Sketches New and Old, Part 3. Read online

  RILEY-NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT

  One of the best men in Washington--or elsewhere--is RILEY, correspondentof one of the great San Francisco dailies.

  Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makeshis conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarksare about somebody else). But notwithstanding the possession of thesequalities, which should enable a man to write a happy and an appetizingletter, Riley's newspaper letters often display a more than earthlysolemnity, and likewise an unimaginative devotion to petrified facts,which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficialcharacter. He explains this curious thing by saying that his employerssent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several timeshe has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarkswhich, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently notunderstood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended toconvey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or somethingof that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer andcast into the stove. Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted witha yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that hesimply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in thedelight of untrammeled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as onlya mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy andreduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley dothis very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak. Often I havelaughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plow hispen through it. He would say, "I had to write that or die; and I've gotto scratch it out or starve. They wouldn't stand it, you know."

  I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. Welodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8,moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention bypaying our board--a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuousin Washington. Riley would tell all about his trip to California in theearly days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan River; and about hisbaking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up tenpins,and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, andteaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, andkeeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts--whichlatter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up alittle money when people began to find fault because his translationswere too "free," a thing for which Riley considered he ought not to beheld responsible, since he did not know a word of the Chinese tongue, andonly adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood.Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the position ofofficial interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar withthe Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Riley used totell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was onlyan iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians,and other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left allhis paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floatedout of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off theirallegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and becomean English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; buta land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up theStars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection againand swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors camehome every time, and away they went with the northeast trades driftingoff sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up theCannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which itwas noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyedhim; and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got sofearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy underfoot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all; and atlast, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnantof the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to theother, and then plunged under forever, carrying the national archivesalong with it--and not only the archives and the populace, but someeligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as theydiminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold atthirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept theprovince afloat ten hours longer and got her into port.

  Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgetsanything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a stanch friend, and apermanent reliable enemy. He will put himself to any amount of troubleto oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to bedone for the helpless and the shiftless. And he knows how to do nearlyeverything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-springthat never goes dry. He stands always ready to help whoever needs help,as far as he is able--and not simply with his money, for that is a cheapand common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb andsacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare.

  Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applyingquotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the backside of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperatingjoke. One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next doorto us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppressively emotionalat breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities asoffered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find itbest to let her talk along and say nothing back--it was the only way tokeep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral inthe neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week.

  And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughsof woe--entirely brokenhearted. Everything she looked at reminded her ofthat poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, thecoffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wailthat made our hair rise. Then she got to talking about deceased, andkept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through.Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs:

  "Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!--the poor old faithfulcreature. For she was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been aservant in that selfsame house and that selfsame family for twenty sevenyears come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick! And, oh,to think she should meet such a death at last!--a-sitting over the redhot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell onit and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but literallyroasted to a crisp! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked! I ambut a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up atombstone over that lone sufferer's grave--and Mr. Riley if you wouldhave the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which wouldsort of describe the awful way in which she met her--"

  "Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,'" said Riley, and neversmiled.