The History and Records of the Elephant Club by Doesticks and Underhill (leveled readers txt) 📖

he. He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl—wonder if he got it? My name is Dennis, my mother's maiden name was Moore, so that if I'd been born before she married, I'd have been a poet, which I'm sorry to say, don't think it, for I ain't. I'm glad to see you, Mr. Wagstaff, and as you say you're jolly, and propose that we shall all be jolly, perhaps you'll favor me by coming out strong on the second and fourth lines of this chorus.

"I'll do my little utmost," said Wagstaff.

And he did do his little utmost with a will, and their united voices croaked up again the first man[Pg 103] with the steeple-crowned hat, who hadn't got his eyes fairly opened before he joined in the chorus too, and he gave his particular attention to it, and put in so many unexpected cadenzas and quavers which the composer never intended, and shakes that nobody else could put in, and trills that his companions couldn't keep up with, that he fairly astonished his hearers. And he didn't stop when they did, but kept singing "tooral li tooral," with unprecedented variations, and wouldn't hold up for Dennis to sing the verses, and wouldn't wait for Wagstaff to take breath; but kept right on, now putting a long shake on "tooral," now an unheard of trill on "looral,"[Pg 104] now coming out with redoubled force on the final "la," and then starting off again, as if his voice had run away with him and he didn't want to stop it, but was going to sing a perpetual chorus of unceasing "toorals" and never ending "loorals."

For fifteen minutes his harmony was allowed uninterrupted progress, but at length Wagstaff, putting his hand over his mouth, thereby smothering, in its infancy, a strain of extraordinary power, addressed him thus:

"I don't want to interfere with any of your little arrangements, stranger, but, if you don't stop that noise, I'll knock your head off. What do you mean by intruding your music upon other people's music, and thus mixing the breed? Don't you try to swallow my fist, you can't digest it."

The latter part of this address was called forth by the frantic efforts of the unknown amateur to get his mouth away from behind Wagstaff's hand, which he at length accomplished, and when he had recovered his breath he made an effort to speak. The musical fiend, however, had got too strong possession of him to give up on so short a notice, and he was unable to speak more than ten words without introducing another touch of the magical chorus. The address with which he first favored his compa[Pg 105]nions ran something after the following fashion and sounded as if he might have been the identical Vilikins, unexpectedly recovered from the effects of the "cup of cold pison," or prematurely resurrected from the "same grave," wherein he had been disposed by the "cruel parient" by the side of the lamented "Dinah."

"My friends, don't interrupt the concert—too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la. I'll explain presently—with a too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la. I'm delighted to meet you—allow me to introduce myself—ral li la—I am a professional—loo ral li, loo ral li—man—ral li la—my name is Moses Overdale—with my loo ral li, loo ral li, loo ral li la."

Here he stopped, evidently by a violent exertion, and shook hands with each of the others, and afforded such a view of his personal appearance as satisfied the individual of the solitary optic, and his companion of the vegetable leg, that they had fallen in with another original—added to the fact, with which they were already well acquainted, that he had a powerful, though not very controllable voice. Other things about the newly-discovered person showed him to be a man far above, or below, or, at least, differing from, the common run of people one meets in a railroad-car. His face, had it[Pg 106] been visible to the naked eye, through the surrounding thicket of hair, might have passed for good-looking; but the hirsute crop which flourished about his head was something really remarkable. If each hair had possessed as many roots as a scrub oak sapling, and had grown the wrong way, with the roots out, there couldn't have been more; or if each individual hair had been grafted with a score of thrifty shoots, and each of them, in turn, had given off a multitude of sandy-colored sprouts, and each separate sprout had taken an unconquerable aversion to every other sprout, and was striving to grow in an independent direction of its own, there wouldn't have been a more abundant display of hair, growing towards a greater variety of hitherto unknown points of compass. It was so long that it concealed his neck and shoulders, and you could only suppose he had a throat from the certainty that he had a mouth. And even the mouth was in its turn ornamented with an overhanging moustache, of a subdued rat-color, which also was long, running down the corners of the jaw, and joining the rest of the beard on the neck below. A shirt-collar, turned down over his coat, was dimly visible whenever the wind was strong enough to lift the superincumbent hair.[Pg 107]

Taking into account the physical curtailments of Overdale's companions, the trio consisted of about two men and a half.

Dennis now proposed that they should go on with the song, he volunteering to sing the verses, and requesting the reinforcements to show their strength when he said, "Chorius"—the mention of music excited Overdale's harmonic devil again, and he was obliged to twist his neckerchief until he was black in the face, to choke down an embryo, "tooral," which ran to his lips before the cue came, and seemed to insist upon an immediate and stormy exit; by dint of the most suffocating exertions he succeeded in keeping back the musical torrent until the end of the verse, when it broke forth with a vengeance.

And then Wagstaff struck in, and Dennis took a long breath, and he struck in; and they waked up a couple of children, and they struck in; and Dennis put his wooden leg on the tail of a dog, and he struck in; and the locomotive put on the final touch, by shrieking with a frightful yell, as if it had boiled down into one, the squalls of eleven hundred freshly-spanked babies.

And they kept on, Dennis singing, in a masterly manner, the historical part; the charms of Dinah[Pg 108] the barbarity of the cruel parient, the despair of Vilikins, the death and burial of the unfortunate "lovyers," their subsequent ghastly reappearance to the cruel parient, and his final remorse, had all been related; the "chorus of tender maidens" had been pathetically sung by the musical trio; the "chorus of cruel and unnatural parients," had been indignantly disposed of; the "chorus of pisoned young women," had been spasmodically executed: the "chorus of agonized young men, with an awful pain in the stummack," had been convulsively performed; the "chorus of cold corpuses," had been sepulchrally consummated; and the musical enthusiasts were laying out their most lugubrious strength on the "concluding dismal chorus of gloomy apparitions," when the concert was interrupted by the train running off the track and pitching a part of the passengers into a sand-bank on the right, throwing the remainder into frog-pond on the left, and gently depositing the engineer on a brush heap, where he was afterwards discovered with the bell-rope in his hand, and his legs covered up by the smoke-pipe.

It was soon ascertained that no very serious damage was done, beyond the demolition of the engine, which had left the rail without cause or provocation, and was now lying by the side of the road[Pg 109] with its head in the mud, wrong end to, bottom side up, roasting itself brown, steaming itself yellow, and smoking itself black, like an insane cooking-stove turned out-doors for misbehavior.

Overdale got out of the sand without assistance, and, save a black eye, and a peck or two of sand and gravel in his hair, was none the worse for the accident. Wagstaff crawled out of the frog pond, looking as dripping and juicy as a he-mermaid; while Dennis, though unconscious of any painful hurt, had sustained so serious a fracture of his wooden leg, that he found it necessary to splice it with an ironwood sapling before he could navigate.

It being discovered that the danger was over, and that there was nothing more to fear, the ladies, as in[Pg 110] duty bound, began to faint; one old lady fainted, and fell near the engine; happening, however, to sit down in a puddle of hot water, she got up quicker than she went down; young lady, rather pretty, fainted and fell into the arms of four or five gentlemen who were waiting to receive her; another young lady fainted, and didn't fall into anybody's arms, being cross-eyed and having a wart on her nose; maiden lady, ancient and fat, got near a good-looking man with a big moustache, and giving notice of her intention by a premonitory squall, shut her eyes, and fell towards moustache; she had better, however, have kept her eyes open, for moustache, seeing her coming, and making a hasty estimate of her probable weight, stepped aside, and the gentle creature landed in a clump of Canada thistles, whence she speedily recovered herself, and looked fiery indignation at moustache, who bore it like a martyr; young lady in pantalets and curls tried it, but, being inexperienced, and not having taken the precaution to pick out a soft place to fall, in case there didn't anybody catch her, she bumped her head on a stone, and got up with a black eye; jealous married lady, seeing her husband endeavoring to resuscitate a plump-looking miss, immediately extemporized a faint herself, and fell directly across the young miss aforesaid,[Pg 111] contriving as she descended, to break her husband's spectacles by a malicious dig with her elbow; in fact the ladies all fainted at least once apiece, and those who received the most attention had an extra spasm or two before their final recovery, while the vicious old maids whom nobody cared for, invariably fell near the best-looking girls, and went into furious convulsions, so that they could kick them in the tender places without its being suspected that their intentions were not honorable.

During this characteristic female performance, our musical trio had not been idle. Dennis had been busily engaged in splicing his wooden leg. Wagstaff had seized a bucket from the disabled engine, and nearly drowned three or four unfortunate females with dirty water from the frog-pond. Overdale was attracted to the side of a blue-eyed girl, who had swooned in a clean place, behind a concealing blackberry bush, and he had rubbed the skin off her hands in his benevolent exertions to "bring her to," and had meanwhile liberally peppered her face and neck with gravel-stones and sand, from the stock which had accumulated in his hair when he was first pitched into the sand-bank.

Everybody was eventually convalescent, and[Pg 112] likely to recover from the damage which nobody had sustained; the gentlemen had repented of the prayers which they had not said, and were now swearing ferociously about their fractured pocket-companions, and their broken cigars; and the ladies were regaling each other with multitudinous accounts of miraculous escapes from the horrible accidents which might have killed everybody, but hadn't hurt anybody. Another engine was sent for, and the cars ran to the end of the railroad, seventy miles, before the women stopped talking, or the men got anything to drink.

The musical trio, whose united chorus had been so suddenly interrupted, met at the bar of the nearest tavern for the first time since the run off; their greeting was peculiar, but characteristic; when they came in sight of each other, they didn't speak a word, until they solemnly joined hands and finished the "too ral li la," which they hadn't had the leisure to complete at the time of their sudden separation. Overdale, true to his ruling passion, wouldn't stop when the others did, but was going on with an extra "tooral li, looral li," when Wagstaff presented a glass of strong brandy and water at him; the plan succeeded; he stopped in the midst of a most aston[Pg 113]ishing shake on the first "looral," and merely remarking, "To be continued," he yielded, a passive captive to the fluid conqueror.

Subsequent conversations disclosed their future plans, and it was discovered that they were all journeying to the same place, New York city; and that their several