Gov. Bob. Taylor\'s Tales
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Robert L. Taylor >> Gov. Bob. Taylor\'s Tales
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[Illustration: THE PARADISE OF THE BAREFOOTED BOY.]
His father took him to town one day and said to him: "Now John, I want
you to stay here on the corner with the wagon and watch these potatoes
while I go round the square and see if I can sell them. Don't open your
mouth sir, while I am gone; I'm afraid people will think you're a fool."
While the old man was gone the merchant came out and said to John: "What
are those potatoes worth, my son?" John looked at him and grinned. "What
are those potatoes worth, I say?" asked the merchant. John still looked
at him and grinned. The merchant turned on his heel and said: "You're a
fool," and went back into his store. When the old man returned John
shouted: "Pap, they found it out and I never said a word."
His life is an endless chain of pranks and pleasures. Look how the
brawling brook pours down the steep declivities of the mountain gorge!
Here it breaks into pearls and silvery foam, there it dashes in rapids,
among brown bowlders, and yonder it tumbles from the gray crest of a
precipice. Thus, forever laughing, singing, rollicking, romping, till
it is checked in its mad rush and spreads into a still, smooth mirror,
reflecting the inverted images of rock, and fern, and flower, and tree,
and sky. It is the symbol of the life of a barefooted boy. His quips,
and cranks, his whims, and jollities, and jocund mischief, are but the
effervescences of exuberant young life, the wild music of the mountain
stream.
If I were a sculptor, I would chisel from the marble my ideal of the
monumental fool. I would make it the figure of a man, with knitted brow
and clinched teeth, beating and bruising his barefooted boy, in the
cruel endeavor to drive him from the paradise of his childish fun and
folly. If your boy _will_ be a boy, let him be a boy still. And remember
that he is following the paths which your feet have trodden, and will
soon look back upon its precious memories, as you now do, with the
aching heart of a care-worn man.
[Illustration: THE WILD MUSIC OF THE MOUNTAINS.]
(Sung to the air of Down on the Farm.)
Oh, I love the dear old farm, and my heart grows young and warm,
When I wander back to spend a single day;
There to hear the robins sing in the trees around the spring,
Where I used to watch the happy children play.
Oh, I hear their voices yet and I never shall forget
How their faces beamed with childish mirth and glee.
But my heart grows old again and I leave the spot in pain,
When I call them and no answer comes to me.
THE PARADISE OF YOUTH.
[Illustration: THE PARADISE OF YOUTH.]
If childhood is the sunrise of life, youth is the heyday of life's ruddy
June. It is the sweet solstice in life's early summer, which puts forth
the fragrant bud and blossom of sin e'er its bitter fruits ripen and
turn to ashes on the lips of age. It is the happy transition period,
when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble
on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and
scraping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping
nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the
first symptom of love. Did you never observe him wrestling with a pair
of boots two numbers too small, as Jacob wrestled with the angel? That
is another symptom of love. His callous heel slowly and painfully yields
to the pressure of his perspiring paroxysms until his feet are folded
like fans and driven home in the pinching leather; and as he sits at
church with them hid under the bench, his uneasy squirms are symptoms of
the tortures of the infernal regions, and the worm that dieth not; but
that is only the penalty of loving. When he begins to wander through the
fragrant meadows and talk to himself among the buttercups and clover
blossoms, it is a sure sign that the golden shaft of the winged god has
sped from its bended bow. Love's archer has shot a poisoned arrow which
wounds but never kills. The sweet venom has done its work. The fever of
the amorous wound drives the red current bounding through his veins, and
his brain now reels with the delirium of the tender passion. His soul is
wrapped in visions of dreamy black eyes peeping out from under raven
curls, and cheeks like gardens of roses. To him the world is transformed
into a blooming Eden, and _she_ is its only Eve. He hears her voice in
the sound of the laughing waters, the fluttering of her heart in the
summer evening's last sigh that shuts the rose; and he sits on the bank
of the river all day long and writes poetry to her. Thus he writes:
"As I sit by this river's crystal wave,
Whose flow'ry banks its waters lave,
Me-thinks I see in its glassy mirror,
A face which to me, than life is dearer.
Oh, 'tis the face of my Gwendolin,
As pure as an angel, free from sin.
It looks into mine with one sweet eye,
While the other is turned to the starry sky.
Could I the ocean's bulk contain,
Could I but drink the watery main,
I'd scarce be half as full of the sea,
As my heart is full of love for thee!"
Thus he lives and loves, and writes poetry by day, and tosses on his bed
at night, like the restless sea, and dreams, and dreams, and dreams,
until, in the ecstacy of his dream, he grabs a pillow.
One bright summer day, a rural youth took his sweetheart to a Baptist
baptizing; and, in addition to his verdancy and his awkwardness, he
stuttered most distressingly. The singing began on the bank of the
stream; and he left his sweetheart in the buggy, in the shade of a tree
near by, and wandered alone in the crowd. Standing unconsciously among
those who were to be baptized, the old parson mistook him for one of the
converts, and seized him by the arm and marched him into the water. He
began to protest: "ho-ho-hold on p-p-p-parson, y-y-y-you're ma-ma-makin'
a mi-mi-mistake!!!" "Don't be alarmed my son, come right in," said the
parson. And he led him to the middle of the stream. The poor fellow made
one final desperate effort to explain--"p-p-p-p-parson, l-l-l-l-let me
explain!" But the parson coldly said: "Close your mouth and eyes, my
son!" And he soused him under the water. After he was thoroughly
baptized the old parson led him to the bank, the muddy water trickling
down his face. He was "diked" in his new seersucker suit, and when the
sun struck it, it began to draw up. The legs of his pants drew up to his
knees; his sleeves drew up to his elbows; his little sack coat yanked up
under his arms. And as he stood there trembling and shivering, a good
old sister approached him, and taking him by the hand said: "God bless
you, my son, how do you feel?" Looking, in his agony, at his blushing
sweetheart behind her fan, he replied in his anguish: "I fe-fe-fe-feel
l-l-l-l-like a d-d-d-d-durned f-f-f-f-fool!"
[Illustration: THE SEERSUCKER YOUTH AT THE BAPTIZING.]
If I were called upon to drink a toast to life's happiest period,
I would hold up the sparkling wine, and say: "Here is to youth, that
sweet, Seidlitz powder period, when two souls with scarcely a single
thought, meet and blend in one; when a voice, half gosling, half
calliope, rasps the first sickly confession of puppy love into the
ear of a blue-sashed maiden at the picnic in the grove!" But when she
returns his little greasy photograph, accompanied by a little perfumed
note, expressing the hope that he will think of her only as a sister,
his paradise is wrecked, and his puppy love is swept into the limbo
of things that were, the school boy's tale, the wonder of an hour.
But wait till the shadows have a little longer grown. Wait till the
young lawyer comes home from college, spouting Blackstone, and Kent, and
Ram on facts. Wait till the young doctor returns from the university,
with his whiskers and his diploma, to tread the paths of glory, "that
lead but to the grave." Wait till society gives welcome in the brilliant
ball, and the swallow-tail coat, and the patent leather pumps whirl with
the decollette and white slippers till the stars are drowning in the
light of morning. Wait till the graduate staggers from the giddy hall,
in full evening dress, singing as he staggers:
"After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancer's leavin', after the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching, if we could read them all--
Many the hopes that are vanished, after the ball."
[Illustration: AFTER THE BALL.]
It is then that "somebody's darling" has reached the full tide of his
glory as a fool.
THE PARADISE OF HOME.
How rich would be the feast of happiness in this beautiful world of
ours, could folly end with youth. But youth is only the first act in
the "Comedy of Errors." It is the pearly gate that opens to the real
paradise of fools.
"It's pleasures are like poppies spread--
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed,
Or like the snowfall on the river--
A moment white then melts forever."
Whether it be the child at its mother's knee or the man of mature years,
whether it be the banker or the beggar, the prince in his palace or the
peasant in his hut, there is in every heart the dream of a happier lot
in life.
I heard the sound of revelry at the gilded club, where a hundred hearts
beat happily. There were flushed cheeks and thick tongues and jests and
anecdotes around the banquet spread. There were songs and poems and
speeches. I saw an orator rise to respond to a toast to "Home, sweet
home," and thus he responded:
"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: John Howard Payne touched millions of
hearts when he sang:
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
But as for me, gentlemen, give me the pleasures an' the palaces--give me
liberty, or give me death. No less beautifully expressed are the tender
sentiments expressed in the tender verse of Lord Byron:
"'Tis sweet to hear the watchdog's honest bark
Bay deep mouthed welcome as we draw near home;
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming,
And look brighter when we come."
But as for me, gentlemen, I would rather hear the barkin' of a gatlin'
gun than to hear the watch dog's honest bark this minute. I would rather
look into the mouth of a cannon than to look into the eyes that are now
waitin' to mark my comin' at this delightful hour of three o'clock in
the morning."
Then he launched out on the ocean of thought like a magnificent ship
going to sea. And when the night was far spent, and the orgies were
over, and the lights were blown out at the club, I saw him enter his own
sweet home in his glory--entered it, like a thief, with his boots in his
hands,--entered it singing softly to himself:
"I'm called little gutter pup, sweet little gutter pup,
Though I could never tell why--(hic),
Yet still I'm called gutter pup, sweet little gutter pup,
Poor little gutter pup--I--(hic)."
He was unconscious of the presence of the white figure that stood at
the head of the stairs holding up a lamp, like liberty enlightening
the world, and as a tremulous voice called him to the judgment bar, the
door closed behind him on the paradise of a fool, and he sneaked up the
steps, muttering to himself, "What shadows we are--(hic)--what shadows
we pursue." Then I saw him again in the morning, reaping temptation's
bitter reward in the agonies of his drunk-sick; and like Mark Twain's
boat in a storm,
"He heaved and sot, and sot and heaved,
And high his rudder flung,
And every time he heaved and sot,
A mighty leak he sprung."
If I were a woman with a husband like "that," I would fill him so full
of Keely's chloride of gold that he would jingle as he walks and tinkle
as he talks and have a fit at every mention of the silver bill.
The biggest fool that walks on God's footstool is the man who destroys
the joy and peace of his own sweet home; for, if paradise is ever
regained in this world, it must be in the home. If its dead flowers
ever bloom again, they must bloom in the happy hearts of home. If its
sunshine ever breaks through the clouds, it must break forth in the
smiling faces of home. If heaven ever descends to earth and angels tread
its soil, it must be in the sacred precincts of home. That which heaven
most approves is the pure and virtuous home. For around it linger all
the sweetest memories and dearest associations of mankind; upon it hang
the hopes and happiness of the nations of the earth, and above it shines
the ever blessed star that lights the way back to the paradise that was
lost.
[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE CLUB.]
BACHELOR AND WIDOWER.
I saw a poor old bachelor live all the days of his life in sight of
paradise, too cowardly to put his arm around it and press it to his
bosom. He shaved and primped and resolved to marry every day in the year
for forty years. But when the hour for love's duel arrived, when he
stood trembling in the presence of rosy cheeks and glancing eyes, and
beauty shook her curls and gave the challenge, his courage always oozed
out, and he fled ingloriously from the field of honor.
Far happier than the bachelor is old Uncle Rastus in his cabin, when he
holds Aunt Dina's hand in his and asks: "Who's sweet?" And Dina drops
her head over on his shoulder and answers, "Boaf uv us."
A thousand times happier is the frisky old widower with his pink bald
head, his wrinkles and his rheumatism, who
Wires in and wires out,
And leaves the ladies all in doubt,
As to what is his age and what he is worth,
And whether or not he owns the earth.
He "toils not, neither does he spin," yet Solomon, in all his glory was
not more popular with the ladies. He is as light-hearted as "Mary's
little lamb." He is acquainted with every hog path in the matrimonial
paradise and knows all the nearest cuts to the "sanctum sanctorum" of
woman's heart. But his jealousy is as cruel as the grave. Woe unto the
bachelor who dares to cross his path.
An old bachelor in my native mountains once rose in church to give his
experience, in the presence of his old rival who was a widower, and with
whom he was at daggers' points in the race to win the affections of one
of the sisters in Zion. Thus the pious old bachelor spake: "Brethren,
this is a beautiful world. I love to live in it just as well to-day as
I ever did in my life. And the saddest thought that ever crossed this
old brain of mine is, that in a few short days at best, these old eyes
will be glazed in death and I'll never get to see my loved ones in this
world any more." And his old rival shouted from the "amen corner,"
"_thank God!_"
PHANTOMS.
In every brain there is a bright phantom realm, where fancied pleasures
beckon from distant shores; but when we launch our barks to reach them,
they vanish, and beckon again from still more distant shores. And so,
poor fallen man pursues the ghosts of paradise as the deluded dog chases
the shadows of flying birds in the meadow.
The painter only paints the shadows of beauty on his canvas; the
sculptor only chisels its lines and curves from the marble; the sweetest
melody is but the faint echo of the wooing voice of music.
We stumble over the golden nuggets of contentment in pursuit of the
phantoms of wealth, and what is wealth? It can not purchase a moment of
happiness. Marble halls may open wide their doors and offer her shelter,
but happiness will flee from a palace to dwell in a cottage. We crush
under our feet the roses of peace and love in our eagerness to reach the
illuminated heights of glory; and what is earthly glory?
"He who ascends to mountain tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
'Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head."
I saw a comedian convulse thousands with his delineations of the
weaknesses of humanity in the inimitable "Rip Van Winkle." I saw him
make laughter hold its sides, as he impersonated the coward in "The
Rivals;" and I said: I would rather have the power of Joseph Jefferson,
to make the world laugh, and to drive care and trouble from weary brains
and sorrow from heavy hearts, than to wear the blood-stained laurels of
military glory, or to be President of the United States, burdened with
bonds and gold, and overwhelmed with the double standard, and three girl
babies.
THE FALSE IDEAL.
It is the false ideal that builds the "Paradise of Fools." It is the
eagerness to achieve success in realms we cannot reach, which breeds
more than half the ills that curse the world. If all the fish eggs were
to hatch, and every little fish become a big fish, the oceans would be
pushed from their beds, and the rivers would be eternally "dammed"--with
fish; but the whales, and sharks, and sturgeons, and dog-fish, and eels,
and snakes, and turtles, make three meals every day in the year on fish
and fish eggs. If all the legal spawn should hatch out lawyers, the
earth and the fullness thereof would be mortgaged for fees, and mankind
would starve to death in the effort to pay off the "aforesaid and the
same." If the entire crop of medical eggs should hatch out full fledged
doctors, old "Skull and Cross Bones" would hold high carnival among the
children of men, and the old sexton would sing:
"I gather them in,
I gather them in."
If I could get the ear of the young men who pant after politics, as the
hart panteth after the water brook, I would exhort them to seek honors
in some other way, for "Jordan is a hard road to travel."
The poet truly said: "How like a mounting devil in the heart is the
unreined ambition. Let it once but play the monarch, and its haughty
brow glows with a beauty that bewilders thought and unthrones peace
forever. Putting on the very pomp of Lucifer, it turns the heart to
ashes, and with not a spring left in the bosom for the spirit's lip,
we look upon our splendor and forget the thirst of which we perish."
THE CIRCUS IN THE MOUNTAINS.
[Illustration: THE CIRCUS IN THE MOUNTAINS.]
I saw a circus in a mountain town. The mountaineers swarmed from far
and near, and lined the streets on every hand with open mouth and bated
breath, as the grand procession, with band, and clown, and camels,
and elephants, and lions, and tigers, and spotted horses, paraded in
brilliant array. The excitement was boundless when the crowd rushed
into the tent, and they left behind them a surging mass of humanity,
unprovided with tickets, and destitute of the silver half of the double
standard. Their interest rose to white heat as the audience within
shouted and screamed with laughter at the clown, and cheered the girl
in tights, and applauded the acrobats as they turned somersaults over
the elephant. But temptation whispered in the ear of a gentleman in tow
breeches, and he stealthily opened his long bladed knife and cut a hole
in the canvas. A score of others followed suit, and held their sides and
laughed at the scenes within. But as they laughed a showman slipped
inside, armed with a policeman's "billy." He quietly sidled up to the
hole where a peeper's nose made a knot on the tent on the inside.
"Whack!" went the "billy"--there was a loud grunt, and old "Tow
Breeches" spun 'round like a top, and cut the "pigeon wing," while his
nose spouted blood. "Whack!" went the "billy" again, and old "Hickory
Shirt" turned a somersault backwards and rose "a-runnin'." The last
"whack" fell like a thunderbolt on the Roman nose of a half drunk old
settler from away up at the head of the creek. He fell flat on his back,
quivered for a moment, and then sat up and clapped his hand to his
bleeding nose and in his bewilderment exclaimed: "Well I'll be durned!
hel-lo there stranger!" he shouted to a bystander, "whar wuz you _at_
when the lightnin' struck the show?" Then I saw a row of bleeding noses
at the branch near by, taking a bath; and each nose resembled a sore
hump on a camel's back.
[Illustration: "WHACK!" WENT THE "BILLY!"]
So it is around the great arena of political fame and power. "Whack!"
goes the "billy" of popular opinion; and politicians, like old "Tow
Breeches," spin 'round with the broken noses of misguided ambition and
disappointed hope. In the heated campaign many a would-be Webster lies
down and dreams of the triumph that awaits him on the morrow, but he
wakes to find it only a dream, and when the votes are counted his
little bird hath flown, and he is in the condition of the old Jew.
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Jew hung up their socks together on
Christmas Eve. The Englishman put his diamond pin in the Irishman's
sock; the Irishman put his watch in the sock of the Englishman; they
slipped an egg into the sock of the Jew. "And did you git onny thing?"
asked Pat in the morning. "Oh yes," said the Englishman, "I received a
fine gold watch, don't you know. And what did you get Pat?" "Begorra,
I got a foine diamond pin." "And what did you get, Jacob?" said the
Englishman to the Jew. "Vell," said Jacob, holding up the egg. "I got
a shicken but it got avay before I got up."
THE PHANTOM OF FORTUNE.
I would not clip the wings of noble, honorable aspiration. I would not
bar and bolt the gate to the higher planes of thought and action, where
truth and virtue bloom and ripen into glorious fruit. There are a
thousand fields of endeavor in the world, and happy is he who labors
where God intended him to labor.
The contented plowman who whistles as he rides to the field and sings as
he plows, and builds his little paradise on the farm, gets more out of
life than the richest Shylock on earth.
The good old spectacled mother in Israel, with her white locks and
beaming face, as she works in her sphere, visiting the poor, nursing the
sick, and closing the eyes of the dead, is more beautiful in her life,
and more charming in her character, than the loveliest queen of society
who ever chased the phantoms of pleasure in the ballroom.
The humblest village preacher who faithfully serves his God, and leads
his pious flock in the paths of holiness and peace, is more eloquent,
and plays a nobler part than the most brilliant infidel who ever
blasphemed the name of God.
The industrious drummer who travels all night and toils all day to win
comfort for wife, and children, and mother, and sister, is a better man,
and a far better citizen, than the most successful speculator on Wall
Street, who plays with the fortunes of his fellow-man as the wolf plays
with the lamb, or as the cyclone plays with the feather.
Young ladies, when the time comes to marry, say "yes" to the good-natured,
big-hearted drummer. For he is a spring in a desert, a straight flush in
a weary hand, a "thing of beauty and a joy forever," and he will never
be at home to bother you.
CLOCKS.
Oliver Wendell Holmes says: "Our brains are seventy year clocks. The
angel of life winds them up once for all, closes the case, and gives the
key into the hand of the resurrection angel." And when I read it I
thought, what a stupendous task awaits the angel of the resurrection,
when all the countless millions of old rickety, rusty, worm-eaten clocks
are to be resurrected, and wiped, and dusted, and repaired, for mansions
in the skies! There will be every kind and character of clock and
clockwork resurrected on that day. There will be the Catholic clock with
his beads, and the Episcopalian clock with his ritual. There will be
an old clock resurrected on that day wearing a broadcloth coat buttoned
up to the throat; and when he is wound up he will go off with a whizz
and a bang. He will get up out of the dust shouting, "hallelujah!" and
he will proclaim "_sanctification!_" and "_falling from grace!_" and
"_baptism by sprinkling and pouring!_" as the only true doctrine by
which men shall go sweeping through the pearly gate, into the new
Jerusalem. And he will be recognized as a Methodist preacher, a little
noisy, a little clogged with chicken feathers, but ripe for the Kingdom
of Heaven.
There will be another old clock resurrected on that day, dressed
like the former, but a little stiffer and straighter in the back,
and armed with a pair of gold spectacles and a manuscript. When he is
wound up he will break out in a cold sepulchral tone with, firstly:
"_foreordination!_" secondly: "_predestination!_" and thirdly: "_the
final perseverance of the saints!_" And he will be recognized as a
Presbyterian preacher, a little blue and frigid, a little dry and
formal, but one of God's own elect, and he will be labeled for Paradise.
There will be an old Hard-shell clock resurrected, with throat whiskers,
and wearing a shad-bellied coat and flap breeches. And when he is wound
up a little, and a little oil is squirted into his old wheels, he will
swing out into space on the wings of the gospel with: "My Dear Beloved
Brethren-ah: I was a-ridin' along this mornin' a-tryin' to study up
somethin' to preach to this dying congregation-ah; and as I rid up by
the old mill pond-ah lo and behold! there was an old snag a sticking
up out of the middle of the pond-ah, and an old mud turtle had clim
up out uv the water and was a settin' up on the old snag a sunnin' uv
himself-ah; and lo! and behold-ah! when I rid up a leetle nearer to
him-ah, he jumped off of the snag, 'ker chugg' into the water, thereby
proving emersion-ah!"
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