“WEARING JEWSEPPY’S COAT, AND WAS GRINDING AWAY AT THE ORGAN.”
“At this point the gorilla hauled Jewseppy in and gave him a fairly good thrashing for wasting his time in conversation. When the man came around again with the plate I told him that he was taking in more money than he had ever taken in before, and that this ought to console him, even if the consciousness that he was doing justice to the oppressed had no charms for him. I’m sorry to say that Jewseppy used such bad language that I really couldn’t stay and listen to him any longer. I understood him to say that the gorilla took possession of every penny that was collected, and would be sure to spend it on himself, but as this was only what Jewseppy had been accustomed to do it ought not to have irritated a man with a real sense of justice. Of course I was sorry that the little man was being ill treated, but he was tough, and I thought that it would not hurt him if the gorilla were to carry out his course of instruction in the duty of elevating the oppressed a little longer. I have always been sort of sorry that I did not interfere, for although Jewseppy was only a foreigner who couldn’t vote, and was besides altogether too set in his ideas, I didn’t want him to come to any real harm. After that day no man ever saw Jewseppy, dead or alive. He was seen about dusk two or three miles from town on the road to Sheboygan. He was still tied to the rope and was using a lot of bad language, while the gorilla was frequently reminding him with the whip of the real duties of his station and the folly of discontent and rebellion. That was the last anybody ever saw of the Italian. The gorilla turned up the next day at a neighboring town with his organ, but without anybody to take up the collection for him, and as the menagerie happened to be there the menagerie men captured him and put him back in his old cage, after having confiscated the organ. No one thought of making any search for Jewseppy, for, as I have said, he had never been naturalized and had no vote, and there were not enough Italians in that part of the country to induce any one to take an interest in bringing them to the polls. It was generally believed that the gorilla had made away with Jewseppy, thinking that he could carry on the organ business to more advantage without him. It’s always been my impression that if Jewseppy had lived he would have been cured of the desire to elevate the down-trodden, except, of course, in foreign countries. He was an excellent little man—enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and really believing in his talk about the rights of monkeys and the duty of elevating everybody. But there isn’t the least doubt that he made a mistake when he tried to do justice to that gorilla.”
THAT LITTLE FRENCHMAN.
“Does anybody doubt my patriotism?” asked the Colonel. We all hastened to say that we should as soon doubt our own existence. Had he not made a speech no longer ago than last Fourth of July, showing that America was destined to have a population of 1,000,000,000 and that England was on the verge of extinction? Had he not perilled his life in the cause of freedom, and was he not tireless in insisting that every Chinaman should be driven out of the United States? If there ever was one American more patriotic than another it was the Colonel.
“Well, then,” continued the speaker, “you won’t misunderstand me when I say that the American railroad car is a hundred times more dangerous than these European compartment cars. In thirty years there have been just four felonious assaults in English railroad cars. There have been a few more than that in France, but not a single one in Germany. Now, I admit that you are in no danger of being shot in an American car, unless, of course, two gentlemen happen to have a difficulty and shoot wild, or unless the train is held up by train robbers who are a little too free with their weapons. But I do say that the way in which we heat our cars with coal-stoves kills thousands of passengers with pneumonia and burns hundreds alive when the trains are wrecked.
“You see, I’ve looked into this thing and I’ve got the statistics down fine. I’m the only man I know who ever had any trouble with a passenger while travelling in Europe, and I don’t mind telling you about it, although it will be giving myself away. Kindly push me over those matches, will you? These French cigars take a lot of fuel, and you have to encourage them with a match every three minutes if you expect them to burn.
“When I was over here in Paris, ten years ago, there was a fellow here from Chicago who was trying to introduce American cars, and he gave me a pamphlet he had got up showing the horrors of the compartment system. It told of half a dozen murders, fifteen assaults, eleven cases of blackmail, and four cases in which a solitary traveller was shut up in a compartment with a lunatic—all these incidents having occurred on European railways. I was on my way to Egypt, and when I had read the pamphlet I began to wonder if I should ever manage to live through the railroad journey without being killed, or blackmailed, or lunaticked, or something of the kind. You see, I believed the stories then, though I know now that about half of them were false.
“I took the express train—the Peninsular and Oriental they call it—from Paris about twelve o’clock one night. I went early to the train, and until just before we started I thought I was going to have the compartment to myself. All at once a man very much out of breath jumped in, the door was slammed, and we were off.