You come on a wheelbarrow suddenly when it is in a brown study, and you
undertake to straddle it, so to speak, and all at once you find the
wheelbarrow on top. I may say, I think, safely, that the wheelbarrow is,
as a rule, phlegmatic and cool; but when a total stranger startles it, it
spreads desolation and destruction on every hand.
This is also true of the perambulator, or baby-carriage. I undertook to
evade a child's phaeton, three years ago last spring, as it stood in the
entrance to a hall in Main street. The child was not injured, because it
was not in the carriage at the time; but I was not so fortunate. I pulled
pieces of perambulator out of myself for two weeks with the hand that was
not disabled.
How a sedentary man could fall through a child's carriage in such a manner
as to stab himself with the awning and knock every spoke out of three
wheels, is still a mystery to me, but I did it. I can show you the
doctor's bill now.
The other day, however, I discovered a new style of riding animal. The
Rev. Mr. Hallelujah was at the depot when I arrived, and was evidently
waiting for the same Chicago train that I was in search of. Rev. Mr.
Hallelujah had put his valise down near an ordinary baggage-truck which
leaned up against the wall of the station building.
He strolled along the platform a few moments, communing with himself and
agitating his mind over the subject of Divine Retribution, and then he
went up and leaned against the truck. Finally, he somehow got his arms
under the handles of the truck as it stood up between his back and the
wall. He still continued to think of the plan of Divine Retribution, and
you could have seen his lips move if you had been there.
Pretty soon some young ladies came along, rosy in winter air, beautiful
beyond compare, frosty crystals in their hair; smiled they on the preacher
there.
He returned the smile and bowed low. As he did so, as near as I can figure
it out, he stepped back on the iron edge of the truck that the baggageman
generally jabs under the rim of an iron-bound sample-trunk when he goes to
load it. Anyhow, Mr. Hallelujah's feet flew toward next spring. The truck
started across the platform with him and spilled him over the edge on the
track ten feet below. So rapid was the movement that the eye with
difficulty followed his evolutions. His valise was carried onward by the
same wild avalanche, and “busted” open before it struck the track below.
I was surprised to see some of the articles that shot forth into the broad
light of day. Among the rest there was a bran fired new set of ready-made
teeth, to be used in case of accident. Up to that moment I didn't know
that Mr. Hallelujah used the common tooth of commerce. These teeth slipped
out of the valise with a Sabbath smile and vulcanized rubber gums.
[Illustration: A RAPID MOVEMENT.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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