Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0150/01502.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 8KB | 136 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01502}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
Riley - Newspaper Correspondent}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{riley
never
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}
$Date{1893}
$Log{}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        Riley - Newspaper Correspondent
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

Riley - Newspaper Correspondent

     One of the best men in Washington - or elsewhere - is Riley,
correspondent of one of the great San Francisco dailies.

     Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes
his conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarks are
about somebody else).  But, notwithstanding the possession of these qualities,
which should enable a man to write a happy and appetizing letter, Riley's
newspaper letters often display a more than earthly solemnity, and likewise an
unimaginative devotion to petrified facts, which surprise and distress all men
who know him in his unofficial character.  He explains this curious thing by
saying that his employers sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy,
and the several times he has come near losing his situation by inserting
humorous remarks which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently
not understood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to convey
signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something of that kind,
and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and cast into the stove.
Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with a yearning to write a
sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he simply cannot resist it, and
so he goes to his den and revels in the delight of untramelled scribbling; and
then, with suffering such as only a mother can know, he destroys the pretty
children of his fancy and reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy.
Having seen Riley do this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak.
Often I have laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him
plough his pen through it.  He would say, "I had to write that or die; and
I've got to scratch it out or starve.  They wouldn't stand it, you know."

     I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw.  We
lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8,
moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention by paying our
board - a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous in Washington.
Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the early days, by the
way of the Isthmus and the San Juan river; and about his baking bread in San
Francisco to gain a living, and setting up ten-pins, and practising law, and
opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and teaching French, and tending
bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and keeping dancing-schools, and
interpreting Chinese in the courts - which latter was lucrative, and Riley was
doing handsomely and laying up a little money when people began to find fault
because his translations were too "free," a thing for which Riley considered
he ought not to be held responsible, since he did not know a word of the
Chinese tongue, and only adopted interpreting as means of gaining an honest
livelihood.  Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the
position of official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar
with the Chinese language, but did not know any English.  And Riley used to
tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only an
iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians, and
other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all his paying
subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated out of the
jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their allegiance and ran
up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become an English colony as
they drifted along down the British Possessions; but a land breeze and a
crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the Stars and Stripes and
steered for California, missed the connection again and swore allegiance to
Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came home every time, and away they
went with the northeast trades drifting off side-ways toward the Sandwich
Islands, whereupon they ran up the Cannibal flag and had a grand human
barbecue in honor of it, in which it was noticed that the better a man liked a
friend the better he enjoyed him; and as soon as they got fairly within the
tropics the weather got so fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and
it got so sloppy underfoot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get
about at all; and at last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the
melancholy remnant of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and
then to the other, and then plunged under for ever, carrying the national
archives along with it - and not only the archives and the populace, but some
eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they diminished in
size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at thirty cents a pound
and made himself rich if he could have kept the province afloat ten hours
longer and got her into port.

     Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets
anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a staunch friend, and a
permanent reliable enemy.  He will put himself to any amount of trouble to
oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be done
for the helpless and the shiftless.  And he knows how to do nearly everything,
too.  He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring that never goes
dry.  He stands always ready to help whoever needs help, as far as he is able
- and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap and common charity, but
with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and sacrifice of time.  This sort of
men is rare.

     Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying
quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back side
of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating joke.  One
night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door to us, and Riley
said that our landlady would be oppressively emotional at breakfast, because
she generally made use of such opportunities as offered, being of a morbidly
sentimental turn, and so we should find it best to let her talk along and say
nothing back - it was the only way to keep her tears out of the gravy.  Riley
said there never was a funeral in the neighborhood but that the gravy was
watery for a week.

     And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs
of woe - entirely brokenhearted.  Everything she looked at reminded her of
that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the coffee
forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail that made
our hair rise.  Then she got to talking about deceased, and kept up a steady
drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through. Presently she took a
fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs -

     "Ah, to think of it, only to think of it! - the poor old faithful
creature.  For she was so faithful.  Would you believe it, she had been a
servant in that self-same house and that self-same family for twenty-seven
years come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick!  And, oh, to
think she should meet such a death at last! - a-sitting over the red-hot stove
at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on it and was
actually roasted!  Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally roasted to a
crisp!  Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked!  I am but a poor woman,
but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a tombstone over that
lone sufferer's grave - and Mr. Riley if you would have the goodness to think
up a little epitaph to put on it which would sort of describe the awful way in
which she met her - "

     "Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,'" said Riley, and never
smiled.