CHAPTER XIX.
THE LAST OF THE K.’S.
A Popular Fallacy—Karl Konstant Esq.—A Fit Companion for the Wandering Jew—Awaiting Events—The First Visitation—An Intricate Subject for the Hospitals and Doctors—Getting Even with the Latter—Put Away—Yellow Jack on a Raid—K. K. K., Esq., in his Prison Cell—Promoted to the Hospital—An Uncommon Defiance—A Picturesque Outside—Waiting for the End—K. Konstant Kain Struggles back to Shore—“Do not Weep”—A Critical Moment—A New Cast and entire Change of Scenery—“Gruel” did it—Waited upon by a Deputation of Citizens—“Young Man, Go West”—The New Orleans Pest-House—Konfounded, Krooked Konundrum.
Some dealer in those cheap apothegms which commend themselves to the public gullibility, through the public tendency to moralize concerning subjects of which it knows nothing, has rendered himself famous, and the great majority of mankind asses, by the announcement that “everything must have an end.” Without a design of reopening a dead controversy, or so much as mentioning the word “fossil,” we must be permitted to record a belief that the author of this sage prophecy had never heard of the mathematician’s war involving the crookedness of the half circle, and was grossly uninformed on the topic of the great Woman’s Rights movement and those leaders who have concerned themselves about its temperature for the past two hundred years. And while the cause of orthodoxy might be safely entrusted to two such examples of
“The few immortal things
That were not born to die,”
it is in no sense of triumphing over a fallen adversary that we add the conviction that the beaming countenance of Karl Konstant Kain, the last of the K.’s, had never dawned upon this prophet’s sense of the ridiculous.
We shall introduce him to the reader as he was, and is, and without any reference to a future—that with him is but a name, a fleeting shadow. And in order that this reminiscence may be perfect, it will be needful to relate that he had reached, at this period of his existence, a climax of loneliness and gaunt despair that would have rendered him a fit companion for the “Wandering Jew,” and a most unfit one for anything less ludicrously ideal. Though it had been of his own choosing, a shadow pursued him and would not let him rest: it was the ghost of the murdered K. K. K. He had been with it in its prosperity; had eaten its bread in its adversity; and since above the spot of its interment the daisies were developing into types of its departed beauty, he had given himself to the magnanimous resolve of perpetuating its genius in other climes.
Having chalked a freight car, “Through without delay,” he deposited his remains on the inside, and four days thereafter found himself at the door of a cheap hashery, in the thriving little city of Columbus, Texas. Here he refreshed the inner man on a promise to pay, rendered subsequent to the meal, and having been damned for a “blister,” and a “cooter,” and a “scorpion,” wandered forth, that image of “blank dismay” which we have already depicted to the reader. Destiny was now begun with him in earnest, and it was only necessary for him to sit still and “administer upon the fluttering pasteboards,” with that resignation of soul which should characterize the man who has given five points in the game, and occupies the losing seat. Mounting a goods-box on a neighboring corner, he adjusted his unshapeliness to its angles in a posture that would have been an easy one for another man, and awaited events. They were not slow in coming. In fact they came in troops, and awaited their turn with a constancy of resolve that would have frightened a less Napoleonic structure. The first visitation comprised two Hibernians of smiling aspect, who, observing this unusual tableau, affected to note a disposition to sneeze in the subject. Instantly our hero accepted the challenge (ad hominem et sine exceptione), and leaping from his perch engaged his persecutors with the desperation of a man who feels that he would be made happier if soundly whipped. Striking right and left, he provoked his adversaries to do their worst, and soon brandishing huge knives, they made inroads upon his anatomy which left him an intricate subject for the hospitals and doctors. Twenty-two wounds in all had severally penetrated his lungs, severed his carotid artery, atrophied his liver, wasp-nested his umbilicus, riddled his facial parts, and bereft him of five fingers and the arm to which their five fellows were attached,—and yet he would not die, could not see it to his interest to die, felt that it would not be destiny to die,—and four weeks thereafter exhibited himself in public to a goodly number of false prophets, who, excusing him and themselves on the ground of a miracle, tendered him congratulations.
But if Karl Konstant was some the worse for wear, he was none the worse for something to wear, having levied on a full cloth rig and watch, belonging to one of the hospital doctors, as some remuneration for the torturing exercises in surgery which had been directed at his corporosity. Walking the streets with the air of a man whom melancholy has marked for her own, and yet attracting the notice of passers-by through a subdued emphasis of gait and manner, which could hardly have proceeded from a less philosophic cause than good clothes, and a chronometer that would unfailingly chronicle the hash hour, he was next interviewed by two policemen with drawn clubs, who, by virtue of his late condition of mayhem, subjected him to but one-half the regulation mauling, and having divested him of his borrowed plumage, jugged him, and corked him, and expressed through the bars a wish to kiss him for his mother-in-law.
About this time “Yellow Jack,” in making his decennial tour of the Southern cities of Texas, debarked at Columbus, and for a period of four weeks lent his energies to a most devastating epidemic. Thousands were stricken, hundreds rendered their final account, and the undertakers, protesting that it was an ill-wind, took orders for coffins. Karl Konstant Kain beheld the public dismay through his prison bars, and despaired. He knew that it would come; fate had whispered him that it would come—and feeling this, his anxiety on the subject soon developed into a wish that it might come. He was not disappointed; and when it came and lodged a great pain in his side, and touched up his pulse an half hundred degrees or so, it did not conclude its labors, but promoted him to the hospital and doctors, and bade him look about him for means of offsetting the latter.