A Bit of Chivalry.
At Woodward's Garden, in the city of San
Francisco, is a rather badly chiselled statue of
Pandora pulling open her casket of ills. Pandora's
raiment, I grieve to state, has slipped down about
her waist in a manner exceedingly reprehensible. One
evening about twilight, I was passing that way, and
saw a long gaunt miner, evidently just down from
the mountains, and whom I had seen before, standing
rather unsteadily in front of Pandora, admiring her
shapely figure, but seemingly afraid to approach
her. Seeing me advance, he turned to me with a
queer, puzzled expression in his funny eyes, and
said with an earnestness that came near defeating
its purpose, “Good ev'n'n t'ye, stranger.” “Good
evening, sir,” I replied, after having analyzed his
salutation and extracted the sense of it. Lowering
his voice to what was intended for a whisper,
the miner, with a jerk of his thumb Pandoraward,
continued: “Stranger, d'ye hap'n t'know 'er?”
“Certainly; that is Bridget. Pandora, a Greek
maiden, in the pay of the Board of Supervisors.”
He straightened himself up with a jerk that threatened
the integrity of his neck and made his teeth
snap, lurched heavily to the other side, oscillated
critically for a few moments, and muttered:
“Brdgtpnd—.” It was too much for him; he
went down into his pocket, fumbled feebly round,
and finally drawing out a paper of purely hypothetical
tobacco, conveyed it to his mouth and
bit off about two-thirds of it, which he masticated
with much apparent benefit to his understanding,
offering what was left to me. He then resumed
the conversation with the easy familiarity of one
who has established a claim to respectful attention:
“Pardner, couldn't ye interdooce a fel'r's wants
tknow'er?” “Impossible; I have not the honour of
her acquaintance.” A look of distrust crept into
his face, and finally settled into a savage scowl
about his eyes. “Sed ye knew'er!” he faltered,
menacingly. “So I do, but I am not upon speaking
terms with her, and—in fact she declines
to recognise me.” The soul of the honest miner
flamed out; he laid his hand threateningly upon
his pistol, jerked himself stiff, glared a moment at
me with the look of a tiger, and hurled this question
at my head as if it had been an iron interrogation
point: “W'at a' yer ben adoin' to that gurl?”
I fled, and the last I saw of the chivalrous gold-hunter,
he had his arm about Pandora's stony
waist and was endeavouring to soothe her supposed
agitation by stroking her granite head.
