A WORD OF EXPLANATION.
For the benefit of my readers, many of whom are not what might be called practical newspaper men and women, I will say that if your time is very precious, and life is too short for you to fool away your evenings reading local advertisements, and you are at times in grave doubt as to what is advertisement and what is news, just cast your eye to the bottom of the article, and if there is a foot-note which lays "tylfritu3dp" or something of that stripe, you may safely say that no matter how much confidence you may have had in the editor up to that date, the article with a foot-note of that kind is published from a purely mercenary motive, and the editor may or may not indorse the sentiments therein enunciated.
CHESTNUT-BURR—THE HUMORIST INTERVIEWS HIS GRACE THE DUKE IN THE IMPROVED STYLE.
Marlborough's Seeming Lack of Appreciation of a Joke—Likewise his Lack of Loquacity—A Cordial Invitation to the Duke to Visit the Metropolis—Nye's Naive and Graceful Conservation on Society Gossip.
Newport, Sept. 8.
I have just terminated a pleasant call upon the Duke of Marbro at his lodgings. I write his name Marbro because that is the way we pronounce it here at Newport. In the language of my ostensibly colored friend, Mr. Rankin, the amateur pronouncer would call it Marl-bor-ough, with three grunts, while in fact Marbro, the correct pronunciation of the name, is executed with but one grunt.
I found the Duke seated on a low ottoman, clad in a loosely fitting costume of pajamas. It was so loose and negligé that it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if his mother made it for him out of his father's old pajamas; but I suddenly remembered that I was in Newport, and not in Tombstone, Arizona, and I restrained myself.
The Duke is suffering from a slight cold, which he contracted for during the early part of the week. It resulted from his ignorance of our changeable and freckle-minded climate. On Tuesday he took a long stroll, and while several miles from his lodgings and wearing his light summer cane, he was overtaken by a severe and sudden change in the temperature. The Marbros are not a strong race, and I am told that one of the Duke's second cousins died of pneumonia from exposing himself to the severity of a Christmas-day frolic clad in an autumn cane.
The Duke rose languidly as I entered, and, taking a reef in his pajamas clothes, looked at me in an inquiring way which betokened that, though of lineage high, he was not entirely at his ease in my presence.
"Duke," said I, standing my umbrella up in the corner to show my childlike confidence in him, "how's your conduct?"
In five minutes afterwards I would have given worlds if I could have recalled my rash words. I did not mean anything more than to utter a piece of pleasantry, for I am passionately fond of pleasantry even in society; but Marbro seemed to take it to heart and to feel distressed. He made a low, guttural sound, but his reply seemed to die away in the mansard roof of his mouth. He stammered out something which sounded like the wail of a damned soul. At least it struck me to be like that, although my lot has not been cast among that class of souls since I got out of politics, and I may have forgotten their style of wail.
To hide his embarrassment, Marbro "rosined" his eye and put a large glass paper weight in it. He then regarded me with some amazement through this piece of brick-a-brac, while I poured out a grown person's dose of Rectified Ruin which stood on the escritoire and drank it with a keen relish, which showed that I trusted him implicitly. Everything I did was done to make Marbro forget himself and feel at his ease.
I told him I had known the Marbros in Maine ever since I was a boy; that we didn't feel above them then, and it would be a poor time to begin now at my time of life to look down on people just because I now wrote pieces for the paper, many of which were afterwards printed. We always thought that the Marbros, or Marlboroughs, of Maine, got their name from burrowing in the marl along the Piscataquis, I said.
Thus I chatted on with him for an hour or two without seeming to chirk him up at all. "Duke," said I at last, "I know what the matter must be with you—you are socially ostracized. I knew it as soon as I came into the room. You cannot disguise it from me. You are suffering from social ostracism, and it is breaking you down. The social demands made by America upon an imported social wreck do not give said wreck time to eat his meals and obtain a necessary amount of rest. I suppose there is nowhere in the world a climate that is so trying on a person suffering from social ostracism as that of my native land. In other climes they give a social outcast rest, but here he gets absolutely no rest whatever."
I then drifted into society chat in a graceful and naïve way which, with others, has never failed to melt the stoniest heart. I told him that I had understood, since I came to Newport, that the demands of society here were so unrelenting that they had kept Mr. and Mrs. Mayonnaise dressing all the time.
A long pause ensued here, during which I could hear Marbro's reason tottering on its throne. After waiting three-quarters of an hour, by my watch, and failing to see that my remark had shed even a ray of sunshine, where erstwhile all was gloom and chaos, I gave him my address and told him that if, in the future, he ever derived any beneficial effects from the above joke, I would be glad to have him communicate with me. And even if I were to die before he could truly say that he had been benefited by this joke and grapple with its keen, incisive nub, my grandchildren would be tickled almost to death to know that he had taken it to pieces and put it together again and found out how it was built and laugh at its ingenious mechanism.
I conversed with the Duke some time about the way his visit to Newport had depressed the price of real estate, and offered him the freedom of New York, hoping that he could depress the price of real estate there so that I could buy some.
"But," said I, assuming an air of perfect repose, as I flung myself on a low couch in such a way as to give a faint view of my new red socks, "you will find it different in New York. Social ostracism there will not materially affect the price of real estate in the neighborhood of the postoffice. In fact, Marbro," said I, regarding him earnestly for a moment through the bottom of a cut-glass tumbler, "there is not enough English social ostracism in New York to supply the demand. Come to our young and thriving town, a town that is rich in resources and liabilities; a town that threatens to rival Omaha as a railroad center; a town where a B. and O. deal has been a common occurrence every day for over a year; a town where you can ride on the elevated trains and get yourself pinched in the iron gate by the guard or go down to Wall street and get pinched by the directors; a town where a man like Henry S. Ives can buy about seven million dollars' worth of stuff that he can't pay for, while a poor man who goes into a general store to buy a pair of ear muffs is followed up by a private detective for fear he may run his finger into the molasses barrel and then lick it syruptitiously. Come on, Duke," said I, growing more talkative as the fumes of his fifty-two dollar liquor rose to my surprised and delighted brains; "come on to New York and mix up with us, and get on to our ways."
"See Fulton market by midnight, bite off a piece of atmosphere from Castle Garden, and come with me to see Guiteau's head in the museum. Guiteau was the last of a long line of assassins. He prophesied that everyone connected with his trial would come to a bad end. Quite a number of those connected with this celebrated trial are already dead, and more especially Mr. Guiteau himself, whose skeleton is in the Smithsonian Institution, his viscera in the Potomac, and his head in a jar of alcohol. If you will come to New York, Marbro, you will have a good time, and the rose geraniums will come back to your pallid and durable cheek.
"If you will give us a whirl, Duke," said I, selecting an umbrella from the decorated crock in the hall and coming back to where he still sat, "you will be pleased and gratified with us; and if you can spare time to come over and see me personally I would try to be as cordial and chatty as you have been with me. No man ever entertained me as you have, or sat and examined me through the bottom of an old microscope for two hours, to be forgotten again by me. Marbro, if you will come to New York, we will go and visit anybody's tomb that you may designate."
I then let myself out of the house with an adjustable pass-key and hastened away. Shortly after I got back to my own lodgings, sometimes called a room, a lackey from the Duke, wearing a livery-colored lively, handed me a note from Marbro, in which he said he hoped that in case I used this interview for publication I would be careful to give his exact language.
In my poor, weak way, I think I have done so.