In the latter years of his picturesque career Colonel Eph Lillard was warden of the state prison at Frankfort. It was no more than natural that the Colonel should be a sincere lover of good horseflesh. To him, a thoroughbred was almost the noblest work of God.
In his conduct of the prison he applied some of the kindly principles which actuated him in his private life. It was his boast that no penitentiary in the South was run on more humane lines. One morning, though, word spread through the town that during the night a convict up at the Colonel’s big, stone-walled establishment had hanged himself to the bars of his cell. In a body, the correspondents of the Louisville and Cincinnati papers waited upon the warden to learn the details of the suicide. They found Colonel Lillard in his private office wearing upon his genial face a look of genuine concern.
“Colonel,” said the spokesman for the group, “it begins to look to us as though some of your pets were not so well satisfied as you’ve been letting on. How about that fellow who killed himself last night?”
“Boys,” said the Colonel, “I’ve just been conductin’ an examination into the circumstances of that most deplorable affair. The situation with regards to the late deceased prove to be mighty affectin’. It seems he was sent up the first time to serve two years for stealin’ a horse. When he got out he went back home and stole another horse. They caught him before he’d gone more than half a mile and the jury gave him five years and back he came again. After he’d served his second term he went into an adjoinin’ county to the one where he’d formerly lived and slipped into a stranger’s stable and stole a mighty likely blooded mare, but was overtaken at daylight next morning and inside of three months was back here again doin’ an eight-year term. The way I look at it, the poor fellow took to broodin’ and just naturally despaired of ever gettin’ hisself a horse.”
Martin Littleton was born in East Tennessee. When he was a boy he moved to a community in Texas, largely settled by people from his own part of the country who had carried with them to their new home the customs and traditions of their native mountains. There he studied law and presently he opened a modest law-office.
Almost the first person who called upon him in a professional way was a gaunt Tennesseean whom he had known as a child. The visitor stated that he wished to bring a lawsuit against a neighbor, also a transplanted Tennesseean, to decide a dispute which had arisen over a line fence.
“Now see here, Uncle Zach,” young Littleton said, “it’s too bad that two old friends from the same part of the world should be lawing each other. Isn’t there some way you men can settle this thing out of court?”
The old fellow shook his grizzled head.
“Martin, I’m afeard not,” he said. “When this yere row first got serious betwixt us I made him a proposition. I suggested to him that we should decide it the same way we used to decide sich arguments back home. I told him if he’d meet me at sun-up in my pecan grove, bringin’ his squirrel rifle with him, we’d stand up back to back and each one would step off twenty steps and swing around and start shootin’. But Martin, the low-flung craven, he couldn’t stand the gaff when the shootin’ time came. He didn’t have the sand. When I’d stepped off twenty steps and whirled around you kin believe it or not, but the cowardly dog had done jumped behind a tree.”
“What happened then?” asked Littleton.
“Well, natchelly, Martin, that th’owed me behind a tree.”
A youth from the slums attained fame as a prize-fighter. With prosperity and prominence, he turned arrogant.
One day he openly snubbed a companion of his earlier days. The snubbed one presently sent an emissary to reproach him for his snobbishness.
“Jim says you ought to be ashamed of yourself for throwing him down now when you two used to be such good friends,” stated the intermediary. “He says he’s done you a whole lot of favors in the past.”
“Aw, tell him to forgit it!” growled the pug. “Dat guy never done nothin’ for nobody. Whut did he ever do for me?”
“Well, all I know is he told me to ask you if you’d forgot that hotel episode in Toledo when you were there together the time of the Willard-Dempsey fight?”
“He’s a liar,” said the pugilist. “To begin with, they ain’t no Hotel Episode in Toledo.”
When Sherman, after his march from Atlanta to the sea, turned his columns northward he was temporarily halted just below Fayetteville, North Carolina, while his engineers threw a temporary bridge across a swollen creek, the Confederates in falling back having destroyed the only bridge which spanned the stream. The retreating Southern army had left behind in Fayetteville a population made up almost altogether of women, children, boys too young to fight and men too old for service.
In response to a call, practically all of these older men gathered at the courthouse to discuss such measures as might be taken for the protection of the town in view of the approach of the invaders. Various expedients for saving the place from the fate which already had overtaken Atlanta and Columbia were discussed. But none of them seemed feasible, inasmuch as the community could muster no adequate defending force.
Finally an aged veteran of the Mexican War rose from his seat and caught the eye of the presiding officer.
“Mister Chairman,” he quavered, “I make a motion that we collect a fund and have a lot of dodgers struck off at the printin’ shop and circulated amongst the Yankee Army, warnin’ them that they enter Fayetteville at the peril of their lives.”
Riley Wilson is one of the best story-tellers who ever came out of the South. He loves to go to horseraces when he is not playing politics in his own state of West Virginia. Indeed he owns a string of race horses.
At the Latonia track once Riley ran into a rural friend of his from Tennessee and in the goodness of his heart gave him a tip on a horse which he had entered for one of the events. The friend excused himself and went away for a few minutes, and when he returned to where Wilson sat in the grand stand he confessed that he had wagered practically every cent he had on Wilson’s entry; which admission might be taken as evidence of sporting blood, inasmuch as it developed that he had never before seen a running race and never before had wagered money on one.
The gee-gees were off. At once Wilson’s horse and another contender took the lead. Together the pair of them fought it out all the way. Neck and neck they swung into the home stretch, and neck and neck they thundered toward the goal. A scant ten feet from the wire the rival horse gave a convulsive leap and won by half a nose from Wilson’s colt.
As this dreadful thing happened, the Tennesseean fell back in his seat, pawing at himself with both hands.
“Was it much of a shock to you?” asked Wilson.
“Much of a shock?” echoed the loser. “I ain’t been all over myself yet, but as fur as I’ve gone here’s what’s happened to me: My watch is stopped, both my suspenders is busted, and my glass eye is cracked right through the center.”
An elderly English actor came over to take his first American engagement. He had never visited the country before but he had strong—not to say fixed—prejudices touching on the United States, as compared with the British Isles.
The voyage across was a rough one and the visitor’s disposition did not sweeten by reason of it. On landing he started for an English boarding house uptown, where he had been told he could get English food uncontaminated by base Yankee notions. To keep down expenses he elected to repair thither by a street car instead of using a cab.
He emerged from the pier laden with his hatbox, his umbrella, his make-up tin, his grips—two in number—his steamer rug, his tea caddy, his overcoat, his framed picture of the Death of Nelson, and other prized personal belongings, and climbed aboard a car.
Just as he got fairly upon the platform the car started and he fell through the open door into the aisle, scattering his goods and chattels in every direction. As he got upon his knees he remarked in a tone of conviction:
“There now! I knew I shouldn’t like the blarsted country!”
From where he lived high up on a ridge of the mountains along the boundary between Kentucky and West Virginia, an elderly hillsman came down to the general store at the cross roads for provender. There he met a lowland acquaintance who asked him whether there was any news up in the knobs.
“Well, son,” said the mountaineer, “I don’t know as there’s any neighborhood gossip stirrin’ without you’d keer to hear about my affair with them dad-fetched Hensley boys.”
The visitor professed a desire to know the details.
“Well,” said the old gentleman, “off and on, here lately, I’ve been havin’ a right smart trouble with them Hensleys. The whole passel of ’em live right up the creek a little piece above my place, and they tuck a sort of a grudge ag’inst me. Every night when I went out to feed the stock they’d be hid in the brush-fence at the lower end of my hoss-lot and they’d shoot at me with them high-powered rifles of their’n. It pestered me no little!
“Finally I got plum’ outdone over it. Of late years I’ve tried to live at peace with one and all; but there’s a limit to any man’s patience. Besides, I’m gittin’ along in years and I can’t see to aim the way I could oncet, on account of my eyesight; but I jest made up my mind the other night that I wouldn’t stand it no more.
“So that night when I went out to feed I taken my old gun along with me. Shore enough, they was ambushed in the same place, and they cut down on me jest as soon as I came into sight.
“So I up with my gun and I sort of sprayed them bushes with bullets. That seemed to quiet ’em down, and I went on with my feedin’; but after I’d got through I felt sort of curious and I walked down to that there brush fence and taken a look over on the fur side of it. And, son, all of them Hensleys was gone but three!”
Young Mrs. Smith was in need of a domestic for general house-work. She inserted a notice in the local paper. In answer to the advertisement a rather slatternly-looking colored girl applied for the job.
“Where did you work last?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“I wukked fur de Jones fambly right down de street yere a piece,” said the candidate.
“Do you mean the Herbert Joneses who live in the white house on the corner?” inquired Mrs. Smith.
“Yassum, they’s the ones.”
“When did you leave their employment?”
“Las’ Sad’day night.”
“Did you quit or were you discharged?”
“I quit. Yassum, of my own free will I up and quit.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Me, I likes peace—tha’s why! I couldn’ stand it no mo’ to be stayin’ in a house whar they’s always so much quollin’ goin’ on.”
Now the Joneses were friends of Mrs. Smith, and, to her always, they had seemed a happy couple, ideally mated. Naturally this disclosure shocked her greatly. She hardly could believe it. Still, she shared with the rest of us an almost universal trait—she had a natural curiosity. If the household of her neighbors was rent by internal dissensions here was a chance to find out the true state of affairs.
“Do you mean to tell me that Mr. and Mrs. Jones have been quarreling?”
“Yassum. All de two months I stayed there they was quollin’ constant.”
“What did they quarrel about?”
“Diffunt things, ever’ day. Ef ’twasn’t Mrs. Jones quollin’ wid me ’bout somethin’ or other I’d done, ’twas Mr. Jones.”
The clannishness of the rural Vermonter is proverbial. In illustration of this trait a distinguished citizen of the Green Mountain state told me a story. He said that on a rather cloudy day a typical group of natives sat on the porch of the main general store in a town on the shores of Lake Champlain. Among them appeared a youth citified as to dress and having rather an air of assurance about him. In silent disapproval the company took in his belted coat, his knickerbockers and golf stockings and, most disapprovingly of all, the confident manner of the alien.
“Good morning, everybody,” he said breezily.
The elder of the group, a venerable gentleman, made answer for the rest:
“How’ do,” he said shortly.
Somewhat abashed at the coolness of his reception, the young man tried again:
“Looks rather like rain,” he said.
“ ’Twon’t rain,” said the old man in a tone of finality.
“But I rather thought from the looks of these clouds——”
“ ’Twon’t rain,” repeated the ancient in the voice of one who is not used to being argued with.
A daunting silence ensued. The stranger fidgeted in his embarrassment. The old man fixed him with a cold and hostile eye.
“What mout your name be?” he inquired, as though desirous properly to classify a curious zoölogical specimen.
“My name is Nelson—Herbert Nelson,” stated the youth.
“Nelson, hey?” said the patriarch. “There used to be some Nelsons out in the Kent neighborhood. Don’t s’pose you ever heerd of them.”
“I’ve been hearing of them all my life,” said the young man. “I come from New York, but my father’s name was Henry Nelson and he was born out near Kent in this county.”
“Then you must a-been a grandson of the late Ezra Nelson,” said the aged Vermonter. His manner perceptibly had warmed; indeed, by now it was almost cordial.
“Yes, sir,” said the youth. “Ezra Nelson was my grandfather.”
“Dew tell, now!” said the patriarch. “So you’re a son of Henry Nelson and a grandson of Ezra Nelson? Well, in that case it may rain.”
A lady who lives on a plantation in the southern part of Alabama went up to Birmingham on a visit. Upon her return an old negro man who occasionally did odd jobs for her dropped by to welcome her home and to tell her the news of the neighborhood.
“Whilst you wuz gone Aunt Mallie died,” he said. Aunt Mallie was a poor old black woman who lived in a tumbledown cabin half a mile away.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” said the white lady sympathetically. “How long was she sick?”
“Jes’ three or fo’ days,” he said.
“What ailed her?”
“They didn’ nobody know. One mawnin’ she up and fell sick and she kep’ on gittin’ wuss and wuss ’twel de fo’th day come and den, all of a suddenlak, she hauled off an’ died.”
“Who was the doctor?”
“She didn’ have no doctor—she died a natchel death!”
There was a complaint in a small village a few miles from Edinburgh regarding the trolley fare. For four rides into the city the company charged a shilling. This, in the opinion of many of the villagers, was much too much.
A delegation was chosen to visit the offices of the line and make representation in favor of a lower rate. The arguments advanced by the plenipotentiaries prevailed. The company decided that thereafter six tickets might be had for the former price.
The townspeople returned home rejoicing, but there was at least one of their fellow-citizens who did not share in the view that a wise step had been taken. This was an elderly gentleman renowned for his frugality even in a community where frugal folk are common.
“It’s all dam’ foolishness,” he declared. “Now we’ve got to walk to town six times instead of four-r times to save a shillin’!”
Bert Swor, the minstrel man, is something more than a mere black-faced comedian. He was born and reared in a Texas town and he probably knows as much about the true delineation of certain negro types as any living man.
One of his most popular wheezes is a rendition of something which a colored man at Fort Worth said years ago. Two negroes were talking together. As Swor passed by he gathered that the subject under discussion was the relative fleetness of foot of the pair. One of them said:
“You claims you is fast! You says you’s so fast folks calls you Speedy! Jest how fast is you, nigger?”
“I’ll tell you how fast I is,” said the other. “De room whar I sleeps nights is got jest one ’lectric light in it w’ich dat ’lectric light is forty feet frum de baid. W’en I gits undressed I kin walk over to dat ’lectric light and turn it out and git back into baid and be all covered up befo’ de room gits dark.”
Out on the Pacific Coast, where the Japanese question and the prospect of a war with Japan are ever-living issues, a group of the hands at a canning factory were spending part of their lunch hour discussing these vital questions. Sitting on a packing case was a lank Oregonian munching the last bites of his sandwich and taking no part in the discussion. The foreman addressed him.
“Look a-here, Jeff,” said the foreman. “How do you feel about it? If the Japs were to land an invading army in this country I suppose you’d go to the front, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I’d go,” said Jeff. “Me and two others that I knows of.”
“What two others?” inquired the foreman.
“Why, the two that’ll drag me there,” said Jeff.
One of the most widely known railroad men on the Western hemisphere has for many years handled the publicity for a Canadian system. He is as popular in the States as he is in the Dominion.
Having so many friends and being of so social a disposition, it is almost inevitable that he must do his share of drinking. A few years ago he suffered an attack of illness and the physician who attended him put him on a diet. One of the regulations was that, until further notice, he must take no more than one high-ball every twenty-four hours. A few months later he ran down to New York. He called upon a friend and the friend opened a bottle of prime Scotch. As the Canadian refilled his glass for the third time the friend said:
“Look here, Colonel, I thought by the doctor’s orders you were allowed to take only one drink for each day.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said the Colonel, “and I’m following instructions. This drink here, for example,”—and he raised the tumbler and gazed upon its delectable amber contents—“this is my drink for August the twenty-first of next year.”
There is a certain musical comedy star who is not quite so young as she once was. During the season of 1923 she headed a road show. Business at times was not especially good and the tempers of the troupers suffered. Relations became somewhat strained between the prima donna and certain members of the chorus.
This friction was at its height when the company began a week’s engagement in a middle Western city. The theatre was old-fashioned and somewhat primitive in its appointments behind stage. For example, the dressing-rooms were no better than overgrown stalls. The walls between them ran up only part way toward the ceilings so that voices in one of these cubicles might plainly be heard by those beyond the separating half-partitions.
For the opening performance the house was no more than two thirds filled, and the audience, for some reason or other, seemed rather unresponsive. The leading lady was not in a particularly happy frame of mind as she sat in her dressing-room after the final curtain, removing her make-up. Next door several members of the chorus were shifting to street dress.
There came a knock at the star’s door.
“Who is it and what do you want?” she demanded sharply.
“It’s the house manager, Miss ——,” came the answer. “There’s a lady out front who’d like very much to see you.”
“I’m not receiving visitors to-night,” said Miss —— rather acidly. “Who is this lady?”
“She tells me that she thinks you’ll be glad to see her. She says that she was a chum of yours when you were at high school. Shall I show her in?”
Over the dividing wall came floating the voice of a catty chorus-lady:
“Wheel her in!”
Back in the days when crowned heads were more numerous in Europe—and more popular—than at present, Carlos of Portugal paid his first visit to the British Isles. At the conclusion of his trip King Edward, so it is said, asked young Carlos what, of all things in England, he liked best.
Now, Portugal’s king was by way of being a consistent and sincere trencherman. He thought for a moment and made answer:
“The roast beef,” he said.
“Is that all that has impressed you?” inquired His Majesty of England.
“Well,” replied Carlos, “the boiled beef is not so bad.”
It will be recalled that it was necessary for the Wright brothers to go abroad in order to secure proper recognition for their first aeronautic inventions. The French government welcomed them and gave them proper opportunity to demonstrate what they had done; but as a group, the French aeronauts were disposed to show jealousy for the two Yankees.
Following the successful proof by the Wrights of their ability actually to fly and, what was more important, to guide their machine along a given course, a banquet at Paris was arranged in their honor.
Naturally, there was a deal of speech-making. The chief orator was a distinguished Frenchman who devoted most of his remarks to claiming that France had led the world in the new field of endeavor—or so he insisted—and to proclaiming that future developments ever would find Frenchmen at the forefront. Curiously enough, he had very little to say in compliment of the two chief guests of honor.
Wilbur Wright was next called upon by the toastmaster. Slowly he rose to his feet.
“I am no hand at public speaking,” he said, “and on this occasion must content myself with a few words. As I sat here listening to the speaker who preceded me I have heard comparisons made to the eagle, to the swallow and to the hawk as typifying skill and speed in the mastery of the air; but, somehow or other, I could not keep from thinking of the bird which, of all the ornithological kingdom, is the poorest flier and the best talker. I refer to the parrot.”
And down he sat amid tremendous applause from the Americans present.
A year or two before his death, Booker T. Washington made an address in a small town in Georgia. When he had finished, an old Confederate soldier, white-haired and white-moustached, pushed forward to the platform, his face aglow with enthusiasm.
“Professor Washington,” he declared, “I want to do now what I never thought I’d be doing—I want to clasp your hand and pledge you my support for the great work you are doing. And furthermore, I want to tell you this: that was the best speech I ever heard in my life and you are the greatest man in this country to-day!”
“I’m afraid you do me too much honor,” said Washington. “Wouldn’t you regard Col. Roosevelt as the greatest man we have?”
“Huh!” exploded the Southerner. “I’ve had no use for him since he invited you to eat a meal with him at the White House.”
I just told a story relating to Booker Washington. Here’s another. It was a favorite anecdote of the great negro educator. He said that the citizens of a remote Southern community got interested in a project to import some Europeans to the neighborhood and colonize them.
A meeting was held at the courthouse to discuss ways and means. In the audience sat an elderly and highly respected colored citizen.
After the meeting adjourned the chairman of it hailed the old negro.
“Hello, Uncle Zack!” he said. “I was glad to have you with us to-night. I take it that you endorse the project we’ve put under way?”
“Well, Kunnel, I wouldn’t go so fur ez to say dat,” stated the old man. “To tell you de Gawd’s truth, they’s already mo’ w’ite folks in dis county than us niggers kin suppo’t.”
Fourth of July was supposed to be a holiday in a certain garrison of the regular army out West, but a grizzled old sergeant named Kelly, in charge of the guard house, had his own ideas about this holiday notion. After breakfast he ordered all his prisoners to line up outside their prison quarters, and he made a short speech:
“There is no doubt in me own mind,” he said, “but that a good many of you men should not be prisoners at all. You’ve neglected your opportunities, that’s all. Some here has had educations and should make good company clerks. Maybe there’s some others amongst you who’d like to be company barbers and earn a little money on the side.”
A murmur of assent ran through the lines.
“Now, thin,” went on Sergeant Kelly, “all you men who are educated or who think ye cud learn to do paper work, step two paces to the front.”
About half of the prisoners came forward.
“Now, thin, all who’d like to learn the barberin’ business advance two paces.”
All save two moved toward him with alacrity.
The sergeant addressed the remaining pair:
“What did the two of you do before you joined the army?” he asked.
“We was laborin’ men,” answered one.
“Very well, thin, all you educated guys take these here gunnysacks and pick up every scrap of paper around the parade grounds. And the rest of you, who want to learn barberin’, you grab these here lawn mowers and cut grass until I tell you to leave off. You two laborin’ men kin go back inside the tent and take a nap.”
On the Congressional Limited a passenger who, to judge from the visible evidences, had been patronizing a bootlegger, hailed the Pullman conductor as the latter passed through the car.
“Shay, conductor,” he inquired rather thickly, “how far is it from Wilmington to Baltimore?”
The conductor told him the distance, and passed on. On his next appearance the inebriated one halted him again:
“How far is it,” he asked, “from Baltimore to Wilmington?”
“I told you just a few minutes ago,” said the Pullman man.
“No, you didn’t,” said the traveler. “You told me how far it was from Wilmington to Baltimore. What I want to know now is how far is it from Baltimore to Wilmington.”
“Say, listen,” said the irate conductor. “What are you trying to do—make a goat of me? If it’s so many miles from Wilmington to Baltimore, isn’t it necessarily bound to be the same number of miles from Baltimore to Wilmington?”
“Not nesheshar’ly,” said the other. “It’s only a week from Christmas to New Year’s, but look what a devil of a distance it is from New Year’s to Christmas.”
A young woman in the confessional confided that she was afraid she had been spending some of her money foolishly.
“Spending your money foolishly calls for penance,” said the priest sternly. “How have you been spending yours?”
“Well, Father, I went to a fortune teller,” admitted the penitent.
“Oh, ho, so you went to a fortune teller, eh? Well, that’s wrong to begin with. In the first place, professional fortune tellers are most of them frauds, and in the second place, they pretend to deal with the supernatural. And what did you do for this fortune teller?”
“I gave him two dollars, Father.”
“Worse and worse—wasting your hard-earned wages on a fakir. And, in exchange for your two dollars what did he do for you?”
“He told me a pack of lies, Father, about my past and my future.”
“What did he say about your past?”
“Only a pack of lies, as I was just afther tellin’ you.”
“And what did he tell you about your future?”
“He said, Father, I would shortly be goin’ on a long, hard journey.”
“Well,” said the priest reflectively, “he may have lied to you about your past, but when he predicted that you would be going on a long, hard journey in the near future he was not far wrong, after all. You’ll do the Stations of the Cross twelve times!”
A venerable mountaineer residing near the boundary between Tennessee and North Carolina sat one bright afternoon on the stile in front of his cabin, busily engaged in following his regular occupation of doing nothing at all. At the edge of the clearing, fifty yards away, suddenly appeared an individual in flannel shirt and laced boots who aimed at the old gentleman a round-barreled instrument mounted on a tripod, which the native naturally mistook for a new kind of repeating rifle. Up went both his hands.
“Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “I surrender.”
“I’m not fixing to shoot,” said the stranger, drawing nearer. “I belong to an engineering crew. We’re surveying the state line.”
“Shuckins, son,” said the old man, “you’re away off. The line runs through the gap nearly half a mile down the mounting below here.”
“That’s where it used to run,” said the engineer, “but it seems there was a mistake in the original job. According to the new survey it’ll pass about fifty feet from your house, on the upper side of the hill.”
“Say, look a-here, boy,” stated the old man, “won’t that throw me from Tennessee clear over into North Carolina?”
“Yep, that’s what it’ll do.”
“Well, that won’t never do,” demurred the mountaineer. “I was born and raised in Tennessee. I’ve always voted thar. It looks to me like you fellows ain’t got no right to be movin’ me plum’ out of one state into another.”
“Can’t help it,” said the surveyor. “We have to go by the corrected line.”
“Wall,” said the old man resignedly, “come to think it over, I don’t know but what it’s a good thing, after all. I’ve always heered tell North Carolina was a healthier state than Tennessee anyhow.”
When Sam Blythe was a Washington correspondent he went into New England to sound out public opinion on one or another of those crises which, politically speaking, are forever threatening the liberties of the people.
He called upon the retired political leader of New Hampshire, who lived in a small but comfortable cottage in a little town. The old gentleman felt a deep concern in the vital question of the hour, whatever it was. Noontime approached and still he was nowhere near through with what he had to say. So he insisted that Blythe should remain with him through the afternoon.
Having sampled the cuisine of the local hotel at breakfast, Blythe promptly consented. The old gentleman excused himself in order to inform his wife that there would be a guest for the midday meal and also to get some important papers bearing on the subject which were stored away, he said, in a room upstairs. Going out, he left the parlor door ajar.
Through the opening Blythe heard a voice, evidently one belonging to the mistress of the household.
“Samantha,” the lady said, raising her tone in order that she might be heard by the cook in the kitchen, “my husband has invited a gentleman to stay for dinner. Take those two large potatoes back down cellar and bring up three small ones.”
A certain captain of the regular army was on trial before a court-martial for alleged intoxication. His orderly, whose name was McSweeney, appeared as a witness for the defence.
“What was the condition of the accused on the date in question?” asked the judge advocate.
“He was sober, sor,” said McSweeney.
“It has been reported,” stated the judge, “that he was in such a condition that you had to help him to his quarters and undress him and put him in bed.”
“No, sor,” said Private McSweeney, “I just wint to quarters with the captain—that’s all, sor.”
“Did he say anything that would lead you to think he was intoxicated?”
“No, sor.”
“Did he say anything at all?”
“Well, he did say wan thing.”
“What was that?”
“Well, sor, just as I was leavin’ he sez to me, he sez, ‘McSweeney, if you’re wakin’ call me early. For I’m to be Queen of the May.’ ”
A company of a division of colored troops were in heavy marching order awaiting the word to start for the front. It was to be their first actual contact with the enemy. One of the privates had somewhere picked up a copy of the Paris edition of the New York Herald.
“Does dat air paper say anything about us boys?” inquired a sergeant.
“It sho’ do,” answered the private, improvising. “It sez yere dat twenty-five thousand cullid troops is goin’ over de top to-night, suppo’ted by fifty thousand Frenchmen.”
From down the line came a third voice, saying:
“Well, I knows whut to-morrow’s number of dat paper’s gwine say. It’s gwine say, in big black letters, ‘Fifty thousand Frenchmen trompled to death by twenty-five thousand niggers.’ ”
In the great Meuse-Argonne advance two doughboys were squatted in a shell hole for shelter. In another minute or two they expected an order to go forward again against the German positions. The enemy was pouring everything he had in their direction. Machine-gun bullets were whining by just above their heads. High explosives and shrapnel shells were bursting about them. Hundreds of guns, big and little, roared and thundered.
One of the soldiers turned his head toward his companion.
“Buddy,” he said, “I’ve just been layin’ here thinkin’.”
“Hell of a time to be thinkin’,” said his pal. “What were you thinkin’ about?”
“I was thinkin’ how a fellow’s feelings get changed in this war.”
“What do you mean—get changed?”
“Why, once upon a time, back home, a fellow with a thirty-eight calibre pistol run me plum’ out of town.”
Archie Gunn, the artist, is a Scot who was educated in England and who still has a great love for the national game of the British Isles, to wit: cricket. Will Kirk, the verse-writer, is a product of Wisconsin and until one day when his friend Gunn took him over on Staten Island had never seen a game of cricket.
Teams made up of English residents were playing. The spectators, almost exclusively, were their fellow-countrymen.
A batsman dealt the ball a powerful wallop.
“Well hit, old chap!” cried Gunn. And “Well hit! Well hit!” echoed others in the crowd.
An opposing player made a hard run to catch the ball as it descended into his territory. He almost got under it—almost, but not quite. It just eluded his clutching fingers.
“Well tried, old chap! Well tried!” called out Gunn.
Kirk figured this sort of thing must be in accordance with the proper ritualism of the game. He decided that, to show his approval, he would at the next opportunity speak up, too.
Once more the batsman smote the ball. It rose high in the air. A fielder for the rival club ran to catch it. His toe caught in a clod of upturned turf and he tumbled forward on his face, and the ball, dropping, hit him squarely on the top of his head.
Kirk’s yell rose high and clear above all lesser sounds.
“Well fell, old chap!” he shouted. “Well fell, by gum!”
Almost invariably, when men fall to discussing examples of business sagacity, someone present is reminded of the illustrative incident of the white tramp and the colored saloon-keeper.
The colored man sat behind his bar in a moment when trade was slack. Through the swinging doors entered the ragged Caucasian.
“Give me a good five-cent cigar,” he ordered.
The proprietor produced a box containing a number of dangerous-looking dark-brown rolls. The patron made a discriminating choice and then in the act of putting the cigar between his lips checked himself.
“Say, I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Believe I’ll take a glass of beer instead.”
The negro returned the cigar to its box and drew a glass of beer. The customer drank it, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and started to withdraw.
“Yere, hol’ on, w’ite man,” said the negro, “you forgot to pay fur dat beer.”
“Why, I give you a cigar for it.”
“Yes, but you ain’t paid fur de cigar, neither.”
“But you’ve still got the cigar, ain’t you? What’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
The colored man scratched his head.
“Lemme see, boss,” he said, “ef I gits dis thing straight: You don’t owe me for de beer, ’cause you give me de cigar fur it; and you don’t owe me fur de cigar, ’cause you handed it back to me. Is dat right?”
“Certainly, it’s right,” said the crafty white.
“Ver’ well, then,” agreed the colored man; “but say, mister, I wants to ax you a favor: Next time you feels lak smokin’ or drinkin’ please tek yo’ custom somewhars else.”
This story has to do with a man describing a poker game which he was invited to join while visiting in a strange town.
“The first hand that was dealt,” he says, “I had threes. I opened the pot and one other man stayed. He drew one card. We bet back and forth for a while and finally he called. ‘I’ve got three of a kind,’ I said, and showed down my three nines. ‘I’ve got a straight—ten high,’ he says, and pitches his hand in the deck and reaches for the chips. ‘Hold on,’ I says, ‘I didn’t see what you had.’ He looks at me sort of surprised and the fellow who’s givin’ the party speaks up and says to me: ‘This is a gentleman’s game. If a man wins a pot here we never ask him to show his hand. We just take his word for it that he holds the winning cards and we let it go at that. That’s our rule.’ ”
“Did you keep on playing after that?” asks a bystander.
“Certainly I did,” says the first speaker.
“And did you win?”
“Did I win? Huh—the first pot was the only one I lost!”
“Now, then, children,” said the Sunday school teacher in her best Sunday school teacher’s manner, “the lesson for to-day is about the Prophet Elisha. Can any little boy or little girl here tell us anything about Elisha?”
“Me,” answered a ten-year-old urchin, holding up his hand.
“Very well, then, Eddie,” answered the teacher. “Now, then, all the rest of you be nice and quiet while Eddie, here, tells us about the Prophet Elisha.”
“Well,” said Eddie, “Elisha was an old bald-headed preacher. One day he was goin’ along the big road and he came past where some children were playin’ in the sand, and they laughed at him and poked fun at him and called him names and hollered, ‘Oh, look at that old bald-headed man!’ That made Elisha hoppin’ mad and he stopped and turned around and shook his fist at ’em and he said: ‘Don’t you kids make fun of me any more! If you do I’ll call some bears out of them woods yonder and they’ll shore eat you up.’
“And they did and he did and the bears did.”
This is in explanation of why a rather well-known New Yorker gave up free-hand drawing. Although without any artistic training, he rather fancied himself a pretty fair amateur sketch artist.
In company with a newspaper man he was touring Spain. One morning in Malaga the two Americans dropped into a little café for breakfast. They knew no Spanish and their waiter knew no English. Largely by signs they made him understand that they wanted coffee and rolls. But when the newspaperman decided that he wished also a glass of milk difficulties arose.
Singly and in chorus they pronounced the word “milk.” Then they spelled it out. Then they shouted it loudly as one always does, somehow, when using one’s own language, one is dealing with a stranger who doesn’t understand that language. The waiter merely shrugged his shoulders and spread his fingers in a gesture of helplessness.
The man who wanted milk imitated the action of one milking a cow, meanwhile mooing plaintively, and then, to round out the illustration, went through the pantomime of emptying an imaginary glass. Still the waiter stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Hold on,” said the artist, “I’ve got an idea. I can draw about as well as the next one. Lend me a pencil; it won’t take me a minute to make this fellow understand.”
With the pencil, on the table cloth, he sketched rapidly what seemed to him a very graphic likeness of a domestic cow, and, squatted down alongside the cow, his conception of a conventional milkmaid engaged in the act of milking.
As he made the finishing strokes the waiter, who had been watching the operation over his shoulder, burst into a delighted cry of “Sí! Sí! Señor!” and, tucking up his apron, dashed from the restaurant and ran across the street into the shop of a tobacconist.
“Now, then,” said the artist to his friend, “see what a knack with the pencil will do for a fellow when he gets into difficulties in a foreign country? I’ll venture I could go all over the world, making my meaning clear by dashing off these little illustrations.”
“Maybe so,” said the newspaper man, “but why in thunder did the waiter go to a cigar store for milk?”
“Probably a custom of the country,” said the artist. “The main point was that just as soon as he’d had a good look at my drawing he was on his way. He’ll be back here in a minute with your glass of milk.”
The prediction was only partly true. The waiter was back again in a minute or less, but he brought no milk. Triumphantly, he laid down in front of his patrons two tickets for a bull-fight.
It was back in 1899 that State Senator William Goebel seized the Democratic nomination for Governor of Kentucky and, so doing, split the party in the state to flinders. The feuds born of that fight are still alive to-day after the lapse of more than twenty-three years. It was my fortune as a reporter from a Louisville paper to follow the story of the conflict.
Theodore Hallam, perhaps the greatest orator in a state of orators, and almost the quickest-thinking man on his feet, I believe, that ever lived anywhere, having bolted the nomination of Goebel, took the stump against him. The seceding wing of the party picked on Hallam to open its fight, and chose the town of Bowling Green as a fitting place for the firing of the first gun, Bowling Green being a town where the rebellion inside the Democratic ranks was wide-spread and vehement. But Goebel had his adherents there, too.
You could fairly smell trouble cooking on that August afternoon when Hallam rose up in the jammed courthouse to begin his speech. Hardly had he started when a local leader, himself a most handy person in a rough-and-tumble argument, stood upon the seat of his chair, towering high above the heads of those about him.
“I want to ask you a question!” he demanded in a tone like the roar of one of Bashan’s bulls.
One third of the crowd yelled: “Go ahead!” The other two thirds yelled: “Throw him out!” and a few enthusiastic spirits suggested the expediency of destroying the gentleman utterly.
With a wave of his hand Hallam stilled the tumult.
“Let it be understood now and hereafter that this is to be no joint debate,” he said in his rather high-pitched voice. “My friends have arranged for the use of this building this afternoon and I intend to be the only speaker. But it is a tenet of our political faith that in a Democratic gathering no man who calls himself a Democrat shall be denied the right to be heard. If the gentleman will be content to ask his question, whatever it is, and to abide by my answer to it, I am willing that he should speak.”
“That suits me,” proclaimed the interrupter. “My question is this: Didn’t you say at the Louisville convention not four weeks ago that if the Democrats of Kentucky, in convention assembled, nominated a yaller dog for Governor, you would vote for him?”
“I did,” said Hallam calmly.
“Well, then,” whooped the heckler, eager now to press his seeming advantage, “in the face of that statement, why do you now repudiate the nominee of that convention and refuse to support him?”
For his part Hallam waited for perfect quiet and finally got it.
“I admit,” he stated, “that I said then what now I repeat, namely, that when the Democrats of Kentucky nominate a yaller dog for the governorship of this great state I mean to support him—but lower than that ye shall not drag me!”
A colored man was idling along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from where the county jail stood. From a barred window high up in the structure came the voice of a member of his own race:
“Say, nigger,” called the unseen speaker.
The pedestrian halted and faced about.
“Whut you want?” he demanded.
“I wants to ax you a question,” said the invisible one.
“Well, ax it. I’s listenin’.”
“Is you got a watch on you?”
“Suttinly I’s got a watch on me.”
“Well, den, whut time is it?”
“Whut is time to you?” answered the man in the street. “You ain’t fixin’ to go nowheres, is you?”
Puffed with pride, a colored man returned to his native town in North Carolina after a season spent with a traveling circus. He was recounting his experiences in the great world at large to a fellow Afro-American.
“I started out,” he said, “ez a roustabout, but de boss man w’ich owned de show he right away seen dat I had merits above my station an’ he permoted me to be a lion tamer. So dat’s whut I is now—a reg’lar perfessional lion tamer.”
“Is dat so?” said his townsman. “Tell me, boy, how does you go ’bout bein’ a lion tamer?”
“It’s ver’ simple,” said the returned one. “All you got to have is bravery an’ de dauntless eye. Fust you picks out yore lion—de best way is to pick out de fiercest one. Den you walks up to de cage whar he is wid a club in yore hand an’ open de do’ and jump inside an’ slam de do’ shut behind you. Natchelly, de lion rare hisse’f up on his hind laigs an’ come at you wid his mouth open an’ his teeth all showin’. You waits till he’s right clost up to you an’ den you hauls off an’ you busts him acrost de nose wid yore club. Den you backs him up into a corner an’ you beats him some mo’ till he ’knowledges you fur his master. Den, w’en he’s plum’ cowed down, you grabs him by de jaws an’ twists his mouth open an’ sticks yore head down his throat an’ after dat you meks him jump th’ough a hoop an’ lay at yore feet an’ sit up an’ beg fur raw meat an’ teach him a few more tricks such as dem. Tha’s being a lion tamer.”
“Huh, nigger,” grunted his audience, “you ain’t no lion tamer—you’ a lyin’ scoundrel!”
August Winestopper ran a family liquor store in the day when there were family liquor stores. Mr. Winestopper’s knowledge of English was somewhat circumscribed but, as events were to prove, his business sagacity was profound.
In the early part of the summer business, for some reason or other, fell off considerably. While Mr. Winestopper, was canvassing in his own mind the possible causes for this shrinkage in normal neighborhood consumption of wet goods other discomfiting things began to occur. The agent for the owner of the premises waited upon him and told him that, beginning the following month, the rent would be advanced $600 per annum. The two barkeepers notified him that the barkeepers’ union had passed a rule calling for an increase in the wage scale. He got a summons for an alleged violation of the Sunday closing law and was confronted by the prospect that, if found guilty, he would pay a heavy fine. The brewery sent him word that the price of beer shortly would go up.
Mr. Winestopper considered the situation in all of its various and disturbing phases. Then he took a piece of chalk and on the mirror behind the bar he wrote, where all might read, the following ultimatum:
“The first of July will be the last of August!”
A colored man owned a mule which, for reasons best known to himself he desired to sell. He heard that a neighbor down the road was in the market for a mule. So he put a halter on the animal and led her to the cabin of the other negro.
At once negotiations were entered into. The owner had delivered himself of a eulogy touching on the strength, capacity for hard work, and amiable disposition of his beast, when the prospective purchaser broke in with a question:
“Is dis yere mule fast?”
“Fast?” the proprietor snorted. “Look yere!” He gave the mule a kick in the ribs, whereupon she bucked sideways, tore down a strip of fencing, galloped headlong through a week’s washing, butting against the side of the barn, and then caroming off, tore across a garden patch and vanished into the woods beyond the clearing.
“Look yere, nigger,” said the owner of the damaged property, “dat mule must be blind.”
“She ain’t blind,” said the owner; “but she jest natchelly don’t keer a damn!”
An old colored man, who had been crippled in the railroad service, served for many years as a watchman at a grade crossing in the outskirts of an Alabama town. By day he wielded a red flag and by night he swung a lantern.
One dark night a colored man from the country, driving home from town, steered his mules across the track just as the Memphis flier came through and abolished him, along with his team and his wagon. His widow sued the railroad for damages. At the trial the chief witness for the defence was the old crossing watchman.
Uncle Gabe stumped to the stand and took the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Under promptings from the attorney for his side, he proceeded to give testimony strongly in favor of the defendant corporation. He stated that he had seen the approaching team in due time and that, standing in the street, he had waved his lantern to and fro for a period of at least one minute. In spite of the warning, he said, the deceased had driven upon the rails.
Naturally, the attorney for the plaintiff put him to a severe cross-examination. Uncle Gabe answered every question readily and with evident honesty. He told just how he had held the lantern, how he had swung and joggled it and so forth and so on.
After court had adjourned the lawyer for the railroad sought out the old man and congratulated him upon his behavior as a witness.
“Gabe,” he said, “you acquitted yourself splendidly. Weren’t you at all nervous while on the stand?”
“I suttinly wuz, boss,” replied Uncle Gabe. “I kep’ wonderin’ whu wuz gwine happen ef dat w’ite genelman should ax me if dat lantern wuz lighted.”