The record-union., 1891-08-22
OF SNOBS.
Hoffman Analyses All Kinds of
the Creatures.
A Miserably Poor Man and What Hap
pened to Him-Some Snobs Who are
Slightly Worse Than Other Snobs-
nhiZPS

| Especial correspondence OF RECoRD-U UNION. ]
| To-day met man had not seen for
| years. was Intimately acquainted with
hlm when he was SO poor that the flies
died OF starvation in his house; so poor
| that the smell of fried bacon never issued
from his kitchen except on rare occasions,
and was always followed by a report that
somebody's old swinette was lost, strayed
or stolen; SO poor that his pantaloons
were missing in the most conspicuous
places; so poor and poverty-stricken and
miserable and empty that his cheeks,
| slapping against his back teeth, were full
Of holes.
In those days, when this mans stom-
ach was bowling, desolate waste, he
| and were very good friends. We were
both poor then, but often, when / had
boiled a pot Of beans, or made an extra
allowance of dunderfunl, or had cooked
a fresh mess of socki, 1 would run over to
his house and invite him to dine with
me. How joyfully he always accepted
those invitations! How he did Stow
away the beans and the dunderfunk and
the socki! 1t would have done YOU a
world of good if you could have heard his
teeth whacking together as he devoured
all l set before him!
In those old days, when we were both
so poor, and our picks, driven into The
'rOck-rlbbed'' Sierra NeVadas, brought
forth very few grains of gold, L was his
| best, his dearest friend. He always hailed
me when we met, and more than once did
he grasp my hands with his lank and ca
daYerous claws and say, while two great,
salty tears welled out of his ewes and
frI IL,
ers:
u will never forget you, partner
Never as long as [ live, by goshi Some
day pll be able to do you a good turn.
partner, and then dog me If L don't do it.''
To-day we met, after five years of sep
aration, and Ihailed him gladly with the
old cry:
Hello, old pardr'
There was no response. He stared at
me and was about to pass on, ignoring
me, because he has by a sudden change
IN the affairs of fate become rich He has
a large farm, whereon he raises oranges,
lemons, lines, walnuts, prunes, pump
kins and beans. AYE, beans, but they
Will never seem as good to him as the
beans he ate with me on the banks of the
American river y
He attempted to pass on, 1 say, ignor-
ing me. But he didn't
L remembered those bygone days when
he was so miserably poor; when he was
getting ready, as it were for the abund-
ance OF tat which now hangs in folds
about his person. In my mind [ saw
him when he came to me and said that
he would mine no more. / saw him
standing in the door of my shack. with
the morning sunlight distinctly outlining
his tattered garments and lighting up his
face, that was pinched and haggard,
while he held one hand against his stom-
ach, freshly filled with beans and bacon
from my slender stock, and SAID ''Good-
bye" swearing that he would never for
get the ''old partner" who had been so
good to him.
l lived that hour of our parting and
that period of our fortune hunting all
over again IN the one little moment when
he was about to pass on ignoring me.
Then L snaked him down from his fine
buggy and wiped the earth with him and
stood him up against a barbed wire fence
and made him bow and say "How do
you do, sir?" fifty times. Then I kicked
him in several places in a desultory way
and left him to think of those bygOne
days when he ate my beans and dunder-
funk and socki on the American River.
If wish to cut an old friend, and cut
him most cruelty, | can do it better and
with more credit to myself by taking a
dull ak, or hay-knite, or q grubbing-
hoe, and doing it with that.
costs less than politeness, and there is no
man SO far removed from manliness as
he who refuses to return the salutations
OF the people he meets, no matter how
lowly they may be. Even the most COM
mon cur dog in the world will wag his
tail if spoken to kindly, and the man
who is, in his own mind, too good to no.
tice the civility of others, is infinitely
lower in the scale of intelligence and
generosity than dog. To write nv
opinion of such men | would have a pen
made from the beak of buzzard. and ink
distilled from the fangs of rattlesnake.
Several wise men have noticed that it
takes all kinds of people to make a
world, just as 1t takes all sorts of insects
to make up the microcosan of the ento-
mologist. The latter must have its Shiny
slugs, and nobody knows why they
could not have been left out of the crea-
ton entirely. They do no good, unless
it is to act as foils. Perhaps were more
thoroughly conversant with the laws of
nature, l might be able to see where the
Shiny, repulsive insects and the insult
ing germs of humanity fit into the intri-
cate meshes Of the social fabric. But it's
all right, l guess. Insects that leave
their Shiny trails in the fostering, stag
nant fern banks, now and then crawling
over the lilies, and the insects that leave
their Shiny trails in the walks of human
hIdeous ittleness of soul, are, suppose,
very necessary things. But, while I
can avoid stepping on the repulsive, Shiny
insect, / cannot help feeling a desire to
take down and thrash every contempti-
bic, miserable, arrogant snob who, be-
cause he can afford to change his under
shirt twice in a week, thinks he is too
high up to hear the friendly "Good morn
ing" of another.
Sometimes meet people who, having
little brains, consider themselves vastly
better than any other men or women on
earth, and then l wish that had the wizard
power to separate their souls from their
minds, leaving both soul and mind ex-
posed at its true value and in its true i'm
portance, and have each see and under
stand the worth of the other. 1t
would, L think, be like a mustard seed
appralslng grain of sand, and vice Ueysd,
Or that 1 had the power to put all the
snobs together in one planet, and then,
lighting my pipe, watch them strut and
swell and swell until, one by one. they
had all been exploded by their own van
ity.
1t is rather curious, too, how many
different bases the pyramids of snobbery
rest upon. The most common founda-
ton is Myself" and after that ''My
Money" and after that MY Position.'
Then we have long list of reasons. some
Of them sublimely ridiculous:
Il am a Van Doodlebury."
Wy father fit in the revolution"
Il slept for week with a Duke.r
And the clear-headed, sensible man
says to these people:
Who and what are the Van Doodle
burys ?''
''On which side of the revolution did
you fight?"
You are certainly not healthy-take
iodide of potassium"
/ have noticed, too, that those people