"Well, I asked $600 calc'latin' six months would do it, but he brought me down to $450 and will pay my board and lodgin'. That ain't bad."
The reporter coincided with Jack Hogan that it appeared to be a pretty good thing.
"And you don't git your money down either. He wants to be fixed up from the soles of his feet to near his shirt collar and wristbands, in the house where he is now, and then he's goin' off to some quiet spot and have his face and hands and even his ears and the top of his head, for he's partly bald, done up in some place in the country, or may be out in some of the Pacific islands, and if it's a bargain between us I'll have to go with him."
"What catches me," said I, as we got up to leave the car, "is what Henneberry will do with himself when the finishing touches are all put on him."
"I can't say, but I s'pose he'll go off to the Sandwich Islands, marry a nigger squaw, or something of that sort, and come back with a cock-and-bull story about being captured by savages, and then swing 'round the circle with some circus or other. He's got the money to push the thing through, and I believe he can stand it. Maybe he'll travel with old Cos'tenus, and they'll call themselves the tattooed twins."
And the old fellow laughed heartily as he got down carefully from the platform of the car, and limped away towards the river—perhaps down to the Bethel Home on the levee.
The foregoing story may be regarded as quite a valuable clue when associated with a piece of information furnished by an Albany, New York, journal, whose reporter says the work on Capt. Costentenus's body pales when compared with that shown by a young man who stopped over in Albany one evening last summer on his way from Saratoga to his home in Syracuse. His name is Henry Frumell, and he is but twenty-three years of age. Although so young, he has, according to his own story, seen considerable of life. In 1876 he ran away from home, shipped on a merchant vessel which was trading among the Washington Islands in South Pacific. While there he underwent the tattooing process, which he described as the most painful torture ever endured.
"How was it done, and by whom?" he was asked by a reporter.
"By the natives, and with six needles fastened to a stick. Do you see them (showing the backs of his hands and wrists)? There is a lady's face on one and a man's on the other. Vermilion red and indigo blue were used, being pricked in with the needles. Now you see that the work is executed just as neatly and perfectly as it could possibly be on the human skin. Well, it took weeks before the design was finished, and it had to be pricked over a number of times."
"It must have been painful."