 | Phœnixiana; or, Sketches and burlesques |  |
PHŒNIX AT BENICIA.
I observed your pathetic inquiry as to my whereabouts. I'm
all right, sir. I have been vegetating for two or three weeks
in this sweet (scented) place, enjoying myself, after a manner,
in “a tranquil cot, in a pleasant spot, with a distant view of
the changing sea.” Howbeit, Benicia is not a Paradise. Indeed,
I am inclined to think that had Adam and Eve been
originally placed here, the human race would never have been
propagated. It is my impression that the heat, and the wind,
and some other little Benician accidents, would have been too
much for them. It would have puzzled them, moreover, to
disobey their instructions; for there is no Tree of Knowledge,
or any other kind in Benicia; but if they had managed this,
what, in the absence of fig-leaves, would they have done for
clothing? Maybe tulé would have answered the purpose—
there's plenty of that. I remarked to my old friend, Miss
Wiggins, the other day, in a conversation on Benicia, its advantages
and its drawbacks, that there was not much society
and Mr. Woodbridge's, but I don't belong to nuther.”
“I don't either,” said I, and the conversation terminated.
I hardly know what to write to you; I remind myself of
the old Methodist Elder, way down on the French Broad, in
Tennessee, who was unexpectedly called upon to address a
Camp-Meeting. He slowly rose and ejaculated, “Brutherin,”
—here an idea struck him—“Brutherin,” said he, “the term
Brutherin arose from an old custom of the Apostles, who
used to go up to the tabernacle and breathe therein! Hence
the term, Brutherin. But my brutherin,” he went on, “I'm
not a going to take my text from any particular part of
the Bible to-night. I'll tell you,” said he, with a pleasant
smile, as he warmed to his work, “I'll tell you all about
old brother Paul—who went down to Corinth and got into
an all-fired scrape—and was knocked down—and drug out—
and left thar for dead—all of which is written by Hellicarnassus,
up the Archipelago—bless-ed be the Lord!” Now,
like this “ancient worthy,” who by the way went on and
made a very effective speech of it, I'm not going to take my
text from any thing in particular, but I will commence this
rambling epistle by an anecdote of “old Brother” Tushmaker,
which I think extremely probable has never yet been
published.
Dr. Tushmaker was never regularly bred as a physician,
or surgeon, but he possessed naturally a strong mechanical
genius and a fine appetite; and finding his teeth of great service
in gratifying the latter propensity, he concluded that he
therein by putting the teeth of its inhabitants in good
order, than in any other way; so Tushmaker became a dentist.
He was the man that first invented the method of
placing small cog-wheels in the back teeth for the more perfect
mastication of food, and he claimed to be the original
discoverer of that method of filling cavities with a kind of
putty, which, becoming hard directly, causes the tooth to
ache so grievously that it has to be pulled, thereby giving
the dentist two successive fees for the same job. Tushmaker
was one day seated in his office, in the city of Boston, Massachusetts,
when a stout old fellow named Byles presented himself
to have a back tooth drawn. The dentist seated his
patient in the chair of torture, and opening his mouth, discovered
there an enormous tooth, on the right-hand side,
about as large, as he afterwards expressed it, “as a small
Polyglot Bible.” I shall have trouble with this tooth,
thought Tushmaker, but he clapped on his heaviest forceps,
and pulled. It didn't come. Then he tried the turn-screw,
exerting his utmost strength, but the tooth wouldn't stir.
“Go away from here,” said Tushmaker to Byles, “and return
in a week, and I'll draw that tooth for you, or know the reason
why.” Byles got up, clapped a handkerchief to his jaw,
and put forth. Then the dentist went to work, and in three
days he invented an instrument which he was confident would
pull any thing. It was a combination of the lever, pulley,
wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge and screw. The castings
were made, and the machine put up in the office, over an
down into the foundations of the granite building. In a week
old Byles returned; he was clamped into the iron chair, the
forceps connected with the machine attached firmly to the
tooth, and Tushmaker stationing himself in the rear, took
hold of a lever four feet in length. He turned it slightly
Old Byles gave a groan, and lifted his right leg. Another
turn; another groan, and up went the leg again. “What do
you raise your leg for?” asked the doctor. “I can't help
it,” said the patient. “Well,” rejoined Tushmaker, “that
tooth is bound to come now.” He turned the lever clear
round, with a sudden jerk, and snapped old Byles' head clean
and clear from his shoulders, leaving a space of four inches
between the severed parts! They had a post mortem examination—the
roots of the tooth were found extending down
the right side, through the right leg, and turning up in two
prongs under the sole of the right foot! “No wonder,” said
Tushmaker, “he raised his right leg.” The jury thought so
too, but they found the roots much decayed, and five surgeons
swearing that mortification would have ensued in a few
months, Tushmaker was cleared on a verdict of “justifiable
homicide.” He was a little shy of that instrument for some
time afterward; but one day an old lady, feeble and flaccid,
came in to have a tooth drawn, and thinking it would come
out very easy, Tushmaker concluded, just by way of variety,
to try the machine. He did so, and at the first turn drew
the old lady's skeleton completely and entirely from her body,
leaving her a mass of quivering jelly in her chair! Tushmaker
after that, and they called her the “India-Rubber Woman.”
She had suffered terribly with the rheumatism, but after this
occurrence never had a pain in her bones. The dentist kept
them in a glass case. After this, the machine was sold to the
contractor of the Boston Custom-House, and it was found
that a child of three years of age could, by a single turn of
the screw, raise a stone weighing twenty-three tons. Smaller
ones were made, on the same principle, and sold to the keepers
of hotels and restaurants. They were used for boning turkeys.
There is no moral to this story whatever, and it is
possible that the circumstances may have become slightly
exaggerated. Of course, there can be no doubt of the truth
of the main incidents.
The following maritime anecdote was related to me by a
small man in a pea-jacket and sou'-wester hat, who had salt
standing in crusts all over his face. When I asked him if it
were true, he replied, “The jib-sheet's a rope, and the helm's
a tiller.” I guess it's all right.
Many years ago, on a stormy and inclement evening, “in
the bleak December,” old Miss Tarbox, accompanied by her
niece, Mary Ann Stackpole, sailed from Holmes's Hole to
Cotuit, in the topsail schooner Two Susans, Captain Blackler.
“The rains descended, and the floods came, and the
winds blew and beat upon” that schooner, and great was the
tossing and pitching thereof; while Captain Blackler, and his
hardy crew, “kept her to it,” and old Miss Tarbox and her
niece rolled about in their uncomfortable banks, wishing
dry land. The shouts of Captain Blackler as he trod the
deck, conveying orders for “tacking ship,” were distinctly
audible to the afflicted females below; and “Oh!” groaned
old Miss Tarbox, during a tranquil interval of her internal
economy, as for the fifteenth time the schooner “went in
stays,” “what a drefful time them pore creeturs of sailors is
a having on't. Just listen to Jim Blackler, Mary Ann, and
hear how he is ordering about that pore fellow, Hardy Lee.
I've heerd that creetur hollered for twenty times this blessed
night, if I have onst.” “Yes,” replied the wretched Mary
Ann, as she gave a fearful retch to starboard, “but he ain't
no worse off than poor Taupsle Hall—he seems to ketch it
as bad as Hardy.” “I wonder who they be,” mused old Miss
Tarbox; “I knowed a Miss Hall, that lived at Seekonk Pint
oncet—mebbe it's her son.” A tremendous sea taking the
“Two Susans” on her quarter at this instant, put a stop to
the old lady's cogitations; but they had an awful night of
it—and still above the roaring of the wind, the whistling and
clashing of the shrouds, the dash of the sea, and the tramp
of the sailors, was heard the voice of stout Captain Blackler,
as he shouted, “Stations! Hard a lee! Top'sle haul! Let
go and haul,”—and the “Two Susans” went about. And,
as old Miss Tarbox remarked years afterward, when she and
Mary Ann had discovered their mistake, and laughed thereat,
“Anybody that's never been to sea, won't see no pint to this
story.”
Circumstances over which I have no control, will soon
and fertile field of usefulness, named for the “Father of his
Country,” who, I am led to understand, was “first in peace,
first in war, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” As
the Kentuckian remarked, “I may be heered on again, but I
stand about as much chance as a bar going to — the infernal
regions (not to put too fine a point on it) without any
claws.” Before I go, however, I will endeavor to give you
a little history of the rise, progress and decline of “My San
Diego Lawsuit,” which I think you and your readers will
find curious, if not amusing. Adieu.
P. S.—You think this a stupid letter, perhaps? Think
of my surroundings, young man! 'Tis not often you get a
good thing out of Nazareth. Oh, Benicia, Benicia, “don't
you cry for me,” for I positively assure you, the feeling will
not be reciprocated.
| Phœnixiana; or, Sketches and burlesques | |