PART III.

Stories and Romances.

3.1. Moses the Sassy; or, The Disguised Duke.

3.2. Marion: A Romance of the French School.

3.3. William Barker, the Young Patriot.

3.4. A Romance—The Conscript.

3.5. A Romance—Only a Mechanic.

3.6. Roberto the Rover; A Tale of Sea and Shore.

3.7. Red Hand: A Tale of Revenge.

3.8. Pyrotechny: A Romance after the French.

3.9. The Last of the Culkinses.

3.10. A Mormon Romance—Reginald Gloverson.

PART III. STORIES AND ROMANCES.

3.1. MOSES THE SASSY; OR, THE DISGUISED DUKE.

CHAPTER I.—ELIZY.

My story opens in the classic presinks of Bostin. In the parler of a bloated aristocratic mansion on Bacon street sits a luvly young lady, whose hair is cuvered ore with the frosts of between 17 Summers. She has just sot down to the piany, and is warblin the popler ballad called "Smells of the Notion," in which she tells how, with pensiv thought, she wandered by a C beat shore. The son is settin in its horizon, and its gorjus light pores in a golden meller flud through the winders, and makes the young lady twict as beautiful nor what she was before, which is onnecessary. She is magnificently dressed up in a Berage basque, with poplin trimmins, More Antique, Ball Morals and 3 ply carpeting. Also, considerable gauze. Her dress contains 16 flounders and her shoes is red morocker, with gold spangles onto them. Presently she jumps up with a wild snort, and pressin her hands to her brow, she exclaims: "Methinks I see a voice!"

A noble youth of 27 summers enters. He is attired in a red shirt and black trowsis, which last air turned up over his boots; his hat, which it is a plug, being cockt onto one side of his classical hed. In sooth, he was a heroic lookin person, with a fine shape. Grease, in its barmiest days, near projuced a more hefty cavileer. Gazin upon him admiringly for a spell, Elizy (for that was her name) organized herself into a tabloo, and stated as follers.

"Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? Is it some dreams? No, I reckon not! That frame! them store close! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!"

He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was "a hunkey boy."

CHAPTER II.—WAS MOSES Of NOBLE BIRTH?

Moses was foreman of Engine Co. No. 40. Forty's fellers had just bin havin an annual reunion with Fifty's fellers, on the day I introjuce Moses to my readers, and Moses had his arms full of trofees, to wit: 4 scalps, 5 eyes, 3 fingers, 7 ears, (which he chawed off) and several half and quarter sections of noses. When the fair Elizy recovered from her delight at meetin Moses, she said:—"How hast the battle gonest? Tell me!"

"We chawed 'em up—that's what we did!" said the bold Moses.

"I thank the gods!" said the fair Elizy. "Thou did'st excellent well. And, Moses," she continnered, layin her hed confidinly agin his weskit, "dost know I sumtimes think thou istest of noble birth?"

"No!" said he, wildly ketchin hold of hisself. "You don't say so!"

"Indeed do I! Your dead grandfather's sperrit comest to me the tother night."

"Oh no, I guess it's a mistake," said Moses.

"I'll bet two dollars and a quarter he did!" replied Elizy. "He said, 'Moses is a Disguised Juke!'"

"You mean Duke," said Moses.

"Dost not the actors all call it Juke?" said she.

That settled the matter.

"I hav thought of this thing afore," said Moses, abstractedly. "If it is so, then thus it must be! 2 B or not 2 B! Which? Sow, sow! But enuff. O life! life!—YOU'RE TOO MANY FOR ME!" He tore out some of his pretty yeller hair, stampt on the floor sevril times, and was gone.

CHAPTER III.—THE PIRUT FOILED.

Sixteen long and weary years has elapst since the seens narrated in the last chapter took place. A noble ship, the Sary Jane, is a sailin from France to Ameriky via the Wabash Canal. A pirut ship is in hot pursoot of the Sary. The pirut capting isn't a man of much principle and intends to kill all the people on bored the Sary and confiscate the wallerbles. The capting of the S.J. is on the pint of givin in, when a fine lookin feller in russet boots and a buffalo overcoat rushes forored and obsarves:

"Old man! go down stairs! Retire to the starbud bulkhed! I'll take charge of this Bote!"

"Owdashus cuss!" yelled the capting, "away with thee or I shall do mur-rer-der-r-r!"

"Skurcely," obsarved the stranger, and he drew a diamond-hilted fish-knife and cut orf the capting's hed. He expired shortly, his last words bein, "we are governed too much."

"People!" sed the stranger, "I'm the Juke d'Moses!"

"Old hoss!" sed a passenger, "methinks thou art blowin!" whareupon the Juke cut orf his hed also.

"Oh that I should live to see myself a dead body!" screamed the unfortnit man. "But don't print any verses about my deth in the newspapers, for if you do I'll haunt ye!"

"People!" sed the Juke, "I alone can save you from yon bloody pirut! Ho! a peck of oats!" The oats was brought, and the Juke, boldly mountin the jibpoop, throwed them onto the towpath. The pirut rapidly approached, chucklin with fiendish delight at the idee of increasin his ill-gotten gains. But the leadin hoss of the pirut ship stopt suddent on comin to the oats, and commenst for to devour them. In vain the piruts swore and throwd stones and bottles at the hoss—he wouldn't budge a inch. Meanwhile the Sary Jane, her hosses on the full jump, was fast leavin the pirut ship!

"Onct agin do I escape deth!" sed the Juke between his clencht teeth, still on the jibpoop.

CHAPTER IV. THE WANDERER'S RETURN.

The Juke was Moses the Sassy! Yes, it was!

He had bin to France and now he was home agin in Bostin, which gave birth to a Bunker Hill!! He had some trouble in gitting hisself acknowledged as Juke in France, as the Orleans Dienasty and Borebones were fernest him, but he finally conkered. Elizy knowd him right off, as one of his ears and a part of his nose had bin chawed off in his fights with opposition firemen during boyhood's sunny hours. They lived to a green old age, beloved by all, both grate and small. Their children, of which they have numerous, often go up onto the Common and see the Fountain squirt.

This is my 1st attempt at writin a Tail & it is far from bein perfeck, but if I have indoosed folks to see that in 9 cases out of 10 they can either make life as barren as the Desert of Sarah, or as joyyus as a flower garding, my object will have been accomplished, and more too.

3.2. MARION: A ROMANCE OF THE FRENCH SCHOOL.

I.

—, Friday, —, 1860.

On the sad sea shore! Always to hear the moaning of these dismal waves!

Listen. I will tell you my story—my story of love, of misery, of black despair.

I am a moral Frenchman.

She whom I adore, whom I adore still, is the wife of a fat Marquis—a lop-eared, blear-eyed, greasy Marquis. A man without soul. A man without sentiment, who cares naught for moonlight and music. A low, practical man, who pays his debts. I hate him.

II.

She, my soul's delight, my empress, my angel, is superbly beautiful.

I loved her at first sight—devotedly, madly.

She dashed past me in her coupe. I saw her but a moment—perhaps only an instant—but she took me captive then and there, forevermore.

Forevermore!

I followed her, after that, wherever she went. At length she came to notice, to smile upon me. My motto was en avant! That is a French word. I got it out of the back part of Worcester's Dictionary.

III.

She wrote me that I might come and see her at her own house. Oh, joy, joy unutterable, to see her at her own house!

I went to see her after nightfall, in the soft moonlight.

She came down the graveled walk to meet me, on this beautiful midsummer night—came to me in pure white, her golden hair in splendid disorder—strangely beautiful, yet in tears!

She told me her fresh grievances.

The Marquis, always a despot, had latterly misused her most vilely.

That very morning, at breakfast, he had cursed the fishballs and sneered at the pickled onions.

She is a good cook. The neighbors will tell you so. And to be told by the base Marquis—a man who, previous to his marriage, had lived at the cheap eating-houses—to be told by him that her manner of frying fishballs was a failure—it was too much.

Her tears fell fast. I too wept. I mixed my sobs with her'n. "Fly with me!" I cried.

Her lips met mine. I held her in my arms. I felt her breath upon my cheek! It was Hunkey.

"Fly with me. To New York! I will write romances for the Sunday papers—real French romances, with morals to them. My style will be appreciated. Shop girls and young mercantile persons will adore it, and I will amass wealth with my ready pen."

Ere she could reply—ere she could articulate her ecstasy, her husband, the Marquis, crept snake-like upon me.

Shall I write it? He kicked me out of the garden—he kicked me into the street.

I did not return. How could I? I, so ethereal, so full of soul, of sentiment, of sparkling originality! He, so gross, so practical, so lop-eared!

Had I returned, the creature would have kicked me again.

So I left Paris for this place—this place, so lonely, so dismal.

Ah me!

Oh dear!

3.3. A ROMANCE.—WILLIAM BARKER, THE YOUNG PATRIOT.

I.

"No, William Barker, you cannot have my daughter's hand in marriage until you are her equal in wealth and social position."

The speaker was a haughty old man of some sixty years, and the person whom he addressed was a fine-looking young man of twenty-five.

With a sad aspect the young man withdrew from the stately mansion.

II.

Six months later the young man stood in the presence of the haughty old man.

"What! YOU here again?" angrily cried the old man.

"Ay, old man," proudly exclaimed William Barker. "I am here, your daughter's equal and yours?"

The old man's lips curled with scorn. A derisive smile lit up his cold features; when, casting violently upon the marble center table an enormous roll of greenbacks, William Barker cried—

"See! Look on this wealth. And I've tenfold more! Listen, old man! You spurned me from your door. But I did not despair. I secured a contract for furnishing the Army of the — with beef—"

"Yes, yes!" eagerly exclaimed the old man.

"—and I bought up all the disabled cavalry horses I could find—"

"I see! I see!" cried the old man. "And good beef they make, too."

"They do! they do! and the profits are immense."

"I should say so!"

"And now, sir, I claim your daughter's fair hand!"

"Boy, she is yours. But hold! Look me in the eye. Throughout all this have you been loyal?"

"To the core!" cried William Barker.

"And," continued the old man, in a voice husky with emotion, "are you in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war?"

"I am, I am!"

"Then, boy take her! Maria, child, come hither. Your William claims thee. Be happy, my children! And whatever our lot in life may be, LET US ALL SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT!"

3.4. A ROMANCE—THE CONSCRIPT.

[Which may bother the reader a little unless he is familiar with the music of the day.]

CHAPTER I.

Philander Reed struggled with spool-thread and tape in a dry- goods store at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, State of New York. He Rallied Round the Flag, Boys, and HAILED Columbia every time she passed that way. One day a regiment returning from the war Came Marching Along, bringing An Intelligent Contraband with them, who left the South about the time Babylon was a-Fallin', and when it was apparent to all well-ordered minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other Man." Then he Walked Round.

"And your Master," sed Philander, "where is he?"

"Massa's in the cold, cold ground—at least I hope so!" sed the gay contraband.

"March on, March on! all hearts rejoice!" cried the Colonel, who was mounted on a Bob-tailed nag—on which, in times of Peace, my soul, O Peace! he had betted his money.

"Yaw," sed a German Bold Sojer Boy, "we don't-fights-mit-Segel as much as we did."

The regiment marched on, and Philander betook himself to his mother's Cottage Near the Banks of that Lone River, and rehearsed the stirring speech he was to make that night at a war meeting.

"It's just before the battle, Mother," he said, "and I want to say something that will encourage Grant."

CHAPTER II.—MABEL.

Mabel Tucker was an orphan. Her father, Dan Tucker, was run over one day by a train of cars though he needn't have been, for the kind-hearted engineer told him to Git out of the Way.

Mabel early manifested a marked inclination for the milinery business, and at the time we introduce her to our readers she was Chief Engineer of a Millinery Shop and Boss of a Sewing Machine.

Philander Reed loved Mabel Tucker, and Ever of her was Fondly Dreaming; and she used to say, "Will you love me Then as Now?" to which he would answer that he would, and WITHOUT the written consent of his parents.

She sat in the parlor of the Cot where she was Born, one Summer's eve, with pensive thought, when Somebody came Knocking at the Door. It was Philander. Fond Embrace and things. Thrilling emotions. P. very pale and shaky in the legs. Also, sweaty.

"Where hast thou been?" she sed. "Hast been gathering shells from youth to age, and then leaving them like a che-eild? Why this tremors? Why these Sadfulness?"

"Mabeyuel!" he cried. "Mabeyuel! They've Drafted me into the Army!"

An orderly Surgeant now appears and says, "Come, Philander, let's be a-marching;" And he tore her from his embrace (P.'s) and marched the conscript to the Examining Surgeon's office.

Mabel fainted in two places. It was worse than Brother's Fainting at the Door.

CHAPTER III.—THE CONSCRIPT.

Philander Reed hadn't three hundred dollars, being a dead-broken Reed, so he must either become one of the noble Band who are Coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more, or skedaddle across the St. Lawrence River to the Canada Line. As his opinions had recently undergone a radical change, he chose the latter course, and was soon Afloat, afloat, on the swift rolling tide. "Row, brothers, row," he cried, "the stream runs fast, the Sergeant is near, and the Zamination's past, and I'm a able- bodied man."

Landing, he at once imprinted a conservative kiss on the Canada Line, and feelingly asked himself, "Who will care for Mother now? But I propose to stick it out on this Line if it takes all Summer."

CHAPTER IV.—THE MEETING.

It was evening, IT was. The Star of the Evening, Beautiful Star, shone brilliantly, adorning the sky with those "Neutral" tints which have characterized all British skies ever since this War broke out.

Philander sat on the Canada Line, playing with his Yard-stick, and perhaps about to take the measure of an unmade piece of calico; when Mabel, with a wild cry of joy, sprang from a small boat to his side. The meeting was too much. They divided a good square faint between them this time. At last Philander found his utterance, and said, "Do they think of me at Home, do they ever think of me?"

"No," she replied, "but they do at the recruiting office."

"Ha! 'tis well."

"Nay, dearest," Mabel pleaded, "come home and go to the war like a man! I will take your place in the Dry Goods store. True, a musket is a little heavier than a yardstick, but isn't it a rather more manly weapon?"

"I don't see it," was Philander's reply; "besides, this war isn't conducted accordin' to the Constitution and Union. When it is— when it is, Mabeyuel, I will return and enlist as a Convalescent!"

"Then, sir," she said, with much American disgust in her countenance, "then, sir, farewell!"

"Farewell!" he said, "and When this Cruel War is Over, pray that we may meet again!"

"Nary!" cried Mabel, her eyes flashing warm fire,—"nary. None but the Brave deserve the Sanitary Fair! A man who will desert his country in its hour of trial would drop Faro checks into the Contribution Box on Sunday. I hain't got time to tarry—I hain't got time to stay!—but here's a gift at parting: a White Feather: wear it in your hat!" and She was Gone from his gaze, like a beautiful dream.

Stung with remorse and mosquitoes, this miserable young man, in a fit of frenzy, unsheathed his glittering dry-goods scissors, cut off four yards (good measure) of the Canada Line, and hanged himself on a Willow Tree. Requiescat in Tape. His stick drifted to My Country, 'tis of thee! And may be seen, in connection with many others, on the stage of any New York theatre every night.

The Canadians won't have any line pretty soon. The skedaddlers will steal it. Then the Canadians won't know whether they're in the United States or not, in which case they may be drafted.

Mabel married a Brigadier-General, and is happy.

3.5. A ROMANCE—ONLY A MECHANIC.

In a sumptuously furnished parlor in Fifth Avenue, New York, sat a proud and haughty belle. Her name was Isabel Sawtelle. Her father was a millionaire, and his ships, richly laden, ploughed many a sea.

By the side of Isabel Sawtelle sat a young man with a clear, beautiful eye, and a massive brow.

"I must go," he sed, "the foreman will wonder at my absence."

"The FOREMAN?" asked Isabel in a tone of surprise.

"Yes, the foreman of the shop where I work."

"Foreman—shop—WORK! What! do YOU work."

"Aye, Miss Sawtelle! I am a cooper!" and his eyes flashed with honest pride.

"What's that?" she asked; "it is something about barrels, isn't it!"

"It is!" he said, with a flashing nostril. "And hogsheads."

"Then go!" she said in a tone of disdain—"go AWAY!"

"Ha!" he cried, "you spurn me, then, because I am a mechanic. Well, be it so! though the time will come, Isabel Sawtelle," he added, and nothing could exceed his looks at this moment—"when you will bitterly remember the cooper you now so cruelly cast off? FAREWELL!"

. . . .

Years rolled on. Isabel Sawtelle married a miserable aristocrat, who recently died of delirium tremens. Her father failed, and is now a raving maniac, and wants to bite little children. All her brothers (except one) were sent to the penitentiary for burglary, and her mother peddles clams that are stolen for her by little George, her only son that has his freedom. Isabel's sister Bianca rides an immoral spotted horse in the circus, HER husband having long since been hanged for murdering his own uncle on his mother's side. Thus we see that it is always best to marry a mechanic.

3.6. ROBERTO THE ROVER:—A TALE OF SEA AND SHORE.