CHAPTER VI.
THE EDITOR OF OUR DAILY PAPER--THE APPEARANCE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF COLONEL BANGS--THE AFFAIR WITH THE TOMBSTONE--ART NEWS--COLONEL BANGS IN THE HEAT OF A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN--PECULIAR TROUBLES OF PUBLIC SINGERS--THE PHENOMENA OF MENAGERIES--EXTRAORDINARY SAGACITY OF THE ANIMALS--THE WILD MAN OF AFGHANISTAN.
The editor of our daily paper, _The Morning Argus_, is Col.Bangs--Colonel Mortimer J. Bangs. The colonel is an exceedinglyimportant personage in the village, and he bears about him the air of aman who is acutely conscious of the fact. The gait of the colonel, thepeculiar way in which he carries his head, the manner in which he swingshis cane, and the art he has of impressing any one he happens to addresswith a feeling that he is performing an act of sublime condescension inpermitting himself to hold communication with an inferior being, combineto excite in the vulgar mind a sentiment of awe. The eminent journalistmanifests in his entire bearing his confidence in the theory that uponhim devolves the responsibility of forming the public opinion of theplace; and there is a certain grandeur in the manner in which he conveysto the public mind, through the public eye, the fact that while heappreciates the difficulties of what seemed to be an almost superhumantask, which would surely overwhelm men of smaller intellectual calibre,the work presents itself to his mind as something not much moreformidable than pastime.
The appearance of Colonel Bangs is not only imposing, but sometimesit inclines to be almost ferocious. The form in which he wears hiswhiskers, added to the military nature of his title, would be likely togive to timid strangers an idea not only that the colonel has a ragingand insatiable thirst for blood and an almost irresistible appetitefor the horrors of war, but that upon very slight provocation he wouldsuddenly grasp his sword, fling away the scabbard, and then proceedto wade through slaughter to a throne and shut the gates of mercy onmankind. But I rejoice to say that the colonel has not really suchmurderous and revolutionary inclinations. His title was obtained inthose early years of peace when he led the inoffensive forces of themilitia upon parade, and marshaled them as they braved the perils of thetarget-shooting excursion.
I think I am warranted in saying that Colonel Bangs would nevervoluntarily stand in the imminent deadly breach if there happened to bea man there with a gun who wanted him to leave, and that he will neverseek the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth unless the cannonhappens to be unloaded. Place Colonel Bangs in front of an empty cannon,and for a proper consideration he would remain there for years withoutthe quiver of a muscle. Charge that piece of ordnance with powder andball, and not all the wealth of the world would induce him to standanywhere but in the rear of the artillery.
The _Argus_ has never appeared to me to be an especially brilliantjournal. To the intelligent and critical reader, indeed, the controllingpurpose of the colonel seems to be to endeavor to ascertain how near hecan bring the paper to imbecility without actually reaching thatcondition; and it is surprising how close a shave he makes of it. Whenwe first came to the village, a gleam of intelligence now and thenappeared in the editorial columns of the _Argus_, and this phenomenonwas generally attributed to the circumstance that Colonel Bangs hadpermitted his assistant editor to spread his views before the public. Onsuch occasions it was entertaining to observe in what manner the colonelwould assume the honors of the authorship of his assistant's articles.Cooley, for instance, meeting him upon the street would observe:
"That was an uncommonly good thing, colonel, which appeared in the_Argus_ this morning on The Impending Struggle; whose was it?"
COLONEL BANGS (with an air of mingled surprise and indignation). "Whosewas it? Whose was that article? I suppose you are aware, sir, that _I_am the editor of THE MORNING ARGUS!"
COOLEY. "Yes; but I thought perhaps--"
COLONEL (with grandeur). "No matter, sir, what you thought. When anarticle appears in my own paper, Mr. Cooley, there is but a singleinference to be drawn. When I find myself unable to edit the _Argus_, Iwill sell out, sir--I will sell out!"
COOLEY (calmly). "Well, but Murphy, your assistant, told me distinctlythat he wrote that editorial himself."
COLONEL (coming down). "Ah! yes, yes! that is partly true, now Iremember. I believe Murphy did scratch off the body of the article, butI overhauled it; it was necessary for me to revise it, to touch it up,to throw it into shape, as it were, before it went into type. Murphymeans well, and with a little guidance--just a l-e-e-t-l-e carefultraining--he will do."
But Murphy did not remain long. One of the colonel's little nephewsdied, and a man who kept a marble-yard in Wilmington thought he mightobtain a gratuitous advertisement by giving to the afflicted uncle asubstantial expression of his sympathy. So he got up a gravestone forthe departed child. The design, cut upon the stone in bas-relief,represented an angel carrying the little one in his arms and flyingaway with it, while a woman sat weeping upon the ground. It was executedin a most dreadful manner. The tombstone was sent to the colonel, with asimple request that he would accept it. As he was absent, Mr. Murphydetermined to acknowledge the gift, although he had not the slightestidea what it meant. So the next morning he burst out in the _Argus_ withthe following remarks:
"ART NEWS.
"We have received from the eminent sculptor, Mr. Felix Mullins ofWilmington, a comic _bas-relief_ designed for an ornamental fireboard.It represents an Irishman in his night-shirt running away with thelittle god Cupid, while the Irishman's sweetheart demurely hangs herhead in the corner. Every true work of art tells its own story; and weunderstand, as soon as we glance at this, that our Irish friend has beencoqueted with by the fair one, and is pretending to transfer his love toother quarters. There is a lurking smile on the Irishman's lips whichexpresses his mischievous intentions perfectly. We think it would havebeen better, however, to have clothed him in something else than anight-shirt, and to have smoothed down his hair. We have placed this_chef d'oeuvre_ upon a shelf in our office, where it will undoubtedlybe admired by our friends when they call. We are glad to encourage suchprogress in Delaware art."
This was painful. When the colonel returned next day, Mr. Mullins calledon him and explained the tombstone to him, and that very night Mr.Murphy retired from the _Morning Argus_, and began to seek fresh fieldsfor the exercise of his talents.
Colonel Bangs affords me most entertainment in the _Argus_ when anelection is approaching.
Your city editor often displays a certain amount of vehemence at suchtimes, but his wildest frenzy is calmness, is absolute slumberous reposeitself, when compared with the frantic enthusiasm manifested by ColonelBangs. The latter succeeds in getting up as much fury over a candidatefor constable as a city editor does over an aspirant for the Presidency.He will turn out column after column of double-leaded type, in which hewill demonstrate with a marvelous profusion of adjectives that if youshould roll all the prophets, saints and martyrs into one, you wouldhave a much smaller amount of virtue than can be found in that onehumble man who wants to be constable. He will prove to you that unlessthat particular person is elected, the entire fabric of Americaninstitutions will totter to its base and become a bewildering andhopeless ruin, while the merciless despots who grind enslaved millionsbeneath their iron heels will greet the hideous and irreclaimable chaoswith fiendish laughter, and amid the remnants of a once proud republicthey will erect bastiles in which they will forge chains to fetter thewrists of dismayed and heart-broken patriots. He will ask you to takeyour choice between electing that man constable and witnessing theannihilation of the proud work for which the Revolutionary patriots bledand died.
The man who runs against the candidate of the _Argus_ will be proved tobe a moral and intellectual wreck, and it will be shown that all thevices which have corrupted the race since the fall of man areconcentrated in that one individual. The day after election, if his manwins, Colonel Bangs will decorate his paper with a whole array ofroosters and a menagerie of 'coons, and inform a breathless world thatthe nation is once more saved. If he loses, he will omit any
referenceto the frightful prophecies uttered during the campaign, keep hisroosters in the closet, and mildly assert that the opposition man is notso bad, after all, and that the right party must triumph next time forcertain. Then Colonel Bangs will keep his enthusiasm cool for a year,and during that period will rest his overwrought brain, while he editshis paper with a pair of predatory shears and a dishonest paste-pot.
* * * * *
It is extremely probable that we shall lose our servant-girl. She wasthe victim of a very singular catastrophe a night or two since, inconsequence of which she has acquired a prejudice against the house ofAdeler. We were troubled with dampness in our cellar, and in order toremove the difficulty we got a couple of men to come and dig the earthout to the depth of twelve or fifteen inches and fill it in with acement-and-mortar floor. The material was, of course, very soft, and theworkmen laid boards upon the surface, so that access to the furnace andthe coal-bin was possible. That night, just after retiring, we heard awoman screaming for help, but after listening at the open window, weconcluded that Cooley and his wife were engaged in an altercation, andso we paid no more attention to the noise. Half an hour afterward therewas a violent ring at the front-door bell, and upon going to the windowagain, I found Pitman standing upon the door-step below. When I spoke tohim, he said:
"Max" (the judge is inclined sometimes, especially during periods ofexcitement, to be unnecessarily familiar), "there's somethin' wrong inyour cellar. There's a woman down there screechin' and carryin' on likemad. Sounds 's if somebody's a-murderin' her."
I dressed and descended; and securing the assistance of Pitman, so thatI would be better prepared in the event of burglars being discovered, Ilighted a lamp and we went into the cellar.
There we found the maid-servant standing by the refrigerator, knee-deepin the cement, and supporting herself with the handle of a broom, whichwas also half submerged. In several places about her were air-holesmarking the spot where the milk-jug, the cold veal, the lima beans andthe silver-plated butter-dish had gone down. We procured some additionalboards, and while Pitman seized the sufferer by one arm I grasped theother. It was for some time doubtful if she would come to the surfacewithout the use of more violent means, and I confess that I was halfinclined to regard with satisfaction the prospect that we would have toblast her loose with gunpowder. After a desperate struggle, during whichthe girl declared that she would be torn in pieces, Pitman and Isucceeded in getting her safely out, and she went up stairs with half abarrel of cement on each leg, declaring that she would leave the housein the morning.
The cold veal is in there yet. Centuries hence some antiquarian willperhaps grub about the spot whereon my cottage once stood, and will blowthat cold veal out in a petrified condition, and then present it to amuseum as the fossil remains of some unknown animal. Perhaps, too, hewill excavate the milk-jug and the butter-dish, and go about lecturingupon them as utensils employed in bygone ages by a race of savagescalled "the Adelers." I should like to be alive at the time to hear thatlecture. And I cannot avoid the thought that if our servant had beencompletely buried in the cement, and thus carefully preserved until thecoming of that antiquarian, the lecture would be more interesting, andthe girl more useful than she is now. A fossilized domestic servant ofthe present era would probably astonish the people of the twenty-eighthcentury.
* * * * *
"I see," said Mrs. Adeler, who was looking over the evening paper uponthe day following the accident, "that Mlle. Willson, the opera-singer,has been robbed of ten thousand dollars' worth of diamonds in St. Louis.What a dreadful loss!"
"Dreadful, indeed, Mrs. A. These singing women are very unfortunate.They are constantly being robbed, or rolled over embankments in railwaycars, or subjected to deadly perils in some other form; and theastonishing thing about it all is that these frightful things invariablyoccur precisely at the times when public interest in the victims beginsto flag a little, and the accounts always appear in the papers of acertain city just before the singers begin an engagement in that place.It is very remarkable."
"You don't think this story is false, do you, and that all suchstatements are untrue?"
"Certainly not. I only refer to the fact because it shows how verywonderful coincidences often are. I have observed precisely the samething in connection with other contributors to popular entertainment.But in these cases sometimes we may trace the effects directly to thecause. Take menageries, for example. The peculiar manifestations whichfrequently attend the movements of these collections of wild animalsthrough the land can be attributed only to the wonderful instinct of thebeasts. If I am to judge from the reports that appear occasionally inthe provincial newspapers, it invariably happens that the animals cometo the rescue of the menagerie people when the latter begin theircampaigns and are badly in want of advertisements for which they aredisinclined to pay."
"Regularly every season these ferocious beasts proceed to do somethingto secure sensational allusions to themselves in the papers. If therhinoceros does not plunge through the side of the tent and prowl aboutuntil he comes home with an entire Sunday-school class of small boysimpaled on his horn, the Nubian lion is perfectly certain to bite itskeeper in half and lunch upon his legs. If the elephant should neglectto seize his attendant and fling him into the parquet circle, while atthe same time it crushes the hyena into jelly, the Bengal tiger is verysure not to forget to tear half a dozen ribs out of the ticket agent,and then to assimilate ten or twelve village children who are tryingto peep under the tent. Either the brass band, riding upon the den oflions, finds the roof caving in, and at last is rescued with the lossof the cymbal player and the operator upon the key bugle, and of a lotof legs and arms snatched from the bass drummer and the man with thetriangle, or else there is a railroad accident which empties the carsand permits kangaroos, panthers, blue-nose baboons and boa-constrictorsto roam about the country reducing the majorities of the afflictedsections previous to the election."
"You may find hundreds of accounts of such accidents in the rural pressduring the summer season; and whenever I read them, I am at a loss todetermine which is more wonderful, the remarkable sagacity and theself-sacrificing devotion of these beasts, which perceive that somethingmust be done and straightway do it, or the childlike confidence, thebland simplicity, of the editors who give gratuitous circulation tothese narratives."
"Talking about menageries," observed Mr. Bob Parker, "did I ever tellyou about Wylie and his love affair?"
"No."
"Wylie, you know, was the brother of the porter in our store; and whenhe had nothing to do, he used to come around and sit in the cellar amongthe boxes and bales, and we fellows would go down when we were atleisure and hear him relate his adventures.
"One time, several years ago, he was awfully hard up and he accepted asituation in a traveling show. They dressed him up in a fur shirt andput grizzly bears' claws on his feet and daubed some stuff over hisface, and advertised him as 'The Wild Man of Afghanistan.' Then, whenthe show was open, he would stand in a cage and scrouge up against thebars and growl until he would scare the children nearly to death. Thefat woman used to sit near him during the exhibitions just outside thecage, and by degrees he learned to love her. The keeper of the concernhimself, it appears, also cherished a tender feeling for the corpulentyoung creature, and he became jealous of the Wild Man of Afghanistan."
"And the professor of avoirdupois--whom did she affect?"
"Well, when the visitors came, the keeper would procure a pole with anail in the end, and he would stir up the Wild Man and poke him. Thenhe would ridicule the Wild Man's legs and deliver lectures upon themanner in which he turned in his toes; and he sometimes read to theaudience chapters out of books of natural history to show that a beingwith a skull of such a shape must necessarily be an idiot. Then he wouldpoke the Wild Man of Afghanistan a few more times with the pole and passon to the next cage with some remarks tending to prove that the monkeystherein and the
Wild Man were of the same general type."
"And all the time the fat woman would sit there and smile a cold anddisdainful smile, as if she believed it all, and hated such legs anddespised toes that turned in. At last the Wild Man of Afghanistan hadhis revenge. One day when all hands were off duty, the keeper fellasleep on the settee in the ticket-office adjoining the show-room. ThenMr. Wylie threw a blanket over him and went for the fat woman. He ledher by the hand and asked her to be seated while he told her about hislove. Then she suddenly sat down on the keeper."
"And killed him, I suppose, of course?"
"Wylie informed me that you could have passed the remains under a closeddoor without scraping the buttons of the waistcoat. They merely slid himinto a crack in the ground when they buried him, and the fat woman pinedaway until she became thin and valueless. Then the Wild Man married her,and began life again on a new basis."
"Was Mr. Wylie what you might consider a man of veracity?"
"Certainly he was; and his story is undoubtedly true, because his toesdid turn in."
"That settles the matter. With such incontrovertible evidence as that athand, it would be folly to doubt the story. We will go quietly andconfidently to tea instead of discussing it."