Puck — August 13, 1879 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

859 fA 4] say, ain't this high? A ten cent cigar 'n’ a reg'lar ice-cream gal! Oh my! kill me, I’m to sweet ter live!” ° THE CONVERSATIONAL BLACKSMITH. E'S a Very, curious man,” ‘said the native to whom thé reporter applied for information about the local con- versational celebrity, ‘and I wouldn't advise you to talk to him, unless you know his ways. He's kinder to get interested in what he’s sayin’, and abstracted like. If I was you, I'd keep out of that blacksmith’s shop, I would.”’ But the reporter wouldn't. He said that was the way he liked to find a man; and that he had been sent up there to interview that man, and to hear him talk, and that he meant to write up a column-and-a-half article on that conversationalist of the forge; and that he didn’t mean to travel back from Cairo, Greene Co., t6 New York, just because he found a man had absent-minded ways. So he went in and opened up a conversation with the blacksmith, who was quite what you might call a remarkable man. He had made himself famous for twenty-five miles around by his phenomenal vivacity of his chin, He wasso great ‘a talker that people used to come from all the neighboring counties to hear him sling the vernacular. He talked about two hund: words to the minute, when he got warmed up to his subject, and he had more opinions to the ‘cubic yard of conversation than any six men in Cairo. His reputation had finally got as far as New York, and the reporter’s paper had despatched him to Cairo to tap the stream of language at, its source, So he went in and talked to the blacksmith. He was a fearfully easy man to talk to, that blacksmith, At the first leading question he limbered up his chin, hauled his epiglottis into position, and fired off. “Who's going to be the next president ?””he 6 | less reporter, and drew hin repeated, hammering ferociously at a horse- shoe. ‘ Well, I tell you who @in't; and that’s Sherman, Now that man ain't nd good: Who's Sherman, anyway? What's he been and gone and done for the ‘country? Nothing. Re- soomed,, did he? So does any man who's busted—he resooms as $00n as he can, What's resumption, anyway? Does resumption put another dollar inté my pocket or into your's, my friend? What's‘ dollar, anyway? A dollar is pork, and a dollar 's beans, and a dollar's a biled shirt. I ain't had a biled shirt on since John Sherman resoomed. And am I going to throw away my vote on John Sherman. No- sirree!” And he plunged the horse-shoe into the water-tub, and withdrew it, and hammered on it again, and dipped it again; as He went on, without waiting for the reporter’s remarks ‘or queries: * “Then there’s Evarts—William M. Evarts. He's a candidate, is he? I tell you, there ain’t no chanze for Evart’s. The people don’t want no such man as Evarts, They want,a man who can talk. Can Evarts'‘talk, anyway? No, sir; he ain't no talker. For a little light conversa- tion, mebbe, he’s gdodendugh ; but he‘ain’t no sort of a hand at_sdstained eloquence!” And, thoroughly absorbed’ in. his interesting theme, the. bl ith, having finished his horse-shoe, fasten¢d his pee tae thé help- ly towards the anvil. “‘ What are you ‘doing?’ cried the inter- viewer, “I say—" ‘ “What's a talker, anyway ?” the blacksmith went on. ‘A talker is a man who's got some range to his conversation—a man who ain’t confined to one subject, nor to one style. Now, I don’t pretend to do no fancy talking, for instance; but I consider I’ve got some scope, and ‘some grip of things in general. Now, what | is grip, anyway?” e i ‘Here he lifted ithe reporter. up, absent- mindédly twisted him‘over on one side, and ites in the forts: 4 iT say—" began, ie rter.. , But he didn’t say: "he. blacksmith went right on. . “Grip is the hold a man has on his subject and the way he handlesit;” and he laid the Teporter on the anvil and commenced ham- imering him out with artistic evenness, “Now, there's some subjects requires light handling, and there's some subjects requires solid hhande ling: There's astronomy, for instance. - Now, ‘What's astronomy, anyway? Astronomy’s the Star-surveying business. When I strike out on stars—" and he struck stars out of the reporter, “J turn the job out neat.” Here he heeled off the reporter, and turned him up at the counter-tip. : “I went in for Star cultivatin’ about a year ‘ago. I made a telescope out of two tomato- cans, and a pair of spectacles. I went.in for discoverin’ planets, and I tell you I discovered right solid, I ain't no slouch when 1 go to dis- coverin’ planets, Now, what’s a slouch, any- way? Aslouch is a man that séts out to dis- cover planets and don’t discover nothin’ but little asteroids and sich, First off, I dis- covered Jupiter and Venus, which ain't no small potato for a beginning.” He rounded off the interviewer with a neat professional stroke, and swished him into the water-tub. “Of course the jealousy and narrowminded- ness of them fancy astronomers interfered with me, and they gradually spiled the business for me; but you don’t suppose I'd done with science then, do you?” “No,” he continued, as he. returned the Tepresentative of the metropolitan press to the anvil, and began to spike out the nail-holes, “1 was only just beginning. I turned my attention right square onto finance. I’m the inventor Of the boss currency. Mebbe you don’t know it; but it was me who give to the world the grand idea of a injin-rubber,‘cur- tency. I tell you, sir,” said he, as he turned the reporter up on his curved end and ham- mered down his heel-tips, ‘if the greenback party had gone in on that platform in °76, they’d have gone to victory, * Now, what's victory, anyway? Victory. isfoing a job up solid.” : Here he rounded off tHe reporter's rough edges, and smoothed out his upper sides. “Victory is giving defeat a settler right in the proboscis. Victory is krockifig opposition into a cocked hat. Victory is uplifting the standard of progréss over the whole universe. Victory is taking the rag off all creation. Now, what's creation, anyway ?—Dear me!” said the conversational blacksmith, “I've béen ham- ‘mering that young man into a horse-shoe all this time, and I never knew it. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Now, what's a newspaper man, anyway?” SCIENTIFIC. Petroleum 'ile!—well, now, the fax is, *Arth needs it fur to grease her axis. This bustin’ out uv old Vesuvus? Hain’t got left enuf to move us: An’ so the ‘friction in 'arths bowels Continooally grinds an’ growels, An’ workin’ to’ard the surfis nigher, Busts out in sulfer gas an’ fire. Cloze pan on this petrolum borin’ An’ that shets out volcanos roarin’— ‘The axes will resoom their 'ilein’ An’ everything continoo smilin’: If not—the ‘arth at any minit Turns into Hell—and us ail in it! ae ~"Suowets. comicbooks.com