LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1533, 16 January 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

“A TOURIST FROM INJIANY.” [by “beet haet.”] We lirat saw him from the deck on the Unser Fritz, aa that gallant steamer was preparing to leave the port of New York for Plymouth, Havre, and Hamburg. Perhaps it was that all objects at that moment become indelibly impressed on the memory of the departing voyager ; perhaps it was that mere interrupting trivialities always assume undue magnitude to us when we arc waiting for something really important; but I retain a vivid impression of him as he appeared on the gangway in apparent hopelessness, yet as it afterwarka appeared, really triumphant altercation with the German-speaking deck hands and stewards. Presently, having violated a dozen of the ship’s regulations, he took his place be the side of a very pretty girl, apparently his superior in station, who addressed him as “father” At the groat ship swung nut into the stream, ho was still a central figure on our deck, getting into cverybo !y’s way, addressing all with equal familiarity, imperturbable to affront or snub, but always doggedly aud consistently adhering to one towAvft trivial or inadequate to the means employed. <v n n’re sittin’ on sutthin’ o’ mine, Miss,’ ho began for the third or fourth time to the elegant Miss Montmorris, who was revisiting Europe nndor high social conditions. ‘ Jiat rise up while I git it—’twont take a miuit.’ Not only was the lady forced to rise, but to make necessary the rising aud discomposing of the whole Montmorris party who were congregated around her. The missing ‘ sutthin’ ’ was discovered to be a very old and battered newspaper. ‘ It’s the “ Cinciunatty Times,”’ he explained, as ho quickly took it up, oblivious to the indignant glances of the party. ‘lt’s a little squashed by your sittin’ on it, but it’ll do to rc-fer to. It’s got a letter fromPayris, showin’ the prices o’ them tbar hotels and nst’rauts, and I allowed to my darter wo might want it on the other side Thar’s ouc or two French names that rather gets me ; mebbe your eyes is stronger,’ but here the entire Montmorris rustled away, Raving him with the paper in one hand—the other pointing at the paragraph Not at all discomfited, ho glanced at the vacant bench, took possession of it with his hat, duster, and umbrella, then disappeared, and presently appeared again -with his daughter, a lank-looking young man, and an angular clderiy family, aud so replaced the Mostmorrises, Vv’hen we wore fairly at sea be was missed. A pleasing belief that he had fallen overboard, or had been left behind, was dissipated by his appearance one morning, with h s daughter on one arm, and the elderly fomalo before referred to on the other. The Unser Fritz was rolling heavily at the time, but, with his usual awkward pertinacity, he ins'ste'd ;;pcm attempting to walk forward the best part of the deck, as ho always did, as if it were a right and a duty. A lurch brought him and his uncertain freight in contact with the Montmorrßcs ; there was a moment of wild confusion, two or throe seats were emptied, aud lie was finally led away by tho steward, an obviously and obtrusively side man, Gut when he had disappeared beiow, it was noticed that he had : ecured two excellent seals f r his female companions. Nobody dared to disturb the cider ; nobody dared disturb the younger, who, it may be here recoded, haq a certain eby reserve which checked aught but tho

simplest civilities from the masculine passengers. A few days later it was discovered that ho was not an inmate of the fir t, hut of the second cabin, that the eldt rly female was not his wife, as popularly supposed, but the room-mato of his daughter in the first cabin. These facts made his intrusions on the saloon deck the more exasperating to the Montmorrises, yet the more difficult to deal with. Eventually, however, he had, as usual, his own way. No place was sacred, or debarred his slouched hat and duster. They were turned out of the engine room to re-appear upon the bridge; they were forbidden the forecastle, to rise a ghostly presence beside the officer in his solemn supervision of the compass. They would have been lashed to the rigging on their way to the maintop, but for the silent protest of his daughter’s presence on the deck. Most of his interrupting familiar conversation was addressed to the interdicted ‘ man at the wheel.’ But one day when I was lounging by the stern rail, idly watching the dogged ostentation of the screw, the ominous shadow of the slouclerl hat and the trailing duster fell upon me. * I didn’t know till yesterday who you be,’ he began deliberately, ‘or I should nob hev been so unsocial. But I’ve always told my darter that in permiskias trav’liu’ a man oughter bo keerful of who he meets.’ I’ve read some of your writings—read ’em in a paper of Injiany, but I never reconed I'd meet ye. Things is queer, and trav'lin’ brings all sorter people together. My darter Looeze suspected ye from the first, and she worried over it, and kinder put me up to this. ’ The most delicate llattery could not have done more. To have been in the thought of this reserved, gentle girl, who scarcely seemed to notice even those who had paid her attention was—‘Speaking o’ Cook and Cook's tourists, I’m my own Cook, I reckon I calkilate and know every rent that I’ll spend twixt Eveanaville, Injianny, and Rome and Naples, and everything I’ll see.’ He paused a moment, and laying his hand familiarly on my knee, and said, ‘ Did I ever tell you how I kem to go abroad ?’ As wo had never spoken together before, it was safe to reply that he had not. He rubbed his head softly with his baud, knitted his iron grey brows, and then said meditatively, ‘No ! it must hev been the head waiter. He sorter favors you in the musstache and general get up. I guess it was him I spoke to.’ I thought it must have been. ‘ Well, then, this is the way it kem about I was sittin’ one night, about three months ago, with ray darter Looeze—my wife bein’ dead some four years—and I was reading to her out of the paper about the Exposition, She sez to me, quiet like—she’s a quiet sort o’gal if you ever notissed her—‘‘l should like to go thar.” I looks at her—it was the first time sense her mother died that that gal had ever asked for anything, or had, so to speak, a wish. It wasn’t her way. She took everything ez it kem, and durn my akin ef I ever wanted to kem in any other way. I never told ye this afore, did I’’ ‘No,’ I said hastily. ‘Go on.’

He felt of his knees for a moment, and then drew a long breath, ‘Perhaps,’ he began deliberately, ‘ye don’t know that I’m a poor man. Seein’ me here among these rich folks, goin’ abroad to Paree with the best o’them, and Looese thar— in the first cabin—a lady ez she is—ye wouldn’t bl’eeve it. but I’m poor! I am. Well, air, when that gal looks up at me and sez that, I hadn’t but 12 dols. in my pocket, and I ain’t the durned fool that I look—but suthin’ in me—suthin’ away back in me—sez you shall! Loo-ey, you shall 1 and then I sez—repeatin’ it, and right up in her eyes—“ You shall go, Loo-ey’'—Did you ever look in my gal’s eyes ?’ I parried i hat somewhat direct question by another. ‘ But the 12 dols,—how did you Increase that?’ ‘ I raised it to 250 dols. I got odd jobs o’ work here and there, overtime—l’m a machinist. I used to keep this yer overwork from Loo—saying I had to see men in the evenin’ to get p’ints about Europe, and that and getting a little money raised on my life insurance, I shoved her through. And here we is. Chipper and first-class—all through—that is, Loo is !’ ‘ But 230 dols! And Rome and Naples, and return ? You can’t do it.’ He looked at me cunningly for a moment. ‘ Kan’t do it ? I’ve done it.’ ‘ Done it ?’ i Wall, about the same, I reckon; I've figgered it out. Figgers don’t lie. I ain’t no Cook’s tourist; I kin see Cook and give him p’ints. I tell you I’ve figgered it out to a cent, and I’ve money to spare. Of course I don’t reckon to travel with Loo. She’ll go first-class. But I’ll be near her if its in the steerage of a ship, or in the baggage car of a railroad. I don’t need much in the way of grub or clothes, and now and then I kin pick up a job. Perhaps you disromember that row I had down in the en-gine-room, when they chucked me out of it?’

I could not help looking at him with astonishment; there was evidently only a pleasant memory in his mind. Yet I recalled that I felt indignant for him and his daughter. ‘ Well, that d -m fool of a Dutchman, that chief engineer, gave me a job the other day. And ef I hadn’t just forced my way down there, and talked sissy to him, and criticised his macheen, he’d have never knowed I I knowd a eccentric from a waggon wheel. Do you see the p’int V 1 thought I began to see it. But I could not help asking what his daughter thought of travelling in this inferior way. Ho laughed. ‘ When I was gettin’ up some p’ints from them books of travel I read her a proverb or saying outer one o’ them, that “only prin’es and fools and Americans traveled first-class.” You see I told hor it didn’t say “women,” for they naturally would ride first-class, and American gals being princesses, didn’t count. Don’t you see V If I did not quite follow hia logic, nor see •"v wav clearly into his daughter’s acquiescence througu m- some light may he thrown upon it from his -H-njauce I had risen with some vague words of congratulation on his success and was about to leave him when ho called me back.

‘ Did I tell ye,’ he said, cautiously looking arouud, yet with a smile of stilled enjoyment in his face, * Did I tell ye what that gal—my darter—sed to me ? No, I didn’t toll ye —nor no one else afore, Como here I’ Ho made me draw down closely into the shadow and secrecy of the round-house. ‘ That night that I told my gal she should go abroad, I sez to her, quite chipper-like and free, ‘I say, ‘Looey, ’sez I, ‘ye’ll be goin’ for to marry some o’ them counts, or dukes, or potentates, I reckon, and y'll leave the old mau. And she scz, sez she, looking mo rquar iu the eye —did ye ever uotiss that gal’s eye ?’ ‘She has fine eyes,’ I replied cautiously. ‘They is cz clean as a fresh milk pan, and ez bright. Nothing sticks to cm. Eh ?’ ‘ You are right.’ ‘ Well, she knks up at me this way’—here he achieved a vile imitation of his daughter's modest glance, not at all like her— ‘ and looked at me, she scz quietly:—“That’s what I’m goin’ for, and to improve my mind. ” He ! ho ! he 1; It’s a tack ! To marry a nobleman, and improve her mind ! Ha ! ha ! ha We parted in England. It is not necessary, iu this brief chronicle, to repeat'ho various stories of ‘ Uncle Joahua,’ as the younger and m >re frivolous of our passengers called him, nor that two-thirds of the stories repeated were utterly at variance with my estimate of the characted of the man, although I add that 1 was also doubtful of the accuracy of my owu estimate. But oio quality was always dominant—his restless, dogged pertinacity and calm imperturbability. I was at a certain entertainment given in Paris by the heiv-% executors, and assignees of an admirable man, long since, gathered to his fatb cr s in Pore la Cnsise, but whose Hhakospoa'e-like bust still looks calmly and benevolently down on the riotous revelry of absurd wickedness of which ho was, when living, the patron saint. The entertainment

was of such a character that, while the performers were chiefly women, a majority of the spectators were men. The few exceptions were foreigners, and among them I quickly recognised my fair fellow countrywomen, the Montmorrisses, ‘ Don’t thay that you’ve theen us here,’said the youngest Miss Montmorriss, ‘for ith only a lark. Its awfully funny! And that friend of yourth from Injianny ith here with hith daughter.’ !t did not take me long to find my friend Uncle Joshua’s serious, practical, unsympathetic face in the front row of tables and benches. But, beside him, to my utter consternation, was his shy and modest daughter. In another moment I was at his side, ‘ I really think —I am afraid ’ I began in a whisper, ‘that yon have made a mistake, I don’t think you can be aware of the character of this place. Your daughter—’ ‘ Kem here with Miss Montmorriss, She’s yer. It’s all right.’ I was at my wit’s end. Happily at this moment Mile, Rochefort, from the Grangerie, skipped out in the quadrille immediately before us, caught her light skirts in either hand, and executed a pas that lifted the hat from the eyes of some of the front spectators, and pulled it down over the eyes of the others. The Montmorrises fluttered away with a half hysterical giggle, and a half confounded escort. The modest-looking Miss Loo. who had been staring at everything quite indifferently, suddenly stepped forward, took her father’s arm, and said sharply, ‘Come.’ At this moment a voice in English, but unmistakably belonging to the politest nation in the world, rose from behind the girl, mimickingly, ‘My God! it’s shocking. I bloosh I 0 dammit!’ In an instant he was in the hands of ‘Uncle Joshua,’and forced back clamoring against the railing, his hat smashed over his foolish, furious face, and half his shirt and cravat in the old man’s strong grip. Several students rushed to the rescue of their compatriot, but one or two Englishmen and half a dozen Americans had managed in some misterious way to bound into the arena. I looked hurriedly for Miss Louisa, but she was gone. When we had extricated the old man from the melee, I asked him where she was, ‘ 0,1 reckon she’s gone off with Sir Arthur. I saw him here just as I pitched into that damned fool.’ ‘ Sir Arthur ?’ I asked. * Yes, an acquaintance o’ Loo’s.’ ‘ She’s in my carriage just outside,’ interrupted a handsome young fellow, with the shoulders of a giant and the blushes of a girl. * It’s all over now, you know. It was rather a foolish lark, yon coming here with her without knowing—you know—anything about it, you know. But this way—.thank you. She’s waiting for you,’ and in another instant he and the old man had vanished. Nor did I see him again until he stepped into the railway carriage with me on the way to Liverpool. ‘ You see I’m travelling first-class now,’ he said,’ ‘ but goin’ home I don’t mind a trifle extra expense. ’ ‘ Then you’ve made your tour, and are successful V I asked. ‘ Wal, yes, we saw Switzerland and Italy, and if f hedn’t been short o’ time, we’d hev gone to Egypt. Mebboe next winter I’ll run over again to see Loo. and do it.’ * Then your daughter does not return with you ?’ I continued, in some astonishment. ‘ Wal, no; she’s visiting some of Sir Arthur’s relatives in Kent. Sir Arthur is there—perhaps you recollect him?’ He paused a moment, looked cautiously around, and with the same enjoyment he had shown on shipboard, said— ‘ Do yon remember the joke I told you on Loo, when she was at sea ?’ * Yes.’ Well, don’t ye say anything about it no. But dem my skin if it doesn’t look like coming true.’ And it did.