Colonel Bulper was of a slumberous turn. Most people are not: they
work all day and sleep all night--are always in one or the other
condition of unrest, and never slumber. Such persons, the Colonel used
to remark, are fit only for sentry duty; they are good to watch our
property while we take our rest--and they take the property. But this
tale is not of them; it is of Colonel Bulper.
There was a fellow named Halsey, a practical joker, and one of the
most disagreeable of his class. He would remain broad awake for a year
at a time, for no other purpose than to break other people of their
natural rest. And I must admit that from the wreck of his faculties
upon the rock of _insomnia_ he had somehow rescued a marvellous
ingenuity and fertility of expedient. But this tale is not so much of
him as of Colonel Bulper.
At the time of which I write, the Colonel was the Collector of Customs
at a sea-port town in Florida, United States. The climate there is
perpetual summer; it never rains, nor anything; and there was no good
reason why the Colonel should not have enjoyed it to the top of his
bent, as there was enough for all. In point of fact, the Collectorship
had been given him solely that he might repair his wasted vitality by
a short season of unbroken repose; for during the Presidential canvass
immediately preceding his appointment he had been kept awake a long
time by means of strong tea, in order to deliver an able and
exhaustive political argument prepared by the candidate, who was
ultimately successful in spite of it.
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