Later: While the coroner was summoning a
jury, Mark Antony and other friends of the late Caesar
got hold of the body, and lugged it off to the Forum,
and at last accounts Antony and Brutus were making
speeches over it and raising such a row among the
people that, as we go to press, the chief of police
is satisfied there is going to be a riot, and is taking
measures accordingly.
One of the saddest things that ever came under my
notice (said the banker’s clerk) was there in
Corning during the war. Dan Murphy enlisted
as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys
all liked him, and when a wound by and by weakened
him down till carrying a musket was too heavy work
for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as
a sutler. He made money then, and sent it always
to his wife to bank for him. She was a washer
and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep
money when she got it. She didn’t waste
a penny.
On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank-account
grew. She grieved to part with a cent, poor
creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had
known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick,
and without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting
dread of suffering so again. Well, at last Dan
died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and
respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know
if she would like to have him embalmed and sent home;
when you know the usual custom was to dump a poor
devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform
his friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy
jumped to the conclusion that it would only cost two
or three dollars to embalm her dead husband, and so
she telegraphed “Yes.” It was at
the “wake” that the bill for embalming
arrived and was presented to the widow.
She uttered a wild, sad wail that pierced every heart,
and said, “Sivinty-foive dollars for stooffin’
Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose
I was goin’ to stairt a Museim, that I’d
be dalin’ in such expinsive curiassities !”
The banker’s clerk said there was not a dry
eye in the house.
The scriptural Panoramist—[Written
about 1866.]
“There was a fellow traveling around in that
country,” said Mr. Nickerson, “with a
moral-religious show—a sort of scriptural
panorama —and he hired a wooden-headed
old slab to play the piano for him. After the
first night’s performance the showman says:
“’My friend, you seem to know pretty much
all the tunes there are, and you worry along first
rate. But then, didn’t you notice that
sometimes last night the piece you happened to be
playing was a little rough on the proprieties, so
to speak—didn’t seem to jibe with
the general gait of the picture that was passing at
the time, as it were—was a little foreign
to the subject, you know—as if you didn’t
either trump or follow suit, you understand?’
