Curious Republic Of Gondour, And Other Curious Whimsical Sketches, Page 2

  finally got my pluck to where it would stick. But at last I said I would

  go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it.

  I stood up to begin, and he told me to come closer. I edged up a little,

  but still left as much neutral ground between us as I thought he would

  stand. Then I began. It would be useless for me to try to tell what

  conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how they

  grew more and more intense, as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness

  descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his

  hands began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with the

  strength ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling under me:

  THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED

  THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth

  Day of November, in the year

  Of our Lord one thousand eight

  Hundred six-and-fifty,

  Between Joanna S. E. Gray

  And Philip Gray, her husband,

  Of Salem City in the State

  Of Texas, of the first part,

  And O. B. Johnson, of the town

  Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH:

  That said party of first part,

  For and in consideration

  Of the sum of Twenty Thousand

  Dollars, lawful money of

  The U. S. of Americay,

  To them in hand now paid by said

  Party of the second part,

  The due receipt whereof is here-

  By confessed and acknowledg-ed

  Having Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised,

  Released and Aliened and Conveyed,

  Confirmed, and by these presents do

  Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise,

  Alien, Release, Convey, and Con-

  Firm unto the said aforesaid

  Party of the second part,

  And to his heirs and assigns

  Forever and ever ALL

  That certain lot or parcel of

  LAND situate in city of

  Dunkirk, County of Chautauqua,

  And likewise furthermore in York State

  Bounded and described, to-wit,

  As follows, herein, namely

  BEGINNING at the distance of

  A hundred two-and-forty feet,

  North-half-east, north-east-by north,

  East-north-east and northerly

  Of the northerly line of Mulligan street

  On the westerly line of Brannigan street,

  And running thence due northerly

  On Brannigan street 200 feet,

  Thence at right angles westerly,

  North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west,

  West-and-by-north, north-west-by-west,

  About--

  I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the looking-glass. I could

  have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to,

  but I took no interest in such things.

  INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA"

  In taking upon myself the burden of editing a department in THE GALAXY

  magazine, I have been actuated by a conviction that I was needed, almost

  imperatively, in this particular field of literature. I have long felt

  that while the magazine literature of the day had much to recommend it,

  it yet lacked stability, solidity, weight. It seemed plain to me that

  too much space was given to poetry and romance, and not enough to

  statistics and agriculture. This defect it shall be my earnest endeavour

  to remedy. If I succeed, the simple consciousness that I have done a

  good deed will be a sufficient reward.** --[**Together with salary.]

  In this department of mine the public may always rely upon finding

  exhaustive statistical tables concerning the finances of the country,

  the ratio of births and deaths; the percentage of increase of population,

  etc., etc.--in a word, everything in the realm of statistics that can

  make existence bright and beautiful.

  Also, in my department will always be found elaborate condensations of

  the Patent Office Reports, wherein a faithful endeavour will at all times

  be made to strip the nutritious facts bare of that effulgence of

  imagination and sublimity of diction which too often mar the excellence

  of those great works.** --[** N. B.--No other magazine in the country

  makes a specialty of the Patent Office Reports.]

  In my department will always be found ample excerpts from those able

  dissertations upon Political Economy which I have for a long time been

  contributing to a great metropolitan journal, and which, for reasons

  utterly incomprehensible to me, another party has chosen to usurp the

  credit of composing.

  And, finally, I call attention with pride to the fact that in my

  department of the magazine the farmer will always find full market

  reports, and also complete instructions about farming, even from the

  grafting of the seed to the harrowing of the matured crop. I shall throw

  a pathos into the subject of Agriculture that will surprise and delight

  the world.

  Such is my programme; and I am persuaded that by adhering to it with

  fidelity I shall succeed in materially changing the character of this

  magazine. Therefore I am emboldened to ask the assistance and

  encouragement of all whose sympathies are with Progress and Reform.

  In the other departments of the magazine will be found poetry, tales, and

  other frothy trifles, and to these the reader can turn for relaxation

  from time to time, and thus guard against overstraining the powers of his

  mind.

  M. T.

  P. S.--1. I have not sold out of the "Buffalo Express," and shall not;

  neither shall I stop writing for it. This remark seems necessary in a

  business point of view.

  2. These MEMORANDA are not a "humorous" department. I would not conduct

  an exclusively and professedly humorous department for any one. I would

  always prefer to have the privilege of printing a serious and sensible

  remark, in case one occurred to me, without the reader's feeling obliged

  to consider himself outraged. We cannot keep the same mood day after

  day. I am liable, some day, to want to print my opinion on

  jurisprudence, or Homeric poetry, or international law, and I shall do

  it. It will be of small consequence to me whether the reader survive or

  not. I shall never go straining after jokes when in a cheerless mood, so

  long as the unhackneyed subject of international law is open to me.

  I will leave all that straining to people who edit professedly and

  inexorably "humorous" departments and publications.

  3. I have chosen the general title of MEMORANDA for this department

  because it is plain and simple, and makes no fraudulent promises. I can

  print under it statistics, hotel arrivals, or anything that comes handy,

  without violating faith with the reader.

  4. Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department. Inoffensive

  ignorance, benignant stupidity, and unostentatious imbecility will always

  be welcomed and cheerfully accorded a corner, and even the feeblest

  humour will be admitted, when we can do no better; but no circumstances,

  however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the

  admission of that last--and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the

  Pun.

  ABOUT SMELLS

  In a recent issue of the "
Independent," the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of

  Brooklyn, has the following utterance on the subject of "Smells":

  I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in

  church, and a working man should enter the door at the other end,

  would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the

  sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer

  for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog. The fact is,

  if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing up of the

  common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of

  Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the

  church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do with this

  work of evangelization.

  We have reason to believe that there will be labouring men in heaven; and

  also a number of negroes, and Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and

  Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly even some Spaniards and

  Portuguese. All things are possible with God. We shall have all these

  sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in getting them we shall lose the

  society of Dr. Talmage. Which is to say, we shall lose the company of

  one who could give more real "tone" to celestial society than any other

  contribution Brooklyn could furnish. And what would eternal happiness be

  without the Doctor? Blissful, unquestionably--we know that well enough

  but would it be 'distingue,' would it be 'recherche' without him? St.

  Matthew without stockings or sandals; St. Jerome bare headed, and with a

  coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with

  scarcely any raiment at all--these we should see, and should enjoy seeing

  them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away

  regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough,

  but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn." I fear me that in the better

  world we shall not even have Dr. Talmage's "good Christian friend."

  For if he were sitting under the glory of the Throne, and the keeper of

  the keys admitted a Benjamin Franklin or other labouring man, that

  "friend," with his fine natural powers infinitely augmented by

  emancipation from hampering flesh, would detect him with a single sniff,

  and immediately take his hat and ask to be excused.

  To all outward seeming, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is of the same

  material as that used in the construction of his early predecessors in

  the ministry; and yet one feels that there must be a difference somewhere

  between him and the Saviour's first disciples. It may be because here,

  in the nineteenth century, Dr. T. has had advantages which Paul and

  Peter and the others could not and did not have. There was a lack of

  polish about them, and a looseness of etiquette, and a want of

  exclusiveness, which one cannot help noticing. They healed the very

  beggars, and held intercourse with people of a villainous odour every

  day. If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original

  Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with the rest, because he

  could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came

  from around the Sea of Galilee. He would have resigned his commission

  with some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master,

  if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad smells, I will have

  nothing to do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and

  makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is, that he makes it

  in the nineteenth instead of the first century.

  Is there a choir in Mr. T.'s church? And does it ever occur that they

  have no better manners than to sing that hymn which is so suggestive of

  labourers and mechanics:

  "Son of the Carpenter! receive

  This humble work of mine?"

  Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian

  character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the

  stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers

  and wilts under an unsavoury smell? We are not prepared to believe so,

  the reverend Doctor and his friend to the contrary notwithstanding.

  A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES

  When I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an

  Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to

  deceive anybody. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's

  confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who

  will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless

  inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly

  and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not

  mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal

  barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree

  whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches

  should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc. I

  thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to

  make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously

  mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my

  postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas!

  right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that remark seems to

  have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It

  lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers

  feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of

  agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact, one of my

  correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with

  letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and

  maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever

  grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way

  of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful,

  and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).

  Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in

  fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of

  the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and

  the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at

  second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write

  a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in

  perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to

  do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never

  tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one

  to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only

  person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other

  instances the "nub" or moral of the burlesque--if its object be to

  enforce a truth--escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the

  body of the burlesque itself. And very often this "moral" is tagged on

  at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the

  whole thing and the only important paragraph in the a
rticle, tranquilly

  turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire

  with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is

  careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the

  travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked

  and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his

  knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques

  and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I

  tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly

  palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak

  the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in

  America!

  DAN MURPHY

  One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the

  banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy

  enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him,

  and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was

  too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a

  sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for

  him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to

  keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary,

  she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part

  with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had

  known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a

  dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again.

  Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and

  respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to

  have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to

  dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his