THE DRUMMER'S YARN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2310, 30 April 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DRUMMER'S YARN.

A few days ago I fell in with a rib-tick-ling, button-holing, suspender-wrenching drummer, who had spent a good portion of his existence cavorting over the State with a terra-cotta coloured grip-sack, an easy, gliding gait, and atwo-dollar-and-six-bit, glad-to-see-you-looking-so-well, sir. He approached me on the train. I found him generous to a fault. He grew so nobly liberal before he left me as to lavish a number of his emaciated jokelets and tremulous refrains on me under the illusion that he was doing me a colossal kindness. These touring merchants always find a willing listener in me, but there is a friend of mine who says that he never hears a drummer tuning up his ba/,00 but he feels like rising in his wrath, and what other clothes he may be wearing at the time, and being bitter and harsh, and saying mean, hateful things about him, and wanting to run him down and kick him into a shapeless mass. The commercial tourist that I have referred to was scime ten and twenty summjers, and perhaps as many winters, with a disastrous expression ; to his ambitious mouth. A slouch hat, with a piratical rakishness about it, sheltered his Gothic features, and a plain twill suit enveloped his form. His card read : Allover G. Ward. One of his stories in particular amused me. We were in the smokingcar. He sat, with his feet in the window, smoking a short, black pipe', while I laid back in my cushioned seat and regal splendour, struggling with'a Bouquet de Stinkaro in sherred wrapper, which he had given me, and hopelessly wondered how soon the end would come. ; " Not long a«ro," said Mr Ward. " I iriet a young man named Obequiet Oleson, who had been chasing the evasive form of the goddess health over a good portion of California, but up to the hour of going to press his efforts had not been crowned with a big enough wad of success to do hinl much good. One day, as Obequiet yVm ambling down the sunny side of the main street of Riverside, a man on the opposite cried out to him : 'Hi, you, Allover !' Wait a moment. I want to speak to you.' " You will observe that Allover is my mellifluent name. Well, Obequiet went right on, heedless of the appeal, and the man again called to him to wait. But wait he wouldn't, and so he just kept right on, and threw off some side remark about, ' You don't know me anyhow ' ' Know you ? ' rejoins the other. ' Well, I should think 1 ought to.' 'No, you don't ; you only think you do. I know who you take me for !' 'Take you for? Why, who should I take you for but Allover G. Ward.' Then, as he crosses the street aud gets nearer, ' Well, I be gol denied. Beg your pardon, .stranger, but I'm a brass-mounted idgit if you ain't Allover G. Ward's double. Why, you are as like as two exclamation pointn(! !V " Then Obequiet said : 'My friend, I have been travelling over this southern country for the past six months, and every town that I have entered I have been accosted by some lop-eared .Pelican, who was just de;id sure and certain I was Allover G. Ward. There is getting to be entirely too much simultaneous con- ] tinuousness about it. It has worked so upon my mind that I feel as, if I ever meet the man that looks like trie, I will be filled with a great, surging desire to destroy him.' " Well," said my facetious acquaintance, the drummer, " I happened to be in ■ Riverside that very day, and a meeting between us was effected at the si ore of ono of my customers. Shortly after the chiming bells in the great oathcdral hud announced some of the twelve hours. I have forgotten winch one), Obequiet and myself met and shook hands. Did he seek to destroy me? Oh, no. I looked too healthy. His destroyer wasn't in good working orderj I guess. There w;is simply a touching vision of three men walking thoughtfully down street. * * Thev all took the same, aud ate a clove afterward. Then Obequiet took a chew of fins cut about the Size of an Oregon potato and said : ' You see, gentlemen, I came down here a lank and tearful invalid, limping about the country with crutches and a liver pad. After a few weeks in San Diego I was able to throw away my crutches, and when I landed from the train at San Bernardino, a few days ago, I was met by the hotel runners like a long-lo>t, brother, and as soon as I got out of the buss at the hotel the clerk gavo me a dig in the ribs, saying, "Ah, there, you merry dog, how's biz ?' Every one, from the proprietor down to the boot-black, seemed tickled most to death to see tne. Everybody seemed in first-rate spirits, and laughed a good deal, and asked me to eat a clove with them. Every where I went I was received with the same wealth of wartnness. In nearly every town, fair ones, in airy tulle and shimmering satin', met me with ever so much gleeous gladfulness, and seemed so tickled because I had come. I came to this town yesterday, aud took rooms at the 'House. To-day, as I went in, the coloured bellboy grinned a grin of dangerous proportions and said : *1 just sent yer trunk and valise up ter yer room, sar.' Now, as my trunk and valise had been 'up ter my room ' ever since ten o'clock a.m. the day before, I told the boy he must be mistaken, but of course he was dead sure I was Allover Ward, and nothing could convince him I wasn't. So he grinned again and vanished. Now, such things as these are enough to make oue wish they had died of membranous croup when very small. I find myself wanting to get out of the country entirely. I want to go home. There is too much wild-eyed welcome turned loose here every time I enter a town. I need rest. This kind of juvenile joviality don't seem to do me the acquired amount of good. lam too delicate. I need more of the comforts of a civilised people, and less of this wild, barbarious ' Hi! old boy ! Glad to see you ! Shake! * * * " r I find that my nature can stagger along with a very little of this hilerious, awe-inspiring welcome, and a good deal more of the subdued, touchful, limpid-eyed, fawnlike greeting uf the less demonstrative. I have had no peace day or night. This resemblance hud pestered rne like an avenging Nemesis, till I feel that the next time the mangy,' sway-backed, mellow-headed snipe of the desert called me 'Ward,' I would like to put an octagonal head on him, and smash him beyond recognition. It will never do for us to be in this section of the country together,' said Obequiet, addressing me, 'or we will be having another "Comedy of Errors." ' So he left town the following day, and I haven't seen him since. The narrator then got his overcoat and valise down out of the rack, saying : "I will have to say good-bye, my friend ; the next station is mine." "Oh, is it?" I said, innocently; "thought it belonged to the company." Then I thought I saw a tear tremble on his lash, as he wrung my liand and stole away. Fremont Wood,