The Fiends Delight | Page 6

temper, one day started across the
fields to visit his father, whom he generously permitted to till a small

corner of the old homestead. He found the old gentleman behind the
barn, bending over a barrel that was canted over at an angle of seventy
degrees, and from which issued a cloud of steam. Scolliver pŠre was
evidently scalding one end of a dead pig-an operation essential to the
loosening of the hair, that the corpse may be plucked and shaven.
"Good morning, father," said Mr. Scolliver, approaching, and
displaying a long, cheerful smile. "Got a nice roaster there?" The elder
gentleman's head turned slowly and steadily, as upon a swivel, until his
eyes pointed backward; then he drew his arms out of the barrel, and
finally, revolving his body till it matched his head, he deliberately
mounted upon the supporting block and sat down upon the sharp edge
of the barrel in the hot steam. Then he replied, "Good mornin' Jacob.
Fine mornin'."
"A little warm in spots, I should imagine," returned the son. "Do you
find that a comfortable seat?" "Why-yes-it's good enough for an old
man," he answered, in a slightly husky voice, and with an uneasy
gesture of the legs; "don't make much difference in this life where we
set, if we're good-does it? This world ain't heaven, anyhow, I s'spose."
"There I do not entirely agree with you," rejoined the young man,
composing his body upon a stump for a philosophical argument. "I
don't neither," added the old one, absently, screwing about on the edge
of the barrel and constructing a painful grimace. There was no
argument, but a silence instead. Suddenly the aged party sprang off that
barrel with exceeding great haste, as of one who has made up his mind
to do a thing and is impatient of delay. The seat of his trousers was
steaming grandly, the barrel upset, and there was a great wash of hot
water, leaving a deposit of spotted pig. In life that pig had belonged to
Mr. Scolliver the younger! Mr. Scolliver the younger was angry, but
remembering Jefferson's maxim, he rattled off the number ten,
finishing up with "You--thief!" Then perceiving himself very angry, he
began all over again and ran up to one hundred, as a monkey scampers
up a ladder. As the last syllable shot from his lips he planted a dreadful
blow between the old man's eyes, with a shriek that sounded like--"You
son of a sea-cook!"

Mr. Scolliver the elder went down like a stricken beef, and his son
often afterward explained that if he had not counted a hundred, and so
given himself time to get thoroughly mad, he did not believe he could
ever have licked the old man. Mr. Hunker's Mourner.
Strolling through Lone Mountain cemetery one day my attention was
arrested by the inconsolable grief of a granite angel bewailing the loss
of "Jacob Hunker, aged 67." The attitude of utter dejection, the look of
matchless misery upon that angel's face sank into my heart like water
into a sponge. I was about to offer some words of condolence when
another man, similarly affected, got in before me, and laying a rather
unsteady hand upon the celestial shoulder tipped back a very senile hat,
and pointing to the name on the stone remarked with the most exact
care and scrupulous accent: "Friend of yours, perhaps; been dead
long?"
There was no reply; he continued: "Very worthy man, that Jake; knew
him up in Tuolumne. Good feller-Jake." No response: the gentleman
settled his hat still farther back, and continued with a trifle less
exactness of speech: "I say, young wom'n, Jake was my pard in the
mines. Goo' fell'r I 'bserved!"
The last sentence was shot straight into the celestial ear at short range.
It produced no effect. The gentleman's patience and rhetorical vigilance
were now completely exhausted. He walked round, and planting
himself defiantly in front of the vicarious mourner, he stuck his hands
doggedly into his pockets and delivered the following rebuke, like the
desultory explosions of a bunch of damaged fire-crackers: "It wont do,
old girl; ef Jake knowed how you's treatin' his old pard he'd jest git up
and snatch you bald headed-he would! You ain't no friend o' his'n and
you ain't yur fur no good-you bet! Now you jest 'sling your swag an'
bolt back to heaven, or I'm hanged ef I don't have suthin' worse'n
horse-stealin' to answer fur, this time."
And he took a step forward. At this point I interfered. A Bit of
Chivalry.
At Woodward's Garden, in the city of San Francisco, is a rather badly

chiselled statue of Pandora pulling open her casket of ills. Pandora's
raiment, I grieve to state, has slipped down about her waist in a manner
exceedingly