“Do I believe in spiritualism?” repeated the Colonel. “Well, you wouldn’t ask me that question if you knew that I had been in the business myself. I once ran a ‘Grand Spiritual Combination Show.’ I had three first-class mediums, who did everything, from knocking on a table to materializing Napoleon, or Washington, or any of your dead friends. It was a good business while it lasted, but, unfortunately, we showed one night in a Texas town before a lot of cowboys. One of them brought his lasso under his coat, and when the ghost of William Penn appeared the cowboy lassoed him and hauled him in, hand over hand, for further investigation. The language William Penn used drove all the ladies out of the place, and his want of judgment in tackling the cowboy cost him all his front teeth. I and the other mediums and the doorkeeper had to take a hand in the manifestation, and the result was that the whole Combination was locked up over-night, and the fines that we had to pay made me tired of spiritualism.
“No, sir! I don’t believe in spiritualism, but for all that there are curious things in the world. Why is it that if a man’s name is Charles G. Haseltine he will lose his right leg in a railway accident? The police some years ago wanted a Charles G. Haseltine with a wooden right leg in the State of Massachusetts, and they found no less than five Charles G. Haseltines, and every one of them had lost his right leg in a railway accident. What makes it all the more curious is that they were no relation to one another, and not one of them had ever heard of the existence of the others. Then, will someone tell me what is the connection between darkies and chickens? I say ‘darkies’ instead of ‘niggers’ because I had a colored regiment on my right flank at the battle of Corinth, and that night I swore I would never say ‘nigger’ again. However, that don’t concern you. What I meant to say was that there is a connection between darkies and chickens which nobody has ever yet explained. Of course no darky can resist the temptation to steal a chicken. Everybody knows that. Why, I knew a colored minister who was as honest a man as the sun ever tried to tan—and failed—and I have known him to preach a sermon with a chicken that he had lifted on his way to meeting shoved up under his vest. He wouldn’t have stolen a dollar bill if he was starving, but he would steal every chicken that he could lay his hands on, no matter if his own chicken-house was crowded with chickens. It’s in the blood—or the skin—and no darky can help it.
“What was I going to say about the connection between darkies and chickens? I had very nearly forgotten it. This was what I was referring to. A chicken will draw a darky just as a dead sheep will draw vultures in Egypt, though there may have been no vultures within twenty miles when the sheep was killed. You may be living in a town where there isn’t a single darky within ten miles, but if you put up a chicken-house and stock it there will be darkies in the town within twenty-four hours, and just so long as your chicken-house has a chicken in it fresh darkies will continue to arrive from all sections of the country. This beats any trick that I ever saw a spiritual medium perform, and I can’t see the explanation of it. You may say that some one carries word to the darkies that there is a new chicken-house waiting to be visited, but the answer to this is that it isn’t true. My own idea is that it is a matter of instinct. When you carry a cat twenty miles away from home in a bag and let her out, we all know that her instinct will show her the way home again before you can get there yourself. Just in the same way instinct will draw a darky to a chicken-house he has never seen or heard of. You’ll say that to talk about instinct doesn’t explain the matter. That is true enough, but it makes you feel as if you had struck the trail, which is some satisfaction at any rate. So far as I can see, that is about all that scientific theories ever do.
“PREACH A SERMON WITH A CHICKEN UNDER HIS VEST.”
“If you care to listen, I’ll tell you what happened within my knowledge in connection with darkies and chickens. I was located a little after the war in the town of South Constantinople, in the western part of Illinois, and my next-door neighbor was Colonel Ephraim J. Hickox, who commanded the 95th Rhode Island Regiment. The town was a growing place, and it had the peculiarity that there wasn’t a darky in it. The nearest one lived over at West Damascus, seven miles away, and there was only two of him—he and his wife. Another curious thing about the place was the scarcity of labor. There weren’t above a dozen Irishmen in the place, and they wouldn’t touch a spade or a hoe under three dollars a day, and wouldn’t work more than four days in a week. You see, a certain amount of digging and gardening had to be done, and there wasn’t anybody to do it except these Irishmen, so they naturally made a good thing of it, working half the time and holding meetings for the redemption of Ireland the rest of the time in the bar-room of the International Hotel.
“One day Colonel Ephraim, as I always used to call him, wanted to drain his pasture lot, and he hired the Irishmen to dig a ditch about a quarter of a mile long. They would dig for a day, and then they would knock off and attend to suffering Ireland, till Ephraim, who was a quick-tempered man, was kept in a chronic state of rage. He had no notion of going into politics, so he didn’t care a straw what the Irishmen thought of him, and used to talk to them as free as if they couldn’t vote. Why, he actually refused to subscribe to a dynamite fund and for a gold crown to be presented to Mr. Gladstone, and you can judge how popular he was in Irish circles. I used to go down to Ephraim’s pasture every once in a while to see how his ditch was getting along, and one afternoon I found the whole lot of Irishmen lying on the grass smoking instead of working, and Ephraim in the very act of discharging them.
“‘Perhaps it’s “nagurs” that you’d be preferring,’ said one of the men, as they picked themselves up and made ready to leave.
“‘You bet it is,’ said Ephraim, ‘and, what’s more, I’ll have that ditch finished by darkies before the week is out.’ This seemed to amuse the Irishmen, for they went away in good spirits, in spite of the language that had been hove at them, and it amused me too, for I knew that there were no darkies to be had, no matter what wages a man might be willing to pay. I said as much to Ephraim, who, instead of taking it kindly, grew madder than ever, and said, ‘Colonel! I’ll bet you fifty dollars that I’ll have that ditch finished by darkies inside of four days, and that they’ll do all the digging without charging me a dollar.’
“‘If you’re going to send over into Kentucky and import negro labor,’ said I, ‘you can do it, and get your ditch dug, but you’ll have to pay either the darkies or the contractor who furnishes them.’
“‘I promise you not to pay a dollar to anybody, contractor or nigger. And I won’t ask anybody to send me a single man. What I’m betting on is that the darkies will come to my place of their own accord and work for nothing. Are you going to take the bet or ain’t you?’
“I didn’t hesitate any longer, but I took the bet, thinking that Ephraim’s mind was failing, and that it was a Christian duty in his friends to see that if he did fool away his money, it should go into their pockets instead of the pockets of outsiders. But, as you will see, Ephraim didn’t lose that fifty dollars.
“Early the next morning Ephraim had a couple of masons employed in turning his brick smoke-house into a chicken-house, and he had two dozen chickens with their legs tied lying on the grass waiting for the chicken-house to be finished. The masons broke a hole through the side of the house and lined it with steel rods about four feet long, which Ephraim had bought to use in some experiments in gun-making that he was always working at. The rods were set in a circle which was about a foot and a half wide at one end and tapered to about four inches at the other end. The arrangement was just like the wire entrance to a mouse-trap, of the sort that is meant to catch mice alive and never does it. It was nothing less than a darky-trap, although Ephraim pretended that it was a combined ventilator and front door for the chickens. The masons, so far as I could judge, thought that Ephraim’s mind was going fast, and I made up my mind that it would be a sin to let the man bet with anybody who would be disposed to take advantage of his infirmity.
“‘DUNNO!’”
“The trap was finished before dark, and baited with two dozen young chickens. I came by the place a second time about sunset, just as Ephraim was locking up his chicken-house, and I saw a small darky boy leaning on the fence. I asked him where he came from, but he only said ‘Dunno.’ I found out afterward that he came from a house at least ten miles away, and that those two dozen chickens had drawn him there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind. At the time, however, I was a little afraid that Ephraim had begun to import colored labor, and that there was some trick about his bet that might prove that his mind was all right. Two days afterward I went down to the pasture and found sixteen darkies digging away at that ditch and Ephraim superintending with a twenty-five-cent cigar in his mouth. ‘Come to pay that fifty dollars, I suppose!’ he said when he saw me. ‘You can wait till the ditch is finished, which will be some time to-day. You see I was as good as my word.’
“I asked him to explain how he had collected his darkies, and being in unusually good spirits he told me about it.
“He had made his trap just large enough to admit a good-sized darky, who could push the steel rods apart as he crawled in but who couldn’t crawl out again, no matter how hard he might try. The morning after he had set the trap Ephraim took his shot-gun and went down to his chicken-house. He found that the night’s catch had been larger than he had hoped. There were sixteen colored men of different sizes sitting on the ground or leaning up against the side of the house. There was a good deal of wool and cloth sticking to the ends of the steel rods, and some of the younger darkies looked as if they had been fighting with wild-cats, but they didn’t try to explain things. Besides the darkies, there were two white tramps in the trap, but Ephraim just kicked them into the streets without even proposing work to them. Then he came back and told the darkies that the legislature had just passed a bill making it felony to break into a chicken-house, and that he was very much afraid that they would be hung and dissected, unless they could show him some reason for being merciful to them.
“The darkies were frightened, besides being hungry and cold, and when Ephraim said that he had a job of ditching to be done, and that if they would do it for him he would let them off scot-free, they were delighted, and the whole chicken-house was lit up with their teeth. They went into that ditch a happy and contented gang and finished it before night. Ephraim was a liberal man, and considering that he had won fifty dollars and had got his ditch finished for nothing, he was disposed to be generous. So he gave the darkies a lot of good advice and informed them that, with a view of removing temptation from their way, he should sell his chickens and go out of the business. The darkies went away as happy as if they had been well paid, and the next morning there wasn’t a darky in the whole town. They had gone back to their homes, or else they had been drawn somewhere else by other chickens.
“Do I mean to say that Ephraim had not made arrangements with some one to send him those sixteen darkies? That is just what I do mean to say. When he fitted up his chicken-house he had no more idea where his darkies would come from than I had, but he knew that the chickens would draw darkies and that his trap would hold them, so he felt that he had a sure thing. I have no more doubt that those darkies were drawn to Ephraim’s place by those chickens than I have that a magnet will draw a needle. I can’t explain how it was done, but I believe it all the same. It is what is called a mystery, and the good book says that the less you try to explain mysteries the better.”
