By the way, this might be a little offensive.
--
Ellsworth Tallyho entered his parlor on a fine Sunday morning, ready to settle in at his breakfast nook in his bay window, enjoy a lovely breakfast, and begin a fine day of working his staff to the bones on the Sabbath. But as he was about to take his seat, he stopped.
By God! What was this on his breakfast table instead of his breakfast! A god-damned newspaper, that's what! Where was his parlor maid Beatrice Mulvaney? That vacuous plebian louse house! How many times had he told her not to bring him the morning newspaper!
"Curse you, Beatrice Mulvaney, and your plump and tempting Irish arse! What is this on my table and where is my breakfast! Hurry it up or it's into the basement with you!"
Of course there was no answer. Beatrice Mulvaney was one of his least unintelligent servants, and wisely kept her mouth shut on most occasions. This made her difficult to find when he was in a foul temper or his cups. He trusted she would find her tongue to give him some fine excuse for this miscalculation, though! Sow! When she entered she had better have some of those little puff pastries he liked! It might curtail the number of times he beat her with the newspaper.
And so Ellsworth Tallyho sat at his breakfast nook without any damn breakfast staring at a cursed newspaper. And there he waited, fuming. His fine Sunday was off to a terrible start!
What was taking so frigging long?
Beatrice was having trouble with the new kitchen help again, he was sure of it. Something would have to be done about this kitchen help situation. Ellsworth wasn't sure what. The last set of kitchen help were still tied up in the basement. Ellsworth could force this new set down with the others but he wasn't sure if it was too soon. He didn't want the old kitchen help getting too excited about new arrivals. He wanted them demoralized as Jews making mud bricks for Pharaoh on a hot day, so they wouldn't make friends with the new set of hapless, doomed kitchen help.
But what could one do? Gone were the days of ill-tempered rotund slave chefs! Those taskmasters were never late with breakfast! Their merciless culinary coercion had been something to admire! Now Ellsworth was forced to deal with self-important slatterns like Beatrice Mulvaney, who wanted to be paid. She never did anything right, but at least she was a hard worker. Ellsworth couldn't tolerate any other Irish for any purpose whatsoever. Mongrels and moochers, the lot of them!
To pass the time without eggs, bacon, sausages, porridge, fresh fruit, toast, a fine blackberry compote, freshly squeezed orange juice or a nicely cooked piece of breakfast veal, he glared at the abhorrent newspaper and stroked his luxurious moustaches. The Great Ozo's Miracle Moustache Wax was worth all and more that shoe shine lad had declared it to be! Why, this very day Ellsworth intended to gift the lad with another visit and allow him to shine his other shoe!
Beatrice Mulvaney bustled in, carrying a tray with his breakfast.
"Top o' the Mornin' to ya, sir!"
"Yes, yes, and all that. And how are you this morning, Beatrice?" Ah, shake the fist at the gods, he'd done it again! He had been trying to make an innocent everyday greeting, after which he intended to launch into her gruesome tongue lashing with vigorous ire! But Beatrice would now waste time telling him 'how she was'. Ellsworth was going to have to stop this business of displaying interest in other people's lives! It was far too time-consuming, as Beatrice was about to prove.
"Faith an' beggorah! Me brother Seamus had another wee accident, this time with a tractor! Took off 'is whole leg, poor lad!"
Ellsworth had no pity for brainless oafs who got themselves caught in machinery. Machinery was a fine example of good old-fashioned hard American labor and Ellsworth believed everyone could learn from it! It worked as long as you told it to, didn't need lunch breaks or end-of-shifts, didn't need to be paid, and when it broke you simply tossed it in the river and accused the neighboring business of sabotaging you. Then, after a lengthy and tiresmone court process, you received obscene sums of money along with a new piece of machinery.
Ellsworth said, "If that fool brother of yours can't even pay attention to where the tractor is going when he's mowing the potatos perhaps he deserves to have been attacked by it! And what the hell is this, you uneducated ninny!" he yelled, flailing the newspaper over his head threateningly.
Mrs. Mulvaney had the decency to look intimidated, but she tried to cover her arse. "Ohhh, I thought ye might be wantin' a paper this mornin' Mr. Tallyho! There's been a big development in Mr. N. Oswald Wellington's oil business--"
"Beatrice Mulvaney, I have told you on at least five dozen different occasions that I disdain newspapers!"
"But Mr. Tallyho, ye're startin' up yer own newspaper business yerself! I just don't understand why it is ye wouldn't be wantin' to read 'em! And it's important fer a businessman such as yerself to be knowin' what's happenin' in the business world! Now, Mr. N. Oswald Wellington--"
"Damn and blast you, Mrs. Mulvaney, do you think I want to support other newspapers when I'm trying to start my own?!"
There was a silence.
"Oh," Beatrice said. "Oh, I didn't think of it quite like that, Mr. Tallyho."
"Of course not!" He hurled the obtrusion at her overly large head and turned his attention to the breakfast she had sat in front of him. "What's this, and if I hear the word 'potato' pass your lips even once I'll flog your arse redder than an Indian's blushing face!"
"But, Mr. Tallyho, yer newspaper isn't quite up an' runnin' yet! There's no money for anything but potatos! And ev'n those I'm gettin' from me own garden!"
Ellsworth didn't know Beatrice Mulvaney kept a garden. When did she have time to do that? He would have to work her harder!
"Beatrice Mulvaney, I am busy. I have a newspaper to run. Talk to Mrs. Tallyho about silly household trifles like money for food."
Beatrice looked very uncomfortable again, her pert little upturned nose reddening, which gave Ellsworth a feeling of satisfaction rather than foreboding. "Mr. Tallyho, I'm afraid I have some bad news."
"Go away."
"Er . . . pardon me, sir?"
"No, stay, but tell me the good news first."
Beatrice looked at a loss. "Mr. Tallyho, I don't believe I remember sayin' anythin' 'bout good news."
Ellsworth glared at his parlor maid with a glare fiercer than the noonday sun glaring off the glaciers of the great Yukon territory, then turned his attention once more to his food and methodically consumed the atrocious dish of potato chunks she had concocted, which tasted suspiciously like The Great Ozo's Miracle Moustache Wax.
After a very long silence in which Ellsworth began plucking out particularly poisonous-looking pieces of the substance and chucking them at Beatrice Mulvaney, she began to speak.
"It's about yer wife, Mr. Tallyho."
"Geraldina? What about her?"
"When was the last time ye saw yer wife, Mr. Tallyho?"
Ellsworth couldn't actually remember. Had Geraldina gone missing? Was there any insurance?
"Don't know. Why? Is she dead?"
"Faith an' begorrah! I sartainly hope not! No, I'm afraid she's run off to one of those banana republic continents with the farmer garden worker, Nigel von Nievengard."
"The farmer garden worker?"
"Yes."
"Well, you daft cow-eyed Irishwoman, was he a farmer or a garden worker! I don't know who to take out insurance on unless you speak like a resident of this country and not some vacuous imported hussey!"
"Faith an' begorrah, Mr. Tallyho! Ye've never employed farmers!"
"Talk sense, you bint!"
"I'm talkin' about the farmer garden worker! Ye know, the strapping lad with the shoulders and the big tools always pokin' around in the hedges!"
What! That brown-skinned bleach-haired smooth-cheeked pansy-boy spy! Ellsworth had always thought he would end up working in the merchant seaman's docking business! The boy was physically unable to keep in a decent state of dress while doing anything! He belonged with the sailors and prostitutes down at the docks!
Well, apparantly he had gone there, and he had taken Geraldina. Hm. That was a development Elsworth had not forseen.
He said, "I ought to have locked that adulterous strumpet up in the attic when I had the inclination on our wedding night!"
Beatrice looked uncomfortable again. She always tried to ignore the nightly wails of Ellsworth's previous wife, Francesca du Montenegro Tallyho, locked away in the attic.
"So, Mr. Tallyho, about the money--"
"The money will come from the newspaper, Mrs. Mulvaney! Now go away so I can consume your slop without the distraction of your speech!"
Beatrice Mulvaney left for her kitchens.
As he attempted to eat, The Great Ozo's Miracle Moustache Wax dripping off his extravagant facial hair onto his plate, Ellsworth plotted the birth of his newspaper. It would be the greatest newspaper in the United States! The most widely-distributed publication (other than the Rifle and Petticoat Pamphlet, of course) in the nation! Then he could buy out every other newspaper in the nation and everyone would be brought around to his views that the filthy Chinese and swarthy stinking Italians were bringing the great nation to her knees, along with the unending boatloads of wretched sickly immigrants from numerous other unsavory locations around the globe, bringing their native diseases and languages so that in time no true-born American would be able to find work or to even understand his neighbor! These late-comers and moochers hadn't fought in the war, that's what! What America should do was round up all these lackadaisical illiterate foreigners and make them fight the civil war all over again between each other, that's what America ought to do! Yes! That would take care of the immigrants' teeming population, give them a sense of what their true-born countrymen had been through, and give the nation another war in which to develop technology to defeat the Frogs when they next attempted invasion (Ellsworth gave it nine years). What America needed was a nice solid wall to keep everyone out, that's what America needed! Maybe Ellsworth would let the Chinese stay long enough to build one. But after that they had to go!
The best way to start his own newspaper would of course be to take over the biggest already published newspaper in existence. That was H. Remond Buckminster's 'Daily Jitterbug.' Ellsworth sniffed. The man had named his newspaper after something that might have been brought over on a hull-packed boat with the flea-bitten Irish! Ellsworth hadn't quite settled on a name for his impending publication yet, but he was sure it would be better than the 'Daily Jitterbug.'
Taking over the operation was certainly the most efficient and economial plan. The building, machines and army of child laborers were already in place.
"Beatrice, bring your fine Irish arse back into the parlor immediately!"
Beatrice did not appear immediately, but took several moments.
"It's about time, you slug! Beatrice, my girl, I have a job for you!" Beatrice's face brightened. Bless her heart, she loved having something productive to do! "Within the next twelve hours I want every employee of the Daily Jitterbug delivered to this doorstep, bound and gagged!"
"Faith an' begorrah! I couldn't do that!"
"Well, get that lad from the soup kitchen to help you! What's his name, the one with the shoulders?"
"Mr. Sinclair, sir?"
"Yes, Sinclair, that's the one! Inform him that he will be paid a half-penny for each hostage he delivers to me in the next twelve hours!"
"Oh, Mr. Tallyho, I couldn't do that! I mean, because it would be wrong, don't ye see?"
"Mrs. Mulvaney, you'll kidnap those people or I'll hire a tractor out on your brother's remaining leg!"
"Faith an' begorrah! But Mr. Tallyho, what are you goin' to do with all those people?"
"Put them in the basement, of course! With the kitchen slaves!"
"But we're runnin' out of room in the basement!"
"Oh, come, Beatrice, they'll be mostly children, they won't take up very much space! Now shoo!"
"But Mr. Tallyho, why are ye havin' me kidnap them?"
"Why? Because you're my servant, you silly woman! I can't very well do it!"
"But Mr. Tallyho!"
"Oh, all right, I'll help!"
He began to hustle her out the door. "But why are we doin' this?"
"Well, it would be hard to take over the building that houses the Daily Jitterbug without an army, wouldn't it? Women! You know nothing of war, politics or business! I'm going to send an army of H. Redmond Buckminster's own workers to attack his business, and he may hold up in there and force us to besiege him, but I'm going to have you bring me his bloody severed head on my breakfast platter before the week is out!"
"Faith an' begorrah!"
Sunday, July 18, 2010
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