To call at Wolfe Londoner’s Store.  A Car load of Georgia Watermelons Just received For a special distribution Among his Colored Friends. Call Early and get Your Melon!!!

It is needless to say that when Mr. Londoner’s store opened in the morning an ever-increasing cloud of dusky humanity, with teeth that glistened with the juice of anticipation, gathered about the entrance.  Business in the store was at a standstill and travel on the street was blocked.  No explanation could appease the rising anger of that dark multitude.  It was melons, or a riot.  Melons, or that unheard-of thing—­a colored landslide to the democracy.  Mr. Londoner was at his wits’ ends.  There were no melons in the market, and none expected.  Just as Londoner was preparing to abandon his store to the wrath of the justly incensed melon-maniacs, a car-load of magnificent melons dropped into one of the freight sidings, and Londoner and the Republican party were saved.  Nobody ever knew how or whence that pink-hearted manna came.  The price was exorbitant, but that did not matter.  Londoner paid it with the air of a man who had ordered melons and was indignant that the railway company had disappointed him in not delivering them the day before.  There was not a crack in the solid black Republican column on election day.

But Field was not through with Mr. Londoner yet.  The colored brethren had to hold their ratification meeting to endorse the Republican nominations, and more especially to render thanks for the creation of watermelons, and to the man who paid for them, out of season.  Of course Mr. Londoner was invited to attend, and when it came his turn to address the meeting the chairman, a colored deacon of the church where “’Possum Jim” worshipped, by the name of Williams, introduced him as follows: 

“I now take great pleasure in introducing to you our friend and brother, the Honorable Mistah Wolfe Londoner, who has always been our true friend and brother, who always advises us to do the right thing, and stands ready, at all times, to help us in the good fight.  Although he has a white skin, his heart is as black as any of ours.  Brothers, the Honorable Wolfe Londoner.”

There was no mistaking the authorship of this felicitous introduction.

Field was never tired of repeating another story at the expense of Mr. Londoner, in connection with the visit of Charles A. Dana to Denver.  The arrival of “Mr. Dana of the New York Sun” was made the occasion for one of those receptions by the Press Club which made up in heartiness what they lacked in conventional ceremony.  Mr. Londoner was the president of the club, and it not only fell to his lot to deliver the address of welcome to guests of the club, but to look after their comfort and welfare while they remained in the city, and often to provide them with the wherewithal to leave it.  On Mr. Dana’s presentation he was called on for some remarks, to which Mr. Londoner listened with the air of a man who had heard the same tale from lips less entitled to deliver a message of counsel and warning to a group of newspaper writers.  When his guest had finished his remarks, Mr. Londoner, according to Field’s story, walked over to Mr. Dana and asked him how much he wanted.