The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers Volume I Part 1

The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers.

Series 1.

by Robert H. Newell.

LETTER I.

SHOWING HOW OUR CORRESPONDENT CAME INTO THE WORLD: WITH SOME PARTICULARS CONCERNING HIS EARLY CHILDHOOD.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., March 20th, 1861.

Judge not by appearances, my boy; for appearances are very deceptive, as the old lady cholerically remarked when one, who was really a virgin on to forty, blus.h.i.+ngly informed her that she was "just twenty-five this month."

Though you find me in Was.h.i.+ngton now, I was born of respectable parents, and gave every indication, in my satchel and ap.r.o.n days, of coming to something better than this,--much better, my boy.

Slightly northward of the Connecticut river, where a pleasant little conservative village mediates between two opposition hills, you may behold the landscape on which my infantile New England eyes first traced the courses of future railroads.

Near the centre of this village in the valley, my boy, and a little back from its princ.i.p.al road, stood the residence of my worthy sire--and a very pretty residence it was. From the frequent addition of a new upper-room here, a new dormer window there, and an innovating skylight elsewhere, the roof of the mansion had gradually a.s.sumed an Alpine variety of juts and peaks somewhat confusing to behold. Local tradition related that, on a certain showery occasion, a streak of lightning was seen to descend upon that roof, skip vaguely about from one peak to another, and finally slink ignominiously down the water-pipe, as though utterly disgusted with its own inability to determine, where there are so many, which peak it should particularly perforate.

Years afterwards, my boy, this strange tale was told me by a venerable chap of the village, and I might have believed it, had he not outraged the probability of the meteorological narrative with a sequel.

"And when that streak came down the pipe," says the aged chap, thoughtfully, "it struck a man who was leaning against the house, ran down to his feet, and went into the ground without hurting him a mite!"

With the natural ingenuousness of childhood I closed one eye, my boy, and says I:

"Do you mean to tell me, old man, that he was struck by lightning, and yet wasn't hurt?"

"Yes," says the venerable chap, abstractedly cutting a small log from the door-frame of the grocery store with his jack-knife; "the streak pa.s.sed off from him, because he was a conductor."

"A conductor?" says I, picking up another stone to throw at the same dog.

"Yes," says the chap confidentially, "he was a conductor--on a railroad."

The human mind, my boy, when long affected by country air, tends naturally to the marvellous, and affiliates with the German in normal transcendentalism.

Such was the house in which I came to life a certain number of years ago, entering the world, like a human exclamation point, between two of the angriest sentences of a September storm, and adding materially to the uproar prevailing at the time.

Next to my parents, of whom I shall say little at present, the person I can best remember, as I look back, was our family physician. A very obese man was he, my boy, with certain sweet-oiliness of manner, and never out of patients. I think I can see him still, as he arose from his chair after a profound study of the case before him, and wrote a prescription so circ.u.mlocutory in its effect, that it sent a servant half a mile to his friend, the druggist, for articles she might have found in her own kitchen, _aqua pumpaginis_ and sugar being the sole ingredients required.

The doctor had started business in our village as a veterinary surgeon, my boy; but, as the entire extent of his practice for six months in that line was a call to mend one of Colt's revolvers, he finally turned his attention to the ailings of his fellows, and wrought many cures with sugar and water Latinized.

At first, my father did not patronize the new doctor, having very little faith in the efficacy of sugar and water without the addition of a certain other composite often seen in bottles; but the doctor's neat speech at a Sunday school festival won his heart at last. The festival was held near a series of small waterfalls just out of the village, my boy, and the doctor, who was an invited guest, was called upon for a few appropriate remarks. In compliance with the demand he made a speech of some compa.s.s, ending with a peroration that is still quoted in my native place. He pointed impressively to the waterfalls, and says he:

"All the works of nature is somewhat beautiful, with a good moral. Even them cataracts," says he, sagely, "have a moral, and seem eternally whispering to the young, that 'Those what err falls'."

The effect of this happy ill.u.s.tration was very pleasing, my boy; especially with those who prefer morality to grammar; and after that, the physician had the run of all the pious families--our own included.

It was a handsome compliment this worthy man paid me when I was about six months old.

Having just received from my father the amount of his last bill, he was complacent to the last degree, and felt inclined to do the handsome thing. He patted my head as I sat upon my mother's lap, and says he:

"How beautiful is babes! So small, and yet so much like human beings, only not so large. This boy," says he, fatly, looking down at me, "will make a noise in the world yet. He has a long head, a very long head."

"Do you think so?" says my father.

"Indeed I do," says the doctor. "The little fellow," says he, in a sudden fit of abstraction, "has a long head, a very long head--and it's as thick as it is long."

There was some coolness between the doctor and my father after that, my boy: and, on the following Sunday, my mother refused to look at his wife's new bonnet in church.

I might cover many pages with further account of childhood's sunny hours; but enough has been given already to establish the respectability of my birth, despite my present location; and there I let the matter rest, my boy, for the time being.

Yours, retrospectively,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

LETTER II.

SHOWING HOW THE WRITER INCREASED IN YEARS AND INDISCRETION, AND HOW HE WAS SAVED FROM MATRIMONY BY THE LAMENTABLE EXAMPLE OF JED SMITH.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., March 25th, 1861.

To continue from where I left off, my boy: between the interesting ages of ten and eighteen I went to school at the village academy, working through the English branches and the Accidence, with a lively sense of a preponderance of birch in the former, and occasional cla.s.s-sickness in the latter.

Those were my happiest days, my boy; and as I look back to them now, for a moment all my flippancy leaves me, and I forget that I am an American and a politician. Those dear old days! those short, unreal days! Only long in being long past.

It was just after the eternal _"Bonus--Bona--Bonum"_ of the master had ceased to ring in my ears, that I commenced to be a young man. I knew that I was becoming a young man, my boy; for it was then that I began to regard the unmarried women of America with sheepish bashfulness, and stumbled awkwardly as I entered my father's pew in church. Then it was that the sound of a young female giggle threw me into a cold perspiration, and a looking-gla.s.s deluded me into gesticulating in solitude before it, and extemporizing the speeches I was to make when called upon to justify the report of fame by admiring populaces.

Do you remember the asinine time in your own life, my boy,--do you remember it? I know that you do, my boy, for I can feel your blush on my own cheeks.

Of the few women of America who looked upon me with favor, there was one--Ellen--whom I really loved, I think; for of all the girls, the mention of her name, alone, gave me that peculiar feeling in which instinctive impulse blends undefinably and perpetually with a sense of reverent respect; or, rather, with a sense of some unworthiness of self. Ellen died before I had known her a year. I thought afterwards, like any other youngster, that I loved half-a-dozen different girls; but, even in maturer years, second love is a poor imitation. Say what you will about second love, my boy, in the breast of him truly a man, it is but an _imperium in imperio_--a flower on the grave of the first.

There was one young woman of America in our village, my boy, about whom the chaps teased me not a little; and I might, perhaps, have been teased into matrimony, like many another unfortunate, but for the example of a Salsbury chap I met one night in one of the village stores. He was a Yankee chap with much southwestern experience, my boy, and when he heard the lads teasing me about a woman, he hoisted his heels upon the counter, and says he:

"Anybody'd think that creation was born with a frock on, to hear the way you younkers talk woman. Darn the she-critters!" says he, shutting his jack-knife with a clash. "I'd rayther be as lonesome as a borryed pup, than see a piece of caliker as big as a pancake. What's wimmen but a tarnation bundle of gammon and petticoats. Powerful! Be you married folks, stranger?"

"Not yet," says I.

"Don't never be then," says he. "My name's Smith--one of the Smithses down to Salsbury, that's guaranteed to put away as much provender and carry as big a turkey as ever set on critters down in that deestrict.

And whilst my name's Smith, there'll never be a younker to call me 'daddy,' ef a gal was to have Jerusalem tantrums after me. You'rn a stranger, and ain't married folks; but I don't mind tellin' ye about a golfired rumpus I got into down in Salsbury when I took to a gal that stuck out all around like a hay-stack, an' was a screamer at choir-meetin' and such like. Her name was Sal Green--one of the Greenses down in Pegtown--and the first time I took a notion to her was down to the old s.h.i.+ngle meetin'-house, when Sam Spooner had a buryin'.

When the parson gets out a hymn, she straightened up like a rooster at six o'clock of daybreak, and let out a string of screams that set all the babies to yelping as though big pins was goin' clean through their insides. Geewhillikins! how the critter did squawk and squeal, and turn up her eyes like a sick duck in a shower. I was jest fool enough to think it pooty; and when my old man says, says he, 'Jed, you're took all of a heap with that pooty creeter,' I felt as ef chills an' fever was givin' me partikiler agony. Says I, 'She's an armful fur the printze of Wales, and ef that Bob Tompkins don't stop makin' eyes at her over there, I'll give him sech a lacing that he won't comb his hair for six weeks.'

"The old man put a chaw into his meat-safe, and shut one eye; and, sez he: 'Jed, you're a fool ef you don't hook that gal's dress fur her before next harvestin'. She's a mighty scrumptious creetur, and just about ripe for the altar. Jest tell her there's more Smithses wanted an' she'll leave the Greenses 'thout a snicker.' I rayther liked the idee: but I told the old man that his punkin-pie was all squash; because it wouldn't do to let on too soon. When the folks was startin'

from the church, I went up to Sal, and sez I, 'Miss, I s'pose you wouldn't mind lettin' me see you tu hum.' She blushed like a biled lobster, and sez she: 'I don't know your folks.' I felt sorter streaked; but I gev my collar a hitch, and sez I: 'I'm Mister Smith: one of the Smithses of this deestrict, an' always willin' for a female in distress.' Then she made a curtesy, an' was goin' to say somethin', when Bob Tompkins steps up, and sez he: 'There's a-goin' to be another buryin' in this settlement, ef some folks don't mind their own ch.o.r.es, an' quit foolin' with other folkses company!' This riled me rite up, and sez I: 'There's a feller in this deestrict that hain't had a spell of layin' on his back for some time: but he's in immediate danger of ketchin' the disease bad.' Bob took a squint at the width of my chist, and then he turned to Sal, who was shakin' like a cabbage leaf in a summer gale, and sez he: 'Sal, let's marvel out of bad company before it spiles our morials.' With that he crooked one of his smas.h.i.+n'