other, and then plunged under forever, carrying the national archives
along with it–and not only the archives and the populace, but some
eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they
diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at
thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the
province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port.
Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets
anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a stanch friend, and a
permanent reliable enemy. He will put himself to any amount of trouble
to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be
done for the helpless and the shiftless. And he knows how to do nearly
everything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring
that never goes dry. He stands always ready to help whoever needs help,
as far as he is able–and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap
and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and
sacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare.
Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying
quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back
side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating
joke. One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door
to us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppressively emotional
at breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities as
offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find it
best to let her talk along and say nothing back–it was the only way to
keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral in
the neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week.
And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs
of woe–entirely brokenhearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of
that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the
coffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail
that made our hair rise. Then she got to talking about deceased, and
kept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through.
Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs:
“Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!–the poor old faithful
creature. For she was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been a
servant in that selfsame house and that selfsame family for twenty seven
years come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick! And, oh,
to think she should meet such a death at last!–a-sitting over the red
hot stove at three o’clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on
it and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally
roasted to a crisp! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked! I am
but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a
tombstone over that lone sufferer’s grave–and Mr. Riley if you would
have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would
sort of describe the awful way in which she met her–”
“Put it, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,'” said Riley, and never
smiled.
A FINE OLD MAN
John Wagner, the oldest man in Buffalo–one hundred and four years old
–recently walked a mile and a half in two weeks.
He is as cheerful and bright as any of these other old men that charge
around so persistently and tiresomely in the newspapers, and in every way
as remarkable.
Last November he walked five blocks in a rainstorm, without any shelter
but an umbrella, and cast his vote for Grant, remarking that he had voted
for forty-seven presidents–which was a lie.
His “second crop” of rich brown hair arrived from New York yesterday, and
he has a new set of teeth coming from Philadelphia.