The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) by Marshall P. Wilder (short books to read .TXT) 📗

ears. Oh, what a horrible sight he was, gasping and reaching[Pg 1909] after his tobacco, which was away back among his under-jaw teeth.

Stanford was unsettled for a while, but he soon rallied, and watching his chance, aimed a tremendous blow at his favorite mark, which crushed in the rear of Gov. Low's head in such a way that the crown thereof projected over his spinal column like a shed.

He came up to the scratch like a man, though, and sent one of his ponderous fists crashing through his opponent's ribs and in among his vitals, and instantly afterward he hauled out poor Stanford's left lung and smacked him in the face with it.

If I ever saw an angry man in my life it was Leland Stanford. He fairly raved. He jumped at his old speciality, Gov. Low's head; he tore it loose from his body and knocked him down with it. (Sensation in the crowd.)

Staggered by his extraordinary exertion, Gov. Stanford reeled, and before he could recover himself the headless but indomitable Low sprang forward, pulled one of his legs out by the roots, and dealt him a smashing paster over the eye with the end of it. The ever watchful Bill Stewart sallied out to the assistance of his crippled principal with a pair of crutches, and the battle went on again as fiercely as ever.

At this stage of the game the battle ground was strewn with a sufficiency of human remains to furnish material for the construction of three or four men of ordinary size, and good sound brains enough to stock a whole county like the one I came from in the noble old state of Missouri. And so dyed were the combatants in their own gore that they looked like shapeless, mutilated, red-shirted firemen.

The moment a chance offered, Low grabbed Stanford by the hair of the head, swung him thrice round and[Pg 1910] round in the air like a lasso, and then slammed him on the ground with such mighty force that he quivered all over, and squirmed painfully, like a worm; and behold, his body and such of his limbs as he had left, shortly assumed a swollen aspect like unto those of a rag doll-baby stuffed with saw-dust.

He rallied again, however, and the two desperadoes clinched and never let up until they had minced each other into such insignificant odds and ends that neither was able to distinguish his own remnants from those of his antagonist. It was awful.

Bill Stewart and Judge Field issued from their corners and gazed upon the sanguinary reminiscences in silence during several minutes. At the end of that time, having failed to discover that either champion had got the best of the fight, they threw up their sponges simultaneously, and Gen. Wright proclaimed in a loud voice that the battle was "drawn." May my ears never again be rent asunder with a burst of sound similar to that which greeted this announcement, from the multitudes. Amen.

By order of Gen. Wright, baskets were procured, and Bill Stewart and Judge Field proceeded to gather up the fragments of their late principals, while I gathered up my notes and went after my infernal horse, who had slipped his blankets and was foraging among the neighboring children. I—

P. S.—Messrs. Editors, I have been the victim of an infamous hoax. I have been imposed upon by that ponderous miscreant, Mr. Frank Lawler, of the Lick House. I left my room a moment ago, and the first man I met on the stairs was Gov. Stanford, alive and well, and as free from mutilation as you or I. I was speechless. Before I reached the street, I actually met Gov. Low also, with his own head on his own shoulders, his limbs in[Pg 1911]tact, his inner mechanism in its proper place, and his cheeks blooming with gorgeous robustitude. I was amazed. But a word of explanation from him convinced me that I had been swindled by Mr. Lawler with a detail account of a fight which had never occurred, and was never likely to occur; that I had believed him so implicitly as to sit down and write it out (as other reporters have done before me) in language calculated to deceive the public into the conviction that I was present at it myself, and to embellish it with a string of falsehoods intended to render that deception as plausible as possible. I ruminated upon my singular position for many minutes, arrived at no conclusion—that is to say, no satisfactory conclusion, except that Lawler was an accomplished knave and I was a consummate ass. I had suspected the first before, though, and been acquainted with the latter fact for nearly a quarter of a century.

In conclusion, permit me to apologize in the most abject manner to the present Governor of California, to Hon. Mr. Low, the Governor elect, to Judge Field and to Hon. Wm. M. Stewart, for the great wrong which my natural imbecility has impelled me to do them in penning and publishing the foregoing sanguinary absurdity. If it were to do over again, I don't really know that I would do it. It is not possible for me to say how I ever managed to believe that refined and educated gentlemen like these could stoop to engage in the loathsome and degrading pastime of prize-fighting. It was just Lawler's work, you understand—the lubberly, swelled up effigy of a nine-days drowned man! But I shall get even with him for this. The only excuse he offers is that he got the story from John B. Winters, and thought of course it must be just so—as if a future Congressman for the state of Washoe could by any possibility tell the truth! Do you[Pg 1912] know that if either of these miserable scoundrels were to cross my path while I am in this mood I would scalp him in a minute? That's me—that's my style.[Pg 1913]

A CONCORD LOVE-SONG BY JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE

Shall we meet again, love,
In the distant When, love,
When the Now is Then, love,
And the Present Past?
Shall the mystic Yonder,
On which I ponder,
I sadly wonder,
With thee be cast?

Ah, the joyless fleeting
Of our primal meeting,
And the fateful greeting
Of the How and Why!
Ah, the Thingness flying
From the Hereness, sighing
For a love undying
That fain would die!

Ah, the Ifness sadd'ning,
The Whichness madd'ning,
And the But ungladd'ning,
That lie behind!
When the signless token
Of love is broken
In the speech unspoken
[Pg 1914]Of mind to mind!

But the mind perceiveth
When the spirit grieveth,
And the heart relieveth
Itself of woe;
And the doubt-mists lifted
From the eyes love-gifted
Are rent and rifted
In the warmer glow.

In the inner Me, love,
As I turn to thee, love,
I seem to see, love,
No Ego there.
But the Meness dead, love,
The Theeness fled, love,
And born instead, love,
An Usness rare!
[Pg 1915]

THE MEETING BY S. E. KISER

One day, in Paradise,
Two angels, beaming, strolled
Along the amber walk that lies
Beside the street of gold.

At last they met and gazed
Into each other's eyes,
Then dropped their harps, amazed,
And stood in mute surprise.

And other angels came,
And, as they lingered near,
Heard both at once exclaim:
"Say, how did you get here?"
[Pg 1916]

"THERE'S A BOWER OF BEAN-VINES" BY PHŒBE CARY

There's a bower of bean-vines in Benjamin's yard,
And the cabbages grow round it, planted for greens;
In the time of my childhood 'twas terribly hard
To bend down the bean-poles, and pick off the beans.

That bower and its products I never forget,
But oft, when my landlady presses me hard,
I think, are the cabbages growing there yet,
Are the bean-vines still bearing in Benjamin's yard?

No, the bean-vines soon withered that once used to wave,
But some beans had been gathered, the last that hung on;
And a soup was distilled in a kettle, that gave
All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone.

Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies,
An essence that breathes of it awfully hard;
As thus good to my taste as 'twas then to my eyes,
Is that bower of bean-vines in Benjamin's yard.
[Pg 1917]

THE TRIAL THAT JOB MISSED BY KENNETT HARRIS

Job had troubles, I admit;
Clearly was his patience shown,
Yet he never had to sit
Waiting at the telephone—
Waiting, waiting to connect,
The receiver at his lobe.
That's a trial, I expect,
Would have been too much for Job!

After minutes of delay,
While the cramps attacked his knees,
Then to hear Miss Central say
Innocently: "Number, please!"
When the same he'd shouted out
Twenty times—he'd rend his robe,
Tear his hair, I've little doubt;
'Twould have been too much for Job.

Job, with all the woes he bore,
Never got the "busy" buzz
When he tempted was of yore
In the ancient land of Uz.
Satan missed it when he sought
His one tender spot to probe;
If of "central" he had thought,
She'd have been too much for Job!
[Pg 1918]

THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE OF SMITH VS. JONES BY SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

I reported this trial simply for my own amusement, one idle day last week, and without expecting to publish any portion of it—but I have seen the facts in the case so distorted and misrepresented in the daily papers that I feel it my duty to come forward and do what I can to set the plaintiff and defendant right before the public. This can best be done by submitting the plain, unembellished statements of the witnesses as given under oath before his Honor Judge Sheperd, in the Police Court, and leaving the people to form their own judgment of the matters involved, unbiased by argument or suggestion of any kind from me.

There is that nice sense of justice and that ability to discriminate between right and wrong, among the masses, which will enable them, after carefully reading the testimony I am about to set down here, to decide without hesitation which is the innocent party and which the guilty in the remarkable case of Smith vs. Jones, and I have every confidence that before this paper shall have been out of the printing-press twenty-four hours, the high court of The People, from whose decision there is no appeal, will have swept from the innocent man all taint of blame or suspicion, and cast upon the guilty one a deathless infamy.

To such as are not used to visiting the Police Court, I[Pg 1919] will observe that there is nothing inviting about the place, there being no rich carpets, no mirrors, no pictures, no elegant sofa or arm-chairs to lounge in, no free lunch—and, in fact, nothing to make a man who has been there once desire to go again—except in cases where his bail is heavier than his fine is likely to be, under which circumstances he naturally has a tendency in that direction again, of course, in order to recover the difference.

There is a pulpit at