Read Ebook: Told by the Colonel by Alden W L William Livingston Hurst Hal Illustrator Jack Richard Illustrator

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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.

"I didn't like the looks of the fellow. He was a Frenchman, though of course that wasn't his fault. He was small but wiry-looking, and his sharp black eyes were not the style of eyes that inspires me with confidence. Then he had no baggage except a small paper parcel, which was queer, considering that the train was a long-distance one. I kept a close watch on him for a while, thinking that he might be one of the professional lunatics that, according to the Chicago chap's pamphlet, are always travelling in order to frighten solitary passengers; but after a while I became so sleepy that I decided to lie down and take a nap and my chances of being killed at the same time. Just then the man gets up and begins to talk to me in French.

"Now, I needn't say that I don't speak French nor any of those fool languages. Good American is good enough for me. One reason why these Europeans have been enslaved for centuries is that they can't make each other understand their views without shouting at the top of their lungs, and so bringing the police about their ears. But I did happen to know, or thought I did, the French word for going to sleep, and so I thought I would just heave it at this chap so that he would understand that I didn't require his conversation. I have always found that if you talk to a Frenchman in English very slowly and impressively he will get the hang of what you say. That is, if he isn't a cabman. You can't get an idea into a French cabman's head unless you work it in with a club. So I said to the fellow in the train: 'My friend! I haven't any time to waste in general conversation. I'm going to sleep, and I advise you to do the same. You can tell me all about your institutions and your revolutions and things in the morning.' And then I hove in the French word 'cochon,' which I supposed meant something like 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'

"The fellow staggered back as if I had hit him, and then he began to sling the whole French language at me. I calculate that he could have given Bob Ingersoll fifty points in a hundred and beaten him, and, as you know, Bob is the ablest vituperator now in the business. The Frenchman kept on raving and getting madder and madder every minute, and I saw that there wasn't the least doubt that he was a dangerous lunatic.

"I stood up and let him talk for a while, occasionally saying 'non comprenny' and 'cochon,' just to soothe him, but presently he came close to me and shook his fist in my face. This was too much, so I took him by the shoulders and slammed him down in a corner seat, and said, 'You sit there, sonny, and keep quiet, or you'll end by getting me to argue with you.' But the minute I let go of him he bounced up again as if he was made of India-rubber, and came at me just as a terrier will come at a horse, pretending that he is going to tear him into small pieces. So I slammed him down into his corner again, and said, 'This foolishness has gone far enough, and we'll have it stopped right here. Didn't you hear me say cochon? I'm going to cochon, and you'd better cochon, too, or I'll make you.'

"This time he jumped up as soon as I had let go of him and tried to hit me. Of course I didn't want to hit so small a chap, letting alone that he knew no more about handling his fists than the angel Gabriel, so I just took and twisted his arms behind his back and tied them with a shawl-strap. Then, seeing as he showed a reprehensible disposition to kick, I put another strap around his legs and stretched him on the seat with his bundle under his head. But kindness was thrown away on that Frenchman. He tried to bite me, and not content with spitting like a cat, he set up a yell that was the next thing to the locomotive whistle, and rolling off the seat tried to kick at me with both legs.

"I let him exercise himself for a few minutes, while I got my hair-brush and some twine out of my bag. Then I put him back on the seat, gagged him with the handle of the hair-brush, and lashed him to the arm of the seat so that he couldn't roll off. Then I offered him a drink, but he shook his head, not having any manners, in spite of what people say about the politeness of Frenchmen. Having secured my own safety and made the lunatic reasonably comfortable, I turned in and went to sleep. I must have slept very sound, for although the train stopped two or three times during the night, I never woke up until we pulled up for breakfast about eight o'clock the next morning. I sat up and looked at my lunatic, who was wide awake and glaring at me. I wished him good-morning, for I couldn't bear any grudge against a crazy man; but he only rolled his eyes and seemed madder than ever, so I let him lie and got out of the train.

"Two policemen were walking up and down the platform, and I took one of them by the arm and led him to the car, explaining what had happened. I don't know whether he understood or not, but he pretended that he didn't.

"As soon as he saw the lunatic there was a pretty row. He called two more policemen, and after they had ungagged the fellow they hauled us both before a magistrate who had his office in the railroad station. At least he acted like a magistrate, although he wore the same uniform as the policemen. Here the fellow I had travelled with was allowed to speak first, and he charged me, as I afterward found, with having first insulted and then assaulted him. He said he rather thought I was a lunatic, but at any rate he must have my blood. Then an interpreter was sent for, and I told my story, but I could see that nobody believed me.

"'Accused,' said the magistrate very sternly, 'you called this gentleman a pig. What was your motive?'

"Of course I swore that I had never called him a pig, that I hardly knew half a dozen words of his infamous language, and that I had used only one of those. Being asked what it was, I said 'cochon.' And then that idiot ordered me to be locked up.

THOMPSON'S TOMBSTONE.

We had just dined in the little Parisian restaurant where Americans are in the habit of going in order to obtain those truly French delicacies, pork and beans, buckwheat cakes, corned beef, apple pie, and overgrown oysters. I knew a man from Chicago who dined at this restaurant every day during the entire month spent by him in Paris, and who, at the end of that time, said that he was heartily sick of French cookery. Thus does the profound study of the manners and customs of foreign nations enlighten the mind and ripen the judgment.

The Colonel had finished his twelfth buckwheat cake and had lighted his cigar, when he casually and reprovingly remarked to young Lathrop, who, on principle, was disputing the bill with the waiter, that "he was making more trouble than Thompson's tombstone." Being called upon to explain this dark saying, he stretched his legs to their limit, tipped back his chair, knocked the ashes of his cigar among the remnants of his pork and beans, and launched into his story.

"In the town where I was raised--and I'm not going to give away the name of it at present--there were two brothers, James and John Thompson. They were twins and about forty years old, as I should judge. James was a bachelor and John he was a widower, and they were both pretty well to do in the world, for those times at least. John was a farmer and James was a wagon maker and owned the village hearse besides, which he let out for funerals, generally driving it himself, so that any profit that was to be made out of a melancholy occasion he could make without sharing it with anybody. Both the men were close-fisted, and would look at a dollar until their eyesight began to fail before they could bring themselves to spend it. It was this miserly spirit that brought about the trouble that I'm going to tell you of.

"After John Thompson had been a widower so long that the unmarried women had given up calling on him to ask his advice about the best way of raising money for the heathen, and had lost all expectation that any one of them would ever gather him in, he suddenly ups and marries Maria Slocum, who used to keep a candy store next door to the school-house and had been a confirmed old maid for twenty years. She had a little money, though, and folks did say that she could have married James Thompson if she had been willing to take the risk; but the fact that James always had the hearse standing in his carriage-house made him unpopular with the ladies. She took John because his views on infant baptism agreed with hers, and he took her because she had a good reputation for making pies and was economical and religious.

"The Thompson brothers owned burial lots in the new cemetery that were close together. James, of course, had, so far, no use for his lot, but John had begun to settle his by burying his first wife in about the middle of it. The lot was a good-sized one, with accommodation for a reasonably large family without crowding them, and without, at the same time, scattering them in any unsocial way. I don't know how it came about, but no sooner was John married than he took a notion to put up a tombstone over his first wife. He thought that as he was going to incur such an expense he would manage it so that he wouldn't have to incur it again; and so he got up a design for a combination family tombstone, and had it made, and carved, and lettered, and set up in his burial lot.

"Near the top of the stone was John Thompson's name, the date of his birth, and a blank space for the date of his death. Next came the name of 'Sarah Jane, beloved wife of the above,' and the date of her birth and death. Then came the name of 'Maria, beloved and lamented wife of the above John Thompson,' with the date of her birth and a space for the date of her death. You see, John worked in this little compliment about Maria being 'lamented' so as to reconcile her to having the date of her birth given away to the public. The lower half of the tombstone was left vacant so as to throw in a few children should any such contingency arise, and the whole advertisement ended with a verse of a hymn setting forth that the entire Thompson family was united in a better land above.

"The cost of the affair was about the same as that of one ordinary tombstone, the maker agreeing to enter the dates of John's death and of his wife's death free of charge whenever the time for so doing might arrive; and also agreeing to enter the names of any children that might appear at a very low rate. The tombstone attracted a great deal of attention, and the summer visitors from the city never failed to go and see it. John was proud of his stroke of economy, and used to say that he wasn't in danger of being bankrupted by any epidemic, as those people were who held that every person must have his separate tombstone. Everybody admitted that the Thompson tombstone gave more general amusement to the public than any other tombstone in the whole cemetery. Every summer night John used to walk over to his lot and smoke his pipe, leaning on the fence and reading over the inscriptions. And then he would go and take a fresh look at the Rogers' lot, where there were nine different tombstones, and chuckle to think how much they must have cost old man Rogers, who had never thought of a combination family tomb. In the course of about three years the inscriptions had grown, for there had been added the names of Charles Henry and William Everett Thompson, 'children of the above John and Maria Thompson,' and John calculated that with squeezing he could enter four more children on the same stone, though he didn't really think that he would ever have any call so to do.

"Well, a little after the end of the third year John's troubles began. He took up with Second Advent notions and believed that the end of the world would arrive, as per schedule, on the 21st of November, at 8:30 A.M. Maria said that this was not orthodox and that she wouldn't allow any such talk around her house. Both of them were set in their ways, and what with John expressing his views with his whip-handle and Maria expressing hers with the rolling-pin, they didn't seem to get on very well together, and one day Maria left the house and took the train to Chicago, where she got a divorce and came back a free and independent woman. That wasn't all: James Thompson now saw his chance. He offered to sell out the hearse business, and after waiting ten months, so as to give no opportunity for scandal, Maria married him.

"John didn't seem to mind the loss of his wife very much until it happened to occur to him that his combination family tombstone would have to be altered, now that Maria was not his wife any longer. He was a truthful man, and he felt that he couldn't sleep in peace under a tombstone that was constantly telling such a thumping lie as that Maria was resting in the same burying-lot and that she was his beloved wife, when, in point of fact, she was another man's wife and would be, at the proper time, lying in that other man's part of the cemetery. So he made up his mind to have the marble-cutter chisel out Maria's name and the date of her birth. But before this was done he saw that it wouldn't be the square thing so far as Charles Henry and William Everett were concerned. It would be playing it low down on those helpless children to allow that tombstone to assert that they were the children of John Thompson and some unspecified woman called Maria, who, whatever else she may have been, was certainly not John Thompson's wife. Matters would not be improved if the name of Maria were to be cut out of the line which stated the parentage of the children, for in that case it would appear that they had been independently developed by John, without the intervention of any wife, which would be sure to give rise to gossip and all sorts of suspicions.

"Of course the difficulty could have been settled by erasing from the tombstone all reference to Maria and her two children, but in that case a separate stone for the children would some day become necessary, and, what was of more consequence, John's grand idea of a combination tombstone would have to be completely abandoned. John was not a hasty man, and after thinking the matter over until the mental struggle turned his hair gray, he decided to compromise the matter by putting a sort of petticoat around the lower half of the tombstone, which would hide all reference to Maria and the children. This was easily done with the aid of an old pillow-case, and the tombstone became more an object of interest to the public than ever, while John, so to speak, sat down to wait for better times.

"Now, James had been thinking over the tombstone problem, and fancied that he had found a solution of it that would put money in his own pocket and at the same time satisfy his brother. He proposed to John that the inscription should be altered so as to read: 'Maria, formerly wife of John and afterward of James Thompson,' and that a hand should be carved on the stone with an index-finger pointing toward James' lot, and a line in small type saying, 'See small tombstone.' James said that he would pay the cost of putting up a small uninscribed stone in his own lot over the remains of Maria--waiting, of course, until she should come to be remains--and that John could pay the cost of altering the inscriptions on the large stone. The two brothers discussed this scheme for months, each of them being secretly satisfied with it, but John maintaining that James should pay all the expenses.

"This James would not do, for he reasoned that unless John came to his terms the combination tombstone would be of no good to anybody, and that if he remained firm John would come round to his proposal in time.

"There isn't the least doubt that this would have been the end of the affair, if it had not been that James chuckled over it so much that one day he chuckled a fishbone into his throat and choked to death on the spot. He was buried in his own lot, with nothing but a wooden headboard to mark the spot. His widow said that if he had been anxious to have a swell marble monument he would have made provision for it in his lifetime, and as he had done nothing of the kind, she could not see that she had any call to waste her money on worldly vanities.

"How did this settle the affair of the combination tombstone? I'm just telling you. You see, by this time the world had not come to an end, and John, who always hated people who didn't keep their engagements, seeing that the Second Adventists didn't keep theirs, left them and returned to the regular Baptist fold. When his brother died he went to the funeral, and did what little he could, in an inexpensive way, to comfort the widow. The long and short of it was that they became as friendly as they ever had been, and John finally proposed that Maria should marry him again. 'You know, Maria,' he said, 'that we never disagreed except about that Second Advent nonsense. You were right about that and I was wrong, as the event has proved, and now that we're agreed once more, I don't see as there is anything to hinder our getting married again.'

"Maria said that she had a comfortable support, and she couldn't feel that it was the will of Providence for her to be married so often, considering how many poor women there were who couldn't get a single husband.

"'Well,' continued John, 'there is that there tombstone. It always pleased you and I was always proud of it. If we don't get married again that tombstone is as good as thrown away, and it seems unchristian to throw away a matter of seventy-five dollars when the whole thing could be arranged so easy.'

"The argument was one which Maria felt that she could not resist, and so, after she had mourned James Thompson for a fitting period, she married John a second time, and the tombstone's reputation for veracity was restored. John and Maria often discussed the feasibility of selling James' lot and burying him where the combination tombstone would take him in, but there was no more room for fresh inscriptions, and besides, John didn't see his way clear to stating in a short and impressive way the facts as to the relationship between James and Maria. So, on the whole, he judged it best to let James sleep in his own lot, and let the combination tombstone testify only to the virtues of John Thompson and his family. That's the story of Thompson's tombstone, and if you don't believe it I can show you a photograph of the stone with all the inscriptions. I've got it in my trunk at this very moment, and when we go back to the hotel, if you remind me of it, I'll get it out."

A UNION MEETING.

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, "since you ask me what struck me most forcibly during my tour of England, and supposing that you want a civil answer to a civil question, I will say that the thing that astonished me more than anything else was the lack of religious enterprise in England.

"I have visited nearly every section of your country, and what did I find? Why, sir, in every town there was a parish church of the regulation pattern and one other kind of church, which was generally some sort of Methodist in its persuasion. Now, in America there is hardly a village which hasn't half a dozen different kinds of churches, and as a rule at least one of them belongs to some brand-new denomination, one that has just been patented and put on the market, as you might say. When I lived in Middleopolis, Iowa, there were only fifteen hundred people in the place, but we had six kinds of churches. There was the Episcopalian, the Methodist, the Congregational, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Unitarian, and the Unleavened Disciples church, not to mention the colored Methodist church, which, of course, we didn't count among respectable white denominations. All these churches were lively and aggressive, and the Unleavened Disciples, that had just been brought out, was as vigorous as the oldest of them. All of them were furnishing good preaching and good music, and striving to outdo one another in spreading the Gospel and raising the price of pew-rents. I could go for two or three months to the Presbyterian church, and then I could take a hack at the Baptists and pass half a dozen Sundays with the Methodists, and all this variety would not cost me more than it would have cost to pay pew-rent all the year round in any one church. And then, besides the preaching, there were the entertainments that each church had to get up if it didn't want to fall behind its rivals. We had courses of lectures, and returned missionaries, and ice-cream festivals till you couldn't rest. Why, although I am an old theatrical manager, I should not like to undertake to run a first-class American church in opposition to one run by some young preacher who had been trained to the business and knew just what the popular religious taste demanded. I never was mixed up in church business but once, and then I found that I wasn't in my proper sphere."

The Colonel chuckled slowly to himself, as his custom was when anything amused him, and I asked him to tell me his ecclesiastical experience.

"Well, this was the way of it," he replied. "One winter the leading citizens of the place decided to get up a series of union meetings. Perhaps you don't know what a union meeting is? I thought so. It bears out what I was saying about your want of religious enterprise. Well, it's a sort of monster combination, as we would say in the profession. All the churches agree to hold meetings together, and all the preaching talent of the whole of them is collected in one pulpit, and each man preaches in turn. Of course every minister has his own backers, who are anxious to see him do himself and his denomination credit, and who turn out in full force so as to give him their support. The result is that a union meeting will always draw, even in a town where no single church can get a full house, no matter what attractions it may offer.

"Now, a fundamental rule of a union meeting is that no doctrines are to be preached to which any one could object. The Baptist preacher is forbidden to say anything about baptism, and the Methodist can't allude to falling from grace in a union meeting. This is supposed to keep things peaceful and to avoid arguments and throwing of hymn-books and such-like proceedings, which would otherwise be inevitable.

"The union meetings had been in progress for three or four nights when I looked into the Presbyterian church, where they were held one evening, just to see how the thing was drawing. All the ministers in town, except the Episcopalian minister, were sitting on the platform waiting their cues. The Episcopalian minister had been asked to join in the services, but he had declined, saying that if it was all the same to his dissenting and partially Christian friends he would prefer to play a lone hand; and the colored minister was serving out his time in connection with some of his neighbors' chickens that, he said, had flown into his kitchen and committed suicide there, so he couldn't have been asked, even if the white ministers had been willing to unite with him.

"The Presbyterian minister was finishing his sermon when I entered, and soon as he had retired the Baptist minister got up and gave out a hymn which was simply crowded with Baptist doctrine. I had often heard it, and I remember that first verse, which ran this way:

"'I'd rather be a Baptist And wear a smiling face, Than for to be a Methodist And always fall from grace.'

"The hymn was no sooner given out than the Methodist minister rose and claimed a foul, on the ground that Baptist doctrine had been introduced into a union meeting. There was no manner of doubt that he was right, but the Baptists in the congregation sang the hymn with such enthusiasm that they drowned the minister's voice. But when the hymn was over there was just a heavenly row. One Presbyterian deacon actually went so far as to draw on a Baptist elder, and there would have been blood shed if the elder had not knocked him down with a kerosene lamp, and convinced him that drawing pistols in church was not the spirit of the Gospel. Everybody was talking at once, and the women who were not scolding were crying. The meeting was beginning to look like an enthusiastic political meeting in Cork, when I rapped on the pulpit and called for order. Everybody knew me and wanted to hear what I had to say, so the meeting calmed down, except near the door, where the Methodists had got a large Baptist jammed into the wood-box, and in the vestibule, where the Unitarians had formed a ring to see the Unitarian minister argue with an Unleavened Disciple.

"The idea was received with general enthusiasm, especially among the young persons present, and the objections made by a few hard-headed old conservatives were overruled. The next time singing was in order the Unitarian minister selected a familiar short-metre tune, and each minister told his private flock what hymn to sing to it. Everybody sang at the top of his or her lungs, and as nobody ever understands the words that anybody else is singing, there did not seem to be anything strange in the singing of six different hymns to the same tune. There was a moment when things were a little strained in consequence of the Presbyterians, who were a strong body, and had got their second wind, singing a verse about predestination with such vigor as partly to swamp their rivals, but I decided that there was no foul, and the audience, being rather tired with their exertions, settled down to listen to the next sermon.

"Well, I won't undertake to describe what followed. After about five minutes the Methodists didn't feel like singing any more. In fact, most of them were outside the meeting-house limping their way home, and remarking that they had had enough of 'thish yer fellowship with other churches' to last them for the rest of their lives. Inside the meeting-house the triumphant majority were passing resolutions calling me a depraved worldling, who, at the instigation of the devil, had tried to convert a religious assemblage into an Orange riot. Even the Unitarians, who always maintained that they did not believe in the devil, voted for the resolutions, and three of them were appointed on the committee charged with putting me out. I didn't stay to hear any more sermons, but I afterward understood that all the ministers preached at me, and that the amount of union displayed in putting the blame of everything on my shoulders was so touching that men who had been enemies for years shook hands and called one another brothers.

"Yes! we are an enterprising people in ecclesiastical matters, and I calculate that it will be a long time before an English village will see a first-class union meeting."

A CLERICAL ROMANCE.

"If you want to know my opinion of women-preachers," said the Colonel, "I can give it to you straight. They draw well at first, but you can't depend upon them for a run. I have had considerable experience of them, and at one time I thought well of them, but a woman, I think, is out of place in the pulpit.

"Although I never was a full member of the New Berlinopolisville Methodist church, I was treated as a sort of honorary member, partly because I subscribed pretty largely to the pastor's salary, the annual picnics, and that sort of thing, and partly because the deacons, knowing that I had some little reputation as a theatrical manager and was a man of from fair to middling judgment, used to consult me quietly about the management of the church. There was a large Baptist church in the same town, and its opposition was a little too much for us. The Baptist house was crowded every Sunday, while ours was thin and discouraging. We had a good old gentleman for a minister, but he was over seventy, and a married man besides, which kept the women from taking much interest in him; while his old-fashioned notions didn't suit the young men of the congregation. The Baptists, on the other hand, had a young unmarried preacher, with a voice that you could hear a quarter of a mile off, and a way of giving it to the Jews, and the Mormons, and other safe and distant sinners that filled his hearers with enthusiasm and offended nobody. It was growing more and more evident every day that our establishment was going behindhand, and that something must be done unless we were willing to close our doors and go into bankruptcy; so one day the whole board of trustees and all the deacons came round to talk the matter over with me.

"My mind was already made up, and I was only waiting to have my advice asked before giving it. 'What we want,' said I, 'is a woman-preacher. She'll be a sensation that will take the wind out of that Baptist windmill, and if she is good-looking, which she has got to be, I will bet you--that is, I am prepared to say--that within a fortnight there will be standing-room only in the old Methodist church.'

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