The Complete Works of Artemus Ward Part 26

Ah me!

Oh dear!

A ROMANCE.--WILLIAM BARKER, THE YOUNG PATRIOT.

I.

"No, William Barker, you cannot have my daughter's hand in marriage until you are her equal in wealth and social position."

The speaker was a haughty old man of some sixty years, and the person whom he addressed was a fine-looking young man of twenty-five.

With a sad aspect the young man withdrew from the stately mansion.

II.

Six months later the young man stood in the presence of the haughty old man.

"What! YOU here again?" angrily cried the old man.

"Ay, old man," proudly exclaimed William Barker. "I am here, your daughter's equal and yours?"

The old man's lips curled with scorn. A derisive smile lit up his cold features; when, casting violently upon the marble center table an enormous roll of greenbacks, William Barker cried--

"See! Look on this wealth. And I've tenfold more! Listen, old man!

You spurned me from your door. But I did not despair. I secured a contract for furnis.h.i.+ng the Army of the---with beef--"

"Yes, yes!" eagerly exclaimed the old man.

"--and I bought up all the disabled cavalry horses I could find--"

"I see! I see!" cried the old man. "And good beef they make, too."

"They do! they do! and the profits are immense."

"I should say so!"

"And now, sir, I claim your daughter's fair hand!"

"Boy, she is yours. But hold! Look me in the eye. Throughout all this have you been loyal?"

"To the core!" cried William Barker.

"And," continued the old man, in a voice husky with emotion, "are you in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war?"

"I am, I am!"

"Then, boy take her! Maria, child, come hither. Your William claims thee. Be happy, my children! And whatever our lot in life may be, let us all support the government"

A ROMANCE--THE CONSCRIPT.

[Which may bother the reader a little unless he is familiar with the music of the day.]

CHAPTER I.

Philander Reed struggled with spool-thread and tape in a dry-goods store at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, State of New York. He Rallied Round the Flag, Boys, and Hailed Columbia every time she pa.s.sed that way. One day a regiment returning from the war Came Marching Along, bringing An Intelligent Contraband with them, who left the South about the time Babylon was a-Fallin', and when it was apparent to all well-ordered minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other Man." Then he Walked Round.

"And your Master," sed Philander, "where is he?"

"Ma.s.sa's in the cold, cold ground--at least I hope so!" sed the gay contraband.

"March on, March on! all hearts rejoice!" cried the Colonel, who was mounted on a Bob-tailed nag--on which, in times of Peace, my soul, O Peace! he had betted his money.

"Yaw," sed a German Bold Sojer Boy, "we don't-fights-mit-Segel as much as we did."

The regiment marched on, and Philander betook himself to his mother's Cottage Near the Banks of that Lone River, and rehea.r.s.ed the stirring speech he was to make that night at a war meeting.

"It's just before the battle, Mother," he said, "and I want to say something that will encourage Grant."

CHAPTER II.--MABEL.

Mabel Tucker was an orphan. Her father, Dan Tucker, was run over one day by a train of cars though he needn't have been, for the kind-hearted engineer told him to Git out of the Way.

Mabel early manifested a marked inclination for the milinery business, and at the time we introduce her to our readers she was Chief Engineer of a Millinery Shop and Boss of a Sewing Machine.