“Rooster Kell,” a well-known sport, “passed in his checks” lately. “Rooster Kell” was a character. He would have delighted Charles Dickens, for there was nobody like him. There have been better men and worse men, but no other “Rooster Kell.” He was a gambler and outside man for faro games. “Only a sport” and not a sport of the highest kind, either. But he had his good points. He was a pretty honest man in his way, about money matters. He loved his family, and though he never kept any money for himself, he left his folks pretty well fixed. And he will be regretted more and remembered longer than many a better or a smarter man. He never seemed to care about money, and never had any energy or ambition. All he cared for was having a good time and tellin’ stories. And such stories! The most unlikely yarns you ever heard of–yarns which nobody would listen to from anybody else, but which “Rooster Kell” told so well, and told with such gusto, that one almost believed him, although they are impossible.
Rooster Kell swore like a trooper, and never hesitated to swear to the truth of his own stories. The boys round town thought that he really believed his own inventions.
One of his favorite stories was his adventure with the monkeys in South America. Accordin’ to Rooster Kell, he was years ago wanderin’ in a South American forest, and there he lost his way, and, wearied out at last, tryin’ in vain to find it, he laid down in the shade for a little rest.
He heard voices near him, voices talkin’ Spanish. He looked round him but couldn’t see any men, nor any women, nor any children, nothin’ but monkeys, in fact; yet there were the voices right near him, talkin’ Spanish–and right good Spanish, too. Rooster Kell had picked up Spanish by this time and was a judge of the lingo, and he never heard better Spanish than then, in the forest.
This was mighty funny, and Rooster Kell was bothered to explain the mystery. At last he watched two big monkeys near him, and saw that they were a jabberin’ away to each other, and then the idea struck him, like a flash of lightning, that it must be the monkeys who were talkin’ Spanish to each other in the forest.
He waited a minute in hidin’ and then he burst upon the two monkeys. They started off, or tried to, but he called called ‘em back in Spanish and told ‘em he had discovered their secret. Then he asked ‘em, for goodness sake, to tell him why it was, if they could talk Spanish so well in private, why they never seemed to understand it or pretend to talk it in public.
And then one of the two monkeys up and told him that if he was a monkey, at least he wasn’t a fool into the bargain, and that although the monkeys had been able for hundreds of years to talk Spanish with the natives, they never owned up or else the white man would have made slaves of them and put them to work.
Then the monkey who told him all this extracted a promise from him that he wouldn’t say anything about this discovery of his while he was in South America, at least; not till he got back into his own country; and Rooster Kell bein’ a gentleman and not wishin’ to take advantage even of a monkey gave this promise, and kept it, too. “For,” said Rooster Kell, when he told this story, “I got the two monkeys to show me my way out of that forest, and enjoyed their conversation very much. I found them quite intelligent, and as I always like to encourage brains, even in monkeys, and as I had a pack of cards with me, I sat down a while and taught the two monkeys to play seven-up. They took to it very kindly, and promised never to forget me. I, for my part, gave ‘em my promise never to betray their secret, and I never said a word about it while I was in South America.”
This story will give you a pretty good idea of what Rooster Kell’s yarns were like. They were the most outrageous fibs, but he told ‘em with the gravest face, and never winced.
And there was this one thing about Rooster Kell: if he ever said a thing, no matter how wild or absurd, he stuck to it, never changed it, never came down a peg, but held on to his original statement like a bulldog to a man’s leg. The more you tried to laugh him out of his yarn the more firmly he stuck to it–as if it was a woman in trouble and he was defending her. In fact I believe he cared more for his stories than he did for women. and he wasn’t a hater of the sex, either.
He used to have a pal or partner called Wooly Moon, and the two used to work a jolly nice racket together. Rooster Kell would get up a yarn, some wild impossible thing, and get somebody to bet drinks or money it wasn’t so, as anybody of any sense would be willing to bet any amount. Then in would happen to drop this Wooly Moon and Rooster Kell would refer the matter to him, as if by accident or carelessly, and Wooly Moon would say just about the same thing as Rooster Kell had just said, and then the other fellow would have to pay the bet.
They used to try it on at the old Ocean House years ago, this Rooster Kell and Wooly Moon, and one time, the story goes, they tried it on John Morrissey.
Rooster Kell swore before a crowded bar-room that he had once rode on a Canadian river with a pair of oars fifty feet long.
“How long did you say those oars were?” asked John Morrissey.
“They measured just fifty feet,” said Rooster Kell, very exact and particular.
“Not a foot less?” asked Morrissey.
“Not a foot less,” said Rooster Kell, “fifty feet by official measurement. I’m willin’ to bet drinks with any man that those oars were just fifty long.”
“I’ll take that bet,” said John Morrissey; “drinks for the crowd,” and it was a pretty big crowd that night, as it was rainin’ and all the gang kept indoors around the stove.
Pretty soon Wooly Moon happened to come into the bar-room, and then Rooster Kell hollered to him, just as if he hadn’t dreamed of seein’ him that night.
“Why, Wooly, you are just the man the boys are waitin’ to see. Don’t you remember when you and I were in Canada together two years ago?”
“Yes, I do,” said Wooly Moon.
“Well, don’t you remember seeing a pair of mighty big oars lyin’ alongside of a boat, and that you and I shoved the boat into the water and circused with those oars?”
“Yes. Come to think of it, I do remember just as you tell it,” said Wooly Moon.
“Well, don’t you remember we had a bet how long those oars were, and you won the bet by coming nearest to the real length?” asked Rooster Kell.
“Yes,” said Wooly Moon, “I remember that, too, now”
“Well, Wooly,” said Rooster Kell, “tell the boys how long those oars were proved to be by actual measurement.”
“Why, fifty feet, to be sure,” said Wooly Moon.
“You see,” said Rooster Kell to John Morrissey, who had been taking in every word of this conversation.
“Yes,” said Morrissey, “and I hear, too, and I refuse to pay the bet.”
“You refuse,” said Rooster Kell, and the other boys looked astonished, too, for John Morrissey even then had made the reputation of bein’ a man who never went back on his word.
“Yes, I refuse,” said Morrissey, “and I leave it to the crowd if I ain’t doin’ right under the circumstances. I ain’t got nothin’ against the length of the oars, but I have got something against Wooly Moon, who said two years ago he was in Canada. Now, didn’t he last night, to help his friend win a bet, say and swear to it, that two years ago he was the entire year over in Ireland, in Dublin?”
“He did–he did,” said the boys who recollected the statement. “And didn’t he say afterwards, too,” asked Morrissey, “to win another bet, that he had never been in Canada in the whole course of his life?”
“He did–he did,” said the boys who recollected that circumstance, too.
“Well, then either those two bets were wrongly decided last night,” said Morrissey, “or else my bet is off tonight on this gentleman’s own statement,” pointing to Wooly Moon and walkin’ off.
Then the boys went for Rooster Kell. It didn’t matter to ‘em who paid for the drinks–Rooster Kell or John Morrissey–so they got the drinks; and this time it did seem to the boys as if Rooster Kell and Woolly Moon had been playin’ it a little too fine and had been caught in their own trap.
You see, fellows who tell tough stories should have long memories.
Rooster Kell’s last appearance in public life was durin’ the contest between Nick Muller and Ben Wood for congress last Fall, in which fight Rooster Kell was against Wood.
The way Rooster Kell told his own story of his share in this fight was about as follows: “You see,” he said, “boys, I was agin Wood this time on principle. Wood was a good trump, but the boys had got a little soured on him, and he had got a little too independent of ‘the boys,’ and in fact we all thought Nick Muller was just the man to send to Congress. So I worked day and night in Nick Miller’s behalf just for principle–and expenses, bare expenses. Well, one day, Muller wanted me to attend at once to some very delicate and important work for him; in fact, boys, if you won’t give it away, I’ll tell you in confidence just how delicate and important it was. It was to see Shed Shook, up at the Union Place Hotel, and make a deal with him. Nobody would do for this work but me, boys, so I took it in hand right off and determined to carry it through, though Shed Shook and I were a little ‘off’ just then.
“Well, Muller,” says I, “I’m ready. I’ll just take a Broadway bus, or the elevated, and ride up to Union Square.”
“‘No, you won’t take a Broadway bus’,” says Muller, “‘and you won’t take the elevated neither. You’ll just take this’ giving me a tenner–a brand new tenner–’and then you’ll just take that,’ pointing to a hack which stood in waitin’, ‘and you’ll make the best time you can and see Shed Shook.’
“‘You bet,’ says I, and jumping into the hack, and closing the door with the bang. I hollered to the driver not to stop for anybody or anythin’, but to drive like mad to the Union Place Hotel, as if his mother-in-law was after him.
“I was smoking a Reina Victoria just then, and felt good, but pretty tired and very sleepy. You see, the old woman had just made me some nice veal pie at home; I had eaten heartily and felt correspondingly. So I had just laid myself back in the seat of the hack and was about closin’ my eyes, while the old hack horse was makin’ a mile in five minutes for the first time in his life, when, whack–bang–bounce–kerslap–out drops the floor of the old coach; down it tumbled into the street, leavin’ me with my feet on the ground and the coach goin’ as I told it to go, like mad. I yelled to the driver to stop, but he didn’t pay any attention. I had told him not to stop for anybody or anythin’, and he was carrying out my instructions. He didn’t hear me or didn’t heed me, and only whipped his old horse on the faster. So there was no help for it. I was in for it–in a coach without any bottom. So I had to run inside a wagon faster than I had ever run outside of it, the men and women on the street starin’ and screamin’ at me as I ran or rode by with my legs goin’ it between the wheels; and by the time I got to Union Square I was blowed completely, and fainted away in Shed Shook’s arms, who had to give me a stiff glass of brandy at the bar to revive me.”
This ride-walk, which was told as only Rooster Kell could tell it, was the last of Rooster Kell’s yarns, and was followed not long after by his death and burial.
Poor Rooster Kell! There are liars enough in New York, but who can ever lie again like Rooster Kell?
[Editor’s notes: Rooster Kelly (Abt. 1811-1881) was a well-known character in mid-19th century New York City. “Wooly Moon’s” real name was William Moon. Sheridan “Shed” Shook was a notable Republican party functionary and later became manager of the Union Square Theatre. His nickname is supposed to have come from his cornering a market on “shedder” or peeler crabs, blue crabs about to molt, at which time their meat was highly prized.
Rooster’s obituary:
