the passenjare!’ Sleep? Not a single wink! I was almost a lunatic when
I got to Boston. Don’t ask me about the funeral. I did the best I
could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed and tangled and
woven in and out with ‘Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the
presence of the passenjare.’ And the most distressing thing was that my
delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and
I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of
it with their stupid heads. And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but
before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their
heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all. The moment I had
finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy. Of
course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of
the deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into
the church. She began to sob, and said:
“‘Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn’t see him before he died!’
“‘Yes!’ I said, ‘he is gone, he is gone, he is gone–oh, will this
suffering never cease!’
“‘You loved him, then! Oh, you too loved him!’
“‘Loved him! Loved who?’
“‘Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!’
“‘Oh–him! Yes–oh, yes, yes. Certainly–certainly. Punch–punch–oh,
this misery will kill me!’
“‘Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words! I, too, suffer in
this dear loss. Were you present during his last moments?’
“‘Yes. I–whose last moments?’
“‘His. The dear departed’s.’
“‘Yes! Oh, yes–yes–yes! I suppose so, I think so, I don’t know! Oh,
certainly–I was there I was there!’
“‘Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege! And his last words-
-oh, tell me, tell me his last words! What did he say?’
“‘He said–he said-oh, my head, my head, my head! He said–he said–he
never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of the
passenjare! Oh, leave me, madam! In the name of all that is generous,
leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair! –a buff trip slip for a
six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare–endu–rance can no
fur–ther go!–PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!”
My friend’s hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he
said impressively:
“Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ah
me, it is just as well–it is just as well. You could not do me any
good. The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Something
tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that
remorseless jingle, There–there it is coming on me again: a blue trip
slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a–”
Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance
and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite.
How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring
university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes
into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students. How is it with
them, now? The result is too sad to tell. Why did I write this article?
It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose. It was to warn you, reader,
if you should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them–avoid
them as you would a pestilence.
THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN
Let me refresh the reader’s memory a little. Nearly a hundred years ago
the crew of the British ship bounty mutinied, set the captain and his
officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and
sailed southward. They procured wives for themselves among the natives
of Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-Pacific, called
Pitcairn’s Island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that
might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore.
Pitcairn’s is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many
years before another vessel touched there. It had always been considered
an uninhabited island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there,