jLI PERKINS: ' ' ' Th jrty Years ofMt » • >• J>- p~t ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. o t,g/^2>0 sc-(Sas^/ ELI PERKINS THIRTY YEARS OF WIT AND REMINISCENCES OF WITTY WISE AND ELOQUENT MEN BY Melville D. Landon (ELI PERKINS) 1*99 XTbe Werner Company NEW YORK AKRON. OHIO CHICAGO Copyright 1891 BY Cassell Publishing Company Copyright 1899 BY THE WERNER COMPANY Perkins CONTENTS. It \9° PACE Acknowledgments and Thanks ix Reminiscences of Noted Men i Charles Sumner on Leibnitz and Kepler— Talks with Josh Billings, Sam Jones. Mark Twain, Danbury News Man, and Bill Arp. General Sherman's Anecdotes and Jokes 20 Sherman on John Phoenix, Win. R. Travers, General Scott, General Kilpatrick, Admiral Farragut, and General How- ard — His Joke on the Ghost Dancers, Garfield, the Irish Soldier, and Tennessee Women. Reminiscences of Wm. R. Travers 41 Travers's Joke on the Englishman — A. T. Stewart, Joe Mills, Henry Clews, Jay Gould, and August Belmont. Chauncey Depew's Best Stories 50 Depew on the Poughkeepsie Farm — Discussing Demand and Supply — The Crowded Connecticut Funeral — Absent- minded Daniel Drew — The Spotted Dog and Other Stories — Depew in Ireland — Fun with the Irish Girls — All of Depew's Stories. New Philosophy of Wit and Humor 69 Wit and Humor Distinctly Separated — Wit, Imagination ; Humor, the Truth — Wits and Humorists Classified — Mark Twain, Dickens, Will Carleton.Nasby, Josh Billings, Dan- bury News Man, Burdette — Pathos. Wild West Exaggerations 92 The Wit of Exaggeration — Wonderful Fishing and Hunting Stories — The Lying Tournament of the Press Club — West- ern Imagination — Wild Bill, Bill Nye, and Eli Compete. v VI CONTENTS. Satire Kills Error 106 The Great Satirists: Cervantes, Dean Swift, Juvenal, Nasby — Christ Uses Satire to Kill Error — Satirizing the Jury System — Satirizing Blustering Lawyers — Satirizing Society and the Dude — Satirizing the Agnostic — Satirizing Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Ingersoll — Satire in Politics Brings Letters from Blaine and President Harrison. Ridicule Kills Truth 139 Ridiculing Truth and Laughing it out of Court — Randolph Ridicules Clay — Ingersoll Ridicules Christianity — How to Meet Ridicule — Ridiculing Ritualism — Beecher Ridicules Bob — Ridicule a Lawyer's Weapon, not the Clergyman's — Christ Used Satire, but not Ridicule. Eli Explains Repartee 156 The Repartee of Diogenes and Aristippus of Greece, Talley- rand and Madame de Stael of France, Charles Lamb and Douglas Jerrold of England, and Tom Corwin, Randolph, Thad. Stevens, Sam Jones, Ben. Butler, Wendell Phillips, and Sam Cox of America — Blaine and Conkling's Repartee. Artemus Ward 168 The Father of American Humor — Personal Reminiscences — Where Eli Perkins Got his nam de plume — From the Maine Farm to Kensal Green — His original MSS. left to the Writer. Bill Nye in Laramie , 187 How he Introduced Perkins to an Audience — He Interviews an English Joker — He Writes his Biography for this Book. Children's Wit and Wisdom 194 They Make us Laugh and Cry— Child Theology— Ethel's Funny Blunders. Those Wicked, Wicked Boys 199 Their First Boots and First Pockets— That Naughty Uncle William — Grandma Loves them and Grandpa Makes a Fool of Himself. CONTENTS. Vll Story-telling Clergymen 204 Clerical Anecdotes by Dr Collyer, Lyman Abbott, Beecher, and Prof. Swing — Special Prayer, Baptism, and Close Com- munion Anecdotes — A Clerical Convention for Real Solid Fun. Doctors' Wit and Humor 223 General Sheridan Jokes Dr. Bliss — Dr. Hammond Cures Eli Perkins — Dr. Monson Knows it All — The Colored Doctor — The Irishman's Doctor. Eli with the Lawyers 230 Anecdotes of Choate, Ingersoll, and Evarts — Foraker's Joke on Dan Voorhees — Negro Judges in South Carolina — Challenging the Judge — Funny Verdicts. Evarts — Conkling — Governor Hill. ... 245 Many Legal Anecdotes — Depew Tells about Evarts and Bancroft — Evarts's Pig Pork — Chief Justice Wake on Conkling — W. S. Groesbeck and Senator Boutwell's Speeches at Johnson's Impeachment. Henry Ward Beeciier's Humor 251 He Makes Fun of his Poverty — His Joke on Dana — His Everyday Humorous Talk and Life. Gough's Wit and Pathos 256 His Fall and Rise — Many Gough Anecdotes — How He made his Audiences Weep and Laugh — Cigars in his Hat. A Night with Jolly Rebels 261 Eli Talks to Old Rebel Soldiers — Stories of old Zeb Vance, Fitz Hugh Lee, Judge Olds, Tom Allen, and Bob Toombs — The Pennsylvania Dutchman and Freedman Bureau School Marm. Political Anecdotes and Incidents 270 General Butler and Sam Cox — Geo. W. Curtis's Anti-climax — Garfield's Irishman — McKinley's Interruption — General Alger's Story on the Democrat — Blaine's Kilmaroo Story Via CONTENTS. — Eli on the Prohibitionist — Horr on the Mugwumps — Dan Voorhees on the Darky — Lincoln on Ben Wade — Yoorhees on Tanner — Ben Wade Disgraces a Democrat — Aristippus, the Greek Politician. Fi'N Up in Nova Scotia 282 Lecture Experiences in Acadia — Riding over Longfellow's Basin of Minas — Nova Scotia Potato Bugs — The Acadians Lie to Eli — Uncle Hank Allen's Biggest Potato Bug Story. Eli On Children's Wit and Blunders 286 Scientific Lecture before the Anthropological Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbia College, as reported in the World. From College to Cowboy 292 Funny Introductions — The College Senior Rattled — Lectur- ing on Gettysburg Battlefield — With the Cheyenne Cow- boys — Dead Shot Bill — A Joke or Your Life — Poker in the Cheyenne Sabbath School — Back to Sweet Berea — Lecturing a Princeton Foot-ball Team — Doubtful Compli- ment at Portsmouth — Why I Write Books. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND THANKS. DURING the last thirty years, while preparing this volume, the ^author has listened to thousands of anec- dotes, reminiscences, and funny experiences from the lips of the following witty, wise, and eloquent thinkers, now dead : Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln, Generals Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Kilpatrick, and Admiral Farragut ; Beecher, Conkling, Garfield, Geo. Bancroft, John B. Gough, Wendell Phillips, Wm. R. Travers, August Bel- mont, Prof. Proctor, Ben. Wade, Robt. Toombs, Thad. Stevens, Artemus Ward, Nasby, Josh Billings, Ben: Perlcy Poore, John G. Saxe. The following living thinkers will recognize many stories and anecdotes which they have told to me, and will receive my thanks : Dr. Colyer, Talmage, Lyman Abbott, Dwight L. Moody, Bishop H. C. Potter, Sam Jones, Prof. Swing, ex-Gov. A. G. Curtin, Gen. Butler, R. G. Ingcrsoll, Chauncey M. Depcw, Wm. M. Evarts, General Alger, Dr. Hammond, Horace Porter, Chief Justice Fuller, Daniel Dougherty, Dan'l Voorhics, ex-Gov. Foraker, G. W. Curtis, Proctor Knott, Fitz Hugh Lee, General Howard, John Wanamaker, Jay Gould, Roswell G. Horr, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Will Carleton, Eugene Field, Mark Twain, J. W. Riley, Bret Harte, Alex. IX x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND THANKS. Sweet, John Habberton, Geo. W. Cable, and George Thatcher. I have also used the best wit transcribed by others from the lips of Tom Corwin, Randolph, Seba Smith, Tom Hood, Chas. Lamb, Dickens, Thackeray, Talley- rand, Cervantes, Dean Swift, Juvenal, Aristippus, and Diogenes. The author desires to acknowledge the inspiration and aid he has received from the pens of the following makers of American wit and humor: "Josh Billings"— Henry W. Shaw. " Andrew Jack Downing " — Seba R. Smith. " Artemus Ward " — Charles Farrar Browne. "Bill Arp"— Charles H. Smith. " Gath " — George Alfred Townsend. " Fat Contributor "—A. Miner Griswold. " Hawkeye Man " — Robert J. Burdette. " Howadjii " — George William Curtis. " Ik Marvel "—Donald Grant Mitchell. "John Paul"— Charles H. Webb. " John Phoenix " — Capt. George H. Derby. " Mark Twain " — Samuel L. Clemens. " Max Adler "—Charles H. Clark. " Petroleum V. Nasby " — David Ross Locke, " Bill Nye "—Edgar W. Nye. " Danbury News Man "— Jas. M. Bailey. "Old Si "—Samuel W. Small. "Orpheus C. Kerr "—Robert H. Newell. " Miles O'Reilly "—Charles G. Halpin. " Peter Parley "— H. C. Goodrich. " Ned Buntline "—Col. Judson. " Brick Pomeroy " — M. M. Pomeroy. " Josiah Allen's Wife "—Marietta Holley. " Doesticks " — Mortimer M. Thompson. " Mrs. Partington " — Benj. P. Shillaber. " Spoopendyke " — Stanley Huntley. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND THANKS. xl " Uncle Remus " — Joel Chandler Harris. " Hosea Bigelow " — James Russell Lowell. " Fanny Fern " — Sara Payson Willis. " Grand Father Lickshingle "—Robert W. Criswell. " M. Quad " — Charles B. Lewis. The object of the book is to give the people the best anecdotes, the best wit and humor, and the brightest sayings of the nineteenth century, and to transmit them to posterity. Melville D. Laxdon, "Eli Perkins." 208 West End Avenue, New York. ELI PERKINS-THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. REMINISCENCES OF NOTED MEN. Charles Sumner on Leibnitz and Kepler — Talks with Josh Billings, Sam Jones, Mark Twain, Danbury News Man, and Bill Arp. MY first intention was to write an autobiography, for I have had an eventful life. But biography is always dry, while reminiscences, jokes, and anecdotes are al- ways charming. So I toss aside the autobiography and commence with the more humorous and entertaining auto-reminiscences and quaint laugh-provoking inci- dents which I have witnessed. If the reader really wants to know the history of the writer he will find it condensed below in a foot note, as given in Spofford's 'Library of American Writers."* * A. R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, in his " Library of American Writers," gives this biography of Mr. Landon : Melville D. Landon (Eli Perkins), was born in Eaton, N. Y., in 1840, passed the Sophomore year at Madison University, and graduated at Union College in 1861. The next week after graduating Secretary Chase gave him an appointment in the U. S. Treasury. After Sumpter was fired upon Mr. Landon assisted in organizing and served in the Clay Battalion. Resigning from the Treasury he went on to General A. L. Chetlain's 2 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. I can hardly recall the name of a distinguished man in America that I have not met. I remember of talk- ing with Wm. H. Seward in 1861, while he swung in a hammock in the back yard of his Lafayette Square house — the very house where Sickles killed Philip Bar- ton Key and which is now occupied by Secretary Blaine. Senator Sumner lived then just across on the corner, and he was always delighted to talk with college boys. I remember how Sumner had three hobbies, and they were a cosmopolite decimal currency, cosmopolite decimal weights and measures, and a cosmopolite lan- guage — that is, a common language for all diplomats. Then he used to tell us a story about how Leibnitz went to the great philosopher Kepler to show him a cosmopolite sign language. staff in Memphis. In 1864 he resigned from the army and engaged in cotton planting in Arkansas and Louisiana ; the last year culti- vating 1 700 acres. In 1867 Mr. Landon went abroad, traveling over Europe into Russia and down the Volga into Kazan. While in Russia he was chosen by General Cassius M. Clay, then Minister to Russia, as Sec- retary of Legation to St. Petersburg. On returning to America, in 1870, his first public writing was a history of the Franco-Prussian war, published by G. W. Carleton, following it with numerous humorous writings for the public press under the nom de plume of " Eli Perkins." His humorous writings in the Commercial Advertiser in 1872 made his fame world-wide. Under the name of " Eli Perkins " he has published several books, among them " Saratoga in 1901," Sheldon & Co.; " Wit, Humor, and Pathos," Belford Clark Co.; "Wit and Humor of the Age," Western Publishing House, Chicago, and " Kings of Platform and Pulpit," Belford Clark Co., Chicago. The grandfather of the hu- morist was Rufus Landon, a revolutionary soldier from Litchfield County, Connecticut, where his father, John Landon, was born Mr. Landon resides at 208 West End Avenue, New York. REMINISCENCES OF NOTED At EN. 3 "Leibnitz arrived at Kepler's house," said Sumner, "and asked him to send him some smart, shrewd old philosopher, and with him he would illustrate his new cosmopolite language. When the old philosopher (who was old Jim the fisherman) came, Leibnitz told Kepler that he would hold a philosophical discussion with him in his new language of signs. "When old Jim came, Leibnitz held up one finger, to denote one God. "Then old Jim held up two fingers, while Leibnitz rubbed his hands in great glee, saying, 'See! he under- stood me. He means there is a plurality of gods. Mag- nifique /' "Leibnitz now held up three fingers to denote the Trinity; and old Jim put up his fist with his fingers all together, while Leibnitz said, 'He means the three in one — Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Beautiful!' "Leibnitz now handed old Jim an apple, to denote the 'fallen state of man,' and old Jim, much to Leib- nitz's surprise, held up a broken cracker. 'Splendid,' said Leibnitz, looking triumphantly at Kepler. 'Why, when I hand him the apple to de- note the "fallen state of man," he hands me a cracker to denote the "Bread of Life." Wonderful !* "The next day," said Sumner, "Kepler called old Jim to him and asked him how he came to understand Leibnitz so well. 'Why, the man's a fool,' exclaimed old Jim. 'He's crazy and he insulted me !' " 'What did he say to you,' asked Kepler. 'He held up one finger to denote that I had but one eye ; and I held up two fingers to denote that my one eye was better than his two.' 4 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. '"What then, Jim?' ' He held up three fingers to indicate that with my wooden leg I'd had three legs, and then I doubled up my fist and said I'll have no more of that.' " 'And then?' 'Why, the crazy rascal took out an apple to de- note that I ground nothing but apples in my mill ; but I showed him a cracker to prove to him that I ground the best flour in England.' " What a transformation from Sumner and Leibnitz to Josh Billings — but I love an antithesis. Josh Billings — what a wonderful character! I can see the old man now, with his long hair and tall, lank form leaning around on the book counters at Carleton's. G. W. Carleton's, under the Fifth Avenue Hotel, was the rendezvous of all the humorists. There you would meet Bill Arp, and Burdette, and Nasby, and Artemus Ward, for Carleton published all of their books. Carleton is a humorist himself, and his illus- trated book on Cuba has proved his inspiration. One day I was talking with Uncle Josh at Carleton's. During the conversation a beautiful young lady came in with a bundle of manuscript, and stepping up to the publisher hesitated a moment, and then said: "Mr. Carleton?" 'Yes, madame, what can I do for you?" "I want to get you to print a book for me." 'You mean publish your book, don't you?" asked Mr. Carleton. 'Well, now, what is the difference between printing and publishing a book?" asked the young lady, REMINISCENCES OF NOTED MEN. 5 opening her eyes bewilderingly, as young ladies often do. "Why, the difference between publishing and print- ing," said Mr. Carleton, "is simply this: If I should print a kiss on a beautiful young lady's check it would simply be private printing; but if I should go out and tell the whole world about it, that would be publish- ing, and the meanest kind of publishing, too." "I should think so," said the young lady. Carleton is now in Japan, and having no fear of him, I publish, for the first time, one of his poems, which he used to read to us with a very sad and mournful voice. Tis only an infant pippin, Growing on a limb ; 'Tis only a typical small boy, Who devours it with a vim. 'Tis only a doctor's carriage, Standing before the door; But why go into details — The service begins at four. While in Saratoga, a year before Josh Billings died, we went up to my room and spent an entire afternoon on an interview. The interview was a mutual production, and was not to be published till he died. I now give it to the public. "Mr. Billings," I commenced, "where were you edu- cated ?" "Pordunk, Pennsylvania." "How old are you?" "I was born 150 years old — and have been growing young ever since." "Are you married?" ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF IVIT. Once." How many children have you?" Doublets." What other vices have you?" None." Have you any virtues?" Several." What are they?" I left them up at Poughkeepsie." Do you gamble?" When I feel good." What is your profession?" Agriculture and alminaxing." How do you account for your deficient knowledge in spelling?" Bad spells during infancy, and poor memory." What things are you the most liable to forget?" Sermons and debts." What professions do you like best?" Auctioneering, base-ball, and theology." Do you smoke?" Thank you, I'll take a Partaga first." What is your worst habit?" The coat I got last in Poughkeepsie." What are your favorite books?" My alminack and Commodore Vanderbilt's pocket- book." What is your favorite piece of sculpture?" The mile stone nearest home." What is your favorite animal?" The mule." Why?" Because he never blunders with his heels." REMINISCENCES OF NOTED MEN. 7 "What was the best thing said by our old friend Artemus Ward?" "All the pretty girls in Utah marry Young.'" "Do you believe in the final salvation of all men?" "I do — let me pick the men !" In the evening Josh and I reviewed the interview, and pronounced it faithfully rendered, and then he gave me the following specimen of his handwriting: dha/rt. 12. 2. Thunps isn 7/vls ywrLcC [fur TrAccA >ve curt rwwv- /u/fy fillOJtz izvKbp uvuLMmy'^a.'f /rapt — Tfieyrn&ki. ^7wa^MrQffal& 8 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. The nicest rebels I ever met were "Bill Arp," the Southern humorist, Sam Jones, and Fitz Hugh Lee. "Bill Arp," whose real name is Chas. H. Smith, of Car- tersville, Ga., was just as good a rebel as Alex. H Stevens, or Robert Toombs, or John B. Floyd ; but when I found him on his Cartersville farm, he was fully reconstructed. Speaking of Bill Arp's age to the Rev. Sam Jones, his neighbor, he said : ' ' Why, Bill's sixty years old. He's got nine children of his own, and if he a'nt the father of American hu- morists it isn't his fault." "Is Bill really reconstructed?" I asked Mr. Jones. "Yes, Bill has been born again. He repented, but Floyd and Toombs were never reconstructed. They died with their Confederate war paint on, and with their coffins wrapped in the old red and white flag of the Confederacy. "Robert Toombs and John B. Floyd," said Sam, "were both members of Jeff Davis's cabinet. Once they were talking of where they would like to be buried. It was after the war, and, notwithstanding defeat, each loved Jeff Davis and the Confederacy. They had been reading letters from R. Barnwell Rhett, John Slidell, and Henry A. Wise, brother cabinet officers. " 'When I die,' said Floyd, very seriously, T wish I could be buried right under that Confederate monu- ment in Richmond.' " 'What for?' asked Toombs. " 'Because I want my last sweet rest to be where a Yankee will never come.' " T would be buried there, too,' said Toombs, 'but I hate the devil worse than I hate a Yankee, and REMINISCENCES OF NOTED MEN. 9 I almost wish I could be buried in the colored cemetery.' "'Wha— what for?' asked Floyd, deeply surprised. "'Because,' said Toombs, ' the devil will never trouble me there. He'd never think of looking for an old rebel Democrat in a colored graveyard !' When I asked Bill Arp one day if he really killed many Yankees, he said : "Well, I don't want to boast about myself, but I killed as many of them as they did of me." Speaking of pensions one day, Mr. Arp said: "Every Yankee soldier ought to have a pension." "But they were not all injured in the army, were they?" I asked. "Yes, they all did so much hard lying about us poor rebels that they strained their consciences." Fitz Hugh Lee told me a good story about " Bill Arp." "In the summer of 1863," said Fitz Hugh, 'Bill Arp— we called him Major Smith then— was in the Rich- mond Hospital. The hospital was crowded with sick and dying soldiers and the Richmond ladies visited it daily, carrying with them delicacies of every kind, and did all they could to cheer and comfort the suffer- ing. On one occasion a pretty miss of sixteen was distributing flowers and speaking gentle words of en- couragement to those around her, when she overheard a soldier exclaim : 'Oh, my Lord !' "It was Bill Arp. "Stepping to his bedside to rebuke him for his profan- ity, she remarked: 'Didn't I hear you call upon the name of the Lord ? 1 am one of his daughters. Is there anything I can ask him for you?' "Looking up into her bright, sweet face, Bill replied : io ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. 'I don't know but you could do something for me if I wasn't married.' " 'Well,' said she, 'what is it?' "Raising his eyes to hers and extending his hand, he said, 'As you are a daughter of the Lord, if I wasn't married, I'd get you to ask him if he wouldn't make me his son-in-law.' " A friend of mine, a writer on the New York Sun, told me how Bill Arp happened to surrender. 'You know," he said, "Major Munson had charge of the Dalton district, in Georgia, when the humorist sur- rendered. It was a hard thing for him to do it, and it took him a week or two to come down to it, but he fin- ally laid down his sword. " 'Most of the "Confeds" came in very quietly,' said the major, 'and seemed glad to have the thing settled, but once in a while I struck a man who hated to come under. One day a big, handsome man, with tangled hair, and with Virginia red mud on his boots, came in to talk about surrendering. It was Bill Arp. " ' " Doggone it, sir," he began, in the Georgia dialect, "I have come in, sir, to see what terms can be secured in case I surrender." " ' "Haven't you surrendered yet?" I inquired. "'"No, sir! Not by a doggone sight! I said I'd die in the last ditch, and I've kept my word." " ' "Whose company did you belong to?" " ' " Belong ! Belong ! Thunderation ! I didn't belong to any one's company ! Why, sir, I fought on my own hook." "Where was it?" " ' "No matter, sir; no matter. What are your best terms? Out with it!" REMINISCENCES OF' NO TED MEN. I 1 " ' "Unconditional surrender," I said. Terms don't suit," said Bill. "Unconditional? No, sir; I'll surrender to Spain or Mexico. You can't crush me. I can be insulted, but not crushed. Good- day, sir. I'll see the United States weep tears of blood before I'll surrender. Haven't a card, but my name is Arp— Colonel Bill Arp." " 'He went off, but in about a week he returned and began : " ' "As the impression seems to be general that the Southern Confederacy has been crushed, I called to see what terms would be granted me in case I concluded to lay down my sword." " ' "Unconditional surrender," I briefly replied. " ' "Then, doggone it, sir, I'll never lay it down while life is left. The cause is lost, but principle remains. You can inform General Sheridan that Bill Arp refuses to surrender." " 'Colonel Arp returned two weeks later. He seemed to have had a hard time of it, as his uniform was in rags and his pockets empty. " ' " Look a-here, Captain," he said, as he came in, " I don't want to prolong this bloody strife, but am fo'ced to do so by honor. If accorded reasonable terms, I might surrender. What do you say?" " ' "The same as before." " ' "Then you are determined to grind us to powder, eh ? Sooner than submit. I'll shed the rest of my blood ! Send on your armies, Captain. I am ready for 'em!" " 'Just a week from that day, Colonel Arp came in again, said he'd like to surrender, drew his rations with the rest, and went off in great good-humor to his Car- tcrsville farm,' " 12 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. Mark Twain can tell a humorous story as if it were a funeral dirge. I met him once with a party. Each had told a sea story and Mark was asked to tell one too. "A true story?" asked the humorist. "Why, of course." "Well, gentlemen," he commenced, with that won- derful drawl, "I was once crossing the Atlantic on one of the stanchest ships of the Anchor line. We had ridden for days in an utter calm. One day, when we were all fanning ourselves, telling anecdotes, and narrating religious experiences, a terrible storm broke over the vessel. Billows mountains high dashed over us, the rudder was torn off, the masts fell, the waters roared in torrents through the scuppers, and then all of a sudden the ship settled, lunged forward on her beam ends, and sank out of sight in sixty fathoms of water, every soul on board going down with her." After the wonder had somewhat subsided, Joaquin Miller, the poet, came up to the humorist and said : "You did not tell us how you escaped, Mr. Twain." "I didn't escape!" exclaimed Mark, "I was drowned with the rest." Mr. David Welcher tells me that Mark Twain, when in a good humor, told him the story of his courtship, and how he won his beautiful and wealthy wife. She was a Miss Langdon of Elmira. When Mark first met her, he was not so distinguished as now; his origin was humble, and for some years of his life he had been a pilot on the Mississippi River. The future Mrs. Clemens was a woman of position and fortune ; her father was a judge, and doubtless expected "family" and social importance in his son-in-law. Clemens> how- REMINISCENCES OF NOTED .VEX. 1 3 ever, became interested in his daughter, and after a while proposed, but was rejected. "Well," he said to the lady, "I didn't much believe you'd have me, but I thought I'd try." After ;i while he "tried" again, with the same result ; and then remarked, with his celebrated drawl, "I think a great deal more of you than if you'd said 'Yes,' but it's hard to bear." A third time he met with better fortune, and then came to the most difficult part of his task — to address the old gentleman. "Judge," he said to the dignified millionaire, "have you seen anything going on between Miss Lizzie and me?" "What? What?" exclaimed the judge, rather sharply, apparently not understanding the situation, yet doubtless getting a glimpse of it from the inquiry. "Have you seen anything going on between Miss Lizzie and me?" "No, indeed," replied the magnate sternly. "No, sir, I have not." "Well, look sharp and you will," said the author of "Innocents Abroad"; and that's the way he asked the judicial luminary for his daughter's hand. And Mark, to this day, has never ceased to con- gratulate himself on the shrewd and business-like man- ner that he conducted his case, and, like a clever diplo- mat won a wise judge and a lovely wife at the same time. What of Sam Jones? Sam Jones lives in Cartersville, Ga., and is a neighbor of Bill Arp. Mr. Jones told me that he was once a 14 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. lawyer, but he says he afterward repented and became a Methodist clergyman. One day I asked Mr. Jones why he was a prohibi- tionist. "Because," he said, "to be a Christian you must be a prohibitionist. I don't mean a third party man ; but you must be a man that is against everything that favors whisky, and in favor of everything that is against it. "The fact is," continued Sam, "this whisky question has got to be settled. There was lots of blood spilled in this country to make free men out of 4,000,000 slaves, and I don't see anything wrong in a little more blood being spilled to save the women and children from the misery and sufferings that result from this damnable traffic. I don't care when the fight comes. I am willing to get at the head of the procession with my rifle." Mr. Jones makes a great deal of money out of his lectures, but not so much out of his preaching; still he has very little love for money. "Are you saving your money?" I asked the revivalist one day on the train. "Saving my money!" he exclaimed, "what for? Why, a man who saves money is a miser. Christ didn't have a bank account. Josh Billings says the old miser that has accumulated his millions and then sits down with his millions at last, without any capacity for enjoying it, reminds him of a fly that has fallen into a half-barrel of molasses. There you've got the picture just as complete as Josh Billings ever drew a picture. "No, sir," continued Sam, "I never had much REMINISCENCES OF NOTED MEN. <5 money — never will, I reckon. I saw in the papers some time ago where a man had died in North Carolina and left Sam Jones a wonderful legacy — and all that sort of thing. I was at home at the time. Several of my friends ran up with the paper, and said : " 'Sam, did you see this?' 'Yes.' " 'What are you going to do about it?' 'I ain't going to do anything.' 'Well, I'd write on and tell them where you are.' 'No sir,' said I, 'I am getting on right well without a legacy, and God knows what I'd do if I had one. I am getting on so well without one that I don't want to fool with one. '"Don't you see? I want you all to have legacies and live in fine houses, and I will go around and take dinner with you, and let you pay the taxes and servants, and I will enjoy the thing. Don't you see? That is a good idea, ain't it?' "If I get wealth without religion," continued Sam thoughtfully, "why, I'll be poor in the next world. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man that ever bade America good-by, and stepped into eternity. He turned to his oldest boy and passed $75,000,000 into his hands; $25,000,000 additional he turned over to the rest of his heirs, and then, in his last moments, turned to his Christian wife and asked her: 'Wife, please sing Come, ye sinners, poor and needy ; Weak and wounded, sick and sore.' "The richest man that America ever produced ask- ing his wife to sing the song of a beggar!" 1 6 ELI PERKINS-THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. I do not think there is a man living who can use as strong English as Sam Jones, or, rather, as strong Saxon. The great but pedantic Dr. Johnson once said, speaking of one of Addison's essays: "There is not virtue enough in it to preserve it from putrefac- tion." Sam Jones would have said in his bold Saxon: "There ain't wit enough in it to keep it sweet." One day, when the reporters had been criticising the revi- valist's Saxon language, he became indignant, and said : "Do you want my opinion of these reporters who abuse our meetings?" Yes. "Well, in my humble opinion, I will be in heaven when these miserable little reporters who malign me are sitting on one ear in hell, trying to keep cool by fanning themselves with the other." "Do they ever answer back to you from the audience when you talk so savagely?" I asked. "Yes, often. Every now and then a burnt sinner will squeal. Sometimes they get a good joke on me, too. One day, in St. Louis," continued the preacher, laughing, "an awful funny thing happened. I had been attacking the gamblers and drunkards for an hour, and I said a drunkard is lower than a dog. "Just then a shabby, blear-eyed man arose trem- blingly, and started to leave the church. " 'Stop! young man,' I said. 'Stop!' "The young man stood still, with a thousand eyes on him. "If you'd rather go to hell than hear me preach just go on !' 'Well,' replied the man, after a pause, T believe I'd rather. And out he went. REMINISCENCES OF NOTED MEN. 17 "Ha! ha! ha!" chuckled Sam, "it was a good one, wasn't it? "The very next night," continued the preacher, "I saw the same man in the audience. By and bye I saw him standing up. "'Well,' said I kindly, 'what do you want, my man?' "'I want to know, Elder, if you think you can get the devil out of me?' " 'Oh, yes,' I said, 'but I don't think it would im- prove you any. The little left would be worse than the devil.' " "I suppose you learn a good deal from your audiences?" I suggested. "Oh, yes. A good old Christian lady rose one night and said she had got repentance. "'Do you know what true repentance is, mother?' I asked. " 'Yes. It is being sorry for your meanness and feel- ing that you ain't going to do it any more.' " 'That's the best definition of repentance I ever heard in my life, mother,' I said. 'That is repentance. Good Lord, I am so sorry for my meanness that I don't intend to do it any more. And now, mother,' said I, 'do you know what true religion is?' "'Yes.' " 'What?' '"It's this,' said the old lady: 'If the Lord will just forgive me for it, I won't want to do it any more.' " 'Right, mother!' said I. 'There is repentance and religion in a nutshell, so every man in the world can get hold of it.' " 1 8 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. The Danbury News Man — have I met him? Yes, and have letters from him. In fact, I published his lecture, "England from a Back Window," in my "Kings of Platform and Pulpit." Mr. Bailey — James Montgomery Bailey is his full name — told me that he was born in Albany, N. Y., in 1 84 1 ; he fought through the war in a Connecticut regiment, and afterward made himself famous writing for the Danbury News. Mr. Bailey's wit has a delicious mental flavor. In fact, it is always the shrewd, thoughtful man who en- joys it. It is not in long, inane dialogues, but a flash of thought. The humorist says a poor man came to him with tears in his eyes one day, asking for help for his destitute and starving children. "What do you need most?" asked Mr. Bailey. "Well, we need bread, but if I can't have that I'll take tobacco." One day a solemn and religious Danbury man hailed a charcoal peddler with the query: "Have you got charcoal in your wagon?" 'Yes, sir," said the expectant driver, stopping his horses. 'That's right," observed the religious man, with an approving nod, "always tell the truth and people will respect you." And then he closed the door just in time to escape a brick hurled by the wicked peddler. "Speaking of lazy men," said Mr. Bailey, "we have a man in Danbury so lazy that instead of shoveling a path to the front gate he pinches the baby's ear with the nippers till the neighbors come rushing in to tread down the snow." REMINISCENCES OF NOTED MEN. 19 A Danbury man was bargaining for a house of old McMastcrs, and asked him if the house was cold. "Cold," said the old man cautiously, "I can't say as to that ; it stands out doors." Speaking of the Indian raids, says Bailey: "The Modocs have made another raid on our people, and murdered them. If ever our government gets hold of these savages, gets them right where they cannot escape, gets them wholly into its clutches — some con- tractor will make money." Mr. Bailey's humor also consists in truthful descrip- tions of domestic life. His descriptions are so true that they are absolutely photographed on the mind of the reader. One can close his eyes and see with his mind's eye the very scenes depicted. GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES AND JOKES. Sherman on John Phoenix, Wm. R. Travers, General Scott, General Kilpatrick, Admiral Farragut, and General Howard — His Joke on the Ghost Dancers, Garfield, the Irish Soldier, and Tennessee Women. WHILE preparing my book "Kings of Platform and Pulpit," I had a good many pleasant talks with General Sherman. Our houses were near each other (the general living at 75 West Seventy-first Street, and my house being 208 West End Avenue). Then again I was on General A. L. Chetlain's staff in Memphis, when the general was making his march to the sea. I had met General Sherman often in war time and knew many of our Western generals ; knew all about the social and political status of Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina, and General Sherman was glad to talk over his old war reminiscences and jokes with any one who could appreciate his stories. General Sherman was the brightest man I ever met. He was always gleeful. He had been with Lieutenant George H. Derby (John Phoenix) in San Diego away back in the forties, and really brought the genius of the San Diego humorist to the knowledge of the public. That was the commencement of American humor. Afterward came Jack Downing, Lowell's Bigelow Papers, Ward, Billings, Twain, Nye, and the rest. GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 21 One day, after the general had told several good stories, I begged him to let me publish them in the book which 1 was then writing. "No, no!" he said. "I want to keep them for my private friends. You know I dine out about as much as Depew, and they always expect a new story." As soon as my book was out, containing a few of the general's stories, with the hundreds of others, he sent me this letter — about the last rolicksomc letter he ever wrote : ^Lw^. . Ah. ^^j^, i7 (&;/Ljb^j &l Ay £-~b- h*~~ /c^r' cstti^ , / O -y/ ' / / r— > *- ' r 22 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF W IT. UrXLr-r~- ^.^ cr??zix_^_, erf / ^ ^^ • , r-- - /• £-if/L&z^ s~L*-- c^tsQ. e*~~~, A*- ^L -_ 4^- - /^~£7 __ t2^i~^^~- / / ** — fvJu>, ^~~y UT^U, o/. GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 23 As George Alfred Townsend said of Miles O'Riley, "there was a splendid boyishness" about Sherman. He was always ready with a pun, a sparkling bit of repartee, or a strong thought — a very David with the sword and tongue. "One of my happiest hits," said the general, a week before death called him away, "was the way I man- aged those Charleston rebels when they asked me if they couldn't put Jeff Davis's name in the prayer-book, and pray for the Confederate President in their churches. " 'Want to pray for Jeff Davis, do you?' I asked. " 'Yes; we can't pray for Lincoln.' 'Well,' said I, 'just you go and pray for old Jeff- He needs it /' " 'Did they continue to pray for Jeff?" I asked. "Oh, I don't know; but if they did their prayers weren't answered. Perhaps they were offset by the prayers of the negroes. The negroes were always loyal. Until the army arrived they had never heard ^4 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. us called by any other name than Yankees, and the rebels always added the expletive 'damn' to us. That is, they always called us 'Damn Yankees.' One night one of my staff officers heard the negroes praying, and one old negro ended up his prayer with a hearty : '0 Lord, bress de damn Yankees — guide them to us !' "Another negro," continued the general, "prayed like this : 'O Lord, we bress you for senden' us Gin'ral Sher- man. He's one of us, O Lord. He may have a white skin, but he's got a black heart.' "If the rebels prayed for us," said the general, "they prayed for us as Mr. Travers once bet on John Morrissey's horse. Mr. Morrissey believed in the theory 'like-me, like-my-dog,' and believed every one of his friends was in duty bound to bet on his horse at the Saratoga races. One day he asked Travers to bet on his horse, and the stammering banker promised to do it. The next day Morrissey's horse lost the race, and the man who had whipped Heenan came up to Travers all humiliation. 'I'm sorry, Mr. Travers,' he said, 'that you lost on my horse — very sorry.' 'YV-w-why, I d-d-didn't lose,' said Travers. ' 'Then you didn't bet on him, after all,' said Morrissey, with an injured look. 'Y-y-yes, I b-bet on him, b-b-but — I bet he'd lo-lo- ose ! A month before the general died we had the ghost dance war in the West. The Indians were having their ghostly dances in Dakota, and the report had come in GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 25 that General Miles's men had killed Sitting Bull near the Pine Ridge Agency. " Been killing more Indians out West again, General," I remarked, handing him a newspaper. "Yes, the newspapers kill a good many Injuns. They kill more than the troops do. Why, if we killed half as many Injuns as the newspapers do, we'd be- short of Injuns !" "Is it right to kill these Indians:-" I asked. "Dancing Injuns, ain't they? Ghost dancers?" "Yes." "Well now, Eli," said the general, with mock gravity, "hasn't Sam Jones, and Moody, and the entire Metho- dist Church been trying to break up dancing for years? Of course they haven't succeeded. Now I'm glad that the strong arm of the government has at last united with the Church and taken hold of this dancing question. I hope General Miles will kill or convert every dancer west of the Mississippi, and then I hope the Secretary of War will call on General Howard to arrest the dancers, white or Injun, in the east— in New York and Philadelphia. I tell you, Eli, dancing and chicken stealing must be stopped in this country." When we consider that the only thing Sitting Bull and the Sioux Indians had done to bring on the last war was to dance, ami that all the army did was to stop that dancing, we can appreciate the satire of the general. "That was a terrible satire on the army that the news- paper paragraphs put into Sitting Bull's mouth the day before they killed him," continued the general. "What was it, General?" I asked, much amused, for 26 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. I wrote the satire myself and had used it a thousand times. "Well, the wicked paragrapher said that when Sitting Bull was under arrest they asked him if he had any great grievance? "The old soldier killer, who was in the Custer mas- sacre, was silent. But by and bye he clutched his toma- hawk and said: 'Indian very sensitive. Indian no like being lied about. If Indian ever get back to the white man again, he'll scalp the white-livered son of a gun who's been telling around that Sitting Bull graduated at West Point: " The fun-loving general was apparently as serious about dancing as he was about chicken stealing in the army, as illustrated in the following story : "While at Bowling Green," said General Veatch, who commanded at Memphis previous to General Chetlain, ' ' the rebel women bothered us to death. It was always the same old complaint — ' the soldiers have milked our cows, or stolen our chickens, or "busted" into the smoke house.' Always the same story through Tennes- see and Georgia. At Chattanooga the rebel women seemed to bore Sherman to death. "One morning a tall, hatchet-faced woman, in a faded butternut sunbonnet, besieged the general's head- quarters. " 'Well, my good lady, what can I do for you?' in- quired the general, as she hesitated at his tent entrance. "'My chickens, Gen ' " 'Sh — , Madame!' broke in the general. T have made up my mind, solemnly and earnestly, that the integrity of the Constitution and the unity of this re,- GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 27 public shall be maintained, if it takes every — every chicken in Tennessee ! General Sherman was marching with his army through the mountain gaps of East Tennessee. The people there are generous, but very ignorant and nat- ural. "It was the center of civilization — for clay eaters and bad roads," said the general. "That day," con- tinued the general, "we were inarching through Claiburn County, at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains, when I met a dear good old lady with a snuff stick in her mouth. " 'Which way is the county seat?' I asked. " T didn't know,' she said, with a look of wonder- ment, 'that the county had any seat.' " 'What is the population of your county?' " T dunno,' said the old lady, chewing her snuff stick, T rekon it's up in Kentucky.' " T suppose there are some illicit distilleries up in these mountains?' continued the general, pointing to- ward the Cumberland. " T rekon so,' said the old lady, nodding. " 'That is bad for the people — very bad.' " 'What, whisky bad?' said the old lady, her eyes opening with amazement ; 'why, whisky is the best drink in the world. That's what saved Bill Fellers's life.' ' Rut Bill Fellers is dead — died five years ago,' inter- rupted a bystander. " 'That's what killed him — didn't drink any whisky. Poor Bill, he never knowed what killed him. How he must have suffered !' " I belong to General Kilpatrick Post of the Grand Army of the Republic in New York, and naturally take an interest in that great cavalry officer. I wanted 28 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. to get a good story about "Kill" to tell the comrades, so I remarked casually to the general : "Kilpatrick was a good fighter, wasn't he?" "Yes," said Sherman. " 'Kill' was a good fighter, and a great boaster, too. He had a right to boast, but he could never boast stronger than he fought. One day," continued the general, "Kilpatrick was recount- ing his experience in driving back rebel reinforcements at Chancellorsville. Listening to him was a crowd of old soldiers, among whom was Moseby. "'Why,' said Kilpatrick, 'the woods swarmed with rebels. I had two horses shot under me and ' " 'What did you do then, Kill?' asked Custer. "'Why, I jumped on to a Government mule; a ball knocked me off, but the mule charged right ahead into the rebel ranks. I never knew what became of that mule.' " 'Why, General,' said Moseby, 'I saw that mule. He came right into our lines.' " 'Well, I'm glad to see my words confirmed,' said Kilpatrick seriously. 'Then you really saw him?' " 'Yes, sure.' "'Dead?' "'Yes.' '"Head shot off?' " 'No, died from mortification.' " "I suppose our pickets often talked with the rebels?" I remarked. "Oh, yes," said the general, "and joked with them, too. On the evening before Hooker's last unsuccessful attempt to storm Fredericksburg, one of Fitz Hugh Lee's men discovered a squad of Kilpatrick's cavalry and shouted : GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDQ.TES. 29 " 'Hello, Yanks! Howdy?' " 'We're all right. We're coming to see you pretty quick.' 'Come on!' shouted Lee's men. 'We've got room enough to bun- you !' " To illustrate how much the old soldier likes a joke, even at the expense of the army, 1 give this. One day at the Milwaukee Soldiers' Home, where I had lectured to 600 old soldiers. I went in and talked with the veterans. "You were in a good many battles," I said to a battle scarred private. "Yes, a good many. Seven Tines, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness " "Well, what was the bloodiest battle you were ever in? Where did the balls fall the thickest?" "Gettysburg, sir — Pickett's charge — the balls flew like hailstones— and " "Why didn't you get behind a tree?" "Get behind a tree!" repeated the old soldier indig- nantly. "Get behind a tree! why, there wasn't trees enough for the officers!" General Sherman was very fond of telling the follow- ing story about General Thomas. Many a New York- dinner table has listened to it. "You see," said the general, " General Thomas was junior to me in rank but senior in service. 'Pap.' as the boys called him, was a severe disciplinarian. Well, in the Atlanta campaign he had received many com- plaints about the pilfering and plundering committed by one of his brigades, and, being resolved to put this offense down, he issued some strict orders, menacing with death any who should transgress. The brigade 3° ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. in question wore for its badge an acorn, in silver or gold, and the men were inordinately proud of this distinctive sign. Several cases of disobedience had been reported to the general, but the evidence was never strong enough for decisive action, until one day, riding with an orderly down a by-lane outside the posts, Thomas came full upon an Irishman who, having laid aside his rifle, with which he had killed a hog, was busily engaged in skinning the animal with his sword- bayonet, so as to make easy work with the bristles, etc., before cooking pork chops. 'Ah,' cried the general, 'you rascal, at last I have caught you in the act. There is no mistake about it this time, and I will make an example of you, sir!' "'Bedad! General!' said the Irishman, straighten- ing himself up and coming to the salute, 'it's not shootin' me that you ought to be at, but rewardin' me.' " 'What do you mean, sir?' exclaimed General Thomas. " 'Why, your Honor!" the soldier replied, 'this bad baste here had just been disicratin' the rigimental badge; and so I was forced to dispatch him. It's 'atin' the acorns that I found him at!' "Even General Thomas was obliged to laugh at this, and the soldier saved his life by his wit." When I asked General Sherman what was the bravest thing he ever did, he said: "Well, Eli, I saved a man's life once." "Who was it?" I asked. "Joe Jefferson." "Why, how did you save his life?" "But I did, though," continued Sherman; "and I GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 3 1 look back to it with unalloyed pride and pleasure. It is something to be proud of, saving such a life as belonged to Joe Jefferson." "How did it happen? Please tell me." "Well," said Sherman solemnly. "It occurred last summer. We were both in the parlor upstairs, talking to some ladies. Joe had to leave early, and excused himself. After he went out I noticed a bundle of manuscript on the floor. I thought at first it belonged to me, but finding mine safe, I hurried out to the elevator after Joe, but he had gone by way of the stairs. I halloed 'Joe, Joe,' but he didn't hear me. I ran down after him two steps at a time. 1 finally caught up with him, and, handing him the manuscript, said : " 'Here, Joe, you've forgotten something.' "A serious expression spread over his face, as he took it, and said, in a tremulously solemn and impressive voice : " 'My God, you've saved my life!' "It was his autobiography, which he was engaged upon at the time." " Speaking of General Grant's strategy," said Gen- eral Sherman, "Grant told me that he thought lie learned strategy from his father. He said that when he was a little boy, living on his father's farm in Ohio, his father took him into the stable one day, where a row of cows stood in their unclean stalls, and said: " 'Ulysses, the stable window is pretty high for a boy, but do you think you could take this shovel and clean out the stable?' 'I don't know, father,' said he; 'I never have done it.' 32 ELI P EKK I XS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. - 'Well, my boy, if you will do it this morning, I'll give you this bright silver dollar,' said his father, patting him on the head, while he held the silver dollar before his eyes. 'Good,' said he ; 'I'll try ;' and then he went to work. He tugged and pulled and lifted and puffed, and finally it was done, and his father gave him the bright silver dollar, saying: 'That's right, Ulysses, you did it splendidly; and now I find you can do it so nicely, I shall have you do it every morning all zvinter.' " One of the very best stories about General Sherman, and the one above all others that will go into history, is really founded on fact. Sherman, Grant, Jeff Davis, and Lee fought all through the Mexican war. That war added Texas, Southern California, New Mexico, and Arizona to our possessions. No one knew what these new possessions were worth, for they had never been surveyed. Well, after the war, and Mexico had ceded the new possessions to us, President Taylor sent Captain Sherman out to Arizona and New Mexico to survey them. Sherman was gone two years. He pene- trated the sandy deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, and looked over the cactus country of Southern Cali- fornia, and then returned to Washington, and called on the President. 'Well, Captain," said President Taylor, "what do you think of our new possessions? will they pay for the blood and treasure spent in the war?" "Do you want my honest opinion?" replied Sher- man. 'Yes, tell us privately just what you think." "Well, General," said Sherman, "it cost us one GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 33 hundred millions of dollars, and ten thousand men to carry on the war with Mexico." "Yes, fully that, but we got Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern California." "Well, General," continued Sherman, "I've been out there and looked them over, — all that country,- and between you and me I feel that we'll have to go to war again. Yes, we've got to have another war." "What for?" asked Taylor. "Why, to make 'em take the darned country back!" General Sherman always said with pride that the Army of the Tennessee never retreated. They started in at Memphis and came out at Charleston and Wilming- ton in a fourth of the time that it took the Army of the Potomac to see-saw back and forth between Washing- ton and Richmond. One day after the war the general said he was talking with a veteran from the Army of the Potomac. The soldier was describing the big fight of Hooker at Chancellorsville. "Did the rebels run?" asked Sherman. "Did they run?" repeated the soldier. "Did the rebels run? Great Scott! I should say they did run. Why, general, they run so like thunder that we had to run three miles to keep out of their way, and if we hadn't thrown away our guns they'd run all over us sure !" "There was one thing in which the Army of the Potomac was vastly our superior," said General Sher- man to General Howard, who commanded the Eleventh Corps when it made its wild retreat. "What was that?" asked Howard. "Speed, simple speed," said the general, with a twinkle of the eye. 34 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "What kind of a soldier was General Garfield?" I asked the general. "Good, generous, and brave, and never once lost faith or wavered in his belief that the Republic would win. He wrote private letters to Secretary Chase, whom he loved as he did a father. These letters criticised methods, but they expressed no doubt about our ultimate success. "One of the funniest characters in Garfield's brigade was an Irish sentinel who was detailed on guard after the battle of Chickamauga. It was his first experi- ence in guard mounting, and he strutted along his beat with a full appreciation of his position. As a citizen approached he shouted : " 'Halt ! Who comes there?' "'A citizen!' " 'Advance, citizen, and give the countersign.' "T haven't the countersign; and if I had, the demand for it at this time and place is something very strange and unusual,' rejoined the citizen. " 'An' by the howly Moses, ye don't pass this way at all, be jabers, till ye say "Bull Run," ' was Pat's reply. "The citizen, appreciating the 'situation,' advanced and cautiously whispered in his ear the necessary words. " 'Right ! Pass on,' and the wide-awake sentinel resumed his beat. "This same sentinel," said Sherman, "was afterward accused of sleeping on his watch. General Garfield called the man to his tent to lecture him before his court martial. 'How could you commit such a crime?' asked the GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 35 general. 'Do you not know that it is death to be caught sleeping on your watch?' "'It is false,' said the sentinel. 'How in the divil could I sleep on me watch when it was in the pawn- broker's in Memphis?' "Speaking of tact," said the general, "tact saved a good many officers in the volunteer service. One day Captain Ward of Indiana, a fresh volunteer officer, stepped up to two soldiers who were practicing with their rifles. ' 'See here,' he said, grasping a rifle, 'you shoot wretchedly. Let me show you how to shoot !' [He shoots and misses.] "'There,' he says, 'that is the way you shoot.' [Shoots and misses again.] " 'And that is the way you shoot,' turning to the second soldier. [Shoots again and hits the mark.] " 'And that is the way I shoot.' "This same Indiana captain was struggling along be- fore Atlanta, almost worn out with the march. When he saw his company in bad disorder, he gathered him- self together and shouted : " 'Close up there, boys — doggone it, close up ! If the rebels should fire on you when you're straggling along that way, they couldn't hit a darn one of you ! Close up !' "I met the Indiana captain's father afterward," said the general, "and asked him about his son. "'Well, I have two sons,' he said, 'and I've made a mistake with them. One is in a bank and the other is in the army. The one in the bank, who ought to be drawing drafts, spends all his time shooting; while the 36 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. one in the army, who ought to be a good shot, is always drawing drafts on me for money.' " Speaking of Admiral Farragut one evening, General Sherman said the best thing happened to the admiral in New Orleans: "You see, a week after Farragut had taken the city, he went on shore, where he met one of the sailors of the fleet who had been drinking too much. The sailor, being intoxicated, failed to salute the admiral. " 'See here !' said the admiral, who was very strict in regard to discipline, 'do you belong to the United States Navy?' " 'Wall (hie), I don't know whether I do or (hie) not.' "'You don't, sir? Well, what ship do you belong to?* "T don't (hie) know that, either.' " 'Well, sir, do you know me?' " 'No (hie) sir.' '"Well, sir, I am Admiral Farragut, commander of the United States Navy.' "'Well, Admiral (hie), I know one thing (hie); you've got a good (hie) job !' " "What was the most humorous incident in the war?" I asked. "What seemed to be the most humorous thing to a German soldier, seemed rather serious to me," said Sherman. "Among my 'bummers' was a German whom they falsely accused of foraging chickens. When they arrested him he smiled all over. They put him in the guard house and he was in a broad grin. Finally they bucked and gagged him and he laughed uproari- ously. GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 37 "'What arc you laughing at, you rascal?' screamed the sergeant. " 'Vi (haw, haw!) I vos de (haw, haw) wrong man!' ' The following anecdote is apropos to General Sher- man : One morning in Saratoga Governor Curtin, the old war governor of Pennsylvania, now a varioloid Republi- can or mugwump, sat down on the States balcony by Senator Wade Hampton, one of the proudest of the old South Carolina rebels. They are both keen wits, and both gentlemen of the old school. "I tell you, governor," began General Hampton enthusiastically, "South Carolina is a great State, sir — a great State." "Yes; South Carolina is a State to be proud of," said Governor Curtin. "I agree with you. I knew a good many distinguished people down there myself — and splendid people they were, too— as brave as Julius Caesar and as chivalric as the Huguenots." "You did, sir !" said Senator Hampton, warming up with a brotherly sympathy. "Then you really knew public men who have lived in our old Calhoun State? You knew them?" "Oh, bless you, yes!" continued Governor Curtin, drawing his chair up confidentially. "I knew some of the greatest men your State has ever seen — knew them intimately too, sir." "Who did you know down there in our old Palmetto State?" asked Senator Hampton, handing Governor Curtin his cigar to light from. "Well, sir, I knew General Sherman and General Kilpatrick, and " "Great guns!" interrupted Senator Hampton, and 3^ ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. then he threw down his cigar and commenced winding his Waterbury watch. General Sherman could spin reminiscences of the war by the hour. He could tell about Bragg, and Jeff Davis, and General Scott in Mexico. "General Scott," he said, "was, perhaps, the proudest man in the Union army. He never appeared except in a full-dress uniform, covered with gilt spangles and buttons. Sheridan and Grant were just the opposite. Horace Porter, who was present, says, 'Grant received General Lee's sword at Appomattox while dressed in a common soldier's blouse.' "One day," continued the general, "General Scott called on a lady away out in the suburbs of Washing- ton. Her little boy had never seen a soldier, especially such a resplendent soldier as General Scott. When the general rang the bell, the boy answered it. As he pulled open the door, there stood the general in gilded epaulets, yellow sash, and a waving plume on his hat. 'Tell your mother, little man,' said the general, 'to please come to the door a moment ; I want to speak to her.' "Charlie went upstairs and appeared before his mother, with the most awestruck face. 'Mamma, some one at the door wants to see you,' he said tremblingly. " 'Who is it, my son?' " 'Oh, I don't know, mamma, but I dess it's Dod.' " One of the smartest things the grizzled old general ever said was the remark he made about a New York dude. "What would you do if I were you and you were me, General," tenderly inquired the young swell. GENERAL SHERMAN'S ANECDOTES. 39 "Oh, you must excuse me," said the general modestly. "What would I do," growled the grand old soldier, when the dude had gone, "what would I do if I were it; I'll tell you what I'd do. If I were a dude I would throw away that vile cigarette, cut up my cane for firewood, wear my watch-chain underneath my coat, and stay at home nights and pray for brains." "Speaking of war stories," said General Sherman, "the best thing happened in Howard's Eleventh Corps. Sickles told me the story. It seems that they had a drummer boy over there who always lived well. He was in Col. Arrowsmith's regiment, the Twenty-sixth N. Y. This drummer, while the regiment was on the move, had a pencliant for foraging on his own account, and the chickens had to roost high to escape his far- reaching hands. Whenever night overtook them, this drummer had a good supper provided for himself. On one occasion he had raked in a couple of turkeys and had put them into his drum for convenience in carry- ing. When the regiment was halted for the night, Colonel Arrowsmith immediately ordered dress parade, and the drummers were expected to beat up. The forager made his drumsticks go, but the quick-eyed colonel noticed that he was not drumming. " 'Adjutant,' said the colonel, 'that man isn't drum- ming. Why ain't he drumming.' "The adjutant stepped up to him, saying, 'Why ain't you drumming?' " 'Because,' said the quick-witted drummer, 'I have got two turkeys in my drum, and one of 'em is for the colonel.' 40 ELI PERK1XS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. 'The adjutant went back and the colonel asked, 'What is it?' 'Why, he says he has got two turkeys In his drum, and one of 'em is for the colonel.' "Up to this point the conversation had been carried on sotto voce, but when the adjutant reported, Colonel Arrowsmith raised his voice so that all could hear. 'What! sick, is he? Why didn't he say so before? Send him to his tent at once.' " REMINISCENCES OF \VM. R. TRAVERS. 1 ravers's Joke on the Englishman — A. T. Stewart, Joe Mills, Henry Clews, Jay Gould, and August Belmont. GENERAL SHERMAN'S interest in his old West Point class-mate, Wm. R. Travers, as manifested by his letter published in the previous chapter, led me to collect all the good stories by and about that charm- ing gentleman. To get these stories I have had long and pleasant conversations with Leonard and Lawrence Jerome, Henry Clews, August Belmont, and Mr. De- pew. Mr. Travers died at Bermuda, March 19, 1887; and Leonard and Lawrence Jerome have since followed their boon companion. The great wit married a daughter of Reverdy John- son, of Baltimore, our ex-Minister to England, after which he moved to New York and formed a partnership with Leonard Jerome, whose daughter married Lord Randolph Churchill. Mr. Travers belonged to McAlis- ter's 400, but is chiefly celebrated for not resembling that organization in any other particular. Mr. Travers was a stammerer. He never spoke three consecutive words without stammering. This stammer added to the effectiveness of his wit, as Charles Lamb's stammer added to his wit. His fame got to be so great as a stammerer that he was made the hero of a thousand stammering stories, which he never heard of until they were read to him from the 4> 42 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. newspapers. But his shoulders were broad enough and his heart was big enough to father them all. Speaking of his family one day to an obtuse English friend of Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. T ravers hesitat- ingly remarked : "Yes I c-came from a large f-fa-family, a v-v-very i-large f-family!" "Aw! how large, Mister Travers?" asked the English- man. "There were t-t-ten of us boys, and each of us had a s-s-sister." "Aw, remarkable!" said the obtuse Englishman. "Then there were twenty of you?" "N-no," said Travers scornfully, "1-1-leven." Englishmen were always the natural prey of Jerome and Travers. Jerome pumped them full of the most astonishing stories of Travers's career as a warrior, hunter, yachtsman, statesman, financier, and philoso- pher, and then let Travers get out of it as best he could. One day Jerome was showing an Englishman a queer toy. It was an automatic English dude, with big cane and eye-glasses. "Why, it don't seem to work well," said the English- man. "T-t-they never d-d-do," said Travers. Mr. Travers had Southern blood in him, and he was inclined to be an aristocrat. He was always saying spiteful things about tradesmen like Astor, Lorillard, and A. T. Stewart. Stewart was elected on one occa- sion to preside at a meeting of citizens during the war. Travers was present in the audience. When Mr. Stewart took his gold pencil case from his pocket and REMINISCENCES OF JVM. R. TRAVERS. 43 rapped with its head on the table for the meeting to come to order, Travers called out, in an audible tone: "C-CASH!" This brought down the house, and no one laughed more heartily than Mr. Stewart, although it was a se- vere thrust at himself. Mr. Travers once went down to a dog-fancier's in Water Street to buy a rat-terrier. "Is she a g-g-good ratter?" asked Travers, as he poked a little shivering pup with his cane. "Yes, sir; splendid! I'll show you how he'll go for a rat," said the dog-fancier, and then he put him in a box with a big rat. The rat made one dive and laid out the frightened terrier in a second, but Travers turned around, and ram- ming his hand into his pockets called out : "I say, Johnny, w-w-what'll ye t-t-take for the r-r-rat?" I never knew but one joke ever perpetrated on Mr. Travers, though he was always getting jokes on to other people. We had one stammering waiter at the States in Saratoga, but he never stammered unless excited. When talking to a stammering man he became doubly nervous and would stammer fearfully. Joe Mills, who with his brother, D. O. Mills, used to open oysters before they went to California, became millionaires, and joined the aristocracy and the 400, wanted to get even with Travers, who had been making fun of his French accent. So he got the head-waiter to station this stammering waiter at Travers's table, and then we all watched the result. The great wit was a little nervous himself that day, having patronized the wrong horse at the races, and 44 ELI PERKIXS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. having eaten a bilious supper at Moon's the night be- fore. At first Mr. Travers was troubled by a cold plate, then the soft shell crabs were not browned properly, and the eggs were too rare. "T-ta-take 'em o-o-off," he said, frowning at the waiter, and pointing to the eggs. "W-wha-what f-f-for?" asked the waiter. "N-n-never mind; take 'em o-o-off!" "The h-h-ham suits you, d-d-don't it?" stammered the waiter. "N-no; o-off with it!" said Travers. "But what shall I b-b-bring you?" "W-w-why, anything — and q-q-quick, too!" "But t-t-tell me one thing before I go," said the waiter. "Well, w-w-what is it?" "Why, p-p-please tell if you c-c-came here to eat or to have a f-f-fit ? " The next day, to get even with Mr. Mills, Travers told more stories about his French accent. He said that Joe, who had been in Cuba for his health, finally returned to Key West, and sent this telegram to Leonard Jerome : Leonard Jerome, Stock Exchange : Tell the members of the Stock Exchange that I have arrived safely on terra cotta. J. M. "When Joe came down to the street after arriving in New York," said Travers, "I asked him how he felt." "'How do I feel?' Comment est-ce que je me porte, you mean," said Mr. Mills. "Yes, as you French scholars say, 'How do you carry yourself,' Joe?" REMINISCENCES OF WM. R. TRAVERS. 45 "Oh, we. Well, I feel just splendid— splendide. When I went to Cuba I was a very sick man — trh malade ; but now (with an expressive French shrug) 1 feel — I feel new plus ulster." I asked Mr. Mills afterward if he really said new plus ulster and he denied it. "It's one of Bill Travers's jokes, Eli," he said. "1 guess I know how to talk French — troisansa Paree. Hut I'll tell you honestly, Eli, what I did saw When Travers said I looked sick and wouldn't live a year, I just snapped my fingers in the old fellow's face and walked off in the— in the utmost nom de plume!" Mr. Depew says he was at the Academy of Design one evening looking at the famous picture "Luther at the Diet of Worms." A little while afterward he met Mr. Mills and asked him if he had seen "Luther and the Diet of Worms?" "I saw Luther," said Joe, "but I didn't see any worms. That must have been an awful diet — diet of worms; c 'e'st tres mal /" And Joe gave a real French shrug with both shoulders. Mr. Henry Clews says this dialogue actually oc- curred in Newport. Mr. Travers called on Mrs. Belmont at her cottage one morning and said : "M-M-Mrs. B-B-Belmont, have y-y-y-you ever b-b-b-b-been in S-S-S-ain " "Why, Mr. Travers!" said the astonished Mrs. Bel- mont, "what do you mean?" "H-h-h-ave you ever b-b-b-been in-in-in-in S-S-Sain — in S-S-Sain — have y-y-y-y-you ever b-b-b-b-been in Sain — i-i-i-i-n Sain " "Now, no joking here," said Mrs. Belmont. "I am 46 ELt PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. too provoked to listen to you," and she went across the room. "Mr. Travers," said Mr. Belmont, shortly afterward, "Mrs. Belmont says you've been trying to joke her." "N-n-no!" said Travers, "I was only trying to ask your wife if sh-sh-she had ever been in S-S-S-S-aint LM OU1S. The old parrot story, which I gave fifteen years ago in "Saratoga in 1901," is good enough to repeat. Mr. Travers went into a bird-fancier's in Centre Street. "H-h-have you got a-a-all kinds of b-b-birds?" he asked. "Yes, sir, all kinds," said the bird-fancier politely. "I w-w-want to b-buy a p-p-parrot," hesitated Mr. T. "Well, here is a beauty. See its golden plumage!" "B-b-beautiful," stammered Travers. "C-c-can he t-t-talk?" "Talk!" exclaimed the bird-fancier. "If he can't talk better than you can I'll give him to you !" "One day," says Henry Clews in his "Thirty Years in Wall Street," "after Mr. Travers had moved to New York, an old friend from Baltimore met him in Wall Street. As it had been a long time since they saw each other, they had a considerable number of topics to talk over. They had been familiar friends in the Monumental City, and were not, therefore, restrained by the usual social formalities. " T notice, Travers,' said the Baltimorean, 'that you stutter a great deal more than when you were in Balti- more.' " 'W-h-y, y-e-s,' replied Mr. Travers, darting a look REMINISCENCES OF WM. R. TR AVERS. 47 of surprise at his friend; 'of course I do; this is a d-d-darned sight b-b-bigger city.' " Travers saw Jay Gould one afternoon standing in front of the Stock Exchange buried in deep thought. "Clews," he said, turning to the banker, "that's a queer attitude for G-G-Gould." "How so?" asked Clews. "Why he's got his hands in his p-p-pockets — his own p-p-pockcts." Mr. Clews, the well-known bald-headed banker, al- ways prides himself on being a self-made man. Dur- ing a recent talk with Mr. Travers, he had occasion to remark that he was the architect of his own destiny — that he was a self-made man. "W-w-what d-did you s-ay, Mr. Clews?" asked Mr. Travers. "I say with pride, Mr. Travers, that I am a self-made man — that I made myself " "Hold, H-Henry," interrupted Mr. Travers, as he dropped his cigar, "w-while you were m-m-making yourself, why the devil d-did-didn't you p-put some more hair on the top of y-your h-head?" Colonel Fisk was showing Mr. Travers over the "Plymouth Rock," the famous Long Branch boat. After showing the rest of the vessel, he pointed to two large portraits of himself and Mr. Gould, hanging, a little distance apart, at the head of the stairway. "There," says the colonel, "what do you think of them?" 'They're good, Colonel — you hanging on one side and Gould on the other; f-i-r-s-t rate. But, Colonel," continued the wicked Mr. Travers, buried in thought, "w-w-where's our Saviour?" 48 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. Mr. Travers, who is a vestryman in Grace Church, says he knows it was wicked, but he couldn't have helped it if he'd been on his dying bed. One of Travers's best ban mots was inspired by the sight of the Siamese twins. After carefully examining the mysterious ligature that had bound them together from birth, he looked up blankly at them and said, " B-b-br-brothers, I presume?" Mr. Clews says that the last time he saw Travers, the genial broker called at his office. ' Looking at the tape, Clews remarked : "The market is pretty stiff today, Travers." "Y-y-yes, but it is the st-st-stiffness of d-d-death." One day, many years ago, Mr. Travers was standing on the curb of New Street, opposite the Exchange, buying some stock from a gentleman whose aspect was unmistakably of the Hebrew stamp. "Wh-wh-what is your name?" asked Travers. "Jacobs," responded the seller. "B-b-but wh-what is your Christian name?" reiterated Travers. The Hebrew was nonplussed, and the crowd was con- vulsed with laughter. The first time Mr. Travers attempted to find Mon- tague Street, in Brooklyn, he lost his way, although he was near the place. Meeting a man, he said : "I desire to r-reach M-Montague St-Street. W-will you b-be kik-kind enough to pup-point the way?" "You-you are go-going the wrong w-way," was the stammering answer. "That is M-Montague St-Street there." "Are y-you mimick-mimicking me; making fun of me-me?" asked Mr. Travers sharply. REMINISCENCES OF WM. R. TRA VERS. 49 "Nun-no, I assure you. sir," the other replied. "I-I am ba-badly af-flict-flicted with an imp-impediment in my speech." "Why do-don't y-you g-get cured?" asked Travers solemnly. "G-go to Doctor Janvrin, and y-you'll get c-cured. D-don't y-you see how well I talk? H-he cu-cured m-m-me." The best stammering story I know of happened with myself — actually happened. Travers wasn't in it. I lectured once before the Y. M. C. A. of Binghamton. The chairman of the lecture committee, Major Ste- vens, who is a great stammerer, was rather late in call- ing on me at the hotel. When he finally came, I said : "Major, where Ve you been. Where've you been?" "I've b-b-been down to, been d-d-down t-t-to-to " "Where did you say?" "I've been d-d-down to A-A-Albany, the c-c-c-capi- tal." "What have you been down to Albany for?" "I've b-b-been there to see the m-m-members of the leg-leg-legislature." "What did you want to see the members of the leg- islature for?" "Well, I wanted to get 'em to c-c-change the State con-consti constitution." "Why, what did you want to change the New York State constitution for?" "Because the St-St-State constitution g-g-guarantees to ev-ev-every m-m-man f-f-free s-s-speech, and I w-w- want it, or I w-w-want the d-d-darned thing changed !" CHAUNCEY DEPEW'S BEST STORIES. Depew on the Poughkeepsie Farm — Discussing Demand and Supply — The Crowded Connecticut Funeral — Absent-minded Daniel Drew — The Spotted Dog and Other Stories — Depew in Ireland — Fun with the Irish Girls — All of Depew's Stories. I HAD the delightful pleasure of riding in the seat with William M. Evarts one day from New Haven to the senator's farm at Windsor, Vt. We had been talking about typical Americans like General Butler, Daniel Voorhies, and General Alger of Michigan. All at once the thought struck me, and I asked the great forensic lawyer and descendant of Roger Sherman this question : "Who is our best typical American?" "Why, Chauncey Depew, by all odds," said Mr. Evarts. "He will go into history as our best all-around representative typical American. His life shows what a poor boy with grit and the blood of the Puritans in him can accomplish. Here is a case of a man, born, not poor, but in ordinary circumstances, on a sterile farm back of Poughkeepsie, who graduates at Yale, be- comes an accomplished scholar, an eloquent orator, a shrewd president of our greatest railroad, and with, per- haps, even presidential chances in the future." Governor Russell J. Alger told me once that he was born in poorer circumstances than Depew. At the age of ten Alger's mother was left with twelve children. 5° 1 7/. 1 1 \\\ ■/■: ) ' DEPE W 'S BEST STORIES. 5 i They lived in a leaky tenement house near Canton, 0., and little Russell often worked a whole week to earn money enough to buy a bushel of meal to keep his little brother and sisters from starving. Alger went into the war a private and returned a general. At the close of the war he took his ax and went into the woods in Michigan and actually cut cord wood. One man in Michigan now holds a receipt from Alger for sixteen dollars, in payment for cutting thirty-two cords of stove wood ! So Depew and Alger are both typical Americans. General Alger so often suffered with the cold when a poor boy that he has for years kept a stand- in;; order at several Detroit coal yards to give a bucket of coal to any poor person in the city who needs it enough to carry it home. Depew knew what it was to work when a boy; and many times this great railroad magnate, who now makes presidents, talks politics with Gladstone, and jokes with the Prince of Wales, has driven the cows home in the rain. Mr. Depew's features are marked and individual. In his latest pictures he resembles Gladstone, and when he reaches the age of the eloquent sage of Hawarden his resemblance to the great English commoner will be startling. The great railroad magnate always beams with good humor, and is never too busy to see a friend, even if he has to say "hail and farewell" in the same breath. Mr. Depew's stories, like Lincoln's, always fit the occasion, and prove or illustrate some point. One day at a railroad meeting several railroad presidents, like Sam Sloan and President Roberts, of the Pennsylvania, were gravely discussing the subject of passes and the 52 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. Interstate Commerce bill, when Depew remarked that a man gave him the queerest excuse for a pass that morning that he ever heard of. "What was it?" asked President Roberts. "Well, he came in and simply said he would like a pass to Albany." "On what grounds?" asked Roberts. " 'Simply these,' said the man: 'when I went up last Monday I was the only man on the train who didn't have a pass. General Husted had one, and Senator Irwin, and everybody else, and when I hauled out my ticket they all laughed at me. Now, Mr. Depew, I don't want to be laughed at.' ' "And you passed him on that?" asked Sloan. "Yes, gave him an annual." I was talking one day, with Mr. Depew, about demand and supply. I said the price of any commodity is always controlled by the demand and supply. "Not always, Eli," said Mr. Depew; "demand and supply don't always govern prices. Business tact sometimes governs them." "When," I asked, "did an instance ever occur when the price did not depend on demand and supply?" "Well," said Mr. Depew, "the other day I stepped up to a German butcher, and out of curiosity asked : j " 'What's the price of sausages?' " 'Dwenty cents a bound,' he said. " 'You asked twenty-five this morning,' I replied. " 'Ya, dot vas ven I had some. Now I ain't got none I sells him for dwenty cends. Dot makes me a repudation for selling cheab und I don'd lose nod- dings.' "You see," said Depew laughing, "I didn't want any CI I A UNCE V DEPE W'S BEST S'J ORIE S. 5 3 sausage and the man didn't have any; no demand or supply, and still the price of sausage went down." Mr. Depew is perhaps the most popular dinner ora- tor and dinner guest in New York. He is President of the Union League Club, and his popularity will prob- ably keep him there as long as he can talk and eat. Besides presiding over his own club he is always booked for an annual speech at the New England, St. Patrick's, and St. Andrew's dinners. One day I was talking with him about going out to dinner so much. "Yes," he said, "I do go out a good deal." "But how can you stand it? I should think it would give you dyspepsia. I suppose you can eat every- thing?" "No, there are two things which I always positively refuse to eat for dinner," said Mr. Depew gravely. "And what are they?" "Why, breakfast and supper." "But the great crowds you have to face in heated rooms — they must wear on you," I said. "But the crowded dining-room," said Depew, "is more healthful than a funeral. Now, I have a friend in Poughkeepsie who goes out more than I do, but he goes to funerals. He never misses one. He enjoys a good funeral better than the rest of us enjoy a dinner. "I remember one day how I attended a funeral with my Poughkeepsie friend over in Dutchess County. The house was packed. The people came for miles around — and everybody came to mourn, too. Many eyes were wet, and some good old farmers, who had never seen the deceased, except at a distance, groaned and shed real tears. After we had crowded our way 54 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. in among the mourners, I turned to my friend and said : " 'George, I don't see the coffin — where is it?' "But George couldn't answer. "After a while I made a remark to my friend about a lovely eight-day clock standing in the hall. "'The clock!' said George mournfully, 'why, that isn't a clock, that's the coffin. They've stood him up in the hall to make room for the mourners!' ' Speaking of absent-minded men one day, Mr. Depew said : "Daniel Drew was a very absent-minded man. Once he started for the Erie train and thought he had left his watch at home. First he thought he would go back after it. In an absent-minded way he took out his watch, looked at it, and exclaimed : "'Whew! five o'clock, and the train goes out 5:10. I won't have time.' "Then he put his watch back in his pocket and telegraphed his wife to send it to Albany by express. "But Horace Greeley," said Depew, "was more absent-minded than Drew." "Do you remember the instance?" I asked. "Yes, Whitelaw Reid said when Greeley left the Tribune office one day he put a card on his office door, 'Will return at three o'clock.' "Happening to return at 1.30, and seeing the sign, he sat down in the hall and waited for himself till three o'clock. Greeley was absent-minded !" Mr. Depew gives the credit for his success in life to his mother. When I asked him to please describe her to me, he said : "My mother was a woman of broad culture and a CHA UNCE Y DEPE IV S BEST S TO AVE S. 5 5 great reader. She was intensely religious and believed in the efficacy of church attendance on the Sabbath. She did not care for money and never gave any advice in regard to it. Rich people did not impress her, but she was never tired of enthusiastically speaking of the honors of life and of men who had become famous as statesmen, orators, or authors. She pleaded so earnestly and urgently the duty of going to church that I am as uncomfortable now for the remainder of the week if absent from service at least once on Sunday as I was when a boy. She valued education beyond all acquisition, and her constant injunction was to get knowledge. Her often repeated remark was: 'It re- quires little money to live and anybody who tries can earn it, but very few can win distinction. Strive for that."* The father of the great railroad president was a very frugal farmer, and also a veiy pious man. He never liked to have any time wasted in the prayer-meeting. One night, when the experiences had all been told, and the exhortations flagged, and the prayers grew feeble, Brother Depew arose and solemnly remarked : "I don't like to see this valuable time wasted. Brother Joslyn, can't you tell your experience?" Brother Joslyn said he'd told his experience twice already. "Then, Brother Finney, can't you make a prayer or tell your experience?" "I've told it several times to-night, brother, and prayed twice." "Well, my brethren," said Mr. Depew, "as the regular exercises to-night seem to halt a little, and as no one seems to want to pray or tell his experience. I 56 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. will improve the time by making a few observations on the tariff." Mr. Depew took a trip to Blarney Castle and Kil- larney a year or two ago, and his reminiscences of that trip are very amusing. When I asked him if he saw any of those beautiful golden-haired Irish girls that we read about, he said : "Yes, about forty joined our party at Killarney — and such rosy-cheeked, red-lipped Irish girls they were! Bright and merry as girls could be. They made a raid upon our pockets which cleaned out the last shilling, but it was fairly won and lost. " 'Sure, sor,' said a pretty girl, 'an' are the winters very cold in Ameriky?' " 'Yes,' I said. "'Then,' said this bright-eyed siren, T have been expecting you, sor, and have knitted these woolen stockings to make you comfortable at home and keep your heart warm to ould Ireland.' " 'And is there nothing you will buy?' said another. " 'Nothing,' said I. " 'Well, then,' she cried, 'will yer honor give me a shilling for a sixpence?' " T am going to be married, sor,' lisped a mountain beauty, 'and me marriage portion is pretty near made up! and Pat's getting very weary waiting so long.' "'My money is all gone,' said I, when, quick as a flash, I heard a friend say to her: " 'Mary, thry him on getting to Ameriky.' ' "Are the Irish really a witty people?" I asked. "They are very bright," said Mr. Depew. "The Irish are the quickest and most cheerful of all the peas- antry of Europe. While the English and Continental CHA UNCE V DEPE IV S BEST S TORIES. 5 7 people who are in like condition are little above the brutes, the Irish are as full of life, fire, and humor as if their state was one of frolic and ease. Touch one of them anywhere and at any time, and he bubbles with fun and smart repartee. When I was in Dublin, a political orator was describing his opponent as an extinct volcano, when a voice in the audience cried : " 'Oh, the poor crater.' "I said to a jaunting-car driver at Quccnstown, to whom I owed a shilling: ' 'Can you change a half-crown (two and sixpence)?' ''Change a half-crown, is it?' he cried, in mock amazement, 'do you think I have robbed a bank?' "At Killarney," continued Mr. Depcw, "I met a delicious bit of wit and blunder. I asked the hotel clerk to stamp a letter for me. He put on the postage stamp, which bears Victoria's image, and then starting back as if horrified, said : 'Bedad, but I have stood her majesty on her head." 'Well,' I said, 'that is not astonishing for an Irish- man ; but that is a double letter, and won't go without another stamp.' "'Another stamp, is it?' and slapping the second directly over the first, 'Begora,' said he, 'it will go now.' "I love the witty Irish so well," continued Mr. Depew, "that you must let me illustrate some of their characteristics. Some friends of mine, and among them a disciple of Bcrgh, were walking through Cork, and saw a boy of sixteen beating a donkey. Said the member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; 5 8 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. " 'Boy, stop beating your brother!' And as quick as a flash the boy answered : " 'I won't, father!' "I said to an Irish liveryman: 'Give me a good horse for a long ride.' ' 'All right, your honor. The best in the world.' "The horse broke down in half an hour, and I said: 'You rascal, why did you cheat me in this way?' ' 'Sure, your honor, that horse is all right, but he is a very intelligent baste, and, knowing you are a stranger, he wants you to have time to see the scenery.' "As I was bidding farewell to Ireland, I said to my faithful attendant : 'Good-by, Pat.' ' 'Good-by, yer honor,' he said pathetically. 'May God bless you, and may every hair in your head be a candle to light your soul to glory.' " 'Well, Pat,' I said, showing him my bald pate, 'when that time comes there won't be much of a torch- light procession.' " While in Edinburgh Mr. Depew visited Stirling Castle, overlooking the battlefield of Bannockburn, where Bruce saved Scotland. In this castle King James was born and baptized into the Romish Church. When I asked Mr. Depew about Scotch wit he said : "The Scotch are witty when it pays to be witty. It was a Scotchman who advised his son to be virtuous, on the ground that virtue paid better than vice, and that he had tried both. At Stirling Castle my Scotch guide said : " 'Sir, the tower is closed which contains the crown jewels, and you can't get in.' " 'The doors are locked, you say?' CIIA I 'XCE Y DEPE W ' S BES /' 5 Ti )EIES. 5 9 " 'Locked as tight as the Bank of England.' "'Will a sovereign open them?' 'The half of it will, sir!' he fairly yelled, in astonishment at the reckless prodigality of the offer." Mr. Depew's idea of Scotch wit is a good deal like my own. The Scotch are so practical that the paradox outrages them. The venerable Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, was a Scotch logician, and once wrote a magazine article on humor, but still this great philosopher could never see through a joke. I said this to President Andrew D. White of Cornell University at the States in Saratoga once. "Do you really think so?" asked the president. "I know it," I said. "Now, Dr. McCosh is up at the Clarendon ; let us go up there, and I will tell him a joke with a paradox in it, and if he sees the point I will ad- mit I am in error." Well, we went up and called on the venerable Prince- ton president ; and after we had talked about foreor- dination and the stoical philosophy of Seneca in the sweet reign of Marcus Aurelius, I told him the old par- adoxical story that I have often told about Bill Nye: How, meeting Bill one day, I remarked upon his beauti- ful white teeth. "Now, Mr. Nye," I said, "how do you keep your teeth so white?" "Oh, that's easy," he said; "all teeth will remain white if they are properly taken care of. Of course I never drink hot drinks, always brush my teeth morn- ing and evening, avoid all acids whatever, and, al- though I am forty years old, my teeth are as good as ever." 60 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "And that is all you do to preserve your teeth, is it? You do not select the silicates instead of oleaginous food?" "Oh, no ; I do nothing at all- — except — well — except I generally put them in soft water nights." Dr. White laughed at the paradox, as does the reader, but logically minded Dr. McCosh put his hand to his brow as if in deep thought and remarked : "Yes, yes, but as a scientist I cannot see what chemi- cal property there is in warm water which can act upon the enamel of the teeth so as to make them white !" Dr. White looked at me first in bewilderment and then he burst into a second laugh louder than the first. Returning from Liverpool on the City of Rome I fell in with a Scotch journalist who said he could never see any fun in Artemus Ward. "He is so illogical, and says such impossible things !" he said. "What is one illogical thing that Mr. Ward has said?" I asked. "Why," said the Scotchman, "he said, 'he was bound to live within his means if he had to borrow money to do it.' Why, he wouldn't be living within his means if he borrowed money. Impossible ! How absurd !" Now this Scotchman's language was so precise and matter-of-fact, that he amused me as much as Artemus. When I asked my Scotch journalist what newspaper he wrote for, he said : "I write serious editorials for the Glasgow Herald." "Did you ever try to write humorous articles?" I asked. "Very seldom," he said. "I am very good at com- prehensive serious writing, but my wit, I fear, is con- strained. I joke with difficulty." CHA UNCE Y DEPE W'S BEST STORIES. 6 I T am perpetually amused at the stupidity of John Bull. He always misconstrues every idea. Our American exaggerated stories that come in from Colorado and Wyoming, always astound the English- man. He believes these stories literally. I was very much amused at a party of English tourists whom 1 met at Queenstown after they had been doing the lakes of Killarney. When I asked a John Bull who it was who made up his Killarney party, he said : "We had a rum fellow from Glasgow, a blarsted Yan- kee from Chicago, a bloody Irishman from Cork, a Canuck chap from Toronto, and two English gentle- men." One day a steady going John Bull said to meat Ken- sington : "You have queer people in St. Louis, 'av'n't you?" "Why?" I asked. "Because," he said, "don't chew know, I read a strange story in a newspaper about a St. Louis lady. Some one asked 'er on the steamer if she 'ad been presented at Couit while in London, and she said: " 'Well, no. I didn't go to Court, myself, but my 'usband did ; but he got let off with merely a nominal ne. Then as his single eye-glass fell off, he remarked "Ex- traordinary, wasn't it?" Then after a moment's deep thought he screwed on his eye-glass and continued sol- emnly, "I dare say this St. Louis story is true, for I really read it in a Chicago newspaper!" The French have a different humor from Sandy or John Bull. The Frenchman enjoys the impossible. He laughs at the paradox. One day in Paris I went to see the unveiling of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty. The 62 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. French President presented the statue to America and Minister Morton received it. After the ceremony Min- ister Morton introduced me to M. Francois Bricaire, the humorist of Figaro. I tried hard to get to the bottom of French humor. We exchanged our best stories. I find they have a different idea of humor from what we Americans have. All French stories are true. They never exaggerate, and the paradox is not funny to the Frenchman. It exasperates him. I asked M. Bricaire to tell me the funniest thing he could think of. "You Americans," he said, "are always funny to us. You do such unnatural things. Why, an American recently came here with a steam fire-engine. He was wild to have Paris adopt it. We said. 'Why, we never have any fires. Our buildings are fireproof.' " 'No fires?' he said. 'No fires in Paris?' " 'No, never.' ' 'Pshaw,' he said, 'you are behind the times. It's because you have no steam fire-engines. Get the en- gines and the fires will come.' He made me laugh, ha, ha!" "He was like a Frenchman," continued the humor- ist, "who claimed to be a great inventor. W T hen the Academy asked him what he had invented, he said : " 'I have discovered how to take the salt out of cod- fish.' Ha, ha — that is our best joke." But to return to Mr. Depew: "The ride of six miles from Edinburgh to Roslyn," continued Mr. Depew, "gave me an unusual opportun- ity to mark the difference in intelligence between the nationalities of the coachman class. The Irish driver is full of wit, humor, and fun, but his information is lim- CffA UNCE Y DEPE IV S BEST STORIES. 63 ited, and he is a poor guide. The English driver is the stupidest of all mortals. He has neither imagination nor knowledge. I said to one as we drove through the ancient gates of an old walled town : " 'What were those arches built for?' " ' I don't know, sir.' " 'How long have you lived here?' '"All my life, sir.' "In the square at Salisbury stood a statue of Sidney Herbert, for many years a distinguished member of parliament. I asked the coachman: 'Whose statue is that?' " 'Mr. Herbert, sir." 'Well,' said I, 'what did he do to deserve a statue?' " 'I don't know, sir, but I think he fit somewhere.' 'Well, is that the reason he is dressed in a frock coat, and carries an umbrella instead of a sword?' " 'Yes, sir, I think so.' "I said to my driver at Torquay: " 'Do many Americans come here?' 'Oh, yes, sir. H 'Americans are very fond of Tor- quay. Only yesterday morning, sir, two h'Americans, young ladies, 'ad me out before breakfast, and they made me drive them to an h'American dentist to have a tooth plugged, and the next day I had to go there very early again, because there was some trouble with that plug. Oh, the h'Americans are very fond of Tor- quay, sir.' " 'What was the oldest ruin you visited in England?' I asked. "Well, old Stonehenge, ten miles from Old Sarum. The age of Stonehenge is not known. It is a mystery of the prehistoric past. There are four rows in circles 64 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. of rough, uncut stone columns, each circle within the other. Two uprights, standing about twenty-five feet high, are bound by a third, resting across them on the top, and so on all the way round. This structure is in the midst of a chalk plain, and there are no stones like it nearer than Ireland. The stones weigh about eleven tons each. Where did they come from? How did a primitive people get them there? How did they raise these vast blocks and place them upon the top of the upright supports? Have other races lived, flourished, and perished, with high civilization, before our own? I made all these inquiries, and many more, of the old guide at the temple, and finally he said : 'HT can h'always tell h'Americans by the h'odd questions they ask. Now that big stone yonder fell h'over and broke in the year 1797, and when I told this to one of your countrymen he said : "Well, did you see it fall?" "Good heavens," said I, " that was nearly a hundred years ago." " 'Then I was only last week pointing out to a pretty young h'American lady, how only one day in the year, and that the longest day, the first rays of the rising sun come directly over that tallest stone, and strike on that stone lying down over there with the letter "h'A" on it, which means the altar. ''"Oh," she said, "I suppose you have seen it more than a thousand times." '"Lord bless you, miss," said I, "it only happens once a year." ' "Henry Irving, the actor, told me that Toole, the comedian, said to him one day: 'And so you have done more in twenty years to revive and properly pre- CHAUNCEY DEPEWS BEST STORIES. 65 sent the plays of Shakespeare than any man living, and were never at Stratford ? Let's go at once.' A few hours found them roaming over all the sacred and classic scenes by the Avon. As they were returning to the hotel in the early evening, they met an agricultural laborer coming home with his shirt outside his panta- loons, with his pipe in his mouth, stolid and content. Toole asked him : " 'Does Mr. Shakespeare live here?' " 'No, sor. I think he be dead.' " 'Well, do many people come to see his grave?' " 'Oh, yes, sor.' " 'What did he do to make these great crowds visit his house and the church where he is buried?' 'I've lived here all my life,' said Hodge, scratching his head in great perplexity, 'but I don't know exactly, but I think he writ somethin'.' '"What did he write?' ''I think,' said Hodge solemnly, 'I think it was the Bible.' " I told Mr. Depew's dog story years ago, but the great story-teller has changed it lately, so the last time I saw him I asked him to give me the new version. "But it is a chestnut, Eli," he said, and then he con- tinued thoughtfully. "Everything good is a chestnut. A good dinner is a chestnut ; and so is your old port wine, and your wife's love; but you never get tired of them. The dog story really happened, you know. You see, when I was about fourteen years old my father lived on the old farm up at Poughkeepsie. One day after I had finished a five-acre field of corn my father let me go to town to see a circus. While in town I saw for the first time a spotted coach dog. It took my fancy and 66 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. I bought it and took it home. When father saw it, his good old Puritan face fell. 'Why, Chauncey,' he said sadly, 'we don't want any spotted dog on the farm — he'll drive the cattle crazy.' ''No, he won't, father,' said I proudly; 'he's a blooded dog.' "The next day," said Mr. Depew, "it was raining, and I took the dog out into the woods to try him on a coon, but the rain was too much for him. It washed the spots off. That night I took the dog back to the dog dealer with a long face. Said I : 'Look at the dog sir; the spots have all washed off.' ' 'Great guns, boy !' exclaimed the dog dealer, 'there was an umbrella went with that dog. Didn't you get the umbrella?' " At the last Presidential election the Democrats claimed every State. They claimed that Harrison was surely defeated, and that Cleveland had carried every State. "The Democrats claiming everything so," said De- pew, "reminds me of the Boston drummer who was din- ing at the Albany station. In announcing dessert the waiters sang out mince pie, apple pie, peach pie, and custard ! " 'Give me a piece of mince, apple, and peach,' said the drummer. T say,' said the waitress, as she hesitated a moment, 'what's the matter of the custard?' " Mr. Depew worships a sweet, pure American joke, and he never gets mad if he is made the victim of it. When the jovial railroad president arrived from Eu- rope the last time, the wits of the Union League Club CHA I r Nl "A' ) ' DEPE IV 'S BEST S TORIES. 6 7 had a good joke ready for him. Elliott F. Shepard, Vandcrbilt's son-in-law, and Wm. M. Evarts had told it, and Mr. Dana had it read}- for the Sun. The next day after Mr. Depew arrived from Europe, and before he heard the story, I was in Cornelius Vanderbilt's room in the Grand Central Depot. The story was about De- pew's experience on the steamer. 1 didn't know that Depew sat in the next room and overheard every word of the story through the half-open door. "A new story on Depew?" said Vanderbilt. "Yes, and Depew himself hasn't heard it yet." "What is it— tell it?" "Well," I said, "Evarts and the Union League fellows say that every evening on Depew's steamer, a dozen or so genial passengers clustered in the smoking saloon to tell stories and yarns about things in general. Every soul save one in the party kept his end up. The one exceptional member of the party did not laugh or in- dicate by even a twinkle of the eye any interest in the funniest jokes, and was as silent as a door-knob at the best stories. "This conduct began to nettle Mr. Depew and the other spirits, and when the final seance came around they had lost all patience with the reticent and unre- sponsive stranger. Mr. Depew was finally selected to bring him to terms. They were all comfortably seated and in came the stranger. "See here, my dear sir,' said Mr. Depew, 'won't you tell a story?' " T never told one in my life.' Sing a song? Can t sing. 'Know any jokes?' persisted Mr. Depew. 68 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "'No.' "Mr. Depew and all were prepared to give it up when the stranger stammered and hesitated and finally made it known that he knew just one conundrum, but had forgotten the answer. '"Give it to us,' said Mr. Depew and the others in chorus. 'Yes, give it to us; we'll find the answer.' " 'What is the difference between a turkey and me?' solemnly asked the stranger. " 'Give it up,' said Chairman Depew. " 'The difference between a turkey and me,' mildly said the stranger, 'is that they usually stuff the bird with chestnuts after death. I am alive.' " Vanderbilt smiled audibly, but a merry ha! ha! echoed from the next room. It was the happy laugh of Depew himself, and it grew louder till I left the building. When I meet Mr. Depew now I give him the whole sidewalk, and when I ride on his railroad I walk. NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. Wit and Humor Distinctly Separated — Wit, Imagination ; Humor, the Truth — Wits and Humorists Classified — Mark Twain, Dickens, Will Carleton, Nasby, Josh Billings, Danbury News Man, Hurdette — Pathos. IT was years after I had left college ; yes, years after I had written humorous books and floated wit and humor as far as the English language goes, before I began to investigate philosophically the difference be- tween them. It was also years before I could separate satire and ridicule. In making this investigation I had no books to go to. All the mental philosophers like- Lord Karnes, Whateley, Blair, and Wayland had left us only one erroneous definition, that "Wit is a short-lived surprise." Edison told me that he found all the data on electricity that had come down from Newton and Franklin and Morse erroneous. He threw their data away and commenced again. I did the same with wit and humor. I said, suppose a physician should give as silly a reason for the cause of death as the rhetoricians do of the cause of laughter. Suppose when I asked Dr. Hammond or Dr. MacKenzie what caused a patient's death, they should say : " Why, he died from want of breath ! " "But what caused the want of breath? You are begging the question." " Oh, disease (genus), small-pox (species)." 69 70 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. "Ah, now you have a perfect definition." Now, I ask the rhetoricians what causes the surprise? They do not know. I have discovered this cause. It is the magnification or minification of a thought beyond the truth into the imagination. So I find all humor is pure truth or nature; while all wit is imagination. Humor is the photograph, while wit is an imaginative sketch. Now we can separate the humorists from the wits. Dickens was a pure humorist. The stories of " Little Nell,"* and " Smike," and " Oliver Twist," were descrip- tions true in letter and in spirit. No imagination. The characters actually lived, and Dickens simply pho- tographed them, dialects and all. HUMOR. Here is a little bit of pure humor: I caught it through the phonograph. While they were carrying my phonograph across Central Park I stopped to have Moses, a little black boy, black my boots. When my boots were half done, Julius, who, it seems, had been quarreling with Moses in the morning, came up. I saw there was fire in his * The London Literary World says : " Smike is still living in Bury St. Edmunds, where he keeps a toy shop. He is a tall, hatchet-faced old gentleman, proud of his romantic eminence. Carker was connected, through hi> father, with an eminent engineering firm, and lived in Oxford Road, where he prowled about, a nuisance to all the servant girls in the neighborhood. Carker, Major Bagstock, Mrs. Skewton, — whose real name was Campbell, — and her daughter were well-known characters in Leamington. Fifty years ago the Shannon coach, running between Ips- wich and London, was driven by a big, burly old fellow named Cole, who was the veritable elder Weller." NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND III MoR. 7 1 eye, and I held the phonograph and caught tin's exact dialogue: "Look heah, boy: I'ze dun got my eye-ball on you, an' de fust thing you know I'll pound you to squash!" "Shoo ! Does you know who you is conversin' wid?" "Doan' you talk to me dat way, black man." "Who's black man?" You is. bo is you. "Look out, boy! A feller dun call me a niggah one time, and the county had to bury him." ''An' you look out for me, black man; I'se mighty hard to wake up, but when I gits aroused I wo/, pi7.cn all dc way frew." "Shoo! I just want to say to you dat de las' fight I was in it took eight men to hold me. Doan' you get me mad, boy; doan' you do it." ' Bum ! I dass put out my hand right on yo' shoulder." "An' I dass put my hand on yours." " Now, what yer gwine ter do?" " Now, what yer gwine ter do?" "Shoo!" " Shoo !" As Moses moved away the phonograph ceased to catch his last words, but a flash Kodak camera would have shown him with his left hand waving defiantly, and a big "shoo" coming out of his mouth. You can catch the present humor with the phono- graph and camera for it goes to the eye and ear. but wit goes to the imagination and must be thought of to cause laughter. You cannot paint wit, for you cannot paint a thought. You can paint humor but not wit. 72 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. WIT. Now here is a bit of wit that cannot be appreciated without a little thought : It was in the rational psychology class at Princeton and Dr. McCosh was instructing the class in term- ology. Turning to a student, the doctor commenced: "Now, Mr. Adams, take the terms, 'self evident' — terms often used; what do we mean by them? Can you express their meaning in other words?" "Well, hardly, Doctor. I can't recall other words that would express the same meaning." "I will be more explicit," said the doctor. "I will illustrate. Suppose, speaking anthropologically— sup- pose I should ask you if such a being as the fool killer ever existed?" "I should say I don't know— I never met him." "Ah. that is self evident," said the doctor. "The class is dismissed." A fool cannot laugh at this story. It requires thought — imagination. HUMOR. Here is another bit of phonographic humor between Mr. Isaacstein and a customer: "I sells you dot coat, my frent, for sayventeen shil- ling; you dake him along." "I thought, Isaacstein, that you didn't do business on Saturday. Isn't this your Sunday?" "My frent " (and the phonograph caught his low reverent voice), "my frent, to sell a coat like dot for sayventeen shilling vas not peesness, dot vas sharity." The time will come when the phonograph and Kodak NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. 73 will do more truthful humorous work than Dickens did. Wit requires an afterthought. It is purely mental. WIT. Another case of wit : A beautiful young lady, a member of the 400, came into Hazard's drug store, under the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and asked him if it were possible to disguise castor oil. "It's horrid stuff to take, you know. Ugh !" said the young lady, with a shudder. 'Why, certainly," said Mr. Hazard; and just then, as another young lady was taking some soda water, Mr. Hazard asked her if she wouldn't have some too. After drinking it the young lady lingered a moment and finally observed : "Now tell me, Mr. Hazard, how you would disguise castor oil?" "Why, madam, I just gave you some " "My gracious me !" exclaimed the young lady, "why, I wanted it for my sister!" HUMOR. Here is a quaint little love story and a proposal given just as it occurred between a loving couple in East Tennessee. The very truth of it makes it humor: "D'ye lak me, Sue?" he asked, in a faltering voice. "Purty well, Jim." "How much, d'ye reckon?" "Oh, er good deal," and the blushes came to her cheeks. 74 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. 'But how much, now?" 'Oh,erlot." 'How'd yer lak ter " 'Oh, Jim!" 'How'd yer know what I war goin' ter say?" 'I know'd." 'What?" 'You know." 'I was goin' to ast ye ef ye'd go er fishin'?" 'Ye wasn't nuther." 'Yes, I war." Jim! 'H'm!" 'Ye don't lak me." 'Yes, I do, a heap." 'No, ye don't." 'I orter know.' 'How?" 'Why, Sue, didn't I jist ast yer ter git ready an' go 'Ye said ye war goin' to ast me ter go er fishin'." 'Sue!" 'What, Jim?" 'I didn't mean it.'' 'Then what did ye mean?" 'Oh, Sue, quit yer foolin' an' go an' ast yer paw." The blank lines are to be supplied by the imagina- tion and are really a phantom of wit, but the pure humor stops at "paw." Would you like to read a courtship which occurred up in Puritan New England? NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. 75 Here it is and a very good example of humor: Seven long years ago, Jonas Harris began to "keep company" with Hannah Bell, and yet in all that time he had not mustered courage to propose a certain im- portant question. His house was lonely and waiting; hers was lonely enough to be vacated, and still Jonas could not bring himself to speak the decisive words. Many a time he walked up to her door with the courage of a lion, only to find himself a very mouse when she appeared. He had never failed in dropping in to cheer her loneliness on Christmas evening, and this year he presented himself as usual. The hearth was swept, the fire burned brightly, and Miss Hannah was adorned with smiles and a red bow. Conversation went serenely on for an hour or so, and then, when they both sat paring red -cheeked apples with great contentment, Jonas began to call upon his recollec- tions. "It's a good many years, ain't it, Hannah, since you and I sat here together?" "Yes, a good many." "I wonder if I shall be settin' here this time another year? "Maybe I shan't be at home. Perhaps I shall go out to spend the evening myself," said Miss Hannah briskly. This was a blow indeed, and Jonas felt it. "Where?" he gasped. "Oh, I don't know," she returned, beginning to quarter her apple. "I might be out to tea— over to your house, for instance." "But there wouldn't be arybody over there to get supper for you." 7 6 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "Maybe I could get it myself." "So you could ! so you could !" cried Jonas, his eyes beginning to sparkle. "But there would be nobody to cook the pies and cakes beforehand." "Maybe I could cook 'em." At that moment Jonas's plate fell between his knees to the earth and broke in two, but neither of them noticed it. "Hannah," cried he, with the pent-up emphasis of seven long years, "could you bring yourself to think of gettin' married?" A slow smile curved her lips; surely she had been given abundant time for consideration. "Maybe I could," she returned demurely, as she gently stroked the neck of the purring kitten. "Who?" asked Jonas falteringly. "It might be you, Jonas," and a film came into Han- nah's eyes. "O Hannah!" And Jonas has admired himself to this day for lead- ing up to the subject so cleverly. When Mr. Blathwait asked Mark Twain why he liked "Huckleberry Finn" the best of all his books, he said : "Because it has the truest dialect. I was born in the neighborhood where 'Huckleberry Finn' lived. He was a real character. I lived a great deal of my boyhood on a plantation of my uncle's, where Huckle- berry Finn and forty or fifty negroes lived, and so I gradually absorbed their dialect." Any dialect, — Irish, Scotch, or Negro,— when faith- fully rendered, is humorous. There is no imagination used in rendering a true dialect; it is word painting. The humorist who can write a true dialect is as much an A 7 /://' PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. • 77 artist as the man who can paint a true picture. One is done with the brush and the other with the pen. But as the simple portrait painter who copies nature does not require the subtle imagination of the ideal artist who paints faith and hope and love and despair; so the humorist who copies nature with the pen docs not require the imagination and fancy of the wit who soars into the realms of thought. Rubens, when he painted the humdrum portrait of his fat wife, did not use the imagination that he displayed in his Antwerp "Descent from the Cross," or that Murillo used in his "Immaculate Conception." Teniers was a humorous Dutch painter. His pictures were portraits. The same with Knaus and Bouguereau, only using characters higher up in the social scale. Zamacrois and Vibcrt were wits with the brush. They added imagination to nature. So were Hogarth and John Leach, and so was Nast before he became a mugwump and had to ridicule truth instead of error. The dialects when rendered truthfully are charming humor. Dickens always used them and so does Geo. W. Cable in his Creole stories, and Joel Chandler Harris in his negro sketches. Bret Harte never fails to use the dialect of Calaveras, and John B. Gough was always felicitous when he told his Cornish stories. The charm of Denman Thompson is his life-like Yankee dialect, and Mrs. Burnett made her reputation by writ- ing "That Lass of Lowrie's" in the purest Lancashire. A writer will spend a week on one column of dialect. To illustrate faithful dialect humor: My dining-room boy, Fjancois, whom we brought with us from Paris, could never understand what we meant by "Jack the Ripper," whom he called "Jacques ze Rippair." One 78 ELI rERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. day it all came to him. He came to me wringing his hands in French glee, and said : "I like ze language Americaine. It is so strong, so true, so descripteeve. I go to ze man zat cut my hair, zat shave my barbe, vat you call my beard. I ask, 'Vat is Jacques ze Rippair?' " 'Jacques ze Rippair,' he say, 'Jacques ze Rippair. He is a dandee.' "Zen, ven I gets home to my house, I takes my dictionnaire and I looks for 'Jacques ze Rippair,' but I not find him. Zen I look for dandee, and I find that ze word is dandy, and zat it means a 'lady-killer.' Zen, when to my friend I say, 'Jacques ze Rippair is a man vat kills ladees,' he says, 'Right you are.' I like ze language Americaine, Messieur Landown, it is so eezee to understand." It was another bit of true dialect humor — faithfully phonographed Irish brogue — when Michael Donan walked into the sick room of Patrick Kelly. Patrick lay there very pale, with his eyes closed, and we heard Michael exclaim: "Howly Moses, Pat, it's murtherin' ill ye're lookin'! Fwat in the name av th' howly Virgin's the mather?" "Michael Donan! an' is it yourself?" "Yis." "Well, yez knows that blatherin' spalpeen av Widdy Costigan's second husband?" "That I do." ' He bet me a dollar to a pint I couldn't schwally an igg widout brakin' th' shell— th' shell av it." "Naw!" "Yis." "Did ye do it?" NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AXD HUMOR. 79 "I did." "Then fwat's ailin' ye?" "It's doon there," laying his hand on his stomach. "If I joomp about 1*11 br'ak it an' cut me stummick wid tli* shell. If I kape quiet the dom thing'H hatch oot an' I'll have a Shanghai rooster a-clauin' me insides." Now who are the humorists and who are the wits among the poets? Judge for yourself by the above standard. Will Carleton is a humorous poet, and Lowell in 'Hosea Biglow." Carleton's poems are true in letter and in spirit — fact and dialect. In his farm ballads he simply records nature faithfully. So does Bret Harte in "Jim," and John Hay in "Little Breeches." James Whitcomb Riley tells me that his most humorous poems were written when a mere child wor- shiping at the shrine of nature. How true is his boy poem on "Our Hired Girl": Our hired girl, she's 'Lizabeth Ann ; An' she can cook best things to eat ! She ist puts dough in our pie pan, An' pours in sompin' at's good and sweet. An' nen she salts it all on top With cinnamon ; an' nen she'll stop, An' stoop, an' slide it, ist as slow, In the cook-stove so's 'twon't slop An' git all spilled ; nen bakes it— so It is custard pie, first thing you know ! An' nen she'll say : " Clear out o' my way ! They's time fer work, and time fer play, Take your dough an' run, child, run, Er I cain't git no cookin' done ! " 80 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF IV IT. Longfellow and Tennyson soar up into the imagina- tion. Our sentimental poets are refined wits. They deal entirely in the imagination and fancy. You have no idea how much of our pleasure is caused by imagina- tion or innocent exaggeration. We see it all around us. If a person imagines a thing and expresses it, that is exaggeration. You can't imagine a thing that is. You must imagine something that is not. It is only the brightest people who have vivid imaginations, and only the brightest people who have wit. The sweetest charm of the poet is caused by his imagination or exaggeration. When the divine psalm- ist says, "The morning stars sang together," he don't want to deceive you ; he exaggerates to please you. The stars never sang. Sentimental young people who have been out late at night have listened to these stars ever since Solomon prevaricated, but they never sang. Don't hold the poet to strict account. Joaquin Miller, the sweet poet of the Sierras, in a late poem, speaks of the "clinking stars." "Why, Joaquin," I said when I met him, "did you ever hear the stars clink?" "No," he said, laughing, "but the old poetical exag- geration about the stars singing, got to be a 'chestnut,' and I thought I'd make mine clink." Dear old Longfellow was a sweet Christian, and still he tuned his lyre and sang: The sun kissed the dewdrops and they were pearls. Now the sun never kissed any dewdrops, and it wouldn't have made pearls of them if it had. The aesthetic poet, in rugged Saxon, is a rank liar, but he NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. 8 1 hides behind his poet's license, and we say he has the divine gift of imagination — divine afflatus! When the poets drop exaggeration and fancy, and let their heroes talk the dialect of nature, they become humorists. Lowell's "Biglow Papers" and Will Carle- ton's dialect farm ballads, I say, are pure humor. Mark Twain is both a humorist and a wit. When- ever he tells the absolute truth, close to life, like Dickens, he is a humorist ; but just the moment he lets his imagination play — just the moment he begins to ex- aggerate—stretch it a little — then that humor blossoms into wit. To show the reader the fine dividing line between wit and humor — the invisible line — and how humor can gradually creep into wit through exaggeration, Mark Twain, in one of his books, has a chapter on building tunnels out in Nevada. He goes on for five pages with pure humor — pure truth. He describes those miners just as they are — describes their dialects, describes their bad grammar, describes the tunnel; but Mark can't stick to the truth very long before he begins to stretch it a little. He soon comes to a miner who thinks a good deal of his tunnel. They all tell him he'd better stop his tunnel when he gets it through the hill, but he says he "guesses not — it's his tunnel," so he runs his tunnel right on over the valley into the next hill. You who can picture to yourselves this hole in the sky, held up by trestle ivork, will see where the humor leaves off and the wit begins — where the truth leaves off and the exaggeration commences. We see humor all around us every day. Any one can write humor who will sit down and write the honest 82 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF W IT. truth. There is no imagination in humor, while wit is all imagination — like the tunnel. Humor is what has been; wit is what might be. I saw as good a piece of humor to-day as I ever saw in my life. I wish 1 had photographed it. I would if I had thought that it could be so good. A dear, good old lady and her daughter came into the depot at Pough- keepsie. She wasn't used to traveling, and was very nervous. Her eyes wandered about the depot a mo- ment, and then she walked nervously up to the station window and tremblingly asked : "When does the next train go to New York?" "The next train, madam," said the agent, looking at his watch, "goes to New York at exactly 3.30." "Will that be the first train?" "Yes, madam, the first train." "Isn't there any freights?" "None." "Isn't there a special?" "No, no special." "Now if there was a special would you know it?" "Certainly I would." "And there isn't any — ain't they?" "No, madam; none." "Well, I'm awful glad— awful glad," said the old lady. "Now, Maria, you and I can cross the track." How does the humorist do his work? I will tell you. I will lift the veil right here. The humorist takes any ordinary scene, like the old lady in the depot, and describes it true to life. That's all. Dickens used to go down into the slums of London and get hold of such quaint characters as Bill Sykes and Nancy. Then he used to watch them, hear every NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. 83 word they uttered, hear their bad grammar and dialect, see every act they performed. Then he used to come into his room, sit down and write a photo- graph of what he saw and heard. .And that was humor — truth in letter and in spirit. The humorist is truer than the historian or the poet. The historian is only true in spirit, while the humorist is true in spirit and in letter. Sir Walter Scott, when he wrote true humor was truer than Macaulay. Take King James of Scotland. He had never stepped upon English soil. lie could not speak the English language. He spoke a sweet Scotch dialect. But when Macaulay makes King James speak, he puts in his mouth the pure English of Addi- son and Dr. Johnson. He deceives us to add dignity to his history. Not so with Sir Walter Scott. When he describes King James in "Ivanhoe" he puts nature's dialect in his mouth— that sweet Scotch dialect; and Sir Walter Scott is truer than Macaulay. Again, take the death-bed of Webster. Bancroft says the great orator "raised himself on his pillow, and for an instant the old time fires gleamed from his eagle eyes as he exclaimed, T still live!' and sinking back, was dead." This sounds pretty, and it is the way the dignified historian has to treat the scene. The humorist would have more truth and less dignity. The humorist would describe the scene as Webster's nurse, who saw him die at Marshfield, described it to me: "Webster," he said, "lay on his bed so quiet that it seemed as if he had passed away. As the physician entered the room he glanced at the reclining figure and repeated half to himself: 84 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. " 'Guess he's gone now!' 'Not yet,' said Webster, 'gimme the brandy,' and, after he drank it, he lay motionless; then a long sigh, and he never spoke again." Bancroft had to change this so as to make it heroic, but not truthful. The most humorous thing the "Danbury News Man" ever wrote was that account of putting up a stovepipe, and that actually occurred. The Danbury Nezvs Man and his wife were going to church one day, and the stovepipe fell down. He called his wife back to help him put it up; but she was a very religious woman, and went on to church and left him to put up that stovepipe alone. He put up that stovepipe. That stovepipe did everything that any stovepipe could do. It didn't go out of the room. I had a stovepipe once that got out the back door, went clear around the block twice, and came back and got on to the wrong stove. Well, after he got the stovepipe put up, he sat down and wrote a faithful account of it, and you enjoy reading it. You say, "That is so true ! That man's put up a stovepipe — he's been there !" Now, if the writer had wanted to add wit to his hu- mor, he would only have had to add imagination. In his mind's eye he could have put two joints on the stove- pipe, and the soot could have poured right out of one joint down his shirt collar, and he could have shaken it out of the bottom of his trowsers ; and the other joint could have slipped right over his head and taken off one of his ears. But that would have been a lie, for the stovepipe was No. 6 and his head was No. 7. Another of the humorous creations of the Danbury News Man are his description of cording the bedstead, NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. 85 and Mrs. Munson "shooing" the hen. We can see Mrs. Munson now. Her husband, the old farmer, had been at work all the morning with two hired men and three dogs trying to drive the hens into the coop. Mrs. Munson looked up from her churning, saw the situation, and screamed : "John! I'll 'shoo' those hens!" Then she goes out — gets her eyes on the hens — holds up her dress from both sides — just surrounds the hens — then drops her whole body as she says: "Sh !" That settled the hen! Among American writers C. B. Lewis (M. Quad) and the Danbury News Man are pure humorists. Their characters are all real. Old Bijah really lived in the Court House at Detroit. Yes, Brother Gardner once lived in the flesh, and the Lime-Kiln Club was. Mr. Lewis gave Brother Gardner's dialect so true to life in those Lime-Kiln Club sermons that many people be- lieved the club actually existed. In fact, the humorist showed me three letters, recently received from three members of the Kansas Farmers' Alliance, who wanted to come to Detroit and join that club! Mr. Lewis has now moved the club over to Thompson Street, New York, and we expect to hear of the old Staten Island farmers coming up to the J Vorld office to inquire the way to Brother Gardner's church ! I asked Mr. Lewis one day what was the most hu- morous thing he had seen lately. "I would be ashamed to tell you," he said. "It was such a little thing — but so true!" "What was it?" "Well, a man came into the house, rushed up to his 86 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. wife, and said, 'My dear wife, I've just done the smart- est thing I ever did in my life.' " 'Why, George,' said his wife, 'what did you do? What did you do?' " 'Why' (looking down at his trowsers), 'I rolled up my trousers this morning before they got muddy.' "It was such a little thing, but so true!" • • • • • What of Mark Twain? Well, Mark is both a humorist and a wit. His descrip- tions in "Roughing it" and "Innocents Abroad" are generally humorous. He uses the dialects truthfully, and his characters are natural. Then, all at once, he will run the reader plump up against the tomb of Adam or the bust of Columbus, where he convulses you with the wildest wit, the craziest of imagination. Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence was a case of perfect humor, perfect truth — so natural! Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" is the truest and best thing he ever wrote. When Raymond Blathwait asked Mr. Twain about "Huckleberry Finn," he said: "The only one of my own books that I can ever read with pleasure is the one you are good enough to say is your favorite, 'Huck Finn,' and partly because I know the dialect is true and good. I didn't know I could read even that till I read it aloud last summer to one of my little ones who was sick." "How do you define wit?" was asked Mr. Twain. "Wit is the legitimate child of contrast. Therefore, when you shall have found the very gravest people, and the most lighthearted people in the world, you shall also be able to say without further inquiry, T have found the garden of wit, the very paradise of wit. You NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WIT AND HUMOR. 87 may not know it, but it is true, if a man is at a funeral and brokenhearted, he is quite likely to be persecuted with humorous thoughts. These thoughts are funny by contrast. Now, to illustrate, here is a story: "A clergyman in New York was requested by a man to come over to Brooklyn to officiate at his wife's funeral. The clergyman assented, only stipulating that there must be no delay, as he had an important engagement the same day. At the appointed hour they all met in the parlor, and the room was crowded with mourning people; no sounds but those of sighs and sobbings. The clergyman stood up over the coffin and began to read the service, when he felt a tug at his coat-tails, and bending down he heard the widower whisper in his car: " 'We ain't ready yet.' "Rather awkwardly he sat down in a dead silence. Rose again and the same thing took place. A third time he rose and the same thing occurred. " 'But what is the delay?' he whispered back. 'Why are you not ready?' " 'She ain't all here yet,' was the very ghastly and unexpected reply; 'her stomach's at the apothecary's.' "You see," continued Mr. Twain, "it is the horizon- wide contrast between the deep solemnity on the one hand and that triviality on the other which makes a thing funny which could not otherwise be so. But in all cases, in occurrences such as that I have just de- scribed, it is solemn and grave, culminating in the ridiculous." I think the best story about Mark Twain was his answer when they appealed to him to settle a religious controversy. They had been discussing about eternal 88 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. life and future punishment for the wicked. Is or is not there a hell or heaven, and where will the wicked go? A lady finally appealed to Mr. Twain and af joy. "Aunt 'Liza, there is no hope for you." "Bress de Great Master for his goodness. Ise ready." The doctor gave a few directions to the colored women that sat around 'Liza's bed, and started to leave, when he was recalled by the old woman, who was drift- ing out with the tide: "Marse John, stay wid me till it's ober. I wants to talk ob de old times. I knowed you when a boy long 'fore you went and been a doctor. I called you Marse John den ; I call you de same now. Take yo' ole mam- my's hand, honey, and hold it. Ise lived a long, long time. Ole marster and ole missus hab gone before, and the chillun from de ole place is scattered ober de world. I'd like to see 'em 'fore I starts on de journey to-night. My ole man's gone, and all the chillun I nussed at dis breast has gone too. Dey's wait in' for dere m udder on de golden shore. I bress de Lord, Marse John, for takin' me to meet 'em dar. Ise fought de good fight, and Ise not afraid to meet de Saviour. No mo' wo'k for poor ole mammy, no mo' trials and tribulations — hold my hand tighter, Marse John — fadder — mudder — marster — missus — chillun — Ise gwine home." The soul, while pluming its wings for its flight to the Great Beyond, rested on the dusky face of the sleeper, and the watchers with bowed heads wept silently. She was dead. WILD WEST EXAGGERATIONS. The Wit of Exaggeration — Wonderful Fishing and Hunting Stories — The Lying Tournament of the Press Club — Western Imagination — Wild Bill, Bill Nye, and Eli Compete. I HAVE always found the greatest exaggerators in the West. They live where the mountains are high and the prairies are broad. Their imaginations are affected by great distances and great heights. That is the reason all the great stories which astonish the East come in from Colorado or Wyoming. The imagination of the city man who looks up against a brick wall is dwarfed, but when we stand on the broad plains of Kansas and look a hundred miles and see Pike's Peak rearing her snowy dome into the azure skies, why our stories smack of the distance. Then in the West thought is free, and they are not troubled with these compunctions of conscience. In the East here many of us are so good — so good ! — that if we get hold of an exaggerated joke we go right out back side of the orchard, get right down in the corner of the fence and giggle — all to ourselves. That's the meanest kind of close communionism. But in the West, if a man discovers a good joke, he wants to get on the mountain top and proclaim his good tidings of great joy to all the world. So go West to find imagina- tion: go to the prairies or the mountains, go to Kan- sas or Nebraska; that's where exaggeration lives, that's 92 WILD WEST EXAGGERATIONS. 93 where it stays. Let exaggeration get away from Kan- sas, and, if there isn't a string tied to it it will go right back there again — so natural! Yes, I've met some of our grandest imaginers in prairie schooners, — tattered and torn and ragged, roam- ing through the nation's public land, away from civ- ilization, and where no man had seen the rivers or walked on that virgin soil before. One day, out in Sioux County, the extreme north- western county of Nebraska, I met one of these pro- fessional homesteaders. I le stood by a prairie schooner, out of which came a stovepipe. Behind was a cow and calf and two dogs. "Where is your home?" I asked. "H'n't got no house," he said, as he kicked one of the dogs and took a chew of tobacco. "Where do you live?" "Where d' I live!" he exclaimed, with the grandeur of a king. "Where d' I live? I don't have to live any- where. I'm marchin' ahed of civ'lization, sir. I'm homesteadin'." "Well, where do you sleep?" "Sleep? I sleep over on the government land, drink out of the North Platte, eat jack rabbits and raw wolf. But it's gettin' too thickly settled round here for me. I saw a land agent up at Buffalo Gap to-day, and they say a whole family is comin' up the North Platte fifty miles below here. It's gettin' too crowded for me here, stranger. I leave for the Powder River country to-morrow. I can't stand the rush!" Again, I was out in Kansas City after that great cyclone they had there three years ago. Terrible cyclone ! A third of Kansas City blown away — three 9* ELI TERKIXS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. splendid churches went up with the rest. But they were all perfectly happy. You can't make those Kan- sas people feel bad since they've got prohibition. If they have grasshoppers out there now, they telegraph right over to New England, "Got grasshoppers! Got grasshoppers ! !" And then they claim that their land is so rich that they raise two crops, grasshoppers and corn. Well, the next day after I got to Kansas City, I went up on the bluffs with Colonel Coates. He was going to show me where his house had stood the day before the cyclone. Not one brick left on another; trees blown out by the roots! Said I, "Colonel, you had a terrible cyclone here yesterday, didn't you?" "Well, there was a little d-r-a-f-t " "Well," said I, "Colonel, how hard did it blow here in Kansas City? Don't deceive me, now; how hard did it blow?" "Blow," he said, "why, it blew — it blew my cook stove — blew it away over — blew it seventeen miles, and the next day came back and got the griddles!" "Did it hurt anybody?" "Hurt anybody! Why, there were some of those Farmers' Alliance members of the legislature over here looking around with their mouths open. We told 'em they'd better keep their mouths closed during the hurricane, but they were careless — left their mouths open, and the wind caught 'em in the mouth and turned 'em inside out!" "Did it kill them?" I asked eagerly. "No," said the colonel, wiping his eyes, "it didn't kill 'em, but they were a good deal discouraged. WILD WEST EXAGGERATIONS. 95 "Why," he continued enthusiastically, "it bleu* some of those Farmers' Alliance men — blew 'em right up against a stone wall and flattened 'em out as flat as pancakes — and " "Why, what did you do with them?" I asked. " Do with them ! Why, we went out the next day-i— scraped them farmers off — scraped off several barrels full of 'em — and sent them over to New England and sold them for liver pads!" Out in Dakota they have imaginations as elastic as their climate: "One day," said Elder Russell, "it is a blizzard from Winnipeg, and the next day it is a hot simoon from Texas. Sometimes the weather changes in a second. Now, one morning last spring, to illus- trate, Governor Pierce, of Bismarck, and I were snow- balling each other in the courtyard of the capitol. Losing my temper, for the governor had hit me pretty hard, I picked up a solid chunk of ice and threw it with all my might at his excellency, who was standing fifty feet away." "Did it hurt him?" I asked. "Yes," said the clergyman regretfully, "it did hurt him, and I'm sorry I did it now, but it was unin- tentional. You see, as the chunk of ice left my hand, there came one of those wonderful climatic changes incident to Dakota; the mercury took an upward turn, the ice melted in transit, and the hot water scalded poor Governor Pierce all over the back of his neck." I have heard a good deal of exaggeration among our newspaper men. The smart reporter is boiling over with ideas which he cannot hold within the narrow boundaries of truth. But the reporter tries to be truthful. All the b<^t 9» ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. humor we have comes from the pen of the conscientious reporter who describes little true things close to life. Dickens was a reporter, and the stories of "Little Dor- rit," and "Dick Swiveller," and "David Copperfield" were little true descriptions of real characters which he had met in his reportorial career. Uncle John Wood, the father of the New York Press Club, and who used to run his blue pencil through the first articles I ever wrote, told me about an enter- prising and truthful reporter in Chicago. "A Chicago reporter," said Uncle John, "was detailed to write up a case of dissection of a drowned young lady in the medical college. He was very ambitious and went to his work early in the day — hours before the dissection took place. Before the doctors as- sembled, he saw the corpse, with several others, laying on the table. To kill time, before the doctors arrived, he commenced writing a description of the room and a description of the corpse. All at once he was startled to see one of the corpses on a side table move. Then he heard a rustling. Then the corpse sat up and spoke ! " 'Who are you ?' asked the corpse, pointing his finger at the reporter. " 'I'm a reporter on the morning News. I'm Eugene Field. I've been sent here to describe the dissection of the droAvned girl.' " 'What are you writing about now?' "T'm describing the appearance of the room and the beautiful corpse.' " 'Oh, pshaw, young man, you're too late for that. I sent that in to the Tribune yesterday. I've been laying here two days.' " / 1 T ILD 1 1 '/■: S 7 " EX A GGERA TIONS. 9 7 Can newspaper men exaggerate? Sometimes, if the fee is commensurate with the imagination required. One night, after I had made a little speech at a dinner given by the New York Press Club to General Felix Angus of the Baltimore Avicrican, the boys got to telling exaggerated stories about mean men. "Talking about mean men," said Colonel Cockerill, "I know a man on Lexington Avenue who was the meanest man in New York." "How mean is that?" 1 asked: "Why, Eli," he said, "he is so mean that he keeps a five cent piece with a string tied to it to give to beggars; and when their backs are turned, he jerks it out of their pockets! "Why, this man is so confounded mean," continued the gentleman, "that he gave his children ten cents apiece every night for going to bed without their supper, but during the night, when they were asleep, he went upstairs, took the money out of their clothes, and then whipped them in the morning for losing it !" "Does he do anything else?" "Yes, the other day I dined with him, and I noticed the poor little servant-girl whistled all the way upstairs with the dessert — and when I asked the mean old scamp what made her whistle so happily, he said : '"Why, I keep her whistling so she can't eat the raisins out of the cake.' " "But," I said, " I knew a meaner man than that up in central New York." "Well, now, hear that!" they all said. "But how mean was he?" "Why, his name was Deacon Munson, and his 9§ ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. neighbors said he was so mean that he used to stop his clock nights — to keep the gearing from wearing out." "Oh, come off!" "I didn't see this, gentlemen," I continued, "but the neighbors said the deacon kept a dairy, and after skimming his milk on top, he used to walk up and down the street, and if no one was looking, he would turn it over and skim it on the bottom. But that wasn't dishonest. It was only frugal. He had a per- fect right to skim it on the sides — on the end — » » an "Oh, now Eli !" interrupted several voices. "Fact," I said, "honest fact; but there was one frugal thing the deacon did that I have never yet mentioned. He was very close about domestic matters — about the cooking. Didn't want anything wasted ; and he used to go over to the butcher's shop every Saturday night, take off his old slouch hat, full of something or other, and ask the butcher if he wouldn't please restuff — them — sausage skins?" I looked around for a response, but the Press Club was gone. One solitary man remained. He was an old miner from Idaho, who had come as a guest. "Such Sunday-school stories as you New Yorkers have just told," he said, "don't startle an old Idaho miner at all ; and for the credit of my State I want to present her claims for meanness before I go." "What, Idaho people mean?" I said. "The most selfish people on earth, sir. I'm an Idaho man myself." "How mean are they?" WILD WEST EXAGGERATIONS. 99 "Well, take my case. I run a 'wildcat' under a schoolhouse in Boise City, and struck a rich mine, and yet they were so mean that they wouldn't let me do any blasting during school hours for fear of disturbing the children. I had to work at nights altogether, and they even charged me thirty cents for breaking the windows." "Indeed !" "And in another case, three Idaho men jumped a fellow's claim before I could get there, and they wouldn't let me join 'em. D'you know what I had to do? Why, I tlug a canal from the river three miles away and let the water in and druv them jumpers out, and then the coroner who sat on the bodies made me pay for the coffins, and charged me $12 for a funeral sermon of seven minutes long! No, sir; don't you never go beyond Colorado if you want fair treat- ment." They were talking one night down at the Press Club about ' presence of mind," when Major Bundy, of the Mail and Express, said : 'Why, one day Amos J. Cummings was sitting at his desk in the Sun office writing up one of his imagin- ary clambakes, when a stroke of lightning descended through the roof, stripped him of his clothing, even to his boots, then threw him down on to the bronze statue of Franklin and left him paralyzed and unable to move a muscle. "Oh!" exclaimed Joseph Howard, "and poor Amos was killed?" "No, sir. Mr. Cummings retained complete con- sciousness through it all, and being on the spot was enabled to write up a veracious account of the affair. ioo ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. He has fully recovered and is now a member of con- gress, in good standing." Again, you will see imagination among the sailors as you sail down the long rivers or up to the Arctic Seas or around Cape Horn. Sailors' yarns extend around the world. It is the imagination of the sailor which creates the sea serpent and the imaginative ter rors of Scylla and Charybdis, which are as much a myth as the mountaineer's creation of William Tell. You see the imagination among the owners of swift horses. The race tracks and long races of fast horses help imagination in Kentucky. Let a Kentuckian get hold of a new joke, and he just leaps on to a thoroughbred horse and flies for his neighbors. If a horse ever got lame around Lexington his master lamed him getting there early with a new joke, and no mean man does that. Oh, the man that rides up in front of your house a cold, stormy day, beckons to you, and you come shivering down to the gate, and he tells you a joke that makes you laugh, ha! ha! and you go back into the house and put your arms around your wife's neck and kiss her — no mean man does that ! Now, I was down in Kentucky last spring, during the overflow on the Ohio, and I went across the Ohio to Cairo — Cairo on the Ohio River — and sometimes under it. It was a great deluge. But the women were all perfectly happy. If there is anything that a woman loves — utterly loves — it is to have plenty of nice, wet water to wash, and as the water had been pouring down the chimneys for the last week faster than it could run out of the front door, they were perfectly happy. But the next day after I got WILD II 7. 5 /' EX A GGERA TIONS. I o I there, the river went down and the streets were very muddy. I met a Kentucky clergyman there who told me about the mud. "You ought to see the mud over in Levy Street," he said; "mud! mud! mud! Why, I was riding over there in my carriage this morning, and I jumped off and went into the mud clear to my ankles." "Why," said I, "that wasn't very deep." "Well," he said, "I jumped head first. "But you ought to go over on Water Street, there's mud for you ! Why, I was walking along on Water Street — walking along carefully (they all walk carefully in Cairo — buckshot land), walking along carefully right in the middle of the street, when I saw a stovepipe hat. I ran up to it and kicked it, and hit a man right in the ear. "W r hat are you doing here?' I asked; 'what are you doing here?' 'Keep still, keep still, keep still!' he said. 'I'm sitting in a load of hay.' " After lecturing at Deadwood I went over to the Red Cloud Agency with the Quaker Indian Commissioners. Wild Bill, the famous hunter and Indian scout, was in the party. On the trip the conversation started about famous rain storms; and Wild Bill had been giving his experience to General Miles. A little while afterward a Quaker clergyman, who was seeking after reliable information for his govern- ment report, came up to Bill and said: "Let me see, what was that story thee was narrating about storms to General Miles?" "Well," said Wild Bill, as he winked one eye at the general and looked down the muzzle of his pistol to 102 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. see if it was loaded, "I was tellin' the ginral how I seen clouds makin' to the north'ard and I knowed it was going to settle in for thick weather round Deadwood. I told my son to look out, and in less than half an hour there broke the doggondist storm I ever seed. Rain! Why, gen'lemen, it rained so hard into the muzzle of my gun that it busted the darned thing at the breech ! Yes, sir. And the water began to rise on us, too. Talk about your floods down South! Why, gen'lemen, the water rose so rapidly in my house that it flowed up the chimney and streamed 300 feet up in the air ! We got it both ways that trip, up and down !" "Do we understand thee is relating facts within the scope of thine own experience?" demanded the clergy- man, with his mouth wide open. "Partially mine and partially my son's," answered the truthful Bill. "He watched it go up, and I watched it come down ! But you can get some idea of how it rained when I tell you that we put out a barrel without any heads into it, and it rained into the bunghole of the barrel faster than it could run out at both ends!" "Which of you saw this, thee or thy son?" inquired the clergyman. "We each watched it together, my son and me," re- turned Wild Bill, "till my son got too near the barrel and was drowned. Excuse these tears, gen'lemen, but I can never tell about that storm without crying." "Verily the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction," said the clergyman. "Verily it is." That night, after we got back to General Miles's camp, several of the old scouts who heard Wild Bill's WILD WEST EXAGGERATIONS. 103 success with the Quaker Indian Commissioners began telling storm stories. "Talking about winds, heavy winds," said Sandy McGuire, "why, I saw a man in Cheyenne sitting quietly on his doorstep citing a piece of pie. Suddenly, before he could get into the house, the wind struck him. The gale first blew the house down, and then seized the man, carried him through the air a hundred yards or so, and landed him in a peach tree. Soon after- ward a friendly board from his own house came floating by. This he seized and placed over his head to protect himself from the raging blast, and — finished his pie." "That was a windy day for that part of Wyoming, I presume," said Mr. Wm. Nye, of Laramie; "but that would not compare with one of our Laramie zephyrs. Why, gentlemen, out in Laramie, during one of our ordinary gales, I've seen bowlders big as pumpkins fly- ing through the air. Once, when the wind was blow- ing gravestones around, and ripping water pipes out of the ground, an old Chinaman with spectacles on his nose was observed in the eastern part of the town seated on a knoll, calmly flying his kite — an iron shutter with a log-chain for a tail." "Yes," said a young Harvard graduate, who hail just come from Dakota, "they do have quite windy weather out in Wyoming, but if you want to sec real wind you must see a Dakota blizzard. They are very remarkable. One day as I was passing a hotel in Bismarck the cap flew from one of the chimneys. It was a circular piece of sheet iron, painted black, slightly convex, and the four supports were like legs. The wind carried it down street, and it went straddling along like a living thing." 104 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "Well, what was it?" asked Wild Bill. "Why, it turned out to be a cockroach from the hotel, and, by George! I never saw anything like it," then he added — "outside of Boston." "They used to say out in Kansas," said Sandy Mc- Guire, "that wind would blow grasshoppers away. I guess not. I saw a Kansas grasshopper face a hurri- cane the other day for seven hours, and then yanked a shingle off the house and commenced fanning him- self, saying it was awful sultry." Now and then we meet hunters and fishers in New England who can tell a fair story. Such a man was old Nat Willey, who lived up in the White Mountains near the Conway House. One evening there were a group of guests sitting around the blazing logs of the Conway House. There were several Kentuckians, a Colorado man, and Old Nat. They had all told stories of long shots, but Old Nat kept perfectly quiet. A Kentuckian told about his father, who was a pioneer with Daniel Boone, and how he had killed a deer at a distance of two miles! Then there was a long silence, which was broken by Charley Head, who said to Old Nat : "Look here, Uncle Nat, how about that rifle that General Knox gave you. That could shoot some, couldn't it?" "You mean the one I had to fire salted balls from?" "Yes, tell us about it." "Pshaw! It don't matter. Let the old piece rest in its glory." And modest Old Nat would have sat back out of the way, but the story-tellers had become suddenly interested. WILD WEST EXAGGERATIONS. 105 "Let us hear about it," pleaded the gentleman whose father had been a compatriot with Daniel Boone. "Did I understand you that you salted your bullets?" "Always," said Nat, seriously and emphatically. "And what for, pray?" "Because," answered the old mountaineer, with simple honesty in look and tone, "that rifle killed at such a distance that, otherwise, especially in warm weather, game would spoil with age before I could reach it." SATIRE KILLS ERROR. The Great Satirists, Cervantes, Dean Swift, Juvenal, Nasby — Christ uses Satire to Kill Error— Satirizing the Jury System — Satirizing Blus- tering Lawyers — Satirizing Society and the Dude — Satirizing the Agnostic — Satirizing Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Ingersoll — Satire in Politics brings Letters from Blaine and President Harrison. AFTER discovering the difference between wit and humor, and after describing and illustrating this difference so plainly that a schoolboy can see it, I turn my thought toward satire and ridicule. I find satire and ridicule are species of the genus wit. Neither are true. Both are exaggerations. Satire is to kill error and ridicule is to kill truth. The satirist and ridiculer deal in the imagination. The satirist ex- aggerates an error, makes it hideous, and you indig- nantly stamp it out. The ridiculer exaggerates a truth, makes it grotesque, and you laugh it out. Satire is one of the strongest weapons we have. The Satires of Juvenal changed the politics of Rome, Dean Swift changed the political aspect of England with his "Tale of a Tub," Cervantes broke up the awful custom of knight-errantry in Spain with his "Don Quixote," and Nasby, with his cross-road letters, did more for the Union during the last war than a brigade of soldiers. I say Nasby was a satirist. He always called him- self a satirist — not a humorist. He never tried to produce laughter. His aim was to convince people of jo6 SA TIRE KII. I. S h RROR. 1 07 error, by exaggerating that error so that they could see it. His mission was to exaggerate error, or over- state it and make it hideous. So Nasby never told a truth in his life — in the newspapers. Of course he has told private truths at home — to his wife. Even the date of every letter Nasby ever wrote began with an exaggeration. There is no such place as the "Con- federate cross-roads" in Kentucky; no "Deacon Po- gram" — all an exaggeration! Nasby created red-nosed Deacon Pogram, placed him in the Kentucky cross-road saloon, filled him with bourbon whisky, slavery, and secession; made him abuse the "nigger" and the Republican party, and defend slavery. He made the secessionist odious, and did more with his satire to kill slavery and rebellion than Wendell Phillips did with his denunciation. To illustrate how Nasby exploded the pro-slavery error of disfranchising black citizens of the republic, I give this satirical incident as the great satirist gave it to me: "One day," said Nasby, "a poor ignorant white man came to the polls in Georgia to vote. " 'I wish you would oblige me by voting this ticket,' said a bright mulatto, who was standing near the polls. "'What kind of ticket is it?' asked the poor white man. "'Why,' said the mulatto, 'you can sec for yourself.' " 'But I can't read.' 'What! can't you read the ballot you have there in your hand, which you are about to vote?' exclaimed the colored man. " 'No,' said he, T can't read at all.' 'Well,' said the colored man, 'this ballot means that ioS ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. you are in favor of the fifteenth amendment giving equal franchise to both white and colored citizens.' " 'It means to let the nigger vote, does it?' " 'Yes, sir.' 'Then I don't want it. Niggers dorit knozv enough to vote!' " It was thus that Thackeray satirized snobs and snobbery out of England, and it was this same weapon, satire, that Juvenal used to shame the rotten aristocracy of Rome. You can kill more error with exaggera- tion in a week than you can kill with truth in a thou- sand years. How long had they been trying to break up that awful error of knight-errantry in Spain. They couldn't do it. They flung arguments at it; the arguments fell to the ground, and the error of knight-errantry went on. One day Cervantes, that great Spanish satirist, wrote "Don Quixote" — a pure exaggeration. No Don Quixote ever existed, no Sancho Panza. It was knight- errantry exaggerated, and the people saw the crime and ground it under their feet. Satire is used all through the Bible to kill error. Job used it, and so did Elijah and our Saviour. What cutting- satire did our Saviour use to call the attention of the Jews to their crimes. Don't you remember, when the Jews were washing their hands before and after every meal, — little one-cent observances, while great crimes went creeping into Judea, — Christ wanted to call their attention to their crimes? He used satire. With what dreadful satire he exclaimed : "Ye are blind leaders of the blind. Ye strain at a gnat and swallow a CAMEL!" Our Saviour didn't mean to say these Jews could SATIRE KILLS ERROR. 109 literally swallow a camel — he knew they'd try, but they couldn't do it ! If I wanted to draw the attention of the public to the humbuggery of the present high opera music in the churches, I would exaggerate the singing of a hymn a little, and the people would see the absurdity of it. Thus : We have everything high in our church now. We have hi-church, hi-opera, hi-bonnets, and hi-heels, and hi-pocracy. This is the way we sing our hymns: When ther moo-hoon is mi-hild-ly be-heaming O'er the ca-halm and si-hi-lent se-e-e-e-a ; Its ra-dyunce so-hoftly stre-heam-ing, Oh ! ther-hen; oh, ther-hen, I thee-hink of thee. O Lord ! Hof thee-hee. I thee-hink, I thee-hink, I thee-hink, I thee-he-he-hehehehe-hink hof thee-e-e-e-e ! O Lord ! My friend Lewis, our most prolific humorist, tells a lit- tle satirical story about the Foreign Benevolent Society which was established in Chicago by a party of women not noted for attending to domestic matters at home. They had just organized the society and came to Mr. Jonathan Rigdon, a matter-of-fact business man, for a donation of a few dollars as a foundation to commence the benevolent work in Ethiopia. "Yes, Mr. Rigdon," began Mrs. Graham, the presi- dentess, "it would be so pleasant in after years for you to remember that you gave this society its first dollar and its first kind word." The shrewd old business man slowly opened his no ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. wallet, drew out a ten-dollar bill, and as the ladies smacked their lips and clapped their hands, he asked : "Is this society organized to aid the poor of foreign countries?" "Yes — yes — yes!" they chorused. "And it wants money?" \ es — yes. "Well, now," said Rigdon, as he folded the bill in a tempting shape, "there are twenty married women here. If there are fifteen of you who can make oath that you have combed the children's hair this morning, washed the dishes, blackened the cook stove, and made the beds, I'll donate ten dollars." "1 have," answered two of the crowd, and the rest said : "Why, now, Mr. Rigdon!" "If fifteen of you can make oath that your husbands are not wearing socks with holes in the heels, the money is you s," continued the wretch. "Just hear him!" they exclaimed, each one looking at the other. "If ten of you have boys without holes in the knees of their pants, this X goes to the society," said Rig- don. "Such a man !" they whispered. "If there are five pairs of stockings in this room that do not need darning, I'll hand over the money," he went on. "Jonathan Rigdon," said Mrs. Graham, with great dignity, as she sat down to cover up her stockings, "the rules of this society declare that no money shall be contributed except by members; and as you are not a member, I beg that you will withdraw and let us pro- ceed with the routine business." SA TIRE A' ILLS ERROR. I I i SATIRIZING THE JURYMAN. If I want to satirize the humbuggery of our jury sys- tem, I exaggerate a juryman's ignorance, and then the people see it. For example: A Chicago lawyer was visiting New York for the first time. Meeting a man on the crowded street, he said: "Here, my friend, I want you to tell me something about this city." "I don't know anything about it," said the hurrying business man, with a far-away look. "What street is this?" "I don't know," said the busy man, with his mind occupied, and staring at vacancy. "What city is it?" "Can't tell; I am busy." "Is it London or New York?" "Don't know anything about it." "You don't?" "No." "Well, by Heavens, sir, you are the very man I'm looking for. I've been looking for you for years." "What do you want me for?" "I want you to go to Chicago and sit on a jury." I repeated this colloquy about the juryman to Bret Harte once, and he asked if I had ever heard his story satirizing the early California jury. I had heard it, but not from the lips of the author of the "Luck of Roar- ing Camp." So I gladly let him tell it again. "It was over in the Mariposa Gulch in '50," began Mr. Harte. 'They had never had a jury trial there. If a man stole a horse they lynched him. and that settled it. But the people, many of whom came from U2 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. Massachusetts, began to tire of lynch law and sigh for the good old Puritan jury trial of the East. So one day, when Bill Stevens had jumped a poor man's claim, the Massachusetts fellows resolved to give him a good old-fashioned jury trial. They took Bill into the back end of the board post-office, selected a jury, and the trial commenced." "How did it result?" I asked. "Well, dozens of witnesses were called, and finally the jury retired to agree upon a verdict. When they had been out about twenty minutes, and about con- cluded that Bill was innocent, the boys outside came banging at the door. 'What do you fellows want?' asked the foreman through the keyhole. " 'We want to know if you hain't about agreed on the verdict. If you hain't you'll have to get out. We want this room to lay out the corpse in.' ' I once arranged a satire on the examination of jury- men when once impaneled. It was a real case, only a little exaggerated. The candidate for juryman wore No. \2 shoes, and a No. 6 hat, and the examination was like this: "Are you opposed to capital punishment?" asked the lawyer. "Oh, yes; yes, sir." "If you were on a jury, then, where a man was being tried for his life, you wouldn't agree to a verdict to hang him?" "Yes, sir; yes, I would.* 1 "Have you formed or expressed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused?" "Yes, sir!" SATIRE KILLS ERROR. 1 13 "Your mind, then, is made up?" "Oh, no ; no, it ain't." "Have you any bias for or against the prisoner?" "Yes, I think I have." "Are you prejudiced?" "Oh, no ; not a bit." "Have you ever heard of this case?" "1 think I have." "Would you decide, if on the jury, according to the evidence or mere rumor?" \ es, sir. "Perhaps you don't understand. Would you decide according to evidence?" "Evidence." "If it was in your power to do so, would you change the law of capital punishment or let it stand?" "Let it stand." The Court : "Would you let it stand or change it?" "Change it." "Now, which would you do?" "Don't know, sir." "Are you a freeholder?" "Yes, sir ; oh, yes." "Do you own a house and land, or rent?" "Neither; I'm a boarder." "Have you formed an opinion?" "No, sir." "Have you expressed an opinion?" "Think 1 have." The Court: "Gentlemen, I think the juror is com- petent. It is very evident he has never formed or ex- pressed an opinion on the subject." H4 ELI PERK IX S— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. SATIRIZING THE LAWYER. About six years ago the proprietors of the St. Jacob's Oil Almanac wrote to me and offered $i a line for a hundred line satire on the browbeating lawyer. Here is my dollar-a-line satire : "I used to have a strong contempt for lawyers. I thought their long cross-examinations were brainless dialogues for no purpose. But ever since Lawyer John- son had me as a witness in a wood case, I have had a better opinion of the lawyer's skill. In my direct testi- mony I had sworn truthfully that John Hall had cut ten cords of wood in three days. Then Johnson sharp- ened his pencil and commenced examining me. " 'Now, Mr. Perkins,' he began, 'how much wood do you say was cut by Mr. Hall?' "'Just ten cords, sir,' I answered boldly. 'I meas- ured it.' " 'That's your impression?' " 'Yes, sir.' " 'Well, we don't want impressions, sir. What we want is facts before this jury — f-a-c-t-s, sir; facts!' " 'The witness will please state facts hereafter,' said the judge, while the crimson came to my face. " 'Now, sir,' continued Johnson, pointing his finger at me, 'will you swear that it was more than nine cords?' "'Yes, sir. It was ten cords — just ' "'There! never mind,' interrupted Johnson. " 'Now, how much less than twelve cords were there?' " 'Two cords, sir.' " 'How do you know there were just two uords less, SA TIRE KILLS L RRi 'A'. I I 5 sir? Did you measure these two cords, sir?' asked Johnson savagely. '"No, sir; I ' " 'There, that will do! You did not measure it. Just as I expected. All guess-work. Now didn't you swear a moment ago that you measured this wood?' "'Yes, sir; but ' " 'Stop, sir! The jury will note this discrepancy.' " 'Now. sir,' continued Johnson slowly, as he pointed his finger almost down my throat ; 'now, sir, on your oath, will you swear that there were not ten cords and a half?' " 'Yes, sir,' I answered meekly. "'Well, now, Mr. Perkins, I demand a straight an- swer — a truthful answer, sir. How much wood was there?' " 'T-T-Ten c-c-c-ords,' I answered hesitatingly. " 'You swear it?' " 'I-I-d-d-do.' "'Now,' continued Johnson, as he smiled satirically, 'do you know the penalty of perjury, sir?' "'Yes, sir; I think ' " 'On your oath, on your s-o-l-e-m-n oath, with no evasion, are you willing to perjure yourself by solemnly swearing that there were more than nine cords of wood?' " 'Yes, sir; I ' "'Aha! Yes, sir. You arc willing to perjure your- self, then? Just as I thought' (turning to the judge); 'you see, your Honor, that this witness is prevaricating. He is not willing to swear that there were more than nine cords of wood. It is infamous, gentlemen of the jury, such testimony as this.' The jury nodded assent and smiled sarcastically at me. 1 16 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. 'Now,' said Johnson, 'I will ask this perjured wit- ness just one more question.' 'I ask you, sir — do you know — do you realize, sir, what an awful — a-w-f-u-1 thing it is to tell a lie?' 'Yes, sir,' I said, my voice trembling. " 'And, knowing this, you swear on your solemn oath that there were about nine cords of wood?' " 'No, sir; I don't do anything of ' 'Hold on, sir! Now, how do you know there were just nine cords?' " 'I don't know any such thing, sir! I ' "'Aha! you don't know then? Just as I expected. And yet you swore you did know. Swore you meas- ured it. Infamous ! Gentlemen of the jury, what shall we do with this perjurer?' " 'But I ' " 'Not a word, sir — hush! This jury shall not be in- sulted by a perjurer! " 'Call the next witness!' " SATIRE ON THE LAW. I have given a satire on the ignorant juror, a satire on the browbeating lawyer, and I now follow them with a satire on our curious laws: I find that all law is based on precedents. Two or three precedents establish a certain law. There is no use of studying Blackstone any more. No use of weighing the question of justice. Precedents are what rule the Court. This principle established, I am a full- fledged lawyer now. I am E. Perkins, Esq., Attorney- at-Law, ready to practise even in the Supreme Court at Washington. Whenever a client comes to me and tells me he has committed a great crime, I read up the precedents and SA riKi: kills ERROR. I 1 7 tell him what will become of him if he don't run away. In cases where clients contemplate great crimes, I tell them beforehand what will be the penalty if they don't buy a juryman. Yesterday a man came to me and said he wanted to knock Henry Watterson's teeth down his thro.it. "What will be the penalty, Mr. Perkins?'" he asked. "Are they false teeth or real teeth?" I inquired. "False, I think, sir." "Then, don't do it, sir. False teeth are personal property; but if the)' are real, knock away." These are the precedents: I. A fellow on Third Avenue borrowed a set of false teeth from the show case of a dentist, and he was sent to Sing Sing for four years. II. Another fellow knocked a man's real teeth down his throat, and Judge Barnard let him off with a repri- mand ! The next day Grover Cleveland came to me and wanted to knock out Mr. Chas. A. Dana's eye, because Mr. Dana wrote such long editorials. "Are they real eyes or glass eyes, Mr. Cleveland?" I asked. "One looks like glass, the other is undoubtedly real," said the ex-President. "Ah," I said, "the glass eye is personal property and the real eye is a part of the person. Let's see, the precedents for taking real property are as follows: I. Making off with a man's glass eye — two years in Sing Sing. II. Tearing out a man's real eye — a fine of five dollars. III. Stealing a man's crutch — two years' imprisonment. IV. Breaking a man's leg — a fine of ten dollars or reprimand from the judge. Ii8 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "Mr. Cleveland," I said, "you must be careful about disturbing Mr. Dana's glass eye, but you can scratch out that real eye with impunity. Fee for professional advice, please, twenty-five dollars." As the ex-President handed me the change, I re- marked gratis : "Damage to a man's property — the penitentiary." "Damage to a man's body, or destruction of a man's life — acquittal, or a recommendation to mercy." SATIRE ON SOCIETY. My earlier writings, in " Saratoga in 1901," are usually satires. I have always despised the brainless dude who lived on his father's reputation and money till he could marry a rich girl and board with her mother. Worthy girls often marry these aimless dudes, and, after a fash- ionable wedding, spend a lifetime mourning because they did not marry a brave, strong working-fellow, who would have felt rich in their affections, and who, with a little help from his father-in-law, would have hewed his way to wealth and position. RULES FOR MAKING HEARTLESS DUDES. These are the ten rules I wrote showing how the brainless son of a rich father can become a dude : First.— If your father is rich and holds a high social position, don't go to school yourself, take lectures in the scientific course at Harvard one year to get the dude dialect, and learn to wear peaked-toed shoes. Second. — When you return home with the Harvard stamp, if you haven't sense enough to make a living, pay your addresses to some rich girl— and marry her, if you can. SATIRE KILLS ERROR. 119 Third. — Go home and live with her father, and mag- nanimously spend her money. Keep up your flirtations around town just the same. Gamble a little, and al- ways dine at the clubs. Fourth. — After your wife has nursed you through a spell of sickness, and she looks languid and worn with anxiety, tell her, like a high-toned gentleman, that she has grown plain looking — then scold her a little and make love to her maid. Fifth.- — If your weary wife objects, I'd insult her — tell her you won't be tyrannized over. Then come home drunk once or twice a week and empty the coal scuttle into the piano, and pour the kerosene lamp over her Saratoga trunk and into baby's cradle. When she cries, I'd twit her about the high (hie) social position of your own (hie) family. Sixth. — If, weary and sick and heartbroken, she finally asks for a separation, I'd blacken her character, deny the paternity of my own children, get a divorce my- self. Then by wise American law you can keep all her money, and while she goes back in sorrow to her father. you can magnanimously peddle out to her a small dowry from her own estate. Seventh. — If she asks you — audaciously asks you — for any of her own money, tell her to go to the dev- devil (the very one she has come to). Kighth. — Now I'd keep a mistress and a poodle dvj^. and ride up to the park with them in a gilded landau- let every afternoon. While this miserable, misguided woman will be trodden in the dust by society, you can attain to the heights of modern chivalry by leading at the charity balls in New York, playing polo at New- port, and raising pug dogs for the dog show. 120 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. Ninth. — After you have used up your wife's last money in dissipation, and brought your father's gray hairs down in sorrow to the grave, I'd get the delirium tremens and shoot myself. This will create a sensation in the newspapers, and cause every other rich dude to call you high-toned and chivalrous. Tenth. — Then that poor angel wife, crushed in spirit, tried in the crucible of adversity, and purified by the beautiful "do-unto-others" of the Christ-child, will go into mourning, and build, with her last money, a monu- ment to the memory of the man who crushed her bleed- ing heart. Here is a little satire on the poor dude: There are three kinds of dudes in New York. There is the inanimate rich dude, who don't want to do any- thing on earth but exhibit himself. Then there is the- poor dude, who dresses like the rich dude, and who wants to marry a rich girl and board with her mother; and, lastly, there is the wicked clubhouse dude, who wastes his rich father's money, and then marries four or five rich women, kills them off, and lives off their estates. THE POOR DUDE. The poor dude wears the same one-barreled eye-glass that the rich dude does. He wears apparently the same high collar, the same peaked-toed shoes, with drab tops, the same English top-coat, and the same embroidered kids ; but when you examine them closely they all prove to be an inferior imitation, made on Sixth Avenue. The poor dude don't have rooms at Delmonico's. He rents a hall bedroom and eats where he is invited. He goes to the opera on one-dollar-stand-up tickets, and SA TIRE KILLS ERROR. i 2 i then goes and visits some rich young lady who is sit- ting in a twenty dollar box. They always go to parties as escorts, the poor dudes do, and let sonic rich young lady find the carriage. I knew a poor New York dude whose pet theory for years has been to marry a rich orphan girl with a bad cough —with the consumption. One day he came into my room almost heartbroken. "My pet theory is exploded, Eli," he said. "I am discouraged. I want to die." Then tin' tears rolled down his cheeks. "What is it, Charley? Oh, what has happened?" I asked. "Oh-o-o-o, Eli," he sobbed, and then he broke down. When his feelings recovered he took my hand trem- blingly in his and told me all about it: 'The other day," he sobbed, "I met a very rich young lady— the rich Miss Astor, sister of Jack Astor of Fifth Avenue. She was very wealthy — wore dia- monds and laces — had government bonds, but alas! she didn't have any cough to go with them. She had oceans of money but no sign of a cough — no quick- consumption — just my luck!" And then he buried his face in his hands. "What eKe. Eugene?" I asked. "Well, yesterday, Eli, I met a beautiful young lady from Chicago. She was frail and delicate; had just the cough I wanted — a low, hacking, musical cough. It was just sweet music to listen to that girl's cough. I took her jeweled hand in mine and asked her to be my bride ; but, alas ! in a fatal moment I learned that she hadn't any money to go with her cough, and I had to give her up. I lost her. Oh, I lost her!" 122 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. And then the hot, scalding tears trickled through his fingers and rolled down on his patent-leather boots. SAD REFLECTIONS. A kind old father-in-law on Madison Avenue, who is supporting four or five poor dudes as sons-in-law, Avent down to see Barnum's Fejee cannibals. "Why are they called cannibals?" he asked of Mr. Barnum. "Because they live off of other people," replied the great showman. "Oh, I see!" replied the unhappy father-in-law. "Alas! my four dude sons-in-law are cannibals, too — they live off me !" The genial Hugh J. Hastings despised the snobbish moneyed aristocracy of New York. "They are cads," he said one day ; "their fathers were tailors, oyster open- ers, snuffmakers, and muskrat-skin peddlers. I want you to write a strong article, and stand up to the idea that 'worth makes the man and want of it the fellow.' ' "No," I said, "I will write a simple satire on the growth of aristocracy;" and I wrote this satirical STORY OF EZRA GREEN, JR. His name was Ezra Green, Jr. He was a high-toned New York Englishman, and he turned and cast upon me an imperial look, as he said in scorn : "I disdain a Yankee," and then he frowned at me through a single eye-glass. I thought this was queer when I remembered that his old father and mother still live on Second Avenue — over there where the Fifth Avenue fellows go to flirt with the girls Sunday afternoons. SATIRE KILLS ERROR. 1 23 Alas! Ezra was once- a tailor himself on Avenue II. Time passed, and this respectable Second Avenue tailor grew to be a MERCHANT TAILOR. More time went on. Providence prospered Ezra, and his coats fitted well. He spent much of his feeble income in improved signs. One day I saw a flashy painter paint these letters over his door: • Ezra L. Gkkkn, '. ; MERCHANT Tailur and IMPORTER, j More time skipped along, the tailor moved up town, and I saw Ezra raise the imperial arms of England and France on each end of his sign. Then it read, in bright gilt letters: : E. Livingstone Gkeen, ! PA It IS. IMPORTER. LONDON. \ Alas! "the poor tailor" became smaller and smaller, until it faded entirely away — and still Ezra made clothes. One day a retired Broadway merchant saw the im- posing sign, and, stepping in, innocently asked Ezra the price of "exchange on London." "The price of the which?" inquired Ezra, sticking his shears behind his ears. 124 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OP WIT. "Oh! I am mistaken. You do not do bank business." Ezra said he made clothes for a good many bankers, but the Broadway merchant slid away as if ashamed of his mistake. Fortune smiled upon Ezra, affluence gilded his des- tiny, and his clothes wore well. He rode in a liveried landaulet, traveled in foreign climes, reveled with the nobility in palaces without expending a cent out- side for patching his pants. His career was happy and glorious abroad, and his breeches never ripped at home. And now Ezra, Jr., has become a great swell. He is the Dude of Dudes. He has a corner house on Fifth Avenue, gives dinners to the 400, and dances at the Patriarchs' Ball. He is president of the Polo Club, drives a tandem team at Newport, plays baccarat, leads the coaching parade, and every night he adorns a front proscenium box at the opera. He despises labor so much that when his coat loses a button he goes into the clothes press where no mortal eye can see him and — sews it on. He would not even speak to an ignoble tailor. By and by the aristocratic children of E. Livingstone Green will put up a bronze statue of the evoluted tailor in the public park, and it will be next to a Mr. Dodge who sold tin and — well, we do not remember what else. In satirizing social matters, the satirical proposal by the fashionable worldly dude is quite apropos: The scene is laid at Tuxedo ; the youth a blast mem- ber of the Knickerbocker Club: Her eyes shone a beautiful, joyous light when he leaned forward and said : SATIRE KILLS l-.RROR. 125 "Julia, I have something confidential to tell you." "What is it, Augustus?" she asked, in a low, silvery voice -a kind of German silvery voice. "Well, Julia, to he frank with you, I think that under some circumstances I might love you. Now, do you love me?" "Yes, Augustus, I do love you; you know I do," and then she flung her alabaster arms around his neck. "I am very glad, Julia," he said, " for I like to be loved." " Well, Augustus?" Hut Augustus never said another word. Fashion- able fellows never say more than that nowadays. A similar proposal on the part of Miss Warren, a Boston young lady, occurred at Saratoga. The Boston girl had been flirting for hours on the lovers' balcony of the States with Mr. Jack Astor of New York. They had talked about love in all its phases, but Mr. Astor was slow to take the hint. She could not force him up to the proposing point. Finally I saw Miss Warren look lovingly up into Mr. Astor's eyes and pathetically remark : "Love — oh, love is sweet, Mr. Astor! — my dear Mr. Astor; but nobody loves me — nobody " "Yes, Miss Warren, God loves you; and — your mother loves you." "Mr. Astor, let's go in." And five minutes afterward Miss \Yarren was trying the drawing-out dodge on another poor, innocent, unsus- pecting fellow. A day or two after the dude proposal I nut Julia at a party. She seemed quite indignant at some- thing. 126 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "Do you know?" she said, "that a married man actually tried to flirt with me at Tuxedo?" "He did? that was dreadful; a married man flirting! What did you say to him?" "I told him his wife must have been a Third Avenue chump to marry a man who couldn't flirt any better than he could. Oh, I crushed him!" How sweet it is to read the old-fashioned proposal after these satires! Proposals like this: "May I call you Paula?" he asked modestly. "Yes," she said faintly. "Dear Paula; may I call you that?" "I suppose so." "Do you know I love you?" "Yes." "And shall I love you always?" "If you wish to." "And will you love me?" Paula did not reply. "Will you, Paula?" he repeated. "You may love me," she said again. "But don't you love me in return?" "I love you to love me." "Won't you say anything more explicit?" "I would rather not." They were married in the spring. The shortest courtship I ever heard of occurred out in Ohio. "Widder Jenkins," said old farmer Dobson of Windy Hill, as he hustled into the widow's house one morn, ing, "I am a man of business. I am worth $10,800, and want you for a wife. I give you three minutes to answer." "I don't want ten seconds, old man," she replied, as SATIRE KILLS ERROR. I 27 she shook out the dishcloth. "I'm a woman of busi- ness, worth $16,000, and I wouldn't marry you if you wore the last man on earth! I give you a minute and a half to git." The most dignified satire I ever wrote was a satire on the Old World ruins, delivered in a lecture before Princeton College. I give it as reported in the Princetonian: "My Uncle Consider," said Mr. Perkins, "went to see the Prince of Wales while he was here. They had a long talk, the Prince and Consider did. " 'How do you like our country — America?' asked my uncle, as he held the Prince's trembling hand in his. " Tt is great, Mr. Perkins — g-r-e-a-t. Europe, with her two thousand years of civilization, only excels you in one thing.' " 'What is that, your Highness?' "'Alas! in her magnificent ruins, Mr. Perkins ' '* 'But, your Worshipful, we have a remedy for that. You have old ruins in Germany and England, but we build our houses very shabbily, and we shall soon have ruins — s-p-1-e-n d-i-d young ruins, here, too. Look at Washington monument.* It looks like a y-o-u-n-g r-u-i-n now. [Laughter.] Go to Mount Vernon and see the crumbling tomb of the Father of our Country. Go to Princeton and see the sidewalks.' [Loud laugh- ter.] " 'Yes, Mr. Perkins, I see the enterprise of you Americans on the ruin question, but you cannot quite * Washington's monument was at this time half built. It had re- mained looking like a young ruin for twenty-five years. It has since been finished. — MELVILLE D. I.andon. 128 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. compete with us yet. You have the crumbling tomb of the Father of your Country, but you have no Kenil- worth; you have Washington monument, but you have no Pantheon, no Coliseum, no ruined Senate Hall, no ' "'But your Worshipful has not seen all our ruined halls. You have not seen our magnificent ruins of Tammany Hall and Mayor Hall. They are beautiful to behold. They are the reward of virtue.' 'Yes,' continued my uncle thoughtfully, 'we have other and grander ruins than all of these. We have the ruins of a standing army; we have the ruins of aristocracy and caste; we have the ruins of nullification and secession ; and we have that still grander ruin, the ruin of human slavery. [Applause.] We have the ruins of that old feudal law of entail and primogeni- ture; and we have the ruins of that stupendous fallacy of you Old World despots, the divine right of kings!' " 'Yes, Mr. Perkins,' interrupted the Prince, as he laid his hands on my uncle's shoulders and looked him straight in the face, 'and on these ruins you have reared your magnificent civilization. On these ruins you have reared a nation whose sublime progress makes Europe look like a pigmy! " 'And this,' he continued, 'is American Democracy. Alas!' he continued to mourn, 'if we had more of your republican ruins, more ruins of slavery and despo- tism, more ruins of aristocracy in place of our ruined towers and pyramids, cathedrals and coliseums, we would be better off!' " [Applause.] SATIRE KILLS ERROR. 129 POLITICAL SATIRES. Is satire a strong weapon? It is the strongest weapon known; but it must be addressed to an intelligent audience. It has to be double discounted. The most cruel satire is to call a right wrong and a wrong right. The reader feels out- raged. His prejudices all disappear and his superior judgment rises up and exclaims, with the intense wrath of Greeley, when he said : "You lie — you villain; you lie!" The most cutting piece of political satire I ever wrote was a letter addressed to YV. H. Barnum, the chairman of the Democratic Committee in 1888, giving very satiri- cal reasons for deserting Harrison and coming out for Cleveland. The heading deceived many Democratic editors, who published it, and followed the next day with an apology to their Democratic readers. The theory of the satire was to exaggerate Cleveland's mild vices and short comings into sweet angelic virtues and praise them, and to exaggerate Harrison's virtues and logical political beliefs into shocking vices and condemn them. It was written in the heat of the campaign and all devices are fair in love and politics. Friend and foe must always admit that Cleveland made an honest president, and his administration was as free from scandal as the administrations of Hayes or Harrison. The satirical letter ran like this: 130 eli perkins-thirty years of wit. "Harrison Deserted Again! "IV. H. Barman, Chairman Democratic Committee : "DEAR Sir: Below I give my reasons for deserting Harrison and protection and coming out for your noble Grover Cleveland and free trade. "I am against Harrison because he is an honest Christian ; because he is for temperance, and for twenty years has been a Christian vestryman, and twice a day bows down in family prayer. "I am against Harrison because he drew his sword for the republic in 1861, while noble Grover Cleveland bravely stayed at home and hired a substitute, and paid him with the money earned by hanging criminals. I am down on Harrison because he did not desert the nation, as did the noble Democratic party, with secession in the Senate, theft in the War Department, bankruptcy in the Treasury, and treason in the field. "I am a Democrat. "I am against Harrison and the Republican party be- cause they freed 4,000,000 slaves in 1863, because they made them citizens and gave them the right to vote for the nation for which they fought, and because, to- day, if Harrison were President, he'd honestly count these freedmen's votes and stop our noble Grover from holding by fraud the Presidential office. "I am a Democrat. "I am opposed to Harrison and protection because the English aristocracy hate them worse than they hate an Irish patriot, and because if Harrison becomes our President he'll watch the tariff and see that it protects our workingmen. "I am a Democrat. S.l TIRE KILLS ERROR. 1 3 « "I am down on the Republican party for saving the republic when seventeen Democratic States trod down our flag; down on the Republican party for slaughter- ing 100,000 free trade rebel Democrats, and down on Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield — yes, and Logan, Hale, and Conkling — for making England give up Mason and Slidell, spit on that rebel rag, and reverently cheer the Stars and Stripes. "I am a Democrat. "I am down on Harrison because, if once made President, he'll surely kill Mills's English tariff bill for lowering the wages of our Northern workingmen ; down on him because he says he'll keep the Chinese out and hold back ignorant paupers coming in to oust our high-priced workmen of the North. "I'm down on Harrison because he'll keep such cop- perheads as Thurman, Vallandigham, and Daniel Voor- hees out: because I love those noble Democrats who, when we were soldiering, cursed old Abe Lincoln and stabbed us in the back. "I am a Democrat. "I am for Cleveland and free trade because all our ex-secessionists are for them ; because with free trade they can grind down the poor mechanic of the North and pay him back for stamping on the rebel flag. "I am for Cleveland because the British minister says he favors building up great English industries by breaking down American manufacturers; because he wants the Yankee workmen to live on English paw and because he wants the free trade South to ship direct from England and kill our Yankee workmen in the North. "I am for Cleveland and free trade because every I3 2 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. rebel who shot into our flag is for them. I am a Democrat for tree trade and against the Yankee work- ingman because Jeff Davis is, and Beauregard and every old slave driver of the South. "I am a Democrat. "Yes, I'm down on Harrison because he wants every Union-loving freedman in the South to cast his honest vote, when he knows so well an honest count will break the Democratic South and stop another presi- dent by fraud. "Yours truly, "Eli Perkins. "Harrison Deserter, No. 32." When we consider how Harrison has stood for the Election Bill, which is really nothing more or less than Cleveland's "Ballot Reform," and how he has stood for a protective tariff, my satire sounds to me now almost prophetic. The reader will appreciate the power of satire when I say that the above seventy lines were copied into thousands of newspapers, and were read by probably 10,000,000 people within a week. It brought back bushels of letters pro and con to the writer, and among them letters from so great a man as James G. Blaine, and the two Presidential candidates, Cleveland and Har- rison. President Harrison's letter is given below: "Indianapolis, November 26, 1888. "674 North Delaware Street. "Eli Perkins, Esq., Nciv York : "My Dear Sir: Please accept my very sincere thanks, not only for your friendly words but also for SATIRE KILLS ERROR. 1 33 your zealous and effective work during the campaign. I have not until now been able to make my acknow- ledgment to you. "Very truly yours, "Benjamin Harrison." During the previous Blaine and Hancock campaign, I wrote my satirical reasons for abandoning Blaine and indorsing Hancock, which brought this letter from the Plumed Knight : •t>" "Senate Chamber, Washington. "Ah' Dear SIR: Words of 'truth' are not rare with you, — but 'truth and soberness' combined have not been your peculiar characteristic, — but your last effort in that line is an 'amazing hit' with me, for which I tender my sincere and grateful thanks. "You can render great aid, and I shall cordially acknowledge and reciprocate both good intentions and good works. "Hastily, Yours sincerely, "J. G. Blaine. "Eli Perkins." The following is a facsimile of Mr. Blaine's letter 134 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. SENATE CHAMBER WASHINGTON Jktij £\J^ SATIRE KILLS LRROK. 135 In 1880 I was called upon by Governor Jewell, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, to make thirty-six speeches in Indiana. I was coupled with Judge Albion W. Tourgec, who had just made a national reputation as the author of "The Fool's Errand." My speeches were entirely satirical. I append a few lines of my Fort Wayne speech, as reported by the Fort Wayne Gazette: "What will the South give the North if they elect a president and become the nation? I3 6 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "All we know is what they did give us when they had the power. Last year the Democratic party had the upper and lower house. What did they give the great North. Who did they give the chairmanship of the great committee on "finance" to? Did they give it to the great State of New York? No, they gave it to the little rebel State of Delaware. They gave it to Bayard, who made a speech for secession. "Who did they give the next great committeeship to — the committeeship of appropriations? Did they give it to the great State of Indiana? No, they gave it to the rebel General Atkins, of Tennessee. "What did they give to the great State of Indiana? What did they give to your splendid Daniel Voorhees— your Tall Sycamore of the Wabash? "I will tell you. They made him chairman of the committee on seeds — library and seeds! [Laughter.] Now picture to yourselves, Indianians, your splendid Daniel Voorhees as he goes to the Agricultural Department. He says, I will have a paper of holly- hock seeds for Terre Haute. [Laughter.] I will have turnip seeds for Evansville. [Laughter.] I will have them ! I am the King of Seeds." [Loud laughter.] Ridicule can be used in politics when the people are tired of reading serious arguments. During the last election the people got so tired of tariff discussions that the very mention of the word tariff would cause a man to change his seat in the cars. It got to be a joke, as much of a chestnut as "Annie Rooney." Meeting Congressman Amos Cummings one day, I asked him how he was getting on financially. "Splendidly," said the old journalist. "I've just been offered a splendid situation." SATIRE KILLS ERROR. 1 37 "What is it?" I asked. "Well, I'd spent .ill my congressional salary, and felt pretty poor, and this afternoon 1 went into the Eden Mus6e and asked for a situation. "'What can you do?' asked the manager. " 'I'm a freak,' I said. " 'Well, what can you do?' " 'This, sir," I said. 'I've been in New York now for ten days and haven't said a word about the tariff.' " 'All right, I'll give you sixty dollars a week.' " SATIRIZING THE AGNOSTICS. The most scientific way to destroy the errors of the agnostics is to satirize them — intensify them. The agnostic assaults Christianity with ridicule, as I shall show later on. Satire kills error, while ridicule harms truth. This is the way I would satirize the theories of such agnostics as Spencer, Huxley, and Ingersoll : Yes, I am an agnostic. I reject the Bible and agree with Huxley, Darwin, and Ingersoll in a religion of reason and not of inspiration. Down witli wicked Christianity and the churches. The old theory of creation is all wrong. Nothing was created. Every- thing grew. In the old Bible we read: "In the begin- ning God created heaven and earth." "Now this is all wrong," say Darwin and I. Our new Bible is to commence like this: Genesis. Chap. I. 1. There never was a beginning. The Eternal with- out us, that maketh for righteousness, took no notice whatever of anything. 2. And Cosmos was homogeneous and undifferen- 138 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. tiated, and somehow or another evolution began, and molecules appeared. 3. And molecule evolved protoplasm, and rhythmic thrills arose, and then there was light. 4. And a spirit of energy was developed and formed the plastic cell, whence arose the primordial germ. 5. And the primordial germ became protogene, and protogene somehow shaped eocene — then was the dawn of life. 6. And the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit, after its own kind, whose seed is in itself, developed according to its own fancy. And the Eternal without us, that maketh for righteousness, neither knew nor cared anything about it. 7. The cattle after his kind, the beast of the earth after his kind, and every creeping thing became evolved by heterogeneous segregation and concomitant dissipa- tion of motion. 8. So that by survival of the fittest there evolved the simiads from the jelly-fish, and the simiads differen- tiated themselves into the anthropomorphic primordial types. 9. And in due time one lost his tail and became a man, and behold he was the most cunning of all animals; and lo ! the fast men killed the slow men, and it was ordained to be so in every age. 10. And in process of time, by natural selection and survival of the fittest, Matthew Arnold, Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, and Robert Ingersoll appeared, and behold it was good ! RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH. Ridiculing Truth and Laughing it out of Court— Randolph ridicules Clay — Ingersoll ridicules Christianity — How to meet Ridicule — Ridiculing Ritualism — Beecher ridicules Bob— Ridicule a Lawyer's weapon, not the Clergyman's— Christ used Satire but not Ridicule. AFTER making the discovery that satire destroys error, I commenced investigating ridicule. The rhetoricians have never separated the two. I found that when Cervantes wanted to kill knight-errantry in Spain he exaggerated it, and that when Ingersoll wanted to kill Christianity he ridiculed it. I found that the lawyer who was on the wrong side in a case always ridiculed the right side. Satire is to exaggerate an error till you see it and stamp it out; while ridicule is to exaggerate a truth, deform it, and you laugh it out. With satire the error goes with a kick, while with ridi- cule the truth goes with a laugh. Ridicule is an awful weapon, because with it you can harm the truth. In fact the only way to harm truth is to ridicule it. Deny truth? That don't hurt truth any. You will simply impeach your own veracity — kill yourself. But you can ridicule truth and, as the lawyers say, "laugh it out of court." This is the reason why lawyers always use ridicule — in all law cases only one side is right ; the other must be wrong; and the man who is on the wrong side, if he is a good lawyer, will not say a word about his side, but "39 14° ELI PERKLYS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. he will walk over to the right side, exaggerate it, and "laugh it out of court." To show you how lawyers ridicule the truth, to kill it : I attended a murder case a while ago in Akron, O. It was a homicide case — a case where a man had acci- dentally killed his friend. This lawyer wanted to win the sympathy of the jury, and he told the jury, in a very pathetic and truthful manner, how bad his client felt". "Oh, my client felt so bad," he began, in weeping tones, "felt so bad when he killed his friend, the tears rolled down his cheeks; he knelt down by that fallen form !" Well, the jury knew that his touching pathos was true, and so did the other lawyer. But the opposing counsel could not let it stand, because it had touched the jury. What did he do? Why, he took that true pathos right over on the other side, exaggerated it, and turned it into ridicule, and laughed it out of court. "Yes," he said, with exaggerated pathos, "the accused did feel bad when he killed his friend. The tears did roll down his cheeks. He took off one boot, and emptied it [laughter by the jury] ; then he cried some more; then he emptied his other boot [laughter]; then he tied his handkerchief around his trousers — cried 'em full, boo-hoo!" [Laughter by the jury.] In a moment he had that jury laughing at exagger- ated truth and pathos. The truth was gone ! A good lawyer never denies a true statement before the jury; it is much easier to exaggerate that state- ment, and make the jury "laugh it out of court." Colonel Ingersoll often squelched the opposing coun- RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH, 141 sel by a blast of ridicule, ( )ne day in Peoria they were trying a patent churn case. The opposing counsel used many scientific terms, lie talked about the science of the machine, and how his client had contributed to sci- ence a valuable discovery. "Science!" yelled Colonel Ingersoll. "The opposing counsel is always talking about science, and see" (look- ing over at the opposing counsel's brief), "he spells it with a 'y' — with a 'y,' sir! C-y-e-n-Cre." The jury burst out laughing and the truth-loving scientist lost a good case. If you read .Kschines or Aristippus, the cynic and pupil of Socrates, in the old Greek, you will see most charming ridicule. Aristippus was full of it. On one occasion, when Athens was running to muscle instead of brains, Sinon, a swell young athlete, came to Aristippus and others and commenced boastine about his muscle. "I tell you, sir," said the boasting Sinon, "I can swim farther than any man in Athens." "And so can a goose," said Aristippus. "Yes, and I can dive deeper than any man in Greece." "And so can a bull-frog," said Diogenes. "And, more than that, I can kick higher than any man in Athens, and " "And so can a jackass," interrupted ^Eschines. "And more than all of these, everybody says I'm the handsomest man in Athens." "And so is a brass statue, — a hollow brass statue, — and it has neither life nor brains," said Aristippus. "And they say I have the most musical voice in the city." "And so has a tin horn. A tin horn with an idiot 142 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. behind it can make better music than any singer in G»> reece. This made Sinon mad, and he twitted Aristippus with having no children. "The gods will not permit any more such cynics to be born, while I have many children," said the singer. "Yes, you ignoramus," said Aristippus, "you boast of a quality in which all slaves are your equal and every jackass your superior!" Strange to say, eighteen hundred years afterward, John Randolph used Sinon's reply to Clay when he twitted the cynic of Roanoke with having no children. But Clay afterward used Randolph all up when he made this witty reply, which will live as long as history : One day Clay met his disagreeable enemy, Randolph, on the sidewalk. The cranky old Virginian came proudly up, and occupying most of the sidewalk hissed : "I never turn out for scoundrels!" "I always "do," said Clay, stepping aside with mock politeness. Ridicule will use a man up quicker than abuse. Abuse makes a man combative and he will fight back, while ridicule is unanswerable. I remember the case of an indignant commercial traveler at a Mississippi railroad eating-house, who was utterly routed by a little ridicule from the landlord. This particular commercial man was a great fault-finder, and that day he was growling when he went in, and he growled all the while he was eating, and when he slouched up to the desk to pay his seventy-five cents he broke out with : "Them sandwiches are enough to kill a dog!" "What sandwiches?" RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH. 143 "Why, them on the table." "But we have no sandwiches on the table, sir," pro- tested the landlord. "You haven't? Well, I should like to know what you call them roasted brickbats on that blue platter?" "You didn't try to eat one of those, did you?" asked the landlord solemnly. "Yes, I did !" "Then, my friend, you had better go for a doctor at once! Those are table ornaments, made of terra-cotta, and were placed there to help fill up space! Great Caesar! you must have lived in a canebrake all your life!" The commercial man rushed into the car and began to drain a brandy flask, and he didn't get over looking pale for three hours. "And they were sandwiches after all," said the land- lord ; "real good ham sandwiches, made that day." The landlord had adopted that particular style of ridicule instead of using a club. Ingersoll often used ridicule effectively in politics. One evening a lot of Democrats at the Manhattan Club were grumbling because the Republicans boasted so much about the past. "You Republicans," said Daniel Voorhees, "are always talking about how you broke up slavery- and fought through the war. Oh, bury the past. Speak about the present. We Democrats are not always lugging in the past !" 'Yes," said Colonel Ingersoll, "I should think the Democratic party would bury its past, and its future, too, if it ever has any. If the Democratic party had a glorious past it would not wish to forget it. If it were not for the Republican party there would be no United 144 ELI PERKIXS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT States now on the map of the world. The Democratic party wishes to make a bargain with us to say nothing about the past and nothing about character. It reminds me of the contract that the rooster proposed to make with the horse : Let us agree not to step on each other's feet." The colonel's reply laughed Voorhees out of court. Mr. Beecher probably made the wittiest joke on Ingersoll that history will record, and it is recorded in this book for the first time. I was talking with the great Plymouth preacher about the eloquent agnostic, when Beecher remarked solemnly: "Yes, Robert Ingersoll is eloquent — very eloquent." "Do you think his works and sayings will live?" I asked. "Yes, he will go down with Voltaire and Thomas Paine, and I should like to write his epitaph if the great agnostic would forgive me for it." "What would you write?" "Simply this line," said Beecher, smiling: ROBERT BURNS It is seldom that Ingersoll meets a man who can stand up against his eloquence and wit. The great ag. nostic and Mr. Beecher met on the Alton train one day just after a famous Christian banker had defaulted and fled to Canada. "That's the way with you Christians," said Inger- soll. 'Here is a professed Christian who has been a class leader and a vestryman, and now the hypocrite robs a bank and away he goes to Canada." "Did you ever hear a Christian make an uproar, Colonel, when an anti-Christian committed a crime — RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH. J 45 when he robbed a bank and fled to Canada?" asked Beecher. "I don't remember any such case now," said Ingersoll. "No, you are not surprised when a worldly man com- mits a crime. You don't notice it. It is nothing un- usual. You see," continued Beecher, "you expect us Christians to be perfect. You expect us to be as pure and holy as our religion." "Of course," said Ingersoll. "And when you say 'of course,' you pay us a com- pliment, and when you show great surprise that one of us should chance to do wrong, you pay us a still finer compliment. Don't you?" Mr. Ingersoll was silent, and commenced winding his Waterbury watch. As the train passed Joliet, Ingersoll commenced com- plaining in a bantering way about the hardships Chris- tian people have to endure in this world. 'They have cyclones in Iowa," he said, "grasshoppers in Kansas, famines in Ireland, floods in Pennsylvania, yellow fever in Galveston, George Francis Train in New York, and small-pox epidemics in Baltimore. It is very hard," said Mr. Ingersoll. 'What does all this prove?" asked Beecher. "It proves that the universe is not governed by a personal God, but by law, law, law. There is no per- sonal God or devil. Such ideas are only worthy of a savage. Huxley, and Darwin, and Galileo would laugh at such ideas. Was it a personal God who burned up five hundred people in the Chicago fire. No, it was not God. It was law. Foolish Mrs. O'Leary tipped over her lantern. By the law of combustion fire started and burnt saints and sinners to death." 1 46 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "If there were a personal God, and you were in his place, could you make anything better than it 'is being made?" asked Beecher. "Why, yes. I could make some things better than they are," said Mr. Ingersoll. "Now what is one thing that you would change and improve? Tell me one thing that you would make dif- ferent than it is? Do you mean to say that with our feeble intellect we could improve on anything the Al- mighty has made?" "Yes, certainly I could," said Ingersoll, pushed to the wall. "Well, tell me one single thing that you could im- prove on." "My dear sir," said Ingersoll, "if I had my way in this world, I would make health catching, instead of disease catching!" Before the train reached Chicago, Beecher got even with the great agnostic. In the seat by the Brooklyn preacher was a beautiful celestial globe — a present from a manufacturer in Bloomington. On it was an excellent representation of the constellations and stars which compose them. There were the rings of Saturn and satellites of Uranus. Ingersoll was delighted with the globe. He examined it closely and turned it round and round. "It's just what I want," he said. "Who made it?" ' ' Who made it ?" repeated Beecher. " Who made this globe? Oh, nobody, Colonel; it just happened!" "No, no, it couldn't happen!" said Ingersoll. "Then no more could this great universe happen," said Beecher enthusiastically. "God made it!" The great agnostic was silenced. RIDICULE KILLS LRU ILL. M7 To illustrate ridicule, I reprint a talk I made before the Portsmouth Y. M. C. A. last winter. I give it as reported in the morning newspaper: "Ridicule," said Eli Perkins, "is to kill truth. A good lawyer will never deny a truth before a jury. That would impeach his veracity and disgust the jury. His true weapon is ridicule. He must exagger- ate that truth, overstate it, deform it, and make the jury laugh it out of court. "Ingersoll, in his discussions with Talmage, never denied a true statement of Talmage. I use Ingersoll to illustrate my theory because the genial agnostic is the king of ridiculers. Ridicule is his weapon, and truth is his target. I say Ingersoll exaggerated the true statements of Talmage and made them ridiculous. For instance, Talmage made a statement about Jonah. He said, 'perhaps the whale didn't swallow Jonah. Per- haps the whale simply took Jonah in his mouth, carried him round a day or two, and then vomited him up.' That was enough for Bob. He didn't deny it. He went across the platform, and exaggerated Talmage's statement. 'Yes,' said Ingersoll, 'I can see Jonah in the whale's mouth. He ties himself up to a tooth and when the whale chews, Jonah, he crouches down — crouches down [laughter, while Rob crouches down, keeping time with the whale's jaw], and by and by, when the whale isn't looking, Jonah, he jumps over into a hollow tooth, builds a fire, reaches out and catches a few fish and fries 'em ; peek-a-boo !' [Great laughter. ] And so he laughs Talmage's statement out of court; but has he denied it? Not at all. "Now, again, when Ingersoll wants to ridicule the Church, he doesn't take the Church of to-day. He I4 8 ELI PERKINS—THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. couldn't ridicule that. So what does he do? Why, he goes back four hundred years for that Church. He goes back to the barbarous Inquisition, when every man was a savage, with a spear in one hand and a hatchet in the other, trying to kill his fellow-man. ! Applause.] He goes back to bloody Spain, where the State had seized the Church, and they were burning Protestants at the stake, pulling their arms out on the rack, or boring their eyes out with augers; or he goes to England in the time of Bloody Mary, when the State had seized the Church, and the Church was not [ap- plause] ; where they were toasting John Huss and Cranmer and Latimer in the fires of the Inquisition; where they were burning the saints' eyes out; I say, he finds the Church in the hands of Bloody Mary, and he takes that Church and puts it down before our young men of to-day. Then he sets Deacon Thompson to boring Deacon Monson's eyes out with an auger, and then asks our young if they want to belong to any such wicked old church as that? [Laughter.] "Now, that isn't the church they are asked to belong to. [Applause.] " Ridicule is to harm truth, not error. Our clergymen have no occasion to use ridicule, for the business of the clergyman is not to harm truth but to harm error. So he can use satire all day long, because our Saviour used it. Our Saviour never used ridicule. [Applause.] "In fact, when any man uses ridicule in speech or editorial he is trying to stab the truth, for that is what the weapon is for. "I heard Ingersoll deliver his great lecture on the ' Mistakes of Moses,' in Indianapolis. Splendid speech ! I wouldn't take one plume from the hat of that eloquent RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH. M9 infidel ! But what did that speech consist of? Like all of his speeches, it was made up of nine magnificent truths about human liberty, and human love, and wife's love, and then he took one little religious truth, multi- plied it by five, turned it into ridicule, and 'laughed it out of court.' And the result? Why, the next day, as usual, all our clergymen came out and denied the whole lecture — denied ridicule! That is the mistake our clergymen have been making for ten years. I meet young men every day trembling in the balance, because you clergymen have denied too much and not explained at all. You have not met the infidel logic- ally. If I had followed the great agnostic, I should have said : "'Why, Ingersoll, you have just found out that Moses and the Jews, the anti-Christ, made mistakes! We Christians knew that Moses made mistakes two thousand years ago. It is written there in the Bible as plain as day how Moses murdered an Egyptian, hid him in the sand, and lied about it. Why, Bob, if Moses and the Jews hadn't made mistakes there wouldn't have been any New Testament, there wouldn't have been any Christianity, there wouldn't have been any need of Christ. Christ came to correct the mistakes of Moses. [Applause. ] Why, Bob, where did you get your news? You must have just got your Jerusalem Herald — delayed in a storm !' [Laughter.] "Then I would have said to those Ingersollized Christians, 'Why, my dear, trembling brothers and sis- ters, we haven't got to defend Moses, the Jew, because he made mistakes, because he murdered and lied [sen- sation] ; we Christians haven't got to defend the falter- ing Noah when he got drunk; we Christians haven't 15° ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. got to defend David when he became a Nero and slayed and debauched his people; and we Christians haven't got to defend that miserable king of the Jews, Solomon, when he had four hundred more wives than Brigham Young. [Sensation.] But all we Christians have got to do, and it is so easy, is to stand by the Bible ac- count — that the Bible is true, just as it is written in black and white ! They did make mistakes, those Jews did, and they made such grievous mistakes that God threw the whole Jewish dispensation overboard as a failure, — 'God did nothing in vain, — and started a new dispensation, the Christian dispensation, and sent his only beloved Son, Christ, to sit on the throne at the head of it. [Applause.] What ! you defending the unbelieving Jew — the anti-Christ? God never de- fended them. They did just the best they could, those poor Jews did, without Christ. [Applause.] There could be no perfection without Christ. [Ap- plause.] 'Now Christians, wait till some one shall assault Christianity, not Judaism; wait till some one shall as- sault Christ, not Moses. But no one has assaulted Christ. Renan? Never. Ingersoll? Never. When they come to Christ they stand with heads uncovered. [Loud applause.] T would say more on this theological subject — I would kill the devil — I hate him and I would kill him, but I see there are several clergymen present and they — have — their — families — to — support!" [Loud laugh- ter drowned the speaker's voice.] "The fact is, a great many people who never think of reading the Scriptures, but who keep a dusty Bible to press flowers in and as a receptacle for receipts for RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH. 15 I making biscuits, often cavil about some theology that they hear about in the corner grocery. A grocery theologian said to me one day, 'You don't believe in Noah and the flood, do you ?' 'Yes,' I said, 'and in the Johnstown flood too, when iS,ooo were eating and drinking, and "that flood came and took them off." Christ said that "when lie should come again it would be as in the days of Noah." ' 1 'And the whale story, too. Do you believe that'' " 'Now there is your corner grocery theology again. The Bible don't say anything about a whale. It says, "And God prepared a great fish." And if God could make the universe; if He could say, "let there be light," lie could say, "let there be a big fish." The world is a miracle, the violet is a miracle; man is a miracle, the fish is a miracle.' 'And that story of Balaam. Do you believe that?' says the grocery theologian. 'Why, scientists have ex- amined the mouth of an ass, and they say it is physic- ally impossible for him to speak.' "To this I answered, with all the sarcasm of Moody. 'If you will make an ass, I will make him speak!' It's all a miracle, life, joy, laughter, tears, and death; and He who can create man can resurrect his soul and waft it away to eternal joy !" [Loud applause.] The argument reductio ad absurdum is an argument of ridicule. This was one of Wendell Phillips' favorite arguments. "One d iv," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I was riding in the cars near Philadelphia, when several Southern clergymen got into the car. When one of them heard that Wendell Phillips, the great antislavery agitator, 152 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. was on board, he asked the conductor to point him out. The conductor did so, and the Southern clergyman came up to the orator, and bowing, said : T beg pardon, but you are Mr. Phillips — Mr. Wen- dell Phillips, of Boston?' Yes, sir. 'I should like to speak to you about something, and I trust, sir, you will not be offended,' said the Southern clergyman politely. " 'There is no fear of it,' was the sturdy answer; and then the minister began to ask Mr. Phillips earnestly why he persisted in stirring up such an unfriendly agi- tation in the North about the evil of slavery, when it existed in the South. " 'Why,' said the clergyman, 'do you not go South and kick up this fuss and leave the North in peace?' "Mr. Phillips was not the least ruffled, and answered smilingly: ' 'You, sir, I presume, are a minister of the Gospel?' " 'I am, sir,' said the clergyman. " 'And your calling is to save souls from hell?' " 'Exactly, sir.' " 'Then why do you stay here in Pennsylvania, agi- tating the question of salvation? why don't you go right down to hell, where the sinners are, and save em ? The Southern clergyman saw his absurd position at once. Wendell Phillips was once accosted by Dr. Monson, a professed deist, who asked him : "Do you think a man has a soul?" Yes. "Did you ever see a soul?" RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH. 153 "No." "Did you ever taste a soul?" "No." "Did vou ever smell a soul?" "No."' "Did you ever feel a soul?" "Yes." "Well," said the doctor, "there are four of the five senses against one upon the question whether there be a soul. "Look here, Dr. Monson," said Mr. Phillips, "you are a physician, aren't you?" "Yes." "Did you ever see a pain?" « * XT •• No. "Did you ever hear a pain?" "No." "Did you ever taste a pain?" "No." "Did you ever smell a pain?' . . XT M No. "Did you ever feel a pain?" "Yes." "Well, then," said Mr. Phillips, "there are also four of the senses against one upon the question whether there be a pain. And yet sir, you know that there is a pain, and I know that there is a soul." One of Ingersoll's favorite arguments against the old Connecticut blue laws was the reductio ad absurdum fallacy. One day Ingersoll was talking with Talmage about laws for the enforcement of Sunday observance, when he asked the great Brooklyn preacher these questions; 154 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "Would you like to live in a community, Mr. Tal- mage, where not one cigar could be smoked and not one drop of spirituous liquor could be sold or drunk?" "Certainly," said Talmage; "that would be asocial heaven." "And you would like to live where no one could play on the Sabbath day; where no one could laugh out loud and enjoy a frolic?" "Certainly." "And where every one had to go to church?" "Yes, sir; that would suit me. It would be paradise to live in a community where every one was compelled to go to church every Sunday, where no one could drink a drop, where no one could swear, and where the law would make every man good. There the law would make every man's deportment absolutely cor- rect." "And you think such a man would be a good Christian — a better man than I am?" "Why, of course, Colonel." "Then," said Mr. Ingersoll, "I advise you to go right to the penitentiary. At Sing Sing there is a community of 1500 men and women governed in precisely that manner. They are all good by law." The witty Quaker lecture committeeman at Swarth- morc College used this same fallacy when he came to pay me my lecture fee. He came up to me with a roll of bills in his hand and a twinkle in his eye, and said, as he counted out my fee : "Eli, my friend, does thee believe in the maxims of Benjamin Franklin?" "Yea," I said. RIDICULE KILLS TRUTH. 155 "Well, friend Eli, Benjamin Franklin, in his Poor Richard maxims, says that 'Time is money.' ' "Yea, verily, I have read it," I said. "Well, Eli, if 'time is money,' as thy friend Poor Richard says, and thee believes so, then verily we will keep the money, and thee can take it out in time." ELI EXPLAINS REPARTEE. The Repartee of Diogenes and Aristippus of Greece, Talleyrand and Madame de Stael of France, Charles Lamb and Douglas Jerrold of England, and Tom Corwin, Randolph, Thad. Stevens, Sam Jones, Ben. Butler, Wendell Phillips, and Sam Cox of America— Blaine and Conkling's Repartee. REPARTEE, like ridicule and satire, is a species of wit. It is a quick flash of the imagination — a sort of intellectual stab. In the case of the bull or blunder, a person stum- bles into a witticism ; but repartee shows design and thought. Repartee is always a smart reply, but it is not necessarily unkind. Still cranky and ill-natured men like Diogenes, Charles Lamb, Thomas Carlyle, and John Randolph have always used it prolifically. Repartee is a case where one speaker makes a plain statement, aimed in a certain direction, which a hearer collides with and reverses so as to shoot straight back at the speaker. "What I want," said a pompous orator, aiming at his antagonist, "is good common sense." "Exactly," was the whispered reply; "that's just what you need." Repartee is often very unkind, but its unkindness is excusable when the person indulging in it has been at- tacked. For instance, Abernethy, the famous surgeon, .56 ELI EXPLA INS REP. I X TE E. 1 57 swore violently at a poor Irish paver who had piled some paving-stones on the doctor's sidewalk. "Remove them! away with them!" screamed Aber- nethy, with an oath. "But wln.-re shall I take them to?" asked Pat. "To hell with them!" exclaimed the doctor. "Hadn't I better take them to heaven? Sure, an' they'd be more out of your honor's way there," said Pat, as he leaned on his spade. George Francis Train told me once that in his opin- ion the finest piece of repartee in the English language was the instance where two Irishmen were walking under the gibbet at Newgate. Looking up at the gibbet, one of them remarked : "Ah, Pat, where would you be if the gibbet had done its duty?" "Faith, Flannagan," said Pat, "and I'd be walking London — all alone ! " A fine bit of repartee is attributed to Douglas Jer- rold. "Have you seen my 'Descent into Hell' ?" inquired an author, a great bore, who had written a book with a fiery title : "No," replied Douglas Jerrold, "but I should like to." I heard a bright little reply at Spokane Falls, while on a recent lecture trip, which was smart enough to be repartee : There were about a dozen witty commercial men at dinner and a very pretty waiter girl was waiting on them. She had sweet rosy cheeks, ivory teeth, and a smile that bewitched the traveling men. After chaffing the pretty waitress a while, one com- mercial man looked up, and asked : 158 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "What is your name, my pretty waitress?" "My name," said the young lady, blushing, "is Pearl." "Pearl!" repeated the commercial man. "That is a very pretty name— a v-e-r-y pretty name." Then thinking a moment he asked : "Are you the pearl of great price?" "No," modestly replied the pretty girl, "I am the pearl before swine." Aristippus, the cynic, and a pupil of Plato, was famous for his repartee, although the translators have usually spoiled his jokes by a too literal trans- lation. Croesus, a rich Greek belonging to the 400 of Athens, brought his stupid son to Aristippus one day to have him educated. "How much will you charge to make my boy a scholar?" he asked. "How much?" mused Aristippus, as he put his hand on the boy's head. "How much? Why, five hundred drachmas." "Five hundred drachmas!" exclaimed the shoddy father. "Why, that's too dear! Why, with five hun- dred drachmas I can buy a slave." "Then go and buy him," said Aristippus, "and you'll have twins. You'll have a pair of 'em." "But how will it benefit my son five hundred drachmas' worth?" asked the shoddy Greek. "Why, when you go to look for him in the theater you can distinguish him from the wooden benches. ** * The literal Greek reply was, " He will not be one stone setting on another." The seats of the Athenian theater were of stone. ELI EXP LA INS REP A R TEE. 1 5 9 It was a good bit of repartee that Henry Watterson got on Oscar Wilde, the long-haired aesthetic: Wilde, in his Louisville lecture, was delivering himself of an eloquent tirade against the invasion of the sacred domain of art by the meaner herd of tradespeople and miscellaneous nobodies, and finally, rising to an Alpine height of scorn, exclaimed : "Ay, all of you here are Philistines — mere Philis- tines !" 'Yes," whispered Watterson softly, "we are Philis- tines, and I suppose that is why we are being assaulted with the jawbone of an ass." It would take a book to record all of Tom Corwin's bright and cutting instances of repartee. Many of them are familiar to the old reader, but I record them here for the coming man, the boy growing up. John C. Calhoun once pointed to a drove of mules just from Ohio, and said to Corwin : "There go some of your constituents." "Yes," said Tom gravely, "they are going down South to teach school." Governor Brough was once matched against Corwin, and in the midst of his speech said : "Gentlemen, my honored opponent himself, while he preaches protective tariff and home industry, has a carriage at home which he got in England, and had it shipped across the ocean in an English ship. How is that for supporting home industry and labor?" When Corwin came on the stand he made a great show of embarrassment, stammered, and began slowly: "Well, gentlemen, you have heard what my friend Mr. Brough has to say of my carriage. I plead guilty to the charges, and have only two things to say in my 160 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. defense. The first is that the carriage came to me from an English ancestor as an heirloom, and I had to take it. Again, I have not used it for seven years, and it has been standing in my back yard all that time, and my chickens are roosting on it to-day. Now, gentle- men," with a steady look at Brough, "I have nothing further to say in my defense; but I would like to know how Brough knows anything about my carriage if he has not been visiting my chicken roost." When I lectured before the Carlisle (Pa.) Teachers' Institute they told me innumerable stories about that grim old patriot and antislavery agitator, Thad. Ste- vens, which almost bordered on repartee. One day the old man was practicing in the Carlisle courts, and he didn't like the ruling of the presiding judge. A second time the judge ruled against "old Thad," when the old man got up, with scarlet face and quivering lips, and commenced tying up his papers as if to quit the court-room. "Do I understand, Mr. Stevens," asked the judge, eyeing "old Thad" indignantly, "that you wish to show your contempt for this Court?" "No, sir; no, sir," replied old Thad. "I don't want to show my contempt, sir; I'm trying to conceal it." Alex. H. Stephens, of Georgia, weighed but seventy- four pounds; yet he was always considered in the South as a man of weight. Mr. Stephens once severely worsted a gigantic Western opponent in debate. The big fellow, looking down on Stephens, burst out, "You! why, I could swallow you whole." "If you did," answered the latter, "you would have ELI EXP LA INS REP A R TEE. 1 6 1 more brains in your bowels than ever you had in your head." Wendell Phillips said hundreds of things that were so sharp that his audiences didn't know whether it was Phillips, lightning, or repartee. I met the grand old Abolitionist on the streets of Boston in 1866. He was going along faster than usual, and said he was on his way to Faneuil Hall, where there would probably be a very exciting meet- ing. The ex-rebels had shot into the negroes at the polls, and President Grant had called out the troops in New Orleans to suppress riots. There was a great Democratic crowd in the old historic hall, and it ap- peared dangerous for a Republican to attempt to speak. I entered in front, and just as I cast my eyes on the platform, I saw Mr. Phillips begin to ascend it from the speakers' entrance. A Democratic orator was speaking, but no sooner had Mr. Phillips' head appeared above the platform than the people began to shout, "Phillips, Phillips!" Very soon he was address- ing the audience, and endeavored to conciliate and pac- ify his hearers. "In all cases where any citizen, white or black, is in danger," he said, "it is the duty of the government to protect him." No sooner had he finished the sentence than a number of men began to hiss. The great orator paused a moment, and then an in- spired wrath took hold of him, his great eyes gleamed' and in a blast of irony he exclaimed : 'Truth thrown into the caldron of hell would make a noise like that !" When the cheers had ceased, the silver-tongued orator showered down the following red-hot sentences: l62 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. "In the South," he said, "we have not only an army to conquer, but we have a state of mind to annihilate. When England conquered the Highlands, she held them — held them until she could educate them ; and it took a generation. That is just what we have to do with the South; annihilate the old South, and put a new one there. You do not annihilate a thing by abolishing it. You must supply the vacancy." The mildest bit of repartee I know of occurred between the Poet Saxe and Oliver Wendell Holmes. They were talking about brain fever when Mr. Saxe remarked : "I once had a very severe attack of brain fever my- self." "How could you have brain fever?" asked Holmes, smiling. "It is only strong brains that have brain fever." "How did you find that out?" asked Saxe. The Scotch are always very blunt with their repartee : Sandy complained that he had got a ringing in his head. "Do ye ken the reason o' that?" asked Donald. i i XT M No. "I'll tell ye — it's because it's empty." "And ha'e ye never a ringing in your head?" asked the other. " No, never." "And do ye ken the reason — because it's cracked." The man who uses repartee is like the wasp ; he stings when he is attacked. It was so with Diogenes, Chateaubriand, and Charles Lamb. A dear friend was once expatiating to Talleyrand on ELI EXPLAINS REPARTEE. 163 his mother's beaut}', when the mean wit said, "Then it must have been your father who was ugly." When some one said that Chateaubriand complained of growing deaf, Talleyrand replied: "He thinks he is deaf because he no longer hears himself talked of." A well-known author exclaimed, "During my life I have been guilty of only one mistake" "Where will that end?" inquired Talleyrand. A friend of Mr. Blaine once asked Conkling if he would take the stump for Blaine in the campaign of '84. "I can't," said Conkling spitefully. "I have retired from criminal practice." Mr. Blaine got even with Conkling for this by tell- ing a story about Conkling's vanity. "One day," said Mr. Blaine, "when Conkling and I were friends, the proud New York senator asked Sam Cox whom he thought were the two greatest characters America ever produced?" "I should say," said Cox solemnly, "I should say the two most distinguished men in America have been General Washington and yourself." "Very true," said Conkling, "but I don't see why you should drag in the name of Washington." I witnessed a cutting rebuke and a sharp reply on the part of an American in Germany. The German officers before the Franco-Prussian war used to be arrogant and pedantic. The German army had not proved its prowess then, and the officers were sensitive. But since the war with France has proved that they are the best soldiers in the world, that sensitiveness has all gone. They are sure of their position and can afford to be magnanimous. The Heidelberg student, though, is 164 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. still pompous, arrogant, and egotistical; painful to Democratic Americans. I was on the steamboat platform at Heidelberg a few years ago with a party of Americans. There was a good deal of jamming and crowding, and an American happened to crowd a Heidelberg student, a famous class duelist, when he drew himself up pompously, his scarred face all scowls, and exclaimed : "Sir, you are crowding; keep back, sir!" "Don't you like it, sonny?" asked the American. "Sir!" scowled the student. "Don't you like it, sonny?" repeated the American derisively. The German gave one look full of pedantry and hatred, then thrusting his card in the American's face hissed out : "Allow me to tell you, sir, that you have insulted me, and that I am at your service — at any time and place !" "Oh, you are at my service, are you?" said the American. "Then just carry this satchel to the hotel for me !" I have had several tilts with General Butler during the last twenty years, although I am a great admirer of the man who gave the first order making old slaves contraband of war. That order of Butler's settled the question of slavery on this continent, and Lincoln's proclamation of freedom became a necessity. Even before the war I had written this parable on the general : Old Deacon Butler, of Lowell, had one son, Ben, who was very smart at everything, but the deacon could not tell what profession to give him. So one ELI EXPLAINS REPARTEE. 165 day he put the boy in a room with a Bible, an apple, and a dollar bill. "If I find Hen reading the Bible when I return," said the deacon, "I shall make him a clergyman; if eating the apple, a farmer; and if interested in the dollar bill, a banker." "What was the result?" you ask. "Well, when the deacon returned he found his son sitting on the Bible with the dollar bill in his pocket, and the apple almost devoured." "What did he do with him?" 'Why, he made him a politician, and is still running for governor of Massachusetts. Ben is still devouring that apple." During the war I set this little bit of satire afloat: General Butler went into a hospital in Washington not long since, to express sympathy with the patients. 'What is the matter with you, my man?" asked the general, as he gazed at the man with a sore leg. "Oh, I've got gangrene, General." "Gangrene! why, that's a very dangerous disease, my man ; v-e-r-y d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s," said General Butler. "I never knew a man to have gangrene and recover. It always kills the patient or leaves him demented. I've had it myself!" Well, General Butler bided his time. He waited until he got me in front of him at a Grand Army dinner — got me surrounded and then bottled me up with his best story. After Chauncey Depew and Horace Porter had told some exaggerated stories, Butler arose in a very dig- nified manner and said : "Speaking of liars, Mr. Depew, I have the honor of 1 66 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. knowing three of the greatest liars, the greatest living liars, in this world." "Who are they?" asked the venerable Sam Ward, as he dropped a chicken partridge to listen to the general. "Well, sir," said the general, as he scratched his head thoughtfully, "Mark Twain is one, and Eli Perkins is the other two!" I forgave General Butler for that story on account of the good story he told on the city of Philadelphia. This story has been attributed to a dozen different people, but Butler was the man who told it. "Oliver Wendell Holmes," says Butler, " happened to be seated next to George W. Childs at a Boston dinner. '"Speaking of Boston,' said Ben, 'she is a fine city, isn't she?' " 'Yes, Boston is a very compact and substantial city,' said Mr. Childs; 'but she is not so well laid out as Philadelphia.' "'No,' said Ben, with his eyes more on a bias than usual, 'Boston is not so well laid out as Philadelphia, I admit that ; but she will be when she is as dead as Philadelphia.' " The staid New York Tribune came near jumping over into the realms of wit and repartee when it published this paragraph: Eli Perkins, who is a vestryman in an uptown church, in the ab- sence of a Sunday-school teacher, kindly offered to take her class in the Sabbath-school. After teaching the class four weeks Mr. Perkins was presented with a Bible by his class. People can draw their own inferences. A bright, though not very orthodox bit of repartee was made by Sam Jones to Elder Smitzer, who was I-.l 1 EXPLAINS REPARTEE. l6 7 lecturing Sam for the sin of chewing tobacco. "Brother Jones," exclaimed Brother Smitzer, without stopping to ask any other question, "is it possible that you chew tobacco?" "I must confess 1 do," quietly replied Mr. Jones. "Then I would quit it, sir," energetically continued Brother Smitzer. "It is a very unclerical practice, and I must say a very uncleanly one. Tobacco ! Why, sir, even a hog would not chew it." "Brother Smitzer," responded his amused listener, "do you chew tobacco?" "I? No, sir!" he answered gruffly, with much indignation. "Then, pray, my dear brother," said Sam, "which is most like the hog, you or I?" "If your habits were as good as your logic, Sam Jones," said Brother Smitzer, smiling, "you would be saved in spite of your bad taste." ARTEMUS WARD. The Father of American Humor — Personal Reminiscences — Where Eli Perkins got his nom de plume — From the Maine Farm to Kensal Green — His original MSS. left to the Writer. I FIRST met Artemus Ward in Memphis, in the spring of 1865. He had just returned from his overland stage trip from California, and was making a lecture tour of the States. I little thought then that I should be called upon in 1876, by Geo. W. Carleton, to write his biography and edit a complete edition of his works.* On that occasion the humorist accompanied me to my plantation at Lake Providence, La., where I had 1700 acres of cotton. I had previously been on General A. L. Chetlain's staff in Memphis. The negroes were a perpetual delight to Artemus; and they used to stand around him with staring eyes, and mouths wide open, listening to his seemingly serious advice. I could not prevail upon him to hunt or to join in any of the equestrian amusements with the neighboring planters, but a quiet fascination drew him to the ne- groes. Strolling through the "quarters," his grave words, too deep with humor for darky comprehension, gained their entire confidence. * The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (four volumes in. one), with his Mormon Lecture, and Biography by Eli Perkins. G. W. Carleton, New York ; and Chatto & Windus, London. 168 ARTEMIS WARD. 169 One day he called upon Uncle Jeff, an Uncle-Tom- like patriarch, and commenced in his usual vein : "Now, Uncle Jefferson," he said, "why do you thus pursue the habits of industry? This course of life is wrong — all wrong — all a base habit, Uncle Jefferson. Now, try and break it off. Look at me — look at Mr. Landon, the chivalric young Southern plantist from New York; he toils not, neither does he spin; he pur- sues a career of contented idleness. If you only •thought so, Jefferson, you could live for months with- out performing any kind of labor, and at the expiration of that time feel fresh and vigorous enough to com- mence it again. Idleness refreshes the physical organi- zation — it is a sweet boon. Strike at the roots of the destroying habit to-day, Jefferson. It tires you out ; re- solve to be idle; no one should labor; he should hire others to do it for him." And then he would fix his mournful eyes on Jeff and hand him a dollar, while the eyes of the wonder-struck darky would gaze in mute admiration upon the good and wise originator of the only theory which the darky mind could appreciate. As Jeff went away to tell the wonderful story to his companions, and backed it with the dollar as ma- terial proof, Artemus would cover his eyes, and bend forward on his elbows in a chuckling laugh. One of the queerest sights was to see his trunks spread along the hall outside of his room. Each trunk- was fully labeled. One would be labeled, "A. Ward, his store close"; and another, "A. Ward, his Sunday suit. One evening I asked him to tell me about his child, hood up in Maine, and he said : "I was born up at Waterford, but afterward moved 17° ELI RERA'I.YS- THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. to Skowhegan. My father's name was Levi, and my mother's name was Caroline. I had four uncles in Waterford : Daniel, Mallory, Jabez,and Thaddeus." "Were you Puritans?" I asked. "Well," he said, "father's name was Levi, and we had a Moses and a Nathan in the family, so I think we must have come from Jerusalem. But," he continued thoughtfully, "my brother's name was Cyrus, and per- haps that made us Persians." I had many practical ideas about the plantation, and Artemus was constantly saying, during the visit : 'You are a regular Eli Perkins kind of a man — you are. I think I'll call you Eli." An Eli Perkins kind of a man with Ward was some one with dry philosophical ideas, original and startling. After this he never addressed me by any other name. The name Eli Perkins seemed to give him infinite amuse- ment, and at Natchez and New Orleans it was a never ending source of pleasure, when the crowd called upon him, to turn around, smile, and say: "Allow me to introduce Mr. Eli Perkins, the chivalric young Southern plantist from — from New York." When I parted with Artemus at New Orleans he came to the gang-plank, smiled, and said loudly : "You know so much about farming, Eli, that I'm going to make you manager of my plantation up in Maine." And sure enough, he wrote this letter a month or so afterward, which appears in most of his books, and which caused me to take the name "Eli Perkins" as a nom dc plume in 1 871, when I wrote my first book, "Saratoga in 1901." ARTEMUS WARD. 171 This was Ward's letter: New York, June 12. 1865. To the Farmers' Club, Cooper Institute. Gentlemen: I have been an honest farmer for some four years. My farm is in the interior of Maine. Unfortunately my lands are eleven miles from the railroad. Eleven mill s is quite a distance to haul immense quantities of wheat, corn, r\e, and oats ; but as I haven't any to haul, I do not, after all, suffer much on that account. Two years ago I tried sheep-raising. I bought fifty lambs, and turned them loose on my broad and beautiful acres. It was pleasant on bright mornings, after coming back from a lecturing tour, to stroll leisurely out on to the farm in my dressing- gown, with a cigar in my mouth, and watch these innocent little- lambs as they danced gayly o'er the hillside. One clay my gentle shepherd, Mr. Eli Perkins, said, " We must have some shepherd dogs." I had no very precise idea as to what shepherd dogs were, but I assumed a rather profound look, and said : •' We must, Eli. I spoke to you about this some time ago." I wrote to Boston for two shepherd dogs, and the dogs came forthwith. They were splendid creatures— snuff -colored, hazel- eyed, long-tailed, and shapely jawed. We led them proudly to the fields. " Turn them in, Eli," 1 said. Eli turned them in. They went in at once, and killed twenty of my best lambs in about four minutes and a half. My friend had made a trifling mistake in the breed of these dogs. Eli Perkins was astonished, and observed : •■ Waal ! did you ever?" I certainly never had. There were pools of blood on the green sward, and fragments of wool and raw lamb chops lay round in confused heaps. The dogs would have been sent to Boston that night, had they 172 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. not rather suddenly died that afternoon of a throat-distemper. It wasn't a swelling of the throat. It wasn't diphtheria. It was a violent opening of the throat, extending from ear to ear. Thus closed their life stories. Thus ended their interesting tails. I failed as a raiser of lambs. As a sheepist I was not a success. Last summer Mr. Perkins said, " I think we'd better cut some grass this season, sir." We cut some grass. To me the new mown hay is very sweet and nice. New mown hay is a really fine thing. It is good for man and beast. We hired four honest farmers to assist us, and I led them gayly to the meadows. 1 was going to mow, myself. I saw the sturdy peasants go round once ere I dipped my flash- ing scythe into the tall, green grass. " Are you ready ? " said E. Perkins. " I am here ! " " Then follow us ! " I followed them. Followed them rather too closely, evidently, for a white-haired old man, who immediately followed Mr. Perkins, called upon us to halt. Then, in a low, firm voice, he said to his son, who was just ahead of me, " John, change places with me. I hain't got long to live, anyhow. Yonder berryin' ground will soon have these old bones, and it's no matter whether I'm carried there with one leg off and ter'ble gashes in the other or not ! But you, John— you are young." The old man changed places with his son. A smile of calm resignation lit up his wrinkled face, as he said, " Now, sir, I am ready ! " " What mean you, old man ? " I said. " I mean that if you continue to bran'ish that blade as you have been bran'ishin' it, you'll slash h out of some of us before we're a hour older ! " There was some reason mingled with this white-haired old peasant's profanity. It was true that I had twice escaped mowing off his son's legs, and his father was, perhaps, naturally alarmed. ARTEMUS WARD. 173 I went and sat down under a tree. " I never know'd a literary man in my life," I overheard the old man say, " that know'd any- thing." Mr. Perkins was not as valuable to me this season as I had fan- cied he might be. Every afternoon he disappeared from the field regularly, and remained about some two hours. He said it was headache. He inherited it from his mother. His mother was often taken in that way. and suffered a great deal. At the end of the two hours, Mr. Perkins would reappear with his head neatly done up in a large wet rag and say he " felt better." One afternoon it so happened that I soon followed the invalid to the house, and as I neared the porch I heard a female voice ener- getically observe, " You stop ! " It was the voice of the hired girl, and she added. " I'll holler for Mr. Brown !" " Oh, no, Nancy ! " I heard the invalid E. Perkins soothingly say, " Mr. Brown knows I love you. Mr. Brown approves of it ! " This was pleasant for Mr. Brown ! I peered cautiously through the kitchen blinds, and, however unnatural it may appear, the lips of Eli Perkins and my hired girl were very near together. She said, " You shan't do so," and he do-soed. She also said she would get right up and go away and, as an evidence that she was thoroughly in earnest about it, she re- mained where she was. They are married now, and Mr. Perkins is troubled no more with the headache. This year we are planting corn. Mr. Perkins writes me that ''on accounts of no skare krows bein' put up krows cum and digged fust crop up but soon got nother in. Old Bisbee, who was frade youd cut his sons leggs of, Ses you bet go and stan up in feeld yrself with dressin gownd on & gesses krows will keep way. this made Boys in store larf. no More terday from Yours respecful, Eli Perkins." P. S. — Eli has done better since he got married. Artemus Ward. After Artemus died in London in 1867, I visited his grave in Waterford and talked with his mother, who af- 174 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. terward wrote me several letters. I learned in Water- ford that Artemus was full of fun when a boy. His mother, from whom the writer received several letters, told me that Artemus was out very late one night at a spelling-bee, and came home in a driving snowstorm. "We had all retired," said Mrs. Browne, "and Arte- mus went around the house and threw snow-balls at his brother Cyrus's window, shouting for him to come down quickly. Cyrus appeared in haste, and stood shivering in his night-clothes. " 'Why don't you come in, Charles? The door is open.' " 'Oh,' replied Artemus, 'I could have gotten in all right, Cyrus; but I called you down because I wanted to ask you if you really think it is wrong to keep slaves.' " Charles received his education at the Waterford school, until family circumstances induced his parents to apprentice him to learn the rudiments of printing in the office of the Skowhegan Clarion, published some miles to the north of his native village. Here he passed through the dreadful ordeal to which a printer's "devil" is generally subjected. He always kept his temper; and his amusing jokes are even now related by the residents of Skowhegan. In the spring, after his fifteenth birthday, Charles Browne bade farewell to the Skowhegan Clarion ; and we next hear of him in the office of the Carpet-Bag, edited by B. P. Shillaber ("Mrs. Partington"). In these early years young Browne used to "set up" articles from the pens of Charles G. Halpine ("Miles O'Reilly") and John G. Saxe, the poet. Here he wrote his first contribution in a disguised hand, slyly put it into ARTEMUS WARD. 175 the editorial box, and the next day enjoyed the pleasure of setting it up himself. The article was a description of a Fourth of July celebration in Skowhegan. The spectacle of the day was a representation of the battle of Yorktown, with George Washington and General Cornuallis in character. The article pleased Mr. Shil- laber, and Mr. Browne, afterward speaking of it, said: "I went to the theater that evening, had a good time of it, and thought I was the greatest man in Bos- ton. While engaged on the Carpet-Bag, Artemus closely studied the theater and courted the society of actors and actresses. It was in this way that he gained that correct and valuable knowledge of the texts and charac- ters of the drama which enabled him in after years to burlesque them so successfully. The humorous writ- ings of Seba Smith were his models, and the oddities of "John Phcenix" were his especial admiration : After leaving Boston, Artemus became a reporter and compositor in Tiffin, O., at four dollars a week. From there he went into the Toledo Commercial, and in 1858, when he was twenty-four years of age, Mr. J. W. Gray, of the Cleveland Plaiiulealer, secured him as local re- porter, at a salary of twelve dollars per week. Here his reputation first began to assume a national charac- ter, and it was here that they called him a "fool" when he mentioned the idea of taking the field as a lecturer. Speaking of this circumstance, while traveling down the Mississippi with the writer in 1865, Mr. Browne mus- ingly repeated this colloquy : Wise Man. "Ah! you poor, foolish little girl— here is a dollar for you." Foolish Little Girl. "Thank you, sir, but I have a 176 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OE WIT. sister at home as foolish as I am ; can't you give me a dollar for her?" In i860 the humorist became the editor of Vanity Fair in New York, succeeding Charles G. Leland. Speaking of his experience on Vanity Fair, Artemus said : "Comic copy is what they wanted for Vanity Fair ; I wrote some and it killed it. The poor paper got to be a conundrum and so I gave it up." After lecturing in Clinton Hall, December 23, 1862, Ward went to California to lecture. His lecture on "Babes in the Woods," took the Californians by storm. It consisted of a wandering batch of comicalities, touch- ing upon everything except the "Babes." Indeed, it was better described by the lecturer in London, when he said, "One of the features of my entertainment is, that it contains so many things that don't have any- thing to do with it." In the middle of his lecture, the speaker would hesi- tate, stop, and say: "Owing to a slight indisposition, we will now have an intermission of fifteen minutes." The audience looked in utter dismay at the idea of staring at vacancy for a quarter of an hour, when, rub- bing his hands, the lecturer would continue: "But, ah— during the intermission I will go on with my lee- ture! On returning from California on the overland stage, Artemus lectured in Salt Lake City. He took a deep interest in Brigham Young and the Mormons. The Prophet attended his lecture. When the writer lec- tured in the Mormon theater fifteen years afterward, Brigham Young was present. The next day my wife and I were entertained at the Lion House, the home of ARTEMUS WARD. 177 the Prophet, when he and Hiram Clausen gave me many reminiscences of Artemus Ward's visit. When I wrote the humorist's biography, Mr. Carle- ton gave me a trunk full of his old MSS., which I have been looking over to-day.* Before me is this sketch oi Brigham Young in Artemus Ward's handwriting, it was written in [862, while the war of the Rebellion was going on ; but after Joe Johnson's campaign against the Mormons. Any journalist will see, by his correct punc- tuation, that he was a man of culture. This litho- graphed sketch shows his character. It proves that he was once a type-setter. It is the best index to the cul- ture and technical knowledge of the humorist that could be given : The reader will see by Mr. Ward's diary that the Mormons were jealous of the national troops encamped at Salt Lake. *A package of these Ward sketches, with autograph letters from President Harrison, the Prince of Wales, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Geo. W. Curtis, Cable, Talmage, Depew, General Sher- man, Cardinal Gibbons, and forty oihers were stolen from the Sixth Avenue elevated train after this was written. It is hoped that autograph collectors into whose hands they will come will com- municate with Mr. Landon. 178 ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. 4- f/l^x^'s. /^~w^- ^L^Ct^Z **^-*» t^j&z- L***" 71*^*! / /^S, ** /f /L. ^2H?^ t A^L t fao- ARTEMUS WARD. *79 l£j, sA^yC^ A- ^^ ^ *? j^U^CC U Cty^^/ f)^^ r f- I So ELI PERKINS— THIRTY YEARS OF WIT. A