Cordwood Part 12

MR. SWEENEY'S CAT.

Robert Ormsby Sweeney is a druggist of St. Paul; and though a recent chronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descendant of a sure-enough king, and though there is mighty good purple, royal blood in his veins that dates back where kings used to have something to do to earn their salary, he goes right on with his regular business, selling drugs at the great sacrifice which druggists will make sometimes in order to place their goods within the reach of all.

As soon as I learned that Mr. Sweeney had barely escaped being a crowned head, I got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up, and I told him that people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible, and that, as it hadn't shown itself in his family for years, he might perhaps finally wear it out.

He is a mighty pleasant man, anyhow, and you can have just as much fun with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal blood in his veins. You would be with him for days on a fishing trip and never notice it at all.

But I was going to speak more in particular of Mi. Sweeney's cat. Mr.

Sweeney had a large cat named Dr. Mary Walker, of which he was very fond. Dr. Mary Walker remained at the drug store all the time, and was known all over St. Paul as a quiet and reserved cat. If Dr. Mary Walker took in the town after office hours n.o.body seemed to know anything about it. She would be around bright and cheerful the next morning, and attend to her duties at the store just as though nothing whatever had ever happened.

One day last summer Mr. Sweeney left a large plate of fly-paper with water on it in the window, hoping to gather in a few quarts of flies in a deceased state. Dr. Mary Walker used to go to this window during the afternoon and look out on the busy street while she called up pleasant memories of her past life. That afternoon she thought she would call up some more memories, so she went over on the counter, and from there jumped down on the window-sill, landing with all four feet in the plate of fly-paper.

At first she regarded it as a joke and treated the matter very lightly, but later on she observed that the fly-paper stuck to her feet with great tenacity of purpose. Those who have never seen the look of surprise and deep sorrow that a cat wears when she finds herself glued to a whole sheet of fly-paper can not fully appreciate the way Dr. Mary Walker felt. She did not dash wildly through a $150 plate-gla.s.s window, as some cats would have done. She controlled herself and acted in the coolest manner, though you could have seen that mentally she suffered intensely. She sat down a moment to more fully outline a plan for the future. In doing so she made a great mistake. The gesture resulted in gluing the fly-paper to her person in such a way that the edge turned up behind her in the most abrupt manner and caused her great inconvenience.

Some one at that time laughed in a coa.r.s.e and heartless way, and I wish you could have seen the look of pain that Dr. Mary Walker gave him.

When she went away, she did not go around the prescription case as the rest of us did, but strolled through the middle of it, and so on out through the gla.s.s door at the rear of the store. We did not see her go through the gla.s.s door, but we found pieces of fly-paper and fur on the ragged edges of a large aperture in the gla.s.s, and we kind of jumped at the conclusion that Dr. Mary Walker had taken that direction in retiring from the room.

Dr. Mary Walker never returned to St. Paul, and her exact whereabouts are not known, though every effort was made to find her. Fragments of fly-paper and brindle hair were found as far west as the Yellowstone National Park, and as far north as the British line, but the Doctor herself was not found. My own theory is that if she turned her bow to the west so as to catch the strong easterly gale on her quarter, with the sail she had set and her tail pointing directly toward the zenith, the chances for Dr. Mary Walker's immediate return are extremely slim.

BILL NYE'S LETTER.

THE HUMORIST WRITES FROM HIS WINTER RESORT IN HIS USUALLY HAPPY VEIN ON VARIOUS TOPICS.

ASHEVILLE, N. C.--As soon as I saw in the papers that my health was failing, I decided to wing my way South for the winter. So I closed up my establishment at Slipperyelmhurst, told the game-keeper not to monkey with the preserves and came here, where I am now writing. At first it seems odd to me that I should be writing from where I now am, but the more I think it over the better I am reconciled to it, for what better place can a man select from which to write a letter than the point where he is located at the time.

Asheville is an enterprising cosmopolitan city of six or seven thousand people and a visiting population during the season of sixty thousand more. It is situated in the picturesque valley of the French Brood and between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. Asheville is the metropolis of Western North Carolina, and has no compet.i.tion nearer than Knoxville, Tenn., one hundred and sixty miles away, and, in fact, not in any way competing with Asheville, for it is in another county altogether.

This region of country is from 2,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level and is, in fact, a mountain region with a southern exposure.

Strange stories are told here of people who came five, ten, twenty or more years ago, with a view of dying here, but who afterward decided to live on, and they are living yet. One man who was a survivor of the Samso-Philistine war, if I am not mistaken, came here at last from the mouth of the Amazon, full of malaria. He had been kind of "down in the mouth"--of the Amazon for some years, and they say his liver looked like a rubber door-mat and his skin was like the cover of a sun-kissed ham.

He picked up his spirits here and recovered his youth, and though he was very old when he came, he is still older now and in pretty good health.

I went to see him the other day. He is so old that there is moss on the north side of him and hieroglyphics on his feet. When I made some facetious remarks to him and told him a story I had recently acquired, he brightened up a good deal and emitted a dry, cackling laugh like a xylophone, and said that he believed he enjoyed that story just as well as he did when they used to tell it in the rifle-pits in front of Troy.

He said he liked Asheville very much indeed.

Asheville is called the Switzerland of America. It has been my blessed privilege during the past twenty years to view nearly all the Switzerlands of America that are here, but this is fully the equal if not the superior of any of them.

You can climb to the top of Beaucatcher Mountain and see a beautiful sight in any direction, and on most any day of the year. Every where the eye rests on a broad sweep of dark-blue climate. Up in the gorges, under the whispering pines, along the rhododendron bordered margins of the Swannonoa, or the French Brood, out through the Gap, and down the thousand mountain brooks, you will find enough climate in twenty minutes to last a week.

The chief products of Western North Carolina are smoking tobacco and climate. If you do not like the climate you can keep yourself to the smoking tobacco.

Here you will find old Mr. Ozone with his coat off and a feather duster in his hand, prepared to dust the cobwebs from the catacombs of the asthmatic or the consumptive. There is enough climate wasted here every year to supply a city the size of Chicago. Moreover, there is now a handsome hotel here called the Battery Park--that has been full ever since it was built and you can get good saddle horses, carriages or donkeys at reasonable rates in town.

The donkey is quite a feature of this country as he is apt to be of all mountain countries in fact. I have never a.s.sociated with a more genial urbane or refined donkey than we have here. He is generally a soft mouse color, about nine hands high, and delights in making small, elongated foot-prints on the sands of time.

This small animal of the mountains is frequently accompanied by a robust but poorly-modulated voice. It is very pathetic and generally needs a little oil on it. The North Carolina donkey like the Colorado burro, lives to a great age. He then dies.

Asheville has splendid water works supplying first-cla.s.s water to those who wish to use this popular fluid; electric lights all over the city, a street railway organized with its money put up to construct it next summer, first-cla.s.s churches, schools and colleges, well supplied markets with moderate prices, and lots of genuine attractions beside the climate. Fuel and whiskey are about the same that they are in Chicago, so a man need not suffer here provided he has a moderate income.

The sportsman may sport here with impunity, and the angler may also triangular relaxation.

Moonshine whisky is also produced here in the mountains, though in a crude way, and very quietly. None of the moonshiners advertise much in the papers. They do not care for a big run of trade, but seem content to remain in obscurity. Sometimes, however, their work attracts the attention of prominent people who come out and call on them with shot-guns and regrets.

Then the moonshiner does his distillery up in a napkin and goes away into the primeval forest. Some years ago a party of revenue officers hunted out one of these amateur distillers and chased him up the side of the mountain, where they surrounded and captured him with his distillery on his back, like a Babc.o.c.k fire-extinguisher, and still warm.

The officer, in his report of the capture, referred to it as a still hunt, whereupon his commission was promptly revoked. The man who tries to have any fun with the present Administration must have his resignation where he can put his hand on it at a moment's warning.

DECLINED WITH THANKS.

BILL NYE POLITELY REFUSES THE JOB OF KING OF BULGARIA.

HE GIVES HIS REASONS FOR THE DECLINATION AND THROWS IN CHUNKS OF HEAVY-WEIGHT ADVICE--ADVISABILITY OF FORMING A ROYAL TRADES-UNION.

Bill Nye has furnished to the _World_ the following copy of a cable dispatch just forwarded to the Allied Powers of Europe:

SLIPPERYELMHURST, HUDSON, WIS.--_To the Allied Powers, care of Lord Salisbury._ Gentlemen: Your favor of recent date regarding my acceptance of the Bulgarian throne, which is now vacant and for rent, in which note you tender me the use of said throne for one year, with the privilege of three, is at hand. You also state that the Allied Powers are not favorable to Prince Nicholas and that you would prefer a dark horse.

Looking over the entire list of obscure men, it would seem you have been unable to fix upon a man who has made a better showing in this line than I have.

While I thank you for this kind offer of a throne that has, as you state, been newly refitted and refurnished throughout, I must decline it for reasons which I will try to give in my own rough, unpolished way.

In the first place I read in the dispatches to-day that Russia is mobilizing her troops, and I do not want anything to do with a country that will treat its soldiers in that way. Troops have certain rights as well as those who have sought the pleasanter walks of peace.

That is not all. I do not care to enter into a squabble in which I am not interested. Neither do I care to go to Bulgaria in the capacity of a carpet-bag monarch from the ten-cent counter, wearing a boiler-iron overcoat by day and a stab-proof corset at night. I have always been in favor of Bulgaria's selection of a monarch _viva voce_ or _vox populi_, whichever you think would look the best in print.

I hate to see a monarch in hot water all the time and threatening to abdicate. Supposing he does abdicate, what good will that do, when he leaves a widow with nothing but a second-hand throne and a crown two sizes too small for his successor? I have always said, and I still say, that nothing can be more pitiful than the sight of a lovely queen whose husband, in a wild frenzy of remorse, has abdicated himself.

Nothing, I repeat, can be sadder than this picture of a deserted queen, left high and dry, without means, forced at last to go to the p.a.w.nbrokers with a little plated, fluted crown with rabbit-skin ear-tabs on it!

We are p.r.o.ne to believe that a monarch has nothing to do but issue a ukase or a mandamus and that he will then have all the funds he wants; but such is not the case. Lots of our most successful monarchs are liable to be overtaken any year by a long, cold winter and found as late as Christmas reigning in their summer scepters.

I am inclined also to hesitate about accepting the Bulgarian throne for another reason--I do not care to be deposed when I want to do something else. I have had my deposition taken several times and it did not look like me either time.

I think that you monarchs ought to stand by each other more. If you would form a society of free and independent monarchs there in Europe, where you are so plenty, you could have a good time and every little while you could raise your salaries if you worked it right.

Now you pull and haul each other all the time and keep yourselves in hot water day and night. That's no way for a dynasty any more than any one else. It impairs your usefulness and fills our telegraphic columns full of names that we can not p.r.o.nounce. Every little while we have to pay the operator at this end of the cable ten dollars for writing in a rapid, flowing hand that "meanwhile Russia will continue to disregard the acts of the Sobranje."

Why should a great country like Russia go about trying to make trouble with a low-priced Sobranje! I think that a closer alliance of crowned heads, whose interests are identical, would certainly relieve the monotony of many a long, tedious reign. If I were to accept the throne of Bulgaria, which is not likely, so long as my good right arm can still jerk a fluent cross-cut saw in the English tongue, I would form a syndicate of monarchs with grips, pa.s.s-words, explanations and signals; every scepter would have a contralto whistle in the b.u.t.t end which could be used as a sign of distress, while the other end could have a cork in it, and then steering a tottering dynasty down through the dim vista of crumbling centuries would not be so irksome as it now is.