K. K. K. Sketches, Humorous and Didactic Part 7

THE LAST OF THE K.'S.

A Popular Fallacy--Karl Konstant Esq.--A Fit Companion for the Wandering Jew--Awaiting Events--The First Visitation--An Intricate Subject for the Hospitals and Doctors--Getting Even with the Latter--Put Away--Yellow Jack on a Raid--K. K. K., Esq., in his Prison Cell--Promoted to the Hospital--An Uncommon Defiance--A Picturesque Outside--Waiting for the End--K. Konstant Kain Struggles back to Sh.o.r.e--"Do not Weep"--A Critical Moment--A New Cast and entire Change of Scenery--"Gruel" did it--Waited upon by a Deputation of Citizens--"Young Man, Go West"--The New Orleans Pest-House--Konfounded, Krooked Konundrum.

Some dealer in those cheap apothegms which commend themselves to the public gullibility, through the public tendency to moralize concerning subjects of which it knows nothing, has rendered himself famous, and the great majority of mankind a.s.ses, by the announcement that "everything must have an end." Without a design of reopening a dead controversy, or so much as mentioning the word "fossil," we must be permitted to record a belief that the author of this sage prophecy had never heard of the mathematician's war involving the crookedness of the half circle, and was grossly uninformed on the topic of the great Woman's Rights movement and those leaders who have concerned themselves about its temperature for the past two hundred years. And while the cause of orthodoxy might be safely entrusted to two such examples of

"The few immortal _things_ That were not born to die,"

it is in no sense of triumphing over a fallen adversary that we add the conviction that the beaming countenance of Karl Konstant Kain, the last of the K.'s, had never dawned upon this prophet's sense of the ridiculous.

We shall introduce him to the reader as he was, and is, and without any reference to a future--that with him is but a name, a fleeting shadow. And in order that this reminiscence may be perfect, it will be needful to relate that he had reached, at this period of his existence, a climax of loneliness and gaunt despair that would have rendered him a fit companion for the "Wandering Jew," and a most unfit one for anything less ludicrously ideal. Though it had been of his own choosing, a shadow pursued him and would not let him rest: it was the ghost of the murdered K. K. K. He had been with it in its prosperity; had eaten its bread in its adversity; and since above the spot of its interment the daisies were developing into types of its departed beauty, he had given himself to the magnanimous resolve of perpetuating its genius in other climes.

Having chalked a freight car, "Through without delay," he deposited his remains on the inside, and four days thereafter found himself at the door of a cheap hashery, in the thriving little city of Columbus, Texas. Here he refreshed the inner man on a promise to pay, rendered subsequent to the meal, and having been d.a.m.ned for a "blister," and a "cooter," and a "scorpion," wandered forth, that image of "blank dismay" which we have already depicted to the reader. Destiny was now begun with him in earnest, and it was only necessary for him to sit still and "administer upon the fluttering pasteboards," with that resignation of soul which should characterize the man who has given five points in the game, and occupies the losing seat. Mounting a goods-box on a neighboring corner, he adjusted his unshapeliness to its angles in a posture that would have been an easy one for another man, and awaited events. They were not slow in coming. In fact they came in troops, and awaited their turn with a constancy of resolve that would have frightened a less Napoleonic structure. The first visitation comprised two Hibernians of smiling aspect, who, observing this unusual tableau, affected to note a disposition to sneeze in the subject.

Instantly our hero accepted the challenge (_ad hominem et sine exceptione_), and leaping from his perch engaged his persecutors with the desperation of a man who feels that he would be made happier if soundly whipped. Striking right and left, he provoked his adversaries to do their worst, and soon brandis.h.i.+ng huge knives, they made inroads upon his anatomy which left him an intricate subject for the hospitals and doctors.

Twenty-two wounds in all had severally penetrated his lungs, severed his carotid artery, atrophied his liver, wasp-nested his umbilicus, riddled his facial parts, and bereft him of five fingers and the arm to which their five fellows were attached,--and yet he would not die, could not see it to his interest to die, felt that it would not be destiny to die,--and four weeks thereafter exhibited himself in public to a goodly number of false prophets, who, excusing him and themselves on the ground of a miracle, tendered him congratulations.

But if Karl Konstant was some the worse for wear, he was none the worse for something to wear, having levied on a full cloth rig and watch, belonging to one of the hospital doctors, as some remuneration for the torturing exercises in surgery which had been directed at his corporosity.

Walking the streets with the air of a man whom melancholy has marked for her own, and yet attracting the notice of pa.s.sers-by through a subdued emphasis of gait and manner, which could hardly have proceeded from a less philosophic cause than good clothes, and a chronometer that would unfailingly chronicle the hash hour, he was next interviewed by two policemen with drawn clubs, who, by virtue of his late condition of mayhem, subjected him to but one-half the regulation mauling, and having divested him of his borrowed plumage, jugged him, and corked him, and expressed through the bars a wish to kiss him for his mother-in-law.

About this time "Yellow Jack," in making his decennial tour of the Southern cities of Texas, debarked at Columbus, and for a period of four weeks lent his energies to a most devastating epidemic. Thousands were stricken, hundreds rendered their final account, and the undertakers, protesting that it was an ill-wind, took orders for coffins. Karl Konstant Kain beheld the public dismay through his prison bars, and despaired. He knew that it would come; fate had whispered him that it would come--and feeling this, his anxiety on the subject soon developed into a wish that it might come. He was not disappointed; and when it came and lodged a great pain in his side, and touched up his pulse an half hundred degrees or so, it did not conclude its labors, but promoted him to the hospital and doctors, and bade him look about him for means of offsetting the latter.

But we regret to state that, notwithstanding these small but disinterested attentions, K. K. K., Esq., murmured, and the very day upon which he was transferred to hospital sumptuousness, confronted his yellow-visaged enemy with a challenge to do his worst. That individual hesitated, and objected that the combat would prove an unequal one; but soon seeing that any explanation which might be rendered would be construed into a possible desire to avoid defeat (and becoming the least bit enraged in view of such an uncommon defiance), began his dispositions.

And now the battle of the giants raged in good earnest; and as there was a kind of Pindaric grotesqueness about it which could not fail to attract observers, it became first the hospital talk, and then the subject of no inconsiderable amount of by-betting, with the odds in favor of "Yellow Jack." One week from the period of his inoculation, the victim had developed the most picturesque outside that it is possible for any man to possess east or west of the Malayan dominions, and inwardly, a type of the black vomit that would have set an undertaker's teeth on edge. The doctors, examining their watches at a safe distance, thought that he could not last twenty-four hours, and the subject of the disorder, transferring an abandoned kerchief to the rear of his s.h.i.+rt front, gave himself but half that time. But doctors, though controlling the other features of the business with tolerable accuracy, are not always infallible as to "time when." It was three days before a coffin was ordered, and pending the half hour required to produce a fair example of pest-house carpentry, Karl Konstant struggled back to sh.o.r.e with the announcement that he had changed his mind, and a sarcastic appeal to his medical attendants "not to weep."

The "box" was found to square the dimensions of a stiff in a neighboring ward, who had accomplished the stormy voyage in forty-eight hours, and into it he was jammed, and committed to the cartman with an injunction to drive fast.

K. K. K., Esq., was now billed "for five days, only with a new cast and entire change of scenery," the latter part of this announcement referring to an abandoned hut on the river sh.o.r.e, one mile below the city. The doctors, despairing of the disease, declared that the stench in his body would suffocate him in twenty-four hours (extending the time as above, to avoid accidents), and dismissed him to an aged negress, with instructions to draw on the city for boneyard supplies. Situated in this quiet retreat, our hero could lie "heels uppermost," and number his waning breaths, or hearken to the death-rattle in his throat, without aught to molest or make him afraid, and controlled by that sweet imperturbability of temper so necessary to perfect rest amid such scenes. He had enjoyed his new lease of happiness two full days before it was thought necessary to apply to his city correspondents, and as there was some delay in forwarding the stipulated articles, it is needless to say that when they arrived the subject had "limbered up," and the cartman found it necessary to imitate his example, and drive back a sadder man.

Five days came and went, and still Karl Konstant Kain lingered above ground, viewing the shadows go up and down on the pine box destined for his remains (a standing menace of this character now occupied one corner of his apartment), and realizing that his symptoms grew hourly worse. His old friends, the doctors, feeling some anxiety, came to examine into the matter, but after a careful diagnosis of the patient, they left with very marked abridgments of countenance and their pills. Under the circ.u.mstances, they felt that pills would only hasten the sad event. And, indeed, their prognostications seemed not ill-founded. Six hours later, a fearful coma seized his struggling anatomy and held it fast, and in a few minutes, at farthest, the last mournful rites would be in order. The pulse had become quite motionless, the suppressed breathing grew momentarily fainter,--and, aha! hold a light, nurse.

What a moral is pointed in that much quoted sentiment referring to the "fate of men and empires." 'Twas but a drop of water trickling from the rain-drenched roof, and yet it had power to call a human being to life.

K. K. Kain, Esq., now sat bolt upright in his straw-bed and demanded--shall we write it--would it be politic--in a word, would it be accepted as true? In such an emergency there is no alternative left to the undissembling chronicler of fact, nor do we seek one. K. Konstant Kain demanded gruel, and indeed from this moment conceived such an attachment for gruel, that it was with difficulty that their separation could be accomplished for any considerable portion of his waking moments. Nor can it be denied that gruel aided his convalescence and his complexion as nothing else but tolerably regular doses of Blooming Cereus could have done. (This joke is paid for, and on that ground it is hoped there will be no objection to it.) In two weeks, time gruel stood him on his two legs and bade him "view, the landscape o'er." In three it had brought its magician's art to bear on his sunken cheeks, and converted the yellow rose of Texas into a lively peach bloom. And in the short s.p.a.ce of one month it had so far rehabilitated his battered hulk, that he was enabled to receive a deputation of citizens with a purse of Mexican coin, and a "gruel"

request to convey himself across that border. It is needless to say that Mr. Kain accepted the _douceur_ and stood not upon the order of his going.

Arrived in that sun-burnt clime, one of his first acts, according to the Texas journalists, was to involve himself in a railroad smash-up, with a loss of his dexter leg and a head, but as he was shortly afterwards advertised to appear in a Greaser circus combination as a tight-rope performer, it is apprehended that some of the facts were suppressed.

Terminating his engagement in debt to the managers, he reached the city of New Orleans by "hook or crook," or both, and more of the former, and a good deal of the latter, and was last heard of as one of the inmates of the famous pest-house of that city. How he escaped from this inst.i.tution, and resumed his peripatetic career, would doubtless make a very pretty romance, but we must be pardoned, if we a.s.sert that we know no more about this _konfounded, krooked konundrum_ than does the reader, and drop our quill.

CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUSION.

The Author has no Explanations to Offer--Such as it is, it is--The Chief of Two Reasons for Holding it in Esteem--A Whim that has been Gratified--Mischievous Results of Confiding a Secret to One Female Acquaintance instead of Fifty--Can anything be more Ridiculous than to Suppose that there is a Word of Fiction Connected with the foregoing Chapters?--Lakeside Publishers--The Public Invited to Pocket their Scruples and Read History--Finale.

Positively, we must depart from a time-honored custom of the bookmaker, as we confess with blushes that we have no confidences to exchange with the reader, no explanations to offer to the public, and no fine epigrams to repeat concerning that aged word--farewell. Such as it is, it is, and we have no idea of making it better, by any such _supra legem_ performance.

If the reader is satisfied, we are; and if he is not, and will signify that remarkable conclusion to the author, he shall have his money back, together with fair wages for such portion of his valuable time as may have been squandered on its pages. We could not think of taking such a mean advantage of any one's talent for promiscuous reading, and beg to repeat this announcement as a request.

If anybody's party-feeling has been ruffled, it may be taken in some sense as a natural conclusion, for, besides having none ourselves, and treating the subject from all sides, we may have had some such _dernier_ purpose in view. Political tastes are so varied that they can rarely be consulted with success in a literary venture of reasonable magnitude, and where this is true, it can be no more than fair to ignore them.

The work has many imperfections, as all can see--imperfections which cannot be cured, and hence resemble it so much to human nature that we must be pardoned for alleging that circ.u.mstance as the chief of two reasons (both disconnected from those philoprogenitive impulsions that we sometimes hear of from mawkish writers) for holding it in esteem. The sun has spots, and we once knew a critic whose grammar was execrable. Lest, however, some persons should officiously infer that we mean to wrong a very excellent cla.s.s of people, we will state that the a.n.a.logy between the last-named objects does not cease here.

What we wish to say most in this concluding chapter, is that the work was not written to invite anybody's pique, nor to avoid it, nor to flatter anybody, nor to parody anybody, but to gratify a whim, and as it has been announced that there would be no explanation, and the completion of the task leaves us in a mood for conundrums, we shall not interfere with the reader's prerogative of guessing its import. But it was a mere whim, and now that it has been gratified, we feel better--vastly improved, in fact--so much improved that, in order to reach a superlative that will fit our case precisely, we find it necessary to go beyond the dictionary standard, and adopt the beautiful newsboy euphemism, hunky-dory. And then, too, the author has that self gratulation which could not fail to proceed from the knowledge that, from the beginning, a brave effort was maintained to avoid that notoriety which comes of even remote connection with such labor as he has performed,--and which must have succeeded but for his inadvertence in confiding the secret to one female acquaintance instead of fifty. Now that the mischief has been performed, his partiality for the s.e.x leads him to say that he will be more thoughtful in the future.

An old friend, whose sagacity regarding such subjects is approved, has informed us confidentially that the book will sell, and if it sells, can it be anybody's business whether it is read or not? After revolving this query in our mind, and inducing a fair a.n.a.logy between what would be just to the outside world and profitable to ourselves, we are left _statu quo_ until such time as the neighborhood debating society can be heard from.

Can anything be more ridiculous than to suppose that there is a word of fiction connected with the foregoing chapters? A half-wit acquaintance, who plumes himself on the accident which enables him to write M. C. after his name, has obtruded this difficulty upon the author, and been handsomely objurgated for his pains. Did we not do right? and why is it that these men are permitted to lounge away from their places of confinement at the most dangerous season of the year?

We here make the announcement, boldly and without fear of successful contradiction (this form of expression is copied from J. Billings, with some amendments in spelling), that n.o.body's facetiousness is chargeable with one syllable of these sketches; and if they do not suit the public palate, it is altogether attributable to the fact that that organ is in a badly disordered state, and requires stimulants of a nature which the Lakeside publishers will have no difficulty in supplying at the regulation price for compounded drinks. More than this we do not feel at liberty to divulge at present, but we do sincerely trust that those who compromise their doubts far enough to purchase the book, will pocket their scruples and read history.

THE END.

Footnotes:

[A] The reader's fancy, aided by the hints supplied in the text, has doubtless informed him that these females had fallen victims to the l.u.s.t of the flying desperadoes; for, perceiving the hand of fate in the impending catastrophe, and having nothing to hope from the indulgence of their pursuers, they realized that this startling crime could only hasten the denouement, not add to their weight of doom.

[B] An individual of the gowned fraternity, six feet six inches in height, borne upon the shoulders of a comrade, who approximated the latter condition.