the effect that yesterday France and Prussia were simultaneously invaded
by the two bodies of troops which lately assembled on the border. Both
armies conducted their invasions secretly and are now hunting around for
each other on opposite sides of the border.
Russia espouses the cause of France. She will bring 200,000 men to the
field.
England continues to remain neutral.
Firing was heard yesterday in the direction of Blucherberg, and for a
while the excitement was intense. However the people reflected that the
country in that direction is uninhabitable, and impassable by anything
but birds, they became quiet again.
The Emperor sends his troops to the field with immense enthusiasm. He
will lead them in person, when they return.
.....................
Fourth Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR!
NO BATTLE YET!!
THE TROOPS GROWING OLD!
BUT BITTER STRIFE IMMINENT!
PRODIGIOUS EXCITEMENT!
THE INVASIONS SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED
AND THE INVADERS SAFE!
RUSSIA SIDES WITH BOTH SIDES
ENGLAND WILL FIGHT BOTH!
LONDON, Friday.
No battle has been fought thus far, but a million impetuous soldiers are
gritting their teeth at each other across the border, and the most
serious fears entertained that if they do not die of old age first, there
will be bloodshed in this war yet.
The prodigious patriotic excitement goes on. In Prussia, per Prussian
telegrams, though contradicted from France. In France, per French
telegrams, though contradicted from Prussia.
The Prussian invasion of France was a magnificent success. The military
failed to find the French, but made good their return to Prussia without
the loss of a single man. The French invasion of Prussia is also
demonstrated to have been a brilliant and successful achievement. The
army failed to find the Prussians, but made good their return to the
Vaterland without bloodshed, after having invaded as much as they wanted
to.
There is glorious news from Russia to the effect that she will side with
both sides.
Also from England--she will fight both sides.
....................
LONDON, Thursday evening.
I rushed over too soon. I shall return home on Tuesday's steamer and
wait until the war begins. M. T.
THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED
[From the Buffalo Express, September 18, 1869.]
There has been so much talk about the mysterious "wild man" out there in
the West for some time, that I finally felt it was my duty to go out and
interview him. There was something peculiarly and touchingly romantic
about the creature and his strange actions, according to the newspaper
reports. He was represented as being hairy, long-armed, and of great
strength and stature; ugly and cumbrous; avoiding men, but appearing
suddenly and unexpectedly to women and children; going armed with a club,
but never molesting any creature, except sheep, or other prey; fond of
eating and drinking, and not particular about the quality, quantity, or
character of the beverages and edibles; living in the woods like a wild
beast, but never angry; moaning, and sometimes howling, but never
uttering articulate sounds.
Such was "Old Shep" as the papers painted him. I felt that the story of
his life must be a sad one--a story of suffering, disappointment, and
exile--a story of man's inhumanity to man in some shape or other--and I
longed to persuade the secret from him.
.....................
"Since you say you are a member of the press," said the wild man, "I am
willing to tell you all you wish to know. Bye and bye you will
comprehend why it is that I wish to unbosom myself to a newspaper man
when I have so studiously avoided conversation with other people. I will
now unfold my strange story. I was born with the world we live upon,
almost. I am the son of Cain."
"What?"
"I was present when the flood was announced."
"Which?"
"I am the father of the Wandering Jew."
"Sir?"
I moved out of range of his club, and went on taking notes, but keeping a
wary eye on him all the while. He smiled a melancholy smile and resumed:
"When I glance back over the dreary waste of ages, I see many a
glimmering and mark that is familiar to my memory. And oh, the leagues
I have travelled! the things I have seen! the events I have helped to
emphasise! I was at the assassination of Caesar. I marched upon Mecca
with Mahomet. I was in the Crusades, and stood with Godfrey when he
planted the banner of the cross on the battlements of Jerusalem. I--"
"One moment, please. Have you given these items to any other journal?
Can I--"
"Silence. I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst
upon his vision. I saw Charles I beheaded. I was in London when the
Gunpowder Plot was discovered. I was present at the trial of Warren
Hastings. I was on American soil when the battle of Lexington was fought
when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered--
When Washington died. I entered Paris with Napoleon after Elba. I was
present when you mounted your guns and manned your fleets for the war of
1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond fell--when the
President's life was taken. In all the ages I have helped to celebrate
the triumphs of genius, the achievements of arms, the havoc of storm,
fire, pestilence, famine."
"Your career has been a stirring one. Might I ask how you came to locate
in these dull Kansas woods, when you have been so accustomed to
excitement during what I might term so protracted a period, not to put
too fine a point on it?"
"Listen. Once I was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious"
(here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but
in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and
newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down,
sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with
cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character
at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank
robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the
pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad; immediately I was
spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of the New York
papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire; next to
raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had begun
to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this
howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull
down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play
'Wild Man' generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy
newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other, I am
described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me--and all to
gratify this quill-driving scum of the
earth!"
"Poor old carpet bagger!"
"I have been served infamously, often, in modern and semi-modern times.
I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent history, and to
perpetrate all sorts of humbugs. I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I
moped in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron
Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians,
a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the
gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played
sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums;
I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of
miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World,
and thundered Political Economy through the Tribune. I have done all the
extravagant things that the wildest invention could contrive, and done
them well, and this is my reward--playing Wild Man in Kansas without a
shirt!"
"Mysterious being, a light dawns vaguely upon me--it grows apace--what
--what is your name."
"SENSATION!"
"Hence, horrible shape!"
It spoke again:
"Oh pitiless fate, my destiny hounds me once more. I am called. I go.
Alas, is there no rest for me?"
In a moment the Wild Man's features seemed to soften and refine, and his
form to assume a more human grace and symmetry. His club changed to a
spade, and he shouldered it and started away sighing profoundly and
shedding tears.
"Whither, poor shade?"
"TO DIG UP THE BYRON FAMILY!"
Such was the response that floated back upon the wind as the sad spirit
shook its ringlets to the breeze, flourished its shovel aloft, and
disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.
All of which is in strict accordance with the facts.
M. T.
LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN --[From the Buffalo Express, September 11, 1889.]
Marshal Neil's last words were: "L'armee fran-caise!" (The French
army.)--Exchange.
What a sad thing it is to see a man close a grand career with a
plagiarism in his mouth. Napoleon's last words were: "Tete d'armee."
(Head of the army.) Neither of those remarks amounts to anything as
"last words," and reflect little credit upon the utterers.
A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is
about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and
take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a
thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit
at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest
gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. No--a man is apt to be too
much fagged and exhausted, both in body and mind, at such a time, to be
reliable; and maybe the very thing he wants to say, he cannot think of to
save him; and besides there are his weeping friends bothering around;
and worse than all as likely as not he may have to deliver his last gasp
before he is expecting to. A man cannot always expect to think of a
natty thing to say under such circumstances, and so it is pure egotistic
ostentation to put it off. There is hardly a case on record where a man
came to his last moment unprepared and said a good thing hardly a case
where a man trusted to that last moment and did not make a solemn botch
of it and go out of the world feeling absurd.
Now there was Daniel Webster. Nobody could tell him anything. He was
not afraid. He could do something neat when the time came. And how did
it turn out? Why, his will had to be fixed over; and then all the
relations came; and first one thing and then another interfered, till at
last he only had a chance to say, "I still live," and up he went.
Of course he didn't still live, because he died--and so he might as well
have kept his last words to himself as to have gone and made such a
failure of it as that. A week before that fifteen minutes of calm
reflection would have enabled that man to contrive some last words that
would have been a credit to himself and a comfort to his family for
generations to come.
And there was John Quincy Adams. Relying on his splendid abilities and
his coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment
to carry him through, and what was the result? Death smote him in the
House of Representatives, and he observed, casually, "This is the last of
earth." The last of earth! Why "the last of earth" when there was so
much more left? If he had said it was the last rose of summer or the
to say was, "Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth," but he
put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning
observation on his lips.
And there we have Napoleon's "Tete d'armee." That don't mean anything.
Taken by itself, "Head of the army," is no more important than "Head of
the police." And yet that was a man who could have said a good thing if
he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while. Marshal Neil,
with half a century at his disposal, could not dash off anything better
in his last moments than a poor plagiarism of another man's words, which
were not worth plagiarizing in the first place. "The French army."
Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly flat utterly pointless. But if he had
closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it
lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into
his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction
all the rest of his life. I do wish our great men would quit saying
these flat things just at the moment they die. Let us have their next-
to-the-last words for a while, and see if we cannot patch up from them
something that will be more satisfactory.
The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the time.
But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties who took the
trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we immediately
notice a happy difference in the result.
There was Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life to
build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of
speech and manners the world has ever seen. And could you suppose he
failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic "last words," in
the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail of such a reputation
and clinching on the other side for ever? Not he. He prepared himself.
He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his pulse. He awaited his
chance. And at last, when he knew his time was come, he pretended to
think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his throat
emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin around,
John, and get the gentleman a chair." And so he died, amid thunders of
applause.
Next we have Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's
quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up
at nights reducing t
he rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and
snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in their
regimentals; who said, "Virtue is its own reward;" who said,
"Procrastination is the thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide wait for
no man" and "Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old Franklin,
the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to say, the
latter transcends him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short
of him in correctness of orthography. What sort of tactics did Franklin
pursue? He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and
then when the time came, he said, "None but the brave deserve the fair,"
and died happy. He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived
till he was an idiot.
Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of anything to say,
at the last moment but, "Augusta--sister--Lady Byron--tell Harriet
Beecher Stowe"--etc., etc.,--but Shakespeare was ready and said, "England
expects every man to do his duty!" and went off with splendid eclat.
And there are other instances of sagacious preparation for a felicitous
closing remark. For instance:
Joan of Arc said, "Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching."
Alexander the Great said, "Another of those Santa Cruz punches, if you
please."
The Empress Josephine said, "Not for Jo-" and could get no further.
Cleopatra said, "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders."
Sir Walter Raleigh said, "Executioner, can I take your whetstone a
moment, please?" though what for is not clear.