Joe Smith has bought out the devil, and is going to convert Tophet into a Mormon Paradise.
Shakspeare has progressed in his new play as far as the fourth act, where he has got the hero seven miles and a half up in a balloon, while the disconsolate heroine is hanging by her hair to a limb over a precipice; question is, how the heroic lover shall get down and rescue his lady-love before her hair breaks, or her head pulls off.
Spirits now began to come without invitation, like Paddies to a wake.
Soul of an alderman called for clam soup and bread and b.u.t.ter.
Ghost of a newsboy sung out for the Evening Post.
All that was left of a Bowery fireman, wanted to know if Forty had got her b.u.t.t fixed and a new inch and a half nozzle.
Ghost of Marmion wanted a dish of soft crabs, and called out, after the old fashion, to charge it to Stanley.
Medium had by this time lost all control over her ghostly company.
Spirits of waiters, soldiers, tailors (Damphool trembled), babies, saloon-keepers, dancers, actors, widows, circus-riders, in fact all varieties of obstreperous sprites, began to play the devil with things generally.
The dining table jumped up, turned two somersets, and landed with one leg in the widow"s lap, one in Damphool"s mouth, and the other two on the toes of the sanctimonious-looking individuals opposite.
The washstand exhibited strong symptoms of a desire to dance the Jenny Lind polka on Bull Dogge"s head.
The book-case beat time with extraordinary vigor, and made faces at the company generally.
Our walking canes and umbrellas promenaded round the room in couples, without the slightest regard to corns or other pedal vegetables; while the bedstead in the corner was extemporizing a comic song, with a vigorous accompaniment on the soap-dish, the wash-dish, and other bed-room furniture.
Bull Dogge here made a rush for the door, and dashed wildly down Broadway, pursued, as he avers to this day, by the spirit of an Irishman, with a pickaxe, a handsaw, and a ghostly wheelbarrow.
Concluding I had seen enough, I took Damphool and B. D----"s bottle (empty, or he would never have left it), and went home, satisfied that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of," except by lying "_mediums_," so called; who too lazy to work, and too cowardly to get an honorable living by stealing, adopt this method to sponge their bread and b.u.t.ter out of those, whom G.o.d in his mysterious wisdom has seen fit to send on earth weak enough to believe their idiotic ravings.
x.x.x.
Special Express from Dog Paradise--A Canine Ghost.
I regret the strong language used in the preceding chapter, for since it was penned I have become a firm believer in ghosts, "spheres," saltatory furniture, and the other doctrines of professed Spiritualists.
It is a solemn truth that I, Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P.B., although neither a doctor, clergyman, nor Judge of the Supreme Court, have received a visit from the spirits. The secrets of the other world have been partially revealed to me.
I have had a glimpse of horse-heaven--a very fair view of the very blissful residence of pigs and poultry, and been vouchsafed a key-hole peep at the paradise of Spiritual Jacka.s.sdom.
I have discovered that Esop is a reliable historian, and I find that in a future world the power and liberty of quadrupedal speech will be restored in all its pristine euphony and elegance. Listen, wonder, and believe!
Some time since, I had a beloved and beautiful bull-terrier--(not the Bull Dogge alluded to in other epistles,) he was perfect in every point--his hair stuck out in mult.i.tudinous directions--his snarl was of the crossest--his teeth of the sharpest, and his ordinary behavior exhibited a general and impartial hatred of mankind. He was a canine Ishmael, for every man"s hand was against him. His cognomen savored of the satanic. I called him Pluto.
He mysteriously disappeared--an offered reward of seven dollars and a half failed to restore him to my fireside. I tearfully gave him up, and mourned sincerely. I suspected the dog-killers, and wept for him as for one gone "to that bourne from which" bull-terriers don"t come back.
Last evening I was aroused from a thoughtful contemplation of my nightcap (liquid and hot, with nutmeg,) by the unusual and remarkable conduct of a pet tom-cat, who deliberately climbed upon my lap, and, in a voice intelligible, if not absolutely musical, spoke to me--positively spoke to me!--he informed me that various spirits were present who desired to hold communication with me.
Having recovered somewhat from my momentary astonishment, I sung out to fire away.
No sooner said than done--the services of the feline "medium" were instantly dispensed with, and there suddenly appeared to my bewildered sight the unmistakable form of my lamented Pluto.
I was astonished, and so I said, but I could not be deluded--it was my "real, old, original, genuine" Pluto. I knew his warning growl--I recognized the friendly wag of his tail--I could have sworn to each particular hair.
He addressed me in a voice trembling with emotion--he narrated the full history of his untimely decease--told of his seduction by a tempting mutton chop, and consequent _ab_duction by the remorseless thief--his vain and ineffectual struggles to escape--related his incarceration in an unseaworthy ca.n.a.l-boat, with a hundred other unfortunates--described their embarkation and departure for a foreign market--the terrific collision which ensued when about four miles and a half from port, when the ca.n.a.l-boat was met by a mudscow which was recklessly running with great velocity in a thick fog, the entire force of her propelling apparatus (one-horse power) being brought into requisition to attain a frightful speed--he dwelt upon the terrors of the scene--the dastardly desertion of the crew, (a mulatto woman and two coffee-colored boys,) who took to the boat, (a ba.s.s-wood "dugout,") and escaped, leaving the helpless pa.s.sengers to their awful fate. He told the agonies he endured when submerged in the raging flood--his attempt to save himself upon an empty cheese-tub. How he was crowded off by a frightened spaniel pup--the last excruciating, agonizing pain of the final struggle, and his subsequent entrance to the canine spirit world. He whispered, in a mysterious tone, that he had just come from a sixpenny eating-house, where he had witnessed the final disappearance of his mortal remains through the jaws of a confiding drayman who had asked for a mutton pie.
The whole history was related with an appearance of earnestness and sincerity which left not a doubt of its truth; and the entire narrative was couched in such elegant language that I strongly suspected that Pluto had read the report of those accommodating spirits who had imparted such reliable information concerning the untimely loss of the lamented steamship "Arctic," to a distinguished, and formerly-supposed-sensible-and-sane, Judge of the Superior Court for the Empire State. And, like those unfortunate ghosts, these, too, came to reveal to mortal ears the story of their sufferings and death.
For my beloved animal was not alone: with him appeared the disembodied ghosts of all the crowd who perished with him.
Pluto informed me that they were in such a disturbed state of mind that they did not know much yet--most of them were not permanently billeted--but that he himself, on account of his superior sagacity, had been already a.s.signed his sphere and situation. He volunteered to show me some of the celebrities.
With a majestic motion he moved his pathetic tail, and forth they came in grand procession, the "Happy Family" being headed by old Mother Hubbard"s dog and d.i.c.k Whittington"s cat, in neighborly proximity.
From a hurried inspection I was enabled to gather the following items: The Trojan horse was suffering from indigestion; Coleridge"s "mastiff b.i.t.c.h" has just become the happy mother of thirteen lovely cherubs, and is "as well as can be expected;" "the rat that eat the malt that lay in the house that Jack built" says the Maine Law would have spared him that early indiscretion; Balaam"s a.s.s had his jaw tied up with the toothache; Rozinante was in good racing condition; St. George"s dragon looks much more amiable than I should have supposed; Bucephalus and Old Whitey had been fighting a pitched battle, and are on short allowance of oats for insubordination; the Fee Jee mermaid said she had got tired of her Caudal appendage, and desired me to ask Barnum, if her tail must be continued.
Jonah"s whale, some time since, swallowed the Na.s.sau-st. four-cent man, but gave him up, like a second Jonah, and he is now on his old "stamping-ground" again. In the distance, I perceived John Gilpin"s horse, and the bull that was unceremoniously displaced from a well known architectural elevation, and was informed that Nebuchadnezzar, who had not yet lost his fondness for greens, sometimes shares their pasture with them.
The Black Swan, the Swan of Avon, and the patriotic geese whose intellectual cackling saved Imperial Rome, were enjoying themselves in catching tadpoles in a duck-pond.
Walter Scott"s dog Maida, Beth Gelert, Launce"s dog, old dog Tray, and the other "Tray, Blanche, and Sweet-heart," were discussing canine politics over a beef-bone.
The Sea Serpent appeared, but was so dimly visible that I could only judge him to be about the average length.
Edgar A. Poe"s Raven and Barnaby Rudge"s Grip had just been detected stealing corn from a quail trap, and hiding it in an empty powder-horn.
Many other birds of note were pointed out, and their situation and prospects explained by the obliging Pluto.
And, even as one of our most learned, wise and ill.u.s.trious rulers, and his brother Rapperites, have demonstrated that the spirits of the departed are busied in employments similar to their earthly ones, so did my reliable Pluto state similar facts concerning the honorable company of beasts, birds, and reptiles. His discourse ran much as follows:
"Know, men of earth, that shadowy horses still throng your streets, harnessed to intangible drays, and to incorporeal express wagons, and still tailfully drag innumerable three-cent stages; they still live in your stables, graze in your pastures, and drink at your pumps; drivers, malignant, though unseen, still lash their unreal sides with cutting whips, until they become overcome with ire, and viciously kick over their spectral traces; defunct racers still haunt the scenes of their former triumphs, skim with feet unshod round the inside track, and scornfully turn up their goblin noses at the fastest earthly time on record; transparent donkeys wag complacently their celestial ears, and brush off airy flies with unsubstantial tails.
"Swine, full grown, although unseen, proud as in life, ferociously prowl about your streets, seeking what they may devour, and expressing with inaudible grunts their Paradisiac satisfaction; bodiless pigs squeal under formless gates; dogs still follow, with unheard tread, their dreamy masters, wagging their placid phantom tails, or searching through their s.h.a.ggy hides, with savage teeth, for spiritual fleas.
"Polecats, invisible, still haunt your barns, searching for airy chickens, finding ghostly eggs in unheard of nests--then stealing and giving odor in your cellars; apparitions of departed cats hunt pulseless mice, and in your parlors, phantom kittens chase their goblin tails.
Henceforth, let every man take heed, lest, in pulling off his boots, he kick his dear departed Carlo; and let every maiden lady bestow herself in her favorite rocking-chair, in awe and perturbation, lest the cushion be already occupied by defunct Tabby and her spectral litter."
When my darling Pluto had spoken thus, the company began to disappear. A mist seemed gradually to envelope all, and one by one they faded from my mortal vision, and soon all save Pluto had vanished from my sight. He only remained, to give me one last a.s.surance that the creed of the well known Indian mentioned by Mr. Pope, is true--who firmly believes that in the happy hunting ground hereafter,
"His faithful dog shall bear him company."
x.x.xI.