Playing the mischief :: :: University of Virginia Library

Mr. David Shorthand, the local editor of
the Washington Newsmonger, though not personally
fortunate enough to see any portion
of the tragedy, had the good luck to meet
a gentleman who had witnessed the close
of it. This person he interviewed, as the
phrase is; then he interviewed the druggist
and his clerks, and the dirty little negro
whose scarecrow-hat had been perforated;
finally he probed his way into Squire Nancy's
office and interviewed that lovely sufferer.

It is certain that he would also have called
upon Mr. Drummond himself for particulars,
only that he remembered the young
legislator as a fellow who had knocked him
down some two or three years before, and
feared lest he might take advantage of a
renewal of the acquaintance to repeat the
operation.

But from the above-mentioned individuals,
and from his own abominably copious
sewer of an imagination, he drew materials
enough to give such a report of the affair
as set all the low people in Washington
roaring with laughter.

Remembering the Drummond fist, he mentioned
no names; but he described the personages
of his drama so vividly that it was
not hard for people who knew them to recognize
them; and, moreover, he used such
distinguishing phrases as “the heroic Bloomer,”
“the lovely little widow,” and “the
young Lycurgus of the Empire State.”

The narrative was a masterpiece of that
rowdy, harlequin fun which does us such
credit abroad as “American humor.” It
was as impudent as the letters of Major Jack
Downing, and as hyperbolical as the relations
of Mr. John Phœnix.

Such a fight as it made out! One round
after another; first blood for the heroic
Bloomer; first knock-down for the Empire
State Lycurgus; the lovely widow cheering
on her honorable champion; the crowd hurraing
for the strong-minded one: a full
column of exaggerations and inventions!
Mr. Shorthand wrote out of an intemperate
imagination and a rapidly emptying whisky-bottle.
For it must be understood that he
was a poor blackguard drunkard; in person,
a thin, pale, wizened, downcast-looking,
sneaking, shabby scarecrow; in morals, an
impudent, conscienceless, rascally, contemptible
liar.

It is almost a scandal to confess that
among the first persons to read this preposterous
narrative were the Reverend and
Mrs. Murray. We know how early they got
up in the morning, and what a praiseworthy
thing it is to get up early, especially when
there is no cause for it. But all the sooner
commenced the life-long marital task of finding
amusement for a mind which was too
weak to labor and at the same time too active
to be patient of repose.

So Parson Murray took that dreadful
sheet, the Newsmonger, and read it to his
wife before breakfast just as regularly as he
read family prayers after breakfast. They
were both a little ashamed of it; they never
alluded to it except among their most intimate
and trustworthy friends; they commented
upon its scandalous items in such
phrases as, “Impudent! Perfectly outrageous!
How dare he print such stuff!” etc.

But at bottom it was really relished, not
only by fragile old Mrs. Murray, but also by
her reverend husband. Their expressions
of disapprobation and contempt very closely
resembled the grimace and the wiping of
the mouth with which an ancient drunkard
apologizes for his dram.

Well, they read Mr. Shorthand's effusion
nearly through, and laughed over it as much
as people usually do laugh before breakfast,
ere they began to suspect that it concerned
their household. Of a sudden the old lady
looked up with a start of frightened comprehension,
and exclaimed:

“Why, Mr. Murray!”

“You—don't—think so?” answered the
husband, catching her suspicion, and staring
horror-stricken at her over the top of the
now shaking paper.

“Why, it is! Why, Mr. Murray, it certainly
is! Why, Mr. Murray, it's perfectly
shameful!”

“It does read like it!” gasped Mr. Murray.
“Lovely young widow; one of the
belles of the season; related to one of our

most respectable clergymen. It does certainly
read like it.”

“And she knows that Congressman—I
can't think of his name now, but I know
who it means—she knows him and walks
with him.”

“I remember—Rimmon?—Crummond?
What is it?” mumbled the rector.

“No, not Crummond. Oh, I've got it now.
No, I haven't. Yes, I have. Drummond—
that's the name—Drummond, Drummond,”
repeated Mrs. Murray, with her mind's eye
fixed on the pages of her diary. “Yes,
Drummond! She knows him, and she goes
out with him. And so she is the lovely
widow, and all this is about her! Oh, Mr.
Murray, what shall we do? I can't stand
this; I'm sure I can't. It is too much. It
will make—me—SICK!”

The emphasis and pathos with which she
uttered this prophecy revealed a fervid instinct
of self-preservation and an almost
life-long habit of self-care. For thirty years
and more a large part of her purposes and
anxieties had been devoted to the problem
of how not to grow old, not to be ill, and not
to die.

But why should the “American humor”
of the Newsmonger strike her with such dismay?
Well, she was a “born lady,” both in
blood and in character; she had the honorable
sensitiveness and the honorable though
occasionally whimsical pride of that most
worthy type of humanity; she had never
herself done a deed which society could scoff
at, and she loved to believe that her relatives
were worthy of her. Both the Murrays
and her own blood-kindred, they were
all hereditary, infallible gentlemen and ladies,
the objects of her veneration and the
world's. The idea that her most respectable
breed should, through the naughtiness
or indecorum or imprudence of one of its
retainers, become a mark for scandal and
scorn was enough, as she afterward solemnly
remarked, “to make any one sick.”

“I am afraid it is the nature of the creature
to have such things happen to her,”
groaned the clergyman. “There are the old
stories—”

“I don't believe them!” exclaimed Mrs.
Murray, who had already pronounced for
her favorite against those accusations, and
did not like being called on to reverse her
judgment. “But this is dreadful enough.
She must be inconsiderate. To get such a
vile piece as that written about her, and us
mixed up with it—it is too bad! I don't
know what I shall do. I can't stand it. It
will make me SICK.”

Indeed it seemed likely; she had been
tossing her hands about in a wild way, verging
on hysteria; and now she began to cry
outright. Nor did Mr. Murray, although a
man of good natural parts and of fair intellectual
training, behave with much great
er self-control. The spectacle of his wife's
trouble acted upon his sensitive nerves as
the spectacle of one lunatic's ravings acts
upon another lunatic.

He did not walk the room in anger, for
frequent rheumatism, and chronic muscular
weakness resulting from it, made walking
difficult to him, and he rarely used his legs
except for the purpose of getting to some
desired point. He sat still, with his slippered
feet in a chair, softly patting his wife's
hand; but mentally, the while, he was in a
state of feverish action, talking loudly and
wrathfully.

“I won't have it!” he exclaimed. “Don't
cry, my dear Huldah; I wish you wouldn't
cry. I won't have so many men here. I
won't have her rushing about so incessantly.
I will have some peace and order and
decorum in my own house. I won't have a
life going on around me which can lead to
such adventures and such comments.”

“Such adventures and comments,” repeated
Mrs. Murray, wiping her eyes. “Such a
disgrace to the family!”

“I don't mind about that,” said the rector.
“The family may take care of itself,
and can take care of itself. My ancestors
are out of harm's way. But I will not have
you tormented. You need rest. You have
had excitement enough of late to kill a
horse. I will allow it no longer; I will
put a stop to it—an entire stop! an instant
stop! It must be stopped. I'll stop it myself
if no one else will. I say I will stop it
—stop it.”

It was a marked symptom of excitement,
this frequent and eager and indistinct iteration
of one word, this stammering of both
mind and tongue. His face, too, was flushed,
and his large features disturbed by twitchings,
while his free hand was in constant
movement. Had the family physician been
present, he would probably have advised
him to go to bed and have his feet soaked
in hot water. Mrs. Murray, who knew him,
of course, better than any doctor, soon noted
his nervous agitation, and took alarm at it,
to the partial forgetting of her own trouble.

“Don't, Mr. Murray!” she begged. “Don't
say another word about it. I shall feel better
in a minute.”

But the rector's sickly outbursts could not
be quelled at once, not even by the voice of
the woman for whom he had lived a life of
pure love.

“I can't have it—I can't have it,” he babbled
on. “I won't have it. I say it must
stop—all stop. I say so, and when I say
things I mean them,” declared this mild old
valetudinarian, who considered himself a
stern and belligerent person. “I mean what
I say. I mean it—every word of it—every
word.”

“Do stop, Mr. Murray,” urged the old lady,
becoming thoroughly frightened. “You are

so excitable!” she added, with a slight sense
of grievance in that she had not been allowed
to have her own excitement out. “I
wouldn't mind about it now—not this time.
I don't suppose she will rush into another
such adventure. I do hope you won't say a
word to her, at least not till we learn more
about it—not till you know you must interfere.
You get so excited when you go at
people! You will hurt yourself: I am sure
you will. You will have one of your attacks.
And then — if you are taken down
sick—what is to become of me?” she fairly
whimpered.

This was an appeal never uttered in vain.
The shattered man, whose affections could
never be shattered, remembered that he must
keep himself well in order to care for his
fragile wife, and strove to bring his mind
back to calmness. Nearly all of his childishness
was for her sake; and for her sake
also was much of his finest manliness.

Thus happened it that, when Josie Murray
came down to breakfast that morning,
she got no lecture from her protectors concerning
her street misadventure, and was
called upon for no explanation. The Newsmonger
was, of course, hidden, as, indeed, it
had always been hidden, from her, lest her
innocent soul should be harmed by those
readings which were so refreshing to elder
and wiser people. She found the rector and
wife jaded and indisposed to talk, and learned
from them that their slumbers had been
broken by the neighbor's dog, a fictitious
animal of whom they spoke with great severity.
It was wrong, of course, to tell such
a fib; but, then, Mr. Murray must not be allowed
to get excited; no, nor Mrs. Murray
either. In fact, if Josie had committed a
murder the day before, and the Newsmonger
had contained all the harrowing particulars,
these two frail old people would scarcely
have spoken to her about it, for fear of
making themselves sick.

Besides, she was an immense amusement;
and they really liked her very much, especially
when she was present; and would
have been sorry to give her pain, unless it
were likely to redound to their health. This
morning she did her best to be agreeable,
for there was a little fear in her soul lest the
Appleyard adventure should get out, and
she felt the need of help and of all her
friends. So she racked her brain for tattle
and stories, and was so prodigiously diverting,
that Mrs. Murray soon fell to giggling,
whereupon the rector laughed to see his
wife laugh.

Meantime the article in the Newsmonger
made quite a wonderful uproar in Washington
society. Multitudes of people took that
lampooning periodical, although nearly every
body talked more or less in dispraise of
it. So Dave Shorthand's sample of American
humor was read and laughed over at
hundreds of breakfast-tables, and laughed
over all the more, because the persons whom
it displayed were generally recognized, and
were notabilities. Of course, Squire Appleyard
was famous, as any woman may be
who will persistently wear trowsers, or as
any man might be who should invest himself
with petticoats. Josie Murray, too,
was already well known as a leader of fashion
and flirting, while Drummond had an
enviable repute for ability, and a disagreeable
one for other things.

Indeed, the Shorthand article promptly
became a Congressional matter, at least so
far as to be gravely talked over in committee-rooms.
Mr. Hollowbread, dropping
in upon General Daniel Bangs, the noted
chairman of the Committee on Spoliations,
was much disgusted at finding that gentleman
reading the history of the Appleyard
combat, and guffawing to himself over it.
The Shorthand style, with its slang, its harlequin
wit, its coarse insinuations, and its
Bowery impudence, was just the kind of
writing to please the general. It bore a disagreeably
close resemblance to the dashing,
rollicking, billingsgate eloquence with
which he was accustomed to defend thieves
and murderers before juries, and demagogical
swindlers before Congress. For the
great wire-puller was by profession a criminal
lawyer, and, as some plagiaristic jokers
put it, a very criminal lawyer. To give the
devil his due, by-the-way, we must not omit
the fact that he had great power of speech,
aside from his street Arab-wit. He could
grasp the whole of a difficult case or a complicated
bill; he could argue the right or
the wrong side of either with admirable
completeness of view, closeness of logic, and
vigor of statement; he was not wanting, either,
in the notes of high appeal, or, strange
to say, of moving pathos; and, finally, his
diction was singularly lucid, varied, and
precise, for an extemporaneous orator. In
fact, he was a very able man, and would,
perhaps, have been a great one, if he had
possessed any moral principles, or could
have imagined them in others. His constant
stumbling-block was this, that he believed
that all his countrymen were rogues,
and could be moved by merely roguish motives.

“By the Lord, I should think I had written
that myself,” roared the general, as Josie's
advocate entered the committee-room.
“Look here, Hollowbread, have you seen
this neat joke on Drummond, Appleyard,
and Co.?”

Mr. Hollowbread, who did not consider it
a neat joke, but, on the contrary, a very
foul-mouthed one, nodded rather grimly.

“And so Drummond got a sound cowhiding
— ho, ho, ho!” shouted the honorable
chairman. “It's astonishing. I thought
he was a man of muscle and grit, who

wouldn't let even a woman whip him. I
don't see how fellows put up with such assaults.
If a termagant attempted to wale
me in that style, I should just simply and
forcibly knock her down. However, it
serves Drummond right—cuts his comb for
him.”

“Mr. Drummond was not waled at all,”
answered Hollowbread, whose desire it was
to demolish Shorthand's entire history, and
destroy what little credit it deserved. “I
have taken the pains to look into this babble.
It is mainly a fabrication.”

“Oh, is it?” laughed General Bangs, even
more amused than before. “I dare say.
The Newsmonger is up to any thing. It is a
devilish clever paper. But what interest
do you take in the business? You don't
want to help out Drummond for any thing,
do you? If it's all the same to you, I want
him smashed. He is a conceited, impudent
bully, and in every body's way.”

Mr. Hollowbread did not say what he
thought concerning this declaration of opinion
and feeling. Had he been regardless
of consequences, and had it been the fashion
of this world to utter every discoverable
truth on all occasions, he would have
remarked on the curious fact that one conceited,
impudent bully should hate another.
But he was chiefly anxious to promote the
welfare of Josie Murray, and to that end he
desired to keep the good-will of General
Bangs.

“I wouldn't perhaps mind smashing
Drummond,” he said; “or that idiot of a
Nancy Appleyard, either. But I have an
interest in seeing this whole invention exploded,
for the reason that it casts insinuations
upon another person, a lady whom I
regard with profound respect.”

He spoke the truth. It is a wonderful
and almost a beautiful fact that he absolutely
revered Josie Murray. She was a
young flirt, and he was a practiced old beau
and wire-puller, and yet he loved her so sincerely
that he worshiped the very thought
of her.

“Oh, the lovely widow!” exclaimed the
general, changing his horse-laugh to a knowing
grin, by no means respectful to Josie.
“So it was your lovely widow, the pretty
claimant? But how the dickens came she
to be so mixed up with Drummond and the
Appleyard woman?”

“She was not mixed up with them,” asserted
Mr. Hollowbread trembling and perspiring
with wrath. “She was joined in
the street by Drummond, who has the brass,
you know, to join any body—to join the Madonna,
or his Creator! She had scarcely
walked a block with him, and was just turning
into a shop to get rid of him, when
that lunatic hermaphrodite appeared with
her cowhide. All this I learned from Mrs.
Murray herself, whom I saw not an hour
ago. As for the flogging, I have gathered
from other parties that not a blow was
struck, and that Drummond took away the
whip, pushed the Bloomer into the gutter,
and walked off. Nearly the whole story of
the Newsmonger is a pure, simple, low-bred,
scoundrelly fabrication.”

“Exactly—I dare say,” answered Bangs,
accustomed to meet with fabrications and
to make them.

As a criminal lawyer, he had fabricated
evidence; as a general in the late war, he
had fabricated accounts of victories; as a
politician, he had fabricated slanderous letters
and braggadocio telegrams. There was
no end to his latitude of lying, and he
honestly believed that his fellow-men were
equally illimitable in that direction, especially
when they belonged to the “brotherhood
of the press.”

“I dare say,” repeated the general, meanwhile
meditating tranquilly. “See here,
Hollowbread,” he added; “you came to me
about this affair, didn't you? You have
this lady's interests at heart? Well, something
ought to be done. Such a story as
this may cast a shadow on your claimant,
and injure her prospects in the House. Let
me give you a bit of advice.”