Complete Poetical Works

While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight,
We saw the long curl of his lash and the juice of tobacco descending.

"Danger!  Sir, I believe you,—indeed, I may say, on that subject,
You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager.
I have seen danger?  Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you:
'Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone in yon wagon.

"It was the Geiger Grade, a mile and a half from the summit:
Black as your hat was the night, and never a star in the heavens.
Thundering down the grade, the gravel and stones we sent flying
Over the precipice side,—a thousand feet plumb to the bottom.

"Half-way down the grade I felt, sir, a thrilling and creaking,
Then a lurch to one side, as we hung on the bank of the canyon;
Then, looking up the road, I saw, in the distance behind me,
The off hind wheel of the coach, just loosed from its axle, and
following.

"One glance alone I gave, then gathered together my ribbons,
Shouted, and flung them, outspread, on the straining necks of my
cattle;
Screamed at the top of my voice, and lashed the air in my frenzy,
While down the Geiger Grade, on THREE wheels, the vehicle thundered.

"Speed was our only chance, when again came the ominous rattle:
Crack, and another wheel slipped away, and was lost in the darkness.
TWO only now were left; yet such was our fearful momentum,
Upright, erect, and sustained on TWO wheels, the vehicle thundered.

"As some huge boulder, unloosed from its rocky shelf on the mountain,
Drives before it the hare and the timorous squirrel, far leaping,
So down the Geiger Grade rushed the Pioneer coach, and before it
Leaped the wild horses, and shrieked in advance of the danger
impending.

"But to be brief in my tale.  Again, ere we came to the level,
Slipped from its axle a wheel; so that, to be plain in my statement,
A matter of twelve hundred yards or more, as the distance may be,
We traveled upon ONE wheel, until we drove up to the station.

"Then, sir, we sank in a heap; but, picking myself from the ruins,
I heard a noise up the grade; and looking, I saw in the distance
The three wheels following still, like moons on the horizon whirling,
Till, circling, they gracefully sank on the road at the side of the
station.

"This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you.
Much more, perchance, might be said—but I hold him of all men most
lightly
Who swerves from the truth in his tale.  No, thank you— Well, since
you ARE pressing,
Perhaps I don't care if I do: you may give me the same, Jim,—no
sugar."

A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE

REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES

It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr. Cutter for remarks
he heard him utter in debate upon the floor,
Swung him up into the skylight, in the peaceful, pensive twilight,
and then keerlessly proceeded, makin' no account what WE did—
To wipe up with his person casual dust upon the floor.

Now a square fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but
the simple thing that gets me—now the job is done and gone,
And we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery,
leavin' Cutter there with Sutter—that mebbee just a stutter
On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the loss we deeply mourn.

Some bashful hesitation, just like spellin' punctooation—might have
worked an aggravation on to Sutter's mournful mind,
For the witnesses all vary ez to wot was said and nary a galoot will
toot his horn except the way he is inclined.

But they all allow that Sutter had begun a kind of mutter, when
uprose Mr. Cutter with a sickening kind of ease,
And proceeded then to wade in to the subject then prevadin': "Is
Profanity degradin'?" in words like unto these:

"Onlike the previous speaker, Mr. Sutter of Yreka, he was but a
humble seeker—and not like him—a cuss"—
It was here that Mr. Sutter softly reached for Mr. Cutter, when the
latter with a stutter said: "ac-customed to discuss."

Then Sutter he rose grimly, and sorter smilin' dimly bowed onto the
Chairman primly—(just like Cutter ez could be!)
Drawled "he guessed he must fall—back—as—Mr. Cutter owned the
pack—as—he just had played the—Jack—as—" (here Cutter's gun
went crack! as Mr. Sutter gasped and ended) "every man can see!"

But William Henry Pryor—just in range of Sutter's fire—here
evinced a wild desire to do somebody harm,
And in the general scrimmage no one thought if Sutter's "image" was
a misplaced punctooation—like the hole in Pryor's arm.

For we all waltzed in together, never carin' to ask whether it was
Sutter or was Cutter we woz tryin' to abate.
But we couldn't help perceivin', when we took to inkstand heavin',