Some humorous experiences of a globe trotter

Chapter I

All the world's a stage, and the men and women merely players.

— Shakespeare

Life is full of humor if one has but the wit to see it. The happy, genial disposition that sees the funny side of things, is to be envied. And surely there is an element of humor in the situation at this time.

Here I am, installed for the winter in my old college town attempting to see the funny side of things and jotting them down, in my maiden effort to write a book, and calling it by the euphonious title, "Some Humorous Experiences of a Globe Trotter." Naturally high strung and touchy to a degree, I cannot even stay where there is noise, confusion, idle talk and chattering, much less hold myself down to think and write coherently. Yet here I am, and I have come all the way from Pocatello, Idaho, several thousand miles away, to find here the rest and quiet for which I had hoped while writing this book.

b SOME HUMOROUS EXPERIENCES

I am rooming with a French family of six, every one of whom talks continuously every moment of the time night and day, without a moment's cessation and all at once. My room is on the first floor, and it is heated by some kind of hot air contrivance. I never knew before, what a perfect conductor of the slightest sound one of these hot-air pipes is. It never for a single moment conducts any heat, only cold air and the incessant jabber of my compatriots in the adjoining room. I cannot distinguish a word that is said but as this is the time the war is on in Europe, I imagine the women are trying to tell how the French beat the Kaiser.

I once got similarly caught in a German tenement house in Spokane, Washington ; another time in an Italian lodging house in Pocatello, Idaho; and yet again have at divers times visited my Mormon friends in and near Salt Lake City, Utah; but all of these distinct noises combined could not by any stretch of the imagination enter into competition with this French family. In the hope of a sympathetic response I have once or twice told my grievances to some of my male friends, who promptly advised me to "pay no attention to it". There is an old saying by someone that "Misfortunes never come singly." And I used to know a wag, who, when things had come to that pass as to be quite unbearable, would say, "Cheer up, my friend, the w r orst is still to come." And so a some what strenuous experience with my foreign friends in different parts of the United States — French, English, German, Irish and others — has rather prepossessed me in favor of a plain, ordinary American citizen without one drop of foreign blood in his veins. And yet even Americans like to talk, and the jabbering of the male of this species and the incessant cackling of the female gives one little opportunity for thought when in their neighborhood. I remember, when in the optical business, striking the little town of Crown Point, Indiana. Thoroughly exhausted by the day's jaunt and activities, and with no rest the previous night, I congratulated myself upon getting into the town early and getting to bed early; I forget where, but in the best and mostfavorable looking place in the town . All wen t well for awhile, and

I was so exhausted from lack of sleep that I must have fallen asleep almost immediately upon retiring. But my slumbers were of short duration. I was awakened by a graphaphone in the adjoining room, playing "We Won't Go Home Until Morning," accompanied by a highpitched female voice with a male chorus and the discordant noise of a cracked piano; while at the same instant an uproarious noise arose in the street and the boisterous music of fife and drum completely drowned the "rah! rah! rah!" of the victorious political party. It was no use to lose temper. I had been there many times before, and had learned by manifold experience that the wise thing to do, in fact the only thing to do in such a case, is to look pleasant and take a chance in getting some sleep — somehow, someplace — the next night.

In one of the western states they have a law requiring that sheets be of a certain length, — long enough so that they will cover both the chest and the feet at the same time. I thought this was extremely funny when I heard about it for the first time. But it really isn't a bit humorous, and is the foremost sensible thing that has been done in the United States in this decade! It was a committee of traveling men that got the bill through. Traveling men, who visit many localities and sleep in many strange and unknown beds, are often annoyed by short sheets and comforters. Do what he will, he cannot remedy the matter himself. Five feet eight inches in height, he has a sheet that is exactly five feet long. If he covers his feet his chest is exposed, and if he pulls the sheet up to cover his chest, his feet are naked to the air. And again, if he uses diplomacy and makes a compromise by first covering his chest and then drawing up his legs, so as to get his feet under the sheet and quilts, he is in a ridiculously awkward, unsanitary and painful position, — sans comfort, sans sleep, sans everything but trouble.

The night I was trying to sleep at Crown Point this beneficent law was not in effect. And so, promptly at four A. M., I arose, took a cold sponge bath and rub -down for a bracer, and going out upon the street, drilled until the morning's sun rose to bring confidence and hope, and, being with little sleep, forgetfulness of the past night. Now this sounds strange, but it isn't funny, not a bit of it. Everybody laughs when the wind blows your hat off in the street, and you make an ineffectual hot-foot down the line to recapture it. Many things sound humorous when they are past and gone, when we have naught to do but read about them, but there might not be the least particle of humor in going through the actual experience.

Chapter II

There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio.

— Hamlet

In the fall of the year 1894, having finished my work, drumming for fruit in the great fruit belt of Michigan for a Chicago Commission House, restless and discontented, without any fixed position, and filled with the social and almost morbid memories of the previous year (the year of the great World's Fair in Chicago in 1893), an old and life-long schoolmate friend, (Mr. Charles H.Stauffer) similarly situated and I, conceived the somewhat erratic idea of cutting wholly loose from our surroundings, and like Sherman on his historic march through Georgia, strike off into and through an entirely new and untried territory and make our own living as we went. Only our mission was a peaceful, not a warlike one; a friendly, not a hostile visit; a commercial, and not a military invasion.

Charlie was by far the best fellow the good

Lord ever permitted to live and grow to strong and virile manhood. Chums, friends and inseparable comrades all of our lives from the time we were boys and seat-mates together in the rude little country school of earliest days, our friendship ran on in sunshine and in shadow all the years, until at the ripe age of thirty years each looking backward all the way he had come, we could recollect that strangely enough in all these years through their vicissitudes and changing conditions, we had never once for a single instant unpleasantly disagreed; had not had a single falling-out, nor had our unbroken and life-long friendship marred by the slightest doubt, misunderstanding or unfriendly feeling.

And Charlie and I with our faithful little horse, Freddy, purchased of Leo DeVries in Holland, Michigan, and the carriage purchased of my old friend, Charlie Southard of Bangor, Michigan, were ready for our trip and new experience.

We emptied our pocketbooks before starting, our plan being to make a living as we went, or starve. Charlie carried a stock of silverware, — knives and forks, tablespoons and teaspoons and butter knives, while I, still in the optical business was to fit eye-glasses and spectacles.

It was comparatively easy to work our way through Michigan, our native state, and in a very short time strike the Miami valley in Western Ohio, ready to follow the valley southward coming out at Cincinnati where we were to cross the Ohio River to Covington , Kentucky. So far the trip was ideal, neither hot nor cold, with not an unkind cloud in the sky, the days and nights almost perfect, the roads a boulevard, the carriage brand-new and running easily, lightly, and splendidly. And so, although we made no money, at times scarce paying essential expenses we managed to live and had a delightful time.

At noon, exactly the tenth day out, we reached Cincinnati, and driving through the then Ohio Metropolis, between Vine and Vance Streets, we crossed the Ohio River and passed on into Covington, Kentucky.

Our route now took us east and south so as to strike the attractive little city of Lexington, Kentucky, famed the world over for its fast and blooded horses and beautiful women. At

Lexington, the marble shaft of Henry Clay pierces the sky, and the open friendliness and cordiality of the people gives the first pleasant suggestion of what might be expected from the better class of Kentuckians. Passing rapidly through the country of Blue Grass, fast horses and pretty women, our course still south-east, the way, scenery and people change, and we find ourselves in two or three more days nearing Cumberland Gap, a wild, rocky, sterile district at which point three states meet - Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia ; to which fact, attention is called by means of a huge rock by the roadside with the names of these states printed thereon.

At Cumberland Gap, no longer delighted by a sense of beauty and agreeable surroundings, the scene has changed to the sterile, mountainous, and unfriendly, with huge buzzards overhead, poised on heavy wing, and searching with beady eye and acute sense of smell for carion below. We drive slowly on, rocks, boulders and rough roads now making traveling difficult, our objective point being Greenville j Tennessee, and our direction slightly changed to the southward. We had now reached a section where it w r as quite impossible to fit any glasses or sell any silverware, and so get hold of any money. Money seemed to be unknown to the people we met, and not being able to make any, the only thing we could do was to pay out money; and even then it was difficult and at times entirely impossible to secure anything to eat for ourselves, or corn or fodder for our faithful little horse, Freddy. The people lived wholly on corn bread made (without salt) of corn meal and water, and baked on top of the stove; and the only thing in the shape of fodder for Freddy was a few leaves from stunted corn stalks grown on the sterile sidesof the mountain, and half a dozen nubbin ears of corn, for which we paid the undersized boy who gathered them for us one penny an ear. Paying seven pennies for the seven nubbins of corn the boy was able to gather for us, we fed our horse; and Charlie entered a rude log cabin by the roadside, and, after thirty minutes' time and an extended argument with the boy's mother, returned with a piece of corn bread (baked on the lid of the stove) for which she exacted seven more cents.

We ate the corn bread ravenously and drank from a stream of water flowing down the mountain side. This was probably the first real money this woman had seen since the Civil War, and it was entirely new and strange to the twelveyear-old boy. Refreshed by the seven ears of corn and a long draught of mountain water, Freddy was in condition to start again; while Charlie and I, thoroughly enjoying our cornbread and cool beverage of mountain ale, were in a position to take up "the battle of life" again. We were now directly at the foot of Wild Cat Mountain, a low, but precipitous pile of rocks over which we must go to continue our journey . We could not go around the mountain, but must perforce climb it direct and go over the summit. Asking the woman of whom we got the corndodgers if she thought we could get over it, she said," I reckon you can, but it's mighty rough.'' I had but to say in a low, mild voice, "Go on Freddy," when the faithful little animal started. Never, since by a strange freak of nature the rocks had been curiously piled up there, had any human being ever attempted to scale them in civilized manner with horse and carriage. No mountaineer on horseback with a sure-footed animal had ever tried it, but always went around leading his horse. Of course we immediately saw we would have to walk, and we got out of the buggy and assisted Freddy by pushing on it from behind. Never before did I see such an intelligent effort of a supposedly dumb animal to accomplish a well-nigh impossible feat. The untrodden road was full of rocks, and the little horse would carefully put down one foot, and try himself and the conditions out by carefully raising himself on one front foot; and if that went well, he would try the other foot, gingerly following with his hind feet, slowly pulling forward and upward, with our pushing behind, the entire carriage with its load of wolf robes, silver ware and optical goods. After several hours of laborious and incessant struggle, wearied but delighted, we at last reached the summit of Wild Cat Mountain. The top was quite level, with a fairly good road, and here and there, on either side of the road, a rising rock with timber on both sides. Refreshing Freddy with another ear or two of corn, a copious drink of mountain water, and thirty minutes' rest, we drove on, and in less than one hour had come upon, and passed through, the wierdest and most uncanny experience either of us had ever known before. Laughing and talking, and driving gaily along, at a smart trot, just as we came to a bend in the road, a creature of massive build, fully six feet in height, with bloodshot eyes, bewhiskered chin and matted gray hair, wearing a long, gray garment that reached to the naked feet, stepped in front of our buggy; but, halting only one instant, stepped to one side of the road and allowed us to drive on. Freddy snorted and reared, and, but for a firm hold on the lines, would have become unmanageable..

Passing now beyond Wild Cat Mountain and on the other side on our way to the next town, Mount Vernon, we again entered a stretch of wild, rocky country where no carriage had ever been, and where a single man, even though a rough, rugged pathfinder, could scarcely go on foot. At Mount Vernon, a rude little mountain hamlet of half a hundred houses, seated deep down in the rocky defile with boulders on every side, — here, at the only place we could find — a kind of alleged hotel — we managed to pass the night.

That evening before retiring, seated for an hour or two in front of the huge, old-fashioned log fire-place, we told of our experience in meeting what we saw on the mountain; and in turn were told by one of the men, a massive square-jawed and gray-bearded man of perhaps sixty years of age, that he knew the woman well from the time she was a child. Apparently interested by our interest, he at length settled down, and filling the huge bowl of his pipe with home-made tobacco, related the following story:

THE MANIAC OF WILDCAT MOUNTAIN

I knew this unfortunate woman from the time she was a little child not five years of age, and many a time have held her on my knee. She was the brightest, prettiest little girl I believe I ever saw, with dark brown eyes, raven hair and a winsome manner that captivated and held every heart and made her beloved by all who knew her.

As she grew to womanhood she became each day more beautiful and more captivating, until at the age of twenty she was considered in all of Eastern Kentucky the most beautiful woman that section had ever known, rivaling and wholly eclipsing even the far-famed belles of Lexington and the Blue Grass region. Her lovers were legion and her brief social life ended by her marrying a man of prominent family, considerable means and magnificent physique, but who was suspected of operating illicit stills in various parts of mountainous Eastern Kentucky. Despite this, the wedding was held in the most fashionable church in Lexington, the elite attending; and so, under a shower of flowers, rice and good wishes, they were married, and from Lexington, Kentucky, took the first train to Nashville, Tennessee, on their wedding trip.

No one heard from either bride or groom for many years, until it was learned later that the girl's husband was shot by a revenue officer while resisting arrest in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and some years later, old and infirm, with mind hopelessly impaired, the once beautiful girl was discovered leading a sad and semi-savage life among the rocks and caves of Wild Cat Mountain. She had been known to grasp the bridle-rein of travelers crossing the mountain and to stop the horse, but otherwise had offered no molestation, although some feared her and others regarded her as homicidal.

And this is the story told there of the Maniac of Wild Cat Mountain, and was repeated to us, as we sat about the huge open fireplace with half a dozen rude six-foot mountaineers, that night in 1894.

CHAPTER III Put money in thy purse

— I ago.

Money is the whole thing when you are among strangers and almost the whole thing when you are among acquaintances. Unable to make any money along the savage way over which we had come and having none on our persons, we shortly began to feel the need and absolute essentiality of some. Our neighborhood was changing again and we were passing along a highway where we could occasionally although not often, fit a pair of glasses or sell a dozen silver knives and forks or a set of silver teaspoons. But the country was yet new and raw, the habitations crude and the people for the most part rude and unlearned.

We stopped one night at a low-built log cabin of two rooms, and after an hour's persuasive and diplomatic talk by Charlie, were permitted to tie our horse out in a kind of shed, feed him some corn-stalks and go inside.

The woman and her eighteen -year-old daughter dipped snuff, occasionally spitting with unerring accuracy at a fly on the opposite wall, while the man told us they never "kept anybody overnight," and that was the first time they had "ever seen anybody come through there", but, that we could stay if we wanted to as it was half a dozen miles to any other place where we possibly could stay and it would be dark in another hour. A hound, two cats, the man, his wife and four tow-headed children, gathered with Charlie and myself around the fireplace that evening after our supper of corn bread and bacon, and we conversed until after eleven o'clock, when our host said, "And now, boys, I'll show you where you will sleep. You will find it right smart different than in the big cities of the north where you came from, but we like you, and if you can put up with it you are welcome to stay."

He opened a door and taking a candle in hand conducted us into a low-arched room with a single bed. The sides and ends of the room were made of rough logs with wide, open spaces between them, through which the far-away stars shown cold and the wind came in unpleasant gusts. By pulling the single blanket tight around us and lying close together so as to conserve the heat of our bodies and with eyes fixed upon the polar star, some time during the night, through utter exhaustion we fell asleep.

When I next regained consciousness I was startled by hearing Charlie say, " listen . what on earth is that!" I did so and there was distinctly borne to our ears the nearby baying of a dog, to be followed a moment later by the mad scramble of some wild animal, possibly a fox, a coon, or a wild cat, through the opening in the logs, pell-mell over our bed and out through the opening on the other side, followed immediately in like manner by the sanguine and sanguinary hound. "Well, now, wouldn 't that take you to the Fair ! ' ' said Charlie, as he tumbled out of bed and reached for his pantaloons. "What was it?" "You are at liberty to search me," I replied, following suit immediately.

After our breakfast of cornbread and bacon, leaving Charlie to settle in some way for the night's entertainment, I went out to curry, water, feed and harness Freddy, and prepare for our journey southward. Having done this,

OK A GLOBE TROTTER 25

I returned to the cabin to assist in disposing of some of our goods in exchange for our stay over night, as it will be remembered, every penny of our money was gone and we had to depend entirely upon our ability as salesmen to get rid of some of our silverware or spectacles, for we could not pay out the money we did not have. And here was where we got our eyes wide open as to the alleged hospitality of the "open-hearted south." We had goods galore, but not one penny in real money. Shy lock was the embodiment of mercy, compared with the sinister, lynx-eyed female with whom we were trying to settle. Repeated, friendly and honest offers to let her have even ten times the cost of our night's entertainment in goods, were repeatedly met by the set and unchanging speech, "We want the money." Every house in this part of the country has over the door a longbarrelled rifle, which, because of seeing it so often, Charlie and I at length began to call, the squirrel gun." As this sinister and chilling female repeated for the dozenth time the monotonous demand, "We want the money," her eyes looked suggestively up at the squirrel gun, while mine sought Charlie's and both of us thought of our unpreparedness for a leap into the Great Beyond. I never could recall how it was done, certainly it was neither Charlie's eloquence nor my own persuasiveness, but in some way the danger passed. The ban was lifted, and both of us recovered our normal equilibrium, to find ourselves a dozen miles down the road with the new night coming on, the wind beginning to blow, and a dozen buzzards circling high before us above the remains of a dead horse. I considered it a close call, and felt again for the hundredth time the almost tragic meaning of Iago's sinister advice, "Put money in thy purse." I cannot think how otherwise we could have done it, but we must surely have unloaded ten dollars' worth of sterling silver into the hands of this grasping, covetous woman for the privilege of staying awake one night in a back room, and having a mangy hound chase some wild animal over our bed and through our apartment. The next night we stopped at some house along the roadside where the woman and her grown-up daughter made a business of dipping snuff. We learned in some way that the girl's name was" Molly"; and, on account of her skill, accuracy and proficiency in spitting, never once missing the mark, Charlie called her, "Molly, the spitter." That evening we entertained ourselves, and were entertained, by sitting around the usual, old-fashioned, open fire-place and watching the two women dipping snuff, the younger one always doing a very artistic and sometimes a very clever thing in the way of spitting.

The husband and father made a living by raising and selling razor-back pigs. He fattened them on acorns and let them run wild in the open woods that stretched interminably back of the house. Not knowing this, the next morning through curiosity I wandered out nto the woods. Imagine my consternation when almost instantly I was surrounded by a score of snorting, grunting, menacing razorbacks. Instead of being weakened and collapsing from my stifling fears, they seemed to give me instantly almost superhuman strength. Although not a professional, nor even an amateur athlete, I then and there made a jump that would put to shame the greatest athlete in the world. I sprang directly upward, catching the lower limb of a huge tree just above me, and drew myself up among the branches. And there I had to stay, with the angry and disgruntled swine beneath me, until the mountaineer came to call them away with a few ears of corn, when I could with safety descend from my awkward position.

Chapter IV

Back! Back! Back to New York!

— Song of Defeat.

We pressed on until in due time we reached the home of Mr. Me Am is — six miles north of Greenville, Tennessee — and with whom we had had some little correspondence before we left our home in Michigan. The family consisted of Mr. McAmis, then almost an old man, two charming daughters, Lela and May, and a grown-up son, Dave, a young man about twenty two years of age. Without in the least suspecting it we were again getting within the border line of another moonshine district, where the people, although apparently friendly, and treating us with entire cordiality, were nevertheless suspicious, watchful and inclined to feel that two young men from so far away as Michigan were rather intruding upon their privileges and privacy. One of the girls, Lela, had a lover, Dave Rankin, a typical, ignorant Eastern Tennessee hot-head, who for some baseless reason seemed to regard us, especially Charlie, as rivals; even though he knew that Charlie was married and I had long been out of the running, and ceased to count as a factor in social affairs. We were invited and remained in the McAmis home for several days, enjoying our surroundings and their cordial hospitality and giving us an opportunity to drive out, using their place as headquarters, and doing a little optical work, as well as making some sales of silverware.

The third morning we were there, Dave came into our room to tell us that the night before some person or persons had gone into the barn, slashed our carriage top, and literally cut our harness all to pieces. We went out and verified his advice by finding it was exactly as he had stated. The harness was a wreck, and it was with difficulty that we were able to patch it up, and use it when we were ready to go ; while the buggy looked as if it had gone through a hard campaign in the late Civil War. The hint suggested by this wanton outrage was obvious. We were not wanted in that neighborhood of southern chivalry and hospitality, and it was desired that we go. The McAmis family, themselves wholly innocent, expressed all kinds of regrets that the incident had occurred. But, to save them any further unpleasantness, or ourselves perhaps the repetition of a worse thing, we decided to go at once. We denied to ourselves, that we were run out, but taking council from Shakespeare's suggestion that ''discretion is the better part of valor," we left.

Greenville, Tennessee, near where President Andrew Johnson is buried, was some four or five miles away. Making the drive that morning through the thick pine-tree road over which we had to go, we thought of our various experiences in life and the different temperaments, dispositions, and manner of doing things among people in different parts of the United States.

We next moved on to Knoxville, Tennessee, in which delightful little city we secured pleasant accommodations in the way of room and board at Mrs. Banker's house, where we remained for an even month, Freddy being cared for at a nearby livery stable. We had now begun to clearly see and to even frankly admit that from a commercial standpoint our expedition had been the grossest kind of a failure; although we had gained much in pleasure, seeing a new country, and meeting a new people, while, far and above all, were the recollections which memory could not forget. At the end of the month, still unready to return to our old home in Michigan, Charlie engaged in the briefly successful business of making candy in Knoxville, Tennessee.

While left thus to my own inclinations and resources, still refusing to quit, I started out all alone, virtually "doubling" on the way we had come, but paralleling our back track so as to meet new people and new experiences. It had long been apparent that for me at least the better opportunity for making money and enjoying life was in the older and settled north, and not in the wild, unsettled regions of the "sunny south". Refusing to persist longer in following a fixed and settled mistake, I gave Freddy a double feed of oats, a last long drink at the livery stable trough at Knoxville, Tennessee, and, resolutely turned his head toward the north and civilization — Valparaiso, Indiana, being the objective point.