Elbow-Room Part 20

Mr. Sloc.u.m was defeated, despite the fact that he wished to succeed.

Mr. Walsh, it appears, was disappointed, in the same contest, in a wholly different manner. Mr. Walsh was the predecessor of our present coroner, Mr. Maginn. How Mr. Walsh was elected he informed me in these words:

"You know," said Mr. Walsh, "that I didn't want that position. When they talked of nominating me, I told them, says I, 'It's no use; you needn't elect me; I'm not going to serve. D'you s'pose I'm going to give up a respectable business to become a kind of State undertaker?

I'm opposed to this _post-mortem_ foolery, any way. When a man's blown up with gunpowder, it don't interest me to know what killed him; so you needn't make me coroner, for I won't serve.'

"Well, do you believe that they persisted in nominating me on the Republican ticket--actually put me up as a candidate? So I published a letter declining the nomination; but they absolutely had the impudence to keep me on the ticket and to hold ma.s.s-meetings, at which they made speeches in my favor. I was pretty mad about it, because it showed such a disregard of my feelings; and so I chummed in with the Democrats, and for about two months I went around to the Democratic ma.s.s-meetings and spoke against myself and in favor of the opposition candidate. I thought I had them for sure, because I knew more about my own failings than those other fellows did, and I enlarged upon them until I made myself out--Well, I heaped up the iniquity until I used to go home feeling that I was a good deal wickeder sinner than I ever thought I was before. It did me good, too: I reformed. I've been a better man ever since.

"Now, you'd a thought people would a considered me pretty fair authority about my own unfitness for the office, but hang me if the citizens of this county positively didn't go to the polls and elect me by about eight hundred majority. I was the worst disappointed of any man you ever saw. I had repeaters around at the polls, too, voting for the Democratic candidate, and I paid four of the judges to falsify the returns, so as to elect him. But it was no use; the majority was too big. And on election night the Republican executive committee came round to serenade me, and as soon as the band struck up I opened on them with a shot-gun and wounded the ba.s.s drummer in the leg. But they kept on playing; and after a while, when they stopped, they poked some congratulatory resolutions under the front door, and gave me three cheers and went home. I was never so annoyed in my life.

"Then they sent me round my certificate of election, but I refused to receive it; and those fellows seized me and held me while Harry Hammer pushed the certificate into my coat-pocket, and then they all quit.

The next day a man was run over on the railroad, and they wanted me to tend to him. But I was angry, and I wouldn't. So what does the sheriff do but come here with a gang of police and carry me out there by force? And he hunted up a jury, which brought in a verdict. Then they wanted me to take the fees, but I wouldn't touch them. I said I wasn't going to give my sanction to the proceedings. But of course it was no use. I thought I was living in a free country, but I wasn't. The sheriff drew the money and got a mandamus from the court, and he came here one day while I was at dinner. When I said I wouldn't touch a dollar of it, he drew a pistol and said if I didn't take the money he'd blow my brains out. So what was a man to do? I resigned fifteen times, but somehow those resignations were suppressed. I never heard from them. Well, sir, at last I yielded, and for three years I kept skirmishing around, perfectly disgusted, meditating over folks that had died suddenly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORCED TO DO DUTY]

"And do you know that on toward the end of my term they had the face to try to nominate me again? It's a positive fact. Those politicians wanted me to run again; said I was the most popular coroner the county ever had; said that everybody liked my way of handling a dead person, it was so full of feeling and sympathy, and a lot more like that. But what did I do? I wasn't going to run any such risk again. So I went up to the city, and the day before the convention met I sent word down that I was dead. Circulated a report that I'd been killed by falling off a ferry-boat. Then they hung the convention-hall in black and pa.s.sed resolutions of respect, and then they nominated Barney Maginn.

"On the day after election I turned up, and you never saw men look so miserable, so cut to the heart, as those politicians. They said it was an infamous shame to deceive them in that way, and they declared that they'd run me for sheriff at the next election to make up for it. If they do, I'm going to move for good. I'm going to sail for Colorado, or some other decent place where they'll let a man alone. I'll die in my tracks before I'll ever take another office in this county. I will, now mind me!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

_THE MATUTINAL ROOSTER_.

Horatio remarks to Hamlet, "The morning c.o.c.k crew loud;" and I have no doubt he did; he always does, especially if he is confined during the performance of his vocal exercises to a narrow city yard surrounded by brick walls which act as sounding-boards to carry the vibrations to the ears of a sleeper who is already restless with the summer heat and with the buzzing of early and pertinacious flies. To such a man, aroused and indignant, there comes a profound conviction that the urban rooster is far more vociferous than his rural brethren; that he can sing louder, hold on longer and begin again more quickly than the bucolic c.o.c.k who has communed only with nature and known no envious longings to outshriek the morning milkman or the purveyor of catfish.

And he who is thus afflicted perhaps may be justified if he regards "the c.o.c.k, that trumpet of the morn," as an insufferable nuisance, whose only excuse for existence is that he is pleasant to the eye and the palate when, bursting with stuffing, he lies, brown and crisp, among the gravy, ready for the carving-knife.

But the man who is fortunate enough to dwell in the country during the ardent summer days takes a different and more kindly view of chanticleer. If he is waked early in the morning by the clarion voice of some neighboring c.o.c.k, he will not repine, provided he went to bed at a reasonably early hour, for he will hear some music that is not wholly to be despised. The rooster in the neighboring barn-yard gives out the theme. His voice is a deep, but broken, ba.s.s. It is suggestive of his having roosted during the night in a draft, which has inflamed his vocal chords so that his tones have lost their sweetness. It is as if a coffee-mill had essayed to crow. The theme is taken up by a thin-voiced rooster a quarter of a mile away, and scarcely has he reached the concluding note before a baritone c.o.c.k, a little more remote, repeats the cadence, only to have his song broken in upon by a nearer bird who understands exactly the part he is to play in the fugue. And so it pa.s.ses on from the one to the other, growing fainter and fainter in the distance as Shanghai sings to Bantam and Chittagong to Brahmapootra, until, at last, there is silence; and then, "O hark!

O hear! How thin and clear!" far, far away some rooster sends out a delicate falsetto note that might have come from a microscopic c.o.c.k who is practicing ventriloquism in the cellar. Instantly the catarrhal chicken in the next yard begins the refrain again with his hoa.r.s.e voice; and then again and again the fugue goes round, never tiring the listener, but always growing more musical, until the sun is fairly up, the hens awake and the scratching of the day is ready to begin.

The note of the c.o.c.k has been misrepresented. Shakespeare, following usage, perhaps, has given it as "c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo," and that is the accepted interpretation of it. But this does not convey the proper impression. We should say that if human syllables can tell the story they would a.s.sume some such form as:

_Ooauk-auk-auk-au-au-au-auk_!

It is a song that ought to be studied and glorified in print. Think what a history it has! That identical combination of sounds which wakes and maddens the sleeping citizen of to-day was heard by Noah and his family with precisely the same cadence and accent in the ark. It was that very crow that Peter heard when he had denied his Master. It is a crow that has come down to us from Eden almost without a moment's intermission. It is a crow which has pa.s.sed round the world century after century, and now pa.s.ses, as the herald of the coming of the sun.

It may yet be made the theme of a majestic musical composition, now that Wagner has come to teach men how to build a lyric drama upon a phrase. Perhaps the coming American national song may have this familiar crow for its inspiration and its burden. We might do worse, perhaps, than to take the rooster for our national bird, even if we reject his song as the basis of our national anthem. We took our eagle from Rome, as France did hers; would it not have been wiser if we had taken the c.o.c.k instead, as France did after the Revolution? The Romans and Greeks regarded the c.o.c.k as a sacred bird. The princ.i.p.al thing that the average school-boy remembers about Socrates is that he killed himself immediately after ordering that a c.o.c.k should be sacrificed to Aesculapius; and some have held that the reason of his suicide was the vociferousness of the c.o.c.k, which he wanted to kill in revenge for the misery it had caused him while he was trying to sleep or to think.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EARLY c.o.c.k]

The c.o.c.k is a braver bird than the eagle. He has ever been a bold and ready warrior, and has worn a warrior's spurs from the beginning. He has one high soldierly quality: he knows when he is whipped; for who has not seen him, when defeated in a gallant contest, sneak away to a distant-corner to stand, with ruffled feathers, upon a single leg, the very picture of humiliation and despair? And he is vigilant, for has he not for ages revolved upon church-steeples as the emblem of watchfulness? He has the homelier virtues. He is a kind father and a fond as well as a mult.i.tudinous husband. He knows how to protect his family from errant and disreputable roosters, and he is always willing to stand aside with unsatisfied appet.i.te and permit them to devour a dainty he has found. He is useful and admirable in his relation to this world, and he is not without value to the next, for popular belief has credited him with the office of warning revisiting spirits to retire from the earth; and when he crows all through the night, the Katie Kings and other ghostly persons who come from s.p.a.ce to rap upon tables and evoke discordant tw.a.n.gs from guitars are deaf to the seductive entreaties of the mediums. When

"This bird of dawning singeth all night long, ... then they say no spirit dares stir abroad."

Perhaps the true method of expelling Satan from the land and of reforming the corruption which afflicts the country is to place the c.o.c.k upon our standards and to offer him inducements to crow perpetually. There should be something to that effect in the political platforms. A goose saved Rome; why should not a rooster rescue America? Let the patriot who curses the noisy bird which crows him from his drowsy couch at an unseemly hour think of these things and allay his wrath with reflections upon the well-deserved glories of the matutinal rooster.

I have one neighbor who does not regard the crowing c.o.c.k with proper enthusiasm--who is indeed inclined to look upon it with disgust; but as he has been a victim of the bird's vociferousness, perhaps his sentiments of dislike for the proud bird may be excused.

The agricultural society of our county held a poultry show last fall, and Mr. b.u.t.terwick, who is a member of the society, was invited to deliver the address at the commencement of the fair. Mr. b.u.t.terwick prepared what he considered a very learned paper upon the culture of domestic fowls; and when the time arrived, he was on the platform ready to enlighten the audience. The birds were arranged around the hall in cages; and when the exhibition had been formally opened by the chairman, the orator came forward with his ma.n.u.script in his hand.

Just as he began to read it a black Poland rooster close to the stage uttered a loud and defiant crow. There were about two hundred roosters in the hall, and every one of them instantly began to crow in the most vehement manner, and the noise excited the hens so much that they all cackled as loudly they could.

Of course the speaker's voice could not be heard, and he came to a dead halt, while the audience laughed. After waiting for ten minutes silence was again obtained, and b.u.t.terwick began a second time.

As soon as he had uttered the words "Ladies and gentlemen," the Poland rooster, which seemed to have a grudge against the speaker, emitted another preposterous crow, and all the other fowls in the room joined in the deafening chorus. The audience roared, and b.u.t.terwick grew red in the face with pa.s.sion. But when the noise subsided, he went at it again, and got as far as "Ladies and gentlemen, the domestic barn-yard fowl affords a subject of the highest interest to the--" when the Poland rooster became engaged in a contest with an overgrown Shanghai chicken, and this set the hens of the combatants to cackling, and in a moment the entire collection was in another uproar. This was too much. Mr. b.u.t.terwick was beside himself with rage. He flung down his ma.n.u.script, rushed to the cage, and shaking his fist at the Poland chicken exclaimed,

"You diabolical fiend, I've half a mind to murder you!"

Then he kicked the cage to pieces with his foot, and seizing the rooster twisted its neck and flung it on the floor. Then he fled from the hall, followed by peals of laughter from the audience and more terrific clatter from the fowls. The exhibition was opened without further ceremony, and the dissertation on the domestic barn-yard fowl was ordered to be printed in the annual report of the proceedings of the society.

One day while I was talking with Mr. Keyser upon the subject of the c.o.c.k he pointed to a chicken that was roosting upon an adjoining fence, and told me a story about the fowl that I must refuse to believe.

"Perhaps you never noticed that rooster," said Keyser--"very likely you wouldn't have observed him; but I don't care in what light you look at him, the more you study him, the more talented he appears.

You talk about your American iggles and birds of freedom, but that insignificant-looking chicken yonder can give any of them twenty points and pocket them at the first shot. That rooster has traits of character that'd adorn almost any walk of life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AFFAIR AT THE POULTRY-SHOW]

"Most chickens are kinder stupid; but what I like about him is that he is sympathetic, he has feeling. I know last fall that my Shanghai hen was taken sick while she was trying to hatch out some eggs, and that rooster was so compa.s.sionate that he used to go in and set on that nest for hours, trying to help her out, so that she could go off recreating after exercise. And when she died, he turned right in and took charge of things--seemed to feel that he ought to be a father to those unborn little orphans; and he straddled around over those eggs for ever so long. He never got much satisfaction out of it, though.

Most of them were duck eggs, and it seemed to kinder cut him up when he looked at those birds after they hatched out. He took it to heart, and appeared to feel low-spirited and afflicted. He would go off and stand by himself--stand on one leg in a corner of the fence and let his mind brood over his troubles until you'd pity him. It disgusted him to think how the job turned out.

"Now, you wouldn't think such a chicken as that would have much courage, but he'd just as leave fight a wagon-load of tigers as not.

He got a notion in his head that that rooster over there on the Baptist church-steeple was alive, and he couldn't bear to think that it was up there sailing around and putting on airs over him, and a good many times I've seen him try to fly up at it, so's to arrange a fight. When he found he couldn't make it, he'd crow at the Baptist rooster and dare it to come down, and at last, when all his efforts were useless, would you believe that rooster one day attacked the s.e.xton as the weatherc.o.c.k's next friend, and drove his spurs so far into the s.e.xton's shanks that he walked on crutches for more'n a week?

I never saw a mere chicken have such fine instincts and such pluck.

"He is a splendid fighter, anyway, just as he stands. Why, he had a little fuss with Murphy's Poland rooster here some time back, and instead of going at him and taking the chances of getting whipped, that chicken actually put himself into training, ate nothing but corn, took regular exercise, went to roost early, took a cold bath every morning and got a pullet to rub him down with a corn-cob. It was wonderful; and in a week or so he was all bone and muscle, and he flickered over the fence after Murphy's rooster and sent him whizzing into the next world on the fourth round.

"I never knew such a rooster. Now, do you know I believe that chicken actually takes an interest in politics? Oh, you may laugh, but last fall during the campaign he was so excited about something that he couldn't eat, and the night they had the Republican ma.s.s-meeting here he roosted on the chandelier in the hall, and every time General Trumps made a good point that chicken would cackle and flap his wings, as much as to say, 'Them's my sentiments!' And on the day of the parade he turned out and followed the last wagon, keeping step with the music and never dropping out of line but once, when he stopped to fight a Democratic rooster belonging to old Byerly, who was on the Democratic ticket. And in the morning, after the Republicans won, he just got on the fence out here and crowed so vociferously you could've heard him across the river, particularly when I ran up the American flag and read the latest returns.

"Yes, sir. Now, I know you'll think it's ridiculous when I tell you, but it's an actual fact, that that very day my daughter was playing the 'Star-spangled Banner' on the piano, and that rooster, when he heard it, came scudding into the parlor, and after flipping up on the piano he struck out and crowed that tune just as natural as if he was an educated musician. Positive truth; and he beat time with his tail.

He don't crow like any other rooster. Every morning he works off selections from Beethoven and Mozart and those people, and on Sundays he frequently lets himself out on hymn-tunes. I've known him to set on that fence for more'n an hour at a time practicing the scales, and he nearly kicked another rooster to death one day because that rooster crowed flat. I saw him do it myself. And now I really must be going.

Good-morning."

I think I shall send out and kill that rooster at the first opportunity. I want Keyser to have one thing less to fib about. He has too much variety at present.

CHAPTER XIX.

_AN UNRULY METER.--SCENES IN A SANCTUM_.

During one of the cold spells of last winter the gas-meter in my cellar was frozen. I attempted to thaw it out by pouring hot water over it, but after spending an hour upon the effort I emerged from the contest with the meter with my feet and trousers wet, my hair full of dust and cobwebs and my temper at fever heat. After studying how I should get rid of the ice in the meter, I concluded to use force for the purpose, and so, seizing a hot poker, I jammed it through a vent-hole and stirred it around inside of the meter with a considerable amount of vigor. I felt the ice give way, and I heard the wheels buzz around with rather more vehemence than usual. Then I went up stairs.

I noticed for three or four days that the internal machinery of the meter seemed to be rattling around in a remarkable manner; it could be heard all over the house. But I was pleased to find that it was working again in spite of the cold weather, and I retained my serenity.

About two weeks afterward my gas bill came. It accused me of burning during the quarter about one million five hundred thousand feet of gas, and it called on me to settle to the extent of nearly three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I put on my hat and went down to the gas-office. I addressed one of the clerks: