Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1878 — “A TOURIST FROM INJIANNY.” [ARTICLE]

“A TOURIST FROM INJIANNY.”

We first saw him from the deck of the Unser Fritz, as that gallant steamer was preparing to leave the port of New York lor Plymouth, Havre and Hamburg. Perhaps it was that all objects at that moment become indelibly impressed on the memory of the departing voyager—perhaps it was that mere interrupting trivialities always assume undue magnitude to us when we are Avaiting for something really important —hut I retain a vivid impression of him as he appeared on the gangway in apparently hopeless, yet, as it afterward appeared, really triumphant, altercation with the Germanspeaking dcck-liands and stewards. He was not an heroic figure. Clad in a worn linen duster, his arms filled with bags and parcels, he might have been taken for a hackman carrying the luggage of his fare. But it was noticeable that, although he calmly persisted in speaking English and ignoring the voluble German of his antagonists, he in some rude fashion accomplished his object without.losing his temper or increasing his temperature, while his foreign enemy was crimson with rage and perspiring with heat; and that presently, having violated a dozen of the ship’s regulations, lie took his place by tho side of a very pretty girl, apparently liis superior in station, who addressed him as “ father.” As the great ship swung out into the stream he was still a central figure on our deck, getting into everybody’s way, addressing all with equal familiarity, imperturbable to affront or snub, but always doggedly and consistently adhering to one purpose, however trivial or inadequate) to the means employed. “ You’re sittin’ on sntliin’ o’ mine, Miss,” he began, for the third or fourth time, to the elegant Miss Montmorris, who was revisiting Europe under high social conditions. “ Jist rise up while I get it—’twon’t take a minit.”

Not, only was that lady forced to rise, but to make necessary the rising and discomposing of the whole Montmorris parly who were congregated around her. The missing “ suthin’ ” was discovered to be a very old and battered newspaper. “ It’s the Cinciimaty Times,” he explained, as he quietly took it up, oblivious to the indignant glances of the party. “ It’s a little squoshed by your sittin’ on it, but it’ll do to refer to. It’s got a letter from Payris, sliowin’ the prices o’ them tliar hotels and rist’rants, and I allowed to my darter we might want it on the other side. Thar’s one or two French names tliar'that rather gets me— mebbe your eyes is stronger;” but here the entire Montmorris party rustled away, leaving him with the paper in one hand -the other pointing at the paragraph. Not at all discomfited, he glanced at the vacant bench, took possession of it with his hat, duster and umbrella, disappeared, and presently appeared again with his daughter, a lank-looking young man, and an angular elderly female, and —so replaced the Montmorrises. When we were fairly at sea he was missed. A pleasing belief that he had fallen overboard, or had been left behind, was dissipated by liis appearance one morning, with his daughter on one arm, and the elderly female before alluded to on the other. The Unser Fritz was lolling heavily at the time, but, with his usual awkward pertinacity, he insisted upon attempting to walk tovard the best part of the deck, as ho always did, as if it were, a right and a duty. A lurch brought him and his uncertain freight in contact with the Montmorrises, there was a moment of wild confusion, two or three seats were emptied, and he was finally led away by the steward, an obviously and obtrusively sick man. But, when ho had disappeared below, it was noticed that he had secured two excellent seats for his female companions. Nobody dared to disturb the elder; nobody eared to disturb the younger —who, it may be here re-' corded, had a certain shy reserve which checked aught but the simplest civilities from the male passengers. A few days later it Avas discovered that he was not an inmate of the first, but of the second cabin; that the elderly female Avas not his Avife, as popularly supposed, but the room-mate of his daughter in the first cabin. These facts made his various intrusions on the saloon deck the more exasperating to the Montmorrises, yet the more difficult to deal with. Eventually, hoAvever, he had, tvs usual, his oaa’ii way; no place was sacred, or debarred his slouched hat and duster. They Avere turned out of the engine-room to reappear upon the bridge, they Avere forbidden the forecastle to rise a ghostly presence beside the officer in his solemn supervision of the compass. They would have been lashed to the riggin g on their Avay to the maintop, but for the silent protest of his daughter’s presence on deck. Most of liis interrupting familiar conversation Avas addressed to the interdicted “ man at the wheel.” Hitherto I had contented myself Avitli the fascination of his presence from afar—wisely, perhaps, deeming it dangerous to a true picturesque perspective to alter my distance, and perhaps, like the best of us, I fear, preferring to keep my OAvn idea of him than to run the risk of altering it by a closer acquaintance. One day when I was lounging by the stern-rail, idly watching the dogged ostentation of the screw, that had been steadily intimating, after the fashion of screws, that it Avas the only thing in the ship Avith a persistent purpose, the ominous shadoAv of the slouched hat and the trailing duster fell upon me. There Avas nothing to do but accept it meekly. Indeed, my theory of the man made ire helpless. “ I didn’t know until yesterday who you be,” ho began deliberately, “or I shouldn’t hev’ been so onsocial. But I’ve allers told my darter that in permis-

kiss travlin’ a man ought to be keerful of who he meets. I’ve read some of your writin’s—read ’em in a paper in Injianny—but I never reckoned I’d meet ye. Things is queer, and travlin’ brings all sorter people together. My darter Looeze suspected ye from the first, and she worried over it, and kinder put me up to this.” The most delicate flattery could not have done more. To have been in the thought of this reserved, gentle girl, who scarcely seemed to notice even those who had paid her attention was “She put me up to it,” he continued calmly, “though she, herself, hez a kind o’ pre-judise again you and your writin’s —tliinkin’ them sort o’ low doAvn, and the folks talked about not to her style—and ye know that’s woman’s nater, and she and Miss Montmorris agree on that point. But tliar’s a few friends with me round yer ez Avould like to see yeT He stepped aside, and a dozen men appeared in- Indian file from behind the round-house, and, with a solemnity known only to the Anglo-Saxon nature, shook my hand deliberately, and then dispersed themselves in various attitudes against the railings. They were honest, well-meaning countrymen of mine, but I could not recall a single face. There was a dead silence; the screw, however, ostentatiously went on. “You see Avhat I told you,” it said. “ This is all vapidity and trifling. I’m the only felloAv here with a purpose. Whiz, whiz; chug, chug, chug!” I was about to make some remark of a general nature, when I was greatly relieved to observe my companion’s friends detach themselves from the railings, and, with a slight boAV and another shako of the hand, severally retire, apparently as much relieved as myself. My companion, Avho had in the meantime acted as if he had discharged himself of a duty, said, “ Thar oilers must be somo one to tend to this kind o’ thing, or thar’s no sociableness. I took a deppytation into the Cap’n’s room yesterday to make some proppysitions, and thar’s a minister of the gospel aboard ez orter be spoke to afore next Sunday, and I reckon it’s my duty, onless,” he added, with deliberate and formal politeness, “you’d prefer to do it—bein’, so to speak, a public man.” But the public man hastily deprecated any interference Avith the speaker’s functions, and, to change the conversation, remarked that he had heard that there Avere a party of Cook’s tourists on board, and — Avere not the preceding gentlemen of the number ? But the question caused the speaker to lay aside liis hat, take a comfortable position on the deck against the rail, and, draA\ r ing his knees up under his chin, begin as follows: “ Speaking o’ Cook and Cook’s tourists, I’m my own Cook! I reckon I calkilate and know every cent that I’ll spend ’twixt Evansville, Injianny, and Borne and Naples, and everything I’ll see.” He paused a moment, and, laying his hand familiarly on my knee, said, “ Did I ever tell ye how i kem to go abroad ? ”

As avc h id never spoken together before, it Avas safe to reply that he had not. He rubbed his head softly Avith his hand, knitted his iron-gray broAvs, and then said, meditatively, “ No! it must hev been that head-waiter. He sorter favors you in the musstaclie and gen’ral get-up. I guess it war him I spoke to.” I thought it must have been. “ Well, then, this is the way it kem about. I Avas sittin’ one night, about three months ago, Avith my darter Looeze—mv Avife bein’ dead some four year —and I Avas reading to her out of the paper about the Exposition. She sez to me, quiet-like—she’s a quiet sort o’ gal, if you ever notissed her—‘l should like to go tliar.’ I looks at her—it was the first time sense her mother died that that gal had ever asked for anything, or had, so to speak, a wish. It Avasn’t her way. Sho took everything ez it kem, and deni my skin es I ever could toll Avlietlier she ever Avantcd it to kem in any other Avay. I never told ye this afore, did I?” “ No,” I said, hastily. “Go on.” He felt his knees for a moment, and then dreAv a long breath. “ Perhaps,” he began, deliberately, “ye don’t knoAV that I’m a poor man. Seein’ me here among these rich folks, goiu’ abroad to Paree with the best, o’ them, and Looeze tliar -in the first cabin—a lady, ez she is—ye wouldn’t b’leeve it, but I’m poor? I am. Well, sir, Avlien that gal looks up at me and sez that —I hadn’t but sl2 in my pocket and I ain’t the durned fool that I look—but suthin’ in me—sntliin’, you kiiOAv, a Avay back in me—sez, you shall! Loo-ey, you shall! and then I sez—repeatin’it, and looking upright in her eyes, ‘ You shall go, Loo-ey ’ —did you ever look in my gal’s eyes ? ” I parried that someAvliat direct question by another, “ But the $12 —lioav did you increase that ? ”

o’ work here and there, overtime—l’m a machinist. I used to keej) this yer overwork from Loo—saying I had to see men in the evenin’ to get pints about Europe—and that—.and getting a little money raised on my life-insurance, I shoved her through. And here we is. Chipper and first-class—all through—that is, Loo is! ” “ But $250! And Rome, and Naples, and return ? You can’t do it! ” Ho looked at mo cunningly a moment. “ Kan’t do it! I’ve done it ? ” “ Done it? ” “Wall, about the same, I reckon; I’ve figgered it out. Figgers don’t lie. I ain’t no Cook’s tourist; I can see Cook and give him pints. I tell you I’ve figgered it out to a cent, and I’ve money to spare. Of course, I don’t reckon to travel with Loo. She’ll go first-class. But I’ll be near her, if it’s in the steerage of a ship, or in the baggage car of a railroad. I don’t need much in the way of grub or clothes, and now and then I kin pickup a job. Perhaps you disremember that row I had in the engine-room, when they chucked me out of it ? ” I could not help looking at him with astonishment; there was evidently only a pleasant memory in his mind. Yet I recalled that I had felt indignant for him and his daughter. “ Well, that fool of a Dutchman, that chief-engineer, gives. me a job the other day. And es I hadn’t just forced my way down there, and talked sassy to him, and criticized his macheen, he’d liev never knowed a eccentric from a wagon-wheel. Do you see the pint ? ” I thought I began to see it. But I could not help asking what his daughter thought of his traveling in this inferior way. He laughed. “ When I was gettin’ up some pints from them books of travel I read her a proverb or saying outer one o’ them, that ‘only princes and fools and Americans traveled first-class.’ You see I told her it didn’t say * women,’ for they naterally would ride first-class—and Amerikan gals, being Princesses, didn’t count. Don’t you see?” If I did not quite follow his logic, nor see my way clearly into his daughter’s acquiescence through this speech, some light may be thrown upon it by his next utterance. I had risen with some vague words of congratulation on his success, and was about to leave him, when he called me back. “ Did I tell ye,” he said, cautiously looking around, yet with a smile of stifled enjoyment in his face, “ did I tell ye what that gal—my darter—sed to me ? No, I didn’t tell ye—nor no one else afore. Come here! ” He made me dfftw down closely infcq

the shadow and secrecy of the roundhouse. “ That night that I told my gal she could go abroad, I sez to her, quite chipper-like and free, ‘ I say, Looey,’ sez I, ‘ ye’ll be goin’ for to marry some o’ them Counts, or Dukes, or potentates, I reckon, and ye’U leave the old man.’ And she sez, sez she, lookin’ me squar in the eye—did ye ever notiss that gal’s eye? ” “ She has fine eyes,” I replied, cautiously. “ They is ez clean ez a fresh milk-pan and ez bright. Nothin’ sticks to ’em. Eh?” “ You are right.” “ Well, she looks up at me this way,” here he achieved a vile imitation of his daughter’s modest glance, not at all like her, “ and, looking at me, she sez quietly, ‘ That’s what I’m goin’ for, and to improve my mind.’ He! he! he! It’s a sack! To marry a nobleman and improve her mind! Ha! ha! ha! ” The evident enjoyment that he took in this, and the quiet ignoring of anything of a moral quality in his daughter’s sentiments, or in his confiding them to a stranger’s ear, again upset all my theories. I may say here that it is one of the evidences of original character, that it is apt tp baffle all prognosis from a mere observer’s standpoint. But I recalled it some months after. . We parted in England. It is not necessary, in this brief chronicle, to repeat the various stories of “ Uncle Joshua,” as the younger and more frivolous of our passengers called him, nor that twothirds of the stories repeated were utterly at variance Avitli my estimate of the man, although, I may add, I was also doubtful of the accuracy of my OAvn estimate. But one quality Avas alAvays dominant—his restless, dogged pertinacity and calm imperturbability! “He asked Miss Montmorris if she ‘ minded ’ singin’ a little in the second cabin to liven it up, and added, as an inducement, that they didn’t know good music from bad,” said Jack Walter to me. “ And, Avhen he mended the broken lock of my trunk, he abtholutely propotlied to me to atlik Gouthin Grath if thee didn’t want a ‘ koorier ’ to travel Avitli her to ‘do mechanics,’ provided thee would take charge of that dreadfully deaf-and-dumb daughter of his. Wothn’t it funny? Really, he’th one of your characters,” said the youngest Miss Montmorris to me as Ave made our adieu on the steamer. I am afraid he Avas not, although he Avas good enough afterAvard to establish one or two of my theories regarding him. I was enabled to assist -him once in an altercation he had Avith a cabman regarding the fare of his daughter, the cabman retaining a distinct impression that the father had also ridden in some obscure way in or upon the' same cab — as he undoubtedly had—and I grieve to say, foolishly. I heard that he had forced his way into a certain great house in England, and that he was ignominiously rejected, but I also heard that ample apologies had been made to a certain quiet, modest daughter of his avlio Avas Avitliout on the laAvn, and also that a certain Personage, whom I approach, even in this vague way, with a capital letter, had graciously taken a fancy to the poor child, and had invited her to a reception. But this is only hearsay evidence. So also is the story which met me in Paris, that he had been up with his daughter in the captive balloon, and that at an elevation of several thousand feet from the earth he had made some remarks upon the attaching cable and the drum on Avliich the cable revolved, which not only excited the interest of the passengers, but attracted the attention of the authorities, so that he Avas not only given a gratuitous ascent afterward, but Avas, I am told, offered some gratuity. But I shall restrict this narrative to the few facts of Avhicli I was personally cognizant in the career of this remarkable man. I was at a certain entertainment given in Paris by the heirs, executors, and assignees of an admirable man, long since gathered to his fathers in Pere la Chaise, but whose Shakspeare-like bust still looks calmly and benevolently down on the riotous revelry of absurd wickedness of which lie was, when living, the patron saint. The entertainment was of such a character that, while the performers Avere chiefly Avomen, a majority of the spectators Avere men. The few exceptions were foreigners, and among them I quickly recognized my fair fellow-countrywomen, the Montmorrises. “ Don’t thay that you’ve tlieen us here,” said the youngest Miss Montmorris, “ for ith only a lark. Ith awfully funny! And that friend of yourth from Injianny ith here with hith daughter.” It did not take me long to find my friend Uncle Joshua’s serious, practical, unsympathetic face in the front i-oav of tables and benches. But beside him, to my utter consternation, was his shy and modest daughter. In another moment I was at his side. “I really think—l am afraid—” I begau in a whisper, “ that you have made a mistake. I don’t think you can be aivare of the character of this place. Your daughter—” “ Kem here Avith Miss Montmorris She’s yer. It’s all right.” I was at my Avits’ end. Happily, at this moment, Mile. Rochefort, from the Orangie, skipped out in the quadrille immediately before us, caught her light skirts in either hand, and executed a pas that lifted the hat from the eyes of some of the front spectators and pulled it down over the eyes of others. The Montmorrises fluttered aAvay with a a half-hysterical giggle and a' half-con-founded escort. The modest-looking Miss Loo, who had been staring at everything quite indifferently, suddenly stepped forward, took her father’s arm, and said, sharply, “ Come.” At this moment a voice in English, but unmistakably belonging to the politest nation in the world, rose from behind the girl, mimickingly. “My God! it is shocking. I bloosh! Oh, dammit! ”

In an instant he was in the hands of “ Uncle Joshua,” and forced back clamoring against the railing, his hat smashed oyer his foolish, furious face, and half his shirt and cravat in the old man’s strong grip. Several students rushed to the rescue of their compatriot, but one or two Englishmen and half a dozen Americans had managed, in some mysterious way, to bound into the arena. I looked hurriedly for Miss Louisa, but she was gone. When we had extracted the old man from the melee, I asked him where she was. “ Oh, I reckon she’s gone off with Sir Arthur, I saw him here just as I pitched into that dam fool.” “ Sir Arthur? ” “ Yes, an aquaintance o’ Loo’s.” “ She’s in my carriage, just outside,” interrupted a handsome young fellow, with the shoulders of a giant and the blushes of a girl. “ It’s all over now, you know. It was rather a foolish lark, you coming here with her without knowing—you know—anything about it, you know. But this way—thank you. She’s waiting f®r you,” and in another instant he and the old man had vanished. Nor did I see him again until he stepped into the railway carriage with me on his way to Liverpool. “ You see I’m trav’lin’ first class now,” he said, “ but goin’ home I don’t mind a trifle extry expense.” “ Then you have made your tour,” I asked, “ and are successful ? ” “ Wall, yes, we saw Switzerland and Italy, and, if I hedn’t been short o’ time, we’d hev gone to Egypt. Mebbe next winter I’ll run over again to see Loo, and do it.” “ Then your daughter does not return with you?” J contin-

ned, in some astonishment. “ Wall, no —she’s Arisiting some of Sir Arthur’s relatives in Kent. Sir Arthur is there—perhaps you recollect him ? ” He paused a moment, looked cautiously around, and, with the same enjoyment he had shown on shipboard, said, “Do yon remember the joke I told you on Loo, when she was at sea? ” “ Yes.” “ Well, don’t ye say anything about it nou\ But dam my skin if it doesn’t look like coming true.” And it did. —Bret Harte.