CHAPTER IV.
It is now the proper time to throw in the solitary horseman. The horizontal bars of golden light from the setting sun gleam and glitter from the dome of the court-house and bathe the green plains of Syracuse with mellow splendor. The billowy piles of fleecy bronze in the eastern sky look soft and yielding, like a Sarah Bernhardt. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and all nature seems oppressed with the solemn hush and stillness of the surrounding and engulfing horror.
The solitary horseman is seen coming along the Albany and Syracuse toll road. He jabs the Mexican spurs into the foamy flank of his noble cay use plug, and the lash of the quirt as it moves through the air is singing a merry song. Damon has been, delayed by road agents and wash-outs, and he is a little behind time. Besides, he fooled a little too long and dallied in Albany with his fair gazelle. But he is making up time now and he sails into the jail yard just in time to take his part. He and Pythias fall into each other's arms, borrow a chew of fine-cut from each other and weep to slow music. Dionysius comes before the curtain, bows and says the exercises will be postponed. He orders the band to play something soothing, gives Damon the appointment of superintendent of public instruction, and Pythias the Syracuse post-office, and everything is lovely. Orchestra plays something touchful. Curtain comes down. Keno. In hoc usufruct nux vomica est.
A TRYING SITUATION.
There are a great many things in life which go to atone for the disappointments and sorrows which one meets, but when a young man's rival takes the fair Matilda to see the base-ball game, and sits under an umbrella beside her, and is at the height of enjoyment, and gets the benefit of a "hot ball" in the pit of his stomach, there is a nameless joy settles down in the heart of the lonesome young man, such as the world can neither give nor take away.
CHESTNUT-BURR XIX—A STORY OF SPOTTED TAIL.
Trifling Incidents Make Men Great.—Chief Big Mouth.—A Quarrel between Big Mouth and Spotted Tail.—The Tragic End.
The popularity of the above-named chieftain dates from a very trifling little incident, as did that of many other men who are now great.
Spotted Tail had never won much distinction up to that time, except as the owner of an appetite, in the presence of which his tribe stood in dumb and terrible awe.
During the early days of what is now the great throbbing and ambitious West, the tribe camped near Fort Sedgwick, and Big Mouth, a chief of some importance, used to go over to the post regularly for the purpose of filling his brindle hide full of Fort Sedgwick Bloom of Youth.
As a consequence of Big Mouth's fatal yearning for liquid damnation, he generally got impudent, and openly announced on the parade ground that he could lick the entire regular army. This used to offend some of the blood-scarred heroes who had just arrived from West Point, and in the heat of the debate they would warm the venerable warrior about two feet below the back of his neck with the flat of their sabers.
This was a gross insult to Big Mouth, and he went back to the camp, where he found Spotted Tail eating a mule that had died of inflammatory rheumatism. Big Mouth tearfully told the wild epicure of the way he had been treated, and asked for a council of war. Spot picked his teeth with a tent pin, and then told the defeated relic of a mighty race that if he would quit strong drink, he would be subjected to fewer insults.
Big Mouth then got irritated, and told S. Tail that his remarks showed that he was standing in with the aggressor, and was no friend to his people.
Spotted Tail said that Mr. B. Mouth was a liar, by yon high heaven, and before there was time to think it over, he took a butcher knife, about four feet long, from its scabbard and cut Mr. Big Mouth plumb in two just between the umbilicus and the watch pocket.
As the reader who is familiar with anatomy has already surmised, Big Mouth died from the effects of this wound, and Spotted Tail was at once looked upon as the Moses of his tribe. He readily rose to prominence, and by his strict attention to the duties of his office, made for himself a name as a warrior and a pie biter, at which the world turned pale.
This should teach us the importance of taking the tide at its flood, which leads on to fortune, and to lay low when there is a hen on, as Benjamin Franklin has so truly said.
CHESTNUT-BURR XX—THE ROMANCE OF HORSE-SHOEING.
Recreation with a Bronco—Careful Preparations—The Bronco humps Himself Like a Camel—The Bronco in a Sling—The Bronco Full of Spirit.
Recently I have taken a little recreation when I felt despondent, by witnessing the difficult and dangerous feat of shoeing a bronco.
Whenever I get low-spirited and feel that a critical public don't appreciate my wonderful genius as a spring poet, I go around to Brown & Boole's blacksmith shop on A street, and watch them shoe a vicious bronco. I always go back to the office cheered and soothed, and better prepared to light the battle of life.
They have a new rig now for this purpose. It consists of two broad sinches, which together cover the thorax and abdomen of the bronco, to the ends of which—the sinches, I mean—are attached ropes, four in number, which each pass over a pulley above the animal, and then are wrapped about a windlass. The bronco is led to the proper position, like a young man who is going to have a photograph taken, the sinches slipped under his body and attached to the ropes.
Then the man at the wheel makes two or three turns in rapid succession.
The bronco is seen to hump himself, like the boss camel of the grand aggregation of living wonders. He grunts a good deal and switches his tail, while the ropes continue to work in the pulleys, and the man at the capstan spits on his hands and rolls up on the wheel. After a while the bronco hangs from the ceiling like a discouraged dish rag, and after trying for two or three hundred times unsuccessfully to kick a hole in the starry firmament, he yields, and hangs at half mast while the blacksmith shoes him.
Yesterday I felt as though I must see something cheerful, and so I went over to watch a bronco getting his shoes on for the round-up. I was fortunate. They led up a quiet, gentlemanly appearing plug with all the weary, despondent air of a disappointed bronco who has had aspirations for being a circus horse, and has "got left." When they put the sinches around him he sighed as though his heart would break, and his great, soulful eyes were wet with tears. One man said it was a shame to put a gentle pony into a sling like that in order to shoe him, and the general feeling seemed to be that a great wrong was being perpetrated.
Gradually the ropes tightened on him and his abdomen began to disappear. He rose till he looked like a dead dog that had been fished out of the river with a grappling iron. Then he gave a grunt that shook the walls of the firmament, and he reached out about five yards till his hind feet felt of a greaser's eye, and with an athletic movement he jumped through the sling and lit on the blacksmith's forge with his head about three feet up the chimney. He proceeded then to do some extra ground and lofty tumbling and kicking. A large anvil was held up for him to kick till he tired himself out, and then the blacksmith put a fire and burglar-proof safe over his head and shod him.
The bronco is full of spirit, and, although docile under ordinary circumstances, he will at times get enthusiastic, and do things which he afterward, in his sober moments, bitterly regrets.
Some broncos have formed the habit of bucking. They do not all buck. Only those that are alive do so. When they are dead they are-more subdued and gentle.
A bronco often becomes so attached to his master that he will lay down his life if necessary. His master's life, I mean.
When a bronco comes up to me and lays his head over my shoulder, and asks me to scratch his chilblain for him, I always excuse myself on the ground that I have a family dependent on mo, and furthermore, that I am a United States Commissioner, and to a certain extent the government hinges on me.
Think what a ghastly hole there would be in the official staff of the republic if I were launched into eternity now, when good men are so scarce.
Some days I worry a good deal over this question. Suppose that some In principled political enemy who wanted to be United States Commissioner or Notary Public in my place should assassinate me!!!
Lots of people never see this. They see how smoothly the machinery of government moves along, and they do not dream of possible harm. They do not know how quick she might slip a cog, or the eccentric get jammed through the indicator, if, some evening when I am at the opera house, or the minstrel show, the assassin should steal up on me, and shoot a large, irregular aperture into my cerebellum.
This may not happen, of course; but I suggest it, so that the public will, as it were, throw its protecting arms about me, and not neglect me while I am alive.
A CHILD'S FAITH.
During a big thunder shower a while ago little Willie, who slept up stairs alone, got scared and called his mother, who came up and asked him what he was frightened about. Willie frankly admitted that the thunder was a little too much for a little boy who slept alone.
"Well, if you are afraid," said his mother, pushing back the curls from his forehead, "you should pray for courage."
"All right, ma," said Willie, an idea coming into his head; "suppose you stay up here and pray while I go down stairs and sleep with paw."