice with the deacon to see which should buy the lunch at the dairy kitchen. This is a true story, told me by an old neighbor of Deacon Decker's.

"Deacon Decker once discovered a loose knot in his pew seat in church, and while considering the plan of redemption, thoughtlessly pushed with considerable force on this knot with his thumb. At first it resisted the pressure, but finally it slipped out and was succeeded by the deacon's thumb. No one saw it, so the deacon, slightly flushed, gave it a stealthy wrench, but the knot-hole had a sharp conical bottom, and the edge soon caught and secured the rapidly swelling thumb of Deacon Decker.

"During the closing prayer he worked at it with great diligence and all the saliva he could spare, but it resisted. It was a sad sight. Finally he gave it up, and said to himself the struggle was useless. He tried to be resigned and wait till all had gone. He shook his head when the plate was pa.s.sed to him, and only bowed when the brethren pa.s.sed him on the way out. Some thought that maybe he was cursed with doubts, but reckoned that they would pa.s.s away.

"Finally he was missed outside. He was generally so chipper and so cheery. So his wife was asked about him. 'Why, father's inside. I'll go and get him. I never knew him to miss shaking hands with all the folks.'

"So she went in and found Deacon Decker trying to interest himself with a lesson leaf in one hand, while his other was concealed under his hat.

He could fool the neighbors, but he could not fool his wife, and so she hustled around and told one or two, who told their wives, and they all came back to see the deacon and make suggestions to him.

"This little incident is true, and while it does not contain any special moral, it goes to show that an honest man gathers no moss, and also explains a large circular hole, and the tin patch over it, which may still be seen in the pew where Deacon Decker used to sit."

THREE OPEN LETTERS

XIV

_Colonel John L. Sullivan, at large:_

DEAR SIR--Will you permit me, without wishing to give you the slightest offense, to challenge you to fight in France with bare knuckles and police interference, between this and the close of navigation?

I have had no real good fight with anybody for some time, and should be glad to co-operate with you in that direction, preferring, however, to have it attended to in time so that I can go on with my fall plowing. I should also like to be my own stake holder.

We shall have to fight at 135 pounds, because I can not train above that figure without extra care and good feeding, while you could train down to that, I judge, if you begin to go without food on receipt of this challenge. I should ask that we fight under the rules of the London prize ring, in the Opera House in Paris. If you decide to accept, I will engage the house at once and put a few good reading notices in the papers.

I should expect a forfeit of $5,000 to be put up, so that in case you are in jail at the time, I may have something to reimburse me for my trip to Paris and the general upheaval of my whole being which arises from ocean travel.

I challenge you as a plain American citizen and an amateur, partially to a.s.sert the rights of a simple tax-payer and partly to secure for myself a name. I was, as a boy, the pride of my parents, and they wanted me to amount to something. So far, the results have been different. Will you not aid me, a poor struggler in the great race for supremacy, to obtain that notice which the newspapers now so reluctantly yield? You are said to be generous to a fault, especially your own faults, and I plead with you now to share your great fame by accepting my challenge and appearing with me in a mixed programme for the evening, in which we will jointly amuse and instruct the people, while at the same time it will give me a chance to become great in one day, even if I am defeated.

I have often admired your scholarly and spiritual expressions, and your modest life, and you will remember that at one time I asked you for your autograph, and you told me to go where the worm dieth not and the fire department is ineffectual. Will you not, I ask, aid a struggler and panter for fame, who desires the eye of the public, even if his own be italicised at the same time?

I must close this challenge, which is in the nature of an appeal to one of America's best-known men. Will you accept my humble challenge, so that I can go into training at once? We can leave the details of the fight to the _Mail and Express_, if you will, and the championship belt we can buy afterward. All I care for is the honor of being mixed up with you in some way, and enough of the gate money to pay for arnica and medical attendance.

Will you do it?

I know the audience would enjoy seeing us dressed for the fray, you so strong and so wide, I so pensive and so flat busted about the chest. Let us proceed at once, Colonel, to draw up the writings and begin to train.

You will never regret it, I am sure, and it will be the making of me.

I do not know your address, but trust that this will reach you through this book, for, as I write, you are on you way toward Canada, with a requisition and the police reaching after you at every town.

I am glad to hear that you are not drinking any more, especially while engaged in sleep. If you only confine your drinking to your waking hours, you may live to be a very old man, and your great, ma.s.sive brain will continue to expand until your hat will not begin to hold it.

What do you think of Browning? I should like to converse with you on the subject before the fight, and get your soul's best sentiments on his style of intangible thought wave.

I will meet you at Havre or Calais, and agree with you how hard we shall hit each other. I saw, at a low variety show the other day, two pleasing comedians who welted each other over the stomach with canes, and also pounded each other on the head with sufficient force to explode percussion caps on the top of the skull, and yet without injury. Do you not think that a prize-fight could be thus provided for? I will see these men, if you say so, and learn their methods.

Remember, it is not the punishment of a prize-fight for which I yearn, but the effulgent glory of meeting you in the ring, and having the cables and the press a.s.sociate my budding name with that of a man who has done so much to make men better--a man whose name will go down to posterity as that of one who sought to ameliorate and mellow and desiccate his fellow-men.

I will now challenge you once more, with great respect, and beg leave to remain, yours very truly,

BILL NYE.

_Hon. Ferdinand de Lesseps, Paris, France:_

DEAR SIR--I have some shares in the ca.n.a.l which you have been working on, and I am compelled to hypothecate them this summer, in order to paint my house. You have great faith in the future of the enterprise, and so I will give you the first chance on this stock of mine. You have suffered so much in order to do this work that I want to see the stock get into your hands. You deserve it. You shall have it. Ferdie, if you will send me a post-office money order by return mail, covering the par value of five hundred shares, I will lose the premium, because I am a little pressed for money. The painters will be through next week, and will want their pay.

As I say, I want to see you own the ca.n.a.l, for in fancy I can see you as you toiled down there in the hot sun, floating your wheelbarrow and your bonds down the valley with your perspiration. I can see you in the morning, with hot, red hands and a tin dinner pail, going to your toil, a large red cotton handkerchief sticking out of your hip pocket.

So I have decided that you ought to have control, if possible, of this great water front; besides, you have a larger family than I have to support. When I heard that you were the father of fifteen little children, and that you were in the sere and yellow leaf, I said to myself, a man with that many little mouths to feed, at the age of eighty, shall have the first crack at my stock. And so, if you will send the face value as soon as possible, I will say bong jaw, messue.

Yours truly,