DIGNITY
Dignity does not draw. It answers in place of intellectual tone for twenty minutes, but after awhile it fails to get there. Dignity works all right in a wooden Indian or a drum major, but the man who desires to draw a salary through life and to be sure of a visible means of support, will do well to make some other provision than a haughty look and the air of patronage.
CHESTNUT-BURR XVIII – THE TRUE HISTORY OF DAMON AND PYTHIAS
Dionysius the Elder – Paris Green in the Pie – Damon and Pythias – Pythias about to Be Sacrificed – The Solitary Horseman Puts in an Appearance.
CHAPTER I
The romantic story of Damon and Pythias, which has been celebrated in verse and song for over two thousand years, is supposed to have originated during the reign of Dionysius I, or Dionysius the Elder as he was also called, who resigned about 350 years b. c. He must have been called "The Elder," more for a joke than anything else, as he was by inclination a Unitarian, although he was never a member of any church whatever, and was, in fact, the wickedest man in all Syracuse.
Dionysius arose to the throne from the ranks, and used to call himself a self made man. He was tyrannical, severe and selfish, as all self-made men are. Selfmade men are very prone to usurp the prerogative of the Almighty and overwork themselves. They are not satisfied with the position of division superintendent of creation, but they want to be most worthy high grand muck-a-muck of the entire ranch, or their lives are gloomy fizzles.
Dionysius was indeed so odious and so overbearing toward his subjects that he lived in constant fear of assassination at their hands. This fear robbed him of his rest and rendered life a dreary waste to the tyrannical king. He lived in constant dread that each previous moment would be followed by the succeeding one. He would eat a hearty supper and retire to rest, but the night would be cursed with horrid dreams of the Scythians and White River Utes peeling off his epidermis and throwing him into a boiling cauldron with red pepper and other counter-irritants, while they danced the Highland fling around this royal barbecue.
Even his own wife and children were forbidden to enter his presence for fear that they would put "barn arsenic" in the blanc-mange or "Cosgrove arsenic" in the pancakes, or Paris green in the pie.
During his reign he had constructed an immense subterranean cavernous arrangement, called the Ear of Dionysius, because it resembled in shape and general telephonic power, the human ear. It was the largest ear on record. One day a workman expressed the desire to erect a similar ear of tin or galvanized iron on old Di. himself. Some one "blowed on him," and the next morning his head was thumping about in the waste paper basket at the General Office. When one of the king's subjects, who thought he was solid with the administration, would say: "Beyond the possibility of a doubt, your Most Serene Highness is the kind and loving guardian of his people, and the idol of his subjects," His Royal Tallness would say, "What ye givin' us Do you wish to play the Most Sublime Overseer of the Universe and General Ticket Agent Plenipotentiary for a Chinaman? Ha!!! You cannot fill up the King of Syracuse with taffy." Then he would order the chief executioner to run the man through the royal sausage grinder, ana throw him into the Mediterranean. In this way the sausage-grinder was kept running night and day, and the chief engineer who ran the machine made double time every month.
CHAPTER II
I will now bring in Damon and Pythias.
Damon and Pythias were named after a popular secret organization because they were so solid on each other. They thought more of one another than anybody. They borrowed chewing tobacco, and were always sociable and pleasant. They slept together, and unitedly "stood off" the landlady from month to month in the most cheerful and harmonious manner. If Pythias snored in the night like the blast of a fog horn, Damon did not get mad and kick him in the stomach as some would. He gently but firmly took him by the nose and lifted him up and down to the merry rythm of "The Babies in Our Block."
They loved one another in season and out of season. Their affection was like the soft bloom on the nose of a Wyoming legislator. It never grew pale or wilted. It was always there. If Damon were at the bat, Pythias was on deck. If Damon went to a church fair and invited starvation, Pythias would go, too, and vote on the handsomest baby till the First National Bank of Syracuse would refuse to honor his checks.
But one day Damon got too much budge and told the venerable and colossal old royal bummer of Syracuse what he thought of him. Then Dionysius told the chief engineer of the sausage grinder to turn on steam and prepare for business. But Damon thought of Pythias, and how Pythias hadn't so much to live for as he had, and he made a compromise by offering to put Pythias in soak while the only genuine Damon went to see his girl, who lived at Albany. Three days were given him to get around and redeem Pythias, and if he failed his friend would go to protest.
CHAPTER III
We will now suppose three days to have elapsed since the preceding chapter. A large party of enthusiastic citizens of Syracuse are gathered around the grand stand, and Pythias is on the platform cheerfully taking off his coat. Near by stands a man with a broad-axe. The Syracuse silver cornet band has just played "It's funny when you feel that way," and the chaplain has made a long prayer, Pythias sliding a trade dollar into his hand and whispering to him to give him his money's worth. The Declaration of Independence has been read, and the man on the left is running his thumb playfully over the edge of his meat axe. Pythias takes off his collar and tie, swearing softly to himself at his miserable luck.
CHAPTER IV
It is now the proper time to throw in the solitary horseman. The horizontal bars of golden light from the setting sun gleam and glitter from the dome of the court-house and bathe the green plains of Syracuse with mellow splendor. The billowy piles of fleecy bronze in the eastern sky look soft and yielding, like a Sarah Bernhardt. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and all nature seems oppressed with the solemn hush and stillness of the surrounding and engulfing horror.
The solitary horseman is seen coming along the Albany and Syracuse toll road. He jabs the Mexican spurs into the foamy flank of his noble cay use plug, and the lash of the quirt as it moves through the air is singing a merry song. Damon has been, delayed by road agents and wash-outs, and he is a little behind time. Besides, he fooled a little too long and dallied in Albany with his fair gazelle. But he is making up time now and he sails into the jail yard just in time to take his part. He and Pythias fall into each other's arms, borrow a chew of fine-cut from each other and weep to slow music. Dionysius comes before the curtain, bows and says the exercises will be postponed. He orders the band to play something soothing, gives Damon the appointment of superintendent of public instruction, and Pythias the Syracuse post-office, and everything is lovely. Orchestra plays something touchful. Curtain comes down. Keno. In hoc usufruct nux vomica est.
A TRYING SITUATION
There are a great many things in life which go to atone for the disappointments and sorrows which one meets, but when a young man's rival takes the fair Matilda to see the base-ball game, and sits under an umbrella beside her, and is at the height of enjoyment, and gets the benefit of a "hot ball" in the pit of his stomach, there is a nameless joy settles down in the heart of the lonesome young man, such as the world can neither give nor take away.
CHESTNUT-BURR XIX – A STORY OF SPOTTED TAIL
Trifling Incidents Make Men Great. – Chief Big Mouth. – A Quarrel between Big Mouth and Spotted Tail. – The Tragic End.
The popularity of the above-named chieftain dates from a very trifling little incident, as did that of many other men who are now great.
Spotted Tail had never won much distinction up to that time, except as the owner of an appetite, in the presence of which his tribe stood in dumb and terrible awe.
During the early days of what is now the great throbbing and ambitious West, the tribe camped near Fort Sedgwick, and Big Mouth, a chief of some importance, used to go over to the post regularly for the purpose of filling his brindle hide full of Fort Sedgwick Bloom of Youth.
As a consequence of Big Mouth's fatal yearning for liquid damnation, he generally got impudent, and openly announced on the parade ground that he could lick the entire regular army. This used to offend some of the blood-scarred heroes who had just arrived from West Point, and in the heat of the debate they would warm the venerable warrior about two feet below the back of his neck with the flat of their sabers.
This was a gross insult to Big Mouth, and he went back to the camp, where he found Spotted Tail eating a mule that had died of inflammatory rheumatism. Big Mouth tearfully told the wild epicure of the way he had been treated, and asked for a council of war. Spot picked his teeth with a tent pin, and then told the defeated relic of a mighty race that if he would quit strong drink, he would be subjected to fewer insults.
Big Mouth then got irritated, and told S. Tail that his remarks showed that he was standing in with the aggressor, and was no friend to his people.
Spotted Tail said that Mr. B. Mouth was a liar, by yon high heaven, and before there was time to think it over, he took a butcher knife, about four feet long, from its scabbard and cut Mr. Big Mouth plumb in two just between the umbilicus and the watch pocket.
As the reader who is familiar with anatomy has already surmised, Big Mouth died from the effects of this wound, and Spotted Tail was at once looked upon as the Moses of his tribe. He readily rose to prominence, and by his strict attention to the duties of his office, made for himself a name as a warrior and a pie biter, at which the world turned pale.
This should teach us the importance of taking the tide at its flood, which leads on to fortune, and to lay low when there is a hen on, as Benjamin Franklin has so truly said.
CHESTNUT-BURR XX – THE ROMANCE OF HORSE-SHOEING
Recreation with a Bronco – Careful Preparations – The Bronco humps Himself Like a Camel – The Bronco in a Sling – The Bronco Full of Spirit.
Recently I have taken a little recreation when I felt despondent, by witnessing the difficult and dangerous feat of shoeing a bronco.
Whenever I get low-spirited and feel that a critical public don't appreciate my wonderful genius as a spring poet, I go around to Brown & Boole's blacksmith shop on A street, and watch them shoe a vicious bronco. I always go back to the office cheered and soothed, and better prepared to light the battle of life.
They have a new rig now for this purpose. It consists of two broad sinches, which together cover the thorax and abdomen of the bronco, to the ends of which – the sinches, I mean – are attached ropes, four in number, which each pass over a pulley above the animal, and then are wrapped about a windlass. The bronco is led to the proper position, like a young man who is going to have a photograph taken, the sinches slipped under his body and attached to the ropes.
Then the man at the wheel makes two or three turns in rapid succession.
The bronco is seen to hump himself, like the boss camel of the grand aggregation of living wonders. He grunts a good deal and switches his tail, while the ropes continue to work in the pulleys, and the man at the capstan spits on his hands and rolls up on the wheel. After a while the bronco hangs from the ceiling like a discouraged dish rag, and after trying for two or three hundred times unsuccessfully to kick a hole in the starry firmament, he yields, and hangs at half mast while the blacksmith shoes him.
Yesterday I felt as though I must see something cheerful, and so I went over to watch a bronco getting his shoes on for the round-up. I was fortunate. They led up a quiet, gentlemanly appearing plug with all the weary, despondent air of a disappointed bronco who has had aspirations for being a circus horse, and has "got left." When they put the sinches around him he sighed as though his heart would break, and his great, soulful eyes were wet with tears. One man said it was a shame to put a gentle pony into a sling like that in order to shoe him, and the general feeling seemed to be that a great wrong was being perpetrated.
Gradually the ropes tightened on him and his abdomen began to disappear. He rose till he looked like a dead dog that had been fished out of the river with a grappling iron. Then he gave a grunt that shook the walls of the firmament, and he reached out about five yards till his hind feet felt of a greaser's eye, and with an athletic movement he jumped through the sling and lit on the blacksmith's forge with his head about three feet up the chimney. He proceeded then to do some extra ground and lofty tumbling and kicking. A large anvil was held up for him to kick till he tired himself out, and then the blacksmith put a fire and burglar-proof safe over his head and shod him.
The bronco is full of spirit, and, although docile under ordinary circumstances, he will at times get enthusiastic, and do things which he afterward, in his sober moments, bitterly regrets.
Some broncos have formed the habit of bucking. They do not all buck. Only those that are alive do so. When they are dead they are-more subdued and gentle.
A bronco often becomes so attached to his master that he will lay down his life if necessary. His master's life, I mean.
When a bronco comes up to me and lays his head over my shoulder, and asks me to scratch his chilblain for him, I always excuse myself on the ground that I have a family dependent on mo, and furthermore, that I am a United States Commissioner, and to a certain extent the government hinges on me.
Think what a ghastly hole there would be in the official staff of the republic if I were launched into eternity now, when good men are so scarce.
Some days I worry a good deal over this question. Suppose that some In principled political enemy who wanted to be United States Commissioner or Notary Public in my place should assassinate me!!!
Lots of people never see this. They see how smoothly the machinery of government moves along, and they do not dream of possible harm. They do not know how quick she might slip a cog, or the eccentric get jammed through the indicator, if, some evening when I am at the opera house, or the minstrel show, the assassin should steal up on me, and shoot a large, irregular aperture into my cerebellum.
This may not happen, of course; but I suggest it, so that the public will, as it were, throw its protecting arms about me, and not neglect me while I am alive.
A CHILD'S FAITH
During a big thunder shower a while ago little Willie, who slept up stairs alone, got scared and called his mother, who came up and asked him what he was frightened about. Willie frankly admitted that the thunder was a little too much for a little boy who slept alone.
"Well, if you are afraid," said his mother, pushing back the curls from his forehead, "you should pray for courage."
"All right, ma," said Willie, an idea coming into his head; "suppose you stay up here and pray while I go down stairs and sleep with paw."
HOW TO PRESERVE TEETH
I find," said an old man to a Boomerang reporter, yesterday, "that there is absolutely no limit to the durability of the teeth, if they are properly taken care of. I never drink hot drinks, always brush my teeth morning and evening, avoid all acids whatever, and although I am sixty-five years old, my teeth are as good as ever they were."
"And that is all you do to preserve your teeth, is it?"
"Yes, sir; that's all – barring, perhaps, the fact that I put them in a glass of soft water nights."
CHESTNUT-BURR XXI – EXPERIENCE ON THE FEVERISH HORNET
Every Profession Has Its Style – Not much Difference in Folks – Timber line and Katooter – Katooter Was a Very Smart Man.
Yes, that's so," said Woodtick Williams thoughtfully, as he looked out across the divide and beyond the foothills, toward the top of the range where the eternal snow was glittering in the summer sun.
"You are eminently correct. The gentleman from Buckskin has stated the exact opinion of the subscriber, sure as death and semi-annual assessments.
"Every profession has its style of lead and its peculiar dip toward the horizon. From the towering congressman, down to the neglected advance agent of the everlasting gospel, every profession, I allow, has its peculiar lingo. Every pork-and-beans pilgrim from the States that's been in my camp for twenty-seven years has said that the miner slings more unnecessary professional racket than anybody else; but that ain't so. Take folks as they assay, from blossom rock to lower level, there ain't much difference.
"Nine years ago, I and Timberline Monroe and Katooter Lemons, from Zion, struck the Feverish Hornet up on Slippery Ellum. First we knew the prospecting season had closed up on us and, as the lay-out for surface had pinched out, we decided to sink on the Hornet, just for luck.
"So Timberline, Katooter and me went over to Huckleberry Oleson's store at at the lower camp and soaked our physiognomy for chuck, and valley-tan, and a blastin' outfit for the job.
"Down five foot she showed 150 colors to a hunk of rock no bigger'n a plug of tobacker, with wall rocks well defined both sides and foot wall slick as a confidence game in 'Frisco.
"The quartz, with a light coat of gouge, looked as if she'd been jammed through the formation like a Sabbath-school scholar's elbow through a custard pie, and it had crushed the prehistoric stuffin' and pre-adamite sawdust out of the geological crust in good shape.
"'Katooter,' says I, 'if she shows up this way all the way down, I be teetotally dodbuttered if I don't think we've cornered the sugar at last. We'll run her down to ten foot and see how she looks to the naked eye.'
"Ten foot down she'd widen to three foot between walls, with solid gray quartz as pretty as a bank book. Then we made a mill run of five pounds in a half-gallon mortar and cleared up a dollar's worth of dust on the blade of a long-handled shovel.
"The prospectus of the Feverish Hornet was very cheering indeed.
"I sat down on a candle-box and sang something. I always twitter a few notes when I feel tickled about anything.
"Katooter listened to my singing a little while, and then he went down the gulch murmuring, something about my music and intimating that prosperity always had its little drawbacks after all.
"He slid down to the Frescoed Hell and jammed his old freckled hide so full of horse liniment of the vintage of '49 that he got entirely off the lead, and drifted so far into poverty rock that he didn't know Timberline nor me from a stomach pump.
"That's generally the way with men that turn up their noses at vocal music.
"Well, he got no better so rapidly that next day he was occupying a front seat at the biggest delirium triangle matinee you ever heard of, and was the sole proprietor of the biggest aggregation of seal-brown tarantulas and variegated caterpillars and imported centipedes that ever exhibited in Columbia's fair domain.
"Every little while he'd nail some diabolical insect crawling up his sleeve or gently walking through his hair, and then he'd yell like a maniac and pray and swear like a hired man.
"The atmosphere seemed to be level-full of bumblebees as big as a cook-stove, and every time they'd cuddle up to him of sink on him with their sultry little gimlets, Katooter would jump up and whoop like a Piute medicine man trying to assuage a wide waste of turbulent cucumber.
"At these times Katooter would lay aside his wardrobe, and, throwing me into the fire-place and Timberline under the bed, he would wander forth into the starlight, with the thermometer down to 37 degrees, and wrapped in nothing but his surging thoughts.
"By the time Timberline and me would get up and swab the cobwebs and cinders out of our eyes, Katooter would be half way up the gulch and lighting out like a freckled Greek slave hunting for a clothing store.
"First along we used to run after him and try to tire him out and corral him, but he was most too skipful, and apparently so all-fired anxious to put all the intervening distance he could between himself and the fuzzy tarantulas and fall style of centipede, that he made some pretty tall time, considering the poor trail and the light mountain air.
"Then another thing; when we got to him he was so pesky mean to hang on to.
"You've probably tried before now, when you was small, to catch the boy who tied your shirt to the top limb of a dead tree, and you have thrown all your energy into the effort, but you decided after awhile to wait till he got his clothes on before you punished him.
"That's the way it was with Katooter. He was the smartest man I ever tried to gather into the fold. We'd think we had him, and all at once he'd glide between our legs like a yaller dog and laugh a wild kind of laugh that would run the thermometer down 13 degrees, and away he'd glimmer up the trail like a red-headed right of way.
"So I got mad at last, and used to chase him with a lariat and Yellow Fever.
"Yellow Fever was a sorrel mule that belonged to the firm. We called him Yellow Fever because he was so fatal.
"Well, when Yellow Fever and me got after Katooter with the lariat, we most always gathered him in. – [Bless my soul, how I'm stringing this yarn out.]
"Well, to make a long story short, Katooter rallied after a while, and during the spell his chilblains was convalescing, and some more new skin growing on his system where he had barked it off running through the sage-brush, and falling into old deserted prospect holes. I had an offer of $50,000 for my third in the Feverish Hornet, and sold.
"Then I went down to Truckee and bought a little house of an old railroad man down there, and grubstaked myself for the winter, and allowed I'd lay off till the snow left the range in the spring.
"One night, about half after 12, I judge, I heard somebody step along to the window of my boudoir. Hearing it at that time of night, I reckoned that something crooked was going on, so I slid out of bed and got my Great Blood Searcher and Liver Purifier, with the new style of center fire and cartridge ejector, and slid up to the window, calculating to shove a tonic into whoever it might be that was picnicking around my claim.
"I looked out so as to get a good idea of where I wanted to sink on him, and then I thought before I mangled him I'd ask him if he had any choice about which part of his vitals he wanted to preserve, so I sang out to him:
"Look out below there, pard, for I'm going to call the meeting to order in a minute! Just throw up your hands, if you please, and make the grand hailing sign of distress, or I'll have to mutilate you! Just show me about where you'd have the fatal wound, and be spry about it, too, because I've got my brief costume on, and the evening air is chill!"
"He didn't understand me, apparently, for a gurgling laugh welled up from below, and the party sings back:
"Hullo, Fatty, is that you? Just lookin' to see if you'd fired up yet. You know I was to come round and flag you if second seven was out Well, I've been down to the old man's to see what's on the board. Three is two hours late and four is on time. There's two sevens out and two sections of nine. Skinney'll take out first seven and Shorty'll pull her with 102. It's you and me for second seven, with Limber Jim on front end and French to hold down the caboose. First fire is wrong side up in a washout this side of Ogallalla, and old Whatshisname that runs 258 got his crown sheet caved in and telescoped his headlight into the middle of the New Jerusalem. You know the little Swede that used to run extra for Old Hotbox on the emigrant awhile? Well, he was firing on 258 and he's under three flats and a coal-oil tank, with a brake beam across his coupler, and his system more or less relaxed. He's gone to the sweet subsequently, too. Rest of the boys are more or less demoralized, and side-tracked for repairs. Now you don't want to monkey around much, for if you don't loom up like six bits and go out on the tick, the old man'll give you a time cheek and the oriental grand bounce. You hear the mellow trill of my bazoo?"
"Then I slowly uncorked the Great Blood Purifier, and moving to the footlights where the silvery moonbeams could touch up my dazzling outlines, I said: 'Partner, I am pleased and gratified to have met you. I don't know the first ding busted thing you have said to me, but that is my misfortune. I am a plain miner, and my home is in the digestive apparatus of the earth, but for professional melody of the chin, you certainly take the cake. You also take the cake basket and what cold pie there is in on the dump. My name is Wood-tick Williams. I discovered the Feverish Hornet up on Slippery Elm. I am proud, you know. Keep right on getting more and more familiar with your profession, and by and by, when nobody can understand you, you will be promoted and respected, and you will at last be a sleeping-car conductor, and revel in the biggest mental calm, and wide shoreless sea of intellectual stagnation that the world ever saw. You will —
"But he was gone.
"Then I took a pillow sham and wiped some pulverized crackers off the soles of my feet, and went to bed, enveloped in a large gob of gloom."