Mr. Scraggs | Page 7

mean it was nothing to bank on in dealing with Zeke. Still, if you could
see those eyes, dimmed with a settled melancholy; those mustachios,
which, absorbing all the capillary possibilities of his head, drooped like
weeping willows from his upper lip; and above, the monumental
nose--that springing prow that once so grandly parted the waves of
adverse circumstance, until, blown by the winds of ambition, his bark
was cast ruined on the shores of matrimony--you would not so much
blame the man who mistook E. G. Washington Scraggs for a something
not too difficult. Red Saunders said that Scraggsy looked like a forlorn
hope lost in a fog, but when you came to cash in on that basis it was
most astonishing. In general a man of few words, on occasions he
would tip back his chair, insert the stem of his corncob pipe in an
opening provided by nature at the cost of a tooth, and tell us about it.
[Illustration: "Scraggsy looked like a forlorn hope lost in a fog."]
"Why can't people be honest?" said Mr. Scraggs--_Silence_!
"Charley!" cried Red, reproachfully, "why don't you tell the
gentleman?"
"No, no, no!" replied Charley. "You be older'n me, Red--you explain."
"Well," said Red, "I suppose the loss of their hair kind of discourages
'em."
"I had rather," meditated Mr. Scraggs, "I had much rather wear the top
of my head a smooth white record of a well-spent life than go amblin'
around the country like the Chicago fire out for a walk, and I repeat:
Why can't people be honest?"
"I begin to pity somebody an awful lot," said Red. "Did you send him
home barefoot?"
"You go on!" retorted Mr. Scraggs. "I fell into the hands of the
Filly-steins oncet, and they put the trail of the serpent all over me. I run
into the temple of them twin false gods, Mammon and Gammon, and I
stood to draw one suit of sack-cloth and a four-mule wagon-load of
ashes."
"Is them the close you got on now?" said Charley. "And what did you
get for the ashes?"
"The play come up like this," said Scraggs. "After my eighteenth
bestowin' of the honored name of Scraggs upon a person that didn't

appreciate it the Mormon Church see fit to assume a few duties on me.
I was put in a position of importance in a placer minin' districk
inhabited by jack-rabbits, coyotes, Chinamen, and Mrs. Scraggses. And
still I wasn't happy. Them jack-rabbits et up my little garding patch; the
coyotes gathered at nights and sung me selections from the ghost dance;
the Chinamen sprung every con-cussed trick on me that a man who
wears his whiskers down his back can think of; and day and night alike,
Mrs. Scraggs, from one to eighteen, informed me what I'd ort to do.
"I tried to strike up a little friendly conversation with the Chinks, for
variety, but it weren't no use. A Chinaman'll be a Mormon, or a
Democrat, or a cannibal, or any other durn thing for five cents, sixty
days from date. He ain't got any more natural convictions than a
Missouri River catfish. They'd just keep a-watchin' my face so's they
could agree with me. Now, I didn't want that. I wanted to get up an
argument with somebody I could sass back, because in my own house,
where I was lord and master, if I happened to remark it was a nice,
bright day everybody swore you couldn't see your hand before your
face, and I let the subject drop right there. Mrs. Scraggs quar'led some
among herself, but when I come in her motto was, 'United we stand
him on his head, and divided we fall upon his neck.' When she done the
last, of a still day, you could hear the crack of my cervycal vertybree
three mile.
"So, at last, I wearied. I writ a letter to the Elders tellin' 'em I enjoyed
the work, but thought it was time for my spirit of self-sacrifice to
exercise himself a little. So would they mind givin' me another job?
Somethin' like lyin' on a board and havin' a doctor rip-saw chunks out
of me for the benefit of Science, and let him lose the pieces, for all I
cared.
"The Mormon Church, she come to my relief by sendin' me out on a
proselytin' expedition to York State. But I wasn't built proper to lead
errin' sheep into the fold. Most of the sheep they hollered 'Baa!' when
they see me, and gathered distance with both feet. If I did get a chance
to talk to a man he always asked me awkward questions. Like one old
farmer, whilest I was explainin' the advantages of havin' as many
helpmates and cheerful companions and domestic