Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1881 — A Touching Story. [ARTICLE]

A Touching Story.

Calamity is the name of d ttiatl tvho lives at the gold camp of Cummins City, He has another name, but nobody seems to know what it is. It has been torn off the wrappers someway, and so the boys call him Calamity. He is a man of singular mind and eccentric construction. The most noticeable feature about Calamity is his superstitious dread of muscular activity. Some people will not tackle any kind of business enterprise on Friday. Calamity is even more the victim of vague superstition, and lias a dread of beginning work on any day of the week, for fear that some disaster should befall him. Last spring he had a little domestic trouble, and his wife made complaints that Calamity had worn out an old longhandled shovel on her, trying to convince her about some abstruse theory of his. The testimony seemed rather against Calamity, and the miners told him that as soon as they got over the rush a little, and had the leisure, they would have to hang him. They hoped he would take advantage of the hurry of business and go away, because they did not want to hang him so early in the season. But Calamity did not go away. He stayed because it was easier to stay than to go. He did not, of course, pine for the notoriety of being the first man hung in the camp, but rather than pull up stakes and move away from a place where there are so many pleasant associations, he concluded to stay and meet death calmly, in whatever form it might come.

One evening, after the work of the day was done and the boys had eaten their suppers, one of them suggested that it would be a good time to hang Calamity. So they got things in shape and went -down to the big Laramie bridge. Calamity was with them. They got things all ready for the exercises to begin, and then asked the victim if he had anything to say. He loosened the rope around his neck a little with one hand so that he could speak with more freedom, and holding his pantaloons with the other, said: “Gentlemen of the convention, I call you to witness that this public demonstration toward me is entirely unsought on my part. I have never courted notoriety. Plugging along in comparative obscurity is good enough for me. This is the first time I have ever addressed an audience. That is why I am embarrassed and ill at ease. You have brought me here to hang me because I seemed harsh and severe with my wife. You have entered the hallowed presence of my home-life, and assumed the prerogative of subverting my household descipline. It is well. Ido not care to live, so long as my authority is questioned. You have already changed my submissive wife into an arrogant, self-reliant woman. Yesterday I told her to go out and grease the wagon, and she straightened up to her full height and told me to go and grease it myself. I have always been kind and thoughtful to her. When she had to go up into the guich in the winter after firewood, my coat shielded her from the storm, while I sat alone in the cabin, through the long hours. I could name other instances of unselfishness on my part, but I will not take your time. She uses my smoking tobacco, and kicks my vertebrae up into my hat on the most unlooked for occasions. She does not love me any more, and life to me is only a hollow mockery. Death, with its wide waste of eternal calm and its shoreless sea of rest, is a glad relief to me. I go, but I leave in your midst a skittish and able-bodied woman, who will make Romo howl. I bequeath her to this camp. She is yours, gentlemen. She is ail I have to give, but in giving her to you I feel that my untimely death will always be looked upon in this gulch as a dire calamity. The day will come when you will look back upon this awful night and wish that I was alive again, but it will be too late. I will be far away. My soul will be in a land where domestic infelicity and cold feet can never enter. Bury me at the foot of Vinegar Hill, where the sagehen and the fuzzy bumblebee may gambol o’er my lowly grave.” When Calamity had finished, an impromptu caucus was held. When it was adjurued, Calamity went home to his cabin to surprise his wife. She has not yet fully recovered from her surprise.