The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) Read online

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  Library Edition

  THE WIT AND HUMOR OF AMERICA

  In Ten Volumes

  VOL. III

  SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN)]

  THE WIT AND HUMOR OF AMERICA

  EDITED BY MARSHALL P. WILDER

  _Volume III_

  Funk & Wagnalls CompanyNew York and London

  Copyright MDCCCCVII, BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANYCopyright MDCCCCXI, THE THWING COMPANY

  CONTENTS

  PAGE

  Arkansas Planter, An Opie Read 556 Auto Rubaiyat, The Reginald Wright Kauffman 546 Ballade of the "How To" Books, A John James Davies 416 Bohemians of Boston, The Gelett Burgess 519 Courtin', The James Russell Lowell 524 Crimson Cord, The Ellis Parker Butler 470 Diamond Wedding, The Edmund Clarence Stedman 549 Dislikes Oliver Wendell Holmes 536 Dos't o' Blues, A James Whitcomb Riley 486 Dying Gag, The James L. Ford 569 Elizabeth Eliza Writes a Paper Lucretia P. Hale 454 Garden Ethics Charles Dudley Warner 425 Genial Idiot Suggests a Comic Opera, The John Kendrick Bangs 504 Hans Breitmann's Party Charles Godfrey Leland 446 Hired Hand and "Ha'nts," The E.O. Laughlin 419 In Elizabeth's Day Wallace Rice 572 In Philistia Bliss Carman 567 Letter from Home, A Wallace Irwin 522 Little Mock-Man, The James Whitcomb Riley 540 Little Orphant Annie James Whitcomb Riley 444 Mammy's Lullaby Strickland W. Gillilan 542 Maxioms Carolyn Wells 424 Morris and the Honorable Tim Myra Kelly 488 Mr. Stiver's Horse James Montgomery Bailey 464 My First Visit to Portland Major Jack Downing 409 My Sweetheart Samuel Minturn Peck 544 New Version, The W.J. Lampton 574 Our New Neighbors at Ponkapog Thomas Bailey Aldrich 403 Plaint of Jonah, The Robert J. Burdette 485 Retort, The George P. Morris 584 Rhyme of the Chivalrous Shark, The Wallace Irwin 483 Rollo Learning to Read Robert J. Burdette 448 Selecting the Faculty Bayard Rust Hall 437 Southern Sketches Bill Arp 575 Tower of London, The Artemus Ward 528 Traveled Donkey, A Bert Leston Taylor 428 Tree-Toad, The James Whitcomb Riley 418 Two Automobilists, The Carolyn Wells 573 Two Business Men, The Carolyn Wells 583 Two Housewives, The Carolyn Wells 566 Two Ladies, The Carolyn Wells 548 Two Young Men, The Carolyn Wells 565 Uncle Simon and Uncle Jim Artemus Ward 539 Wamsley's Automatic Pastor Frank Crane 511 Wild Animals I Have Met Carolyn Wells 414

  COMPLETE INDEX AT THE END OF VOLUME X.

  OUR NEW NEIGHBORS AT PONKAPOG

  BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

  When I saw the little house building, an eighth of a mile beyond my own,on the Old Bay Road, I wondered who were to be the tenants. The modeststructure was set well back from the road, among the trees, as if theinmates were to care nothing whatever for a view of the stylishequipages which sweep by during the summer season. For my part, I liketo see the passing, in town or country; but each has his ownunaccountable taste. The proprietor, who seemed to be also the architectof the new house, superintended the various details of the work with anassiduity that gave me a high opinion of his intelligence and executiveability, and I congratulated myself on the prospect of having some veryagreeable neighbors.

  It was quite early in the spring, if I remember, when they moved intothe cottage--a newly married couple, evidently: the wife very young,pretty, and with the air of a lady; the husband somewhat older, butstill in the first flush of manhood. It was understood in the villagethat they came from Baltimore; but no one knew them personally, and theybrought no letters of introduction. (For obvious reasons, I refrain frommentioning names.) It was clear that, for the present at least, theirown company was entirely sufficient for them. They made no advancetoward the acquaintance of any of the families in the neighborhood, andconsequently were left to themselves. That, apparently, was what theydesired, and why they came to Ponkapog. For after its black bass andwild duck and teal, solitude is the chief staple of Ponkapog. Perhapsits perfect rural loveliness should be included. Lying high up under thewing of the Blue Hills, and in the odorous breath of pines and cedars,it chances to be the most enchanting bit of unlaced disheveled countrywithin fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half anhour's ride by railway. But the nearest railway station (Heaven bepraised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw.Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day would render the placeuninhabitable.

  The village--it looks like a compact village at a distance, but unravelsand disappears the moment you drive into it--has quite a large floatingpopulation. I do not allude to the perch and pickerel in Ponkapog Pond.Along the Old Bay Road, a highway even in the Colonial days, there are anumber of attractive villas and cottages straggling off toward Milton,which are occupied for the summer by people from the city. These birdsof passage are a distinct class from the permanent inhabitants, and thetwo seldom closely assimilate unless there has been some previousconnection. It seemed to me that our new neighbors were to come underthe head of permanent inhabitants; they had built their own house, andhad the air of intending to live in it all the year round.

  "Are you not going to call on them?" I asked my wife one morning.

  "When they call on _us_," she replied lightly.

  "But it is our place to call first, they being strangers."

  This was said as seriously as the circumstance demanded; but my wifeturned it off with a laugh, and I said no more, always trusting to herintuitions in these matters.

  She was right. She would not have been received, and a cool "Not athome" would have been a bitter social pill to us if we had gone out ofour way to be courteous.

  I saw a great deal of our neighbors, nevertheless. Their cottage laybetween us and the post-office--where _he_ was never to be met with byany chance--and I caught frequent glimpses of the two working in thegarden. Floriculture did not appear so much an object as exercise.Possibly it was neither; maybe they were engaged in digging forspecimens of those arrowheads and flint hatchets, which are continuallycoming to the surface hereabouts. There is scarcely an acre in which theplowshare has not turned up some primitive stone weapon or domesticutensil, disdainfully left to us by the red men who once held thisdomain--an ancient tribe called the Punkypoags, a forlorn descendant ofwhich, one Polly Crowd, figures in the annual Blue Book, down to theclose of the Southern war, as a state pensioner. At that period sheappears to have struck a trail to the Happy Hunting Grounds. I quotefrom the local histor
iographer.

  Whether they were developing a kitchen garden, or emulating ProfessorSchliemann, at Mycenae, the newcomers were evidently persons of refinedmusical taste: the lady had a contralto voice of remarkable sweetness,although of no great compass, and I used often to linger of a morning bythe high gate and listen to her executing an arietta, conjecturally atsome window upstairs, for the house was not visible from the turnpike.The husband, somewhere about the ground, would occasionally respond withtwo or three bars. It was all quite an ideal, Arcadian business. Theyseemed very happy together, these two persons, who asked no oddswhatever of the community in which they had settled themselves.

  There was a queerness, a sort of mystery, about this couple which Iadmit piqued my curiosity, though as a rule I have no morbid interest inthe affairs of my neighbors. They behaved like a pair of lovers who hadrun off and got married clandestinely. I willingly acquitted them,however, of having done anything unlawful; for, to change a word in thelines of the poet,

  "It is a joy to _think_ the best We may of human kind."

  Admitting the hypothesis of elopement, there was no mystery in theirneither sending nor receiving letters. But where did they get theirgroceries? I do not mean the money to pay for them--that is an enigmaapart--but the groceries themselves. No express wagon, no butcher'scart, no vehicle of any description, was ever observed to stop at theirdomicile. Yet they did not order family stores at the sole establishmentin the village--an inexhaustible little bottle of a shop which, Iadvertise it gratis, can turn out anything in the way of groceries, froma hand-saw to a pocket-handkerchief. I confess that I allowed thisunimportant detail of their _menage_ to occupy more of my speculationthan was creditable to me.

  In several respects our neighbors reminded me of those inexplicablepersons we sometimes come across in great cities, though seldom or neverin suburban places, where the field may be supposed too restricted fortheir operations--persons who have no perceptible means of subsistence,and manage to live royally on nothing a year. They hold no governmentbonds, they possess no real estate (our neighbors did own their house),they toil not, neither do they spin; yet they reap all the numerous softadvantages that usually result from honest toil and skilful spinning.How do they do it? But this is a digression, and I am quite of theopinion of the old lady in "David Copperfield," who says, "Let us haveno meandering!"

  Though my wife had declined to risk a ceremonious call on our neighborsas a family, I saw no reason why I should not speak to the husband as anindividual, when I happened to encounter him by the wayside. I madeseveral approaches to do so, when it occurred to my penetration that myneighbor had the air of trying to avoid me. I resolved to put thesuspicion to the test, and one forenoon, when he was sauntering along onthe opposite side of the road, in the vicinity of Fisher's sawmill, Ideliberately crossed over to address him. The brusque manner in which hehurried away was not to be misunderstood. Of course I was not going toforce myself upon him.

  It was at this time that I began to formulate uncharitable suppositionstouching our neighbors, and would have been as well pleased if some ofmy choicest fruit-trees had not overhung their wall. I determined tokeep my eyes open later in the season, when the fruit should be ripe topluck. In some folks, a sense of the delicate shades of differencebetween _meum_ and _tuum_ does not seem to be very strongly developed inthe Moon of Cherries, to use the old Indian phrase.

  I was sufficiently magnanimous not to impart any of these sinisterimpressions to the families with whom we were on visiting terms; for Idespise a gossip. I would say nothing against the persons up the roaduntil I had something definite to say. My interest in them was--well,not exactly extinguished, but burning low. I met the gentleman atintervals, and passed him without recognition; at rarer intervals I sawthe lady.

  After a while I not only missed my occasional glimpses of her pretty,slim figure, always draped in some soft black stuff with a bit ofscarlet at the throat, but I inferred that she did not go about thehouse singing in her light-hearted manner, as formerly. What hadhappened? Had the honeymoon suffered eclipse already? Was she ill? Ifancied she was ill, and that I detected a certain anxiety in thehusband, who spent the mornings digging solitarily in the garden, andseemed to have relinquished those long jaunts to the brow of Blue Hill,where there is a superb view of all Norfolk County combined with sundryvenerable rattlesnakes with twelve rattles.

  As the days went by it became certain that the lady was confined to thehouse, perhaps seriously ill, possibly a confirmed invalid. Whether shewas attended by a physician from Canton or from Milton, I was unable tosay; but neither the gig with the large white allopathic horse, nor thegig with the homoeopathic sorrel mare, was ever seen hitched at thegate during the day. If a physician had charge of the case, he visitedhis patient only at night. All this moved my sympathy, and I reproachedmyself with having had hard thoughts of our neighbors. Trouble had cometo them early. I would have liked to offer them such small, friendlyservices as lay in my power; but the memory of the repulse I hadsustained still rankled in me. So I hesitated.

  One morning my two boys burst into the library with their eyessparkling.

  "You know the old elm down the road?" cried one.

  "Yes."

  "The elm with the hang-bird's nest?" shrieked the other.

  "Yes, yes!"

  "Well, we both just climbed up, and there's three young ones in it!"

  Then I smiled to think that our new neighbors had got such a promisinglittle family.

  MY FIRST VISIT TO PORTLAND

  BY MAJOR JACK DOWNING

  In the fall of the year 1829, I took it into my head I'd go to Portland.I had heard a good deal about Portland, what a fine place it was, andhow the folks got rich there proper fast; and that fall there was acouple of new papers come up to our place from there, called the"Portland Courier" and "Family Reader," and they told a good many queerkind of things about Portland, and one thing and another; and all atonce it popped into my head, and I up and told father, and says,--

  "I am going to Portland, whether or no; and I'll see what this world ismade of yet."

  Father stared a little at first, and said he was afraid I would getlost; but when he see I was bent upon it, he give it up, and he steppedto his chist, and opened the till, and took out a dollar, and he gave itto me; and says he,--

  "Jack, this is all I can do for you; but go and lead an honest life, andI believe I shall hear good of you yet."

  He turned and walked across the room, but I could see the tears startinto his eyes. And mother sat down and had a hearty crying-spell.

  This made me feel rather bad for a minit or two, and I almost had a mindto give it up; and then again father's dream came into my mind, and Imustered up courage, and declared I'd go. So I tackled up the old horse,and packed in a load of axe-handles, and a few notions; and motherfried me some doughnuts, and put 'em into a box, along with some cheese,and sausages, and ropped me up another shirt, for I told her I didn'tknow how long I should be gone. And after I got rigged out, I went roundand bid all the neighbors good-by, and jumped in, and drove off forPortland.

  Aunt Sally had been married two or three years before, and moved toPortland; and I inquired round till I found out where she lived, andwent there, and put the old horse up, and eat some supper, and went tobed.

  And the next morning I got up, and straightened right off to see theeditor of the "Portland Courier," for I knew by what I had seen in hispaper, that he was just the man to tell me which way to steer. And whenI come to see him, I knew I was right; for soon as I told him my name,and what I wanted, he took me by the hand as kind as if he had been abrother, and says he,--

  "Mister," says he, "I'll do anything I can to assist you. You have cometo a good town; Portland is a healthy, thriving place, and any man witha proper degree of enterprise may do well here. But," says he,"stranger," and he looked mighty kind of knowing, says he, "if you wantto make out to your mind, you must do as the steamboats do."

  "Well," says I, "how do
they do?" for I didn't know what a steamboatwas, any more than the man in the moon.

  "Why," says he, "they go ahead. And you must drive about among the folkshere just as though you were at home, on the farm among the cattle.Don't be afraid of any of them, but figure away, and I dare say you'llget into good business in a very little while. But," says he, "there'sone thing you must be careful of; and that is, not to get into the handsof those are folks that trades up round Huckler's Row, for ther's somesharpers up there, if they get hold of you, would twist your eye-teethout in five minits."

  Well, arter he had giv me all the good advice he could, I went back toAunt Sally's ag'in, and got some breakfast; and then I walked all overthe town, to see what chance I could find to sell my axe-handles andthings and to get into business.

  After I had walked about three or four hours, I come along towards theupper end of the town, where I found there were stores and shops of allsorts and sizes. And I met a feller, and says I,--

  "What place is this?"

  "Why, this," says he, "is Huckler's Row."

  "What!" says I, "are these the stores where the traders in Huckler's Rowkeep?"

  And says he, "Yes."

  "Well, then," says I to myself, "I have a pesky good mind to go in andhave a try with one of these chaps, and see if they can twist myeye-teeth out. If they can get the best end of a bargain out of me, theycan do what there ain't a man in our place can do; and I should justlike to know what sort of stuff these 'ere Portland chaps are made of."So I goes into the best-looking store among 'em. And I see some biscuiton the shelf, and says I,--