The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (important books to read txt) 📖
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- Author: Marshall P. Wilder
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A banished, blasted plant, I droop, to which no freshness lends
Its healing balm, for Heaven knows, I've but—a dozen friends.
No dewy pearl of Pleasure my sad sunken eyes adorns;
Calamity has clothed my thoughts, I feel a bliss no more,—
Alas! my wardrobe now would only—stock a clothing store.
It dwells within the dreary habitation of the dead;
I breathe my midnight melodies in languor and by stealth,
For Fate inflicts upon my frame—the luxury of health.
And a baneful curse clings to me, like the stain on innocence;
My moments are as faded leaves, or roses in their blight—
I'm asked but once a day to dine—to parties every night.
Or but one gleam that's glorified by each Peruvian's prayer!
My tortured spirit turns from earth, to ease its bitter loathing;
My hatred is on all things here, because—I want for nothing.
[Pg 16] THE GRAMMATICAL BOY BY BILL NYE
Sometimes a sad, homesick feeling comes over me, when I compare the prevailing style of anecdote and school literature with the old McGuffey brand, so well known thirty years ago. To-day our juvenile literature, it seems to me, is so transparent, so easy to understand, that I am not surprised to learn that the rising generation shows signs of lawlessness.
Boys to-day do not use the respectful language and large, luxuriant words that they did when Mr. McGuffey used to stand around and report their conversations for his justly celebrated school reader. It is disagreeable to think of, but it is none the less true, and for one I think we should face the facts.
I ask the careful student of school literature to compare the following selection, which I have written myself with great care, and arranged with special reference to the matter of choice and difficult words, with the flippant and commonplace terms used in the average school book of to-day.
One day as George Pillgarlic was going to his tasks, and while passing through the wood, he spied a tall man approaching in an opposite direction along the highway.
"Ah!" thought George, in a low, mellow tone of voice, "whom have we here?"
"Good morning, my fine fellow," exclaimed the stranger, pleasantly. "Do you reside in this locality?"[Pg 17]
"Indeed I do," retorted George, cheerily, doffing his cap. "In yonder cottage, near the glen, my widowed mother and her thirteen children dwell with me."
"And is your father dead?" exclaimed the man, with a rising inflection.
"Extremely so," murmured the lad, "and, oh, sir, that is why my poor mother is a widow."
"And how did your papa die?" asked the man, as he thoughtfully stood on the other foot a while.
"Alas! sir," said George, as a large hot tear stole down his pale cheek and fell with a loud report on the warty surface of his bare foot, "he was lost at sea in a bitter gale. The good ship foundered two years ago last Christmastide, and father was foundered at the same time. No one knew of the loss of the ship and that the crew was drowned until the next spring, and it was then too late."
"And what is your age, my fine fellow?" quoth the stranger.
"If I live till next October," said the boy, in a declamatory tone of voice suitable for a Second Reader, "I will be seven years of age."
"And who provides for your mother and her large family of children?" queried the man.
"Indeed, I do, sir," replied George, in a shrill tone. "I toil, oh, so hard, sir, for we are very, very poor, and since my elder sister, Ann, was married and brought her husband home to live with us, I have to toil more assiduously than heretofore."
"And by what means do you obtain a livelihood?" exclaimed the man, in slowly measured and grammatical words.
"By digging wells, kind sir," replied George, picking up a tired ant as he spoke and stroking it on the back. "I have a good education, and so I am able to dig wells as[Pg 18] well as a man. I do this day-times and take in washing at night. In this way I am enabled barely to maintain our family in a precarious manner; but, oh, sir, should my other sisters marry, I fear that some of my brothers-in-law would have to suffer."
"And do you not fear the deadly fire-damp?" asked the stranger in an earnest tone.
"Not by a damp sight," answered George, with a low gurgling laugh, for he was a great wag.
"You are indeed a brave lad," exclaimed the stranger, as he repressed a smile. "And do you not at times become very weary and wish for other ways of passing your time?"
"Indeed, I do, sir," said the lad. "I would fain run and romp and be gay like other boys, but I must engage in constant manual exercise, or we will have no bread to eat, and I have not seen a pie since papa perished in the moist and moaning sea."
"And what if I were to tell you that your papa did not perish at sea, but was saved from a humid grave?" asked the stranger in pleasing tones.
"Ah, sir," exclaimed George, in a genteel manner, again doffing his cap, "I am too polite to tell you what I would say, and besides, sir, you are much larger than I am."
"But, my brave lad," said the man in low musical tones, "do you not know me, Georgie? Oh, George!"
"I must say," replied George, "that you have the advantage of me. Whilst I may have met you before, I can not at this moment place you, sir."
"My son! oh, my son!" murmured the man, at the same time taking a large strawberry mark out of his valise and showing it to the lad. "Do you not recognize your parent on your father's side? When our good ship went to the[Pg 19] bottom, all perished save me. I swam several miles through the billows, and at last, utterly exhausted, gave up all hope of life. Suddenly I stepped on something hard. It was the United States.
"And now, my brave boy," exclaimed the man with great glee, "see what I have brought for you." It was but the work of a moment to unclasp from a shawl-strap which he held in his hand and present to George's astonished gaze a large forty-cent watermelon, which until now had been concealed by the shawl-strap.
SIMPLE ENGLISH BY RAY CLARKE ROSEI wonder if I'm sane.
For when I put the right one on,
The right seems to remain
To be put on—that is, 'tis left;
Yet if the left I don,
The other one is left, and then
I have the right one on.
But still I have the left on right;
The right one, though, is left
To go right on the left right hand
All right, if I am deft.
[Pg 20] PARTINGTONIAN PATCHWORK BY B.P. SHILLABER VII
"Are you in favor of the prohibitive law, or the license law?" asked her opposite neighbor of the relict of P.P.; corporal of the "Bloody 'Leventh."
She carefully weighed the question, as though she were selling snuff, and answered,—
"Sometimes I think I am, and then again I think I am not."
Her neighbor was perplexed, and repeated the question, varying it a little.
"Have you seen the 'Mrs. Partington Twilight Soap'?" she asked.
"Yes," was the reply; "everybody has seen that; but why?"
"Because," said the dame, "it has two sides to it, and it is hard to choose between them. Now here are my two neighbors, contagious to me on both sides—one goes for probation, t'other for licentiousness; and I think the best thing for me is to keep nuisance."
She meant neutral, of course. The neighbor admired, and smiled, while Ike lay on the floor, with his legs in the air, trying to balance Mrs. Partington's fancy waiter on his toe.
IXChristmas Ike was made the happy possessor of a fiddle, which he found in the morning near his stocking.[Pg 21]
"Has he got a musical bent?" Banfield asked, of whom Mrs. Partington was buying the instrument.
"Bent, indeed!" said she; "no, he's as straight as an error."
He explained by repeating the question regarding his musical inclination.
"Yes," she replied; "he's dreadfully inclined to music since he had a drum, and I want the fiddle to see if I can't make another Pickaninny or an Old Bull of him. Jews-harps is simple, though I can't see how King David played on one of 'em, and sung his psalms at the same time; but the fiddle is best, because genius can show itself plainer on it without much noise. Some prefers a violeen; but I don't know."
The fiddle was well improved, till the horsehair all pulled out of the bow, and it was then twisted up into a fish-line.
XVI"How limpid you walk!" said a voice behind us, as we were making a hundred and fifty horse-power effort to reach a table whereon reposed a volume of Bacon. "What is the cause of your lameness?" It was Mrs. Partington's voice that spoke, and Mrs. Partington's eyes that met the glance we returned over our left shoulder. "Gout," said we, briefly, almost surlily. "Dear me," said she; "you are highly flavored! It was only rich people and epicacs in living that had the gout in olden times." "Ah!" we growled, partly in response, and partly with an infernal twinge, "Poor soul!" she continued, with commiseration, like an anodyne, in the tones of her voice; "the best remedy I know for it is an embarkation of Roman wormwood and lobelia for the part infected, though some say a cranberry poultice is best; but I believe the cranberries[Pg 22] is for erisipilis, and whether either of 'em is a rostrum for the gout or not, I really don't know. If it was a fraction of the arm, I could jest know what to subscribe." We looked into her eye with a determination to say something severely bitter, because we felt allopathic just then; but the kind and sympathizing look that met our own disarmed severity, and sinking into a seat with our coveted Bacon, we thanked her. It was very evident, all the while, that she, or they, stayed, that Ike was seeing how near he could come to our lame member, and not touch it. He did touch it sometimes, but those didn't count.
XX"I've always noticed," said Mrs. Partington on New Year's Day, dropping her voice to the key that people adopt when they are disposed to be philosophical or moral; "I've always noticed that every year added to a man's life is apt to make him older, just as a man who goes a journey finds, as he jogs on, that every mile he goes brings him nearer where he is going, and farther from where he started. I am not so young as I was once, and I don't believe I shall ever be, if I live to the age of Samson, which, Heaven knows as well as I do, I don't want to, for I wouldn't be a centurion or an octagon, and survive my factories, and become idiomatic, by any means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will turn out till it takes place; and we shall come to an end some day, though we may never live to see it."
There was a smart tap on the looking-glass that hung upon the wall, followed instantly by another.
"Gracious!" said she; "what's that? I hope the glass isn't fractioned, for it is a sure sign of calamity, and[Pg 23] mercy knows they come along full fast enough without helping 'em by breaking looking-glasses."
There was another tap, and she caught sight of a white bean that fell on the floor; and there, reflected in the glass, was the face of Ike, who was blowing beans at the mirror through a crack in the door.
XXI"As for the Chinese question," said Mrs. Partington, reflectively, holding her spoon at "present," while the vapor of her cup of tea curled about her face, which shone through it like
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