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What Befell Mr. Middleton Because Of The Fourth Gift Of The Emir
by
“Yesterday,” said Mr. Smitz with a slight hauteur, “I could not look forward and see that I was to have such a large and cultivated gathering. You cannot, sir, ask to have your own mere personal business, for business it is with you, take precedence of the scientific quests of all these other ladies and gentlemen. I have planned to materialize men of many nations, with whom all may converse if they please; Confucius, the great Chinese; Caesar, the great Roman; Mohammed, the great Turk; Powhattan, the great Indian, and others. Your business must wait.”
“My friends,” said the Englishman, appealing to the assemblage, “I throw myself upon your good nature. My grandfather was the owner of a small estate in Ireland. In a rebellion, the Irish burned every building on the place and it has since been deserted. He had buried a sum of money before he fled during the rebellion and we have a chart telling where it was buried. But the chart referred to buildings and trees that were subsequently utterly destroyed. We have no marks to guide us. I am sadly in need of money. My grandfather’s ghost could tell me where the treasure is. I shall suffer financial detriment if I do not catch the train at eleven and must attend to several matters before that. You have heard my case. May I not ask you all to grant me the indulgence of having my affair disposed of now?”
Mr. Middleton and several others were about to endorse the justice of the Englishman’s request, when Mr. Smitz hastily forestalled them by saying that all should be heard from and turning to four personages who sat together at a point where the line of chairs of the circle passed before a large and mysterious cabinet set in the corner of the wall, and asking their opinion, they all four in one voice began to object to any alteration of the program of the evening, adverting somewhat to the Boer War, the oppressions in Ireland, and to the Revolution and the War of 1812. When they had done, there was no one who cared to say a word for the Englishman or an Englishman, and Mr. Smitz announced that Confucius would be the next materialization and that all might address him in his native tongue. Of this permission, a small red-head gentleman, whose demeanor advertised him to be in a somewhat advanced state of intoxication, availed himself and remarked slowly:
“Hello, John. Washee, washee? Sabe how washee? Wlanter be Melican man?”
To this the great sage vouchsafed no reply save a contemptuous stare, and the red-headed gentleman observed that doubtless the Chinese language had changed a good deal in two thousand years. All languages did.
From out the darkness under whose cover the Chinaman was modestly divesting himself of his body, came the voice of Mr. Smitz, rich, unctuous, saying:
“The next visitant will be from that great race we all admire so much, the noble race which has done so much to build up this country, which in every field of American endeavor has been a guiding star to us all. It gives me great pleasure to tell you that our next visitant from the world beyond is that great soldier, statesman, and patriot, King Brian Boru.”
“Who the devil wants to see that or any other paddy?” exclaimed the voice of the Englishman, choleric, savage. “Let me out of this blarsted, cheating hole. Who wants to see one of that race of quarrelsome, thieving, wretched rapscallions?”
Whack! Smash! Bang! Crash! The assemblage was thrown into a pitiable state of terror by a most extraordinary combat and tumult taking place somewhere in the circle. The remonstrances of Mr. Smitz and the oaths of the Englishman rose against the general din of the expostulations of the men and cries of the women. Match after match was struck by the men, only to be blown out by some mysterious agency, after giving momentary glimpses of the Englishman astride of a man on the floor, pummelling him lustily, while Mr. Smitz pulled at the Englishman’s shoulders. At length the noise died away, the sound of some one remonstrating, “let me at him oncet, let me at the spalpeen, he got me foul,” coming back from some remote region of the atmosphere, as under the compelling force of the will of the great Smitz, the bodily envelope of the Irish hero was dissipated and his soul went back to the beyond.