He walked into the secretary's office and pulled out a sausage, and holding it toward him was about to explain it to him, when the secretary suddenly dodged behind the table. The movement struck Bradley as being queer, and he walked around after the secretary, still holding out a sample of the Imperishable. Then the secretary made a bolt for the door and went out, and presently in came a couple of clerks with shot-guns. They aimed at Bradley, and told him to drop his weapon or they would fire. He deposited the sausage on the table and asked them what was the matter, and then the secretary came in and said he mistook the sausage for a revolver. When Bradley explained his mission, the secretary told him that nothing could be done without the action of Congress, and he recommended the inventor to go up to the Capitol and push his sausage through there.
[Illustration: THE SECRETARY IS ALARMED]
So Bradley was on hand next day before the session opened, and he laid a sausage on the desk of each member. When the House assembled, there was a large diversity of opinion respecting the meaning of the extraordinary display. Some were inclined to regard the article as an infernal machine introduced by some modern Guy Fawkes, while others leaned to the view that it was a new kind of banana developed by the Agricultural Department. After a while Bradley turned up and explained, and he spent the winter there trying to force his sausage on his beloved country. At the very end of the session a bill was smuggled through, ordering the commissary department of the army to appoint a commission to investigate Bradley's sausage, and to report to the Secretary of War.
When the commission was organized, it came on with Bradley to his home on his farm to examine his method. As the party approached the house a terrific smell greeted them, and upon entering the front door it became nearly unendurable. Mrs. Bradley said she thought there must be something dead under the washboard. But upon going into the garret the origin of the smell became obvious. About half a ton of the Patent Imperishable Sausage lay on the floor in a condition of fearful decay. Then the commissioners put their fingers to their noses and adjourned, and the chairman went to the hotel to write out his report. It was about as follows:
"After a careful examination of the Bradley Patent Imperishable Army Sausage, we find that it is eminently suitable for certain well-defined purposes. If it should be introduced to warfare as a missile, we could calculate with precision that its projection from a gun into a besieged town would instantly induce the garrison to evacuate the place and quit; but the barbarity which would be involved in subjecting even an enemy to direct contact with the Bradley Sausage is so frightful that we shrink from recommending its use, excepting in extreme cases. The odor disseminated by the stink-pot used in war by the Chinese is fragrant and balmy compared with the perfume which belongs to this article. It might also be used profitably as a manure for poor land, and in a very cold climate, where it is absolutely certain to be frozen, it could be made serviceable as a tent-pin.
"But as an article of food it is open to several objections. Bradley's method of mixing is so defective that he has one sausage filled with peas, another with gum-arabic, another with pepper and another with beef. The beef sausages will certainly kill any man who eats a mouthful, unless they are constantly kept on ice from the hour they are made, and the gum-arabic sausages are not sufficiently nutritious to enable an army to conduct an arduous campaign. We are therefore disposed to recommend that the sausage shall not be accepted by the department, and that Bradley's friends put him in an asylum where his mind can be cared for."
When Bradley heard about the report, he was indignant; and after reflecting that republics are always ungrateful, he sent a box of the sausages to Bismarck, in order to ascertain if they could not be introduced to the German army. Three months later he was shot at one night by a mysterious person, and the belief prevails in this neighborhood that it was an assassin sent over to this country by Bismarck for the single purpose of butchering the inventor of the Imperishable Army Sausage. Since then Bradley has abandoned the project, and he is now engaged in perfecting a washing-machine which has reached such a stage that on the first trial it tore four shirts and a bolster-slip to rags.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FACTS IN REFERENCE TO MR. BUTTERWICK'S HORSE.
Mr. Butterwick is not a good judge of horses, but a brief while ago he thought he would like to own a good horse, and so he went to a sale at a farm over in Tulpehocken township, and for some reason that has not yet been revealed he bid upon the forlornest wreck of a horse that ever retained vitality. It was knocked down to him before he had a chance to think, and he led it home with something like a feeling of dismay. The purchase in a day or two got to be the joke of the whole village, and people poked fun at Butterwick in the most merciless manner. But he was inclined to take a philosophical view of the matter, and to present it in rather a novel and interesting light. When I spoke to him of the unkind things that were said about the horse, he said,