The Humors of Falconbridge Part 61

Rhapsody--we must give him the credit of the fact--from no mawkish feeling of his own, but from force of public opinion, resorted to this secret manner of eking out his daily bread, and acting out his part of the fict.i.tious gentleman. During one of his morning lounges--accidentally, Rhapsody met Miss Somebody in the street. They had not met for some few years, and it may not be troublesome to conceive, that Miss Alice--under the new order of things--was more pleased than otherwise to renew the acquaintance of other days, with a gentleman still supposed to be--and his attire and manner surely gave no sign of an altered state of affairs--in a position recognizable by society.

Rhapsody renewed his attentions to the Somebody family, and Miss Alice in particular--with fervor. He admitted himself no longer an _attache_ of government, but offset the deprivation of government patronage, by a.s.serting that he was graduating for a higher sphere in life than the drudgery and abjectness of a clerks.h.i.+p--he was studying political economy, and the learned profession of the law!

The Somebodies were _game_; not a concession would they make to stern indigence; it was merely for the sake of quietude, said Mrs. Somebody, and the solace of retirement from the gay and tempestuous whirls of society, that _we_ changed the scene and dropped a peg lower in domestic show. Rhapsody believed Colonel Somebody a man of substance. He knew how easy it was to account for the expenditure of fifteen hundred dollars a year, but it did not so readily appear possible for a man holding the Colonel's place and perquisites, some thousands a year, to die poor, without estate; ergo, the Somebodies were still, doubtless, _somebody_, and the more the infatuated Rhapsody dwelt upon it, the more he absorbed the idea of forming an alliance with the dead Colonel's family. And the favor with which he was received seemed to facilitate matters as desirably as could be wished for. What airy castles, or gossamer projects may have haunted the fancy of our sanguine friend, Rhapsody, we know not; but that he whacked away more cheerily at his trade, and kept up his appearances spiritedly, was evident enough. An expert and artistic craftsman, he secured paying work, and executed it to the satisfaction of his employers.

The industry of the Somebodies was one of the traits in the characters of the two young women, particularly commendatory to Rhapsody; he seldom paid them a morning or afternoon call, that they were not diligently engaged with needles and Berlin wool--fas.h.i.+oning wrought suspenders for brother, slippers for brother, or mother, or sister, or the Rev. Mr. So-and-So--the recently made inmate of the family. The multiplicity of such performances, for brother, mother, sister, the reverend gentleman--_mere pastime_, as Mrs. Somebody would remark,--most probably would have caused a mystery or misgiving in the minds of many adventurous _Lotharios_; but Rhapsody, though, as we see, a man of the world, had something yet to learn of society and its complexities.

Things progressed smoothly--the reverend gentleman facetiously cajoled Miss Alice and the mother upon the issue of coming events--the lively young lawyer, etc., etc.,--and it seemed to be a settled matter that Miss Alice was to be the bride of Mr. Rhapsody at last.

Rhapsody, usually, after dark, in the evening, in his laboring garments, made his return of work and received more. Whilst thus out, one evening, on business, in making a sudden turn of a corner, he came plump upon Mrs. Somebody and Alice! Rhapsody would have dashed down a cellar--into a shop--up an alley, or sunk through the footwalk, had any such opportunity offered, but there was none--he was there--beneath the flame of a street lamp, with the eagle eyes of all the party upon him! Cut off from retreat, he boldly faced the enemy!

He was going to a political caucus meeting in a noisy and turbulent ward--apprehended a disturbance--donned those shady habiliments, and the large green bag in his hand, that a--well, though it did not seem to contain such goods, was supposed, for the nonce, to contain his books and papers; doc.u.ments he was likely to have use for at the caucus!

Rhapsody got through--it was a tight shave; he dexterously declined accompanying the ladies home--they were rather queerly attired themselves, it occurred to Rhapsody; they made some excuse for their appearance, and so the maskers _quit, even_. Time pa.s.sed on--Alice and Rhapsody had almost climaxed the preparatory negotiations of an hymenial conclusion, when another _contretemps_ came to pa.s.s--it was the grand finale.

It was on a rather bl.u.s.tery night, that Rhapsody, in haste, sought the shop of his employer; he had work in hand which, being ordered done at a certain hour, for an anxious customer, he was in haste to deliver. His green bag under his arm, in rushed Rhapsody,--the servant of the customer was awaiting the arrival of the _bottier_ and his master's boots. The shopman eagerly seized Rhapsody's verdant-colored satchel, and out came the boots, and which underwent many critical inspections, eliciting sundry professional remarks from the shopman, to our hero, Rhapsody, who, in his business matters had a.s.sumed, it appeared, the more humble name of _Mr. Jones_, in the shop. The customer's servant stood by the counter--fencing off a lady, further on--from immediate notice of Rhapsody. A side glance revealed sundry patterns or specimens of most elegantly-wrought slippers--the boss of the shop, and the lady, were apparently negotiating a trade, in these embroidered articles; the lady, now but a few feet from Rhapsody and the garrulous shopman, turned toward the poor fellow just as the shopman had stuffed more work into the green bag--their eyes met. Rhapsody felt an all-overish sensation peculiar to that experienced by an amateur in a shower bath, during his first _douse_, or the incipient criminal detected in his initiatory crime! Poor Rhapsody felt like fainting, while Miss Alice Somebody, without the nerve to gather up her work, or withstand a further test of the force of circ.u.mstances, precipitately left the store, her face red as scarlet, and her demeanor wild and incomprehensible, at least to all but Rhapsody.

Rhapsody was at breakfast the next morning--a servant announced a gentleman in the parlor desirous of an interview with Mr. Rhapsody--it was granted, and soon _Jones_, the _boot-maker_, confronted the Rev. Mr.

So-and-So. Though an inclination to _smile_ played about the pleasant features of the reverend gentleman, he a.s.sumed to be severe upon what he called the duplicity of Mr. Rhapsody; and that gentleman patiently hearing the story out, quietly asked:

"Are you, sir, here as an accuser--denouncer, or an amba.s.sador of peace and good will?"

"The latter, sir, is my self-const.i.tuted mission," said the reverend gentleman.

"Then," said Rhapsody, "I am ready to make all necessary concessions--a clean breast of it, you may say. I am in a false position--struggling against public opinion--false pride--falsely, and yet honestly, working my way through the world. I am no more nor less, nominally, than _Jones, the boot-maker_. Now," continued Rhapsody, "if a false purpose covers not a false heart also, I can yet be happy in the affections of Miss Somebody, and she in mine. For those who can battle as we have, against the common chances of indigence, upright and alone in our integrity, may surely yet win greater rewards by mutual consolation and support, our fortunes joined."

"I have not been mistaken, then, sir," said the reverend gentleman, "in your character, if I was in your occupation; and you may rely upon my friendly service in an amicable and definite arrangement of this very delicate matter."

When General Harrison took the "chair of state," our friend Rhapsody was reinstated in his place, occupied years before, and by fortuitous circ.u.mstances he got still higher--an appointment of trust connected with a handsome salary; so that Jones, the boot-maker, was enabled to re-enter the Somebodies into the gay and fluctuating society at the national capital, from which they had been so unceremoniously driven by the death of the husband and father. Mrs. Somebody, that was, however, is now a much older and much wiser person, the wife of our ministerial friend, who vouches the difficulty he had in overcoming Mrs. Somebody's repugnance to leather--and for sundry quibbles--yea, strong arguments against any blood of hers ever uniting with the fates and fortunes of a boot-maker; with what _propriety_, her experience has long since taught her. Alice is the happiest of women, mother of many fine children, the wife of a man poverty could not corrupt, if public opinion forced him to mask the means that gave him bread. Rhapsody is no longer a politician, or office-holder, but engaged in lucrative pursuits that yield comfort and position in society. To relate the trials, courts.h.i.+p and marriage of "Jones, the boot-maker," is one of our friend Rhapsody's standing jokes, to friends at the fireside and dinner table; but that such a safe and happy tableau would again befall parties so circ.u.mstanced, is a very material question; and the moral of our story, being rather complex, though very definite, we leave to society, and you, reader, to determine.

A Distinction with a Difference.

A gentleman from "out 'town," came into Redding & Co.'s on Christmas day, and leaning thoughtfully over the counter, says he to Prescott, "Got any Psalms here?"

"N-n-no," says Prescott, reflectingly, "but," he continued, after a moment's pause, and handing down a copy of Hood, "here's plenty of old Joe's!"

The out-of-town gentleman gave a glance at _the pictures_, and with a countenance indicative of having been tasting a crab-apple--left!

Pills and Persimmons.

I remember an old "Joke" told me by my father, of an old, and rather addle-headed gentleman, who some fifty years ago did business in New Castle, Delaware, and having occasion to send out to England for hardware, wrote his order, and as he was about to despatch it to the captain of the s.h.i.+p, lying in the stream, ready for sea, a neighbor got him to add an order for some kegs of nails, and in the hurry, the old man dashed off his _P. S._, but upon attempting to read the whole order over, he couldn't make head or tail of it.

"Well," says he, in a flurry, "I'll send it, just as it is; they are better scholars in England than I am--_they'll make it out_."

Strange enough to say, when the hardware came over, among the rest of the stuff were the so many kegs of nails, but upon opening one of these kegs, it was full, or nearly so, of American quarter dollars. The old man roared out in a [word missing].

"Haw! haw! haw! Well, blast me," says he, "if _they_ ain't scholars, fust-rate scholars, in England; _it's worth while sending 'em bad ma.n.u.script_."

A still more comical mistake is related to us, of a commercial transaction that actually took place within a year or two, between parties severally situated in Boston and the city of San Francisco, California. As we consider the whole transaction rather _rich_, we transcribe it for the diversion it may furnish.

Simmons, the "Oak Hall" man, of Boston, had set up a shop in San Francisco, to which he was almost daily sending all sorts of cheap clothing, and making, on the same, more money than a horse could pull; and in his package, he was in the habit of sending articles for friends, &c. A gentleman recently gone to the gold country, from Boston, acquainted with Simmons, and Simmons with him, found, upon looking around San Francisco, that his own business, _lawing_, wasn't worth two cents, as many of his craft were turning their attention to matters more useful to the human family--digging cellars, wheeling baggage, driving teams, &c. So lawyer Bunker _turned_ his attention from Blackstone, Chitty, c.o.ke on Littleton, and those fellows of deep-red, blue-black law, to the manufacture of quack nostrums. Bunker found that the great appet.i.te we Yankees have for quack medicines, pills and powders, suffered no diminution in the gold country; on the contrary, the appet.i.te became rather sharpened for those luxuries, and Bunker found that a New York butcher, with whom he became acquainted, was absolutely making his fortune, by the manufacture of dough pills, spiced with coriander, and a slight tincture of calomel.

"Egad!" says Bunker, "_I'll_ go into medicine. I'll write to a friend in Boston, to send me _out_ a few medicine and receipt books, and a lot of pulverized liquorice, quinine, &c., with a pill machine, and I guess I'll be after my New York butchering friend in a double brace of shakes."

Now, it may be premised that as Bunker was a lawyer, he wrote a first-rate hand; in fact, he might have bragged of being able to equal, if not surpa.s.s, the "Hon." Rufus Choate, whose scrawl more resembles the scratchings of a poor half-drowned in an ink-saucer spider, meandering over foolscap, than quill-driving, and as unintelligible as the marks of a tea-box or hieroglyphics on the sarcophagus of ye ancient Egyptians!

In short, Counsellor Bunker's ma.n.u.script was awful; a few of his most intimate friends, only, pretending to have the hang of it at all; and to one of these friends, Bunker directs his message, transmits it by Uncle Sam's mail _poche_, and in fever heat he awaits the return of the precious combustibles that were to make his fortune. In course of time, Bunker's friends receive the order, but, alas! it was all Greek to them; they cyphered in vain, to make out any thing in the letters except _persimmons_.

"What the deuce," says one of Bunker's friends, "does Joe want with persimmons?"

They went at it again, and again, but there was no mistaking the final sentence, "_send, without delay, persimmons_."

"Persimmons?" said one.

"Persimmons?" echoed another.

"Persimmons? What in thunder does Joe Bunker want with _persimmons_?"

responded a third.

"Persimmons!" all three chimed.

"Persimmons," says one, "are not used in law proceedings, anyhow."

"Nor in gospel, even, provided Joe has got into that," responded another.

"Persimmons are not medicinal."

"They are not chemical."

"Persimmons are no part, or ingredient, in art, science, law, or religion; now, for what does Joe Bunker, counsellor at law, want us to forward, without delay, _persimmons_?"

Well, they couldn't tell; in vain they reasoned. Joe's letter was very brief, strictly to the point, and that point was--_persimmons!_ In the first place, it is not everybody that knows exactly what persimmons are, where they come from, and what they are good for. One of Bunker's friends had lived in the South; he knew persimmons; it occurred to him that possums, and some human beings, especially the colored pop'lation, were the only critters particularly fond of the fruit. Webster was consulted, to see what light he cast upon the matter: he informed them that "_Persimmon_ was a tree, and its fruit, a species of _Diospyros_, a native of the States south of New York. Fruit like a plum, and when not ripe, very hard and astringent (rather so), but when ripe, luscious and highly nutritious."

"Well, there," said one of Bunker's friends, "I'll bet Joe's sick; persimmons have been prescribed for his cure, and the sooner we send the persimmons the better!"

"Persimmons! Now I come to think of it," says the man who had a faint idea of what persimmons were, "they make beer, first-rate beer of persimmons, in the South, and it's my opinion, that Joe Bunker is going into persimmon beer business; as you say, he _may be_ sick--persimmon beer may be the California cure-all; in either case, let us forward the persimmons without delay!"

Now persimmons never ripen until _touched_ pretty smartly with Jack Frost. This was in September; persimmons were mostly full grown, but not ripe. A large keg of them was ordered from Jersey, and as fast as Adams & Co.'s great Express to San Francisco could take them out, _the persimmons went!_