Remarks

The Wail Of A Wife

“Ethel” has written a letter to me and asked for a printed reply. Leaving off the opening sentences, which I would not care to have fall into the hands of my wife, her note is about as follows:

“– Vt., Feb. 28, 1885.

My Dear Sir:

{Tender part of letter omitted for obvious reasons.} Would it be asking too much for me to request a brief reply to one or two questions which many other married women as well as myself would like to have answered?

I have been married now for five years. To-day is the anniversary of my marriage. When I was single I was a teacher and supported myself in comfort. I had more pocket-money and dressed fully as well if not better than I do now. Why should girls who are abundantly able to earn their own livelihood struggle to become the slave of a husband and children, and tie themselves to a man when they might be free and happy?

I think too much is said by the men in a light and flippant manner about the anxiety of young ladies to secure a home and a husband, and still they do deserve a part of it, as I feel that I do now for assuming a great burden when I was comparatively independent and comfortable.

Now, will you suggest any advice that you think would benefit the yet unmarried and self-supporting girls who are liable to make the same mistake that I did, and thus warn them in a manner that would be so much more universal in its range, and reach so many more people than I could if I should raise my voice? Do this and you will be gratefully remembered by

Ethel.”

It would indeed be a tough, tough man who could ignore thy gentle plea, Ethel; tougher far than the pale, intellectual hired man who now addresses you in this private and underhanded manner, unknown to your husband. Please destroy this letter, Ethel, as soon as you see it in print, so that it will not fall into the hands of Mr. Ethel, for if it should, I am gone. If your husband were to run across this letter in the public press I could never look him in the eye again.

You say that you had more pocket-money before you were married than you have since, Ethel, and you regret your rash step. I am sorry to hear it. You also say that you wore better clothes when you were single than you do now. You are also pained over that. It seems that marriage with you has not paid any cash dividends. So that if you married Mr. Ethel as a financial venture, it was a mistake. You do not state how it has affected your husband. Perhaps he had more pocket-money and better clothes before he married than he has since. Sometimes two people do well in business by themselves, but when they go into partnership they bust higher than a kite, if you will allow me the free, English translation of a Roman expression which you might not fully understand if I should give it to you in the original Roman.

Lots of self-supporting young ladies have married and had to go very light on pin-money after that, and still they did not squeal, as you, dear Ethel. They did not marry for revenue only. They married for protection. (This is a little political bon mot which I thought of myself. Some of my best jokes this spring are jokes that I thought of myself.)

No, Ethel, if you married expecting to be a dormant partner during the day and then to go through Mr. Ethel’s pantaloons pocket at night and declare a dividend, of course life is full of bitter, bitter regret and disappointment. Perhaps it is also for Mr. Ethel. Anyhow, I can’t help feeling a pang of sympathy for him. You do not say that he is unkind or that he so far forgets himself as to wake you up in the morning with a harsh tone of voice and a yearling club. You do not say that he asks you for pocket-money, or, if so, whether you give it to him or not.

Of course I want to do what is right in the solemn warning business, so I will give notice to all simple young women who are now self-supporting and happy, that there is no statute requiring them to assume the burdens of wifehood and motherhood unless they prefer to do so. If they now have abundance of pin-money and new clothes, they may remain single if they wish without violating the laws of the land. This rule is also good when applied to young and self-supporting young men who wear good clothes and have funds in their pockets. No young man who is free, happy and independent, need invest his money in a family or carry a colicky child twenty-seven miles and two laps in one night unless he prefers it. But those who go into it with the right spirit, Ethel, do not regret it.

I would just as soon tell you, Ethel, if you will promise that it shall go no farther, that I do not wear as good clothes as I did before I was married. I don’t have to. My good clothes have accomplished what I got them for. I played them for all they were worth, and since I got married the idea of wearing clothes as a vocation has not occurred to me.

Please give my kind regards to Mr. Ethel, and tell him that although I do not know him personally, I cannot help feeling sorry for him.

Bunker Hill

Last week for the first time I visited the granite obelisk known all over the civilized world as Bunker Hill monument. Sixty years ago, if my memory serves me correctly. General La Fayette, since deceased, laid the corner-stone, and Daniel Webster made a few desultory remarks which I cannot now recall. Eighteen years later it was formally dedicated, and Daniel spoke a good piece, composed mostly of things that he had thought up himself. There has never been a feature of the early history and unceasing struggle for American freedom which has so roused my admiration as this custom, quite prevalent among congressmen in those days, of writing their own speeches.

Many of Webster’s most powerful speeches were written by himself or at his suggestion. He was a plain, unassuming man, and did not feel above writing his speeches. I have always had the greatest respect and admiration for Mr. Webster as a citizen, as a scholar and as an extemporaneous speaker, and had he not allowed his portrait to appear last year in the Century, wearing an air of intense gloom and a plug hat entirely out of style, my respect and admiration would have continued indefinitely.

Bunker Hill monument is a great success as a monument, and the view from its summit is said to be well worth the price of admission. I did not ascend the obelisk, because the inner staircase was closed to visitors on the day of my visit and the lightning rod on the outside looked to me as though it had been recently oiled.

On the following day, however, I engaged a man to ascend the monument and tell me his sensations. He assured me that they were first-rate. At the feet of the spectator Boston and its environments are spread out in the glad sunshine. Every day Boston spreads out her environments just that way.

Bunker Hill monument is 221 feet in height, and has been entirely paid for. The spectator may look at the monument with perfect impunity, without being solicited to buy some of its mortgage bonds. This adds much to the genuine thrill of pleasure while gazing at it.

There is a Bunker Hill in Macoupin County, Illinois, also in Ingham County, Michigan, and in Russell County, Kansas, but General Warren was not killed at either of these points.

One hundred and ten years ago, on the 17th day of the present month, one of America’s most noted battles with the British was fought near where Bunker Hill monument now stands. In that battle the British lost 1,050 in killed and wounded, while the American loss numbered but 450. While the people of this country are showing such an interest in our war history, I am surprised that something has not been said about Bunker Hill. The Federal forces from Roxbury to Cambridge were under command of General Artemus Ward, the great American humorist. When the American humorist really puts on his war paint and sounds the tocsin, he can organize a great deal of mourning.

General Ward was assisted by Putnam, Starke, Prescott, Gridley and Pomeroy. Colonel William Prescott was sent over from Cambridge to Charlestown for the purpose of fortifying Bunker Hill. At a council of war it was decided to fortify Breeds Hill, not so high but nearer to Boston than Bunker Hill. So a redoubt was thrown up during the night on the ground where the monument now stands.

The British landed a large force under Generals Howe and Pigot, and at 2 P.M. the Americans were reinforced by Generals Warren and Pomeroy. General Warren was of a literary turn of mind and during the battle took his hat off and recited a little poem beginning:

A man who could deliver an impromptu and extemporaneous address like that in public, and while there was such a bitter feeling of hostility on the part of the audience, must have been a good scholar. In our great fratricidal strife twenty years ago, the inferiority of our generals in this respect was painfully noticeable. We did not have a commander who could address his troops in rhyme to save his neck. Several of them were pretty good in blank verse, but it was so blank that it was not just the thing to fork over to posterity and speak in school afterward.

Colonel Prescott’s statue now stands where he is supposed to have stood when he told his men to reserve their fire till they saw the whites of the enemy’s eyes. Those who have examined the cast-iron flint-lock weapon used in those days will admit that this order was wise. Those guns were in union to health, of course, when used to excess, but not necessarily or immediately fatal.

At the time of the third attack by the British, the Americans were out of ammunition, but they met the enemy with clubbed muskets, and it was found that one end of the rebel flint-lock was about as fatal as the other, if not more so.

Boston still meets the invader with its club. The mayor says to the citizens of Boston: “Wait till you can see the whites of the visitor’s eyes, and then go for him with your clubs.” Then the visitor surrenders.

I hope that many years may pass before it will again be necessary for us to soak this fair land in British blood. The boundaries of our land are now more extended, and so it would take more blood to soak it.

Boston has just reason to be proud of Bunker Hill, and it was certainly a great stroke of enterprise to have the battle located there. Bunker Hill is dear to every American heart, and there are none of us who would not have cheerfully gone into the battle then if we had known about it in time.

A Lumber Camp

I have just returned from a little impromptu farewell tour in the lumber camps toward Lake Superior. It was my idea to wade around in the snow for a few weeks and swallow baked beans and ozone on the 1/2 shell. The affair was a success. I put up at Bootjack camp on the raging Willow River, where the gay-plumaged chipmunk and the spruce gum have their home.

Winter in the pine woods is fraught with fun and frolic. It is more fraught with fatigue than funds, however. This winter a man in the Michigan and Wisconsin lumber camps could arise at 4:30 A.M., eat a patent pail full of dried apples soaked with Young Hyson and sweetened with Persian glucose, go out to the timber with a lantern, hew down the giants of the forest, with the snow up to the pit of his stomach, till the gray owl in the gathering gloom whooped and hooted in derision, and all for $12 per month and stewed prunes.

I did not try to accumulate wealth while I was in camp. I just allowed others to enter into the mad rush and wrench a fortune from the hand of fate while I studied human nature and the cook. I had a good many pleasant days there, too. I read such literary works as I could find around the camp, and smoked the royal Havana smoking tobacco of the cookee. Those who have not lumbered much do not know much of true joy and sylvan smoking tobacco.

They are not using a very good grade of the weed in the lumber regions this winter. When I say lumber regions I do not refer entirely to the circumstances of a weak back. (Monkey-wrench, oil can and screwdriver sent with this joke; also rules for working it in all kinds of goods.) The tobacco used by the pine choppers of the northern forest is called the Scandihoovian. I do not know why they call it that, unless it is because you can smoke it in Wisconsin and smell it in Scandihoovia.

When night came we would gather around the blazing fire and talk over old times and smoke this tobacco. I smoked it till last week, then I bought a new mouth and resolved to lead a different life.

I shall never forget the evenings we spent together in that log shack in the heart of the forest. They are graven on my memory where time’s effacing fingers can not monkey with them. We would most always converse. The crew talked the Norwegian language and I am using the English language mostly this winter. So each enjoyed himself in his own quiet way. This seemed to throw the Norwegians a good deal together. It also threw me a good deal together. The Scandinavians soon learn our ways and our language, but prior to that they are quite clannish.

The cook, however, was an Ohio man. He spoke the Sandusky dialect with a rich, nut brown flavor that did me much good, so that after I talked with the crew a few hours in English, and received their harsh, corduroy replies in Norske, I gladly fled to the cook shanty. There I could rapidly change to the smoothly flowing sentences peculiar to the Ohio tongue, and while I ate the common twisted doughnut of commerce, we would talk on and on of the pleasant days we had spent in our native land. I don’t know how many hours I have thus spent, bringing the glad light into the eye of the cook as I spoke to him of Mrs. Hayes, an estimable lady, partially married, and now living at Fremont, Ohio.

I talked to him of his old home till the tears would unbidden start, as he rolled out the dough with a common Budweiser beer bottle, and shed the scalding into the flour barrel. Tears are always unavailing, but sometimes I think they are more so when they are shed into a barrel of flour. He was an easy weeper. He would shed tears on the slightest provocation, or anything else. Once I told him something so touchful that his eyes were blinded with tears for the nonce. Then I took a pie, and stole away so that he could be alone with his sorrow.

He used to grind the coffee at 2 A.M. The coffee mill was nailed up against a partition on the opposite side from my bed. That is one reason I did not stay any longer at the camp. It takes about an hour to grind coffee enough for thirty men, and as my ear was generally against the pine boards when the cook began, it ruffled my slumbers and made me a morose man.

We had three men at the camp who snored. If they had snored in my own language I could have endured it, but it was entirely unintelligible to me as it was. Still, it wasn’t bad either. They snored on different keys, and still there was harmony in it—a kind of chime of imported snore as it were. I used to lie and listen to it for hours. Then the cook would begin his coffee mill overture and I would arise.

When I got home I slept from Monday morning till Washington’s Birthday, without food or water.

My Lecture Abroad

Having at last yielded to the entreaties of Great Britain, I have decided to make a professional farewell tour of England with my new and thrilling lecture, entitled “Jerked Across the Jordan, or the Sudden and Deserved Elevation of an American Citizen.”

I have, therefore, already written some of the cablegrams which will be sent to the Associated Press, in order to open the campaign in good shape in America on my return.

Though I have been supplicated for some time by the people of England to come over there and thrill them with my eloquence, my thriller has been out of order lately, so that I did not dare venture abroad.

This lecture treats incidentally of the ease with which an American citizen may rise in the Territories, when he has a string tied around his neck, with a few personal friends at the other end of the string. It also treats of the various styles of oratory peculiar to America, with specimens of American oratory that have been pressed and dried especially for this lecture. It is a good lecture, and the few straggling facts scattered along through it don’t interfere with the lecture itself in any way.

I shall appear in costume during the lecture.

At each lecture a different costume will be worn, and the costume worn at the previous lecture will be promptly returned to the owner.

Persons attending the lecture need not be identified.

Polite American dude ushers will go through the audience to keep the flies away from those who wish to sleep during the lecture.

Should the lecture be encored at its close, it will be repeated only once. This encore business is being overdone lately, I think.

Following are some of the cablegrams I have already written. If any one has any suggestions as to change, or other additional favorable criticisms, they will be gratefully received; but I wish to reserve the right, however, to do as I please about using them:

LONDON, –, –, —Bill Nye opened his foreign lecture engagement here last evening with a can-opener. It was found to be in good order. As soon as the doors were opened there was a mad rush for seats, during which three men were fatally injured. They insisted on remaining through the lecture, however, and adding to its horrors. Before 8 o’clock 500 people had been turned away. Mr. Nye announced that he would deliver a matinee this afternoon, but he has been petitioned by tradesmen to refrain from doing so, as it will paralyze the business interests of the city to such a degree that they offer to “buy the house,” and allow the lecturer to cancel his engagement.

LONDON, –, –. —The great lecturer and contortionist, Bill Nye, last night closed his six weeks’ engagement here with his famous lecture on “The Rise and Fall of the American Horse Thief,” with a grand benefit and ovation. The elite of London was present, many of whom have attended every evening for six weeks to hear this same lecture. Those who can afford it will follow the lecturer back to America, in order to be where they can hear this lecture almost constantly.

Mr. Nye, at the beginning of the season, offered a prize to anyone who should neither be absent nor tardy through the entire six weeks. After some hot discussion last evening, the prize was awarded to the janitor of the hall.

{Associated Press Cablegram}

LONDON, –, –. —Bill Nye will sail for America to-morrow in the steamship Senegambia. On his arrival in America he will at once pay off the national debt and found a large asylum for American dudes whose mothers are too old to take in washing and support their sons in affluence.

The Miner at Home

Receiving another notice of assessment on my stock in the Aladdin mine the other day, reminded me that I was still interested in a bottomless hole that was supposed at one time to yield funds instead of absorbing them. The Aladdin claim was located in the spring of ‘76 by a syndicate of journalists, none of whom had ever been openly accused of wealth. If we had been, we could have proved an alibi.

We secured a gang of miners to sink on the discovery, consisting of a Chinaman named How Long. How Long spoke the Chinese language with great fluency. Being perfectly familiar with that language, and a little musty in the trans-Missouri English, he would converse with us in his own language, sometimes by the hour, courteously overlooking the fact that we did not reply to him in the same tongue. He would converse in this way till he ran down, generally, and then he would refrain for a while.

Finally, How Long signified that he would like to draw his salary. Of course he was ignorant of our ways, and as innocent of any knowledge of the intricate details peculiar to a mining syndicate as the child unborn. So he had gone to the president of our syndicate and had been referred to the superintendent, and he had sent How Long to the auditor, and the auditor had told him to go to the gang boss and get his time, and then proceed in the proper manner, after which, if his claim turned out to be all right, we would call a meeting of the syndicate and take early action in relation to it. By this, the reader will readily see that, although we were not wealthy, we knew how to do business just the same as though we had been a wealthy corporation.

How Long attended one of our meetings and at the close of the session made a few remarks. As near as I am able to recall his language, it was very much as follows:

“China boy no sabbe you dam slyndicate. You allee same foolee me too muchee. How Long no chopee big hole in the glound allee day for health. You Melican boy Laddee silver mine all same funny business. Me no likee slyndicate. Slyndicate heap gone all same woodbine. You sabbe me? How Long make em slyndicate pay tention. You April foolee me. You makee me tlired. You putee me too much on em slate. Slyndicate no good. Allee time stanemoff China boy. You allee time chin chin. Dlividend allee time heap gone.”

Owing to a strike which then took place in our mine, we found that, in order to complete our assessment work, we must get in another crew or do the job ourselves. Owing to scarcity of help and a feeling of antagonism on the part of the laboring classes toward our giant enterprise, a feeling of hostility which naturally exists between labor and capital, we had to go out to the mine ourselves. We had heard of other men who had shoveled in their own mines and were afterward worth millions of dollars, so we took some bacon and other delicacies and hied us to the Aladdin.

Buck, our mining expert, went down first. Then he requested us to hoist him out again. We did so. I have forgotten what his first remark was when he got out of the bucket, but that don’t make any difference, for I wouldn’t care to use it here anyway.