Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get

him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my

chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice

without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one

little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the

forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up

smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum,

and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human

being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping

with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face

in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next

he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then choked the

wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would

have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not

rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me

up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he

suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly.

I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath

yesterday. I “had him” again. He next recommended some of “Smith’s Hair

Glorifier,” and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the

new perfume, “Jones’s Delight of the Toilet,” and proposed to sell me

some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of

his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.

He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise,

sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my

protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the

roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering

the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while

combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an

account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his

till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too

late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly

about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily

sang out ” Next!”

This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting

over a day for my revenge–I am going to attend his funeral.

“PARTY CRIES” IN IRELAND

Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of the

whole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people are

Protestants and the other half Catholics. Each party does all it can to

make its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligious

toward them. One hears constantly of the most touching instances of this

zeal. A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to

dedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadways

were lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till

all the region round about was marked with blood. I thought that only

Catholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake.

Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to

admonish the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but not

with perfect success. It has decreed that irritating “party cries” shall

not be indulged in, and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty

shillings and costs. And so, in the police court reports every day, one

sees these fines recorded. Last week a girl of twelve years old was

fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the public

streets that she was “a Protestant.” The usual cry is, “To hell with the

Pope!” or “To hell with the Protestants!” according to the utterer’s

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