Presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumbling audience,and everybody's eyes sought a single point--the wide,empty,carpetless stage.A figure appeared there whose aspect was familiar to hardly a dozen persons present.
It was the scarecrow Dean--in foxy shoes,down at the heels;socks of odd colors,also 'down;'damaged trousers,relics of antiquity,and a world too short,exposing some inches of naked ankle;an unbuttoned vest,also too short,and exposing a zone of soiled and wrinkled linen between it and the waistband;shirt bosom open;long black handkerchief,wound round and round the neck like a bandage;bob-tailed blue coat,reaching down to the small of the back,with sleeves which left four inches of forearm unprotected;small,stiff-brimmed soldier-cap hung on a corner of the bump of--whichever bump it was.This figure moved gravely out upon the stage and,with sedate and measured step,down to the front,where it paused,and dreamily inspected the house,saying no word.
The silence of surprise held its own for a moment,then was broken by a just audible ripple of merriment which swept the sea of faces like the wash of a wave.The figure remained as before,thoughtfully inspecting.
Another wave started--laughter,this time.It was followed by another,then a third--this last one boisterous.
And now the stranger stepped back one pace,took off his soldier-cap,tossed it into the wing,and began to speak,with deliberation,nobody listening,everybody laughing and whispering.
The speaker talked on unembarrassed,and presently delivered a shot which went home,and silence and attention resulted.
He followed it quick and fast,with other telling things;warmed to his work and began to pour his words out,instead of dripping them;grew hotter and hotter,and fell to discharging lightnings and thunder--and now the house began to break into applause,to which the speaker gave no heed,but went hammering straight on;unwound his black bandage and cast it away,still thundering;presently discarded the bob tailed coat and flung it aside,firing up higher and higher all the time;finally flung the vest after the coat;and then for an untimed period stood there,like another Vesuvius,spouting smoke and flame,lava and ashes,raining pumice-stone and cinders,shaking the moral earth with intellectual crash upon crash,explosion upon explosion,while the mad multitude stood upon their feet in a solid body,answering back with a ceaseless hurricane of cheers,through a thrashing snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs.
'When Dean came,'said Claggett,'the people thought he was an escaped lunatic;but when he went,they thought he was an escaped archangel.'
Burlington,home of the sparkling Burdette,is another hill city;and also a beautiful one;unquestionably so;a fine and flourishing city,with a population of twenty-five thousand,and belted with busy factories of nearly every imaginable deion.It was a very sober city,too--for the moment--for a most sobering bill was pending;a bill to forbid the manufacture,exportation,importation,purchase,sale,borrowing,lending,stealing,drinking,smelling,or possession,by conquest,inheritance,intent,accident,or otherwise,in the State of Iowa,of each and every deleterious beverage known to the human race,except water.
This measure was approved by all the rational people in the State;but not by the bench of Judges.
Burlington has the progressive modern city's full equipment of devices for right and intelligent government;including a paid fire department,a thing which the great city of New Orleans is without,but still employs that relic of antiquity,the independent system.
In Burlington,as in all these Upper-River towns,one breathes a go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good in the nostrils.
An opera-house has lately been built there which is in strong contrast with the shabby dens which usually do duty as theaters in cities of Burlington's size.
We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine,but had a daylight view of it from the boat.I lived there awhile,many years ago,but the place,now,had a rather unfamiliar look;so Isuppose it has clear outgrown the town which I used to know.
In fact,I know it has;for I remember it as a small place--which it isn't now.But I remember it best for a lunatic who caught me out in the fields,one Sunday,and extracted a butcher-knife from his boot and proposed to carve me up with it,unless I acknowledged him to be the only son of the Devil.
I tried to compromise on an acknowledgment that he was the only member of the family I had met;but that did not satisfy him;he wouldn't have any half-measures;I must say he was the sole and only son of the Devil--he whetted his knife on his boot.
It did not seem worth while to make trouble about a little thing like that;so I swung round to his view of the matter and saved my skin whole.Shortly afterward,he went to visit his father;and as he has not turned up since,I trust he is there yet.
And I remember Muscatine--still more pleasantly--for its summer sunsets.
I have never seen any,on either side of the ocean,that equaled them.
They used the broad smooth river as a canvas,and painted on it every imaginable dream of color,from the mottled daintinesses and delicacies of the opal,all the way up,through cumulative intensities,to blinding purple and crimson conflagrations which were enchanting to the eye,but sharply tried it at the same time.All the Upper Mississippi region has these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle.
It is the true Sunset Land:I am sure no other country can show so good a right to the name.The sunrises are also said to be exceedingly fine.
I do not know.