The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (short books for teens .txt) π
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- Author: Marshall P. Wilder
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"Now, fellows, this is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have such a chance again!"
Some of the men thought Norton lied. But I never was with him when he did not tell the truth. I did not mention, however, what I had thrown into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester. And I changed my[Pg 1381] mind about Sarah's "secret-service" parcel. It remained on my table.
That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe. The spring came on, and the plot thickened. We did our work in the office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other peopleβbut no matter for that! The third of April came, and the fire, and the right wing of Grant's army. I remember I was glad then that I had moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way there. Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the powers that be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for some days. I improved those days as well as I could,βburning carefully what was to be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden. One thing that happened then belongs to this story. As I was at work on the private bureau,βit was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made Aunt Eunice give up when I broke my leg,βI came, to my horror, on a neat parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They were not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but they were like them. Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday of the flight I had sent Lafarge for these, that the President might use them, if necessary, in his escape. When I found them, I hopped out and called for Julia, and asked her if she did not remember his coming for them. "Certainly," she said, "it was the first I knew of the danger. Lafarge came, asked for the key of the office, told me all was up, walked in, and in a moment was gone."
And here, on the file of April 3d, was Fafarge's line to me:
"I got the secret-service parcel myself, and have put[Pg 1382] it in the President's own hands. I marked it, 'Gulf coast,' as you bade me."
What could Lafarge have given to the President? Not the soundings of Hatteras Bar. Not the working-drawings of the first monitor. I had all these under my hand. Could it be,β"Julia, what did we do with that stuff of Sarah's that she marked secret service?"
As I live, we had sent the girls' old hoops to the President in his flight.
And when the next day we read how he used them, and how Pritchard arrested him, we thought if he had only had the right parcel he would have found the way to Florida.
That is really the end of this memoir. But I should not have written it, but for something that happened just now on the piazza. You must know, some of us wrecks are up here at the Berkeley baths. My uncle has a place near here. Here came to-day John Sisson, whom I have not seen since Memminger ran and took the clerks with him. Here we had before, both the Richards brothers, the great paper men, you know, who started the Edgerly Works in Prince George's County, just after the war began. After dinner, Sisson and they met on the piazza. Queerly enough, they had never seen each other before, though they had used reams of Richards' paper in correspondence with each other, and the treasury had used tons of it in the printing of bonds and bank-bills. Of course we all fell to talking of old times,βold they seem now, though it is not a year ago. "Richards," said Sisson at last, "what became of that last order of ours for water-lined, pure linen government calendered paper of suretΓ©? We never got it, and I never knew why."
"Did you think Kilpatrick got it?" said Richards, rather gruffly.[Pg 1383]
"None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue of ten per cent., convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new they were, made by some Frenchman we got, who had worked for the Bank of France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in March."
Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours, both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.
"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I tried it myself every way; back current, I tried; forward current; high feed; low feed; I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr. Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my[Pg 1384] brother, there, worked all night with the machinists, taking down the frame and the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little bit of wire,"βand he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful steel, which poor I knew so well by this time,β"that little bit of wire had passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the screens, through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the cross-bar, and there this cursed little knifeβfor you see it was a knife by that timeβhad been cutting to pieces the endless wire web every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson, because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."
On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I got no salary on the 1st of April. I thought I would warn other women by writing down the story.
That fatal present of mine, in those harmless hourglass parcels, was the ruin of the Confederate navy, army, ordinance, and treasury; and it led to the capture of the poor President, too.
But, Heaven be praised, no one shall say that my office did not do its duty![Pg 1385]
THE LOST INVENTOR[4] BY WALLACE IRWINHow we honor Mr. Fulton, who devised the choo-choo boat?
How we glorify our Edison, who made the world to go
By the bizzy-whizzy magic of the little dynamo?
Yet no spirit-thrilling tribute has been ever heard or seen
For the fellow who invented our Political Machine.
Till success has crowned his research, should receive a just reward.
The Machine's a great invention, that's continually clear,
Out of nothing but corruption making millions every yearβ
Out of muck and filth of cities making dollars neat and cleanβ
Where's the fellow who invented the Political Machine?
Fed by graft and loot and patronage, as noiselessly it reels.
[Pg 1386]Press the button, pull the lever, clickety-click, and set the vogue
For the latest thing in statesmen or the newest kind of rogue.
Who's the man behind the throttle? Who's the Engineer unseen?
"Ask me nothin'! Ask me nothin'!" clicks that wizard, the Machine.
[Pg 1387] OMAR IN THE KLONDYKE BY HOWARD V. SUTHERLAND
When he had read my copy through and then blown out the light.
"I ain't much stuck on poetry, because I runs to news,
But I appreciates a man that loves his glass of booze.
On liquors, which is better yet, like whisky, gin, or rum;
Perhaps his missus won't allow him things like that to touch,
And he doesn't like to own it. Well, I don't blame Omar much.
And Omar seems to seek 'em much as me and you seek gold;
I only hope for his sake that his wife don't learn his game
Or she'll put a chain on Omar, and that would be a shame.[Pg 1388]
Of them writer chaps that studies and burns the midnight ile;
He tells us he's no chicken; so I guess he knows what's best,
And can hold his own with Shakespeare, Waukeen Miller, and the rest.
For our dancin' girls is ancient, and our liquor's somewhat damp
By doctorin' with water, and we ain't got wine at all,
Though I had a drop of porterβbut that was back last fall.
Which is half the charm of Dawson; and he mightn't live to tell
Of the acres of wild roses that grows on every street;
And he mightn't like the winter, or he mightn't like the heat.
And gallivant with Tottie, or with Flossie, or with Liz;
And fill himself with claret, and, although it ain't like beer,
I wish he'd send a bottleβjust one bottleβto us here."
[Pg 1389] THE HAPPY LAND[5] BY FRANK ROE BATCHELDER
Where they get their ten per cent.,
There is never need to worry
As to how to pay the rent;
There they never dodge the grocer,
And in winter never freeze,
In the Land of Steady Incomes,
Where the dollars grow on trees.
Where the cash is ready-made,
No one ever
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