Remarks Part 33

There is only one way to insure success in the publication of recipes. They must be tried by the editor himself before they are printed. If you have a good recipe for paste, you must try it before you print it. If you have a good remedy for botts, you must get a botty horse somewhere and try the remedy before you submit it. If you think of publis.h.i.+ng the antidote for a certain poison, you should poison some one and try the antidote on him, in order to test it, before you bamboozle the readers of your paper.

This, of course, will add a good deal of extra work for the editor, but editors need more work. All they do now is to have fun with each other, draw their princely salaries, and speak sarcastically of the young poet who sings,

"You have came far o'er the sea, And I've went away from thee."

Sixty Minutes in America.

The following selections are from the advance sheets of a forthcoming work with the above t.i.tle, to be published by M. Foll de Roll. It is possible that other excerpts will be made from the book, in case the present harmonious state of affairs between France and America is not destroyed by my style of translation.

In the preface M. Foll de Roll says: "France has long required a book of printed writings about that large, wide land of whom we listen to so much and yet so little sabe, as the piquant Californian shall say. America is considerable. America I shall call vast. She care nothing how high freedom shall come, she must secure him. She exclaims to all people: 'You like freedom pretty well, but you know nothing of it. We throw away every day more freedom than you shall see all your life. Come to this place when you shall run out of freedom. We make it. Do not ask us for money, but if you want personal liberty, please look over our vast stock before you elsewhere go.'

"So everybody goes to America, where he shall be free to pay cash for what the American has for sale.

"In this book will be found everything that the French people want to know of that singular land, for did I not cross it from New Jersey City, the town where all the New York people have to go to get upon the cars, through to the town of San Francisco?

"For years the writer of this book has had it in his mind to go across America, and then tell the people of France, in a small volume costing one franc, all about the grotesque land of the freedom bird."

In the opening chapter he alludes to New York casually, and apologizes for taking up so much s.p.a.ce.

"When you shall land in New York, you shall feel a strange sensation. The stomach is not so what we should call 'Rise up William Riley,' to use an Americanism which will not bear translation. I ride along the Rue de Twenty-three, and want to eat everything my eyes shall fall upon.

"I stay at New York all night, and eat one large supper at 6 o'clock, and again at 9. At 12 I awake and eat the inside of my hektograph, and then lie down once more to sleep. The hektograph will be henceforth, as the American shall say, no good, but what is that when a man is starving in a foreign land?

"I leave New York in the morning on the Ferry de Pavonia, a steamer that goes to New Jersey City. Many people go to New York to buy food and clothes. Then you shall see them return to the woods, where they live the rest of the time. Some of the females are quite pet.i.te and, as the Americans have it,'scrumptious.' One stout girl at New Jersey City, I was told, was 'all wool and a yard wide.'

"The relations between New York and New Jersey City are quite amicable, and the inhabitants seem to spend much of their time riding to and fro on the Ferry de Pavonia and other steamers. When I talked to them in their own language they would laugh with great glee, and say they could not parley voo Norwegian very good.

"The Americans are very fond of witnessing what may be called the tournament de slug. In this, two men wearing upholstered mittens shake hands, and then one strikes at the other with his right hand, so as to mislead him, and, while he is taking care of that, the first man hits him with his left and knocks out some of his teeth. Then the other man spits out his loose teeth and hits his antagonist on the nose, or feeds him with the thumb of his upholstered mitten for some time. Half the gate money goes to the hospital where these men are in the habit of being repaired.

"One of these men, who is now the champion sc.r.a.pper, as one American author has it, was once a poor boy, but he was proud and ambitious. So he practiced on his wife evenings, after she had washed the dishes, until he found that he could 'knock her out,' as the American has it. Then he tried it on other relatives, and step by step advanced till he could make almost any man in America cough up pieces of this upholstered mitten which he wears in public.

"In closing this chapter on New York, I may say that I have not said so much of the city itself as I would like, but enough so that he who reads with care may feel somewhat familiar with it. New York is situated on the east side of America, near New Jersey City. The climate is cool and frosty a part of the year, but warm and temperate in the summer months. The surface is generally level, but some of the houses are quite tall.

"I would not advise Frenchmen to go to New York now, but rather to wait until the pedestal of M. Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty has been paid for. Many foreigners have already been earnestly permitted to help pay for this pedestal."

Rev. Mr. Hallelujah's Hoss.

There are a good many difficult things to ride, I find, beside the bicycle and the bucking Mexican plug. Those who have tried to mount and successfully ride a wheelbarrow in the darkness of the stilly night will agree with me.

You come on a wheelbarrow suddenly when it is in a brown study, and you undertake to straddle it, so to speak, and all at once you find the wheelbarrow on top. I may say, I think, safely, that the wheelbarrow is, as a rule, phlegmatic and cool; but when a total stranger startles it, it spreads desolation and destruction on every hand.

This is also true of the perambulator, or baby-carriage. I undertook to evade a child's phaeton, three years ago last spring, as it stood in the entrance to a hall in Main street. The child was not injured, because it was not in the carriage at the time; but I was not so fortunate. I pulled pieces of perambulator out of myself for two weeks with the hand that was not disabled.

How a sedentary man could fall through a child's carriage in such a manner as to stab himself with the awning and knock every spoke out of three wheels, is still a mystery to me, but I did it. I can show you the doctor's bill now.

The other day, however, I discovered a new style of riding animal. The Rev. Mr. Hallelujah was at the depot when I arrived, and was evidently waiting for the same Chicago train that I was in search of. Rev. Mr. Hallelujah had put his valise down near an ordinary baggage-truck which leaned up against the wall of the station building.

He strolled along the platform a few moments, communing with himself and agitating his mind over the subject of Divine Retribution, and then he went up and leaned against the truck. Finally, he somehow got his arms under the handles of the truck as it stood up between his back and the wall. He still continued to think of the plan of Divine Retribution, and you could have seen his lips move if you had been there.

Pretty soon some young ladies came along, rosy in winter air, beautiful beyond compare, frosty crystals in their hair; smiled they on the preacher there.

He returned the smile and bowed low. As he did so, as near as I can figure it out, he stepped back on the iron edge of the truck that the baggageman generally jabs under the rim of an iron-bound sample-trunk when he goes to load it. Anyhow, Mr. Hallelujah's feet flew toward next spring. The truck started across the platform with him and spilled him over the edge on the track ten feet below. So rapid was the movement that the eye with difficulty followed his evolutions. His valise was carried onward by the same wild avalanche, and "busted" open before it struck the track below.

I was surprised to see some of the articles that shot forth into the broad light of day. Among the rest there was a bran fired new set of ready-made teeth, to be used in case of accident. Up to that moment I didn't know that Mr. Hallelujah used the common tooth of commerce. These teeth slipped out of the valise with a Sabbath smile and vulcanized rubber gums.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RAPID MOVEMENT.]

In striking the iron track below, the every-day set which the Rev. Mr. Hallelujah had in use became loosened, and smiled across the road-bed and right of way at the bran fired new array of incisors, cuspids, bi-cuspids and molars that flew out of the valise. Mr. Hallelujah got up and tried to look merry, but he could not smile without his teeth. The back seams of his Newmarket coat were more successful, however.

Mr. Hallelujah's wardrobe and a small boy were the only objects that dared to smile.

Somnambulism and Crime.

A recent article in the London Post on the subject of somnambulism, calls to my mind several little incidents with somnambulistic tendencies in my own experience.

This subject has, indeed, attracted my attention for some years, and it has afforded me great pleasure to investigate it carefully.

Regarding the causes of dreams and somnambulism, there are many theories, all of which are more or less untenable. My own idea, given, of course, in a plain, crude way, is that thoughts originate on the inside of the brain and then go at once to the surface, where they have their photographs taken, with the understanding that the negatives are to be preserved. In this way the thought may afterward be duplicated back to the thinker in the form of a dream, and, if the impulse be strong enough, muscular action and somnambulism may result.

On the banks of Bitter Creek, some years ago, lived an open-mouthed man, who had risen from affluence by his unaided effort until he was entirely free from any inc.u.mbrance in the way of property. His mind dwelt on this matter a great deal during the day. Thoughts of manual labor flitted through his mind, but were cast aside as impracticable. Then other means of acquiring property suggested themselves. These thoughts were photographed on the delicate negative of the brain, where it is a rule to preserve all negatives. At night these thoughts were reversed within the think resort, if I may be allowed that term, and muscular action resulted. Yielding at last to the great desire for possessions and property the somnambulist groped his way to the corral of a total stranger, and selecting a choice mule with great dewy eyes and real camel's hair tail, he fled. On and on he pressed, toward the dark, uncertain west, till at last rosy morn clomb the low, outlying hills and gilded the gray outlines of the sage-brush. The coyote slunk back to his home, but the somnambulist did not.

He awoke as day dawned, and, when he found himself astride the mule of another, a slight shudder pa.s.sed the entire length of his frame. He then fully realized that he had made his debut as a somnambulist. He seemed to think that he who starts out to be a somnambulist should never turn back. So he pressed on, while the red sun stepped out into the awful quiet of the dusty waste and gradually moved up into the sky, and slowly added another day to those already filed away in the dark maw of ages.

Night came again at last, and with it other somnambulists similar to the first, only that they were riding on their own beasts. Some somnambulists ride their own animals, while others are content to bestride the steeds of strangers.

The man on the anonymous mule halted at last at the mouth of a deep canon. He did so at the request of other somnambulists. Mechanically he got down from the back of the mule and stood under a stunted mountain pine.

After awhile he began to ascend the tree by means of his neck. When he had reached the lower branch of the tree he made a few gestures with his feet by a lateral movement of the legs. He made several ineffectual efforts to kick some pieces out of the horizon, and then, after he had gently oscilliated a few times, he a.s.sumed a pendent and perpendicular position at right angles with the limb of the tree.

The other somnambulists then took the mule safely back to his corral, and the tragedy of a night was over.

The London Post very truly says that where somnambulism can be proved it is a good defense in a criminal action. It was so held in this case.

Various methods are suggested for rousing the somnambulist, such as tickling the feet, for instance; but in all my own experience, I never knew of a more radical or permanent cure than the one so imperfectly given above. It might do in some cases to tickle the feet of a somnambulist discovered in the act of riding away on an anonymous mule, but how could you successfully tickle the soles of his feet while he is standing on them? In such cases, the only true way would be to suspend the somnambulist in such a way as to give free access to the feet from below, and, at the same time, give him a good, wide horizon to kick at.

Modern Architecture.

It may be premature, perhaps, but I desire to suggest to anyone who may be contemplating the erection of a summer residence for me, as a slight testimonial of his high regard for my sterling worth and symmetrical escutcheon-a testimonial more suggestive of earnest admiration and warm personal friends.h.i.+p than of great intrinsic value, etc., etc., etc., that I hope he will not construct it on the modern plan of mental hallucination and morbid delirium tremens peculiar to recent architecture.

Of course, a man ought not to look a gift house in the gable end, but if my friends don't know me any better than to build me a summer cottage and throw in odd windows that n.o.body else wanted, and then daub it up with colors they have bought at auction and applied to the house after dark with a shotgun, I think it is time that we had a better understanding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCHITECT.]

Such a structure does not come within either of the three cla.s.ses of renaissance. It is neither Florentine, Roman, or Venetian. Any man can originate such a style if he will only drink the right kind of whiskey long enough and then describe the feelings to an amanuensis.

Imagine the sensation that one of these modern, sawed-off cottages would create a hundred years from now, if it should survive! But that is impossible. The only cheering feature of the whole matter is that these creatures of a disordered imagination must soon pa.s.s away, and the bright sunlight of hard horse sense s.h.i.+ne in through the shattered dormers and gables and gnawed-off architecture of the average summer resort.

A friend of mine a few days ago showed me his new house with much pride. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him I liked it first-rate. Then I went home and wept all night. It was my first falsehood.

The house, taken as a whole, looked to me like a skating rink that had started out to make money, and then suddenly changed its mind and resolved to become a tannery. Then ten feet higher it lost all self-respect and blossomed into a full-blown drunk and disorderly, surrounded by the smokestack of a foundry and the bright future of thirty days ahead with the chain gang. That's the way it looked to me.