CHAPTER XVI.—THE EMPEROR’S CIGARS.
It is not the blood which flows at the front, my friends, that is the worst of war; it is the money corruption that goes on at the rear. In old Sparta, theft was not theft unless discovered in process of accomplishment, and those larcenous morals taught of Lycurgus would seem, on the tails of our own civil war, to have found widest consent and adoption throughout every department of government. The public hour reeled with rottenness, and you may be very sure the New York Customs went as staggeringly corrupt as the rest.
It is to my own proper shame that I should have fallen to have art or part or lot in such iniquities. Yet I went into them with open eyes and hands, and a heart—hungry as a pike’s—for whatever of spoil chance or skilfully constructed opportunity might place within my reach. My sole defense, and that now sounds slight and trivial even to my partial ears, was the one I advanced the other day; my two-ply hatred of government both for injuries done my region of the South as well as the personal ruin visited on me when my ill-wishers struck down that enterprise of steamed tobacco which was making me rich. That is all I may urge in extenuation, and I concede its meager insufficiency.
As I’ve said, I obtained an appointment as an inspector of Customs, and afterward worked side by side, and I might add hand and glove, with our old friends, Quin and Lorns of the Story of the Smuggled Silks. That fearsome honest Chief Inspector who so put my heart to a trot had been dismissed—for some ill-timed integrity, I suppose—sharply in the wake of that day he frightened me; and when I took up life’s burdens as an officer of the Customs, my companions, together with myself, were all black sheep together. Was there by any chance an honest man among us, he did not mention it, surely; nor did he lapse into act or deed that might have been evidence to prove him pure. Yes, forsooth! ignorance could be overlooked, drunkenness condoned, indolence reproved; but for that officer of our Customs who in those days was found honest, there shone no ray of hope. He was seized on and cast into outer unofficial darkness, there to exercise his dangerous probity in private life. There was no room for such among us; no peace nor safety for the rest while he remained. Wherefore, we of a proper blackness, were like so many descendants of Diogenes, forever searching among ourselves to find an honest man; but with fell purpose when discovered, of his destruction. We maintained a strictest quarantine against any infection of truth, and I positively believe, with such success, that it was excluded from our midst. That honest Chief Inspector was dismissed, I say; Lorns told me of it before I’d been actively in place an hour, and the news gave me deepest satisfaction.
That gentleman who was official head of the coterie of revenue hunters to which I was assigned was peculiarly the man unusual. His true name, if I ever heard it, I’ve forgot; among us of the Customs, he was known as Betelnut Jack. Lorns took me into his presence and made us known to one another early in my revenue career. I had been told stories of this man by both Lorns and Quin. They deeply reverenced him for his virtues of courage and cunning, and the praises of Betelnut Jack were constant in their mouths.
Betelnut Jack was at his home in the Bowery. Jack, in years gone by, had been a hardy member of one of those Volunteer fire companies which in that hour notably augmented the perils of an urban life. Jack was a doughty fighter, and with a speaking trump in one hand and a spanner-wrench in the other, had done deeds of daring whereof one might still hear the echo. And he became for these strong-hand reasons a tower of strength in politics; and obtained that eminence in the Customs which was his when first we met.
Betelnut Jack received Lorns and myself in his dingy small coop of a parlor. He was unmarried—a popular theory in accounting for this being that he’d been crossed in love in his youth. Besides the parlor, Jack’s establishment contained only one room, a bedroom it was, a shadow larger than the bed.
Betelnut Jack himself was wiry and dark, and with a face which, while showing marks of former wars, shone the seat of kindly good-humor.
There had been an actor, Chanfrau, who played “Mose, the Fireman.” Betelnut Jack resembled in dress his Bowery brother of the stage. His soiled silk hat stood on a dresser. He wore a long skirted coat, a red shirt, a belt which upheld—in a manner so absent-minded that one feared for the consequences—his trousers; these latter garments in their terminations were tucked inside the gaudy tops of calfskin boots; small and wrinkleless these, and fitting like a glove, with the yellow seams of the soles each day carefully re-yellowed to the end that they be admired of men. Betelnut Jack’s dark hair, a shade of gray streaking it in places, was crisp and wavy; and a long curl, carefully twisted and oiled, was brought down as low as the angle of his jaw just forward of each ear.
“Be honest, young man!” said Betelnut Jack, at the close of a lecture concerning my duties; “be honest! But if you must take wrong money, take enough each time to pay for the loss of your job. Do you see this?” And Jack’s hand fell on a large morocco-bound copy of “Josephus” which lay on his table. “Well, Lorns will tell you what stories I look for in that.”
And Lorns, as we came away, told me. Once a week it was the practice of each inspector to split off twenty per cent, of his pillage. He would, thus organized, pay a visit to his chief, the worthy Betel-nut Jack. As they gossiped, Jack’s ever-ready hospitality would cause him to retire for a moment to the bedroom in search of a demijohn of personal whisky. While alone in the parlor, the visiting inspector would place his contribution between the leaves of “Josephus,” and thereby the humiliating, if not dangerous, passage of money from hand to hand was missed.
There existed but one further trait of caretaking forethought belonging with the worthy Betelnut Jack. It would have come better had others of that crooked clique of customs copied Betelnut Jack in this last cautious characteristic. Justice is a tortoise, while rascality’s a hare; yet justice though shod with lead wins ever the race at last. Betelnut Jack knew this; and while getting darkly rich with the others, he was always ready for the fall. While his comrades drove fast horses, or budded brown-stone fronts, or affected extravagant opera and supper afterward with those painted lilies, in whose society they delighted, Betelnut Jack clung to his old rude Bowery nest of sticks and straws and mud, and lived on without a change his Bowery life. He suffered no improvements whether of habit or of habitat, and provoked no question-asking by any gilded new prosperities of life.
As fast as Betelnut Jack got money, he bought United States bonds. With each new thousand, he got a new bond, and tucked it safely away among its fellows. These pledges of government he kept packed in a small hand-bag; this stood at his bed’s head, ready for instant flight with him. When the downfall did occur, as following sundry years of loot and customs pillage was the desperate case, Betelnut Jack with the earliest whisper of peril, stepped into his raiment and his calfskin boots, took up his satchel of bonds, and with over six hundred thousand dollars of those securities—enough to cushion and make pleasantly sure the balance of his days—saw the last of the Bowery, and was out of the country and into a corner of safety as fast as ship might swim.
But now you grow impatient; you would hear in more of detail concerning what went forward behind the curtains of Customs in those later ’60’s. For myself, I may tell of no great personal exploits. I did not remain long in revenue service; fear, rather than honesty, forced me to resign; and throughout that brief period of my office holding, youth and a lack of talent for practical iniquity prevented my main employment in those swart transactions which from time to time took place. I was liked, I was trusted; I knew what went forward and in the end I had my share of the ill profits; but the plans and, usually, the work came from others of a more subtile and experienced venality.
In this affair of The Emperor’s Cigars, the story was this. I call them The Emperor’s Cigars because they were of a sort and quality made particularly for the then Imperial ruler of the French. They sold at retail for one dollar each, were worth, wholesale, seventy dollars a hundred, and our aggregate harvest of this one operation was, as I now remember, full sixty thousand dollars.
My first knowledge was when Lorns told me one evening of the seizure—by whom of our circle, and on what ship, I’ve now forgotten—of one hundred thousand cigars. They were in proper boxes, concealed I never knew how, and captured in the very act of being smuggled and just as they came onto our wharf. In designating the seizure, and for reasons which I’ve given before, they were at once dubbed and ever afterwards known among us as The Emperor’s Cigars.
These one hundred thousand cigars were taken to the Customs Depot of confiscated goods. The owners, as was our rule, were frightened with black pictures of coming prison, and then liberated, never to be seen of us again. They were glad enough to win freedom without looking once behind to see what became of their captured property.
It was one week later when a member of our ring, from poorest tobacco and by twenty different makers, caused one hundred thousand cigars, duplicates in size and appearance of those Emperor’s Cigars, to be manufactured. These cost two and one-half cents each; a conscious difference, truly! between that and those seventy cents, the wholesale price of our spoil. Well, The Emperor’s Cigars were removed from their boxes and their aristocratic places filled by the worthless imitations we had provided. Then the boxes were again securely closed; and to look at them no one would suspect the important changes which had taken place within.
The Emperor’s Cigars once out of their two thousand boxes were carefully repacked in certain zinc-lined barrels, and reshipped as “notions” to Havana to one of our folk who went ahead of the consignment to receive them. In due course, and in two thousand proper new boxes they again appeared in the port of New York; this time they paid their honest duty. Also, they had a proper consignment, came to no interrupting griefs; and being quickly disposed of, wrought out for us that sixty thousand dollar betterment of which I’ve spoken.
As corollary of this particular informality of The Emperor’s Cigars, there occurred an incident which while grievous to the victims, made no little fun for us; its relation here may entertain you, and because of its natural connection with the main story, will come properly enough. At set intervals, the government held an auction of all confiscated goods. At these markets to which the public was invited to appear and bid, the government asserted nothing, guaranteed nothing. In disposing of such gear as these cigars, no box was opened; no goods displayed. One saw nothing but the cover, heard nothing but the surmise of an auctioneer, and thereupon, if impulse urged, bid what he pleased for a pig in a poke.
Thus it came to pass that on the occasion when The Emperor’s Cigars were held aloft for bids, the garrulous lecturer employed in selling the collected plunder of three confiscation months, took up one of the two thousand boxes as a sample, and said:
“I offer for sale a lot of two thousand packages, of which the one I hold in my hand is a specimen. Each package is supposed to contain fifty cigars. What am I bid for the lot? What offer do I hear?”
That was the complete proffer as made by the government; for all that the bidding was briskly sharp. Those who had come to purchase were there for bargains not guarantees; moreover, there was the box; and could they not believe their experience? Each would-be bidder knew by the size and shape and character of the package that it was made for and should contain fifty cigars of the Emperor brand. Wherefore no one distrusted; the question of contents arose to no mind; and competition grew instant and close. Bid followed bid; five hundred dollars being the mark of each advance, as the noisy struggle between speculators for the lot’s ownership proceeded.
At last those celebrated marketeers, Grove and Filtord, received the lot—one hundred thousand of The Emperor’s Cigars—for forty-five thousand dollars. What thoughts may have come to them later, when they searched their bargain for its merits, I cannot say. Not one word of inquiry, condemnation or complaint came from Grove and Filtord. Whatever their discoveries, or whatever their deductions, they maintained a profound taciturnity. Probably they did not care to court the laughter of fellow dealers by disclosures of the trap into which they had so blindly bid their way. Surely, they must in its last chapters have been aware of the swindle! To have believed in the genuineness of the goods would have dissipated what remnant of good repute might still have clung to that last of the Napoleons who was their inventor, and justified the coming destruction of his throne and the birth of the republic which arose from its ruins. As I say, however, not one syllable of complaint came floating back from Grove and Filtord. They took their loss, and were dumb.
My own pocket was joyfully gorged with much fat advantage of this iniquity—for inside we were like whalers, each having a prearranged per cent, of what oil was made, no one working for himself alone—long prior to that bidding which so smote on Grove and Filtord. The ring had no money interest in the confiscation sales; those proceeds went all to government. We divided the profits of our own disposal of the right true Emperor’s Cigars on the occasion of their second appearance in port; and that business was ended and over and division done sundry weeks prior to the Grove and Filtord disaster.
That is the story of The Emperor’s Cigars; there came still one little incident, however, which was doubtless the seed of those apprehensions which soon drove me to quit the Customs. I had carried his double tithes to Betelnut Jack. This was no more the work of policy than right. The substitution of the bogus wares, the reshipment to Cuba of The Emperor’s Cigars, even the zinc-lined barrels, the repackage and second appearance and sale of our prizes, were one and all by direction of Betelnut Jack. He planned the campaign in each least particular. To him was the credit; and to him came the lion’s share, as, in good sooth! it should if there be a shadow of that honor among rogues whereof the proverb tells.
On the evening when I sought Betelnut Jack, we sat and chatted briefly of work at the wharfs. Not one word, mind you! escaped from either that might intimate aught of customs immorality. That would have been a gross breach of the etiquette understood by our flock of customs cormorants. No; Betelnut Jack and I confined discussion to transactions absolutely white; no other was so much as hinted at.
Then came Betelnut Jack’s proposal of his special Willow Run; he retired in quest of the demijohn; this was my cue to enrich “Josephus,” ready on the dwarf center table to receive the goods. My present to Betelnut Jack was five one-hundred-dol-lar bills.
Somewhat in haste, I took these from my pocket and opened “Josephus” to lay them between the pages. Any place would do; Betelnut Jack would know how to discover the rich bookmark. As I parted the book, my eye was arrested by a sentence. As I’ve asserted heretofore, I’m not superstitious; yet that casual sentence seemed alive and to spring upon me from out “Josephus” as a threat:
“And these men being thieves were destroyed by the King’s laws; and their people rended their garments, put on sackcloth, and throwing ashes on their heads went about the streets, crying out.”
That is what it said; and somehow it made my heart beat quick and little like a linnet’s heart. I put in my contribution and closed the book. But the words clung to me like ivy; I couldn’t free myself. In the end, they haunted me to my resignation; and while I remained long enough to share in the affair of the German Girl’s Diamonds, and in that of the Filibusterer, when the hand of discovery fell upon Lorns and Quin, and others of my one-time comrades, I was far away, facing innocent, if sometimes dangerous, problems on our western plains.
“With a profound respect for you,” observed the Jolly Doctor to the Sour Gentleman when that raconteur had ended, “and disavowing a least imputation personal to yourself, I must still say that I am amazed by the corruption which your tale discloses of things beyond our Customs doors. To be sure, you speak of years ago; and yet you leave one to wonder if the present be wholly free from taint.”
“It will be remarkable,” returned the Sour Gentleman, “when any arm of government is exerted with entire integrity and no purpose save public good, and every thought of private gain eliminated. The world never has been so virtuous, nor is it like to become so in your time or mine. Government and those offices which, like the works of a watch, are made to constitute it, are the production of politics, and politics, mind you, is nothing save the collected and harmonised selfishness of men. The fruit is seldom better than the tree, and when a source is foul the stream will wear a stain.” Here the Sour Gentleman sighed as though over the baseness of the human race.
“While there’s to be no doubt,” broke in the Red Nosed Gentleman, “concerning the corruption existing in politics and the offices and office holders bred therefrom, I am free to say that I’ve encountered as much blackness, and for myself I have been swindled oftener among merchants plying their reputable commerce of private scales and counters as in the administration of public affairs.”
The Red Nosed Gentleman here looked about with a challenging eye as one who would note if his observation is to meet with contradiction. Finding none, he relapsed into silence and burgundy.
“Speakin’ of politics,” said the Old Cattleman, who had listened to the others as though he found their discourse instructive, “it’s the one thing I’ve seen mighty little of. The only occasion on which I finds myse’f immersed in politics is doorin’ the brief sojourn I makes in Missouri, an’ when in common with all right-thinkin’ gents, I whirls in for Old Stewart.”
“Would you mind,” remarked the Jolly Doctor in a manner so amiable it left one no power to resist, “would you mind giving us a glimpse of that memorable campaign in which you bore doubtless no inconsiderable part? We should have time for it, before we retire.”
“Which the part I bears,” responded the Old Cattleman, “wouldn’t amount to the snappin’ of a cap. As to tellin’ you-all concernin’ said outburst of pop’lar enthoosiasm for Old Stewart, I’m plumb willin’ to go as far as you likes.” Drawing his chair a bit closer to the fire and seeing to it that a glass of Scotch was within the radius of his reach, the Old Cattleman began.
CHAPTER XVII.—THE GREAT STEWART CAMPAIGN.
As I states, I saveys nothin’ personal of politics. Thar’s mighty little politics gets brooited about Wolfville, an’ I ain’t none shore but it’s as well. The camp’s most likely a heap peacefuller as a com-moonity. Shore, Colonel Sterett discusses politics in that Coyote paper he conducts; but none of it’s nearer than Washin’ton, an’ it all seems so plumb dreamy an’ far away that while it’s interestin’, it can’t be regyarded as replete of the harrowin’ excitement that sedooces a public from its nacheral rest an’ causes it to set up nights an’ howl.
Rummagin’ my mem’ry, I never does hear any politics talked local but once, an’ that’s by Dan Boggs. It’s when the Colonel asks Dan to what party he adheres in principle—for thar ain’t no real shore-enough party lurkin’ about in Arizona much, it bein’ a territory that a-way an’ mighty busy over enterprises more calc’lated to pay—an’ Dan retorts that he’s hooked up with no outfit none as yet, but stands ready as far as his sentiments is involved to go buttin’ into the first organization that’ll cheapen nose-paint, ’liminate splits as a resk in faro-bank, an’ raise the price of beef. Further than them tenets, Dan allows he ain’t got no principles.
Man an’ boy I never witnesses any surplus of politics an’ party strife. In Tennessee when I’m a child every decent gent has been brought up a Andy Jackson man, an’ so continyoos long after that heroic captain is petered. As you-all can imagine, politics onder sech conditions goes all one way like the currents of the Cumberland. Thar’s no bicker, no strife, simply a vast Andy Jackson yooniformity.
The few years I puts in about Arkansaw ain’t much different. Leastwise we-all don’t have issues; an’ what contests does arise is gen’rally personal an’ of the kind where two gents enjoys a j’int debate with their bowies or shows each other how wrong they be with a gun. An’ while politics of the variety I deescribes is thrillin’, your caution rather than your intellects gets appealed to, while feuds is more apt to be their frootes than any draw-in’ of reg’lar party lines. Wherefore I may say it’s only doorin’ the one year I abides in Missouri when I experiences troo politics played with issues, candidates, mass-meetin’s an’ barbecues.
For myse’f, my part is not spectacyoolar, bein’ I’m new an’ raw an’ young; but I looks on with relish, an’ while I don’t cut no hercoolean figger in the riot, I shore saveys as much about what’s goin’ on as the best posted gent between the Ozarks an’ the Iowa line.
What you-all might consider as the better element is painted up to beat Old Stewart who’s out sloshin’ about demandin’ re-election to Jeff City for a second term. The better element says Old Stewart drinks. An’ this accoosation is doubtless troo a whole lot, for I’m witness myse’f to the following colloquy which takes place between Old Stewart an’ a jack-laig doctor he crosses up with in St. Joe. Old Stewart’s jest come forth from the tavern, an’ bein’ on a joobilee the evenin’ before, is lookin’ an’ mighty likely feelin’ some seedy.
“Doc,” says Old Stewart, openin’ his mouth as wide as a young raven, an’ then shettin’ it ag’in so’s to continyoo his remarks, “Doc, I wish you’d peer into this funnel of mine.”
Then he opens his mouth ag’in in the same egree-gious way, while the scientist addressed scouts about tharin with his eyes, plenty owley. At last the Doc shows symptoms of bein’ ready to report.
“Which I don’t note nothin’ onusual, Gov’nor, about that mouth,” says the Doc, “except it’s a heap voloominous.”
“Don’t you discern no signs or signal smokes of any foreign bodies?” says Old Stewart, a bit pettish, same as if he can’t onderstand sech blindness.
“None whatever!” observes the Doc.
“It’s shore strange,” retorts Old Stewart, still in his complainin’ tones; “thar’s two hundred niggers, a brick house an’ a thousand acres of bottom land gone down that throat, an’ I sort o’ reckons some traces of ’em would show.”
That’s the trouble with Old Stewart from the immacyoolate standpint of the better classes; they says he overdrinks. But while it’s convincin’ to sooperior folks an’ ones who’s goin’ to church an’ makin’ a speshulty of it, it don’t sep’rate Old Stewart from the warm affections of the rooder masses—the catfish an’ quinine aristocracy that dwells along the Missouri; they’re out for him to the last sport.
“Suppose the old Gov’nor does drink,” says one, “what difference does that make? Now, if he’s goin’ to try sootes in co’t, or assoome the pressure as a preacher, thar’d be something in the bluff. But it don’t cut no figger whether a gov’nor is sober or no. All he has to do is pardon convicts an’ make notaries public, an’ no gent can absorb licker s’fficient to incapac’tate him for sech trivial dooties.”
One of the argyments they uses ag’in Old Stewart is about a hawg-thief he pardons. Old Stewart is headin’ up for the state house one mornin’, when he caroms on a passel of felons in striped clothes who’s pesterin’ about the grounds, tittivatin’ up the scenery. Old Stewart pauses in front of one of ’em.
“What be you-all in the pen’tentiary for?” says Old Stewart, an’ he’s profoundly solemn.
Tharupon the felon trails out on a yarn about how he’s a innocent an’ oppressed person. He’s that honest an’ upright—hear him relate the tale—that you’d feel like apol’gizin’. Old Stewart listens to this victim of intrigues an’ outrages ontil he’s through; then he goes romancin’ along to the next. Thar’s five wronged gents in that striped outfit, five who’s as free from moral taint or stain of crime as Dave Tutt’s infant son, Enright Peets Tutt.
But the sixth is different. He admits he’s a miscreant an’ has done stole a hawg.
“However did you steal it, you scoundrel?” demands Old Stewart.
“I’m outer meat,” says the crim’nal, “an’ a band of pigs comes pi rootin’ about, an’ I nacherally takes my rifle an’ downs one.”
“Was it a valyooable hawg?”
“You-all can gamble it ain’t no runt,” retorts the crim’nal. “I shore ain’t pickin’ out the worst, an’ I’m as good a jedge of hawgs as ever eats corn pone an’ cracklin’.”
At this Old Stewart falls into a foamin’ rage an’ turns on the two gyards who’s soopervisin’ the captives.
“Whatever do you-all mean,” he roars, “bringin’ this common an’ confessed hawg-thief out yere with these five honest men? Don’t you know he’ll corrupt ’em?”
Tharupon Old Stewart reepairs to his rooms in the state house an’ pardons the hawg convict with the utmost fury.
“An’ now, pull your freight,” says Old Stewart, to the crim’nal. “If you’re in Jeff City twenty-four hours from now I’ll have you shot at sunrise. The idee of compellin’ five spotless gents to con-tinyoo in daily companionship with a low hawg-thief! I pardons you, not because you merits mercy, but to preserve the morals of our prison.”
The better element concloods they’ll take advantage of Old Stewart’s willin’ness for rum an’ make a example of him before the multitoode. They decides they’ll construct the example at a monstrous meetin’ that’s schedyooled for Hannibal, where Old Stewart an’ his opponent—who stands for the better element mighty excellent, seein’ he’s worth about a million dollars with a home-camp in St. Looey, an’ never a idee above dollars an’ cents—is programmed for one of these yere j’int debates, frequent in the politics of that era. The conspiracy is the more necessary as Old Stewart, mental, is so much swifter than the better element’s candidate, that he goes by him like a antelope. Only two days prior at the town of Fulton, Old Stewart comes after the better element’s candidate an’ gets enough of his hide, oratorical, to make a saddle-cover. The better element, alarmed for their gent, resolves on measures in Hannibal that’s calc’lated to redooce Old Stewart to a shorething. They don’t aim to allow him to wallop their gent at the Hannibal meetin’ like he does in old Callaway. With that, they confides to a trio of Hannibal’s sturdiest sots—all of ’em acquaintances an’ pards of Old Stewart—the sacred task of gettin’ that statesman too drunk to orate.
This yere Hannibal barbecue, whereat Old Stewart’s goin’ to hold a open-air discussion with his aristocratic opponent, is set down for one in the afternoon. The three who’s to throw Old Stewart with copious libations of strong drink, hunts that earnest person out as early as sun-up at the tavern. They invites him into the bar-room an’ bids the bar-keep set forth his nourishment.
Gents, it works like a charm! All the mornin’, Old Stewart swings an’ rattles with the plotters an’ goes drink for drink with ’em, holdin’ nothin’ back.
For all that the plot falls down. When it’s come the hour for Old Stewart to resort to the barbecue an’ assoome his share in the exercises, two of the Hannibal delegation is spread out cold an’ he’pless in a r’ar room, while Old Stewart is he’pin’ the third—a gent of whom he’s partic’lar fond—upstairs to Old Stewart’s room, where he lays him safe an’ serene on the blankets. Then Old Stewart takes another drink by himse’f, an’ j’ins his brave adherents at the picnic grounds. Old Stewart is never more loocid, an’ ag’in he peels the pelt from the better element’s candidate, an’ does it with graceful ease.
Old Stewart, however, is regyarded as in peril of defeat. He’s mighty weak in the big towns where the better element is entrenched, an’ churches grow as thick as blackberries. Even throughout the rooral regions, wherever a meetin’ house pokes up its spire, it’s onderstood that Old Stewart’s in a heap of danger.
It ain’t that Old Stewart is sech a apostle of nose-paint neither; it ain’t whiskey that’s goin’ to kill him off at the ballot box. It’s the fact that the better element’s candidate—besides bein’ rich, which is allers a mark of virchoo to a troo believer—is a church member, an’ belongs to a congregation where he passes the plate, an’ stands high up in the papers. This makes the better element’s gent a heap pop’lar with church folk, while pore Old Stewart, who’s a hopeless sinner, don’t stand no show.
This grows so manifest that even Old Stewart’s most locoed supporters concedes that he’s gone; an’ money is offered at three to one that the better element’s entry will go over Old Stewart like a Joone rise over a tow-head. Old Stewart hears these yere misgivin’s an’ bids his folks be of good cheer.
“I’ll fix that,” says Old Stewart. “By election day, my learned opponent will be in sech disrepoote with every church in Missouri he won’t be able to get dost enough to one of ’em to give it a ripe peach.” Old Stewart onpouches a roll which musters fifteen hundred dollars. “That’s mighty little; but it’ll do the trick.”
Old Stewart’s folks is mystified; they can’t make out how he’s goin’ to round up the congregations with so slim a workin’ cap’tal. But they has faith in their chief; an’ his word goes for all they’ve got. When he lets on he’ll have the churches arrayed ag’inst the foe, his warriors takes heart of grace an’ jumps into the collar an’ pulls like lions refreshed.
It’s the fourth Sunday before election when Old Stewart, by speshul an’ trusted friends presents five hundred dollars each to a church in St. Looey, an’ another in St. Joe, an’ still another in Hannibal; said gifts bein’ in the name an’ with the compliments of his opponent an’ that gent’s best wishes for the Christian cause.
Thar’s not a doubt raised; each church believes it-se’f favored five hundred dollars’ worth from the kindly hand of the millionaire candidate, an’ the three pastors sits pleasantly down an’ writes that amazed sport a letter of thanks for his moonificence. He don’t onderstand it none; but he decides it’s wise to accept this accidental pop’larity, an’ he waxes guileful an’ writes back an’ says that while he don’t clearly onderstand, an’ no thanks is his doo, he’s tickled to hear he’s well bethought of by the good Christians of St. Looey, St. Joe an’ Hannibal, as expressed in them missives. The better element’s candidate congratulates himse’f on his good luck, stands pat, an’ accepts his onexpected wreaths. That’s jest what Old Stewart, who is as cunnin’ as a fox, is aimin’ at.
In two days the renown of them five-hundred-dollar gifts goes over the state like a cat over a back roof. In four days every church in the state hears of these largesses. An’ bein’ plumb alert financial, as churches ever is, each sacred outfit writes on to the better element’s candidate an’ desires five hundred dollars of that onfortunate publicist. He gets sixty thousand letters in one week an’ each calls for five hundred.
Gents, thar’s no more to be said; the better element’s candidate is up ag’inst it. He can’t yield to the fiscal demands, an’ it’s too late to deny the gifts. Whereupon the other churches resents the favoritism he’s displayed about the three in St. Looey, St. Joe an’ Hannibal. They regyards him as a hoss-thief for not rememberin’ them while his weaselskin is in his hand, an’ on election day they comes down on him like a pan of milk from a top shelf! You hear me, they shorely blots that onhap-py candidate off the face of the earth, an’ Old Stewart is Gov’nor ag’in.
On the fourth evening of our companionship about the tavern fire, it was the Red Nosed Gentleman who took the lead with a story.
“You spoke,” said the Red Nosed Gentleman, addressing the Jolly Doctor, “of having been told by a friend a story you gave us. Not long ago I was in the audience while an old actor recounted how he once went to the aid of an individual named Connelly. It was not a bad story, I thought; and if you like, I’ll tell it to-night. The gray Thespian called his adventure The Rescue of Connelly, and these were his words as he related it. We were about a table in Browne’s chop house when he told it.”
CHAPTER XVIII.—THE RESCUE OF CONNELLY.
Equipped as we are for the conquest of comfort with fresh pipes, full mugs, and the flavor of a best of suppers still extant within our mouths, it may be an impertinence for one to moralize. And yet, as I go forward to this incident, I will premise that, in every least exigency of life, ill begets ill, while good springs from good and follows the doer with a profit. Such has been my belief; such, indeed, has been my unbroken experience; and the misfortunes of Connelly, and my relief of them, small matters in themselves, are in proof of what I say.
At sixty I look back with envy on that decade which followed my issuing forth from Trinity College, when, hopeless, careless, purposeless beyond the moment, I wandered the face of the earth and fed or starved at the hands of chance-born opportunity. I was up or down or rich or poor, and, with an existence which ran from wine to ditch water and back again to wine, was happy. I recall how in those days of checkered fortune, wherein there came a proportion of one hour of shadow to one moment of sun, I was wont to think on riches and their possession. I would say to myself: “And should it so befall that I make my millions, I’ll have none about me but broken folk: I’ll refuse to so much as permit the acquaintance of a rich man.” I’ve been ever deeply controlled by the sentiment therein expressed. Sure it is, I’ve been incapable of the example of the Levite, and could never keep to the other side of the way when distress appealed.
My youth was wild, and staid folk called it “vicious.” I squandered my fortune; melted it, as August melteth ice, while still at Trinity. It was my misfortune to reach my majority before I reached my graduation, and those two college years which ensued after I might legally write myself “man” and the wild days that filled them up, brought me to face the world with no more shillings than might take me to Australia. However, they were gay though graceless times—those college years; and Dublin, from Smock Alley to Sackville Street, may still remember them.
Those ten years after quitting Dublin were years of hit or miss. I did everything but preach or steal. Yes, I even fought three prize-fights; and there were warped, distorted moments when, bloody but victorious, I believed it better to be a fighter than to be a bishop.
But for the main, I drifted to the theaters and lived by the drama. Doubtless I was a wretched actor—albeit I felt myself a Kemble—but the stage was so far good to me it finally brought me—as an underling of much inconsequence—to the fair city of New York. I did but little for the drama, but it did much for me; it led me to America. And now that I’ve come to New York in this story, I’ve come to Connelly.
Mayhap I had been in New York three weeks. It was a chill night in April, and I was going down Broadway and thinking on bed; for, having done nothing all day save run about, I was very tired. It was under the lamps at the corner of Twenty-ninth Street, that I first beheld Connelly. Thin of face as of coat, he stood shivering in the keen air. There was something so beaten in the pose of the sorrowful figure that I was brought to a full stop.
As strange to the land and its courtesies as I was to Connelly, I hesitated for a moment to speak. I was loth to be looked upon as one who, from a motive of curiosity, would insult another in bad luck. But I took courage from my virtue and at last made bold to accost him:
“Why do you stand shivering here?” I said. “Why don’t you go home?”
“It’s a boarding-house,” said Connelly. “I owe the old lady thirty dollars and if I go back she’ll hold me prisoner for it.”
Then he told me his name, and that the trouble with him came from too much rum. Connelly had a Dublin accent and it won on me; moreover, I also had had troubles traceable to rum.
“Come home,” I said; “you can’t stand here all night. Come home; I’ll go with you and have a talk with the old lady myself. Perhaps I’ll find a way to soften her or make her see reason.”
“She’s incapable of seeing reason,” said Connelly; “incapable of seeing anything save money. She understands nothing but gold. She’ll hold me captive a week; then if I don’t pay, she’ll have me arrested. You don’t know the ‘old lady:’ she’s a demon unless she’s paid.”
However, I led Connelly over to Sixth Avenue and restored his optimism with strong drink. Then I bought a quart of whiskey; thus sustained, Connelly summoned courage and together we sought his quarters. In his little room we sat all night, discussing the whiskey and Dublin and Connelly’s hard fate.
With the morning I was presented to the “old lady,”—an honor to make one quake. When I reviewed her acrid features, I knew that Connelly was right. Nothing could move that stony heart but money. I put off, therefore, those gallantries and blandishments I might otherwise have introduced, and came at once to the question.
“How much does Connelly owe?”
“Thirty dollars!”
The words were emphasized with a click of teeth that would have done credit to a rat-trap.
There was a baleful gleam, too, in the jadestone eye. Clearly, Connelly had read the signs aright. He might regard himself as a prisoner until the “old lady” was paid.
That iron landlady went away to her duties and I counted my fortunes. They assembled but twenty-four dollars—a slim force and not one wherewith to storm the citadel of Connelly’s troubles. How should I augment my capital? I knew of but one quick method and that flowed with risks—it was the races.
I turned naturally to the horses, for it was those continuous efforts which I put forth to name winners that had so dissipated my patrimony. About the time I might have selected a victor now and then, my wealth was departed away. It is always thus. Sinister yet satirical paradox! the best judges of racing have ever the least money!
There was no new way open to me, however, in this instance of Connelly. I must pay his debt that day if I would redeem him from this Bastile of a boarding-house, and the races were my single chance. I explained to Connelly; obtained him the consolation of a second quart wherewith to cure the sharper cares of his bondage, and started for the race-course. I knew nothing of American horses and less of American tracks, but I held not back for that. In the transaction of a work of virtue I would trust to lucky stars.
As I approached the race-course gates, my eyes were pleased with the vision of that excellent pugilist, Joe Coburn. I had known this unworthy in Melbourne; he had graced the ringside on those bustling occasions when I pulled shirt over head and held up my hands for the stakes and the honor of old Ireland. Grown too fat for fisticuffs, Coburn struggled with the races for his daily bread. As he was very wise of horses, and likewise very crooked, I bethought me that Coburn’s advice might do me good. If there were a trap set, Coburn should know; and he might aid a former fellow-gladiator to have advantage thereof and show the road to riches.
Are races ever crooked? Man! I whiles wonder at the age’s ignorance! Crooked? Indubitably crooked. There was never rascal like your rascal of sport; there’s that in the word to disintegrate integrity. I make no doubt it was thus in every time and clime and that even the Olympian games themselves were honeycombed with fraud, and the sacred Altis wherein they were celebrated a mere hotbed of robbery. However, to regather with the doubtful though sapient Coburn.
“Who’s to win the first race?” I asked.
“Play Blue Bells!” and Coburn looked at me hard and as one who held mysterious knowledge.
Blue Bells!—I put a cautious five-dollar piece on Blue Bells. I saw her at the start. Vilest of beasts, she never finished—never met my eye again. I asked someone what had become of her. He said that, taking advantage of sundry missing boards over on the back-stretch, Blue Bells had bolted and gone out through the fence. This may have been fact or it may have been sarcasmal fiction; the truth important is, I lost my wager.
Still true to a first impression—though I confess to confidence a trifle shaken—I again sought Coburn.
“That was a great tip you gave me!” I said. “That suggestion of Blue Bells was a marvel! What do you pick for the next?”
“Get Tambourine!” retorted Coburn. “It’s a sure thing.”
Another five I placed on Tambourine; not without misgivings. But what might I do better? My judgment was worthless where I did not know one horse from another. I might as well take Coburn’s advice; the more since he went often wrong and might name a winner by mistake. Five, therefore, on Tambourine; and when he started my hopes and Connelly—whose consoling quart must be a pint by now—went with him.
At the worst I may so far compliment Tambourine as to say that I saw him again. He finished far in the rear; but at least he had the honesty to go around the course. Yet it was five dollars lost. When Tambourine went back to his stable, my capital was reduced by half, and Connelly and liberty as far apart as when we started.
Following the disaster of Tambourine I sought no more the Coburn. Clearly it was not that philosopher’s afternoon for naming winners. Or if it were, he was keeping their names a secret.
Thus ruminating, I sat reading the race card, when of a blinking sudden my eye was caught by the words “Bill Breen.” The title seemed a suggestion. Bill Breen had been my roommate—my best friend in the days of old Trinity. I pondered the coincidence.
“If this Bill Breen,” I reflected, “is half as fast as my Bill Breen, he’s fit to carry Cæsar and his fortunes.”
The more I considered, the more I was impressed. It was like sinking in a quicksand. In the end I was caught. I waxed reckless and placed ten dollars—fairly my residue of riches—on Bill Breen in one of those old-fashioned French Mutual pools common of that hour; having done so, I crept away to a lonesome seat in the grandstand and trembled. It was now or never, and Bill Breen would race freighted with the fate of Connelly.
About two seats to my right, and with no one between, sat a round, bloated body of a man. He looked so much like a pig that, had he been put in a sty, you would have had nothing save the fact that he wore a hat to distinguish him from the other inmates. And yet I could tell by the mien of him, and his airs of lofty isolation and superiority, that he knew all about a horse—knew so much more than common folk that he despised them and withdrew from their society. It was like tempting the skies to speak to him, so wrapped was he in the dignity of his vast knowledge, but my quaking solicitude over Bill Breen and the awful stakes he ran for in poor Connelly’s evil case, emboldened me. With a look, deprecatory at once and apologetic, I turned to this oracle:
“Do you know a horse named Bill Breen?” I asked.
“I do,” he replied coldly. Then ungrammatically: “That’s him walking down the track to the scales for the ‘jock’ to weigh in,” and he pointed to a greyhound-shaped chestnut.
“Can he race?” I said, with a gingerly air of merest curiosity.
“He can race, but he won’t,” and the swinish man twined the huge gold chain about his right fore-hoof. “I lost fifty dollars on him Choosday. The horse can race, but he won’t; he’s crazy.”
“He looks well,” I observed timidly.
“Sure! he looks well,” assented the swinish one; “but never mind his looks; he won’t win.”
Then came the start and the horses got away on the first trial. They went off in a bunch, and it gave me some color of satisfaction to note Bill Breen well to the front.
“He has a good start,” I ventured.
“Hang the start!” derided the swinish one.
“He won’t win, I tell you; he’ll go and jump over the fence and never come back.”
As the horses went from the quarter to the half mile post, Bill Breen, running easily, was strongly in the lead and increasing. My blood began to tingle.
“He’s ahead at the half mile.”
“And what of it?” retorted the swinish one, disgustedly. “Now keep your eye on him. In ten seconds he’ll fly up in the air and stay there. He won’t win; the horse is crazy.”
As the field swung into the homestretch and each jockey picked his route for the run to the wire, Bill Breen was going like a bird, twenty yards to the good if a foot. The swinish one placed the heavy member that had been caressing the watch-chain on my shoulder. He did not wait for any comment from me.
“Sit still,” he howled; “sit still. He won’t win. If he can’t lose any other way, he’ll stop back beyant on the stretch and bite the boy off his back. That’s what he’ll do; he’ll bite the jockey off his back.”
To this last assurance, delivered with a roar, I made no answer. The horses were coming like a whirlwind; riders lashing, nostrils straining. The roll of the hoofs put my heart to a sympathetic gallop. I could not have said a word if I had tried. With the grandstand in a tumult, the horses flashed under the wire, Bill Breen winner with a flourish by a dozen lengths.
Connelly was saved.
As the horses were being dismissed, and “Bill Breen” was hung from the judges’ stand as “first,” the swinish one contemplated me gravely and in silence.
“Have you a ticket on him?”
“I have,” I replied.
“Then you’ll win a million dollars.” This with a toss as he arose to go. “You’ll win a million dollars. You’re the only fool who has.”
It’s like the stories you read. The swinish one was so nearly correct in his last remark that I found but two tickets besides my own on Bill Breen. It has the ring of fable, but I was richer by eleven hundred and thirty-two dollars when that race was over. Blue Bells and Tambourine were forgotten; Bill Breen had redeemed the day! It was pleasant when I had cashed my ticket to observe me go about recovering the lost Connelly.
“Now, there,” cried the Jolly Doctor, “there is a story which tells of a joy your rich man never knows—the joy of being rescued from a money difficulty.”
“And do you think a rich man is for that unlucky?” asked the Sour Gentleman.
“Verily, do I,” returned the Jolly Doctor, earnestly. “I can conceive of nothing more dreary than endless riches—the wealth that is by the cradle—that from birth to death is as easy to one’s hand as water. How should he know the sweet who has not known the bitter? Man! the thorn is ever the charm of the rose.”
It was discovered in the chat which followed the Red Nosed Gentleman’s tale that Sioux Sam might properly be regarded as the one who should next take up the burden of the company’s entertainment. It stood a gratifying characteristic of our comrade from the Yellowstone that he was not once found to dispute the common wish. He never proffered a story; but he promptly told one when asked to do so. He was taciturn, but he was no less ready for that, and the moment his name was called he proceeded with the fable of “Moh-Kwa and the Three Gifts.”