Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor VOLUME II

Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor

Edited by Thomas L. Masson

VOLUME II

By

Bret Harte

Sol Smith

John Godfrey Saxe

James Russell Lowell

Mary Mapes Dodge

Robert J. Burdette

and others

NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1903

Copyright, 1903, by Doubleday, Page & Company Published, October, 1903

SOL SMITH

A BULLY BOAT AND A BRAG CAPTAIN

A Story of Steamboat Life on the Mississippi

Does any one remember the Caravan? She was what would now be considered a slow boat—then (1827) she was regularly advertised as the “fast running,” etc. Her regular trips from New Orleans to Natchez were usually made in from six to eight days; a trip made by her in five days was considered remarkable. A voyage from New Orleans to Vicksburg and back, including stoppages, generally entitled the officers and crew to a month’s wages. Whether the Caravan ever achieved the feat of a voyage to the Falls (Louisville) I have never learned; if she did, she must have “had a time of it!”

It was my fate to take passage in this boat. The Captain was a good-natured, easy-going man, careful of the comfort of his passengers, and exceedingly fond of the game of brag. We had been out a little more than five days, and we were in hopes of seeing the bluffs of Natchez on the next day. Our wood was getting low, and night coming on. The pilot on duty above (the other pilot held three aces at the time, and was just calling out the Captain, who “went it strong” on three kings) sent down word that the mate[Pg 2] had reported the stock of wood reduced to half a cord. The worthy Captain excused himself to the pilot whose watch was below and the two passengers who made up the party, and hurried to the deck, where he soon discovered by the landmarks that we were about half a mile from a woodyard, which he said was situated “right round yonder point.” “But,” muttered the Captain, “I don’t much like to take wood of the yellow-faced old scoundrel who owns it—he always charges a quarter of a dollar more than any one else; however, there’s no other chance.”

The boat was pushed to her utmost, and in a little less than an hour, when our fuel was about giving out, we made the point, and our cables were out and fastened to trees alongside of a good-sized woodpile.

“Hallo, Colonel! How d’ye sell your wood this time?”

A yellow-faced old gentleman, with a two-weeks’ beard, strings over his shoulders holding up to his armpits a pair of copperas-colored linsey-woolsey pants, the legs of which reached a very little below the knee; shoes without stockings; a faded, broad-brimmed hat, which had once been black, and a pipe in his mouth—casting a glance at the empty guards of our boat and uttering a grunt as he rose from fastening our “spring line,” answered:

“Why, Capting, we must charge you three and a quarter this time.”

“The d——l!” replied the Captain—(captains[Pg 3] did swear a little in those days); “what’s the odd quarter for, I should like to know? You only charged me three as I went down.”

“Why, Capting,” drawled out the wood merchant, with a sort of leer on his yellow countenance, which clearly indicated that his wood was as good as sold, “wood’s riz since you went down two weeks ago; besides, you are awar that you very seldom stop going down—when you’re going up you’re sometimes obleeged to give me a call, becaze the current’s aginst you, and there’s no other woodyard for nine miles ahead: and if you happen to be nearly out of fooel, why——”

“Well, well,” interrupted the Captain, “we’ll take a few cords, under the circumstances,” and he returned to his game of brag.

In about half an hour we felt the Caravan commence paddling again. Supper was over, and I retired to my upper berth, situated alongside and overlooking the brag-table, where the Captain was deeply engaged, having now the other pilot as his principal opponent. We jogged on quietly—and seemed to be going at a good rate.

“How does that wood burn?” inquired the Captain of the mate, who was looking on at the game.

“’Tisn’t of much account, I reckon,” answered the mate; “it’s cotton-wood, and most of it green at that.”

“Well, Thompson—(Three aces, again, stranger—I’ll take that X and the small change, if you[Pg 4] please. It’s your deal)—Thompson, I say, we’d better take three or four cords at the next woodyard—it can’t be more than six miles from here—(Two aces and a bragger, with the age! Hand over those V’s).”

The game went on, and the paddles kept moving. At eleven o’clock it was reported to the Captain that we were nearing the woodyard, the light being distinctly seen by the pilot on duty.

“Head her in shore, then, and take in six cords if it’s good—see to it, Thompson; I can’t very well leave the game now—it’s getting right warm! This pilot’s beating us all to smash.”

The wooding completed, we paddled on again. The Captain seemed somewhat vexed when the mate informed him that the price was the same as at the last woodyard—three and a quarter; but soon again became interested in the game.

From my upper berth (there were no state-rooms then) I could observe the movements of the players. All the contention appeared to be between the Captain and the pilots (the latter personages took it turn and turn about, steering and playing brag), one of them almost invariably winning, while the two passengers merely went through the ceremony of dealing, cutting, and paying up their “anties.” They were anxious to learn the game—and they did learn it! Once in awhile, indeed, seeing they had two aces and a bragger, they would venture a bet of five or ten[Pg 5] dollars, but they were always compelled to back out before the tremendous bragging of the Captain or pilot—or if they did venture to “call out” on “two bullits and a bragger,” they had the mortification to find one of the officers had the same kind of a hand, and were more venerable! Still, with all these disadvantages, they continued playing—they wanted to learn the game.

At two o’clock the Captain asked the mate how we were getting on.

“Oh, pretty glibly, sir,” replied the mate; “we can scarcely tell what headway we are making, for we are obliged to keep the middle of the river, and there is the shadow of a fog rising. This wood seems rather better than that we took in at Yellow-Face’s, but we’re nearly out again, and must be looking out for more. I saw a light just ahead on the right—shall we hail?”

“Yes, yes,” replied the Captain; “ring the bell and ask ’em what’s the price of wood up here. (I’ve got you again; here’s double kings.)”

I heard the bell and the pilot’s hail, “What’s your price for wood?”

A youthful voice on the shore answered, “Three and a quarter!”

“D——nèt!” ejaculated the Captain, who had just lost the price of two cords to the pilot—the strangers suffering some at the same time—“three and a quarter again! Are we never to get to a cheaper country? (Deal, sir, if you please; better luck next time.)”

[Pg 6]

The other pilot’s voice was again heard on deck—

“How much have you?”

“Only about ten cords, sir,” was the reply of the youthful salesman.

The Captain here told Thompson to take six cords, which would last till daylight—and again turned his attention to the game.

The pilots here changed places. When did they sleep?

Wood taken in, the Caravan again took her place in the middle of the stream, paddling on as usual.

Day at length dawned. The brag-party broke up and settlements were being made, during which operations the Captain’s bragging propensities were exercised in cracking up the speed of his boat, which, by his reckoning, must have made at least sixty miles, and would have made many more if he could have procured good wood. It appears the two passengers, in their first lesson, had incidentally lost one hundred and twenty dollars. The Captain, as he rose to see about taking in some good wood, which he felt sure of obtaining now that he had got above the level country, winked at his opponent, the pilot, with whom he had been on very bad terms during the progress of the game, and said, in an undertone, “Forty apiece for you and I and James” [the other pilot] “is not bad for one night.”

I had risen and went out with the Captain, to[Pg 7] enjoy a view of the bluffs. There was just fog enough to prevent the vision taking in more than sixty yards—so I was disappointed in my expectation. We were nearing the shore for the purpose of looking for wood, the banks being invisible from the middle of the river.

“There it is!” exclaimed the Captain; “stop her!” Ding—ding—ding! went the big bell, and the Captain hailed:

“Hallo! the woodyard!”

“Hallo yourself!” answered a squeaking female voice, which came from a woman, with a petticoat over her shoulders in place of a shawl.

“What’s the price of wood?”

“I think you ought to know the price by this time,” answered the old lady in the petticoat; “it’s three and a qua-a-rter! and now you know it.”

“Three and the d——l!” broke in the Captain. “What, have you raised on your wood, too? I’ll give you three, and not a cent more.”

“Well,” replied the petticoat, “here comes the old man—he’ll talk to you.”

And, sure enough, out crept from the cottage the veritable faded hat, copperas-colored pants, yellow countenance and two-weeks’ beard we had seen the night before, and the same voice we had heard regulating the price of cotton-wood squeaked out the following sentence, accompanied by the same leer of the same yellow countenance:

“Why, darn it all, Capting, there is but three[Pg 8] or four cords left, and since it’s you, I don’t care if I do let you have it for three—as you’re a good customer!”

After a quick glance at the landmarks around, the Captain bolted, and turned in to take some rest.

The fact became apparent—the reader will probably have discovered it some time since—that we had been wooding all night at the same woodyard!

THE DOG AND THE BEES

A dog being very much annoyed by bees, ran quite accidently into an empty barrel lying on the ground, and looking out at the bung-hole, addressed his tormentors thus:

“Had you been temperate, stinging me only one at a time, you might have got a good deal of fun out of me. As it is, you have driven me into a secure retreat; for I can snap you up as fast as you come in through the bung-hole. Learn from this the folly of intemperate zeal.”

When he had concluded, he awaited a reply. There wasn’t any reply; for the bees had never gone near the bung-hole; they went in the same way as he did, and made it very warm for him.

The lesson of this fable is that one cannot stick to his pure reason while quarreling with bees.

Ambrose Bierce.

[Pg 9]

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

DISLIKES

I want it to be understood that I consider that a certain number of persons are at liberty to dislike me peremptorily, without showing cause, and that they give no offense whatever in so doing.

If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this sentiment toward myself on the part of others, I should not feel at liberty to indulge my own aversions. I try to cultivate a Christian feeling to all my fellow-creatures, but inasmuch as I must also respect truth and honesty, I confess to myself a certain number of inalienable dislikes and prejudices, some of which may possibly be shared by others. Some of these are purely instinctive; for others I can assign a reason. Our likes and dislikes play so important a part in the order of things that it is well to see on what they are founded.

There are persons I meet occasionally who are too intelligent by half for my liking. They know my thoughts beforehand, and tell me what I was going to say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, and a good deal besides; have read all the books I have read, and in later editions; have had all the experiences I have[Pg 10] been through,—and more, too. In my private opinion, every mother’s son of them will lie at any time rather than confess ignorance.

I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a large excess of vitality—great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers, who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself, and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished by these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at a funeral when they get into full blast.

I cannot get along much better with those drooping, languid people, whose vitality falls short as much as that of the others is in excess. I have not life enough for two; I wish I had. It is not very enlivening to meet a fellow-creature whose expression and accents say, “You are the hair that breaks the camel’s back of my endurance; you are the last drop that makes my cup of woe run over”; persons whose heads drop on one side like those of toothless infants; whose voices recall the tones in which our old snuffling choir used to wail out the verse of

There is another style which does not captivate me. I recognize an attempt at the grand manner now and then, in persons who are well enough in their way, but of no particular importance, socially or otherwise. Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the[Pg 11] bottom of it, and it survives all the advantages that used to set it off: I like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respect the high-born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked in their shirt-sleeves for the last two generations full as much as I ought to. But grandpère oblige; a person with a known grandfather is too distinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. The few Royal Princes I have happened to know were very easy people to get along with, and had not half the social knee-action I have often seen in the collapsed dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in my earlier years.

My heart does not warm as it should do toward the persons, not intimates, who are always too glad to see me when we meet by accident, and discover all at once that they have a vast deal to unbosom themselves to me.

There is one blameless person whom I cannot love and have no excuse for hating. It is the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffensive to me, whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. I suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding its own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once with its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the Mississippi for diluting with its limpid but insipid current the rich reminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream has wandered. I will not compare myself to the clear or the turbid current, but I will own that[Pg 12] my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in for a corner confluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as myself until I can get away from him.—The Poet at the Breakfast Table.

An Illinois boy was asked to write an essay on Masonry, and here is what he wrote: “King Solomon was a man who lived so many years in the country that he was the whole push. He was an awfully wise man, and one day two women came to him, each holding to the leg of a baby and nearly pulling it in two and each claiming it. And King Solomon wasn’t feeling right good and he said: “Why couldn’t the brat have been twins and stopped this bother?” And then he called for his machete and was going to Weylerize the poor innocent little baby, and give each woman a piece of it, when the real mother of the baby said: ‘Stop, Solomon; stay thy hand. Let the old hag have it. If I can’t have a whole baby I won’t have any.’ Then Solomon told her to take the baby and go home and wash its face, for he knew it was hers. He told the other woman to go chase herself. King Solomon built Solomon’s Temple and was the father of Masons. He had seven hundred wives and three hundred lady friends, and that’s why there are so many Masons in the world. My papa says King Solomon was a warm

member and I think he was hot stuff myself. That is all I know about King Solomon.”

[Pg 13]

G. H. DERBY (“Phœnix,” “Squibob”)

ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPERS

A year or two since, a weekly paper was started in London called the Illustrated News. It was filled with tolerably executed wood-cuts, representing scenes of popular interest; and though perhaps better calculated for the nursery than the reading-room, it took very well in England, where few can read but all can understand pictures, and soon attained immense circulation. As when the inimitable London Punch attained its world-wide celebrity, supported by such writers as Thackeray, Jerrold and Hood, would-be funny men on this side of the Atlantic attempted absurd imitations—the Yankee Doodle, the John Donkey, etc.—which as a matter of course proved miserable failures; so did the success of this illustrated affair inspire our money-loving publishers with hopes of dollars, and soon appeared from Boston, New York and other places pictorial and illustrated newspapers, teeming with execrable and silly effusions, and filled with the most fearful wood engravings, “got up regardless of expense” or anything else; the contemplation of which was enough to make

an artist tear his hair and rend his garments. A Yankee named Gleason, of Boston, published[Pg 14] the first, we believe, calling it Gleason’s Pictorial (it should have been Gleason’s Pickpocket) and Drawing-Room Companion. In this he presented to his unhappy subscribers views of his house in the country, and his garden, and, for aught we know, of “his ox and his ass, and the stranger within his gates.” A detestable invention for transferring daguerreotypes to plates for engraving, having come into notice about this time, was eagerly seized upon by Gleason for further embellishing his catchpenny publication—duplicates and uncalled-for pictures were easily obtained, and many a man has gazed in horror-stricken astonishment on the likeness of a respected friend as a “Portrait of Monroe Edwards,” or that of his deceased grandmother in the character of “One of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.” They love pictures in Yankeedom; every tin-peddler has one on his wagon, and an itinerant lecturer can always obtain an audience by

sticking up a likeness of some unhappy female, with her ribs laid open in an impossible manner, for public inspection, or a hairless gentleman, with the surface of his head laid out in eligible lots duly marked and numbered. The factory girls of Lowell, the professors of Harvard, all bought the new Pictorial. (Professor Webster was reading one when Doctor Parkman called on him on the morning of the murder.) Gleason’s speculation was crowned with success, and he bought himself a new cooking[Pg 15] stove, and erected an outbuilding on his estate, with both of which he favored the public in a new wood-cut immediately.

Inspired by his success, old Feejec-Mermaid-Tom-Thumb-Woolly-Horse-Joyce-Heth-Barnum forthwith got out another illustrated weekly, with pictures far more extensive, letter-press still sillier, and engravings more miserable, if possible, than Yankee Gleason’s. And then we were bored and buffeted by having incredible likenesses of Santa Anna, Queen Victoria and poor old Webster thrust beneath our nose, to that degree that we wished the respected originals had never existed, or that the art of wood engraving had perished with that of painting on glass.