Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches Read online

  Once, this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry and slipped in there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar, so that his mother would never know the difference; but all at once a terrible feeling didn’t come over him, and something didn’t seem to whisper to him, “Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn’t it sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother’s jam?” and then he didn’t kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell his mother all about it and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is the way with all other bad boys in the books, but it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also, and laughed, and observed that “the old woman would get up and snort” when she found it out; and when she did find it out he denied knowing anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying himself. Everything about this boy was curious—everything turned out differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the books.

  Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn’s apple tree to steal apples, and the limb didn’t break and he didn’t fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer’s great dog, and then languish on a sick bed for weeks and repent and become good. Oh, no—he stole as many apples as he wanted, and came down all right, and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked him endways with a rock when he came to tear him. It was very strange—nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and bell-crowned hats and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women with the waists of their dresses under their arms and no hoops on. Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books.

  Once he stole the teacher’s penknife, and when he was afraid it would be found out and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson’s cap—poor Widow Wilson’s son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the village, who always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons and infatuated with Sunday-school. And when the knife dropped from the cap and poor George hung his head and blushed, as if in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his trembling shoulders, a white-haired improbable justice of the peace did not suddenly appear in their midst and strike an attitude and say, “Spare this noble boy—there stands the cowering culprit! I was passing the school door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft committed!” And then Jim didn’t get whaled, and the venerable justice didn’t read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and say such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come and make his home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands, and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife to do household labors, and have all the balance of the time to play, and get forty cents a month, and be happy. No, it would have happened that way in the books, but it didn’t happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to make trouble, and so the model boy George got threshed, and Jim was glad of it. Because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was “down on them milksops.” Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.

  But the strangest things that ever happened to Jim was the time he went boating on Sunday and didn’t get drowned, and that other time that he got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday, and didn’t get struck by lightning. Why, you might look, and look, and look through the Sunday-school books, from now till next Christmas, and you would never come across anything like this. Oh, no—you would find that all the bad boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned, and all the bad boys who get caught out in storms, when they are fishing on Sunday, infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them always upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.

  This Jim bore a charmed life—that must have been the way of it. Nothing could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of tobacco, and the elephant didn’t knock the top of his head off with his trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after essence of peppermint, and didn’t make a mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father’s gun and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn’t shoot three or four of his fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist when he was angry, and she didn’t linger in pain through long summer days and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No—she got over it. He ran off and went to sea at last, and didn’t come back and find himself sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet church-yard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to decay. Ah, no—he came home drunk as a piper, and got into the station house the first thing.

  And he grew up, and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality, and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.

  So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.

  December 23, 1865

  Barnum’s First Speech in Congress

  (BY SPIRITUAL TELEGRAPH.)

  Mr. P. T. Barnum will find the House of Representatives a most excellent advertising medium, in case he is elected to Congress. He will certainly not forget the high duties to his country devolving upon him, and it will be a pity if he forgets his private worldly affairs,—a genuine pity if his justly-famed sagacity fails to point out to him how he can dove-tail business and patriotism together to the mutual benefit of himself and the Great Republic. I am informed by the Spirits that his first speech in Congress will read as follows:

  “Mr. Speaker—What do we do with a diseased limb? Cut it off! What do I do with a diseased curiosity? Sell him! What do we do with any speculation of any kind whatever that don’t pay? Get rid of it—get out of it! Of course. Simply because I have got the most superb collection of curiosities in the world—the grandest museum ever conceived of by man—containing the dwarf elephant, Jenny Lind, and the only living giraffe on this continent, (that noble brute, which sits upon its hams in an attitude at once graceful and picturesque, and eats its hay out of the second-story window,)—because I have got these things, and because admission is only thirty cents, children and servants half-price, open from sunrise till 10 P. M., peanuts and all the other luxuries of the season to be purchased in any part of the house, —the proprietor, at enormous expense, having fitted up two pea-nut stands to each natural curiosity,—because I have got these things, shall I revel in luxurious indolence when my voice should sound a warning to the nation? No! Because the Wonderful Spotted Human Phenomenon, the Leopard Child from the wilds of Africa, is mine, shall I exult in my happiness and be silent when my country’s life is threatened? No! Because the Double Hump-backed Bactrian Camel takes his oats in my menagerie, shall I surfeit with bliss and lift not up my voice to save the people? No!—Because among my possessions are dead loads of Royal Bengal Tigers, White Himalaya Mountain Bears, so interesting to Christian families from being mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, Silver-striped Hyenas, Lions, Tigers, Leopards, Wolves, Sacred Cattle from the sacred hills of New Jersey, Panthers, Ibexes, Performing Mules and Monkeys, South American Deer, and so-forth, and so-forth, and so-forth, shall I gloat over my blessings in silence, and leave Columbia to perish? No! Because I have secured the celebrated Gordon Cumming collection, consisting of oil portraits of the two negroes and a child who rescued him from impending death, shall I wrap me in mute ecstacy and let my country rush unwarned to her destruction? No! Because unto me belong the monster l
iving alligator, over 12 feet in length, and four living speckled brook trout, weighing 20 pounds, shall these lips sing songs of gladness and peal no succoring cry unto a doomed nation? No! Because I have got Miller’s grand national bronze portrait gallery, consisting of two plaster of Paris Venuses and a varnished mud-turtle, shall I bask in mine own bliss and be mute in the season of my people’s peril? No! Because I possess the smallest dwarfs in the world, and the Nova Scotian giantess, who weighs a ton and eats her weight every forty-eight hours; and Herr Phelim O’Flannigan the Norwegian Giant, who feeds on the dwarfs and ruins business; and the lovely Circassian girl; and the celebrated Happy Family, consisting of animals of the most diverse principles and dispositions, dwelling together in peace and unity, and never beheld by the religious spectator acquainted with Eden before the Fall, without emotions too profound for utterance; and 250,000 other curiosities, chiefly invisible to the naked eye—all to be seen for the small sum of 30 cents, children and servants half price—staircases arranged with special reference to limb displays—shall I hug my happiness to my soul and fail to cry aloud when I behold my country sinking to destruction and the grave? No!—a thousand times No!

  “NO! Even as one sent to warn ye of fearful peril, I cry Help! help! for the stricken land! I appeal to you—and to you—and to you, sir—to every true heart in this august menagerie! Demagogues threaten the Goddess of Liberty!—they beard the starry-robed woman in her citadel! and to you the bearded woman looks for succor! Once more grim Treason towers in our midst, and once more helpless loyalty scatters into corners as do the dwarfs when the Norwegian giant strides among them! The law-making powers and the Executive are at daggers drawn, State after State flings defiance at the Amendment, and lo! the Happy Family of the Union is broken up! Woe is me!

  “Where is the poor negro? How hath he fared? Alas! his regeneration is incomplete; he is free, but he cannot vote; ye have only made him white in spots, like my wonderful Leopard Boy from the wilds of Africa! Ye promised him universal suffrage, but ye have given him universal suffering instead! Woe is me!

  “The country is fallen! The boss monkey sits in the feed-tub, and the tom-cats, the raccoons and the gentle rabbits of the once happy family stand helpless and afar off, and behold him gabble the provender in the pride of his strength! Woe is me!

  “Ah, gentlemen, our beloved Columbia, with these corroding distresses upon her, must soon succumb! The high spirit will depart from her eye, the bloom from her cheek, the majesty from her step, and she will stand before us gaunt and worn, like my beautiful giantess when my dwarfs and Circassians prey upon her rations! Soon we shall see the glory of the realm pass away as did the grandeur of the Museum amid the consuming fires, and the wonders the world admires shall give place to trivialities, even as in the proud Museum the wonders that once amazed have given place to cheap stuffed reptiles and pea-nut stands! Woe is me!

  “O, spirit of Washington! forgotten in these evil times, thou art banished to the dusty corridors of memory, a staring effigy of wax, and none could recognize thee but for the label pinned upon thy legs! O, shade of Jackson! O, ghost of gallant Lafayette! ye live only in museums, and the sublime lessons of your lives are no longer heeded by the slumbering nation! Woe is me!

  “Rouse ye, my people, rouse ye! rouse ye! rouse ye! Shake off the fatal stupor that is upon ye, and hurl the usurping tyrant from his throne! Impeach! impeach! impeach!—Down with the dread boss monkey! O, snake the seditious miscreant out of the national feed-tub and reconstruct the Happy Family!”

  Such is the speech as imparted to me in advance from the spirit land.

  March 5, 1867

  Cannibalism in the Cars

  I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way west, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about forty-five, or may be fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat down beside me. We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an hour, perhaps, and I found him exceedingly intelligent and entertaining. When he learned that I was from Washington, he immediately began to ask questions about various public men, and about Congressional affairs; and I saw very shortly that I was conversing with a man who was perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to the ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and Representatives in the Chambers of the National Legislature. Presently two men halted near us for a single moment, and one said to the other:

  “Harris, if you’ll do that for me, I’ll never forget you, my boy.”

  My new comrade’s eyes lighted pleasantly. The words had touched upon a happy memory, I thought. Then his face settled into thoughtfulness—almost into gloom. He turned to me and said, “Let me tell you a story; let me give you a secret chapter of my life—a chapter that has never been referred to by me since its events transpired. Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt me.”

  I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure, speaking sometimes with animation, sometimes with melancholy, but always with feeling and earnestness.

  THE STRANGER’S NARRATIVE

  On the 19th December, 1853, I started from St. Louis in the evening train, bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all told. There were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey bade fair to be a happy one, and no individual in the party, I think, had even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo.

  At 11 P.M. it began to snow hard. Shortly after leaving the small village of Weldon, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away towards the Jubilee Settlements. The winds unobstructed by trees or hills, or even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy sea. The snow was deepening fast, and we knew, by the diminished speed of the train, that the engine was ploughing through it with steadily increasing difficulty. Indeed it almost came to a dead halt sometimes, in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves across the track. Conversation began to flag. Cheerfulness gave place to grave concern. The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit.

  At two o’clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by the ceasing of all motion about me. The appalling truth flashed upon me instantly—we were captives in a snowdrift ! “All hands to the rescue!” Every man sprang to obey. Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness, the billowing snow, the driving storm, every soul leaped, with the consciousness that a moment lost now might bring destruction to us all. Shovels, hands, boards—anything, everything that could displace snow, was brought into instant requisition. It was a weird picture, that small company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the blackest shadow and half in the angry light of the locomotive’s reflector.

  One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts. The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away. And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the driving-wheel! With a free track before us we should still have been helpless. We entered the car wearied with labor, and very sorrowful. We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed our situation. We had no provisions whatever—in this lay our chief distress. We could not freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender. This was our only comfort. The discussion ended at last in accepting the disheartening decision of the conductor,—viz.: That it would be death for any man to attempt to travel fifty miles on foot through snow like that. We could not send for help, and even if we could, it could not come. We must submit and await, as patiently as we might, succor or starvation! I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary
chill when those words were uttered.

  Within the hour conversation subsided to a low murmur here and there about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the blast; the lamps grew dim; and the majority of the castaways settled themselves among the flickering shadows to think—to forget the present if they could—to sleep, if they might.

  The eternal night—it surely seemed eternal to us—wore its lagging hours away at last, and the cold grey dawn broke in the east. As the light grew stronger the passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out at the windows upon the cheerless prospect. It was cheerless indeed!—not a living thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast white desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the wind—a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above.

  All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much. Another lingering, dreary night—and hunger.

  Another dawning—another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger, hopeless watching for succor that could not come. A night of restless slumber, filled with dreams of feasting—wakings distressed with the gnawings of hunger.