Humorous American Short Stories

by Bob Blaisdell

  “Yes, but I did really see a real bear.”

  “Did he run?”

  “Yes; he ran after me.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it! What did you do?”

  “Oh! nothing particular—except kill the bear.”

  Cries of “Gammon!” “Don’t believe it!” “Where’s the bear?”

  “If you want to see the bear, you must go up into the woods. I couldn’t bring him down alone.”

  Having satisfied the household that something extraordinary had occurred, and excited the posthumous fear of some of them for my own safety, I went down into the valley to get help. The great bear-hunter, who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, received my story with a smile of incredulity; and the incredulity spread to the other inhabitants and to the boarders, as soon as the story was known. However, as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them to the bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last started off with me to bring the bear in. Nobody believed there was any bear in the case; but everybody who could get a gun carried one; and we went into the woods, armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks and sticks, against all contingencies or surprises—a crowd made up mostly of scoffers and jeerers.

  But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and pointed out the bear, lying peacefully wrapped in his own skin, something like terror seized the boarders, and genuine excitement the natives. It was a no-mistake bear, by George! and the hero of the fight—well, I will not insist upon that. But what a procession that was, carrying the bear home! and what a congregation was speedily gathered in the valley to see the bear! Our best preacher up there never drew anything like it on Sunday.

  And I must say that my particular friends, who were sportsmen, behaved very well on the whole. They didn’t deny that it was a bear, although they said it was small for a bear. Mr. Deane, who is equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it was a very fair shot. He is probably the best salmon-fisher in the United States, and he is an equally good hunter. I suppose there is no person in America who is more desirous to kill a moose than he. But he needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound in the bear, that he had seen that kind of a shot made by a cow’s horn.

  This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to sleep that night, my last delicious thought was, “I’ve killed a bear!”

  SOURCE: The Atlantic Monthly. January 1878.

  THE PARSON’S HORSE RACE (1878)

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), renowned for the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which indeed deserves credit for shaking America of its complacency with slavery, was a professional author of great skill and conviction, and she wrote with power and comedy for several decades. Among the many surprises a modern reader will find in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for instance, are the light and comic episodes. Stowe collected this “used-horse salesman” story in Sam Lawson’s Oldtown Fireside Stories (1881).

  “WAL, NOW, THIS ’ere does beat all! I wouldn’ta thought it o’ the deacon.”

  So spoke Sam Lawson, drooping in a discouraged, contemplative attitude in front of an equally discouraged-looking horse, that had just been brought to him by the Widow Simpkins for medical treatment. Among Sam’s many accomplishments, he was reckoned in the neighborhood an oracle in all matters of this kind, especially by women, whose helplessness in meeting such emergencies found unfailing solace under his compassionate willingness to attend to any business that did not strictly belong to him, and from which no pecuniary return was to be expected.

  The Widow Simpkins had bought this horse of Deacon Atkins, apparently a fairly well-appointed brute, and capable as he was good-looking. A short, easy drive, when the Deacon held the reins, had shown off his points to advantage; and the widow’s small stock of ready savings had come forth freely in payment for what she thought was a bargain. When, soon after coming into possession, she discovered that her horse, if driven with any haste, panted in a fearful manner, and that he appeared to be growing lame, she waxed wroth, and went to the Deacon in anger, to be met only with the smooth reminder that the animal was all right when she took him; that she had seen him tried herself. The widow was of a nature somewhat spicy, and expressed herself warmly: “It’s a cheat and a shame, and I’ll take the law on ye!”

  “What law will you take?” said the unmoved Deacon. “Wasn’t it a fair bargain?”

  “I’ll take the law of God,” said the widow, with impotent indignation; and she departed to pour her cares and trials into the ever ready ear of Sam. Having assumed the care of the animal, he now sat contemplating it in a sort of trance of melancholy reflection.

  “Why, boys,” he broke out, “why didn’t she come to me afore she bought this crittur? Why, I knew all about him! That ’ere crittur was jest ruined a year ago last summer, when Tom, the Deacon’s boy there, come home from college. Tom driv him over to Sherburn and back that ’ere hot Fourth of July. ’Member it, ’cause I saw the crittur when he come home. I sot up with Tom takin’ care of him all night. That ’ere crittur had the thumps all night, and he hain’t never been good for nothin’ since. I telled the Deacon he was a gone hoss then, and wouldn’t never be good for nothin’. The Deacon, he took off his shoes, and let him run to pastur’ all summer, and he’s ben a-feedin’ and nussin’ on him up; and now he’s put him off on the widder. I wouldn’ta thought it o’ the Deacon! Why, this hoss’ll never be no ’good to her! That ’ere’s a used-up crittur, any fool may see! He’ll mabbe do for about a quarter of an hour on a smooth road; but come to drive him as a body wants to drive, why, he blows like my bellowsis; and the Deacon knew it—musta known it!”

  “Why, Sam!” we exclaimed, “ain’t the Deacon a good man?”

  “Wal, now, there’s where the shoe pinches! In a gin’al way the Deacon is a good man—he’s consid’able more than middlin’ good; gin’ally he adorns his perfession. On most p’ints I don’t hev nothin’ agin the Deacon; and this ’ere ain’t a bit like him. But there ’tis! Come to hosses, there’s where the unsanctified natur’ comes out. Folks will cheat about hosses when they won’t about ’most nothin’ else.” And Sam leaned back on his cold forge, now empty of coal, and seemed to deliver himself to a mournful train of general reflection. “Yes, hosses does seem to be sort o’ unregenerate critturs,” he broke out: “there’s suthin about hosses that deceives the very elect. The best o’ folks gets tripped up when they come to deal in hosses.”

  “Why, Sam, is there anything bad in horses?” we interjected timidly.

  “ ’Tain’t the hosses,” said Sam with solemnity. “Lordy massy! the hosses is all right enough! Hosses is scriptural animals. Elijah went up to heaven in a chari’t with hosses, and then all them lots o’ hosses in the Ravelations—black and white and red, and all sorts o’ colors. That ’ere shows hosses goes to heaven; but it’s more’n the folks that hev ’em is likely to, ef they don’t look out.

  “Ministers, now,” continued Sam, in a soliloquizing vein—“folks allers thinks it’s suthin’ sort o’ shaky in a minister to hev much to do with hosses—sure to get ’em into trouble. There was old Parson Williams of North Billriky got into a drefful mess about a hoss. Lordy massy! he wern’t to blame, neither; but he got into the dreffulest scrape you ever heard on—come nigh to unsettlin’ him.”

  “O Sam, tell us all about it!” we boys shouted, delighted with the prospect of a story.

  “Wal, wait now till I get off this crittur’s shoes, and we’ll take him up to pastur’, and then we can kind o’ set by the river, and fish. Hepsy wanted a mess o’ fish for supper, and I was cal’latin’ to git some for her. You boys go and be digging bait, and git yer lines.”

  And so, as we were sitting tranquilly beside the Charles River, watching our lines, Sam’s narrative began:

  “Ye see, boys, Parson Williams—he’s dead now, but when I was a boy he was one of the gret men round here. He writ books. He writ a tract agin the Armenians, and put ’em down; and he writ a big book on the millen
nium (I’ve got that ’ere book now); and he was a smart preacher. Folks said he had invitations to settle in Boston, and there ain’t no doubt he mighta hed a Boston parish ef he’d’a ben a mind ter take it; but he’d got a good settlement and a handsome farm in North Billriky, and didn’t care to move; thought, I s’pose, that ’twas better to be number one in a little place than number two in a big un. Anyway, he carried all before him where he was.

  “Parson Williams was a tall, straight, personable man; come of good family—father and grand’ther before him all ministers. He was putty up and down, and commandin’ in his ways, and things had to go putty much as he said. He was a good deal sot by, Parson Williams was, and his wife was a Derby—one o’ them rich Salem Derbys—and brought him a lot o’ money; and so they lived putty easy and comfortable so fur as this world’s goods goes. Well, now, the parson wa’n’t reely what you call worldly-minded; but then he was one o’ them folks that knows what’s good in temporals as well as sperituals, and allers liked to hev the best that there was goin’; and he allers had an eye to a good hoss.

  “Now, there was Parson Adams and Parson Scranton, and most of the other ministers: they didn’t know and didn’t care what hoss they hed; jest jogged round with these ’ere poundin’, potbellied, sleepy critturs that ministers mostly hes—good enough to crawl around to funerals and ministers’ meetin’s and ’sociations and sich; but Parson Williams, he allers would hev a hoss as was a hoss. He looked out for blood; and, when these ’ere Vermont fellers would come down with a drove, the person he hed his eyes open, and knew what was what. Couldn’t none of ’em cheat him on hoss flesh! And so one time when Zach Buel was down with a drove, the doctor he bought the best hoss in the lot. Zach said he never see a parson afore that he couldn’t cheat; but he said the doctor reely knew as much as he did, and got the very one he’d meant to ’a kept for himself.

  “This ’ere hoss was a peeler, I’ll tell you! They’d called him Tamerlane, from some heathen feller or other: the boys called him Tam, for short. Tam was a great character. All the fellers for miles round knew the doctor’s Tam, and used to come clear over from the other parishes to see him.

  “Wal, this ’ere sot up Cuff’s back high, I tell you! Cuff was the doctor’s nigger man, and he was nat’lly a drefful proud crittur. The way he would swell and strut and brag about the doctor and his folks and his things! The doctor used to give Cuff his cast-off clothes: and Cuff would prance round in ’em, and seem to think he was a doctor of divinity himself, and had the charge of all natur’.

  “Well, Cuff he reely made an idol o’ that ’ere hoss—a reg’lar graven image—and bowed down and worshiped him. He didn’t think nothin’ was too good for him. He washed and brushed and curried him, and rubbed him down till he shone like a lady’s satin dress; and he took pride in ridin’ and drivin’ him, ’cause it was what the doctor wouldn’t let nobody else do but himself. You see, Tam wern’t no lady’s hoss. Miss Williams was ’afraid as death of him; and the parson he hed to git her a sort o’ low-sperited crittur that she could drive herself. But he liked to drive Tam; and he liked to go round the country on his back, and a fine figure of a man he was on him, too. He didn’t let nobody else back him or handle the reins but Cuff; and Cuff was drefful set up about it, and he swelled and bragged about that ar hoss all round the country. Nobody couldn’t put in a word ’bout any other hoss, without Cuff’s feathers would be all up stiff as a tomturkey’s tail; and that’s how Cuff got the doctor into trouble.

  “Ye see, there nat’lly was others that thought they’d got horses, and didn’t want to be crowed over. There was Bill Atkins, out to the west parish, and Ike Sanders, that kep’ a stable up to Pequot Holler: they was down a-lookin’ at the parson’s hoss, and a-bettin’ on their’n, and a darin’ Cuff to race with ’em.

  “Wal, Cuff, he couldn’t stan’ it, and, when the doctor’s back was turned, he’d be off on the sly, and they’d hev their race; and Tam he beat ’em all. Tam, ye see, boys, was a hoss that couldn’t and wouldn’t hev a hoss ahead of him—he jest wouldn’t! Ef he dropped down dead in his tracks the next minit, he would be ahead; and he allers got ahead. And so his name got up, and fellers kep’ comin’ to try their horses; and Cuff’d take Tam out to race with fust one and then another till this ’ere got to be a reg’lar thing, and begun to be talked about.

  “Folks sort o’ wondered if the doctor knew: but Cuff was sly as a weasel, and allers had a story ready for every turn. Cuff was one of them fellers that could talk a bird off a bush—master hand he was to slick things over!

  “There was folks as said they believed the doctor was knowin’ to it, and that he felt a sort o’ carnal pride sech as a minister oughtn’t fer to hev, and so shet his eyes to what was a-goin’ on. Aunt Sally Nickerson said she was sure on’t. ’Twas all talked over down to old Miss Bummiger’s funeral, and Aunt Sally she said the church ought to look into’t. But everybody knew Aunt Sally: she was allers watchin’ for folks’ haltin’s, and settin’ on herself up to jedge her neighbors.

  “Wal, I never believed nothin’ agin Parson Williams: it was all Cuff’s contrivances. But the fact was, the fellers all got their blood up, and there was hoss-racin’ in all the parishes; and it got so they’d even race hosses a Sunday.

  “Wal, of course they never got the doctor’s hoss out a Sunday. Cuff wouldn’ta durst to do that, Lordy massy, no! He was allers there in church, settin’ up in the doctor’s clothes, rollin’ up his eyes, and lookin’ as pious as ef he never thought o’ racin’ hosses. He was an awful solemn-lookin’ nigger in church, Cuff was.

  “But there was a lot o’ them fellers up to Pequot Holler— Bill Atkins, and Ike Sanders, and Tom Peters, and them Hokum boys—used to go out arter meetin’ Sunday arternoon, and race hosses. Ye see, it was jest close to the State-line, and, if the s’lectmen was to come down on ’em, they could jest whip over the line, and they couldn’t take ’em.

  “Wal, it got to be a great scandal. The fellers talked about it up to the tavern; and the deacons and the tithingman, they took it up and went to Parson Williams about it; and the parson he told ’em jest to keep still, not let the fellers know that they was bein’ watched, and next Sunday he and the tithingman and the constable, they’d ride over, and catch ’em in the very act.

  “So next Sunday arternoon Parson Williams and Deacon Popkins and Ben Bradley (he was constable that year), they got on to their hosses, and rode over to Pequot Holler. The doctor’s blood was up, and he meant to come down on ’em strong; for that was his way o’ doin’ in his parish. And they was in a sort o’ day-o’-jedgment frame o’ mind, and jogged along solemn as a hearse, till, come to rise the hill above the holler, they see three or four fellers with their hosses gittin’ ready to race; and the parson says he, ‘Let’s come on quiet, and get behind these bushes, and we’ll see what they’re up to, and catch ’em in the act.’

  “But the mischief on’t was, that Ike Sanders see ’em comin’, and he knowed Tam in a minit—Ike knowed Tam of old—and he jest tipped the wink to the rest. ‘Wait, boys,’ says he: ‘let ’em git close up, and then I’ll give the word, and the doctor’s hoss will be racin’ ahead like thunder.’

  “Wal, so the doctor and his folks they drew up behind the bushes, and stood there innocent as could be, and saw ’em gittin’ ready to start. Tam, he begun to snuffle and paw, but the doctor never mistrusted what he was up to till Ike sung out, ‘Go it, boys!’ and the hosses all started, when, sure as you live, boys! Tam give one fly, and was over the bushes, and in among ’em, goin’ it like chain-lightnin’ ahead of ’em all.

  “Deacon Popkins and Ben Bradley jest stood and held their breath to see ’em all goin’ it so like thunder; and the doctor, he was took so sudden it was all he could do to jest hold on anyway: so away he went, and trees and bushes and fences streaked by him like ribbins. His hat flew off behind him, and his wig arter, and got catched in a barberry-bush; but Lordy massy! he couldn’t stop to think o’ them. He jest leaned dow
n, and caught Tam round the neck, and held on for dear life till they come to the stopping-place.

  “Wal, Tam was ahead of them all, sure enough, and was snorting and snuffling as if he’d got the very old boy in him, and was up to racing some more on the spot.

  “That ’ere Ike Sanders was the impudentest feller that ever you see, and he roared and rawhawed at the doctor. ‘Good for you, parson!’ says he. ‘You beat us all holler,’ says he. ‘Takes a parson for that, don’t it, boys?’ he said. And then he and Ike and Tom, and the two Hokum boys, they jest roared, and danced round like wild critturs. Wal, now, only think on’t, boys, what a situation that ’ere was for a minister—a man that had come out with the best of motives to put a stop to Sabbath-breakin’! There he was all rumpled up and dusty, and his wig hangin’ in the bushes, and these ’ere ungodly fellers gettin’ the laugh on him, and all acause o’ that ’ere hoss. There’s times, boys, when ministers must be tempted to swear, if there ain’t preventin’ grace, and this was one o’ them times to Parson Williams. They say he got red in the face, and looked as if he should bust, but he didn’t say nothin’: he scorned to answer. The sons o’ Zeruiah was too hard for him, and he let ’em hev their say. But when they’d got through, and Ben had brought him his hat and wig, and brushed and settled him ag’in, the parson he says, ‘Well, boys, ye’ve had your say and your laugh; but I warn you now I won’t have this thing goin’ on here any more,’ says he; ‘so mind yourselves.’

  “Wal, the boys see that the doctor’s blood was up, and they rode off pretty quiet; and I believe they never raced no more in that spot.

  “But there ain’t no tellin’ the talk this ’ere thing made. Folks will talk, you know; and there wer’n’t a house in all Billriky, nor in the south parish nor center, where it wer’n’t had over and discussed. There was the deacon, and Ben Bradley was there, to witness and show jest how the thing was, and that the doctor was jest in the way of his duty; but folks said it made a great scandal; that a minister hadn’t no business to hev that kind o’ hoss, and that he’d give the enemy occasion to speak reproachfully. It reely did seem as if Tam’s sins was imputed to the doctor; and folks said he ought to sell Tam right away, and get a sober minister’s hoss.