Finally the adjuster called upon Joe to render his opinion.
"Look here, Joe," says he. "This man claims it was the Arc-light and this fellow that it was the Gas-light. Now what do you think it was?"
"Well," says Joe, "if you want my candid opinion, I think it was neither. I'll bet a dollar that it was the Israelite."
Joe at last got married and, when his son was still quite young, it bothered him somewhat to know just what trade or profession he ought to select for him.
So at last he told his wife to get the boy a box of paints, a toy steam engine, a printing press, and see what the boy would take to most readily.
When Joe got home at night, he asked his wife how the plan had succeeded.
"Well, I'm a bit puzzled," says she, "he has smashed the whole lot to atoms."
"The very thing," says Joe. "We'll make him a furniture mover."
That didn't suit Mrs. Dempsey though, and she said they ought to have the boy a musician.
"All right," says Joe, "we'll let him learn the clarionette."
"Why, Joe!" says his wife. "Whoever heard of such a thing. I say, let him learn to play the violin. Think what an unhandy thing a clarionette is to carry."
"That's right, my dear," says Joe, "but think what a darn handy thing it is in case of a scrap."
Now I'll try to amuse you by singing my latest dead march, entitled "The Moth and the Flame; or, My Kingdom For a Fire."
They howl of the creature who uses the hoe,
Of the farmer behind the plow;
They warble a song to the horny palm,
And they garland the sunburned brow.
There's praise for the soldier behind the gun,
Who fights after others tire;
But here's to the victim of fate's worst blow,
The Hebrew who don't have a fire.
There's flame in his optic that bodeth ill,
There's a dangerous set of jaw;
There's a mighty unrest in his heaving chest,
And he scoffs at the moral law.
Then woe to the creature – or man, or beast —
That rouseth the smoldering ire
Of the Jew who heavily insures his place,
Then finds he can't have a fire.
That song always gives my friend Rosensky a bad attack of indigestion.
All the time I'm singing it he keeps moaning:
"Dink if that vas me. Dink!"
The time I was boarding, my landlady's name was Mrs. Closefist.
One day she went to the grocery store and says:
"I'd like to have some more of that bad butter you sold me last week."
"Why," says the grocer, "if it was bad, what do you want more for?"
"Well, you see," says she, "it lasts longer."
This same woman had a calf. That calf was taken sick and died. We had veal for the next three weeks.
She had a pig and that pig died. We had pork for the next four weeks.
She had a mother-in-law. That mother-in-law was taken sick – but we fooled her, we all moved.
One morning my egg wasn't fried right, so I blew the girl up.
She blew the servant up, the servant blew the cook up, and the gasoline stove blew the frying pan up.
It was a case of blow-up all around.
Mrs. Closefist had a daughter named Jane, who was taking painting lessons at the time.
She also took pains to let every one within a hundred miles know about it.
One day she brought down a thing that looked to me like a green shutter in a cloud of steam.
"Look here," says she, "isn't this pretty?"
"I'm enraptured," says I. "Such a wealth of detail, such a display of budding genius! The perspective is simply perfect. It-it-it – is – so – clever. Oh! confound it, I can't find words to express my admiration. By the way, what is it?"
"Why," says she, "I am surprised. It represents a green field on a cloudy day. Can't I paint well?"
"Fine," says I. "In fact you have done so well, I am going to recommend you to a friend of mine who wants a fence whitewashed."
Mrs. Closefist, whose reputation for meanness was well known, was in the habit of giving a soiree once a year, "just to liven the boarders up."
I don't know whether it made any of the other fellows particularly lively, but I know that on such occasions was the only time I ever managed to get any sleep.
There were very few outsiders who attended, because the "racket" usually partook very much of the chief trait of the hostess.
Once, when she was making preparations for one of these soul-stirring affairs, she says to me:
"I'd like to give my guests a pleasant surprise. Something distinctly original."
I thought a moment and then says:
"Madam, countermand the invitations."
That woman was the meanest thing in the form of a human being I ever struck.
No, I'm wrong; for meanness I give the palm to a certain car driver.
Once, when I was a kid, I footed it out to a resort near my home.
The only cars that ran out there were those little "jiggers."
Well, I was pretty tired when I got out, and didn't feel like walking back.
So I asked one of the drivers to let me hitch behind.
"Where's your fare?" says he.
"Ain't got none," says I.
"Then you can't ride," says he. "But look here, I'll tell you what I'll do. Take those buckets and go to that well up the road, and water that horse and I'll let you ride free."
And he pointed to a skinny-looking little horse.
I got two buckets and the horse drank them off quick as a wink. I got four, I got six, I got ten, a dozen, always with the same result.
Finally the fellow who owned the well refused to let me have any more water, and I went back and told the driver that the man who leased the Great Lakes from St. Peter had locked them up and gone to bed.
"Well," says he, "you didn't fill your contract and I can't let you ride."
As I was going away, a fellow stepped up to me and says:
"You darn fool, they brought all the horses in the stable out and you've watered them one by one."
Say, I don't think I ever told you of the time I went to England. You see, I arrived at Liverpool and took the train for London.
The train seemed to me to be going remarkably fast for that country and I got sort of uneasy.
At the first stop, I went to the guard and said:
"Say, this is pretty fast traveling, isn't it?"
"Oh, no, you needn't be alarmed, we never run off the line here."
"Oh, it's not that I'm afraid of," says I. "I'm afraid you'll run off your blamed little island."
While out for a stroll the other afternoon, I reached the foot of a steep hill just in time to see a fellow with an automobile come skating down faster than he intended.
When he had reached the bottom and the dust had settled, I walked over and asked him if he was hurt.
He said he wasn't, but looked ruefully at his auto.
"This darned thing cost a cool two thousand the other day, but I'd be willing to sell it for fifty now," says he.
I looked it over and it seemed a pretty likely sort of machine and not very much hurt, so I took him up.
He got out of the way mighty quick, and three minutes after he disappeared two mounted policemen came dashing up.
"Ha!" says one of them, "we've got you. Come right along."
Do you know, I had a deuce of a time in convincing them that it was not I who had stolen the machine?
I went to a real old-fashioned wake the other night.
It was the most entertaining innovation I ever attended.
I got there pretty late and all the beer had flown down where the Wurzburger usually flows.
I sat down beside my old friend, McGarrigan.
"What, Mac, you one of the mourners, too?"
"Whoi not?" says he. "Didn't the corpse owe me ten dollars?"
"Well," says I, "cheer up."
"I can't," says he, "the beer is all gone."
Just then I saw his face brighten up.
I followed the direction of his glance and saw it rested on a gallon jug.
Mac got up quietly and took the jug into the hallway.
He came back in ten seconds looking more mournful than ever.
"What's the matter, Mac," says I, "was the jug empty?"
"No," says he.
"Wasn't the wine good?" says I.
"It wasn't wine," says he.
"What was in the jug, Mac?" says I.
He gave me a sheepish, sidelong glance and says:
"Water."
Mac is a boss carpenter.
The other day he called his assistant and says:
"Here, Jim, I'm going out for a few minutes and you can plane down this beam until I return."
He pointed to a big beam about eighteen inches square.
But, alas! when poor Mac got out on the street, he slipped and sprained his ankle.
They took him home and it was the next day, toward evening, before he could hobble around to his shop.
His assistant was nowhere in sight.
The only thing that met his gaze, was an enormous pile of shavings.
So he bawled out:
"James!"
"Hello," came the far off response.
"Where are you?" says Mac.
"Here under this pile of shavings," says Jim.
"What are you up to, anyway?" says Mac.
"Planing that beam. You told me to plane it until you came back. If you had come an hour later there wouldn't have been anything left of it."
Poor Mac sprained his ankle again.
Say, did you ever go to a dime museum?
If not you want to take it in by all means. It's a sure cure for glanders.
I went to one last week, and had more fun than if I came here and listened to these dispensers of heavenly harmony.
Say, wasn't that last part fine? I'm coming up, I am!
I hope to be in the same class as Chuck Conners some day.
Well, as I said, I went to this shelter for freaks and looked them over.
There was the fat lady who was blown up twice a day with the air pump.
A kid in front of me stuck a pin in her arm and punctured her.
There was the living skeleton who was fed on pork and beans three times a day.
There was the Circassian girl who paid twelve dollars for her wig.
When we got to the glass eater, the real fun began.
There was a yap and his wife standing where they could get a good view of the performance.
They watched him, enraptured for a time, and finally the woman says:
"Hiram, just look at that fellow eating window glass."
"That's nothing," says Hiram, "our little Reuben can do the same thing."
"G'wan," says the woman, "how's that?"
"Why, if he eats little green apples, won't he have pains on the inside?"
Then we passed on to the ventriloquist.
"What's a ventriloquist, Hiram?" says Mandy.
"Why," says Hiram, "it's a fellow what stands on one side of the room and talks to hisself from the other."
But the climax came when we got to the wonderful wax figure, recently imported from Paris at the unheard of price of ten thousand dollars.
I looked that wax figure over and something about it struck me as being familiar.
Finally it came to me all at once.
It was Sim Johnson, who borrowed twenty dollars from me out in Chicago. So I went over.
"Hello, Sim," says I. He never moved a muscle.
"Don't you know me, Sim?" says I.
"Go 'way," says he, without moving his lips.
That made me mad as a hornet, and I says:
"Go 'way? Not much. Who is the wall-eyed, bandy-legged, beer-guzzling harp, who borrowed twenty dollars from me, out in Chicago?"
He never said a word. That got me madder.
I continued to pay my respects in this fashion:
"You miserable, consumptive-looking ingrate. You sea-sick-looking, despicable turkey hen; I'd like to kill you. You mean to rob me."
"You lie," shrieked Sim, now warmed up.
Then I had to run. He caught up a big glass case of butterflies and heaved it in my direction.
But the way the butterflies flew wasn't a patch to the way I flew when the porters got hold of me.
Talking of wax men, puts me in mind of a fellow who lives in the flat opposite mine.
He's about the most miserable specimen of a man I ever struck.
His wife is always quarreling with him; he's always quarreling with his wife.
When he proposed to her he said, as we all have said:
"Darling, if you will only marry me, I will make you the best husband in the world."
"Never fear, sweet," says she, "if I marry you, I'll make you that all right, all right."
One afternoon, I heard her giving him a Sam Hill of a blow-up and met him in the hall soon afterward.
"Say," says I, "why in thunder don't you assert your independence?"
"Independence," he wailed, "why she won't even grant me home rule."
"What were you scrapping about just now?" says I.
"Well, you see," says he, "when I married her I told her I delighted in cleanliness. When I got home to-day, she told me she had just paid a dollar to have the coal bin scrubbed out and we expect a load of coal to-morrow. Then, too, she told me she had bought a dream of a hat at a bargain, and I asked her whether there ever was a time she didn't get a bargain, and she says: 'Yes, when I married you.'"
Well, late that night the unhappy couple got to scrapping again, and the worm turned and gave his wife a most unmerciful beating.
I thought he was going to kill her, so I went in search of a policeman.
I looked around for about an hour and finally located one talking to Billyon's cook.
"Say," says I, "you're wanted around the corner. A man has nearly killed his wife."
"How big is the man?" says he.
"Oh, he's bigger than you."
"Well," says he, "I'm sorry, old man, but it's off my beat."
I went to the race track the other day and met a bookmaker I know.
"Hello," says he. "What brings you here? Do you know anything?"
"No," says I, "if I did, I wouldn't be here."
I finally placed a small bet on a couple of horses, and when the first race was run off, anxiously watched the ponies.
They soon got so far away that I couldn't keep track of them, and noticing a fellow with a pair of field glasses next to me, who seemed to be seeing everything going on, I says:
"How does Sunflower stand?"
Sunflower was the horse I bet on, you know.
"I don't know," says he, "I'm only watching the first ten horses."
Just to liven things up a bit, I'll sing you a song entitled "Music On The Installment Plan; or, How Would You Like To Be The Piano Man?"
"I love thee, ah, yes, I love thee,"
She sang in notes of joy;
And like a darned big fool
He married the maiden coy.
But now she never shrieks the song
She howled in days of yore;
She never thumps the keyboard now
Until her thumbs are sore.
Alas! upon her latest grand,
She never more will play;
She failed with the installments,
And they've taken it away.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I sing that song, but I guess I'll laugh.
Crying doesn't suit my complexion; then, too, I've enough to be sad about already.
I live in the suburbs.
You see if a man lives in the city, his wife always wants to go to some show or other, and that costs money.
We have a fine lot of neighbors out our way, I can tell you. They're so friendly.
The other day the woman next door stepped in, as I was coming to New York, and wanted to know if I wouldn't stop at Cooper & Siegel's and get her goods for a dress. I promised I would.
When I got there, I found an old maid ahead of me.