Chapter 112
"This time, the presentment was the interior of a shop, around which were shelves full of boxes containing all sorts of delicious little gaiters, ties, slippers, bootees and kid pumps, whilst the same kind of articles hung suspended from various hooks and pegs on the wall. On a bench in one corner of this shop, busily working upon a dainty pink satin gaiter-boot, was a narrow young man of pensive countenance, weak eyes, pink nose and an intellectual head of hair, in a workman's paper cap manufactured from an admirable weekly journal of romance.
"As the deeply-affected banker gazed upon this figure, he sorrowfully murmured: 'Ah! that is the deep-voiced youth who last week desired of me five hundred dollars to insure the publication of his new novel of Fas.h.i.+onable Life, which was destined to instantly sweep d.i.c.kens, Victor Hugo, Thackeray, and other demoralizing writers from the field of literature.'
"'Yes!' said Mr. Pepper's Ghost, severely; 'and your miserly refusal to aid struggling genius with your miserable wealth has driven a giant intellect into the ladies' shoemaking business. In which,' added the spectre, 'I am bound to say, that he is doing tolerably well.'
"The guilty old banker buried his face in his trembling hands; and when he looked up again, the vision had changed, and he saw before him the inside of a soldier's tent on the banks of the Rapidan, with two gentle Zouaves arraying themselves in their new uniforms, which had just arrived. Owing to some trifling mental aberration, accompanied by hiccups, which often attacks the members of an army confined to damp localities, these two troops had somehow mistaken their jackets for their pants, and were struggling with Herculean strength to thrust their dainty nether limbs into the sleeves of the first-named garments. After an animated struggle of about a quarter of an hour, something was heard to tear; whereupon, one of the Zouaves tore his fractured jacket from his limbs, and dashed it furiously to the ground, hurling imprecations upon all hard-hearted wretches who coined money by making clothing out of rotten rags for the glorious defenders of their homes and firesides.
"'Old boy,' thundered Mr. Pepper's Ghost, reproachfully, 'did you not have an interest with your brother, the ---- street tailor, in that Government contract for uniforms?'
"'I did,' replied the mournful banker.
"'Then behold,' said the spirit, 'how you have earned the eternal hate of your country's gallant volunteers, and will be handed down to future scorn and infamy as a member of the 'Shoddy Aristocracy.'
'And now, continued Mr. Pepper's Ghost, 'that I have shown you these ill.u.s.trations of your wickedness as a rich man, how do you feel?'
"'Well,' responded old Pursimmons, 'to tell the truth, I feel greatly bored and very sleepy.'
"'And you wont bestow all your wealth upon the next poor widow with six small children?'
"'Not exactly.'
"'Nor at least one half of it upon the Mission for the Regeneration of the starving Choctaw Nation?'
"'I'd rather be excused.'
"'Well, then,' exclaimed Mr. Pepper's Ghost, plaintively, 'wont you--_wont_ you, oblige _me_ with--a loan of five dollars?'
"'Yes--if you will take greenbacks.'
"At the word, Mr. Pepper's Ghost uttered a scream of despair, smote its breast frantically, and gave the chair upon which old Pursimmons had just seated himself such a vicious kick that the flinty-hearted banker suddenly awoke, found it all a dream, and,--went outrageously to sleep again; thereby giving convincing proof of that utter callousness of soul which all worthy poor men know to be the sure accompaniment of riches!"
As Villiam ceased reading, we all retired silently from the tent, greatly improved by what we had heard. And now, my boy, let me conclude with a little story of my own:
Some months ago, a certain western General gave an order to an Eastern contractor for a couple of peculiarly made gunboats for his service; but, happening to pa.s.s the White House, shortly after, saw what he took to be the models of two just such gunboats protruding out of one of the windows. Thinking that the President had concluded to attend to the matter himself, he immediately telegraphed to the contractor not to go on with the job.
Quite recently, the contractor came here again, and says he to the General,--
"I'd like to see the model of those White-House gunboats."
The General conducted him toward the White House, my boy, and the two stood admiring the models, which protruded from the window as usual.
Pretty soon a Western Congressman came along, and says the contractor to him:
"Can you tell me, sir, whether those models
"Gunboats!" says the Western chap, looking. "Do you take those things for gunboats?"
"Of course," says the contractor.
"Why, you fool!" says the Congressman, "those are the Secretary's boots. The Secretary always sits with his feet out of the window when he is at home, and those are the ends of his boots!"
Without another word, my boy, the General and the contractor turned gloomily from the spot, convinced that they had witnessed the most terrific feet of the campaign.
Yours, merrily,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER C.
GIVING DIVERS INSTANCES OF STRANGELY-MISTAKEN IDENt.i.tY; AND REVEALING A WISE METHOD OF SAVING THE COUNTRY FROM BANKRUPTCY.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., March 5th, 1864.
This gray-headed pen of mine, my boy,--which is mightier than the sword, inasmuch as it can, itself, "draw" the sword when it chooses, quite as accurately as any pencil-vanian,--has run the blockade recently imposed upon it, and once more gambols nervously down the lines of contemporaneous military history. When first I heard that aphorism of the elegant and ghostly Bulwer, by which the sober sceptre of the scribe is magnified above the fancy-dress weapon of the hero, I took it to be like any other high-sounding sentiment of the stage, whereby the poor but virtuous editor was n.o.bly and improvingly encouraged to believe himself rather more powerful in this universe than all its great captains put together. Being a child of the pen myself, I felt benignantly inflated by the venerable "Richelieu's"
excellent remark, and looked with much generous pity upon a crushed young army officer in the box next to mine; but, at the same time, I remember that it reminded me of the exceedingly moral popular delusion making starving virtue a much pleasanter and more admirable thing to possess than a king's crown; and I also remember how it thereupon dawned upon me, that the pen was possibly mightier than the sword only in the far-removed sense of Might being Write. Since I have lived in Was.h.i.+ngton, however, I have learned, my boy, that the sentiment in question is capable of demonstration as a very plain fact; seeing, as I do, that off-hand strokes of the pen can in a very few minutes promote into Major Generals and Brigadiers certain pleasing bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned chaps whose actual swords could never have done as much for them in all their lives. And yet, my boy, if all those powerful, unsordid creatures, our country editors, had their youths to live over again, I verily believe that two-thirds of them would sooner be put to the sword than put to the pen. Such is man!
Nevertheless, mighty as the pen may be, it must fail equally with the well-known Southern Confederacy to do justice to this Capital of our distracted country in its present social peculiarities. The cackling of geese once saved the Capitol of the Roman Empire, my boy; but it will take more geese than those who have come hither with the expectation of being respected for their virtues, to save Was.h.i.+ngton from permanent investment by all the speculative chaps on earth who have no other capital to invest. The present social circle around the family hearth of this Capitalian and Congressional town, my boy, is somewhat more remarkable than it was, even in the palmiest and most mutually abusive days of our eloquent National Legislature, and fully equals the frequent domestic symposium of Albany when the State Legislature meet _there_. Look into a Was.h.i.+ngton home, and you shall find the venerable grandfather, who sits nearest the fire, talking and chuckling to himself over his success that day in depreciating the national currency by first frightening a country squire on the street almost into fits by prating learnedly about "repudiation," and then buying all his treasury notes from him at fifty per cent. discount! Next sits the younger husband and father, cataloguing to his devoted wife, with the forefinger of his right hand upon all the fingers of his left, the successive pecuniary advantages sure to accrue from a contract he has just obtained to supply our national troops with patent suspenders, and which will enable him to return to New York in the spring, purchase a palatial residence on Fifth Avenue, and sign urgent and influential calls for Peace Conventions. Thirdly, my boy, we have the interesting wife and mother who listens to her lord and master's revelation with beaming satisfaction, glancing occasionally at her youthful son and heir, who, with two thimbles, is practising upon the rug at her feet the curious and ingenious game of the "Little Joker," whereby he hopes to reap profit from his small a.s.sociates on the morrow. The fourth figure of this prayerful group around the home altar is the highly elaborated daughter, reading over her lover's shoulder, from a newspaper held conveniently by him, a spicy, exciting, moral tale of a daring spirit who had sold a sloop-load of hay, just as it floated, to the Government, and then--when he had got his pay--set fire to it and burnt the whole concern so effectually, that very few could presume to think that at least two-thirds of it had been old straw.
It is a n.o.ble and beautiful thing to remember, or note, my boy, that the true and real Home,--the shrine of parental Love and Honor, and of childhood's Innocence and fearless trust,--is ever held sanctified by an unseen angel-circle, into which a few men can bring even so much of the scheming outer world as its cares; that its name, long, perhaps, after it has ceased to be, lives for our voices only in that plaintive medium tone, which, like the master-string of an instrument responding to a pa.s.sionate touch, sums up, by its very cadence, all the n.o.blest music of a life.
It is this state of things in Was.h.i.+ngton that greatly confuses the stranger, and causes him to make strange and horrible mistakes as to personal ident.i.ties. On Monday afternoon, as I stood musing in front of Willard's, after a dispa.s.sionate conversation with the Conservative Kentucky Chap as to the probability of Kentucky's consenting to the setting apart of the first of January as New-Year's day, I overheard a conversation between a middle-aged chap of much vest pattern from the rural districts, and one of the Provost Marshal's disguised detectives.
The rural chap chewed a wisp of straw which he had been using as a toothpick, and says he:
"That gentleman in a broad-brim hat, going along on the other side of the street, is a prominent New York politician,--is he not?"
The detective involuntarily rattled a pair of miniature handcuffs which were hanging from his watch-chain, and says he:
"Ha! ha! truly! That's a queer mistake. Why, that's Nandy Brick, the incendiary and negro-killer."
Not at all discouraged by this failure at guessing, my boy, the rural chap glanced knowingly at another pa.s.ser-by, and says he:
"Well, this here other one who just went by is the French Minister, I believe?"
"Really!" says the detective, with a slight cough, "Really, you're wrong again, for that's 'Policy Loo,' the notorious Mexican murderer and thief."
The rural chap bit his right thumb-nail irritatedly, and says he:
"At any rate, I know who yonder tall, gentlemanly person in the black gloves is. It's a famous leader of fas.h.i.+ons from Fifth Avenue."
The detective opened his eyes widely at this, and says he:
"Why, there you miss it again. I think I ought to know 'Slippery Jim,'
who got that fat contract to supply the army with caps, and made half of them of shoddy."
The chap from the rural districts seemed very much ashamed of himself, my boy, for doing such a wrong to our admirable and refined Best Society; but he was bound to try it once more, and so says he, shortly: