[Jared B. Graham, The Inspired Liar, from Handset Reminiscences: Recollections of an Old-Time Printer and Journalist (1915)]

 

The Inspired Liar.

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            In the quite long ago James W. E. Townsend (otherwise "Jim"), printer, jokesmith and reformed sailor, had a reputation in California as a tolerable wit, and an all-around liar in narrative and harmless form.

            Occasionally Jim would say funny things calculated to make a wit of national reputation stop to listen; but unlike Mark Twain, he always laughed louder than anybody at his own jokes; also, he was strictly original—lacking Twain's abnormal gift of making merchandise of the thoughts of others by masquerading them in unrecognizable togs. When it came to spinning Munchausen-like yarns, with himself as the hero, he easily had Twain skinned.

            I first worked with Jim Townsend in the composing room of the San Francisco Mirror, a consumptive sheet of some note in its brief day. It hit the newspaper cemetery early in the sixties. He afterwards worked with me on the Virginia City (Nev.) Union.

            When on standing time he would often convulse "the alley" with some lively

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personal experience which nobody believed, during the telling of which his high-tenor hee-haw would echo from buildings across the street.

            But there was a streak of unaccountable dullness in his makeup, for one so bright in other ways. To illustrate, one night while setting time copy, consisting of a pinch of unpasted jokelets, he sang out:

            "Say, boss, there's a joke on both sides of this piece."

            "That's not your fault. Set 'em up," said the foreman.

            When the proof came Jim had to lift these lines on to the dead galley:

            "Gadzooks ! a coward, quotha? Nay, then, draw villian, and I will smite thee hip and thigh." (Evidently from a story.)

            Townsend was something of a practical joker, too. I recall one of the funniest things he ever perpetrated, though it had a singular and serious ending.

            On the Mirror was subbing a broken-down, drunken ex-editor from the interior known as "Warhorse" Jones. He would work a few days, then be drunk a few weeks, until he came to be lined up as a chronic old bum.

            When a writer, "Warhorse" acquired a reputation for sensational bellicose at-

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titudes. He was a bitter secessionist, and when the war broke out seldom put an edition to press that did not make the country fairly shudder for miles around.

            Every week he mopped the earth with "Abraham Africanus the First," as he called our beloved president, and for light diversion obliterated several esteemed union contemporaries if they chanced to cross him. He was everlastingly about to fight a duel, but on one pretext or another never did. He actually scared a man out of the state on one occasion. Generally well known to be an arrant coward, to many his violence was a source of great amusement and originated his nickname.

            Among Jones' peculiarities was a morbid horror of smallpox. Seldom a day passed that he did not refer to the dread disease with bated breath. Once after a prolonged spree he staggered into the office in a shaky condition, his face spattered with mud from the wheels of some vehicle. Townsend, at the dead stone about to lift a handful, suddenly struck an attitude of fright and yelled:

            "Great God ! Warhorse, what's the matter with you?"

            Jones turned pale, but reckoned he was only feeling bad for the want of a drink.

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            "Drink !" exclaimed Jim, backing away. "Why man, you're all broke out with smallpox. Look in the glass."

            Across the office was a mirror, and in it Jones caught a glimpse of his soiled face. Uttering a cry of terror, he leaned against the dead stone for support. Jim then edged up a little and said compassionately:

            "Now, Warhorse, listen: Don't you lose a minute in getting to the hospital. You'll give us all a dose if you don't light right out. If you're too sick to walk I'll send for a dray."

            Jones then braced up, and without a word staggered out of the door. Several days later word came from the pest house that he was there, so badly disfigured with pustules his intimate friends would not know him. In fact, he went through every stage of the disease and came near dying.

            The case caused much comment among physicians, and was the subject of a lengthy article in a medical journal bearing on similar phenomena. His doctors decided that he had simulated the disease through abnormal fear, and in fact did not have smallpox at all.

            On one occasion Townsend related how he was once on a three years' whal-

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ing voyage in the northern Pacific; that when the jig was up the ship sailed south, made Honolulu harbor and dropped anchor for a few days.

            While on shore he happened into a daily paper office, and making himself known was asked to go on cases for a day. Nothing loth, he peeled his coat and in eight hours piled up 14,400 of solid brevier (8-point). That string, he said, paralyzed the foreman, who had never before seen a printer who could average more than 1,100, and said a "hand" who could stick type like that ought to be willing to work for two-thirds of the scale.

            Now Jim was really a 1,700-an-hour swift. So this story easily added one more to his wealth of fairy tales, for fancy a comp with caloused hands, stiff with "tar, pitch and turpentine," after three years on shipboard striking an 1,800-an-hour gait!

            While on another alleged whaling voyage, this time in the south seas, his vessel was wrecked near one of the Fegee islands, and he with five other tars was rescued by the natives. They had not yet been converted from the broiled missionary habit, and after a protracted counsel decided upon having a grand

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feast at every new moon so long as the sailors lasted. The unfortunates were placed in a pen, and every month Jim saw the fattest of his comrades led away to the music of kettle drums, until he only remained. He was a skinny, lantern-jawed New Englander, so had the rest easily scooped for last place.

            When at length his turn came the king appeared, preceded by drums and followed by half-a-dozen islanders in single file. They felt of Jim's ribs with a no-good grunt, but opened the pen and he saw that after his six-months' weary wait it was all off with him.

            The king was togged out for a grand wind-up, and would brook no delay. He had on an extra coating of paint, a missionary's plug hat and a red necktie, which was all the clothing in the crowd except the rings in their ears.

            In the return procession Jim was placed immediately behind the king. It seemed a cinch, he said, that he would be next to the fire in a few minutes, so for a parting diversion and to stretch himself after the long confinement he sprang to the side of the king, gave him a high sign and began a series of grotesque postures and kowtows that paralysed the islanders, ending with a

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salaam to the cardinal points of the compass. Then he handed the king a plug of tobacco, that he had concealed under his shirt though he did not use the weed.

            Hiding that tobacco was the luckiest move Jim ever made. The mere sight of it was electrical, for his benighted captors had learned that to eat flesh saturated with tobacco meant deathly sickness. The king rolled his eyes skyward and gagged; then they all gagged.

            After a consultation, all meanwhile eyeing Jim, with loathing, he was returned to the pen innocent of what was the matter.

            Next morning, however, he was taken before the king, who by signs gave him to understand he was an immune, being no good for culinary purposes. It seems, too, the king had taken a great shine to Jim on account of his graceful posturing and gall. It ended in his being adopted by the islanders and forced to marry one of the king's daughters — with the view, he presumed, of improving the breed. Finally he was made the king's viceroy, or something like that, and he said he might have lived there happily ever after but for having made his escape on an English brig that touched the island for water, leaving a son as bow-legged and black as its mother.

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            A trick that Townsend played along in the eighties seemed to have savored more of cupidity than fun, and got him into disrepute, among those not on the inside at least.

            He was editing and printing a small weekly up Grass Valley way, that was in the political interest of the owner — a candidate for a county office. Jim had not been paid for several weeks, the sheet was to be closed down at the end of the campaign, and it began to look very much like he would have to walk out.

            In a saloon one evening he was discussing his boss in uncomplimentary terms, and mentioned the unpaid stipend. It happened that the opposition candidate was one of several listeners. Calling Jim to one side he said :

            "Look a here, pardner, you ought to know by this time that that thar boss of yourn is a dead beat an' no good on earth. He won't pay you a dollar. With that thar paper he has the "age" on me, an' I'll tell you what I'll do: "If you'll throw out his truck and turn the editorial page of the next issue over to me, I'll see you get your wages in full and give you $200 on the side."

            Jim accepted the proposition.

            All Friday night the conspirators worked with curtains down; the edition

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was made ready for the post-office, and Jim took mighty good care at daylight next morning to hit the stage for Frisco — maybe to journey on and rejoin his dusky partner in the Fegees.

            I do not know how the election resulted, and have never since heard directly of the inspired liar.

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