AN OLD FOGY.
“The good old times! And the old times were good, my dear; better, much better, than the times that you live in. I know I am an old fogy, Nelly,” said Ephraim Batterby, refilling his pipe, and looking at his granddaughter, who sat with him in front of the fire, with her head bending over her sewing; “I know I am an old fogy, and I glory in it.”
“But you never will be for me, grandpa,” said Nelly, glancing at him with a smile.
“Yes, my dear, I am for everybody. I am a man of the past. Everything I ever cared for and ever loved, excepting you, belongs to the years that have gone, and my affections belong to those years. I liked the people of the old time better than I do those of the new. I loved their simpler ways, the ways that I knew in my boyhood, threescore and more years ago. I am sure the world is not so good as it was then. It is smarter, perhaps; it knows more, but its wisdom vexes and disgusts me. I am not certain, my dear, that, if I had my way, I would not sweep away, at one stroke, all the so-called ‘modern conveniences,’ and return to the ancient methods.”
“They were very slow, grandpa.”
“Yes, slow; and for that I liked them. We go too fast now; but our speed, I am afraid, is hurrying us in the wrong direction. We were satisfied in the old time with what we had. It was good enough. Are men contented now? No; they are still improving and improving; still reaching out for something that will be quicker, or easier, or cheaper than the things that are. We appear to have gained much; but really we have gained nothing. We are not a bit better off now than we were; not so well off, in my opinion.”
“But, grandpa, you must remember that you were young then, and perhaps looked at the world in a more hopeful way than you do now.”
“Yes, I allow for that, Nelly, I allow for that; I don’t deceive myself. My youth does not seem so very far off that I cannot remember it distinctly. I judge the time fairly, now in my old age, as I judge the present time, and my assured opinion is that it was superior in its ways, its life, and its people. Its people! Ah, Nelly, my dear, there were three persons in that past who alone would consecrate it to me. I am afraid there are not many women now like your mother and mine, and like my dear wife, whom you never saw. It seems to me, my child, that I would willingly live all my life over again, with its strifes and sorrows, if I could clasp again the hand of one of those angelic women, and hear a word from her sweet lips.”
As the old man wiped the gathering moisture from his eyes, Nelly remained silent, choosing not to disturb the reverie into which he had fallen. Presently Ephraim rose abruptly, and said, with a smile,—
“Come, Nelly dear, I guess it is time to go to bed. I must be up very early to-morrow morning.”
“At what hour do you want breakfast, grandpa?”
“Why, too soon for you, you sleepy puss. I shall breakfast by myself before you are up, or else I shall breakfast down town. I have a huge cargo of wheat in from Chicago, and I must arrange to have it shipped for Liverpool. There is one thing that remains to me from the old time, and that is some of the hard work of my youth; but even that seems a little harder than it used to. So, come now; to bed! to bed!”
While he was undressing, and long after he had crept beneath the blankets, Ephraim’s thoughts wandered back and back through the spent years; and, as the happiness he had known came freshly and strongly into his mind, he felt drawn more and more towards it; until the new and old mingled together in strange but placid confusion in his brain, and he fell asleep.
When he awoke it was still dark, for the winter was just begun; but he heard—or did he only dream that he heard?—a clock in some neighboring steeple strike six. He knew that he must get up, for his business upon that day demanded early attention.
He sat up in bed, yawned, stretched his arms once or twice, and then, flinging the covering aside, he leaped to the floor. He fell, and hurt his arm somewhat. Strange that he should have miscalculated the distance! The bed seemed more than twice as high from the floor as it should be. It was too dark to see distinctly, so he crept to the bed with extended hands, and felt it. Yes, it was at least four feet from the floor, and, very oddly, it had long, slim posts, such as bedsteads used to have, instead of the low, carved footboard, and the high, postless headboard, which belonged to the bedstead upon which he had slept in recent years. Ephraim resolved to strike a light. He groped his way to the table, and tried to find the match-box. It was not there; he could not discover it upon the bureau either. But he found something else, which he did not recognize at first, but which a more careful examination with his fingers told him was a flint and steel. He was vexed that any one should play such a trick upon him. How could he ever succeed in lighting the gas with a flint and steel!
But he resolved to try, and he moved over towards the gas-bracket by the bureau. It was not there! He passed his cold hand over a square yard of the wall, where the bracket used to be, but it had vanished. It actually seemed, too, as if there was no paper on the wall, for the whitewash scaled off beneath his fingers.
Perplexed and angry, Ephraim was about to replace the flint and steel upon the bureau, and to dress in the dark, when his hand encountered a candlestick. It contained a candle. He determined to try to light it. He struck the flint upon the steel at least a dozen times, in the way he remembered doing so often when he was a boy, but the sparks refused to catch the tinder. He struck again and again, until he became really warm with effort and indignation, and at last he succeeded.
It was only a poor, slim tallow candle, and Ephraim thought the light was not much better than the darkness, it was so dim and flickering and dismal. He was conscious then that the room was chill, although his body felt so warm; and, for fear he should catch cold, he thought he would open the register, and let in some warm air. The register had disappeared! There, right before him, was a vast old-fashioned fireplace filled with wood. By what means the transformation had been effected, he could not imagine. But he was not greatly displeased.
“I always did like an open wood fire,” he said, “and now I will have a roaring one.”
So he touched the flame of the candle to the light kindling-wood, and in a moment it was afire.
“I will wash while it is burning up,” said Ephraim.
He went to the place where he thought he should find the fixed wash-stand, with hot and cold water running from the pipes, but he was amazed to find that it had followed the strange fashion of the room, and had gone also! There was an old hand-basin, with a cracked china pitcher, standing upon a movable wash-stand, but the water in the pitcher had been turned to solid ice.
With an exclamation of impatience and indignation, Ephraim placed the pitcher between the andirons, close to the wood in the chimney-place; and he did so with smarting eyes, for the flue was cold, and volumes of smoke were pouring out into the room. In a few moments he felt that he should suffocate unless he could get some fresh air, so he resolved to open the upper sash of the window.
When he got to the window he perceived that the panes of glass were only a few inches square, and that the woodwork inclosing them was thrice thicker and heavier than it had been. He strove to pull down the upper sash, but the effort was vain; it would not move. He tried to lift the lower sash; it went up with difficulty; it seemed to weigh a hundred pounds; and, when he got it up, it would not stay. He succeeded, finally, in keeping it open by placing a chair beneath it.
When the ice in the pitcher was thawed, he finished his toilette, and then he descended the stairs. As nobody seemed to be moving in the house, he resolved to go out and get his breakfast at a restaurant. He unlocked the front door, and emerged into the street just as daylight fairly had begun.
As Ephraim descended the steps in front of his house, he had a distinct impression that something was wrong, and he was conscious of a feeling of irritation; but it seemed to him that his mind, for some reason, did not operate with its accustomed precision; and, while he realized the fact of a partial and very unexpected change of the conditions of his life, he found that when he tried, in a strangely feeble way, to grapple with the problem, the solution eluded him and baffled him.
The force of habit, rather than a very clearly defined purpose, led him to walk to the corner of the street, just below his dwelling, and to pause there, as usual, to await the coming of the horse-car which should carry him down town. Following a custom, too, he took from his waistcoat pocket two or three pennies (which, to his surprise, had swollen to the uncomfortable dimensions of the old copper cents), and looked around for the news-boy from whom he bought, every morning, the daily paper.
The lad, however, was not to be seen; and Ephraim was somewhat vexed at his absence, because he was especially anxious upon that morning to observe the quotations of the Chicago and Liverpool grain markets, and to ascertain what steamers were loading at the wharves.
The horse-car was delayed much longer than he expected, and, while he waited, a man passed by, dressed oddly, Ephraim noticed, in knee-breeches and very old-fashioned coat and hat. Ephraim said to him, politely,—
“Can you tell me, sir, where I can get a morning paper in this neighborhood? The lad I buy from, commonly, is not at his post this morning.”
The stranger, stopping, looked at Ephraim with a queer expression, and presently said,—
“I don’t think I understand you; a morning paper, did you say?”
“Yes, one of the morning papers; the Argus or Commercial—any of them.”
“Why, my dear sir, there is but one newspaper published in this city. It is the Gazette. It comes out on Saturday, and this, you know, is only Tuesday.”
“Do you mean to say that we have no daily papers?” exclaimed Ephraim, somewhat angrily.
“Daily papers! Papers published every day! Why, sir, there is not such a newspaper in the world, and there never will be.”
“Pshaw!” said Ephraim, turning his back upon the man in disgust.
The stranger smiled, and, shaking his head as if he had serious doubts of Ephraim’s sanity, passed onward.
“The man is cracked,” said Ephraim, looking after him. “No daily papers! The fellow has just come from the interior of Africa, or else he is an escaped lunatic. It is very queer that car does not come,” and Ephraim glanced up the street anxiously. “There is not a car in sight. A fire somewhere, I suppose. Too bad that I should have lost so much time. I shall walk down.”
But, as Ephraim stepped into the highway, he was surprised to find that there were no rails there. The cobblestone pavement was unbroken.
“Well, upon my word! This is the strangest thing of all. What on earth has become of the street-cars? I must go afoot, I suppose, if the distance is great. I am afraid I shall be too late for business, as it is.”
As he walked onward at a rapid pace, and his eyes fell upon the buildings along the route, he was queerly sensible that the city had undergone a certain process of transformation. It had a familiar appearance, too. He seemed to know it in its present aspect, and yet not to know it. The way was perfectly familiar to him, and he recognized all the prominent landmarks easily, and still he had an indefinable feeling that some other city had stood where this did; that he had known this very route under other conditions, and that the later conditions were those that had passed away, while those that he now saw belonged to a much earlier period.
He felt, too, that the change, whatever it was, had brought a loss with it. The buildings that lined the street now he thought very ugly. They were old, misshapen, having pent-roofs with absurdly high gables, and the shop-windows were small, dingy, and set with small panes of glass. He had known it as a handsome street, edged with noble edifices, and offering to the gaze of the pedestrian a succession of splendid windows filled with merchandise of the most brilliant description.
But Ephraim pressed on with a determination to seek his favorite restaurant, for he began to feel very hungry. In a little while he reached the corner where the restaurant should have been, but to his vexation he saw that the building there was a coffee-house of mean appearance, in front of which swung a blurred and faded sign.
He resolved to enter, for he could get a breakfast here, at least. He pushed through the low doorway and over the sanded floor into a narrow sort of box, where a table was spread; and, as he did so, he had a hazy feeling that this, too, was something that he was familiar with.
“It must be,” he said, “that my brain is producing a succession of those sensations that I have had sometimes before, which persuade the credulous that we move continually in a circle, and forever live our lives over again.”
As he took his seat a waiter approached him.
“Give me a bill of fare,” said Ephraim.
“Bill of fare, sir? Have no bill of fare, sir. Never have them, sir; no coffee-house has them, sir. Get you up a nice breakfast though, sir.”
“What have you got?”
“Ham, sir; steak, sir; boiled egg, sir; coffee, tea, muffins. Just in from furrin countries, sir, are you?”
“Never mind where I am from,” said Ephraim, testily. “Bring me a broiled steak, and egg, and some muffins and coffee, and bring them quickly.”
“Yes, sir; half a minute, sir. Anything else, sir?”
“Bring me a newspaper.”
“Yes, sir; here it is, sir, the very latest, sir.”
Ephraim took the paper, and glanced at it. It was the Weekly Gazette, four days old; a little sheet of yellow-brown paper, poorly printed, containing some fragments of news, and nothing later from Europe than November 6, although the Gazette bore date December 19. So soon as Ephraim comprehended its worthlessness, he tossed it contemptuously upon the floor, and waited, almost sullenly, for his breakfast.
When it came in upon the tray, carried by the brisk waiter, it looked dainty and tempting enough, and the fumes that rose from it were so savory that he grew into better humor. As it was spread before him, he perceived that the waiter had given him a very coarse, two-pronged steel fork.
“Take that away,” said Ephraim, tossing it to the end of the table; “I want a silver fork.”
“Silver fork, sir! Bless my soul, sir! We haven’t got any; never heard of such a thing, sir.”
“Never heard of a silver fork, you idiot!” shouted Ephraim; “why, everybody uses them.”
“No, sir; I think not, sir. I’ve lived with first quality people, sir, and they all use this kind. Never saw any other kind, sir; didn’t know there was any. Do they have ’em in furrin parts, sir?”
“Get out!” said Ephraim, savagely. He was becoming somewhat annoyed and bewildered by the utter disappearance of so many familiar things.
But the breakfast was good, and he was hungry, so he fell to with hearty zest, and, although he found the steel fork clumsy, it did him good service. At the conclusion of the meal, Ephraim walked rapidly to his office—the office that he had occupied for nearly sixty years. As he opened the door, he expected to find his letters in the box wherein the postman thrust them twice or thrice a day. They were not there. The box itself was gone.
“Too bad! too bad!” exclaimed Ephraim. “Everything conspires to delay me to-day. I suppose I must sit here and wait for that lazy letter-carrier to come, and meantime my business must wait too.”
With the intent not to lose the time altogether, Ephraim resolved to write a letter or two. He took from the drawer a sheet of rough white paper, and opened his inkstand. He could not find his favorite steel pen anywhere, and there were no other pens in the drawer, only a bundle of quills. Ephraim determined to try to use one of these. He ruined four, and lost ten minutes before he could make with his knife a pen good enough to write with; but with this he finished his letter. Then he had another hunt for an envelope, but he could find one nowhere, and nothing was to be done but to fold the sheet in the fashion that he had known in his boyhood, and to seal it with sealing-wax. He burned his fingers badly while performing the last-named operation.
Still the postman had not arrived, and Ephraim, being very anxious to mail his letter, resolved to go out and drop it into the letter-box at the corner of the street. When he reached the corner, he found that the letter-box had disappeared as so many other things had done; so he resolved to push on to the post-office, where he could leave the letter and get his morning’s mail. As he approached what he had supposed was the post-office, he was dismayed to perceive that another building occupied the site. The post-office had vanished.
He turned to a man standing with a crowd which was observing him, and asked him where the post-office could be found. Obeying the direction, he sought the place and found it. Rushing to the single window, behind which a clerk stood, he asked,—
“Are there any letters for Ephraim Batterby?”
“I think not,” said the clerk; “there will be no mail in till to-morrow.”
“Till to-morrow!” shouted Ephraim. “What is the matter?”
“The matter! nothing at all. What’s the matter with you?”
“I am expecting letters from New York and Chicago. Are both mails delayed?”
“Chicago’s a place I never heard of, and the mail from New York comes in only three times a week. It came yesterday, and it will come in to-morrow.”
“Three times a week!” exclaimed Ephraim; “why, it comes four or five times a day, unless I am very much mistaken.”
The clerk turned to a fellow-clerk behind him and said in a low tone something at which both laughed.
“How do you suppose the mails get here four or five times a day?” asked the clerk.
“Upon the mail trains, of course,” replied Ephraim, tartly; and then the clerks laughed again.
“Well, sir,” said the man at the window, “we don’t appear to understand each other; but it may straighten things out if I tell you that the New York mails come here upon a stage-coach, which takes twenty-four hours to make the journey, and which reaches here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
Ephraim was about to make an angry reply, but the clerk shut the window and made further discussion impossible. For a moment Ephraim was puzzled. He stopped to think what he should do next, and while he was standing there, he noticed a curious crowd gathering about him, a crowd which seemed to regard him with peculiar interest. And now and then a rude fellow would make facetious comments upon Ephraim’s dress, at which some of the vulgar would laugh. Ephraim was somewhat bewildered, and his confusion became greater when he observed that all of the bystanders wore knee-breeches and very ugly high collars and cravats, in which their chins were completely buried. Ephraim perceived near to him a gentleman who held in his hand a newspaper. Encouraged by his friendly countenance, Ephraim said to him,—
“I am rather confused, sir, by some unexpected changes that I have found about here this morning, will you be good enough to give me a little information?”
“With pleasure, sir.”
“I have missed some important letters that I looked for from New York and the West. I wish to communicate with my correspondents at once. Will you please tell me where I can find the telegraph office?”
“The telegraph office! I don’t understand you, sir.”
“I wish to send messages to my friends at those points.”
“Well, sir, I know of no other way to send them than through the post-office here.”
“Do you mean to say that there is no telegraph line from here to New York?”
“My dear sir, what do you mean by a telegraph line?”
“A telegraph line—a line of wire on which I can send messages by electricity.”
“I fear something is wrong with you, sir,” said the gentleman gravely. “No such thing exists. No such thing can exist.”
“Nonsense!” said Ephraim, waxing indignant. “How do you suppose the afternoon papers to-day will get the quotations of the Liverpool markets of to-day? How will the brokers learn to-day the price of securities at the meeting of the London Stock Exchange this morning?”
“You are speaking very wildly, sir,” said the gentleman, stepping close to Ephraim and using a low tone, while the crowd laughed. “You must be more careful, or persons will regard you as insane.”
“Insane! Why? Because I tell you, what everybody knows, that we get cable news from Europe every day.”
“Cable news! cable news! What does the old fool mean?” shouted the crowd.
“What do I mean!” exclaimed Ephraim, in a passion; “I mean that you are a pack of idiots for pretending to believe that there is no such thing as a telegraph, and no such thing as a telegraph cable to Europe.”
The crowd sent up a shout of derisive laughter and rushed at him as if to hustle him and use him roughly. The gentleman to whom he had spoken seized him by the arm and hurried him away. When they had turned the corner, the man stopped and said to Ephraim,—
“You appear to be a sane man, although you speak so strangely. Let me warn you to be more careful in the future. If you should be taken up as a madman and consigned to a madhouse, you would endure terrible suffering, and find it very difficult to secure release.”
“I am perfectly sane,” said Ephraim, “and I cannot comprehend why you think what I have said strange. I wanted my letters, and I wished in their absence to correspond by telegraph, because I am expecting a cargo of wheat to-day, which I am to ship to Liverpool by steamer.”
“By steamer! There you go again. Nobody can know what you mean by ‘steamer.’”
“Steamer! Steamship! A ship that crosses the ocean by steam, without sails. You know what that is, certainly?”
“I have heard some talk about a rattle-trap invention which used steam to make a little boat paddle about on the river here; but as for crossing the ocean—well, my dear sir, that is a little too ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous! Why—”
“Pardon me,” said the man, “I see you are incorrigible; I must bid you good morning;” and he bowed politely and walked quickly away.
“Well, well!” said Ephraim, standing still and looking after him helplessly. “It’s queer, very queer. I don’t begin to understand it at all, I am half inclined to believe that the world has conspired to make game of me, or else that my poor wits really are astray. I don’t feel as certain of them as a clear-headed man should.”
While he spoke, the bells of the city rang out an alarm of fire with furious clangor, and in a few moments he saw, dashing past him, an old-fashioned hand-engine, pulled by a score or two of men who held a rope. The burning building was not many hundred yards distant from Ephraim, and he felt an inclination to see it. When he reached the scene, men with leathern buckets were pouring water into the engine, while other men were forcing the handles up and down, with the result that a thin stream fell upon the mass of flame.
He had an impulse to ask somebody why the steam fire-engines were not used, but every one seemed to be excited and busy, and he remembered what his friend had said to him about steamers.
So he expressed his disgust for the stupidity of these people in a few muttered ejaculations; and then, suddenly, bethought him of his business.
He resolved to go down to the wharf where he had expected to ship his cargo, and to ascertain what the situation was there.
As he came near to the place, he saw that it had changed since he last saw it, but a handsome ship lay in the dock, and men were carrying bags of grain aboard of her.
“That must be my cargo,” he said; “but what on earth do they mean by loading it in that manner, and upon a sailing vessel?”
He approached the man who seemed to be superintending the work, and said,—
“Is this Ephraim Batterby’s wheat?”
The man looked at him in surprise for a moment, and then, smiling, said,—
“No, sir; it is Brown and Martin’s.”
“When did it arrive?”
“Yesterday.”
“By rail?”
“By rail! What do you mean by that?”
“I say, did it come by rail?”
“Well, old man, I haven’t the least idea what you mean by ‘rail,’ but if you want to know, I’ll tell you the grain came by canal-boat.”
“From Chicago?”
“Never heard of Chicago. The wheat came from Pittsburg. What are you asking for, any way?”
“Why, I’m expecting some myself, by rail from Chicago, and I intend to ship it to Liverpool in a steamer—that is,” added Ephraim, hesitatingly, “if I can find one.”
“Chicago! rail! steamer! Old chap, I’m afraid you’re a little weak in the top story. What do you mean by Chicago?”
“Chicago! Why, it’s a city three or four hundred miles west of Pittsburg; a great centre for the western grain traffic. Certainly you must have heard of it.”
“Oh, come now, old man, you’re trying to guy me! I know well enough that the country is a howling wilderness, three hundred miles beyond Pittsburg. Grain market! That’s good!”
“I don’t know,” said Ephraim, somewhat feebly. “It used to be there. And I expected a cargo of wheat from Chicago to be here this morning, by railroad.”
“What kind of a railroad?”
“A railroad: iron rails, with cars propelled with steam! I expected to find an elevator here to put the grain on board of an iron vessel; to load the whole twenty thousand bushels to-day; but things have gone wrong somehow, and I don’t understand precisely why!”
“Bill,” said the man, turning to a young fellow, one of his assistants, near him, “trot this poor old chap up to the mayor’s office, so that he’ll be taken care of. He’s talking to me about bringing twenty thousand bushels of wheat on a rail, and loading it in an iron vessel—an iron vessel, mind you—in one day! It’s a shame for the old fellow’s relations to let him wander about alone.”
Before “Bill” had a chance to offer his assistance, Ephraim, alarmed, and more than ever bewildered, walked quickly away.
As he gained the street, a man of about middle age suddenly stopped in front of him, and said,—
“Good morning, Mr. Batterby.”
Ephraim had gotten into such a frame of mind, that he was almost startled at the sound of his own name.
He looked hard at the stranger, but, although the features were somewhat familiar, he could not really recognize the man.
“Don’t know me, Batterby? Impossible! Don’t know Tony Miller!”
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Ephraim; “Tony Miller! so it is! Tony Miller! Not Tony Miller? Why—why—why, Miller, I thought you died thirty years ago!”
“Died! ha, ha! Not a bit of it, man. Why, it’s absurd! I saw you only two or three weeks since!”
“Strange, strange!” said Ephraim, almost sadly, in his mind trying to recall some fragments of the past. “I could have sworn that you were dead!”
“No, sir; just as hearty and lively as I ever was. By the way, Mr. Batterby, what has become of Ephraim? I don’t see him about any more.”
“Ephraim? Ephraim Batterby? Why, who do you think I am?”
“Joshua Batterby, of course; who else? You don’t seem very well to-day, I think.”
“He mistakes me for my father,” said Ephraim to himself. “When will all this wild, puzzling mystery end?” Then, addressing Miller, he said, “I would like to have some conversation with you, Miller; I am strangely confused and upset to-day.”
“Certainly; be glad to have a chat with you. I say, suppose you come home and dine with me? I am on my way to dinner now. Will you go?”
“Gladly,” replied Ephraim.
As they walked on, Miller, with intent to break the silence, said,—
“I think we shall have rain to-day, Mr. Batterby.”
“Perhaps; it looks like it. What does the signal service say?”
“What does the what say?”
“The signal service. What are the indications?”
“I haven’t the least idea what you mean, Mr. Batterby.”
“Why,” said Ephraim, timidly, “were you not aware that a bureau in the War Department collects information which enables it to indicate approaching conditions of the weather, and that it gives this information to the newspapers?”
“Never heard of such a thing, Mr. Batterby, and I don’t believe it. Somebody has been joking with you. The only weather indications we have are in the almanacs, and they are not at all reliable.”
The two walked along in silence for a time, and then Ephraim said,—
“Miller!”
“Well?”
“I am going to ask you a good many queer questions to-day, for a private purpose of my own; will you agree to answer them candidly?”
“If I can.”
“And not to think me insane, or absurd, or stupid?”
“Of course I should not think so.”
“Very well,” said Ephraim; “and when we are done, I may explain why I asked them, and perhaps you can solve a mystery for me.”
They reached the house and entered it. The first thing Miller did was to proceed to the side-board, fill two glasses with wine from a decanter, and ask Ephraim to drink.
“Thank you,” said Ephraim, “I never touch it.”
Miller looked at him for a moment in amazement. He concluded that this must be one of the phases of Batterby’s newly-developed queerness. So he emptied his own glass and put it down.
They entered the parlor to wait for dinner. Ephraim’s eye was caught by a very pretty miniature on the wall.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“Mrs. Miller; my wife.”
“Is it a photograph?”
“I don’t know what a photograph is.”
“Ah!” sighed Ephraim, “I remember. Let me ask you something else. Did you ever hear of a place named Chicago?”
“Never! there is no such place.”
“You know nothing of railroads, or steamships, or telegraphs?”
“You are talking Greek to me.”
“Did you ever hear of a telegraph cable to Europe?”
“Well, you are asking queer questions, sure enough. No, I never did.”
“Is there, or is there not, a railway line across the continent to the Pacific?”
“What a funny kind of an idea! No, there isn’t.”
“Are there any such things as daily papers?”
“No, sir.”
“One question more: I see you have a wood fire. Do you never burn coal?”
“Charcoal, sometimes, for some purposes.”
“I mean hard coal—stone coal?”
“There is no such thing in existence, so far as I know. What are you up to, anyhow? Going to invent something?”
“I will tell you after awhile, may be,” replied Ephraim; and then to himself he said, “I am beginning to catch the meaning of all this experience. How strange it is!”
A lady entered from the front door, and passed the parlor. Ephraim saw that she had on a very narrow dress, with a high waist almost beneath her armpits, that she wore upon her head an enormous and hideous green “calash” which bore some resemblance to a gig-top.
He had not seen one of those wonderful bits of head-gear for fifty years.
In a few moments the lady entered the parlor. As Mr. Miller presented Batterby to his wife, Ephraim was shocked to perceive that she seemed to have on but a single, thin, white garment, and that even this appeared to be in immediate danger of slipping downward. He thought it shockingly immodest, but he remembered the figures of women he had seen in the remote past, and thought he knew what this meant. So he gave no indication of surprise.
They went to the dining-room. Ephraim was very careful in conducting his share of the conversation. Mrs. Miller, unlike her husband, had not been forewarned. However, once, when she was lamenting the absence of fruits and vegetables from the markets in winter, Ephraim incautiously asked her why she did not use canned goods; and this opened the way to some vexatious questions. A little later, Miller began talking about the Warners, people whom Ephraim in his soul knew had been dead forty years; and Miller had mentioned that two of them were down with smallpox. Thereupon Ephraim asked if the malady was prevalent, and if Miller had been vaccinated. And thus again he got into trouble, for neither his host nor hostess knew his meaning. He was tripped up again by a reference to sewing-machines; and, finally, by remarking, innocently, when Miller observed that it had just begun to rain, that he was sorry he had not his rubbers with him.
But he would not try to explain his meaning when they pressed him. He had, indeed, an increasing tendency to taciturnity. He shrank more and more from the thought of attempting a discussion of the situation in which some wondrous mischance had placed him. As Miller waxed boisterous and lively in his talk, Ephraim was strongly impelled to complete reserve.
For he had creeping over him, gradually, a horrible feeling that these people, in whose company he was lingering, were not real people; that they were dead, and that by some awful jugglery they had been summoned forth and compelled to play over, before him, a travesty of their former lives.
He became gloomy and wretched beneath the oppression of the thoughts that crowded his brain. As the hour slipped away, his distress was made more intense by the conduct of Miller, who, warmed with wine, mingled oaths with his conversation. Ephraim felt as if that blasphemy came to him clothed with a new horror from the region of mystery beyond the grave. Finally, after Mrs. Miller had left the room, her husband’s utterance became thick and harsh, and presently he slipped, drunken and helpless, beneath the table.
Ephraim sat alone at the board. The room grew darker, for the rain was now swirling without, against the window-panes. There was something ghastly and fearful in the appearance of the apartment. The outlines of the furniture, seen through the dusk, were distorted and misshapen. Ephraim felt as if he were in the presence of phantoms. He had the sensations of one who sits in a charnel-house, and knows that he is the only living thing among the dead.
His good sense half revolted against the fear that overspread him; but it seemed not strong enough to quell the tremulous terror in his soul; for that grew and grew until it filled him with a kind of panic. He had such a meaningless dread as the bravest know when they find themselves amid darkness and loneliness in a dwelling wherein, of late, have been pleasant company and merriment and laughter; wherein has been joyousness that has suddenly been quenched by utter, dismal silence.
He was seized by a sudden impulse to fly. He pushed away his chair, and glanced timorously around him. Then he trod swiftly, and with a fiercely-beating heart, to the hall-way. Grasping his hat from the table, he opened the door, and fled out into the tempest.
As he sped away through the gloomy street, now wet and slippery, and covered with pools of rain, it smote his heart with a new fear to think that even the city about him, with its high walls and impending roofs, its bricks and stones and uplifting spires, was unreal to ghastliness. But even his great dread did not forbid his mind to recall the mysteries of the day.
“I know,” he said, as he rushed onward, “what it all means. This is the Past. Some mighty hand has swept away the barrier of years, and plunged me once more into the midst of the life that I knew in my youth, long ago. And I have loved and worshipped that past. Blind and foolish man! I loved it! Ah, how I hate it now! What a miserable, miserable time it was! How poor and insufficient life seems under its conditions! How meanly men crawled about, content with their littleness and folly, and unconscious of the wisdom that lay within their reach, ignorant of the vast and wonderful possibilities that human ingenuity might compass!”
“There was nothing in that dreary past that I could love, excepting”—and Ephraim was almost ready to weep as he thought that the one longing of his soul could not be realized—“excepting those who were torn from my arms, my heart, my home, by the cruel hand of death.”
The excitement, the distress, the anguish, the wild terror of the day, came back to him with accumulated force as he hurried along the footway; and when he reached his own home he was distracted, unnerved, hysterical.
With eager but uncertain fingers he pushed open the front door, and went into his sitting-room. There a fresh shock came to him, for he saw his wife in the chair she had occupied in the old time, long, long ago. She arose to greet him, and he saw that her dear face wore the kindly smile he had known so well, and that had added much to his sum of happiness in the years that were gone. He leaped to clasp her in his arms when he heard the sweet tones of her voice welcoming him; his eyes filled with tears, and the sobs came, as he said,—
“Ah, my dearest, my dearest! have you, too, come up from the dead past to meet me? It was you alone that hallowed it to me. I loved—loved you—I—”
He felt his utterance choked, the room swam before him, there was a ringing noise in his ears, he felt himself falling; then he lost consciousness.
He knew nothing more until he realized that there was a gentle knocking near to him, as of some one who demanded admittance at the door. He roused himself with an effort, and almost mechanically said,—
“Come in.”
He heard a light step, and he opened his eyes. He was in his own bed-room, the room of the present, not of the past, and in his own bed. It was Nelly who knocked at the door; she stood beside him.
“It is time to get up, grandpa,” she said.
“Wh—where am I? What has happened?” Then, as his mind realized the truth, he said, “Oh, Nelly, Nelly, how I have suffered.”
“How, grandpa?”
“I—I—but never mind now, my dear; I will tell you after awhile. Run down-stairs while I prepare for breakfast. But, Nelly, let me tell you not to believe what I said to you about the glories of the past; it was not true, my child, not true. I have learned better; I talked to you like a foolish old man. Thank God, my dear, that you live late in the world’s history. No man is more unwise or more ungrateful than he who finds delight in playing the part of An Old Fogy.”
MAJOR DUNWOODY’S LEG,
AND THE GREAT POTTAWATOMIE CLAIM.
At Gettysburg, on the afternoon of the third day of July, 1863, Major Henry G. Dunwoody, of the 483d Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, while leading his men into action, was struck by a shell from a Confederate battery. A moment later he was lying upon the ground unconscious, and beside him lay his left leg, severed from his body several inches above the knee.
When the fight was over for the day, the wounded Major was placed in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. A day or two later, the fever having left him, he lay in bed feeling tolerably comfortable. His mind not unnaturally turned to consideration of his wound. He began to think how very inconvenient it would be to have to hop about on one leg during the remainder of his life, and he couldn’t help wondering where his leg was and what would be its fate. He suspected they would bury it; and the notion seemed an unpleasant one.
“I don’t like the idea of being partially interred,” he said; “and while I am alive, too. I am too young a man by half a century to have one foot in the grave.”
The latter suggestion struck the Major as being rather a good joke. He resolved to remember it so that he could tell the surgeon.
The Major could hardly persuade himself, at times, as he reflected, that he had really lost his leg. He had a corn upon a certain toe which he could distinctly feel; there were strong sensations which indicated that the leg was still there, and he could hardly resist the impulse to try to lift it in such a vigorous manner as to kick off the covering of the bed. But he knew that this was absurd. While he was thinking about it he suddenly gave a little start, and a shiver ran through his nerves. He felt as if his leg had been plunged into some intensely cold liquid, and before he had quite recovered from the shock he was conscious of a faint suggestion of alcohol. Whether the perfume of the substance had actually greeted his nostrils, or the alcoholic flavor had been conveyed to his senses in some other way, he could not exactly define. He did not try very hard to solve the problem. This was only one of the many odd experiences of the first forty-eight hours, and he was too feeble to make such a vigorous mental effort as was necessary to their proper solution.
The Major recovered, and was enrolled in the Invalid Corps. During the succeeding three or four years he drew his pay, lived an easy life, and devoted much of his time to experimenting upon artificial legs of various patterns. He never succeeded in finding one that suited him exactly, and in the course of time he collected quite a curious lot of wooden and cork legs, which he kept standing about in the corners of his room at his boarding-house in Washington, and which were perpetually a source of nervous dread to the chambermaid, who lived in expectation that some day they would fly out at her and kick her downstairs.
One day the Major, while strolling along the street, passed the door of the Army Medical Museum, an institution into which has been gathered by the government a very large number of medical and surgical curiosities taken from the various battle-fields of the rebellion. It is the most horribly interesting place in the city of Washington—that is, to the ordinary lay observer. The surgeons and doctors, of course, regard its trophies with gleeful enthusiasm. To others it serves perhaps a good purpose in suggesting some distinct notion of the fearful suffering which was the price paid for the salvation of the Government, and it may perform a useful office in the future by indicating to persons who are burning with a desire for war and glory, that glory is one of the least obvious fruits of murderous strife.
It occurred to the Major to enter the building; and for half an hour he wandered about among the glass cases, studying curiously the strangely distorted fragments of the poor human body which are there preserved. As he turned the corner of one large case, he saw something that induced him to halt. A brief distance in front of him sat a woman intently engaged in drawing upon a piece of pasteboard which stood upon a small easel. It was so unexpected a sight that the Major could not resist the impulse to observe her for a moment. She seemed young and fair; a mass of bright golden hair fell upon her shoulders, and as she turned her head to look at something in one of the cases that she seemed to be sketching, the Major saw that her profile was exceedingly pretty.
He came a step or two closer, and noticed by means of a hurried glance that she had a strange figure of some kind upon the board; and then he passed on.
Just as he got close to her his artificial leg—a leg that he had received a few days before by steamer from France—suddenly launched out sideways. It encountered the foot of the easel, and the next instant Major Dunwoody lay sprawling upon the floor, with the easel across his back and the pasteboard picture lying upon his head. He recovered himself promptly, and turning to the fair artist, who stood above him with a look of mingled vexation and amusement upon her face, said,—
“I—I—really I am very sorry. It is shocking, but I assure you I couldn’t help it. I am suffering from a wound, and—and” (the Major did not like to confess so openly to his dismemberment); “and in fact I had not complete control of myself.”
The Major was a handsome man, and either his appearance, his pleading look, the pathetic tone of his voice, or all combined, touched the artist’s heart with sympathy.
“Oh, never mind,” she said, smiling, as the Major thought, more sweetly than woman ever smiled before. “No harm is done. I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.”
“You are very kind. No, I am not hurt; but I am greatly mortified at the trouble I have caused you. I hardly know how to express my disgust for my clumsiness.”
“Pray do not distress yourself about it,” said the artist, laughing; “the easel is not broken and the sketch is wholly uninjured. I should not have mourned if it had been destroyed. It is a mere study, and very incomplete.”
“You are too generous,” replied the Major; “but I will take good care not to disturb you again, if I can find my way out of here. Would you—would you—be—be—would you be good enough to call the janitor, or somebody, to help to get me upon my feet again? I cannot rise without—in fact, my wound is—is—”
“I shall be more than glad to assist you,” said the artist, with a glance of pity in her blue eyes, “if you will take my hand.”
The Major looked at the hand for a moment. It was extremely pretty; he had an impulse to kiss it, but he restrained himself. He merely clasped it in his own. The artist braced herself firmly, and the next instant the Major stood upright.
“I do not know how I can thank you for your kindness,” he said, “but permit me to offer you my card. I have some influence, and if I can ever serve you in any way I shall greatly rejoice.”
“Major Dunwoody! Indeed!” exclaimed the artist, as she read the name. “You are not one of the Dunwoodys of Clarion County, Pennsylvania, are you?”
“I was born there,” replied the Major with not a little eagerness. He thought he saw a chance to acquire better acquaintance with this lovely and gifted woman. “Do you know any of our folks?”
“Oh, yes,” said the artist, with a bright smile. “My mother came from Clarion County. She was a Hunsicker, a daughter of Hon. John Hunsicker, who represented the district in the forty-first Congress. I have often heard her speak of the Dunwoodys.”
“Indeed,” replied the Major. “I knew your grandfather well when I was a boy.”
The conversation need not be given in detail. The artist and the Major developed at some length how a Hunsicker married a Dunwoody; how a Dunwoody eloped with a Moyer, a cousin of the Hunsickers; how a Dunwoody fought a duel with another Hunsicker over a political dispute, and shook hands afterwards; and how the loves and hates, and bargains and enterprises, and contests and schemes of the Dunwoodys and Hunsickers had filled the history of Clarion County for a quarter of a century past.
At last the Major said,—
“But you haven’t given me your name yet.”
“Pandora M’Duffy is my name. My mother, you know, married Senator M’Duffy, state senator. Poor father died many years ago, and we are now living in Washington.”
“Studying art, I presume?” asked the Major, glancing at the easel.
“Yes,” replied Pandora; “I am an artist.”
“Is not this rather—rather a—a queer place to come to for sketches?”
“Oh, no,” said Pandora, laughing; “I came here to study anatomy for a great picture I am going to paint. You see what that is?” said she, lifting the cardboard, and showing the sketch to the Major.
“That is a—a—I should say that was a picture of—well, of the elbow of a stove-pipe. Isn’t it?”
“You are not very complimentary,” said Pandora. “I know it is very raw and unfinished; but it is at least a fair likeness of that human leg in the jar of alcohol over there.”
“Oh, of course! So it is, so it is; astonishing likeness! How stupid I am! To be sure. The very image of it.”
“Come now, I know you don’t think so! You are flattering me!”
“No, indeed. It is wonderful! But—why, bless my soul, what on earth do you want a picture of such a thing as that for?”
“For my great painting,” said Pandora, with a pretty little laugh. “I am preparing a picture, thirty-eight feet by twenty-seven feet, of George Washington cutting down his father’s cherry-tree with his little hatchet.”
“What for?”
“I expect to sell it to the Government, and to have it placed among the other historical pictures in the rotunda of the Capitol.”
“But you are not going to put this leg in the picture?”
“Yes; I represent George as being barefooted, and having one trouser-leg rolled up.”
“But then, I don’t exactly see how—well, but George was a boy, and this is a man’s leg.”
“I know, but I am drawing all the figures on a heroic scale.”
“Ah!” said the Major. Then he added, “But I must bid you good morning.”
“I shall be very glad to have you come to see me,” said Pandora.
“I assure you it will give me much pleasure to do so,” answered the Major, with a feeling of exultation.
Then he bowed politely, and withdrew.
When Pandora reached home, she showed Major Dunwoody’s card to her mother, and told her of the adventure at the Museum.
Mrs. M’Duffy sat upon the sofa and listened. She was a woman of distinguished appearance; of large frame, not corpulent, but rounded rather more than positive beauty seemed to require. Having the carriage of a queen, with a finely-shaped head, a strongly-defined chin, held well up, an aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes, Mrs. M’Duffy impressed the observer with a sense of power. The mother of the Gracchi might have been such a woman. If Mrs. M’Duffy had been born to a throne, she would have left her impress distinctly upon the history of nations.
Mrs. M’Duffy was familiar with the world. She was a woman who quickly comprehended possibilities. She clearly foresaw that Major Dunwoody might have an influence upon the future of Pandora, and the prospect was not pleasing to her.
“Pandora,” she said, “I trust you did not ask this man to call?”
“Yes, I did, mother.”
“I am sorry to hear it. I never liked his branch of the Dunwoodys. His father was mixed up with some very suspicious land speculations, and he died insolvent. Major Dunwoody has nothing but his pay. You must treat him with coolness when he comes.”
“Why?”
“Why! Why, because it is very necessary that you should give him no encouragement of any kind. He is not a desirable match for you. Besides, you owe it to your family now to offer every opportunity to Achilles Smith. Mr. Smith worships you!”
“And I hate him,” said Pandora, vigorously.
“Hate him, my child? Why, how absurd! Mr. Smith is a very charming man, and when he gets his Pottawatomie claim through Congress, he will be rich.”
“He will never get it through; and I won’t have him, if he does!”
“Never get it through, Pandora! Didn’t General Belcher, the member for the ninety-sixth Kansas district, and his bosom friend, assure me positively that it would be approved during the present session?”
“His claim is ridiculous. Congress will never allow it.”
“My dear! Pray don’t be absurd! His claim is quite as reasonable as thousands of similar claims. The Pottawatomie Indians scalped him in 1862, and he very properly asks the legislature of his country to compel the savages to make reparation by surrendering two million acres of their reservation. I cannot see anything ridiculous about that. If he succeeds, he will be the largest individual land-owner in the West.”
“If he succeeds!”
“But General Belcher, who is pushing his case in Congress, and who is to share the property with him, positively declares that he will succeed. The General, also, makes your acceptance of Achilles the condition of his championship of your picture. He says that Congress shall buy that picture upon the day that you marry Achilles Smith!”
“General Belcher is simply disgusting, mother. I would never think of accepting a favor from him.”
“Not when his exertions can lift you and your mother out of poverty, Pandora? You talk most unreasonably.”
“I mean what I say,” said Pandora firmly.
“Very well, Miss, we shall see,” replied Mrs. M’Duffy, rising and sweeping majestically from the room.
Major Dunwoody called upon that very evening. He called again the next evening. He called frequently upon following evenings; and although Mrs. M’Duffy treated him with coldness which bordered upon disdain, the Major’s infatuation for Pandora was so strong that he forgot Mrs. M’Duffy’s incivility in rejoicing over the exceeding graciousness of her daughter.
The Major was convinced that Pandora loved him, but he hesitated to take practical measures to ascertain the fact, because he could not summon up a sufficient amount of resolution to tell her the truth about the loss of his leg. He was far too honorable to deceive her respecting his misfortune until she had committed herself to him, and he was haunted by apprehension that she might reject him when she knew the actual state of the case. A catastrophe brought matters to a crisis.
One Sunday evening the Major escorted Pandora to church. During the worship the Major felt his French leg give several very strange twitches, and he could hear a clicking sound in the knee as if some of the springs were loose and moving about in an independent manner. Pandora noticed the noise too, and leaned over to ask the Major, in a whisper, if there was not a mouse running about upon the floor of the pew. The Major said he did not think there was.
Pandora whispered that it sounded rather more like machinery.
The Major faintly intimated that it might proceed from the gas meter in the cellar, or perhaps the people in the gallery were fixing something about the organ.
The Major had always rather doubted the springs in the knee-joint of the French leg. They impressed him as being far more complicated and ingenious than was necessary for simple purposes of locomotion. He was thinking about them tremulously when the sermon began. The preacher had hardly announced his text when the Major’s leg suddenly flew up, kicked the bonnet upon the head of the lady in front of him over the wearer’s eyes, and finally the leg fell upon the top of the back of the pew, where it kicked away vigorously. The Major, blushing crimson, grasped it and pulled it down by a severe effort. The wearer of the bonnet looked at him with indignation. Pandora seemed ready to faint.
When the Major let go his hold of the leg it bounced up again, and performed the most eccentric movements upon the back of the pew. Pandora could not suppress a faint scream; and the entire congregation stared at the miserable Major as he seized the leg and thrust it down into the pew. He held it down firmly, but the springs were strong, and they forced the toes to beat a wild tattoo upon the wooden partition in front of them.
In an agony of mortification, the Major rose, with the intention to leave the building. The sexton, who had approached him to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, gave him his arm, and the Major hopped down the aisle with his horrible leg flying out behind and before in a convulsive manner, kicking the sexton, banging pew-doors, and behaving generally in a most sensational and exciting manner.
Pandora followed her lover at a short distance. When the porch of the church was reached, the leg was still in a condition of violent agitation, and the Major, wild with shame and rage, said to the sexton,—
“Take it off! Unbuckle it! Take it off quick!”
The sexton bravely approached, fumbled about for a moment in search of the strap, and an instant later the Major’s imported leg lay upon the carpet squirming about, kicking viciously, and leaping hither and thither like a wounded and desperate animal.
“Call a carriage,” gasped the Major, as he leaned against the wall.
The sexton dispatched a boy for a vehicle, and when it came he placed the Major within, helped Pandora to a seat, and the party moved toward home.
For a little while neither the Major nor Pandora spoke. The situation seemed too awful for words. The silence was becoming embarrassing, when suddenly Pandora said,—
“Poor man!”
“What, are you sorry for me?” asked the Major eagerly.
“Indeed I am. How you must have suffered!”
“I thought you would hate me for subjecting you to such mortification.”
“But you couldn’t help it. I would be very unjust to blame you.”
“And you do not dislike me because I am so crippled?”
“How could I? You are a soldier. You lost your leg honorably, did you not?”
“It was shot away at Gettysburg.”
“You lost it to save my country, and you think I would not honor you for such a sacrifice?”
“Your kind words make me brave. If I might dare—”
“Such a hero as you may dare anything,” she said.
“May I dare to ask if, while you honor me, you can also love me?”
“You may; and if you do, I will answer ‘Yes.’”
“You are an angel!” exclaimed the Major.
They expressed their emotion in a very usual manner, which need not be described. When the carriage turned into the street upon which Pandora lived, she said,—
“Henry dear,—I may call you Henry, mayn’t I?—where is your leg?”
“I left it squirming about in the church porch.”
“No; I mean your real one, dear. The leg that was shot off.”
“I haven’t the least idea. Buried, I suppose.”
Pandora was silent and thoughtful for a moment. Then she said,—
“Isn’t it barely possible that one of those legs preserved at the Medical Museum is yours?”
“Well, I declare I never thought of that! Perhaps mine is there.”
“The one I was sketching on the day I first met you was labelled—‘Gettysburg, July 3rd, 1863.’ Maybe that was it.”
“I will go around to-morrow and examine it. It would be very odd, Pandora dearest, if it should be mine. Wouldn’t it?”
“Very. But I want you to make me a promise. If it should be yours, will you get it and give it to me?”
“If I can I will. But what on earth do you want it for?”
“For two reasons I want it: first, because if I am to marry you I have a legal right to all of you; and, second, because my George Washington has been standing upon one leg beside the cherry-tree for three weeks now, for the reason that I can’t make a satisfactory study of his other leg.”
“Pandora, I will gratify you if human energy is equal to the task. The impulses of an undying affection, not less than a fervid regard for the interests of high art, shall nerve me to the work.”
“Thank you, darling!” she said.
Then the carriage stopped at the M’Duffy front door. Pandora alighted, rang the bell, kissed her hand and disappeared, while the Major drove home in ecstasy to brood upon his unexpected happiness, and to fit himself with a Government leg that was numbered among the best in his collection.
The next morning he went around to the Medical Museum and examined Exhibit 1307 in Case 25, being the leg which Pandora had proposed to pass on to immortality by attaching a representation of it to her picture of George Washington.
The Major could not say with positiveness that the leg was his, but his impression that it belonged to him was strengthened by certain scars that seemed to be familiar, among them one which called up memories of a dog-bite obtained in a Clarion County orchard away back in the years of his boyhood.
A thought struck him. He called the janitor, and slipping a coin into his hand, he explained the case to that officer. At the Major’s suggestion the janitor removed the specimen from the alcohol, and trod heavily upon the excrescence upon the toe. The Major yelled with pain. The identity of the limb was definitely ascertained.
“I will recover possession of that leg,” said the Major as he left the building, “if I have to buy the entire collection!”