The Survivor's Story


Fortunately we were with our wives.



It is in general an excellent custom, as I will explain if opportunity

is given.



First, you are thus sure of good company.



For four mortal hours we had ground along, and stopped and waited and

started again, in the drifts between Westfield and Springfield. We had

shrieked out our woes by the voices of fire-engines. Brave men had dug.
/> Patient men had sate inside, and waited for the results of the digging.

At last, in triumph, at eleven and three-quarters, as they say in

Cinderella, we entered the Springfield station.



It was Christmas eve!



Leaving the train to its devices, Blatchford and his wife (her name was

Sarah), and I with mine (her name was Phebe), walked quickly with our

little sacks out of the station, ploughed and waded along the white

street, not to the Massasoit,--no, but to the old Eagle and Star, which

was still standing, and was a favorite with us youngsters. Good waffles,

maple syrup ad lib., such fixings of other sorts as we preferred, and

some liberty. The amount of liberty in absolutely first-class hotels is

but small. A drowsy boy waked, and turned up the gas. Blatchford entered

our names on the register, and cried at once, "By George, Wolfgang is

here, and Dick! What luck!" for Dick and Wolfgang also travel with their

wives. The boy explained that they had come up the river in the

New-Haven train, were only nine hours behind time, had arrived at ten,

and had just finished supper and gone to bed. We ordered rare

beef-steak, waffles, dip-toast, omelettes with kidneys, and omelettes

without; we toasted our feet at the open fire in the parlor; we ate the

supper when it was ready; and we also went to bed; rejoicing that we had

home with us, having travelled with our wives; and that we could keep

our merry Christmas here. If only Wolfgang and Dick and their wives

would join us, all would be well. (Wolfgang's wife was named Bertha, and

Dick's was named Hosanna,--a name I have never met with elsewhere.)



Bed followed; and I am a graceless dog that I do not write a sonnet here

on the unbroken slumber that followed. Breakfast, by arrangement of us

four, at nine. At 9.30, to us enter Bertha, Dick, Hosanna, and Wolfgang,

to name them in alphabetical order. Four chairs had been turned down for

them. Four chops, four omelettes, and four small oval dishes of fried

potatoes had been ordered, and now appeared. Immense shouting, immense

kissing among those who had that privilege, general wondering, and great

congratulating that our wives were there. Solid resolution that we would

advance no farther. Here, and here only, in Springfield itself, would we

celebrate our Christmas day.



It may be remarked in parenthesis that we had learned already that no

train had entered the town since eleven and a quarter; and it was known

by telegraph that none was within thirty-four miles and a half of the

spot, at the moment the vow was made.



We waded and ploughed our way through the snow to church. I think Mr.

Rumfry, if that is the gentleman's name who preached an admirable

Christmas sermon, in a beautiful church there is, will remember the

platoon of four men and four women, who made perhaps a fifth of his

congregation in that storm,--a storm which shut off most church-going.

Home again; a jolly fire in the parlor, dry stockings, and dry slippers.

Turkeys, and all things fitting for the dinner; and then a general

assembly, not in a caravanserai, not in a coffee-room, but in the

regular guests' parlor of a New-England second-class hotel, where, as it

was ordered, there were no "transients" but ourselves that day; and

whence all the "boarders" had gone either to their own rooms, or to

other homes.



For people who have their wives with them, it is not difficult to

provide entertainment on such an occasion.



"Bertha," said Wolfgang, "could you not entertain us with one of your

native dances?"



"Ho! slave," said Dick to Hosanna, "play upon the virginals." And

Hosanna played a lively Arab air on the tavern piano, while the fair

Bertha danced with a spirit unusual. Was it indeed in memory of the

Christmas of her own dear home in Circassia?



All that, from "Bertha" to "Circassia," is not so. We did not do this at

all. That was all a slip of the pen. What we did was this. John

Blatchford pulled the bell-cord till it broke (they always break in

novels, and sometimes they do in taverns). This bell-cord broke. The

sleepy boy came; and John said, "Caitiff, is there never a barber in the

house?" The frightened boy said there was; and John bade him send him.

In a minute the barber appeared,--black, as was expected,--with a

shining face, and white teeth, and in shirt sleeves, and broad grins.

"Do you tell me, Caesar," said John, "that in your country they do not

wear their coats on Christmas day?"--"Sartin, they do, sir, when they go

out doors."



"Do you tell me, Caesar," said Dick, "that they have doors in your

country?"--"Sartin, they do," said poor Caesar, flurried.



"Boy," said I, "the gentlemen are making fun of you. They want to know

if you ever keep Christmas in your country without a dance."



"Never, sar," said poor Caesar.



"Do they dance without music?"



"No, sar; never."



"Go, then," I said in my sternest accents,--"go fetch a zittern, or a

banjo, or a kit, or a hurdy-gurdy, or a fiddle."



The black boy went, and returned with his violin. And as the light grew

gray, and crept into the darkness, and as the darkness gathered more

thick and more, he played for us and he played for us, tune after tune;

and we danced,--first with precision, then in sport, then in wild

holiday frenzy. We began with waltzes,--so great is the convenience of

travelling with your wives,--where should we have been, had we been all

sole alone, four men? Probably playing whist or euchre. And now we began

with waltzes, which passed into polkas, which subsided into round

dances; and then in very exhaustion we fell back in a grave quadrille. I

danced with Hosanna; Wolfgang and Sarah were our vis-a-vis. We went

through the same set that Noah and his three boys danced in the ark with

their four wives, and which has been danced ever since, in every moment,

on one or another spot of the dry earth, going round it with the sun,

like the drumbeat of England,--right and left, first two forward, right

hand across, pastorale,--the whole series of them; we did them with

as much spirit as if it had been on a flat on the side of Ararat, ground

yet too muddy for croquet. Then Blatchford called for "Virginia Reel,"

and we raced and chased through that. Poor Caesar began to get exhausted,

but a little flip from down stairs helped him amazingly. And, after the

flip, Dick cried, "Can you not dance 'Money-Musk'?" And in one wild

frenzy of delight we danced "Money-Musk" and "Hull's Victory" and "Dusty

Miller" and "Youth's Companion," and "Irish Jigs" on the closet-door

lifted off for the occasion, till the men lay on the floor screaming

with the fun, and the women fell back on the sofas, fairly faint with

laughing.



* * * * *



All this last, since the sentence after "Circassia," is a mistake. There

was not any bell, nor any barber, and we did not dance at all. This was

all a slip of my memory.



What we really did was this:--



John Blatchford said,--"Let us all tell stories." It was growing dark

and he had put more logs on the fire.



Bertha said,--



"Heap on more wood, the wind is chill;

But let it whistle as it will,

We'll keep our merry Christmas still."



She said that because it was in "Bertha's Visit," a very stupid book

which she remembered.



Then Wolfgang told





THE PENNY-A-LINER'S STORY.



[Wolfgang is a reporter, or was then, on the staff of the "Star."]



When I was on the "Tribune" (he never was on the "Tribune" an hour,

unless he calls selling the "Tribune" at Fort Plains being on the

"Tribune"). But I tell the story as he told it. He said,--



When I was on the "Tribune," I was despatched to report Mr. Webster's

great reply to Hayne. This was in the days of stages. We had to ride

from Baltimore to Washington early in the morning to get there in time.

I found my boots were gone from my room when the stage-man called me,

and I reported that speech in worsted slippers my wife had given me the

week before. As we came into Bladensburg it grew light, and I recognized

my boots on the feet of my fellow-passenger,--there was but one other

man in the stage. I turned to claim them, but stopped in a moment, for

it was Webster himself. How serene his face looked as he slept there! He

woke soon, passed the time of day, offered me a part of a sandwich,--for

we were old friends,--I was counsel against him in the Ogden case. Said

Webster to me,--"Steele, I am bothered about this speech: I have a

paragraph in it which I cannot word up to my mind." And he repeated it

to me. "How would this do?" said he. "'Let us hope that the sense of

unrestricted freedom may be so intertwined with the desire to preserve a

connection of the several parts of the body politic, that some

arrangement, more or less lasting, may prove in a measure satisfactory.'

How would that do?"



I said I liked the idea, but the expression seemed involved.



"And it is involved," said Webster; "but I can't improve it."



"How would this do?" said I.



"'LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE!'"



"Capital!" he said, "capital! write that down for me." At that moment

we arrived at the Capitol steps. I wrote down the words for him, and

from my notes he read them, when that place in the speech came along.



All of us applauded the story.



Phebe then told





THE SCHOOLMISTRESS'S STORY.



You remind me of the impression that very speech made on me, as I heard

Henry Chapin deliver it at an exhibition at Leicester Academy. I

resolved then that I would free the slave, or perish in the attempt. But

how? I, a woman,--disfranchised by the law? Ha! I saw!



I went to Arkansas. I opened a "Normal College, or Academy for

Teachers." We had balls every second night, to make it popular. Immense

numbers came. Half the teachers of the Southern States were trained

there. I had admirable instructors in Oil Painting and Music,--the most

essential studies. The Arithmetic I taught myself. I taught it well. I

achieved fame. I achieved wealth; invested in Arkansas Five per Cents.

Only one secret device I persevered in. To all,--old and young, innocent

girls and sturdy men,--I so taught the multiplication-table, that one

fatal error was hidden in its array of facts. The nine line is the

difficult one. I buried the error there. "Nine times six," I taught

them, "is fifty-six." The rhyme made it easy. The gilded falsehood

passed from lip to lip, from State to State,--one little speck in a

chain of golden verity. I retired from teaching. Slowly I watched the

growth of the rebellion. At last the aloe blossom shot up,--after its

hundred years of waiting. The Southern heart was fired. I brooded over

my revenge. I repaired to Richmond. I opened a first-class

boarding-house, where all the Cabinet, and most of the Senate, came for

their meals; and I had eight permanents. Soon their brows clouded. The

first flush of victory passed away. Night after night, they sat over

their calculations, which all came wrong. I smiled,--and was a villain!

None of their sums would prove. None of their estimates matched the

performance! Never a muster-roll that fitted as it should do! And

I,--the despised boarding-mistress,--I alone knew why! Often and often,

when Memminger has said to me, with an oath, "Why this discordancy in

our totals?" have my lips burned to tell the secret! But no! I hid it

in my bosom. And when, at last, I saw a black regiment march into

Richmond, singing "John Brown," I cried, for the first time in twenty

years, "Nine times six is fifty-four;" and gloated in my sweet revenge.



Then was hushed the harp of Phebe, and Dick told his story.





THE INSPECTOR OF GAS-METERS' STORY.



Mine is a tale of the ingratitude of republics. It is well-nigh thirty

years since I was walking by the Owego and Ithaca Railroad,--a crooked

road, not then adapted to high speed. Of a sudden I saw that a long

cross timber, on a trestle, high above a swamp, had sprung up from its

ties. I looked for a spike with which to secure it. I found a stone with

which to hammer the spike. But, at this moment, a train approached, down

hill. I screamed. They heard! But the engine had no power to stop the

heavy train. With the presence of mind of a poet, and the courage of a

hero, I flung my own weight on the fatal timber. I would hold it down,

or perish. The engine came. The elasticity of the pine timber whirled

me in the air! But I held on. The tender crossed. Again I was flung in

wild gyrations. But I held on. "It is no bed of roses," I said; "but

what act of Parliament was there that I should be happy." Three

passenger cars, and ten freight cars, as was then the vicious custom of

that road, passed me. But I held on, repeating to myself texts of

Scripture to give me courage. As the last car passed, I was whirled into

the air by the rebound of the rafter. "Heavens!" I said, "if my orbit is

a hyperbola, I shall never return to earth." Hastily I estimated its

ordinates, and calculated the curve. What bliss! It was a parabola!

After a flight of a hundred and seventeen cubits, I landed, head down,

in a soft mud-hole.



In that train was the young U. S. Grant, on his way to West Point for

examination. But for me the armies of the Republic would have had no

leader.



I pressed my claim, when I asked to be appointed to England. Although no

one else wished to go, I alone was forgotten. Such is gratitude with

republics!



He ceased. Then Sarah Blatchford told





THE WHEELER AND WILSON'S OPERATIVE'S STORY.



My father had left the anchorage of Sorrento for a short voyage, if

voyage it may be called. Life was young, and this world seemed heaven.

The yacht bowled on under close-reefed stay-sails, and all was happy.

Suddenly the corsairs seized us: all were slain in my defence; but

I,--this fatal gift of beauty bade them spare my life!



Why linger on my tale! In the Zenana of the Shah of Persia I found my

home. "How escape his eye?" I said; and, fortunately, I remembered that

in my reticule I carried one box of F. Kidder's indelible ink. Instantly

I applied the liquid in the large bottle to one cheek. Soon as it was

dry, I applied that in the small bottle, and sat in the sun one hour. My

head ached with the sunlight, but what of that? I was a fright, and I

knew all would be well.



I was consigned, so soon as my hideous deficiencies were known, to the

sewing-room. Then how I sighed for my machine! Alas! it was not there;

but I constructed an imitation from a cannon-wheel, a coffee-mill, and

two nut-crackers. And with this I made the under-clothing for the palace

and the Zenana.



I also vowed revenge. Nor did I doubt one instant how; for in my youth I

had read Lucretia Borgia's memoirs, and I had a certain rule for slowly

slaying a tyrant at a distance. I was in charge of the shah's own linen.

Every week, I set back the buttons on his shirt collars by the width of

one thread; or, by arts known to me, I shrunk the binding of the collar

by a like proportion. Tighter and tighter with each week did the vice

close around his larynx. Week by week, at the high religious festivals,

I could see his face was blacker and blacker. At length the hated tyrant

died. The leeches called it apoplexy. I did not undeceive them. His

guards sacked the palace. I bagged the diamonds, fled with them to

Trebizond, and sailed thence in a caique to South Boston. No more! such

memories oppress me.



Her voice was hushed. I told my tale in turn.





THE CONDUCTOR'S STORY.



I was poor. Let this be my excuse, or rather my apology. I entered a

Third Avenue car at Thirty-sixth Street, and saw the conductor

sleeping. Satan tempted me, and I took from him his badge, 213. I see

the hated figures now. When he woke, he knew not he had lost it. The car

started, and he walked to the rear. With the badge on my coat, I

collected eight fares within, stepped forward, and sprang into the

street. Poverty is my only apology for the crime. I concealed myself in

a cellar where men were playing with props. Fear is my only excuse. Lest

they should suspect me, I joined their game, and my forty cents were

soon three dollars and seventy. With these ill-gotten gains, I visited

the gold exchange, then open evenings. My superior intelligence enabled

me to place well my modest means, and at midnight I had a competence.

Let me be a warning to all young men. Since that night, I have never

gambled more.



I threw the hated badge into the river. I bought a palace on Murray

Hill, and led an upright and honorable life. But since that night of

terror the sound of the horse-cars oppresses me. Always since, to go up

town or down, I order my own coupe, with George to drive me; and never

have I entered the cleanly, sweet, and airy carriage provided for the

public. I cannot; conscience is too much for me. You see in me a

monument of crime.



I said no more. A moment's pause, a few natural tears, and a single sigh

hushed the assembly; then Bertha, with her siren voice, told--





THE WIFE OF BIDDEFORD'S STORY.



At the time you speak of, I was the private governess of two lovely

boys, Julius and Pompey,--Pompey the senior of the two. The black-eyed

darling! I see him now. I also see, hanging to his neck, his blue-eyed

brother, who had given Pompey his black eye the day before. Pompey was

generous to a fault; Julius, parsimonious beyond virtue. I therefore

instructed them in two different rooms. To Pompey, I read the story of

"Waste not, want not." To Julius, on the other hand, I spoke of the

All-love of his great Mother Nature, and her profuse gifts to her

children. Leaving him with grapes and oranges, I stepped back to Pompey,

and taught him how to untie parcels so as to save the string. Leaving

him winding the string neatly, I went back to Julius, and gave to him

ginger-cakes. The dear boys grew from year to year. They outgrew their

knickerbockers, and had trousers. They outgrew their jackets, and became

men; and I felt that I had not lived in vain. I had conquered nature.

Pompey, the little spendthrift, was the honored cashier of a savings

bank, till he ran away with the capital. Julius, the miser, became the

chief croupier at the New Crockford's. One of those boys is now in

Botany Bay, and the other is in Sierra Leone!



"I thought you were going to say in a hotter place," said John

Blatchford; and he told his story:--





THE STOKER'S STORY.



We were crossing the Atlantic in a Cunarder. I was second stoker on the

starboard watch. In that horrible gale we spoke of before dinner, the

coal was exhausted, and I, as the best-dressed man, was sent up to the

captain to ask what we should do. I found him himself at the wheel. He

almost cursed me and bade me say nothing of coal, at a moment when he

must keep her head to the wind with her full power, or we were lost. He

bade me slide my hand into his pocket, and take out the key of the after

freight-room, open that, and use the contents for fuel. I returned

hastily to the engine-room, and we did as we were bid. The room

contained nothing but old account books, which made a hot and effective

fire.



On the third day the captain came down himself into the engine-room,

where I had never seen him before, called me aside, and told me that by

mistake he had given me the wrong key; asking me if I had used it. I

pointed to him the empty room: not a leaf was left. He turned pale with

fright. As I saw his emotion he confided to me the truth. The books were

the evidences or accounts of the British national debt; of what is

familiarly known as the Consolidated Fund, or the "Consols." They had

been secretly sent to New York for the examination of James Fiske, who

had been asked to advance a few millions on this security to the English

Exchequer, and now all evidence of indebtedness was gone!



The captain was about to leap into the sea. But I dissuaded him. I told

him to say nothing; I would keep his secret; no man else knew it. The

Government would never utter it. It was safe in our hands. He

reconsidered his purpose. We came safe to port and did--nothing.



Only on the first quarter-day which followed, I obtained leave of

absence, and visited the Bank of England, to see what happened. At the

door was this placard,--"Applicants for dividends will file a written

application, with name and amount, at desk A, and proceed in turn to the

Paying Teller's Office." I saw their ingenuity. They were making out new

books, certain that none would apply but those who were accustomed to.

So skilfully do men of Government study human nature.



I stepped lightly to one of the public desks. I took one of the blanks.

I filled it out, "John Blatchford, L1747 6s. 8d.," and handed it in

at the open trap. I took my place in the queue in the teller's room.

After an agreeable hour, a pile, not thick, of Bank of England notes was

given to me; and since that day I have quarterly drawn that amount from

the maternal government of that country. As I left the teller's room, I

observed the captain in the queue. He was the seventh man from the

window, and I have never seen him more.



We then asked Hosanna for her story.





THE N. E. HISTORICAL GENEALOGIST'S STORY.



"My story," said she, "will take us far back into the past. It will be

necessary for me to dwell on some incidents in the first settlement of

this country, and I propose that we first prepare and enjoy the

Christmas-tree. After this, if your courage holds, you shall hear an

over-true tale." Pretty creature, how little she knew what was before

us!



As we had sat listening to the stories, we had been preparing for the

tree. Shopping being out of the question, we were fain from our own

stores to make up our presents, while the women were arranging nuts, and

blown egg-shells, and pop-corn strings from the stores of the "Eagle and

Star." The popping of corn in two corn-poppers had gone on through the

whole of the story-telling. All being so nearly ready, I called the

drowsy boy again, and, showing him a very large stick in the wood-box,

asked him to bring me a hatchet. To my great joy he brought the axe of

the establishment, and I bade him farewell. How little did he think what

was before him! So soon as he had gone I went stealthily down the

stairs, and stepping out into the deep snow, in front of the hotel,

looked up into the lovely night. The storm had ceased, and I could see

far back into the heavens. In the still evening my strokes might have

been heard far and wide, as I cut down one of the two pretty Norways

that shaded Mr. Pynchon's front walk, next the hotel. I dragged it over

the snow. Blatchford and Steele lowered sheets to me from the large

parlor window, which I attached to the larger end of the tree. With

infinite difficulty they hauled it in. I joined them in the parlor, and

soon we had as stately a tree growing there as was in any home of joy

that night in the river counties.



With swift fingers did our wives adorn it. I should have said above,

that we travelled with our wives, and that I would recommend that custom

to others. It was impossible, under the circumstances, to maintain much

secrecy; but it had been agreed that all who wished to turn their backs

to the circle, in the preparation of presents, might do so without

offence to the others. As the presents were wrapped, one by one, in

paper of different colors, they were marked with the names of giver and

receiver, and placed in a large clothes-basket. At last all was done. I

had wrapped up my knife, my pencil-case, my letter-case, for Steele,

Blatchford, and Dick. To my wife I gave my gold watch-key, which

fortunately fits her watch; to Hosanna, a mere trifle, a seal ring I

wore; to Bertha, my gold chain; and to Sarah Blatchford, the watch which

generally hung from it. For a few moments, we retired to our rooms while

the pretty Hosanna arranged the forty-nine presents on the tree. Then

she clapped her hands, and we rushed in. What a wondrous sight! What a

shout of infantine laughter and charming prattle! for in that happy

moment were we not all children again?



I see my story hurries to its close. Dick, who is the tallest, mounted a

step-ladder, and called us by name to receive our presents. I had a nice

gold watch-key from Hosanna, a knife from Steele, a letter-case from

Phebe, and a pretty pencil-case from Bertha. Dick had given me his

watch-chain, which he knew I fancied; Sarah Blatchford, a little toy of

a Geneva watch she wore; and her husband, a handsome seal ring, a

present to him from the Czar, I believe; Phebe, that is my wife,--for we

were travelling with our wives,--had a pencil-case from Steele, a

pretty little letter-case from Dick, a watch-key from me, and a French

repeater from Blatchford; Sarah Blatchford gave her the knife she

carried, with some bright verses, saying that it was not to cut love;

Bertha, a watch-chain; and Hosanna a ring of turquoise and amethysts.

The other presents were similar articles, and were received, as they

were given, with much tender feeling. But at this moment, as Dick was on

the top of the flight of steps, handing down a red apple from the tree,

a slight catastrophe occurred.



The first I was conscious of was the angry hiss of steam. In a moment I

perceived that the steam-boiler, from which the tavern was warmed, had

exploded. The floor beneath us rose, and we were driven with it through

the ceiling and the rooms above,--through an opening in the roof into

the still night. Around us in the air were flying all the other contents

and occupants of the Star and Eagle. How bitterly was I reminded of

Dick's flight from the railroad track of the Ithaca & Owego Railroad!

But I could not hope such an escape as his. Still my flight was in a

parabola; and, in a period not longer than it has taken to describe it,

I was thrown senseless, at last, into a deep snow-bank near the United

States Arsenal.



Tender hands lifted me and assuaged me. Tender teams carried me to the

City Hospital. Tender eyes brooded over me. Tender science cared for me.

It proved necessary, before I recovered, to amputate my two legs at the

hips. My right arm was wholly removed, by a delicate and curious

operation, from the socket. We saved the stump of my left arm, which was

amputated just below the shoulder. I am still in the hospital to recruit

my strength. The doctor does not like to have me occupy my mind at all;

but he says there is no harm in my compiling my memoirs, or writing

magazine stories. My faithful nurse has laid me on my breast on a

pillow, has put a camel's-hair pencil in my mouth, and, feeling almost

personally acquainted with John Carter, the artist, I have written out

for you, in his method, the story of my last Christmas.



I am sorry to say that the others have never been found.



More

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