The History and Records of the Elephant Club Part 8

Mr. Spout left his chair, and moved to that particular locality in the apartment where the bell-pull, leading to the bar below, was situated.

He gave sundry pulls in accordance with the previously-arranged system of telegraphing, and in a few minutes they were answered by a young gentleman, with a tin waiter in his hands, on which were placed divers decoctions, which stand in better repute outside of total abstinence societies than inside. Each took his mixture until it came to Johnny Cake, when the Higholdboy pa.s.sed over to him a mild beverage, called a port wine sangaree. Johnny refused to accept it, and announced that he was strict in his adherence to principle--that he never indulged in anything which could intoxicate. A lemonade he would indulge in sometimes, but a port wine sangaree--never--_never_--NEVER.

When Johnny Cake had finished his indignant repudiation of the port wine sangaree amid the cheering of his fellow members, Mr. James George Boggs arose. He mounted a chair, and made an effort to speak. He was greeted with loud applause.

As soon as these manifestations had subsided, he said:

"Fellow-citizens (applause); I may say that it is with feelings of the most profound gratification (loud applause), that I meet, this evening, the members of the ill.u.s.trious Elephant Club (continued applause), of which I am an unpretending and obscure member (renewed applause).

Gentlemen, I do not like to appear as an apologist, and much less an apologist for my own shortcomings (loud and continued applause).

Gentlemen, I protest against your unwarranted interference when I am trying to be funny (applause and cheers). I am a modest man, and I am unwilling to stand here to be fooled with (enthusiastic applause); Mr.

Dropper, if you don't shut up your mouth, I'll knock your moustache down your throat (tremendous applause). Mr. Spout, you are the Higholdboy of this club, but I'll hit you with a brick if you don't keep better order.

(Cries of "Order!" "Order!") If you'll stop your blasted noise, there will be no trouble about order. (Cries of "Go on!") Well, gentlemen, as I was saying that--that--that--where the devil did I leave off?

(Applause and laughter.) There, you see that you have broken the thread of my remarks. (Cries of "Good!") Yes, it may be fun for you, but, as the boy said to the frogs, it's death to me (laughter). No, I mean as the Death said to the boys, it's frogs to--(renewed laughter). Go to thunder! I am not going to make speeches to such a set a young rascals as you are." (More applause.)

As soon as order had restored itself, the Higholdboy ordered, at his own expense, a gla.s.s of apple-jack for Mr. Boggs, with the view of expressing, through it, his full and thorough appreciation of Boggs's oratory. Mr. Boggs accepted it. Inquiry was then made of Mr. Boggs as to what he had desired to say in his speech. He stated substantially, that, having been engaged in loafing about, and doing nothing, he had had no time to prepare a contribution for the entertainment of the club.

So completely had the eloquence of Mr. Boggs riveted the attention of the club, that they had hardly made a commencement in disposing of the beverages which had been ordered; Mr. Dropper proposed that, as Johnny Cake was not to be employed in drinking, he having ignored the proffered port wine sangaree, he should occupy their time by relating his experience. To this he expressed his willingness to accede. He stated, however, that he had been on a flying visit to Illinois since his initiation into the Elephantine order, and that he was consequently unable to furnish them with any experience of an interesting nature, in New York. But some interesting incidents had occurred on a railroad train, which he had undertaken to note down, with the view of reading to the club.

Mr. Johnny Cake here produced a roll of ma.n.u.scripts, which, after he had straightened up his collar, he proceeded to read. The ma.n.u.script read as follows:--

"I do not propose, now, to give you a glimpse of anything within the city. In fact, it is my intention to inflict upon you an extra-metropolitan scene, which I recently witnessed, and which, though funny, was not comfortable, and I don't care about experiencing it again."

The section of country to which your attention is called was flat--positively flat--comparatively stale, and superlatively unprofitable. It was a western prairie marsh, the home of gigantic frogs, the abiding place of water-snakes and musk-rats; where flourished in luxuriant profusion, bulrushes, water-cresses, pond-lilies, and such like amphibious and un-get-at-able vegetables. Through that particular locality a train of cars was not only seen, but heard going at 2'40"

speed over a pile-bridge, made across a Michigan swamp, by driving black-oak logs end-wise into the mud. The people therein were covered with dust, as thickly as if each man had been a locomoting Pompeii, each woman a perambulating Herculaneum, and some vagrant Vesuvius had been showering ashes on them all for a month. They were lying about loose in the cars, after the ordinary fas.h.i.+on of people on a tedious railway journey; curled up in some such ungraceful and uneasy positions as the tired beasts of a strolling menagerie probably a.s.sume in their cages during their forced marches across the country. To carry out the parallel, the conductor came along at irregular intervals, and with deliberate and premeditated malignity, stirred up the pa.s.sengers, as if they were actually animals on exhibition, and he really was their keeper, and wanted to make them growl. And this conductor, in common with conductors in general, deserves notice for the diabolical ingenuity which he displayed in forcing from his helpless victims the greatest number of growls in a limited s.p.a.ce of time.

The cars had just left the flouris.h.i.+ng prairie city of Scraggville, which contains seven houses and a tavern, and a ten-acre lot for a church, in the centre of which the minister holds forth now from a cedar stump. At the tavern, dinner had been served up, and the conductor, according to the usual custom, had started the train as soon, without waiting for his pa.s.sengers to eat anything, as the money was collected.

The population of our train, which exceeded that of the great city of Scraggville by about one hundred and seventy persons, had composed itself for a short nap, and the various individuals had settled as nearly into their old places as possible, when a man, remarkable for a particularly lofty s.h.i.+rt-collar, a wooden leg, and an unusual quant.i.ty of dust on the bridge of his nose, began to sing. He commenced that touching ballad, now so popular, "the affecting history of Vilikins and his Dinah." The pathos of his words, added to the unusual power of his voice, waked up his right-hand neighbor, before he had proceeded any further than to inform the listeners that,

"Vilikins vas a-valking"----

This neighbor who was so suddenly aroused, and who was distinguished by a steeple-crowned hat, did not appear to care _where_ Vilikins was a-walking, or to take much interest in the particulars of the said walk, for he immediately turned on the other side, tied himself up in a worse knot than he was in before, and attempted to sleep again. He had in so doing shaken from the top of his mountainous hat about half a peck of cinders, directly into the mouth of the vocalist. The latter gentleman, however, seemed nothing disconcerted by this unexpected pulverulent donation, but, removing those particles which most interfered with his vocal apparatus, he proceeded with his melody. This time he progressed as far as to state emphatically that,

"Vilikins vas a-valkin' in his garding one day,"

And was about to add the explanatory notes, that it was the "back garding," when his left-hand neighbor emerged from a condition of somnolency into a state of unusual wakefulness.

The most noticeable thing about this last named individual was the optical fact that he had but one eye. And as this solitary orb was partially filled with the dust which had acc.u.mulated therein, during a ten hours' nap in a rail-car, over a sandy road, with a headwind, it might be supposed that his facilities for visual observation were somewhat abridged. This did not prove, however, to be the case, for with a single glance of this enc.u.mbered optic, he seemed to take in the character of the singer, and to make up his mind instanter that he was a good fellow and a man to be acquainted with.

Acting promptly upon this extemporaneous opinion, he held out his hand with the remark:

"I don't want to interfere with any arrangements you have made, stranger, but here's my hand, and my name's Wagstaff--let's be jolly."

The singer had by this time got to the chorus of his song, and although he took the extended hand, his only immediate reply to the observations of one-eyed Wagstaff, was "too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la," which he repeated with an extra shake on the last "la," before he condescended to answer. And even then his observation, though poetic, was not particularly coherent or relevant. It was couched in the following language.

"Jolly? yes, we'll be jolly. Old King Cole was a jolly old soul, and a jolly old soul was he. He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl--wonder if he got it? My name is Dennis, my mother's maiden name was Moore, so that if I'd been born before she married, I'd have been a poet, which I'm sorry to say, don't think it, for I ain't. I'm glad to see you, Mr. Wagstaff, and as you say _you're_ jolly, and propose that we shall _all_ be jolly, perhaps you'll favor me by coming out strong on the second and fourth lines of this chorus.

"I'll do my little utmost," said Wagstaff.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

And he _did_ do his little utmost with a will, and their united voices croaked up again the first man with the steeple-crowned hat, who hadn't got his eyes fairly opened before _he_ joined in the chorus too, and he gave his particular attention to it, and put in so many unexpected cadenzas and quavers which the composer never intended, and shakes that n.o.body else _could_ put in, and trills that his companions couldn't keep up with, that he fairly astonished his hearers. And he didn't stop when they did, but kept singing "tooral li tooral," with unprecedented variations, and wouldn't hold up for Dennis to sing the verses, and wouldn't wait for Wagstaff to take breath; but kept right on, now putting a long shake on "tooral," now an unheard of trill on "looral,"

now coming out with redoubled force on the final "la," and then starting off again, as if his voice had run away with him and he didn't want to stop it, but was going to sing a perpetual chorus of unceasing "toorals"

and never ending "loorals."

For fifteen minutes his harmony was allowed uninterrupted progress, but at length Wagstaff, putting his hand over his mouth, thereby smothering, in its infancy, a strain of extraordinary power, addressed him thus:

"I don't want to interfere with any of your little arrangements, stranger, but, if you don't stop that noise, I'll knock your head off.

What do you mean by intruding your music upon other people's music, and thus mixing the breed? Don't you try to swallow my fist, you can't digest it."

The latter part of this address was called forth by the frantic efforts of the unknown amateur to get his mouth away from behind Wagstaff's hand, which he at length accomplished, and when he had recovered his breath he made an effort to speak. The musical fiend, however, had got too strong possession of him to give up on so short a notice, and he was unable to speak more than ten words without introducing another touch of the magical chorus. The address with which he first favored his companions ran something after the following fas.h.i.+on and sounded as if he might have been the identical Vilikins, unexpectedly recovered from the effects of the "cup of cold pison," or prematurely resurrected from the "same grave," wherein he had been disposed by the "cruel parient" by the side of the lamented "Dinah."

"My friends, don't interrupt the concert--too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la. I'll explain presently--with a too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la. I'm delighted to meet you--allow me to introduce myself--ral li la--I am a professional--loo ral li, loo ral li--man--ral li la--my name is Moses Overdale--with my loo ral li, loo ral li, loo ral li la."

Here he stopped, evidently by a violent exertion, and shook hands with each of the others, and afforded such a view of his personal appearance as satisfied the individual of the solitary optic, and his companion of the vegetable leg, that they had fallen in with another original--added to the fact, with which they were already well acquainted, that he had a powerful, though not very controllable voice. Other things about the newly-discovered person showed him to be a man far above, or below, or, at least, differing from, the common run of people one meets in a railroad-car. His face, had it been visible to the naked eye, through the surrounding thicket of hair, might have pa.s.sed for good-looking; but the hirsute crop which flourished about his head was something really remarkable. If each hair had possessed as many roots as a scrub oak sapling, and had grown the wrong way, with the roots out, there couldn't have been more; or if each individual hair had been grafted with a score of thrifty shoots, and each of them, in turn, had given off a mult.i.tude of sandy-colored sprouts, and each separate sprout had taken an unconquerable aversion to every other sprout, and was striving to grow in an independent direction of its own, there wouldn't have been a more abundant display of hair, growing towards a greater variety of hitherto unknown points of compa.s.s. It was so long that it concealed his neck and shoulders, and you could only suppose he had a throat from the certainty that he had a mouth. And even the mouth was in its turn ornamented with an overhanging moustache, of a subdued rat-color, which also was long, running down the corners of the jaw, and joining the rest of the beard on the neck below. A s.h.i.+rt-collar, turned down over his coat, was dimly visible whenever the wind was strong enough to lift the superinc.u.mbent hair.

Taking into account the physical curtailments of Overdale's companions, the trio consisted of about two men and a half.

Dennis now proposed that they should go on with the song, he volunteering to sing the verses, and requesting the reinforcements to show their strength when he said, "_Chorius_"--the mention of music excited Overdale's harmonic devil again, and he was obliged to twist his neckerchief until he was black in the face, to choke down an embryo, "tooral," which ran to his lips before the cue came, and seemed to insist upon an immediate and stormy exit; by dint of the most suffocating exertions he succeeded in keeping back the musical torrent until the end of the verse, when it broke forth with a vengeance.

And then Wagstaff struck in, and Dennis took a long breath, and _he_ struck in; and they waked up a couple of children, and _they_ struck in; and Dennis put his wooden leg on the tail of a dog, and _he_ struck in; and the locomotive put on the final touch, by shrieking with a frightful yell, as if it had boiled down into one, the squalls of eleven hundred freshly-spanked babies.

And they kept on, Dennis singing, in a masterly manner, the historical part; the charms of Dinah the barbarity of the cruel parient, the despair of Vilikins, the death and burial of the unfortunate "lovyers,"

their subsequent ghastly reappearance to the cruel parient, and his final remorse, had all been related; the "chorus of tender maidens" had been pathetically sung by the musical trio; the "chorus of cruel and unnatural parients," had been indignantly disposed of; the "chorus of pisoned young women," had been spasmodically executed: the "chorus of agonized young men, with an awful pain in the stummack," had been convulsively performed; the "chorus of cold corpuses," had been sepulchrally consummated; and the musical enthusiasts were laying out their most lugubrious strength on the "concluding dismal chorus of gloomy apparitions," when the concert was interrupted by the train running off the track and pitching a part of the pa.s.sengers into a sand-bank on the right, throwing the remainder into frog-pond on the left, and gently depositing the engineer on a brush heap, where he was afterwards discovered with the bell-rope in his hand, and his legs covered up by the smoke-pipe.

It was soon ascertained that no very serious damage was done, beyond the demolition of the engine, which had left the rail without cause or provocation, and was now lying by the side of the road with its head in the mud, wrong end to, bottom side up, roasting itself brown, steaming itself yellow, and smoking itself black, like an insane cooking-stove turned out-doors for misbehavior.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Overdale got out of the sand without a.s.sistance, and, save a black eye, and a peck or two of sand and gravel in his hair, was none the worse for the accident. Wagstaff crawled out of the frog pond, looking as dripping and juicy as a he-mermaid; while Dennis, though unconscious of any painful hurt, had sustained so serious a fracture of his wooden leg, that he found it necessary to splice it with an ironwood sapling before he could navigate.

It being discovered that the danger was over, and that there was nothing more to fear, the ladies, as in duty bound, began to faint; one old lady fainted, and fell near the engine; happening, however, to sit down in a puddle of hot water, she got up quicker than she went down; young lady, rather pretty, fainted and fell into the arms of four or five gentlemen who were waiting to receive her; another young lady fainted, and didn't fall into anybody's arms, being cross-eyed and having a wart on her nose; maiden lady, ancient and fat, got near a good-looking man with a big moustache, and giving notice of her intention by a premonitory squall, shut her eyes, and fell towards moustache; she had better, however, have kept her eyes open, for moustache, seeing her coming, and making a hasty estimate of her probable weight, stepped aside, and the gentle creature landed in a clump of Canada thistles, whence she speedily recovered herself, and looked fiery indignation at moustache, who bore it like a martyr; young lady in pantalets and curls tried it, but, being inexperienced, and not having taken the precaution to pick out a soft place to fall, in case there didn't anybody catch her, she b.u.mped her head on a stone, and got up with a black eye; jealous married lady, seeing her husband endeavoring to resuscitate a plump-looking miss, immediately extemporized a faint herself, and fell directly across the young miss aforesaid, contriving as she descended, to break her husband's spectacles by a malicious dig with her elbow; in fact the ladies all fainted at least once apiece, and those who received the most attention had an extra spasm or two before their final recovery, while the vicious old maids whom n.o.body cared for, invariably fell near the best-looking girls, and went into furious convulsions, so that they could kick them in the tender places without its being suspected that their intentions were not honorable.

During this characteristic female performance, our musical trio had not been idle. Dennis had been busily engaged in splicing his wooden leg.

Wagstaff had seized a bucket from the disabled engine, and nearly drowned three or four unfortunate females with dirty water from the frog-pond. Overdale was attracted to the side of a blue-eyed girl, who had swooned in a clean place, behind a concealing blackberry bush, and he had rubbed the skin off her hands in his benevolent exertions to "bring her to," and had meanwhile liberally peppered her face and neck with gravel-stones and sand, from the stock which had acc.u.mulated in his hair when he was first pitched into the sand-bank.

Everybody was eventually convalescent, and likely to recover from the damage which n.o.body had sustained; the gentlemen had repented of the prayers which they had not said, and were now swearing ferociously about their fractured pocket-companions, and their broken cigars; and the ladies were regaling each other with mult.i.tudinous accounts of miraculous escapes from the horrible accidents which might have killed everybody, but hadn't hurt anybody. Another engine was sent for, and the cars ran to the end of the railroad, seventy miles, before the women stopped talking, or the men got anything to drink.

The musical trio, whose united chorus had been so suddenly interrupted, met at the bar of the nearest tavern for the first time since the run off; their greeting was peculiar, but characteristic; when they came in sight of each other, they didn't speak a word, until they solemnly joined hands and finished the "too ral li la," which they hadn't had the leisure to complete at the time of their sudden separation. Overdale, true to his ruling pa.s.sion, wouldn't stop when the others did, but was going on with an extra "tooral li, looral li," when Wagstaff presented a gla.s.s of strong brandy and water at him; the plan succeeded; he stopped in the midst of a most astonis.h.i.+ng shake on the first "looral," and merely remarking, "To be continued," he yielded, a pa.s.sive captive to the fluid conqueror.

Subsequent conversations disclosed their future plans, and it was discovered that they were all journeying to the same place, New York city; and that their several visits had one common object, to see the mysteries of the town. An agreement, which I overheard, was quickly made, that they should remain together, and pursue, in company, their investigations.

They proceeded harmoniously on their journey, singing "Vilikins" between meals every day; and when Overdale couldn't stop in the chorus at the the proper time, Wagstaff corked him up with a corn-cob, which he carried in his pocket for that purpose.

It so happened that I continued on the same trains of cars with this interesting trio of eccentricities, until we took the steamboat at the Dutch village, where the State Legislature meets. After the last verse of their customary evening hymn had been sung, with a strong chorus, as they were about to shelve themselves in their state-rooms for the night, I heard Overdale remark to his companions:

"When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or--well, no matter where. Dennis, you see this black eye; I have to make this particular request, that if this steamboat blows up in the night, and you take a fancy to black anybody's eye, you'll pick out somebody's else."

"I didn't black your eye; what do you mean?"

Overdale explained thus: "I could a tale unfold, which would--but I won't--I'll tell you how it happened, nothing extenuate or set down aught in malice. When that locomotive ran off the track, the shock threw us both, as you are aware, about fifteen feet straight up in the air--as I was going up, you were coming down, and you were practising some kind of an original pigeon-wing with your wooden leg, and, in one of its fantastic gyrations, it came in contact with my visual apparatus, and damaged my personal beauty to the extent you see;--don't do it any more, that's all, my friend, don't do it any more."