Some men there are who will even confess to you that they are governed by these strange impulses in what they term the “trifling details of life,” but as men who admit “trifling details” into their lives rarely attain to a higher life than is constituted by the sum of these, their admission covers a greater scope than they probably intended. Others, equally candid, adopt a different mode of imparting the same confidence, and naively tell you that in “the more important concerns of life” they are indebted for guidance to an unseen agency. But as these men wholly mistake the meaning of the adjective they use, adjusting it to such retail considerations as flow from their daily business or dwell at the bottom of their post-prandial cup, we must take their confession to include both froth and sediment, the top and bottom of so many human lives.
After having devoted much thought to this subject, and made many empirical journeys along the route which leads to men’s confidences, without being suspected of any such deep-laid treason as that which we here confess in the light of a laudable undertaking, it is our candid opinion that if the unsuperstitious of earth were doomed to fall by the knife of some avenging Elijah, the bodies of the slain would no more constitute a Waterloo than fifty swallows would make a tolerable month of July. So that when we say this Ku-Klux breeze blew consternation to many timid hearts, both young and old, great and small, in Crow Hide, we only state in a small way what might have been true, under slightly amended conditions, of the best educated of the oi polloi of the largest cities of the greatest republics.
CHAPTER V.
K. K. K. DEALINGS WITH THE LOYAL LEAGUE.
A Train which brought Welcome Passengers—Caucusing in the Open Air a Dangerous Proceeding—Correct Surmises—An Old Church, Bequeathed from Generation to Generation, and Liable to many Uses—Brothers and Sisters all—The L. L. in full Bloom—Storm succeeded by a Calm—Weird Visitors—What they left behind them—Dummy Constructed of Cow-bones, and Habited in full Ku-Klux Regalia—Height, Ten Feet—Sudden Panic—The Rally—Still in Doubt—The Chairman’s Stratagem—How it didn’t Work—Despondent Leaguers taught to Act for Themselves—Finale.
On the day preceding the evening to which the fates referred the K. K. K. demonstration, as aforesaid, a crowd of sable politicians might have been seen lounging in the neighborhood of the village depot; and a few moments later, as the train drew up, edging their way through the crowd to the vicinity of two small dark objects, which, though partially concealed by the crowd, undoubtedly constituted a part of it, as they were seen to wave above the heads of the tallest what could hardly have been mistaken for anything less startlingly suggestive than two glazed carpet-bags.
When the tumult subsided, and the crowd, after hovering for an instant in the neighborhood of this pantomime, melted away as depot assemblages are wont to do, it was plainly to be seen that the sable electors had been in search of the two men with the glazed carpet-bags, and the two men with the glazed carpet-bags in search of the sable electors; for these elements of the crowd had now amalgamated (so to speak) in a loving embrace.
The ceremony of greeting, as witnessed from a distance by the villagers, extended to a thousand little personal liberties, which white men would no more tolerate from each other than would the more dignified of the beasts of the forest. And when its honey had been extracted by the parties respectively, they were seen to place their upper extremities near together in consultation. Some observation of amazing pithiness ran the gauntlet of woolly crowns; and immediately afterwards a burly politician withdrew from the caucus, followed by all eyes, and at a point not far distant drew a diagram on the platform with his cane. Completing the demonstration, and using, the same weapon, he smote upon the echoing timbers with loud emphasis, and immediately the olfactory charm was renewed around the quadrilateral wonder, which, having been viewed by the crowd with the air of savants, became at once the subject of animated discussion; and then, as suddenly, of perfect agreement and harmonious handshaking.