finally got my pluck to where it would stick. But at last I said I would
go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it.
I stood up to begin, and he told me to come closer. I edged up a little,
but still left as much neutral ground between us as I thought he would
stand. Then I began. It would be useless for me to try to tell what
conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how they
grew more and more intense, as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness
descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his
hands began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with the
strength ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling under me:
THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED
THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth
Day of November, in the year
Of our Lord one thousand eight
Hundred six-and-fifty,
Between Joanna S. E. Gray
And Philip Gray, her husband,
Of Salem City in the State
Of Texas, of the first part,
And O. B. Johnson, of the town
Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH:
That said party of first part,
For and in consideration
Of the sum of Twenty Thousand
Dollars, lawful money of
The U. S. of Americay,
To them in hand now paid by said
Party of the second part,
The due receipt whereof is here-
By confessed and acknowledg-ed
Having Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised,
Released and Aliened and Conveyed,
Confirmed, and by these presents do
Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise,
Alien, Release, Convey, and Con-
Firm unto the said aforesaid
Party of the second part,
And to his heirs and assigns
Forever and ever ALL
That certain lot or parcel of
LAND situate in city of
Dunkirk, County of Chautauqua,
And likewise furthermore in York State
Bounded and described, to-wit,
As follows, herein, namely
BEGINNING at the distance of
A hundred two-and-forty feet,
North-half-east, north-east-by north,
East-north-east and northerly
Of the northerly line of Mulligan street
On the westerly line of Brannigan street,
And running thence due northerly
On Brannigan street 200 feet,
Thence at right angles westerly,
North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west,
West-and-by-north, north-west-by-west,
About--
I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the looking-glass. I could
have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to,
but I took no interest in such things.
INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA"
In taking upon myself the burden of editing a department in THE GALAXY
magazine, I have been actuated by a conviction that I was needed, almost
imperatively, in this particular field of literature. I have long felt
that while the magazine literature of the day had much to recommend it,
it yet lacked stability, solidity, weight. It seemed plain to me that
too much space was given to poetry and romance, and not enough to
statistics and agriculture. This defect it shall be my earnest endeavour
to remedy. If I succeed, the simple consciousness that I have done a
good deed will be a sufficient reward.** --[**Together with salary.]
In this department of mine the public may always rely upon finding
exhaustive statistical tables concerning the finances of the country,
the ratio of births and deaths; the percentage of increase of population,
etc., etc.--in a word, everything in the realm of statistics that can
make existence bright and beautiful.
Also, in my department will always be found elaborate condensations of
the Patent Office Reports, wherein a faithful endeavour will at all times
be made to strip the nutritious facts bare of that effulgence of
imagination and sublimity of diction which too often mar the excellence
of those great works.** --[** N. B.--No other magazine in the country
makes a specialty of the Patent Office Reports.]
In my department will always be found ample excerpts from those able
dissertations upon Political Economy which I have for a long time been
contributing to a great metropolitan journal, and which, for reasons
utterly incomprehensible to me, another party has chosen to usurp the
credit of composing.
And, finally, I call attention with pride to the fact that in my
department of the magazine the farmer will always find full market
reports, and also complete instructions about farming, even from the
grafting of the seed to the harrowing of the matured crop. I shall throw
a pathos into the subject of Agriculture that will surprise and delight
the world.
Such is my programme; and I am persuaded that by adhering to it with
fidelity I shall succeed in materially changing the character of this
magazine. Therefore I am emboldened to ask the assistance and
encouragement of all whose sympathies are with Progress and Reform.
In the other departments of the magazine will be found poetry, tales, and
other frothy trifles, and to these the reader can turn for relaxation
from time to time, and thus guard against overstraining the powers of his
mind.
M. T.
P. S.--1. I have not sold out of the "Buffalo Express," and shall not;
neither shall I stop writing for it. This remark seems necessary in a
business point of view.
2. These MEMORANDA are not a "humorous" department. I would not conduct
an exclusively and professedly humorous department for any one. I would
always prefer to have the privilege of printing a serious and sensible
remark, in case one occurred to me, without the reader's feeling obliged
to consider himself outraged. We cannot keep the same mood day after
day. I am liable, some day, to want to print my opinion on
jurisprudence, or Homeric poetry, or international law, and I shall do
it. It will be of small consequence to me whether the reader survive or
not. I shall never go straining after jokes when in a cheerless mood, so
long as the unhackneyed subject of international law is open to me.
I will leave all that straining to people who edit professedly and
inexorably "humorous" departments and publications.
3. I have chosen the general title of MEMORANDA for this department
because it is plain and simple, and makes no fraudulent promises. I can
print under it statistics, hotel arrivals, or anything that comes handy,
without violating faith with the reader.
4. Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department. Inoffensive
ignorance, benignant stupidity, and unostentatious imbecility will always
be welcomed and cheerfully accorded a corner, and even the feeblest
humour will be admitted, when we can do no better; but no circumstances,
however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the
admission of that last--and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the
Pun.
ABOUT SMELLS
In a recent issue of the "
Independent," the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of
Brooklyn, has the following utterance on the subject of "Smells":
I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in
church, and a working man should enter the door at the other end,
would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the
sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer
for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog. The fact is,
if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing up of the
common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of
Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the
church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do with this
work of evangelization.
We have reason to believe that there will be labouring men in heaven; and
also a number of negroes, and Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and
Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly even some Spaniards and
Portuguese. All things are possible with God. We shall have all these
sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in getting them we shall lose the
society of Dr. Talmage. Which is to say, we shall lose the company of
one who could give more real "tone" to celestial society than any other
contribution Brooklyn could furnish. And what would eternal happiness be
without the Doctor? Blissful, unquestionably--we know that well enough
but would it be 'distingue,' would it be 'recherche' without him? St.
Matthew without stockings or sandals; St. Jerome bare headed, and with a
coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with
scarcely any raiment at all--these we should see, and should enjoy seeing
them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away
regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough,
but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn." I fear me that in the better
world we shall not even have Dr. Talmage's "good Christian friend."
For if he were sitting under the glory of the Throne, and the keeper of
the keys admitted a Benjamin Franklin or other labouring man, that
"friend," with his fine natural powers infinitely augmented by
emancipation from hampering flesh, would detect him with a single sniff,
and immediately take his hat and ask to be excused.
To all outward seeming, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is of the same
material as that used in the construction of his early predecessors in
the ministry; and yet one feels that there must be a difference somewhere
between him and the Saviour's first disciples. It may be because here,
in the nineteenth century, Dr. T. has had advantages which Paul and
Peter and the others could not and did not have. There was a lack of
polish about them, and a looseness of etiquette, and a want of
exclusiveness, which one cannot help noticing. They healed the very
beggars, and held intercourse with people of a villainous odour every
day. If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original
Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with the rest, because he
could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came
from around the Sea of Galilee. He would have resigned his commission
with some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master,
if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad smells, I will have
nothing to do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and
makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is, that he makes it
in the nineteenth instead of the first century.
Is there a choir in Mr. T.'s church? And does it ever occur that they
have no better manners than to sing that hymn which is so suggestive of
labourers and mechanics:
"Son of the Carpenter! receive
This humble work of mine?"
Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian
character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the
stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers
and wilts under an unsavoury smell? We are not prepared to believe so,
the reverend Doctor and his friend to the contrary notwithstanding.
A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES
When I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an
Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to
deceive anybody. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's
confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who
will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless
inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly
and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not
mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal
barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree
whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches
should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc. I
thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to
make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously
mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my
postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas!
right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that remark seems to
have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It
lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers
feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of
agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact, one of my
correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with
letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and
maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever
grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way
of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful,
and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).
Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in
fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of
the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and
the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at
second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write
a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in
perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to
do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never
tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one
to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only
person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other
instances the "nub" or moral of the burlesque--if its object be to
enforce a truth--escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the
body of the burlesque itself. And very often this "moral" is tagged on
at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the
whole thing and the only important paragraph in the a
rticle, tranquilly
turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire
with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is
careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the
travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked
and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his
knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques
and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I
tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly
palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak
the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in
America!
DAN MURPHY
One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the
banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy
enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him,
and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was
too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a
sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for
him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to
keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary,
she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part
with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had
known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a
dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again.
Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and
respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to
have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to
dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his