I thought I would play the tenderfoot and inquiring pilgrim from the cultured East, so I said: "You do not see the circus often in the West, I presume, the distance is so great between towns and the cost of transportation is so great?"
"No, sir. This is the first circus I ever was to. I have never saw a circus before."
"How did you like it?"
"O, tip-top. It was a good thing. I"d like to see it every day if I could, I laughed and drank lemonade till I"ve got my cloze all pinned up with pins, and I"d as soon tell you, if you wont give it away, that my pants is tied on me with barbed fence wire."
"Probably that"s what gives you that anxious and apprehensive look?"
"Yes, sir. If I look kind of doubtless about something, its because I"m afraid my pantaloons will fall off on the floor and I will have to borrow a roller towel to wear home."
"How did you like the animals?"
"I liked that part of the Great Moral Aggregation the best of all. I have not saw such a sight before. I could stand there and watch that there old scaly elephant stuff hay into his bosom with his long rubber nose for hours. I"d read a good deal first and last about the elephant, the king of beasts, but I had never yet saw one. Yesterday father told me there hadn"t been much joy into my young life, and so he gave me a dollar and told me to go over to the circus and have a grand time. I tell you, I just turned myself loose and gave myself up to pleasure."
[Ill.u.s.tration: I WAS A POOR CONVERSATIONALIST.]
"What other animals seemed to please you?" I asked, seeing that he was getting a little freer to talk.
"Oh, I saw the blue-nosed baboon from Farther India, and the red-eyed sandhill crane from Maddygasker, I think it was, and the sacred Jack-rabbit from Scandihoovia, and the lop-eared layme from South America. Then there was the female acrobat with her hair tied up with red ribbon. It"s funny about them acrobat wimmen. They get big pay, but they never buy cloze with their money. Now, the idea of a woman that gets $2 or $3 a day, for all I know, coming out there before 2,000 total strangers, wearing a pair of Indian war clubs and a red ribbon in her hair. I tell you, pardner, them acrobat prima donnars are mighty stingy with their money, or else they"re mighty economical with their cloze."
"Did you go into the side show?"
"No, sir. I studied the oil paintings on the outside, but I didn"t go in, I met a handsome looking man there near the side show, though, that seemed to take an interest in me. There was a lottery along with the show and he wanted me to go and throw for him."
"Capper, probably?"
"Perhaps so. Anyhow, he gave me a dollar and told me to go and throw for him."
"Why didn"t he throw for himself?"
"O, he said the lottery man knew him and wouldn"t let him throw."
"Of course. Same old story. He saw you were a greeney and got you to throw for him. He stood in with the game so that you drew a big prize for the capper, created a big excitement, and you and the crowd sailed in and lost all the money you had. I"ll bet he was a man with a velvet coat, and a moustache dyed a dead black and waxed as sharp as a cambric needle."
"Yes; that"s his description to a dot. I wonder if he really did do that a-purpose."
"Well, tell us about it. It does me good to hear a blamed fool tell how he lost his money. Don"t you see that your awkward ways and general greenness struck the capper the first thing, and you not only threw away your own money, but two or three hundred other wappy-jawed pelicans saw you draw a big prize and thought it was yours, then they deposited what little they had and everything was lovely."
"Well, I"ll tell you how it was, if it"ll do any good and save other young men in the future. You see this capper, as you call him, gave me a $1 bill to throw for him, and I put it into my vest pocket so, along with the dollar bill father gave me. I always carry my money in my right hand vest pocket. Well, I sailed up to the game, big as old Jumbo himself, and put a dollar into the game. As you say, I drawed a big prize, $20 and a silver cup. The man offered me $5 for the cup and I took it."
"Then it flashed over my mind that I might have got my dollar and the other feller"s mixed, so I says to the proprietor, "I will now invest a dollar for a gent who asked me to draw for him."
"Thereupon I took out the other dollar, and I"ll be eternally chastised if I didn"t draw a bra.s.s locket worth about two bits a bushel."
I didn"t say anything for a long time. Then I asked him how the capper acted when he got his bra.s.s locket.
"Well, he seemed pained and grieved about something, and he asked me if I hadn"t time to go away into a quiet place where we could talk it over by ourselves; but he had a kind of a cruel, insincere look in his eye, and I said no, I believed I didn"t care to, and that I was a poor conversationalist, anyhow; and so I came away, and left him looking at his bra.s.s locket and kicking holes in the ground and using profane language.
"Afterward I saw him talking to the proprietor of the lottery, and I feel, somehow, that they had lost confidence in me. I heard them speak of me in a jeering tone of voice, and one said as I pa.s.sed by: "There goes the meek-eyed rural convict now," and he used a horrid oath at the same time.
"If it hadn"t been for that one little quincidence, there would have been nothing to mar the enjoyment of the occasion."
Picnic Incidents.
Camping out in summer for several weeks is a good thing generally. Freedom from social restraint and suspenders is a great luxury for a time, and nothing purifies the blood quicker, or makes a side of bacon taste more like snipe on toast, than the crisp ozone that floats through the hills and forests where man can monkey o"er the green gra.s.s without violating a city ordinance.
The picnic is an aggravation. It has just enough of civilization to be a nuisance, and not enough barbarism to make life seem a luxury. If our aim be to lean up against a tree all day in a short seersucker coat and ditto pantaloons that segregated while we were festooning the hammock, the picnic is the thing. If we desire to go home at night with a jelly symphony on each knee and a thousand-legged worm in each ear, we may look upon the picnic as a success.
But to those who wish to forget the past and live only in the booming present, to get careless of gain and breathe brand-new air that has never been used, to appease an irritated liver, or straighten out a torpid lung, let me say, pick out a high, dry clime, where there are trout enough to give you an excuse for going there, take what is absolutely necessary and no more, and then stay there long enough to have some fun.
If we picnic, we wear ourselves out trying to have a good time, so that we can tell about it when we get back, but we do not actually get acquainted with each other before we have to quit and return.
To camp, is to change the whole programme of life, and to stop long enough in the never-ending conflict for dollars and distinction, to get a full breath and look over the field. Still, it is not always smooth sailing. To camp, is sometimes to show the material of which we are made. The dude at home is the dude in camp, and wherever he goes he demonstrates that he was made for naught. I do not know what a camping party would do with a dude unless they used him to bait a bear trap with, and even then it would be taking a mean advantage of the bear. The bear certainly has some rights which we are bound in all decency to respect.
James Milton Sherrod said he had a peculiar experience once while he was in camp on the Poudre in Colorado.
"We went over from Larmy," said he, "in July, eight years ago-four of us. There was me and Charcoal Brown, and old Joe and young Joe Connoy. We had just got comfortably down on the Lower Fork, out of the reach of everybody and sixty miles from a doctor, when Charcoal Brown got sick. Wa"al we had a big time of it. You can imagine yourself somethin" about it. Long in the night Brown began to groan and whoop and holler, and I made a diagnosis of him. He didn"t have much sand anyhow. He was tryin" to git a pension from the government on the grounds of desertion and failure to provide, and some such a blame thing or another, so I didn"t feel much sympathy fur him. But when I lit the gas and examined him, I found that he had a large fever on hand, and there we was without a doggon thing in the house but a jug of emigrant whiskey and a paper of condition powders fur the mule. I was a good deal rattled at first to know what the d.i.c.kens to do fur him. The whiskey wouldn"t do him any good, and, besides, if he was goin" to have a long spell of sickness we needed it for the watchers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAKING USE OF A DUDE.]
"Wa"al, it was rough. I"d think of a thousand things that was good fur fevers, and then I"d remember that we hadn"t got "em. Finally old Joe says to me, "James, why don"t ye soak his feet?" says he. "Soak nuthin"," says I; "what would ye soak "em in?" We had a long-handle frying-pan, and we could heat water in it, of course, but it was too shaller to do any good, anyhow; so we abandoned that synopsis right off. First I thought I"d try the condition powders in him, but I hated to go into a case and prescribe so recklessly. Finally I thought of a case of rheumatiz that I had up in Bitter Creek years ago, and how the boys filled their socks full of hot ashes and put "em all over me till it started the persbyterian all over me and I got over it. So we begun to skirmish around the tent for socks, and I hope I may be tee-totally skun if there was a blame sock in the whole syndicate. Ez fur me, I never wore "em, but I did think young Joe would be fixed. He wasn"t though. Said he didn"t want to be considered proud and high strung, so he left his socks at home.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARCOAL BROWN"S REPROACHES.]
"Then we begun to look around and finally decided that Brown would die pretty soon if we didn"t break up the fever, so we concluded to take all the ashes under the camp-fire, fill up his cloze, which was loose, tie his sleeves at the wrists, and his pants at the ankles, give him a dash of condition powders and a little whiskey to take the taste out of his mouth, and then see what ejosted nature would do.
"So we stood Brown up agin a tree and poured hot ashes down his back till he begun to fit his cloze pretty quick, and then we laid him down in the tent and covered him up with everything we had in our humble cot. Everything worked well till he begun to perspirate, and then there was music, and don"t you forget it. That kind of soaked the ashes, don"t you see, and made a lye that would take the peelin" off a telegraph pole.
"Charcoal Brown jest simply riz up and uttered a shrill whoop that jarred the geology of Colorado, and made my blood run cold. The goose flesh riz on old Joe Connoy till you could hang your hat on him anywhere. It was awful.
"Brown stood up on his feet, and threw things, and cussed us till we felt ashamed of ourselves. I"ve seen sickness a good deal in my time, but-I give it to you straight-I never seen an invalid stand up in the loneliness of the night, far from home and friends, with the concentrated lye oozin" out of the cracks of his boots, and reproach people the way Charcoal Brown did us.
"He got over it, of course, before Christmas, but he was a different man after that. I"ve been out campin" with him a good many times sence, but he never complained of feelin" indisposed. He seemed to be timid about tellin" us even if he was under the weather, and old Joe Connoy said mebbe Brown was afraid we would prescribe fur him or sumthin"."
Nero.
Nero, who was a Roman Emperor from 54 to 68 A.D., was said to have been one of the most disagreeable monarchs to meet that Rome ever had. He was a nephew of Culigula, the Emperor, on his mother"s side, and a son of Dominitius Ahen.o.barbust, of St. Lawrence county. The above was really Nero"s name, but in the year 50, A.D., his mother married Claudius and her son adopted the name of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. This name he was in the habit of wearing during the cold weather, b.u.t.toned up in front. During the hot weather, Nero was all the name he wore. In 53, Nero married Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and went right to housekeeping. Nero and Octavia did not get along first-rate. Nero soon wearied of his young wife and finally transferred her to the New Jerusalem.
In 54, Nero"s mother, by concealing the rightful heir to the throne for several weeks and doctoring the returns, succeeded in getting the steady job of Emperor for Nero at a good salary.
His reign was quite stormy and several long, b.l.o.o.d.y wars were carried on during that period. He was a good vicarious fighter and could successfully hold a man"s coat all day, while the man went to the front to get killed. He loved to go out riding over the battle fields, as soon as it was safe, in his gorgeously bedizened band chariot and he didn"t care if the wheels rolled in gore up to the hub, providing it was some other man"s gore. It gave him great pleasure to drive about over the field of carnage and gloat over the dead. Nero was not a great success as an Emperor, but as a gloater he has no rival in history.
Nero"s reign was characterized, also, by the great conflagration and Roman fireworks of July, 64, by which two-thirds of the city of Rome was destroyed. The emperor was charged with starting this fire in order to get the insurance on a stock of dry goods on Main street.
Instead of taking off his crown, hanging it up in the hall and helping to put out the fire, as other Emperors have done time and again, Nero took his violin up stairs and played, "I"ll Meet You When the Sun Goes Down." This occasioned a great deal of adverse criticism on the part of those who opposed the administration. Several persons openly criticised Nero"s policy and then died.
A man in those days, would put on his overcoat in the morning and tell his wife not to keep dinner waiting. "I am going down town to criticise the Emperor a few moments," he would say. "If I do not get home in time for dinner, meet me on the "evergreen sh.o.r.e.""
Nero, after the death of Octavia, married Poppaea Sabina. She died afterward at her husband"s earnest solicitation. Nero did not care so much about being a bridegroom, but the excitement of being a widower always gratified and pleased him.