“Yes, sir!” said the Colonel. “Being an American, I’m naturally in favor of elevating the oppressed and down-trodden, provided, of course, they live in other countries. All Americans are in favor of Home Rule for Ireland, because it would elevate the Irish masses and keep them at home; but if I were living in Ireland, perhaps I might prefer elevating Russian Jews or Bulgarian Christians. You see, the trouble with elevating the oppressed at home is that the moment you get them elevated they begin to oppress you. There is no better fellow in the world than the Irishman, so long as you govern him; but when he undertakes to govern you it’s time to look out for daybreak to westward. You see, we’ve been there and know all about it.
“Did I ever tell you about Jewseppy? He was an organ-grinder, and, take him by and large, he was the best organ-grinder I ever met. He could throw an amount of expression into ‘Annie Rooney,’ or, it might be, ‘The Old Folks at Home,’ that would make the strongest men weep and heave anything at him that they could lay their hands to. He wasn’t a Jew, as you might suppose from his name, but only an Italian—‘Jewseppy’ being what the Italians would probably call a Christian name if they were Christians. I knew him when I lived in Oshkosh, some twenty years ago. My daughter, who had studied Italian, used to talk to him in his native language; that is, she would ask him if he was cold, or hungry, or ashamed, or sleepy, as the books direct, but as he never answered in the way laid down in the books, my daughter couldn’t understand a word he said, and so the conversation would begin to flag. I used to talk to him in English, which he could speak middling well, and I found him cranky, but intelligent.
“He was a little, wizened, half-starved-looking man, and if he had only worn shabby black clothes, you would have taken him for a millionaire’s confidential clerk, he was so miserable in appearance. He had two crazes—one was for monkeys, who were, he said, precisely like men, only they had four hands and tails, which they could use as lassoes, all of which were in the nature of modern improvements, and showed that they were an advance on the original pattern of men. His other craze was his sympathy for the oppressed. He wanted to liberate everybody, including convicts, and have every one made rich by law and allowed to do anything he might want to do. He was what you would call an Anarchist to-day, only he didn’t believe in disseminating his views by dynamite.
“SHE WOULD ASK HIM IF HE WAS COLD OR HUNGRY.”
“He had a monkey that died of consumption, and the way that Jewseppy grieved for the monkey would have touched the heart of an old-fashioned Calvinist, let alone a heart of ordinary stone. For nearly a month he wandered around without his organ, occasionally doing odd jobs of work, which made most people think that he was going out of his mind. But one day a menagerie came to town, and in the menagerie was what the show-bill called a gorilla. It wasn’t a genuine gorilla, as Professor Amariah G. Twitchell, of our university, proved after the menagerie men had refused to give him and his family free tickets. However, it was an animal to that effect, and it would probably have made a great success, for our public, though critical, is quick to recognize real merit, if it wasn’t that the beast was very sick. This was Jewseppy’s chance, and he went for it as if he had been a born speculator. He offered to buy the gorilla for two dollars, and the menagerie men, thinking the animal was as good as dead, were glad to get rid of it, and calculated that Jewseppy would never get the worth of the smallest fraction of his two dollars. There is where they got left, for Jewseppy knew more about monkeys than any man living, and could cure any sick monkey that called him in, provided, of course, the disease was one which medical science could collar. In the course of a month he got the gorilla thoroughly repaired, and was giving him lessons in the theory and practice of organ-grinding.
“The gorilla didn’t take to the work kindly, which, Jewseppy said, was only another proof of his grand intellect, but Jewseppy trained him so well that it was not long before he could take the animal with him when he went out with the organ, and have him pass the plate. The gorilla always had a line round his waist, and Jewseppy held the end of it, and sort of telegraphed to him through it when he wanted him to come back to the organ. Then, too, he had a big whip, and he had to use it on the gorilla pretty often. Occasionally he had to knock the animal over the head with the butt end of the whip-handle, especially when he was playing something on the organ that the gorilla didn’t like, such as ‘Marching through Georgia,’ for instance. The gorilla was a great success as a plate-passer, for all the men were anxious to see the animal, and all the women were afraid not to give something when the beast put the plate under their noses. You see, he was as strong as two or three men, and his arms were as long as the whole of his body, not to mention that his face was a deep blue, all of which helped to make him the most persuasive beast that ever took up a collection.
“Jewseppy had so much to say to me about the gorilla’s wonderful intelligence that he made me tired, and one day I asked him if he thought it was consistent with his principles to keep the animal in slavery. ‘You say he is all the same as a man,’ said I. ‘Then why don’t you give him a show? You keep him oppressed and down-trodden the whole time. Why don’t you let him grind the organ for a while, and take up the collection yourself? Turn about is fair play, and I can’t see why the gorilla shouldn’t have his turn at the easy end of the business.’ The idea seemed to strike Jewseppy where he lived. He was a consistent idiot. I’ll give him credit for that. He wasn’t ready to throw over his theories every time he found they didn’t pay. Now that I had pointed out to him his duty toward the gorilla, he was disposed to do it.