第53章

Should another occasion of this kind ever offer, we feel that we should be "adequate" to treat it in a similar manner.A Reporter, we modestly submit, is as good as anybody, and ought to feel that he is, everywhere and at all times.For one, let us quietly and without any show of vanity remark, that we are not only just as good as anybody else, but a great deal better than many we know of.We love God and hate Indians: pay our debts; support the Constitution of the United States; go in for Progress, Sunshine, Calico, and other luxuries; are perfectly satisfied and happy, and wouldn't swop "sits" with the President, Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of China, Sultan of Turkey, Brigham Young, or Nicholas Longworth.Success to us!

1.54.HE HAD THE LITTLE VOUCHER IN HIS POCKET.

L-- lived in this city several years ago.He dealt in horses, carriages, &c.Hearing of a good chance to sell buggies up West, he embarked with a lot for that "great" country.At Toledo he took a Michigan Southern train.Somebody had by way of a joke, warned him against the conductor of that particular train, telling him that said conductor had an eccentric way of taking up tickets at the beginning of the journey, and of denying that he had done so and demanding fare at the end thereof.This the confiding L--swallowed.He determined not to be swindled in this way, and so when the conductor came around and asked him for his ticket he declined giving up.The conductor insisted.L-- still refused.

"I've got the little voucher in my pocket," he said, with a knowing look, slily slapping the pocket which contained the ticket.

The conductor glanced at L--'s stalwart frame.He had heard L--spoken of as a fighting man.He preferred not to grapple with him.

The train was a light one, and it so happened that L-- was the only man in this, the hind car.So the conductor had the train stopped, and quietly unhitched this car.

"Good day, Mr.L," he yelled; "just keep that little voucher in your pocket, and be d--d to you!"L-- jumped up and saw the other cars moving rapidly away.He was left solitary and alone, in a dismal piece of woods known as the Black Swamp.He remained there in the car until night, when the down-train came along and took him to Toledo.He had to pay fare, his up through-ticket not being good on that train.His buggies had gone unattended to Chicago.He was very angry.He finally got through, but he will never hear the last of that "little voucher."1.55.THE GENTLEMANLY CONDUCTOR.

Few have any idea of the trials and tribulations of the railway conductor--"the gentlemanly conductor," as one-horse newspapers delight in styling him.Unless you are gifted with the patience of the lamented Job, who, tradition informs us, had "biles" all over his body, and didn't swear once, never go for a Conductor, me boy!

The other evening we enlivened a railroad car with our brilliant presence.Starting time was not quite up, and the passengers were amusing themselves by laughing, swearing, singing, and talking, according to their particular fancy.The Conductor came in, and the following were a few of the questions put to him:--One old fellow, who was wrapped up in a horse-blanket, and who apparently had about two pounds of pigtail in his mouth, wanted to know, "What pint of compass the keers was travelin in?" An old lady, surrounded by band-boxes and enveloped in flannels, wanted to know what time the eight o'clock train left Rock Island for "Dubu-kue?" Acarroty-haired young man wanted to know if "free omyibuses" ran from the cars to the taverns in Toledo? A tall, razor-faced individual, evidently from the interior of Connecticut, desired to know if "conductin" paid as well eout West as it did deoun in his country; and a portly, close-shaven man with round keen eyes, and in whose face you could read the interest-table, asked the price of corner lots in Omaha.These and many other equally absurd questions the conductor answered calmly and in a resigned manner.And we shuddered as we thought how he would have to answer a similar string of questions in each of the three cars ahead.

1.56.MORALITY AND GENIUS.

We see it gravely stated in a popular Metropolitan journal that "true genius goes hand in hand, necessarily, with morality." The statement is not a startlingly novel one.It has been made, probably, about sixty thousand times before.But it is untrue and foolish.We wish genius and morality were affectionate companions, but it is a fact that they are often bitter enemies.They don't necessarily coalesce any more than oil and water do! Innumerable instances may be readily produced in support of this proposition.

Nobody doubts that Sheridan had genius, yet he was a sad dog.Mr.

Byron, the author of Childe Harold "and other poems," was a man of genius, we think, yet Mr.Byron was a fearfully fast man.Edgar A.

Poe wrote magnificent poetry and majestic prose, but he was, in private life, hardly the man for small and select tea parties.

We fancy Sir Richard Steele was a man of genius, but he got disreputably drunk, and didn't pay his debts.Swift had genius--an immense lot of it--yet Swift was a cold-blooded, pitiless, bad man.

The catalogue might be spun out to any length, but it were useless to do it.We don't mean to intimate that men of genius must necessarily be sots and spendthrifts--we merely speak of the fact that very many of them have been both, and in some instances much worse than both.Still we can't well see (though some think they can) how the pleasure and instruction people derive from reading the productions of these great lights is diminished because their morals were "lavishly loose." They might have written better had their private lives been purer, but of this nobody can determine for the pretty good reason that nobody knows.