Mr. Johnny Cake here produced a roll of manuscripts, which, after he had straightened up his collar, he proceeded to read. The manuscript read as follows:
"I do not propose, now, to give you a glimpse of anything within the city. In fact, it is my intention to inflict upon you an extra-metropolitan scene, which I recently witnessed, and which, though funny, was not comfortable, and I don't care about experiencing it again."
The section of country to which your attention is called was flat positively flat comparatively stale, and superlatively unprofitable. It was a western prairie marsh, the home of gigantic frogs, the abiding place of water-snakes and musk-rats; where flourished in luxuriant profusion, bulrushes, water-cresses, pond-lilies, and such like amphibious and un-get-at-able vegetables. Through that particular locality a train of cars was not only seen, but heard going at 2'40" speed over a pile-bridge, made across a Michigan swamp, by driving black-oak logs end-wise into the mud. The people therein were covered with dust, as thickly as if each man had been a locomoting Pompeii, each woman a perambulating Herculaneum, and some vagrant Vesuvius had been showering ashes on them all for a month. They were lying about loose in the cars, after the ordinary fashion of people on a tedious railway journey; curled up in some such ungraceful and uneasy positions as the tired beasts of a strolling menagerie probably assume in their cages during their forced marches across the country. To carry out the parallel, the conductor came along at irregular intervals, and with deliberate and premeditated malignity, stirred up the passengers, as if they were actually animals on exhibition, and he really was their keeper, and wanted to make them growl. And this conductor, in common with conductors in general, deserves notice for the diabolical ingenuity which he displayed in forcing from his helpless victims the greatest number of growls in a limited space of time.
The cars had just left the flourishing prairie city of Scraggville, which contains seven houses and a tavern, and a ten-acre lot for a church, in the centre of which the minister holds forth now from a cedar stump. At the tavern, dinner had been served up, and the conductor, according to the usual custom, had started the train as soon, without waiting for his passengers to eat anything, as the money was collected. The population of our train, which exceeded that of the great city of Scraggville by about one hundred and seventy persons, had composed itself for a short nap, and the various individuals had settled as nearly into their old places as possible, when a man, remarkable for a particularly lofty shirt-collar, a wooden leg, and an unusual quantity of dust on the bridge of his nose, began to sing. He commenced that touching ballad, now so popular, "the affecting history of Vilikins and his Dinah." The pathos of his words, added to the unusual power of his voice, waked up his right-hand neighbor, before he had proceeded any further than to inform the listeners that,
"Vilikins vas a-valking"
This neighbor who was so suddenly aroused, and who was distinguished by a steeple-crowned hat, did not appear to care where Vilikins was a-walking, or to take much interest in the particulars of the said walk, for he immediately turned on the other side, tied himself up in a worse knot than he was in before, and attempted to sleep again. He had in so doing shaken from the top of his mountainous hat about half a peck of cinders, directly into the mouth of the vocalist. The latter gentleman, however, seemed nothing disconcerted
by this unexpected pulverulent donation, but, removing those particles which most interfered with his vocal apparatus, he proceeded with his melody. This time he progressed as far as to state emphatically that,
"Vilikins vas a-valkin' in his garding one day,"
And was about to add the explanatory notes, that it was the "back garding," when his left-hand neighbor emerged from a condition of somnolency into a state of unusual wakefulness.
The most noticeable thing about this last named individual was the optical fact that he had but one eye. And as this solitary orb was partially filled with the dust which had accumulated therein, during a ten hours' nap in a rail-car, over a sandy road, with a headwind, it might be supposed that his facilities for visual observation were somewhat abridged. This did not prove, however, to be the case, for with a single glance of this encumbered optic, he seemed to take in the character of the singer, and to make up his mind instanter that he was a good fellow and a man to be acquainted with.
Acting promptly upon this extemporaneous opinion, he held out his hand with the remark:
"I don't want to interfere with any arrangements you have made, stranger, but here's my hand, and my name's Wagstaff let's be jolly."
The singer had by this time got to the chorus of his song, and although he took the extended hand, his only immediate reply to the observations of one-eyed Wagstaff, was "too ral li, too ral li, too ral li la," which he repeated with an extra shake on the last "la," before he condescended to answer. And even then his observation, though poetic, was not particularly coherent or relevant. It was couched in the following language.