Various
Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers
In one so circumstanced, it cannot be supposed that such a trifle as the killing of a frowsy friar would be much resented, even had he not taken so bold a measure to obtain his pardon. His petition was granted, of course, as soon as asked; and so it would have been had the indictment drawn up by the Canterbury town-clerk, viz., "That he, the said Robert de Shurland, &c., had then and there, with several, to wit, one thousand pairs of boots, given sundry, to wit, two thousand kicks, and therewith and thereby killed divers, to wit, ten thousand, Austin friars," been true to the letter.
Thrice did the gallant grey circumnavigate the barge, while Robert de Winchelsey, the chancellor and archbishop to boot, was making out, albeit with great reluctance, the royal pardon. The interval was sufficiently long to enable his Majesty, who, gracious as he was, had always an eye to business, just to hint that the gratitude he felt towards the Baron was not unmixed with a lively sense of services to come; and that, if life were now spared him, common decency must oblige him to make himself useful. Before the archbishop, who had scalded his fingers with the wax in affixing the great seal, had time to take them out of his mouth, all was settled, and the Baron de Shurland had pledged himself to be forthwith in readiness, cum suis, to accompany his liege lord to Guienne.
With the royal pardon secured in his vest, boldly did his lordship turn again to the shore; and as boldly did his courser oppose his breadth of chest to the stream. It was a work of no common difficulty or danger; a steed of less "mettle and bone" had long since sunk in the effort; as it was, the Baron's boots were full of water, and Grey Dolphin's chamfrain more than once dipped beneath the wave. The convulsive snorts of the noble animal showed his distress; each instant they became more loud and frequent; when his hoof touched the strand, "the horse and his rider" stood once again in safety on the shore.
Rapidly dismounting the Baron was loosening the girths of his demi- pique, to give the panting animal breath, when he was aware of as ugly an old woman as he ever clapped eyes upon, peeping at him under the horse's belly.
"Make much of your steed, Robert Shurland! Make much of your steed!" cried the hag, shaking at him her long and bony finger." Groom to the hide, and corn to the manger! He has saved your life, Robert Shurland, for the nonce? but he shall yet be the means of your losing it for all that!"
The Baron started: "What's that you say, you old faggot!" He ran round by his horse's tail; the woman was gone!
The Baron paused: his great soul was not to be shaken by trifles! he looked around him, and solemnly ejaculated the word "Humbug!" then slinging the bridle across his arm, walked slowly on in the direction of the castle.
The appearance, and still more, the disappearance of the crone, had, however, made an impression; "'Twould be deuced provoking, though, if he should break my neck after all." He turned and gazed at Dolphin with the eye of a veterinary surgeon. "I'll be shot if he is not groggy!" said the Baron.
With his lordship, like another great commander, "Once to be in doubt, was once to be resolved:" it would never do to go to the wars on a ricketty prad. He dropped the rein, drew forth Tickletoby, and, as the enfranchised Dolphin, good easy horse, stretched out his ewe-neck to the herbage, struck off his head at a single blow. "There, you lying old beldame!" said the Baron; "now take him away to the knacker's."
Three years were come and gone. King Edward's French wars were over; both parties having fought till they came to a standstill, shook hands, and the quarrel, as usual, was patched up by a royal marriage. This happy event gave his majesty leisure to turn his attention to Scotland, where things, through the intervention of William Wallace, were looking rather queerish. As his reconciliation with Philip now allowed of his fighting the Scotch in peace and quietness, the monarch lost no time in marching his long legs across the border, and the short ones of the Baron followed him of course. At Falkirk, Tickletoby was in great request; and in the year following, we find a contemporary poet hinting at his master's prowess under the walls of Caerlaverock—
A quatrain which Mr. Simpkinson translates,
Ovec ens fu achiminez
Li beau Robert de Shurland
Ri kant seoit sur le cheval
Ne sembloit home ke someille.
With them was marching
The good Robert de Shurland,
Who, when seated on horseback,
Does not resemble a man asleep!
So thoroughly awake, indeed, does he seem to have proved himself, that the bard subsequently exclaims in an ecstasy of admiration,
Si ie estoie une pucellete
Je li dourie ceur et cors
Tant est de lu bons li reeors.
If I were a young maiden,
I would give my heart and perso
So great is his fame!
Fortunately the poet was a tough old monk of Exeter; since such a present to a nobleman, now in his grand climacteric, would hardly have been worth the carriage. With the reduction of this stronghold of the Maxwellsse, em to have concluded the Baron's military services; as on the very first day of the fourteenth century we find him once more landed on his native shore, and marching, with such of his retainers as the wars had left him, towards the hospitable shelter of Shurland Castle. It was then, upon that very beach, some hundred yards distant from high-water mark, that his eye fell upon something like an ugly woman in a red cloak. She was seated on what seemed to be a large stone, in an interesting attitude, with her elbows resting upon her knees, and her chin upon her thumbs The Baron started; the remembrance of his interview with a similar personage in the same place, some three years since, flashed upon his recollection. He rushed towards the spot, but the form was gone:—nothing remained but the seat it had appeared to occupy. This, on examination, turned out to be no stone, but the whitened skull of a dead horse! A tender remembrance of the deceased Grey Dolphin shot a momentary pang into the Baron's bosom: he drew the back of his hand across his face; the thought of the hag's prediction in an instant rose, and banished all softer emotions. In utter contempt of his own weakness, yet with a tremor that deprived his redoubtable kick of half its wonted force, he spurned the relic with his foot. One word alone issued from his lips, elucidatory of what was passing in his mind—it long remained imprinted on the memory of his faithful followers—that word was "Gammon!" The skull bounded across the beach till it reached the very margin of the stream:—one instant more and it would be ingulfed for ever. At that moment a loud "Ha! ha! ha!" was distinctly heard by the whole train to issue from its bleached and toothless jaws: it sank beneath the flood in a horselaugh.
Meanwhile Sir Robert de Shurland felt an odd sort of sensation in his right foot. His boots had suffered in the wars. Great pains had been taken for their preservation. They had been "soled" and "heeled" more than once:—had they been "goloshed," their owner might have defied Fate! Well has it been said that "there is no such a thing as a trifle." A nobleman's life depended upon a question of ninepence.
The Baron marched on: the uneasiness in his foot increased. He plucked off his boot; a horse's tooth was sticking in his great toe!
The result may be anticipated. Lame as he was, his lordship, with characteristic decision, would hobble on to Shurland; his walk increased the inflammation; a flagon of aqua vitae did not mend matters. He was in a high fever; he took to his bed. Next morning the toe presented the appearance of a Bedfordshire carrot; by dinner time it had deepened to beet-root; and when Bargrave, the leech, at last sliced it off, the gangrene was too confirmed to admit of remedy. Dame Martin thought it high time to send for Miss Margaret, who, ever since her mother's death, had been living with her maternal aunt, the abbess, in the Ursuline convent at Greenwich. The young lady came, and with her came one Master Ingoldsby, her cousin-german by the mother's side; but the Baron was too far gone in the dead-thraw to recognize either. He died as he lived, unconquered and unconquerable. His last words were—"tell the old hag she may go to—." Whither remains a secret. He expired without fully articulating the place of her destination.
But who and what was the crone who prophesied the catastrophe? Ay, "that is the mystery of this wonderful history."—Some say it was Dame Fothergill, the late confessor's mamma; others, St. Bridget herself; others thought it was nobody at all, but only a phantom conjured up by conscience. As we do not know, we decline giving an opinion.
And what became of the Clerk of Chatham? Mr. Simkinson avers that he lived to a good old age, and was at last hanged by Jack Cade, with his inkhorn about his neck, for "setting boys copies." In support of this he adduces his name "Emmanuel," and refers to the historian Shakespeare. Mr. Peters, on the contrary, considers this to be what he calls one of Simkinson's "Anacreonisms," inasmuch as, at the introduction of Mr. Cade's reform measure, the Clerk, if alive, would have been hard upon two hundred years old. The probability is that the unfortunate alluded to was his great grandson.
Margaret Shurland in due course became Margaret Ingoldsby: her portrait still hangs in the gallery at Tappington. The features are handsome, but shrewdish, betraying, as it were, a touch of the old Baron's temperament; but we never could learn that she actually kicked her husband. She brought him a very pretty fortune in chains, watches, and Saracen ear-rings; the barony, being a male fief, reverted to the Crown.
In the Abbey-church at Minster may yet be seen the tomb of a recumbent warrior, clad in the chain-mail of the 13th century. His hands are clasped in prayer; his legs, crossed in that position so prized by Templars in ancient, and tailors in modern days, bespeak him a soldier of the faith in Palestine. Close behind his dexter calf lies sculptured in bold relief a horse's head: and a respectable elderly lady, as she shows the monument, fails not to read her auditors a fine moral lesson on the sin of ingratitude, or to claim a sympathizing tear to the memory of poor "Grey Dolphin!"
RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM.
MOSES, THE SASSY;
OR,
THE DISGUISED DUKE
CHAPTER I
ELIZY
My story opens in the classic presinks of Bostin. In the parler of the bloated aristocratic mansion on Bacon street sits a luvly young lady, whose hair is cuvered ore with the frosts of between 17 Summers. She had just sot down to the piany, and is warblin the popler ballad called "Smells of the Notion," in which she tells how with pensiv thought, she wandered by a C beat shore. The son is settin in its horizon, and its gorjus light pores in a golden meller flud through the winders, and makes the young lady twice as beautiful nor what she was before, which is onnecessary. She is magnificently dressed up in a Berage basque, with poplin trimmins, More Antique, Ball Morals and 3 ply carpeting. Also, considerable guaze. Her dress contains 16 flounders and her shoes is red morocker, with gold spangles onto them. Presently she jumps up with a wild snort, and pressin her hands to her brow, she exclaims, "Methinks I see a voice!"
A noble youth of 27 summers enters. He is attired in a red shirt and black trowis, which last air turned up over his boots; his hat, which is a plug, being cockt onto one side of his classiual hed. In sooth, he was a heroic lookin person, with a fine shape. Grease, in its barmiest days near projuced a more hefty cavileer. Gazin upon him admirinly for a spell, Elizy (for that was her name) organized herself into a tabloo, and stated as follers:
"Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? No, I reckon not! That frame! them store close! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!"
He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was a "hunkey boy."
CHAPTER II
WAS MOSES OF NOBLE BIRTH?
Moses was foreman of Engine Co. No. 40. Forty's fellers had just bin having an annual reunion with Fifty's fellers, on the day I intorjuce Moses to my readers, and Moses had his arms full of trofees, to wit: 4 scalps, 5 eyes, 3 fingers, 7 ears (which he chawed off), and several half and quarter sections of noses. When the fair Elizy recovered from her delight at meetin Moses, she said:—"How hast the battle gonest? Tell me!"
"We chawed 'em up—that's what we did!" said the bold Moses.
"I thank the gods!" said the fair Elizy. "Thou did'st excellent well. And Moses," she continued, layin her hed confidinly again his weskit, "dost know I sumtimes think thou istest of noble birth?"
"No!" said he, wildly ketchin hold of hisself. "You don't say so!"
"Indeed do I! Your dead grandfather's sperrit comest to me the tother night."
"Oh no, I guess it's a mistake," sed Moses.
"I'll bet two dollars and a quarter he did!" replied Elizy. "He said:
'Moses is a Disguised Juke.'"
"You mean Duke," said Moses.
"Dost not the actors all call it Juke?" said she. That settled the matter.
"I hev thought of this thing afore," said Moses abstractedly. "If it is so, then thus it must be! 2 B or not 2 B! Which? Sow, sow! But enuff. O life! life!—you're too many for me!" He tore out some of his pretty yeller hair, stampt on the floor several times, and was gone.
CHAPTER III
THE PIRUT FOILED
Sixteen long and weary years has elapst since the seen narrated in the last chapter took place. A noble ship, the Sary Jane, is a-sailin from France to Ameriky via the Wabash Canal. The pirut ship is in hot pursoot of the Sary. The pirut capting isn't a man of much principle, and intends to kill all the people on bored the Sary and confiscate the walleables. The capting of the S. J. is on the pint of givin in, when a fine lookin feller in russet boots and a buffalo overcoat rushes forored and obsarves:
"Old man! go down stairs! Retire to the starbud bulk-hed! I'll take charge of this Bote!"
"Owdashus cuss!" yelled the capting, "away with thee or I shall do mur- rer-der-r-r!"
"Skurcely," obsarved the stranger, and he drew a diamond-hilted-fish- knife and cut orf the capting's hed. He expired shortly, his last words bein, "We are governed too much."
"People!" sed the stranger, "I'm the Juke de Moses!"
"Old hoss!" sed a passenger, "methinks thou art blowin!" whareupon the
Juke cut orf his hed also.
"Oh that I should live to see myself a ded body!" screamed the unfortnit man. "But don't print any verses about my deth in the newspapers, for if you do I'll haunt ye!"
"People!" sed the Juke, "I alone can save you from yon bloody pirut! Ho! a peck of oats!" The oats was brought, and the Juke, boldly mountin the jibpoop, throwed them onto the towpath. The pirut rapidly approached, chucklin with fiendish delight at the idee of increasin his ill-gotten gains. But the leadin hoss of the pirut ship stopt suddent on comin to the oats, and commenst for to devour them. In vain the piruts swore and throwed stones and bottles at the hoss—he wouldn't budge a inch. Meanwhile the Sary Jane, her hosses on the full jump, was fast leavin the pirut ship!
"Onct agin do I escape deth!" said the Juke between his clencht teeth, still on the jibpoop.
CHAPTER IV
THE WANDERER'S RETURN
The Juke was the Sassy! Yes, it was!
He had bin to France and now he was home agin in Bostin, which gave birth to a Bunker Hill!! He had some trouble in getting hisself acknowledged as Juke in France, as the Orleans Dienasty and Borebones were fernest him, he finely conkered. Elizy knowed him right off, as one of his ears and a part of his nose had bin chawed off in his fights with opposition firemen durin boyhood's sunny hours. They lived to a green old age, beloved by all, both grate and small. Their children, of which they have numerous, often go up onto the Common and see the Fountain squirt.
This is my 1st attempt at writin a Tail & it is far from bein perfeck, but if I have indoosed folks to see that in 9 cases out of 10 they can either make Life as barren as the Dessert of Sarah, or as joyus as the flower garding, my objeck will have bin accomplished, and more too.
ARTEMUS WARD.
MR. COLUMBUS CORIANDER'S GORILLA
My article on the Origin of the Human Species had been months in preparation. Much of the fame which I have since secured by its publication in that widely circulated magazine, the Interoceanic Monthly, is due to the fact that I spent weeks in deep investigations in ethnological science, comparing results, and especially examining the points of resemblance which exist in the brute creation and the nobler race of man. To say that I utterly overthrew the Darwinian theory, and quite demolished the tribe of pretenders who have since attempted to imitate that great apostle of error, may not be strictly in accordance with modesty, but hosts of candid friends will admit that it is strictly true. I know very well that, though my untiring labors in the cause of science are not yet thoroughly appreciated, an admiring posterity will dwell with delight on the name of Samuel Simcox as the benefactor of his race, who showed where that race had its birth and from what primitive elements it sprang. For further particulars, see the Interoceanic Monthly for June, 18—.
My favorite haunt during the progress of this article was Coriander's Menagerie; having resolved that this should be the masterpiece of my life, I spared neither labor nor expense upon it, and actually procured a season ticket to the menagerie, and passed many pleasant hours in watching the wild animals, studying their habits, and drawing many valuable conclusions from their points of resemblance and difference. Consequently, though the apes and monkeys had furnished me with an inexhaustible fund of amusement and interest, I was delighted beyond measure when it was announced that Coriander had secured a live gorilla for his collection of wild beasts. An agent had been dispatched to Africa, and had sent home, with great secrecy, a real live specimen of this dreadful beast; and so well had all the negotiations been kept that nobody knew of what was being done, until the monster was fairly caged and on exhibition at Coriander's Menagerie. I entered with zest upon a study of the creature's habits and peculiarities; and while the idle curiosity of mere wonder-mongers kept a vast crowd about the cage wherein the furious beast was confined, calmly I surveyed it from a safe distance and made my scientific observations for the benefit of mankind. And when vulgar wonder at the strange beast had somewhat subsided, and I could get nearer the cage and watch the gorilla, I was more and more impressed with the human traits which I discovered in the extraordinary animal. His manner of reclining was, though impish, half human; and his grotesque gait, as he sprang from side to side of the narrow prison, was suggestive of his supposititious congener-man; even his terrible howl, which rent the air of the museum constantly, had a human shade of sound.
One rainy day, when the great hall of the museum was unusually vacant of visitors, I almost leaned against the cage in my eager watch of the movements of the gorilla. I fancied him roaming his native African jungles, the terror of every living thing, or rearing, with a strange grotesque solicitude, his young family. I wondered how much akin to human love and hate were the passions that raged beneath that hairy breast, and how much of real feeling was in the loud and anguished howl that occasionally burst from those fanglike jaws. Thus speculating, I drew incautiously near the bars of the cage where the monster restlessly paced up and down, and was inexpressibly startled at feeling his hot breath on my cheek, while from his huge, hairy lips came the sound—"Sam!" I actually jumped with astonishment, whereupon the creature beseechingly said: "Hush, hush, for Heaven's sake do not leave me!" I mustered courage enough to ask what all this meant. The gorilla answered: "I am your old friend, Jack Gale; don't leave me."
So Coriander's famous gorilla was no other than my old crony, Jack
Gale.
And this is how Jack happened to be a gorilla:
Coriander's keepers were too watchful to permit much conversation, but taking from the gorilla—for such he still was to me—the address of Jack Gale, No. 1283, Morusmulticaulis Street, I went home to revise some of my deductions relative to the origin of the human species, founded on observations of the gorilla in a state of comparative wildness. The menagerie closed at ten o'clock in the evening, and precisely at half-past ten I was at Jack's lodgings, to which I climbed up four flights of crooked and very dark stairways. The room was small and cheerless; the windows were carefully guarded by thick curtains; three or four swinging bars depended from the ceiling for the practice of its inmate in acrobatic exercises; across the foot of the bed lay a well-dressed gorilla's skin, and at a small table, and absorbing the contents of a pot of beer, sat the wearer of this discarded robe. This was the haunt of the African gorilla. He told his story in a few words.
"When you and I were used to talk with each other along the Tallapoosa and Athens wire, I never thought to meet you as a live gorilla; but here I am. After the war was over and the Government discharged so many telegraph operators, it was hard scratching for a while; and after you and I left the Decapolis office, I was well-nigh broke more than once, only a few cents standing between me and beggary. But I kept a stiff upper lip and struggled up to Cincinnati, where I met with Coriander. He was out there with his menagerie and was about to come on to this city and open a big show. He is a great old villain, but he has the sweetest, nicest little daughter that ever was given to man. You haven't seen Clara Coriander, have you? No? Well, you have not seen the loveliest and best girl in the world, then. But, as I was saying, old Coriander was preparing for a year's campaign in this city, and allotted a great deal on a real, live gorilla which had been captured in the wilds of Africa somewhere. Oh, curse that gorilla; I wish I had been dead before I ever heard of him."
And here Jack groaned.
"I love Clara Coriander. I suppose you have guessed that out already. But it was the old story; poor young man, without fortune or friends; cruel parents determined that their only daughter shall not marry a beggar; young lady inconsolable and devoted to aforesaid young man, but dreadfully afraid of papa, whose only child she is. Well, Coriander came on here and I followed, the old man giving me the job of writing his posters and advertisements—to keep me from starving, I suppose. The long-expected Gooroo arrived from Zanzibar, but no gorilla was there on board for Mr. Coriander; there was a skin of that celebrated animal, the beast himself having departed this life off the island of St. Helena, an imitation of the example of another much-feared person who once resided in that locality.
"Coriander was frantic. The great card of his menagerie was not to be his. His long-cherished plans were a wreck; his money was spent for naught; he had no gorilla. After all, I rather like the old wretch (Coriander, I mean). He has an absolute passion for his 'profession,' as he calls it, and was more in despair because he had no gorilla, than because it was a bad financial operation, which left him without that for which he had spent so much money. He was wretched in his disappointment, and postponed indefinitely the opening of his menagerie, though my elegant advertisements were in all the papers, and our flaming posters covered the walls of the city from one end to the other. Gloom reigned in the house of Coriander.
"This was my opportunity. I was in love with Clara and without any permanent occupation. Presenting myself before the old man, I said: 'Mr. Coriander, you want a gorilla?'
"'To be sure,' said he, testily.
"'I will furnish you with one.'
"'The devil you will!'
"'Look here,' said I, stepping back a few paces. Grasping the top of a heavy wardrobe that stood in the room, I swung myself up, clambered along the top, sprang up and down over chairs and tables, raced around the room with huge strides and jumps, and finally wound up my performances by rushing at the astonished Coriander, and, beating my breast, gave a terrific howl, that fairly made the old man quail as he writhed in his chair. I had not been practicing for nothing, evidently. Coriander was actually frightened.
"'What does this mean,' he gasped, with some rage mingled with his perturbation.
"'I am the live gorilla from the wilds of Africa,' said I. 'Give me my skin that arrived by the Gooroo from Zanzibar, and I will scare this city out of its senses when the menagerie opens, after a brief delay on account of the difficulty of preparing for the enormous additions, which a discriminating public will be delighted to see.'
"Old Coriander embraced me with tears in his eyes, declaring that I was a real genius, and was born to the show business.
"'But,' said I, 'though I am poor and need the money which you will pay me, I have one other condition, and that is that you shall give me your daughter's hand if I succeed.'
"The old man was rather taken aback at this, and flatly refused at first; and we wrangled over the matter for two or three days, but, after seeing me in the skin of the gorilla, and go through my antics and performances, he reluctantly gave in and agreed that after one year of gorilla life in his service, I should have the happiness of marrying Clara. He only stipulated that I should not hereafter tell anybody of the cheat, and that not even Clara should know of it now.
"I am aware that my profession is not high art as you call it, and on hot days it is precious uncomfortable. But what won't a fellow do under the pressure of an exchequer in distress, and enticed by the promise of the hand of the prettiest and best girl in the world? The pay is not much, but I keep soul and body together, which is more than some poor devils do in this great city. By the way, Sam, have you got five dollars about you?"
Now, if there was anything that Jack Gale specially loved, it was the state of being in debt. He was never so happy as when in debt, and when by accident, or the interference of friends, he got out of it, he was uneasy and wretched, apparently, until he got in again. The normal condition of the man was debt; so when he asked me for a loan, I could not help laughing; and I told him that he had undoubtedly found one of the greatest privations of his gorilla life to be the difficulty of contracting new debts.
"That's a fact," said Jack. "The menagerie opens at eight o'clock in the morning; it takes me a good hour to get myself up for the day; and we don't shut up until ten o'clock at night; so you see my professional duties are very confining, and a real, live African gorilla is not supposed to have first-rate credit with the people who poke stale sandwiches and peanuts through his cage-bars by day."
I promised Jack that if old Seanecks, of the Interoceanic Monthly, accepted my article on the Origin of the Human Species, I would divide the proceeds with him. Jack and I had shared and shared alike with our little gains too often in years gone by, for me to remember which owed the other now. Besides, I told him that I had studied his habits as a gorilla, and he had some claim upon the profits of an article in which his personal peculiarities figured so largely.
During the next few days I observed the characteristics of Coriander's African gorilla with new interest. He performed wonderfully well; it was difficult to realize that the hairy, ravening, agile, and grotesquely-moving beast, from which every visitor shrank back aghast, was only jolly Jack Gale serving out his hard servitude for an anticipated bride, very much after the ancient fashion of Laban's kinsman. The cunning rascal had a fashion of leaping at the bars when curious people came too near, driving them away from a narrow inspection by his hideous yells and angry mouthings. But his roars, which were really artistic in their brutal sonorousness, served us a good purpose. As I was night editor on the Daily Highflyer, and kept pretty close from ten until three o'clock in the morning, and Jack was caged until the hour at which I went to work, it was not easy for us to meet. So we exchanged the salutations of the day and a few scraps of news by using our old signals, learned long ago in the telegraph office. Instead of the rat-tat-tat of the little instrument so familiar to both of us, Jack, by a series of long or short howls and grunts, gave me his message, to which I replied by careless taps of my cane or hand, nobody suspecting that my casual movements meant anything, nor supposing for an instant that a sudden burst of African forest yells, which sent a fat lady nearly into hysterics, and made two small children howl with apprehension, merely meant "She with the pink bonnet is my Clara."
And it must be confessed that Clara Coriander was an exceedingly attractive young person. Blonde, slight in figure, and with one of those fair transparent complexions that make you think of a light shining through an alabaster vase, Clara Coriander was certainly as lovely a girl as one ever lays eyes upon. Besides, she was an only daughter, and old Coriander had grown rich in the menagerie business. Jack was a lucky dog (gorilla, I should say), to gain her hand—if he ever did; but one could not help thinking, as he noted her dainty manner and delicate, somewhat distingue face, that she was hardly the girl to fancy a fellow who had personated a gorilla, even for her hand. I was afraid that Jack had made a mistake in thus debasing himself to the absurd passion of her cruel parent for the possession of a gorilla. Moreover, by debarring himself from her society for a greater portion of the time (Sundays only excepted), he left the field open for some more fortunate rival who might, in the meantime, carry off the prize.