Dynamite is a serious thing, and it has set the world lately to talkin’ and thinkin’ seriously about it; but there is a funny side to everythin’, even to dynamite, and I heard a pretty good story illustratin’ this comic side of dynamite a day or two ago.
The Martin House is an old-fashioned, cheap hotel, on Chatham street, very near and directly opposite to O’Donovan Rossa’s headquarters on Chambers street. Chambers street and Chatham street, at this locality, almost touch each other, runnin’, as it were, “catty-cornered,” and into each other. In consequence, the Martin House and O’Donovan Rossa’s office are so close together that people in the one could, if they chose, shake hands with the people in the other, and a listener in one can easily hear a good deal of what is said, or done, in the other.
The readin’ room of the Martin House is directly opposite to Rossa’s office, and people seated there have often overheard scraps of conversation in Rossa’s place.
There has been a border at the Martin house named Robinson, an Englishman, who frequented the readin’ room of the hotel, and who, as was to be expected in a full-blooded Englishman, has been bitter in his denunciations of dynamite and the dynamiters. He used to hold forth to whoever chose to listen, in the readin’ room, attackin’ with all the weapons of red-hot rhetoric the whole dynamite gang, expressin’ his convictions that they all ought to be convicted of murder, and hung accordin’ly. These denunciations were overheard by men in O’Donovan Rossa’s office, and in one of the more genial moods of the dynamiters, a job was put up to silence this Robinson.
Just before the time of the attack on Phelan in O’Donovan Rossa’s place a letter reached the Martin Hotel by post, directed in a sprawlin’ hand to this Mr. Robinson. When the gentleman came in in the evenin’ the hotel clerk, Mr. Jeremiah N. Goumanz, handed him the letter, which he opened and read as follows:
“Hold your tongue or you will lose your life. Say nothin’, or if you must say somethin’, say your prayers. You will be past prayin’ for soon if you don’t follow this advice. You are daily insultin’ an injured land, and a band of determined men, who have sworn to avenge it’s wrongs. Keep still or die!”
On the top of this epistle was a skull and crossbones of the usual piratical fashion, and underneath was the legend, “God bless old Ireland.” There was no signature to this mysterious epistle, but Robinson did not need to be told who it came from. There was O’Donovan Rossa and his dynamite written all over it.
Of course, the reader will wonder that Robinson paid any attention to this epistle; of course the reader will see that it was all a commonplace joke. But Robinson didn’t see it in this light at all, and probably the reader wouldn’t have seen it in this light either, had he been in Robinson’s place.
Robinson, to tell the truth, was thoroughly frightened, and he at once showed the letter to the clerk, who had been connected with the hotel for over a score of years. The clerk himself didn’t really know whether to take the letter in joke or in earnest. Dealin’ with any other men except Irishmen, the clerk would have sworn it was a jest, but as Irishmen are proverbially sensitive about Ireland, and O’Donovan Rossa’s set were in dead earnest about dynamite, there was a chance that the epistle might be intended as a solemn warnin’. Besides, a good number of O’Donovan Rossa’s men were in the habit of coming over to the Martin House now and then for drinks and meals, and it would not have been policy for the clerk to spoil their plans, whatever they were. So he was non-committal, and rather on the whole, encouraged the idea that there might be somethin’ in the letter.
Robinson, in the meantime, got more and more nervous about it, and showed it to the other patrons of the Martin House, who also got more and more nervous about it, for their own sakes, not for Robinson’s.
For there is this about dynamite. Everybody in the neighborhood has a vital interest in it; you can’t blow up one man without riskin’ the blowin’ up of all the men, women and children in the vicinity. If the letter meant business, and Robinson was in danger, why, then everybody in the Martin House was in danger, too. So they all made common cause with Robinson and sympathized with him, and above all, advised him to keep still–an advice he scrupulously followed, from the date of the receipt of the warnin’ epistle.
A few days after the comin’ of the letter a man named Barnes registered at the Martin House. He was evidently an Irishman, and he carried a black bag or valise with him–a small black bag or valise, which he handed to the clerk at the office, who, lookin’ upon it suspiciously, handled it very gently indeed, and laid it under the office desk, in a corner all to itself, and took good care never to disturb anythin’ in that corner.
Barnes registered, took one meal at the Martin House, and then vanished; he didn’t turn up again. And meanwhile the little black bag, or valise, remained under the office desk, along with a lot of other rubbish. Finally, on Monday last, the proprietor of the hotel determined to have a grand clearin’ out of his office trumpery, and ordered everythin’ to be removed from the office, except what absolutely belonged there.
Everythin’ was therefore removed from under the office desk–among other things the little black bag, or valise, left by the mysteriously disappeared Irishman by the name of Barnes. It was the very last article touched, or removed, this little black bag, or valise. Two or more of the hotel hands refuse point blank to handle it at all, and finally the clerk had to take hold of it himself, which he did very gingerly.
“What shall be done with the blamed thing?” he asked of a bystander.
“Put it in the water,” was the reply. “That will prevent it explodin’, anyway.” The speaker bein’ under the common, though erroneous, impression that dynamite cannot explode under water.
This suggestion was at once complied with. And in the presence of a score or more nervous men, includin’ Robinson, the little black bag, or valise, was put unopened and undisturbed, in the misdt of a big tank of water, supplyin’ the Martin House up in the second story.
People breathed freer round the hotel, now that the little black bag, or valise, was under water. Robinson, particularly, felt relieved, until, on last Wednesday, up turned the mysteriously missin’ Barnes. He walked into the Martin House office, very quietly and matter-of-fact like, and asked the clerk for the bag which he had left there some time ago.
Robinson was standin’ at the office desk chatting to the clerk just then, and both men started violently and stared at the mysterious and Irish Barnes, who, wonderin’ what on earth they were starin’ at him so for, asked ‘em plump for his bag.
Now it is a pretty difficult thing to tell a man, who has just asked you in his the most natural and matter-of-fact way for his valise, which he left with you some time ago, that you have put the valise into a tub of water and let it soak there without notifyin’ him, the owner, of your very peculiar proceedin’. It had seemed the most natural and proper thing in the world when it was done at first, but somehow, now that it had been done, it looked like a queer thing to do anyway.
The clerk stammered and got confused–that is, as much as a hotel clerk can get confused–and finally blurted out that the valise was in the tub upstairs.
You can imagine how the clerk told this fact, but you can’t imagine how Barnes received it, how mad he was, what a time he made about it, and now the very ones who had been most anxious to have the clerk put the valise under water were now the first to appear to know nothin’ about it, and to leave the clerk in the lurch.
Finally, the clerk made a clean breast of the whole matter and told Barnes just what had been imagined, and what had been done about his bag. And then, for the life of him, Barnes couldn’t help burstin’ into a fit of laughter, which ended in his insisting upon the clerk openin’ the bag himself that he might see what was in it.
And when the bag was opened it was found to contain nothin’ but a lot of soiled linen.
The clerk, feelin’ like a fool, was profuse in his apologies; but Barnes, who was a good-natured fellow at bottom, and a travelin’ salesman, having no more to do with dynamite than he had with Vanderbilt or Queen Victoria, laughed heartily and said there was no harm done. He had intended, just before he had been suddenly called away by business, to give his duds out to be washed, and now they were half washed already–at least soaked thoroughly.
So he made a bargain with the clerk that if he would only complete the job and get his dirty clothes in the valise washed completely for nothin’, he would call it all square.
The delighted clerk at once gave the necessary orders, and thus the dynamite scare, which for a week or ten days had demoralized the Martin House, resulted only in the free washin’ of a dozen or so pieces of soiled clothin’. Would that all dynamite scares could have equally harmless endin’s.
[Editor’s notes: There was a Martin House catering to boarders at 53 Chatham St., but little else can be said about whether the anecdote above really took place. Which, in a way, is fitting, because the truth behind the incident that the column opens with also is surrounded by mystery. This much is known: an Irish nationalist named Thomas Phelan, who lived in Kansas City, traveled to New York in January, 1885, and entered the offices of O’Donovan Rossa’s newspaper. O’Donovan Rossa was an exiled Irish Republican leader who embraced and developed asymmetrical resistance to the British via explosive devices. Not all Irish nationalists endorsed O’Donovan Rossa’s tactics; some believed the potential for injury to innocents was unacceptable; while others just thought that Rossa was wrong to publicize and take credit for bombings. Phelan had written an article for a Kansas City paper in which he claimed he had broken up a plot to place an “infernal machine” (bomb on a timer) aboard an ocean liner, the Queen, because it was carrying passengers of several nations, including Ireland. Phelan was invited to New York to meet O’Donovan Rossa and discuss that article. Instead, Phelan was led into a small room and stabbed several times by a O’Donovan Rossa associate named Richard Short. Phelan recovered and returned to Kansas City, but the majority of Irish nationalists now believed he was a traitor to the cause. This did not cower Phelan, who was an expert marksman and swordman (but that is another story, and not one of Harry Hill’s!) Was there ever a plot to sink the liner? Did Phelan stop it, and if so, who did he contact? Was the plot against a passenger liner, or a similarly named cargo ship, and did Phelan misunderstand that? Had an ocean liner been bombed, would O’Donovan Rossa have readily acknowledged credit for it (as he did with other deadly bombings)?
