"Good day, Mr. L," he yelled; "just keep that little voucher in your pocket, and be d—d to you!"
L— jumped up and saw the other cars moving rapidly away. He was left solitary and alone, in a dismal piece of woods known as the Black Swamp. He remained there in the car until night, when the down-train came along and took him to Toledo. He had to pay fare, his up through-ticket not being good on that train. His buggies had gone unattended to Chicago. He was very angry. He finally got through, but he will never hear the last of that "little voucher."
1.55. THE GENTLEMANLY CONDUCTOR.
Few have any idea of the trials and tribulations of the railway conductor—"the gentlemanly conductor," as one-horse newspapers delight in styling him. Unless you are gifted with the patience of the lamented Job, who, tradition informs us, had "biles" all over his body, and didn't swear once, never go for a Conductor, me boy!
The other evening we enlivened a railroad car with our brilliant presence. Starting time was not quite up, and the passengers were amusing themselves by laughing, swearing, singing, and talking, according to their particular fancy. The Conductor came in, and the following were a few of the questions put to him:—One old fellow, who was wrapped up in a horse-blanket, and who apparently had about two pounds of pigtail in his mouth, wanted to know, "What pint of compass the keers was travelin in?" An old lady, surrounded by band-boxes and enveloped in flannels, wanted to know what time the eight o'clock train left Rock Island for "Dubu-kue?" A carroty-haired young man wanted to know if "free omyibuses" ran from the cars to the taverns in Toledo? A tall, razor-faced individual, evidently from the interior of Connecticut, desired to know if "conductin" paid as well eout West as it did deoun in his country; and a portly, close-shaven man with round keen eyes, and in whose face you could read the interest-table, asked the price of corner lots in Omaha. These and many other equally absurd questions the conductor answered calmly and in a resigned manner. And we shuddered as we thought how he would have to answer a similar string of questions in each of the three cars ahead.
1.56. MORALITY AND GENIUS.
We see it gravely stated in a popular Metropolitan journal that "true genius goes hand in hand, necessarily, with morality." The statement is not a startlingly novel one. It has been made, probably, about sixty thousand times before. But it is untrue and foolish. We wish genius and morality were affectionate companions, but it is a fact that they are often bitter enemies. They don't necessarily coalesce any more than oil and water do! Innumerable instances may be readily produced in support of this proposition. Nobody doubts that Sheridan had genius, yet he was a sad dog. Mr. Byron, the author of Childe Harold "and other poems," was a man of genius, we think, yet Mr. Byron was a fearfully fast man. Edgar A. Poe wrote magnificent poetry and majestic prose, but he was, in private life, hardly the man for small and select tea parties. We fancy Sir Richard Steele was a man of genius, but he got disreputably drunk, and didn't pay his debts. Swift had genius—an immense lot of it—yet Swift was a cold-blooded, pitiless, bad man. The catalogue might be spun out to any length, but it were useless to do it. We don't mean to intimate that men of genius must necessarily be sots and spendthrifts—we merely speak of the fact that very many of them have been both, and in some instances much worse than both. Still we can't well see (though some think they can) how the pleasure and instruction people derive from reading the productions of these great lights is diminished because their morals were "lavishly loose." They might have written better had their private lives been purer, but of this nobody can determine for the pretty good reason that nobody knows.
So with actors. We have seen people stay away from the theater because Mrs. Grundy said the star of the evening invariably retired to his couch in a state of extreme inebriety. If the star is afflicted with a weakness of this kind, we may regret it. We may pity or censure the star. But we must still acknowledge the star's genius, and applaud it. Hence we conclude that the chronic weakness of actors no more affects the question of the propriety of patronizing theatrical representations, than the profligacy of journeymen shoemakers affects the question of the propriety of wearing boots. All of which is respectfully submitted.
1.57. ROUGH BEGINNING OF THE HONEYMOON.
On last Friday morning an athletic young farmer in the town of Waynesburg took a fair girl, "all bathed in blushes," from her parents, and started for the first town across the Pennsylvania line to be married, where the ceremony could be performed without a license. The happy pair were accompanied by a sister of the girl, a tall, gaunt, and sharp-featured female of some thirty-seven summers. The pair crossed the line, were married, and returned to Wellsville to pass the night. People at the hotel where the wedding party stopped observed that they conducted themselves in a rather singular manner. The husband would take his sister-in-law, the tall female aforesaid, into one corner of the parlor and talk earnestly to her gesticulating wildly the while. Then the tall female would "put her foot down" and talk to him in an angry and excited manner. Then the husband would take his fair young bride into a corner, but he could no sooner commence talking to her than the gaunt sister would rush in between them and angrily join in the conversation. The people at the hotel ascertained what all this meant about 9 o'clock that evening. There was an uproar in the room which had been assigned to the newly married couple. Female shrieks and masculine "swears" startled the people at the hotel, and they rushed to the spot. The gaunt female was pressing and kicking against the door of the room, and the newly-married man, mostly undressed, was barring her out with all his might. Occasionally she would kick the door far enough open to disclose the stalwart husband, in his Gentleman Greek Slave apparel. It appeared that the tall female insisted upon occupying the same room with the newly-wedded pair; that her sister was favorably disposed to the arrangement, and that the husband had agreed to it before the wedding took place, and was now indignantly repudiating the contract. "Won't you go away now, Susan, peaceful?" said the newly-married man, softening his voice.