Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-10-12

of this sort. He meets me every day and
he invariably stops me and says:
Show are you coming on ?'
And then the following very interesting
conversation occurs:
Where is your father nowN
In Washington"
sHow does he like il there ?"
"Very WELL"
"Where is your brother now ?"
cat Spokane"
"How does he like it there?"
He does not like il"
Where is your sister now?"
In San Francisco"
How does she like it there ?"
First rate"
Where is your mother now Y
"She is at home"
"How does she like it there ?"
go, 'ratsr"
"What did you say?
l said rats"
A pause.
"Hum What is your father doing ?"
Running for Office"
"What is your brother doing ?"
Running for Office"
"What is your sister doing ?"
Running for Office"
"What Is your mother doing %
Running for Office"
"Hum Is it going to rain ?"
And then, having finished a conversa-
tion which resembles page from Ollen-
dor's Spanish grammer, he pursues the
eve >aor of his way and feels thankful.
This thing has occurred hundred times,
and always without the least variation in
any particular.
There is another man with whom /
often come into contact He is trying to
run a tunnel through hill. He knows
about as much about mining as last
years birds nest, but he has an idea that
he will find an enormous fortune before
he gets through the hill, and he Is always
studying up the most unreliable outlandish
items for ME, and if | do not run them
with regularity in the. paper he is very
badly hurt. He is certain that his hole in
the ground will electrify the world, revo-
lutionize politics and wipe out the ma
tional debt. Every day or two he pops
into my Office and says something like
this:
''You might say in your issue of to-day
that the great Golden Bungle Tunnel Com
pany is now in fifty feet, and will keep
right along. Wen increase the force soon.
Be sure an say that. See? And say that
there is every sign OF hittin' sumthin' be-
fore long. We are now going through a
conglomerated disinterrogation of incom-
prehensibe protoxide Of stalagmites, and
as soon as we get through that Wen have
hack and the formation. See? And you
might say that here in Nevada county we
have fig trees and gooseberries CROWN on
quartz ledges. See |
Then there is another man who was
once a member of Home Guard some
where in the East, and he comes in every
little while, when / am very busy, and
tells me all about the war; how he organ
lied company and led it into hundred
awful battles; hung innumerable spies
was at the head of the military secret
service; built bridges across the Potomac
stormed and captured battery at Vicks.
burg with only three men; was a
prisoner at Andersonville; dug a
tunnel two miles long aud es-
capped with nothing but a dishrag
on his back; organized colored brigade
laid siege to Confederate post, starved an
old woman to death and confscated her
effects; hitched 200 horses to gun and
pulled it through a swamp where only the
drivers head could be seen above the mud;
was a spy and ate turkey dinner with
JEFF Davis was caught, hung and cut
down by shell; broke a saber across the
posterior part of General Bragg's anatomy,
and came home with eight mimic balls in
his leg after a terrible scrimmage with
Frank and Jeese James.
There is another man who never has
anything to say. He drops into my office
with the regularity of clock | can hear
him before he enters, because he wears the
most internal squeaky boots in all creation,
and when he has entered, closed the door
very softly in order not to disturb me- and
gets to moving around, poking at the ex-
changes in a slow, deliberate way, he is
too excruciating for anything.
Just when am in the throes of brill
liant editorial on the force bill, or ro-
nance in which the hero faints and the
heroine restores him with a dose of old
rye. which she carries for use in cases Of
snake bites, etc, this man, who is quiet
and orderly at one end and uproariously
riotous at the other, comes in and stirs up
the exchanges. He never finds the paper
he wants, even though it should happen to
lie on the top of the heap, until he has
taken each one out, unfolded it, read a
funny thing or two, snickered over it. folded
the paper the wrong way and stuck it into
the middle of the pile. He knows that
am "all nerves" and he tries to be as
quiet as a mouse, but his isperpetual s-q-u-e-a-I
resembles the quietness of a mouse that
has been hung up by the tail and whipped.
But the thing who comes in and takes
up an exchange that l have thoroughly
scanned and hacked until it looks like a
circus hoop after the clown has gone
through it, and insists on reading aloud
some old rot that has been going the
rounds of the press for a year, is toe
wicked for death. But have hit upon a
great scheme, which enables me to coun-
teract his influence. When he arrives ]
pop two little balls of soft bee's-wax into
mys-ears, and there / ann Then | can
his jaws flop open and shut and not
be'disturbed.
The man who comes into my office for
the sole purpose Of arguing the political
questions of the day, and who always re-
fers to my party as thieves and cutthroats,
yandals, blackguards and boodlers, and
never gets through until he has worked
me into state of temporary alteration
and murderous intensity of feeling, while
the printers are holding diabolical copy
dance in the composing room, is the most
miserable, contemplate fend in exist
ence.
l hope he will read this and enjoy it.
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