The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (english novels for beginners .TXT) 📗
- Author: Marshall P. Wilder
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I hear much and see more of the physical weakness of woman. Michelet tells the sentimental world that woman is an exquisite invalid, with a perennial headache and nerves perpetually on the rack. It is a mistake. When I gaze upon German and French peasant-women, I ask Michelet which is right, he or Nature? And since my introduction to Barnum's female gymnast,—a good-looking, well-formed mother of a family, who walks about unflinchingly with men and boys on her shoulders, and carries a 300-pound gun as easily as the ordinary woman carries a clothes-basket,—I have been persuaded that "the coming woman," like Brother Jonathan, will "lick all creation." In that good time, woman will have her rights because she will have her muscle. Then, if there are murders and playful beatings between husbands and wives, the wives will enjoy all the glory of crime. What an outlook! And what a sublime consolation to the present enfeebled race of wives that are having their throats cut and their eyes carved out merely because their biceps[Pg 366] have not gone into training! Barnum's female gymnast is an example to her sex. What woman has done woman may do again. Mothers, train up your daughters in the way they should fight, and when they are married they will not depart this life. God is on the side of the stoutest muscle as well as of the heaviest battalions. It is perfectly useless to talk about the equality of the sexes as long as a man can strangle his own mother-in-law.
I was exceedingly thrilled by the appearance of the two young gentlemen from the Cannibal Islands, who are beautifully embossed in green and red, and compassionated them for the sacrifices they make in putting on blankets and civilization. Is it right to deprive them of their daily bread,—I mean their daily baby? Think what self-restraint they must exercise while gazing upon the toothsome infants that congregate at the circus! That they do gaze and smack their overhanging lips I know, because, after going through their cannibalistic dance, they sat behind me and howled in a subdued manner. The North American Indian who occupied an adjoining seat, favored me with a translation of their charming conversation, by which I learned many important facts concerning man as an article of diet. It appears that babies, after all, do not make the daintiest morsels. Tender they are, of course, but, being immature, they have not the rich flavor of a youthful adult. This seems reasonable. Veal is tender, but can it be favorably compared with beef? The cases are parallel. The embossed young men consider babies excellent for entrées, but for roasts there is nothing like plump maidens in their teens. Men of twenty are not bad eating. When older, they are invariably boiled. Commenting upon the audience, the critics did not consider it appetizing; and, strange as it may appear, I felt somewhat hurt by the remark, for who is not vain[Pg 367] enough to wish to look good enough to eat? Fancy being shipwrecked off the Fiji Islands, and discarded by cannibals as a tough subject, while your companions are literally killed with attention! Can you not imagine, that, under such circumstances, a peculiar jealousy of the superior tenderness of your friends would be a thorn in the flesh, rendering existence a temporary burden? If we lived among people who adored squinting, should we not all take to it, and cherish it as the apple of our eye? And if we fell among anthropophagi, would not our love of approbation make us long to be as succulent as young pigs? What glory to escape from the jaws of death, if the jaws repudiate us? So long as memory holds a seat in this distracted brain, I shall entertain unpleasant feelings toward the embossed young gentlemen who did not sigh to fasten their affections—otherwise their teeth—on me. It was worse than a crime: it was bad taste.
Roaming among the wild animals, I made the acquaintance of the cassowary, in which I have been deeply interested since childhood's sunny hours, for then't was oft I sang a touching hymn running thus:
Far away in Timbuctoo,
I should eat a missionary,
Hat, and boots, and hymn-book too."
From that hour the cassowary occupied a large niche in my heart. The desire to gaze upon a bird capable of digesting food to which even the ostrich never aspired, pursued me by day and tinctured my dreams by night. "What you seek for all your life you will come upon suddenly when the whole family is at dinner," says Thoreau. I met the cassowary at dinner. He was dining alone, having left his family in Africa, and I must say that I never met with a greater disappointment. Were it not for the[Pg 368] touching intimation of the hymn, I should believe it impossible for him to eat a missionary. A quieter, more amiable bird never stood on two legs. A polite attendant stirred him up for me, yet his temper and his feathers remained unruffled. Perhaps if our geographical position had changed to Timbuctoo, and I had been a missionary with hymn-book in hand, the cassowary might have realized my expectations. As it was, one more illusion vanished.
In order to regain my spirits, I shook hands with the handsome giant in brass buttons; and speaking of giants leads me to the subject of all lusus naturæ, particularly the Circassian young lady, the dwarf, the living skeleton, the Albinos, and What-is-it. I have dropped more than one tear at the fate of these unfortunate beings; for what is more horribly solitary than to live in a strange crowd, with
None to caress?"
Noah was human. When he retired to the ark, he selected two of a kind from all the animal kingdom for the sake of sociability as well as for more practical purposes. Showmen should be equally considerate. To think of those Albino sisters with never an Albino beau, of the Circassian beauty with never a Circassian sweetheart, of the living skeleton with never another skeleton in his closet (how he can look so good-natured would be most mysterious, were not his digestion pronounced perfect), to think of the wretched What-is-it with never a Mrs. What-is-it, produces unspeakable anguish. May they meet their affinities in another and a more sympathetic world, where monstrosities are impossible for the reason that we leave our bones on earth. Since gazing at the What-is-it, I have become a convert to Darwin. It is too[Pg 369] true. Our ancestors stood on their hind legs, and the less we talk about pedigree the better. The noble democrat in search of a coat-of-arms and a grandfather should visit a grand moral circus. Let us assume a virtue, though we have it not; let our pride ape humility.
Were I asked which I thought the greater necessity of civilization, lectures or circuses, I should lay my right hand upon my left heart, and exclaim, "Circuses!"[Pg 370]
YAWCOB STRAUSS BY CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMSVot gomes schust to mine knee;
Der queerest schap, der createst rogue,
As efer you dit see.
In all barts off der house:
But vot off dot? he vas mine son,
Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss.
Und eferyding dot's oudt;
He sbills mine glass off lager bier,
Poots schnuff indo mine kraut.
Dot vas der roughest chouse:
I'd dake dot vrom no oder poy
But leedle Yawcob Strauss.
Und cuts mine cane in dwo,
To make der schticks to beat it mit,—
Mine cracious, dot vas drue!
He kicks oup sooch a touse:
But nefer mind; der poys vas few
Like dot young Yawcob Strauss.[Pg 371]
Who baints mine nose so red?
Who vas it cuts dot schmoodth blace oudt
Vrom der hair ubon mine hed?
Vene'er der glim I douse.
How gan I all dose dings eggsblain
To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss?
Mit sooch a grazy poy,
Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest,
Und beaceful dimes enshoy;
So guiet as a mouse,
I prays der Lord, "Dake anyding,
But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss."
[Pg 372] SEFFY AND SALLY BY JOHN LUTHER LONG
The place was the porch of the store, the time was about ten o'clock in the morning of a summer day, the people were the amiable loafers—and Old Baumgartner. The person he was discoursing about was his son Sephenijah. I am not sure that the name was not the ripe fruit of his father's fancy—with, perhaps, the Scriptural suggestion which is likely to be present in the affairs of a Pennsylvania-German—whether a communicant or not—even if he live in Maryland.
"Yas—always last; expecial at funerals and weddings. Except his own—he's sure to be on time at his own funeral. Right out in front! Hah? But sometimes he misses his wedding. Why, I knowed a feller—yous all knowed him, begoshens!—that didn't git there tell another feller'd married her—'bout more'n a year afterward. Wasn't it more'n a year, boys? Yas—Bill Eisenkrout. Or, now, was it his brother—Baltzer Iron-Cabbage? Seems to me now like it was Baltz. Somesing wiss a B at the front end, anyhow."
Henry Wasserman diffidently intimated that there was a curious but satisfactory element of safety in being last—a "fastnacht" in their language, in fact. Those in front were the ones usually hurt in railroad accidents, Alexander Althoff remembered.
"Safe?" cried the speaker. "Of course! But
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