A divorce case was before the courts, and it was much discussed everywhere. The wife had been jealous and suspicious, and blond hairs (she was very dark herself) and strange hair-pins held a ludicrous prominence in the evidence. "Ah!" said Fisk, "that's not the kind of a wife I have! Never, never does Lucy surprise me with a visit, God bless her! No, she always telegraphs me when she's coming, and I—I clear up and have a warm welcome for her, and then she's pleased, and that pleases me, and we both enjoy our visit. Hang'd if we don't! And just to show you what a hero—yes, a hero—she is, and, talking of hair-pins, let me tell you now. You know those confounded crooked ones, with three infernal crinkles in the middle to keep them from falling out of the hair? Those English chorus-girls wear them, I'm told. Well, one day Lucy comes to see me. Oh, she had sent word as usual, and everything was cleared up (I supposed) as usual, and George, my man, was laying out some clothes for me, when Lucy, smoothing her hand over the sofa-cushion, picks up and holds to the light an infernal crinkled hair-pin. George turned white and looked pleadingly at me. I saw myself in court fighting a divorce like the devil; and then, after an awful, perspiring silence, my Lucy says—she that has worn straight pins all her life: 'James, that is a lazy and careless woman that cares for your rooms. It's three weeks to-day since I left for home, and here is one of my hair-pins lying on the sofa ever since!'
"If she had put it in her hair I should have thought her really deceived in the matter, but when she dropped it in the fire, I knew she was just a plain hero! I walked over and knelt down and said: 'Thank you, Lucy,' while I pretended to tie her shoe. George was so upset that he dropped the studs twice over he was trying to put into a shirt-front. Oh, I tell you my Lucy can't be beat!"
The time he won the name of "Jubilee Jim," when the whole country was laughing over his triumphant visit to Boston with his regiment, he made this unsmiling explanation of the matter:
"You see, the Ninth and I were both tickled over the invitation to visit Boston, and as there were so many of us I paid the expenses myself. Being proud of the regiment and anxious it should be acquainted with all real American institutions, I arranged for it to stay over Sunday, for there were dozens of the boys who had never even seen a slice of real Boston brown-bread or a crock-baked bean—and a Boston Sunday breakfast was to be the educational feature of the visit. Everything was lovely, until the Ninth suddenly felt a desire to pray, as well as to eat, and I'll be switched on to a side-track if the minister of that big church didn't begin to kick like a steer, and finally refuse to let us pray in his shop. Now, if there's anything that will make a man hot as blazes in a minute, it's choking him off when he wants to pray. Some sharply pointed and peppery words were exchanged on the subject. I suppose our numbers rather muddled up his schedule, but if he'd said so quietly I could have straightened out his heavenly time-table so that there would have been no collision between trains of prayer. But no, instead of that, he slams the doors of his church in our visiting faces, and, in act at least, tells us to go to—what's that polite word now that means h—? What—what do you call it sheol? Shucks! that word won't become popular—hasn't got any snap to it! Well, the boys were mighty blue, they thought the visit was off. But I got 'em into the armory, and I said, what amounted to this, I says: 'This visit ain't off; Boston is right as a trivet, and wants us! We ain't bucking against the city, but against that sanctified stingyike who don't want anyone in heaven but his own gang; but you see here, when the Ninth Regiment wants to pray, I'm d——d if it don't do it. Who cares for that church, anyway, where you'd be crowded like sardines and have your corns crushed to agony! We'll go to Boston, boys, and we'll praise the Lord on the Common, if they'll let us, and if they won't, we'll march out to the suburbs and have a perfect jubilee of prayer!' And what do you think," he cried, grinning like a mischievous boy, as he twisted the long, waxed ends of his mustache to needle-like points, "what do you think—we prayed out of doors, with all female Boston and her attendants looking on and saying amen; and, oh, by George! I sent a man to see, and 'stingyike's' church was nearly empty! Ha! ha! I tell you what it is, when a New York soldier wants to pray, he prays, or something gives!" After that he was Jubilee Jim.
His growing stoutness annoyed him greatly, yet he was the first to poke fun at what he called his "unmilitary figure." One evening I said: "Mr. Fisk, I'm afraid you have cast too much bread upon the waters; it's said to be very fattening food when it returns?"
"Well, I swan!" he answered, "I'll never give another widow a pass over any road of mine—whether she's black, mixed, or grass, for that's about all the breadcasting I do."
This was not true, for he was very kind-hearted and generous, especially to working people who were in trouble. His "black widow" was one in full mourning, his "mixed widow" was the poor soul who had only a cheap black bonnet or a scanty veil topping her ordinary colored clothing to express her widowed state, while the "grasses" were, in his own words: "All those women who were not married—but ought to be."
Whenever he gave a diamond or an India shawl to a French opera-bouffe singer the world heard of it, and the value grew and grew daily, and that publicity gratified his strange distorted vanity, but the lines of widows, sometimes with hungry little flocks hanging at their skirts, that he passed over roads, the discharged men he "sneaked" (his own word) back into positions again, because of their suffering brood, he kept silent about.
He never got angry at the papers, no matter what absurdity they printed about him. At the time of the riot some paper declared he had left his men and had climbed a high board fence in order to escape from danger. In referring to the article at the theatre one evening, he said, in reproachful tones: "Now wasn't that a truly stupid lie?" He rose, and placing his hands where his waist should have been, he went on mournfully: "Look at me! I look like a sprinter, don't I? If you just could see me getting into that uniform—no offence, ladies, I don't mean no harm. Oh, Lord, who has a small grammar about them? Well, when I'm in the clothes, it takes two men's best efforts, while I hold my breath, to clasp my belt—and they say I climbed that high fence! Say, I'd give five thousand dollars down on the nail if I had the waist to do that act with!"
He was not only a natural comedian, but he had an instinct for the dramatic in real life, and he was quick to grasp his opportunity at the burning of Chicago. His relief train must be rushed through first—he must beg personally; and then—and then, oh, happy thought! all the city knew the value he placed upon the beautiful jet black stallion he rode in the Park. Out, then, he and his stall-mate came—splendid, fiery, satin-coated aristocrats! And taking their places before a great express wagon, went prancing and curvetting their way from door to door, Mr. Fisk stopping wherever a beckoning hand appeared at a window. And bundles of clothing, boxes of provisions, anything, everything that people would give, he gathered up with wild haste, and brief, warm thanks, and rushed to the express offices for proper sorting and packing. Of course that personal service was not really necessary. A modest man would not have done it, but he was spectacular. His act pleased the people, too, and really many were moved to give by it. Their fancy was caught by the picture of the be-diamonded Jubilee Jim placing himself and his valuable horses at the service of the terror-stricken, homeless Chicagoans.