Rutherford B. Hayes’ Adventures in Bootblacking

It would be but foolish knavery to attempt to enumerate the numerous luminaries who visited my benefactor Miss Havershank during my residence at her Home for Wayward Bootblacks. Her elegantly appointed sitting room saw the robust hindquarters of everyone from the most esteemed congressmen to the most wickedly vile of entertainers, from towering men of industry to fatuous clergy of every denomination. They all came to bask in the reflected goodness of her genteel grace, and to enjoy the crispiest hardtack this side of the Hoboken Juvenile Detention Facility.

However, one particularly posh paramour of Miss Havershank stands starkly in my mind’s eye to this day, though it be not less than three score years hence that I first made his acquaintance. The personage in question was none other than the right honorable Rutherford B. Hayes, who used to frequent her establishment often in the days when he was but a simple would-be local alderman. Little could we all have imagined the heights to which his fatuous good looks and foppish demeanor would propel him. President! Miss Havershank would have likely been struck dumb at the thought of M– Hayes rising to any office higher than constabulary’s assistant bootman.

M– Hayes would loudly declaim his entry into the bootblackery with a loud “Huzzah” before depositing upwards of forty decidedly well-apportioned boots for blacking. No two boots were ever alike, nor did a match deign to appear in any subsequent visit. M– Hayes would wave off any questions with a blustery burst of false bravado intended to scare the wayward bootblacks back into subservient acquiescence. This technique worked on every occasion save one; the occasion that spelled the end of my association with Miss Havershank, the Home, and the whole array of bootblacking activities and society memberships I had accumulated over the course of my time in that noble semi-profession.

The incident in question began in innocent quietude, we bootblacks having retired to our quarters for our thrice-weekly “rum blackout.” We had scarcely drifted into placid slumber before a clamorous harangue stirred us from our beatitude. It became evident in a thrice that M– Hayes had catapulted himself into Miss Havershank’s establishment in something of an intoxicated state, such that he had taken to rumbling down the hallway bellowing loudly about various local minstrels who had wronged him at some point in the indeterminate past. It is to Miss Havershank’s credit that she did not rain blows down about his head and torso, as I had borne witness to on several occasions when a papist had made the mistake of darkening her door during afternoon tea.

After a good deal of sputtering and medicated wine, Miss Havershank convinced M– Hayes to lie down in the vestibule and attempt to recover his wits. It was at this point that the rotund interloper remembered where he had wandered into. He inquired if we had completed the thirteen boots he had delivered to our doorstep for a deluxe blacking some three weeks hence. When Miss Havershank informed him that we had as of yet only completed twelve boots to his complete specifications, M– Hayes sang out the most indecorous curses upon the heads of the assembled onlookers.

My patience with his shenanigans wearing more threadbare moment to moment, I called out to the drunken wretch with a bon mot that was certain to get his hackles in a pickle, as we used to say: “Maybe our efforts would be more efficacious were you to deliver matched pairs of boots for blacking rather than the bedraggled stragglers you incessantly would have us endeavor to bring to a wearable state. Mayhap their mates were absconded with by these minstrels who do seem to bedevil you so!”

If I had supposed M– Hayes’ previous curses to be indecorous, I was soon put to right, as he proceeded to unleash an outburst of wanton profanity unmatched in our circles since last summer’s decidedly unsuccessful apple picking excursion. He demanded that Miss Havershank dismiss me from my precarious employment post-haste, else he take his unarguably gargantuan bootblacking trade elsewhere—perhaps even down the lane to the suspiciously profitable bootblacking concern under the management of Miss Clousterhamm, Miss Havershank’s half-sister and sworn nemesis.

Such a threat was too much for Miss Havershank to bear, so she took the bold, and dare I say unnecessary, step of throwing both M– Hayes and myself out onto the cobbled sidewalk outside. As nearly weightless snowflakes gently drifted and settled on my woolen cap, and M– Hayes thrashed about in a fruitless attempt to regain his lost dignity by loudly dusting his trousers, I began to suspect that I had again been undone by my waggish tongue.

To my enduring surprise, M– Hayes turned to me and declared, “You’ve gumption, my good man! I like that in a man, and even more so in a bootblack. You’ve earned my respect with that lunatic outburst, and I would be honored to enjoin you in my campaign to become president of these United States!”

I guffawed a hearty laugh and accepted his offer with alacrity. The next several years were ones of constant turmoil, doubt, corruption, more turmoil, and eventually even murder, with details still too scandalous to mention in polite company. Suffice it to say that when all was said and done, President Hayes named me Ambassador to France.

Fin.