Part 32

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL “LADIES' DAY,” PAPYRUS CLUB, BOSTON

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I am perfectly astonished—a-s-t-o-n-i-s-h-e-d—ladies and gentlemen—astonished at the way history repeats itself. I find myself situated at this moment exactly and precisely as I was once before, years ago, to a jot, to a tittle—to a very hair. There isn't a shade of difference. It is the most astonishing coincidence that ever—but wait. I will tell you the former instance, and then you will see it for yourself. Years ago I arrived one day at Salamanca, New York, eastward bound; must change cars there and take the sleeper train. There were crowds of people there, and they were swarming into the long sleeper train and packing it full, and it was a perfect purgatory of dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet, and low profanity. I asked the young man in the ticket-office if I could have a sleeping-section, and he answered “No,” with a snarl that shrivelled me up like burned leather. I went off, smarting under this insult to my dignity, and asked another local official, supplicatingly, if I couldn't have some poor little corner somewhere in a sleeping-car; but he cut me short with a venomous “No, you can't; every corner is full. Now, don't bother me any more”; and he turned his back and walked off. My dignity was in a state now which cannot be described. I was so ruffled that—“well,” I said to my companion, “If these people knew who I am they—” But my companion cut me short there—“Don't talk such folly,” he said; “if they did know who you are, do you suppose it would help your high-mightiness to a vacancy in a train which has no vacancies in it?”

This did not improve my condition any to speak of, but just then I observed that the colored porter of a sleeping-car had his eye on me. I saw his dark countenance light up. He whispered to the uniformed conductor, punctuating with nods and jerks toward me, and straightway this conductor came forward, oozing politeness from every pore.

“Can I be of any service to you?” he asked. “Will you have a place in the sleeper?”

“Yes,” I said, “and much oblige me, too. Give me anything—anything will answer.”

“We have nothing left but the big family state-room,” he continued, “with two berths and a couple of arm-chairs in it, but it is entirely at your disposal. Here, Tom, take these satchels aboard!”

Then he touched his hat and we and the colored Tom moved along. I was bursting to drop just one little remark to my companion, but I held in and waited. Tom made us comfortable in that sumptuous great apartment, and then said, with many bows and a perfect affluence of smiles:

“Now, is dey anything you want, sah? Case you kin have jes' anything you wants. It don't make no difference what it is.”

“Can I have some hot water and a tumbler at nine to-night-blazing hot?” I asked. “You know about the right temperature for a hot Scotch punch?”

“Yes, sah, dat you kin; you kin pen on it; I'll get it myself.”

“Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably?”

“Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll burn all night. Yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want, and dish yer whole railroad'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for to get it for you. Dat's so.” And he disappeared.

Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a smile on my companion, and said, gently:

“Well, what do you say now?”

My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. The next moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and this speech followed:

“Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute. I told de conductah so. Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you.”

“Is that so, my boy?” (Handing him a quadruple fee.) “Who am I?”

“Jenuel McClellan,” and he disappeared again.

My companion said, vinegarishly, “Well, well! what do you say now?” Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while ago—viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it?

CATS AND CANDY

The following address was delivered at a social meeting of literary men in New York in 1874:

When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor—and correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the name of Jim Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very diffident. He and I slept together—virtuously; and one bitter winter's night a cousin Mary—she's married now and gone—gave what they call a candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that came from the eaves—it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with vines—to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to attend this party; we were too young.

The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of tom-cats—it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex—were assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on, and we couldn't sleep at all.

Finally Jim said, “For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that chimney.” So I said, “Of course you would.” He said, “Well, I would; I have a mighty good notion to do it.” Says I, “Of course you have; certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it.” I hoped he might try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.

Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim got almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels flew up and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the midst of the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those hot saucers of candy.

There was a stampede, of course, and he came up-stairs dropping pieces of chinaware and candy all the way up, and when he got up there—now anybody in the world would have gone into profanity or something calculated to relieve the mind, but he didn't; he scraped the candy off his legs, nursed his blisters a little, and said, “I could have ketched them cats if I had had on a good ready.”

OBITUARY POETRY